The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1889-10-16
Protection and Agriculture.

Protection and agriculture.
The farmers throughout the country are
finally waking up to the fact that they are
the chief victims of the tariff robbery.
At the last election, contrary to popular
expectation, the democrats made large
gains on the tariff issue in the manuiact-
uring centers and lost in the agricultural
districts. The tariff scare" failed to work
in the cities; but it seemed to have had
considerable effect in the country.
Since the election, however, the farmers
have been studying the tariff question,
and have learned a great deal about it.
The more they learn about it, the more
clearly they see that the protective tariff
is great injury to them.
In the agricultural department of the
Vermont IjatchB1aH, weekly republican
paper published at Montpelier, DR.. T. II.
HosKINs prints significant article on the
low price of butter The doctor says that
the butter market could only be improved
by increasing the export trade. But, he
says, "if we export butter, we shall have
to take our pay, directly or indirectly, in
the products OF the nations to which we
sell it. No nation can or will pay cash,
end cash only, for staple foreign products,
for this tends to exhaust the store of coin
and bullion upon which the financial So
lidity of all trading nations must be sus-
tanned. As the present commercial policy
OF the Union is oneo of high protection, we
cannot take foreign goods in payment for
our butter without allowing for the duties
we must pay on those foreign goods, be-
fore we can put our hands on them here.
This will reduce the returns of foreign
butter shipments very materially"
The writer says he is a protectionist, but
that he ''can not deny that protection is
not favorable to the interests of the ex-
porters of farm products 1t is not in
tended to be that" he continues, "but to
give us a good and handy home market
among our own industrial class"
These remarks move the ECeninq Post of
New York to present the farmers some facts
showing that the handy home market
is a delusion. "If," it says with great
truth, there lis any farming district in
this country where, according to the pro-
lection theory, the farmers ought to be
accumulating wealth from the good and
handy home market among our own in
dustrial classes, it is certainly the region
within range of fifty miles from Pittsburg
and its sister city OF Allegheny" A corre-
spondent OF the Eyepinq Post wished to
buy farm for a relative in this very re-
giOn-in the southern part of Allegheny
county OF the northern part OF Washing
ton county, within range of say, twenty
miles from Pittsburg. He advertised in
a Pittsburg paper, and was overwhelmed
with replies, receiving communications
from no fewer than one hundred and
wenty-eight persons by mail, to say moth
ing of many personal solicitations. A
large portion, if not a majority, of these
farms were embarrassed either with mort
cages or judgments, as shown by the
county records, and the owners of the rest
seemed generally to be apprehensive of
similar troubles unless they sold at ridicu-
lousy low prices. While everybody APP
peared to be clamorous to sell, the intend
ing purchaser could not hear of single
sale that had been made in many months
Prices are steadily shrinking, and farms
have shrunken in value from 20 to 33 per
cent during the past ten years, in what
should be, according to the protective
theory, the most flourishing agricultural
district in the entire country.
The Erening Post shows that similar
condition of affairs exist in other eastern
states. Recently a correspondent of that
paper described the condition of some
farming towns in New Hampshire, near
the chief manufacturingcities on the Mer-
rimac river. Within few miles of each
other, around the great bend of the river,
from south to east, are the cities of Mas
hua, Lowell. Lawrence and Haverhill.
The farming towns of Windham, Pelham
and Hudson, n. H., are situated within
the bend, and so within easy reach of
more than one good and handy home
market" But instead OF prosperous farms,
the correspondent counted on the main
road from Lowell to Windham six deserted
sets of farm buildings, besides several
which had already gone to ruin. Fields
and pastures" he wrote, "are growing up
to wood houses in which generation
ago sturdy manhood and womanhood
fourished are gone to utter ruin; in many
school districts there are not sufficient
children to have a school. The whole APP
pearance is one of poverty and decay. In
no part OF New England with which l am
acquainted is the decay Of the farming in
terests so obvious and so complete as here
by the manufacturing cities"
Col. T. w. HIGGIxsoN bears similar tes-
timony as to the state of agriculture in
Massachusetts,. He has spent several sum-
mers in Holden, a pleasant farming town
in the heart of the state, and Immediately
adjoining the manufacturing city of Wor-
cester, with which it is connected by five
railway trains daily. The colonel says
that about Holden there is a smaller
amount of cultivated land than there was
forty years ago; that farms : re being