The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1889-11-02
THE DGCADENCE OF FARMING.

has quite a noteworthy article in the
November number of the Popular Sci
ence MonhM Mr.. Benton, like tru,
scientist, shows familiarity with his
subject, is abundantly supplied with
facts, and places his differences and
conclusions upon solid grounds. Tn,
outcome is, that this remarkable de
cadence Of the greatest Of all our in
dustries, in times when all the rest art
enjoying steady growth and increased
prosperity, is the result of unjust leg
islatiOn and excessive taxation. "All
over the statute books, If there is a
law made having any effect at all upon
the farmer, il is, with an almost ma
lcious certainty, made to operate
against him. =. Every tax system
now uppermost puts the heavy end OF
its incidence on the farmer. In the
state, county and township allotment
the burden Of the tax is direct. 1t
falls upon what can be seen and dis
covered with greatest weight. But IL
never fails to discover the farmer. His
broad acres cannot be hidden or sworn
away: while his neighbOr, rich in per-
sonal holdings, can cunningly suspend
his own by evasion-sometimes by an
artful change or confusion of residence
so as to add his also to that of the
beridden farmer"
But" Mr.. Burton proceeds to show,
''worse than all this is the farmers re-
lation to the national tax system, which
exploits away his hard earned profits,
small in percentage, almost invisibly,
and then adds abuse to injury by sue
cessfully persuading him that it exists
for his supreme advantage" 1t is not
our purpose, however, to follow the
argument of Mr.. Benton on this line.
That is a bundle of straw the FREE
TRADER has threshed so often here
tofore that its readers will hardly care
for repetition. We shall only attempt
to condense a few of his most striking
facts and then throw out suggestion
or two of our own on the subject of
state taxation.
Looking through pile of New Eng
land newspapers, Mr.. Burton is sur
prised to see the number of advertise
ments they contain offering farms for
sale. Looking a little further into
the matter, he finds that these farms
are offered at about half the price they
were worth 20 years ago. They are
not poor, worn out farms. They are
in the midst of our best social culture
as developed by our own most intelli-
gent neral communities. Upon them
are improvements and good buildings.
Railroads run over or near all of them;
large factories and populOus towns are
near to buy their products, beauty is
in the landscape and health in the
very air.
But the farms for sale, and have
been for twenty years, and during all
that time going rapidly downward.
The same is true Of farms in New
York as throughout New England.
The n. Y. state assessors, in their last
years report, find the same fact all
over the state--''that farm lands have
deprecated in value, while city prop
erty has increased! The decadence of
farm property is SO rapid, that they
express the opinion that sin few de-
cades there will be none but tenant
farmers in this state" Assessment
returns show the same deCadence
going on in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indi-
ana and Illinois, accompanied in all
these states, as well as through the
entire west, with an alarming increase
of farm mortgages, the increase in
Illinois alone, in three years, being
over $2S,OO0,0O0, and the sum total,
throughout all the western states,
three billions four hundred mad.t,centy-t,co
millions of dollars
What is to be the ultimate outcome?
Already in New England the farms
are passing into the hands of the for.
eigners, Il distinctly peasant element,
class which reduces the necessities
of life to the simplest scale, and
which is able to do farming within the
family and so eliminate the costly fea
ture of hired help. The spinning
wheel is no stranger to them, nor thu
house loom, and they are skilled in tn,
contrivance Of wooden shoes. In New
York, Pennsylvania and Ohio farming
| is tending in the same direction, ant
who cannot foresee, that If our present
system of taxation is to continue, this
lis the future of the great farming in
terest of the whole countryl 1t may
be %, so or 100 years off, but the ten
dency is certainly and rapidly thai
way.
There is no way to arrest this bu
lsuch a reform of our tax system a,