Alpena weekly argus. [volume] (Alpena, Mich.) 1871-1893, 1889-07-10

cornmeal, oats, rye, etc, the whole
amount exported being valued at
SO, 762,864. The total quantity of
breadstuffs sent away from the United
States in the eleven months ending
May 30th, 1889, is valued at SILL
o45,697. Bearing in mind that the
farmers exported this vast quantity
of breadstuffs to foreign markets,
there to compete with breadstuffs
raised in India, in Russia, in Austria,
in Algeria, in Australia and in South
America, the cutlery recently raised
over the formation of a trust in bind
err Irvine, which will cost each farmer
but few dollars extra per annum,
is somewhat remarkable. The farm
err has to pay from 80 to 80 per cent
duty on cotton goods, as high as go
per cent On earthenware, 20 to 30
per cent on hats, 45 per cent on farm
machinery, 60 to 70 per cent on the
wooden clothing he wears and 20 to
30 per cent on his boots and shoes
all for the purpose of enriching a
class which is not only large enough
to compete for and consume his pro-
ducts, which, therefore, have to seek
a foreign market at any price, but a
class which is absolutely careless
whether American agriculture lives
or dies.
Even if the American farmer does
not "see the cat" within the next
four years, his awakening to the true
state of affairs cannot be much long
err delayed. The struggle is one of
the most unequal and absurd that has
been witnessed since governments
were organized. On the one side is
a class which produces what is recog-
nized as the "staff of life"-the most
necessary product of earth we can
conceive of, and offers it to another
class. class which is busy making
articles of secondary importance,
many of them indeed being pure lux
uries, but which says: 1--WE are not
numerous enough to consume your
breadstuffs; it is not that you pro-
duce more than the nation could eat,
for many thousands daily 90 hungry
for lack of even bread but we have
persuaded this nation that you are
only of inferior merit and use, while
our products are magnifed into the
sine qua none of existence"
While this state of things exists,
it is preposterous that a single farm
er should vote to continue it. He
may 60 on toiling year in and year
out, and the more grain he raises the
poorer he will be relatively for his
extra trouble. He has no lever with
which to raise the price of his pro
ducts by hairs breadth, while the
maker of everything else he needs,
and even of luxuries for which his
sons and daughters sigh, has horde
of paid lobbyists watching that not a
cent shall be lifted from the burden
that has been gradually placed on the
farmers broad shoulders. If it were
otherwise, if the manufacturers and
those whom they employ could and
did constitute home market for the
products of the soil, so that the farm
er had an equal opportunity of COM
handing his own price for those pro-
ducts, the demand of the protection
list manufacturer would be less selfish,
less unjust. But the boosted home
market has never existed, and it will
be many years before it will exist.
Meanwhile it is not too much to say
that for every dollars worth of bread
stuffs the farmer exports he has to
take in exchange barely 70 cents
worth of other necessaries.-S Louis
Renuhlic-