Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1890-04-11
Why Farming Don't Pay.
From the Baltimore Sun.


the results of our recent inquiry,
Does farming paw" in the shape oi
numerous replies from those who
know. A like inquiry has been prose
cuted by an indianapolis journal with
substantially similar results. The
farmers of Indiana are not, it is found
in as good a position financially as
they were a year ago. Wheat sells for
"a cents against 81 a year ago. Corn
and oats have fallen six cents bushel.
There is depression of two cents a
pound in the live hog market, while
barrel pork has fallen s. a barrel.
Other hog products are down in the
same proportion. The crops have
been satifactOry, but they bring less
than formerly, and the decline con-
tinues from year to year. With this
decline OF the value of the farmers
product, there has been correspond
| ing decline in the value of his land in
vestment. Lands situated near manu-
featuring towns like South Bend have
deprecated like the rest. A farm for
which $65 an acre was offered in vain
few years ago was recently sold for
$36 an acre. One farmer, who has for
many years kept u record Of his opera
tions, states that formerly he made a
fifteen per cent. profit yearly on his
investment in a farm of 14O acres,
while during the past ten years he
does not average over 81 per cent. On
$50 acres he cannot do as well as he
formerly did on 140. At the same
time that the farmers profit and cap
ital have been growing less the cost of
living has been increasing. The sugar
trust has put up the price of sugar,
and the other trusts, thanks to the
protection they get from high tariff,
afforded by the establishment of man.
ufacturers near at hand, has proven a
delusion, as it pays for the farmers
products only the prices fixed in the
foreign market. In New Hampshire
the steam whistles OF the factories re-
vertebrate over the fields OF S5l aban-
doned farms. In Vermont the case is
still worse though the farmers there
use the bells and whistles of neighbor-
ing factories in lieu of dinner horns.
A cash market for produce at .one's
own door is Of no avail if the cash re-
ceived does not pay profit on the
value of ones labor and investment.
The railroads, with their cheap trans
portation rates, have destroyed the
superiority Of the home market over
any over market. What the con-
sumner of agricultural produce does
nowadays is to send to Chicago for his
beef, to Minneapolis for his flour and
to Nebraska for his corn, if his farmer
in the neighborhood asks a paying
price for his produce. The prices pre-
vailing at centers like Chicago and
Minneapolis are determined at Liver
pool and London, where the farmers
surplus is sold. 1t amounts to this,
then, that the farmer buys his sugars
and necessaries in a home market
made dear by the protective tariff and
sells his products in a cheap foreign
market in competitor with all the
world. How has he gotten into this
absurd positionf Everybody is pros
pering just now but he. Evidently
somebody has been too smart for him.
An Indiana farmer tells how it is.
"The laws of the country" he says,
care made in the interest OF anybody
but the farmers, and until he wakes
up to that fact and demands his rights
he can never have his share in the
country's prosperity"