Los Angeles daily herald., 1890-03-11
The rariss ana the Farmers.

The Tarixf and the Farmers.
The condition of the Western farmers
is becoming worse every year. Ut is
within the bounds of truth to say that
about one half of their farms are mort
gagged, and, as the times 60, their re-
deGption is becoming more problemati-
cal every year. In 1O2 counties in Hill
nois over eight millions of acres of farm
lands are mortgaged for $l47 1920, ,054. In
the single year of 1887 new mortgages
we're fled for record covering 2,17s,532
acres. At the last census the farms of
Michigan were valued at $500, 900,
and the last report of the Labor Com
missioner showed that one half the farms
of shat State were mortgsged at one half
their value. If in these two Western
States, where the farms are we'll stocked,
and where long settlement has enabled
the farmers to practice the highest econ
omics in husbandry, the mortgage canker
has eaten so deeply, what must be the
condition in the newer Western States
As an exchange says, eff the great tariff
tax, that ever drains and Expresses the
farmer, continues for few years longer.
the farms will be owned Dy the men who
already own the mills, and the poor
farmers will become overseers or
workers for bosses" The operation of the
war tariff has been most ruinous to the
farmers of the West, and yet the West
ern States, through the vote of their
farmers, have steadily adhered to the
party which, through its policy, is carry
ing them rapidly on to destruction. 1t
is impossible that these men can be
much longer deceived by the specious
and false reasoning of the war tarifites.
When they open their eyes, as they as
suredly will, to the iniquity they have
helped to maintain, the party which has,
through the war tariff, taxed them to
death, will be permanently retired from
power.
If the farmers of the West have been
deceived by the Republicans when they
were made to believe that high protection
secured for them home market for their
III
ers, who are in the very midst of the
manufacturing towns which were to give
them the home market, have fallen into
the same trap? These men have had
ocular proof, in the desertion of whole
farming districts, of the falsity of the
claim, and yet they have stuck closely to
the party that has destroyed their homes.
The poet Whittier, last December, wrote
to his friend, Judge Mott, in the following
plaintive strain: every year. when /
60 to the N. q. hill country, find more
and more abandoned farms, and the
sight takes away much of the pleasure of
soiourn in view of the mountains"
Judge Mott himself, writing of the con-
dition as he knows it, says:
"Driving thither 1 found huge old
time two-story church, large academy
(Which had blended in the distance with
the church,, village with broad
street, perhaps $50 feet in width. l drove
on and found that the church was aban
doned, the academy dismantled, the vii
lage deserted. The farmer who owned
the farm on the north of the village lived
on one side of the street, and he who
owned the farm on the south on the ether,
and they were the only inhabitants. All
of the others had gone. Here had been
industry, education, religion, comfort
and contentment, but there remained
only drear solitude of forsaken homes" F"
Yet these farms are within a stones
for farmers, which the war tax advocates
declared would make the American hus-
bandman rich in the returns for his pro.
ducts.
Pennsylvania farms are also going out
of sight under the hammer of the Sheriff.
In Bucks county, says a local paper,
"ths Sher ifs bell is heard around the
homestead, and the end is not yet.
Economy must be the watchword, or the
native farmer will be a thing of the
past" A great Stats is thus passing to
decay under the sirocco of subsidized
furnaces and grinding monopoly. While
the protected Carnegies flourish in
splendor and give one hundred thousand
dollar dinners in Washington, the farm
ers with their "home market" at their
door, are bowed under the weight of
taxation and debts that are crushing
them to death. Well may the Somerset
IN. J.) Messenger ask in view of passing
events and unmistakable facts:
What benefit is the present high pro-
tective tariff to farmers? None whatever.
On the contrary, it is the primary cause
OF the depressed condition of agricultural
pursuits. The tariff don't advance the
price of farm products, but it increases
the expenses of the farmers in many
ways; as it is nothing else than an in
direct tax upon what they buy for the
support of their families aud the imple-
ments Of industry. Nails, lumber, tin,
salt, iron, coal and thousand aud one
things that enter into consumption, are
taxed"
Or, in other words, the unprotected
farmer pays the enormous prices the
protected manufacturer is enabled to