Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1890-04-09
From the Lynchburg Advance.
Hard Times for Farmers.

The farmers of the country are evidently
beginning to fully understand what are
their best interests ,and are learning how best
to assert and protect them by the laws and
legislation of the country. They have found
out that what high tariff and monopolist
combines call ''protection" is nothing but
protection to their exclusive interests and
outrageous oppression to the farmers and
laboring men of the country. The farmers
have also found out that what Is called a
"home market" to them is really nothing
but home market for the benefit of the
manufacturers and monopolists, where they
can buy all of the farmers products for
nothing and then sell them all the clothing
and farm utensils they need at an advance
of rs per cent.
But what we desire to call the special at
teption of the farmers to to-day is the fol-
lowing article from the Philadelphia Times,
which tells US the situation and demands OF
the farmers in such manufacturing section
as Pennsylvania. Let the farmers of Vir-
ginia and the south read and ponder it.
The Times says:
The farmers of Montgomery and Berks
counties have been aroused to organized ac.
ton by the general depression in the farm
ing interest in those counties. It is claimed
that the market value of farm lands in
Montgomery county has declined forty per
cent. during the last ten years, and it is as.
certained in both counties that many farmers
will be compelled to abandon farming in
the near future unless some speedy and sub
stautial relief can be obtained.
The depression of the farming interest is
not only logical but it is inevitable. They
are now paying nearly the same high war
taxes on everything they buy that they paid
when they received war prices of So per
bushel for their wheat, and like prices for
sll their other products. The needless
tariff taxes the farmers pay upon the neces-
stiles of life would make the differences be-
tween actual loss and reasonable profit on
any well regulated farm in Montgomery and
Berks counties.
The farmers Knocked with false protec-
ton, and thus taxed excessively on what they
must buy when there is no possible method
of protecting them in their chief products,
the price OF which is regulated by the foreign
W tuclI uuoG SU.
They are Knocked by protection on wool,
when there are not five hundred farmers in
Pennsylvania who would not gain more
from free wool in cheapened woolens they
consume, than they could possibly lose on
wool, and for the mockery of protection on
wool, vegetables, eggs, butter, etc, they
are taxed in home and barn from founda-
tion to roof, taxed in furniture, clothing,
utensils, farm implements, and everything
that goes on their tables from salt to china,
with the single exception of tea and coffee.
The farmers are walking monuments of
high war taxation in time of peace, as are
there wives, their children and their labor
ers When war taxes were necessity and
value of farm products advanced with taxes,
farmers could afford war taxation; but war
taxes with wheat and other farm products
at two fifths their price in war times, must
bankrupt Our farming interest in the old
States. Let the farmers look to congress-,
where tariff revision is on hand, and note
that wool and woolens are to be loaded
with increased taxes and that tin plate of
universal use on our farms from kitchen
utensils TO dinner pals and outhouse roofs,
is to be increased one hundred and twenty
five per cent. in taxes, and they will under
stand why they are impoverished and where
the remedy is to be found. Truly, these are
hard times for farmers, but it is quite as
true that the farmers have always had the
power to release themselves from bondage
and that they have thus far failed to exer-
ciee Il,