The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-08-15
WHY FARMERS ARE POOR.

When the farmers Of Kansas are COM
PEELED to burn their corn for fuel on &C
count of its cheapness, they have been
told that they raise too much corn. If the
cheapness applied to corn only, the remedy
would not be far to seek. The farmers
would raise other crops, But the cheap
ness applies without much difference to all
the farm staples and there are those who
will say the farmers have raised too much
on their farms; there has been an over
production of farm crops.
This strange philosophy seems to teach
that the more the farms produce, the
poorer the farmers will become; and, by
parity of reasoning, implies that if the
farmers would only neglect their farms, or
work them in a less skillful manner, then
the farmers would be better off than they
are when their farms are producing so
much as to cause abundance. This conclu-
sion, that the less attention the farmer
pays to his business and the less his farm
yields, the more money he will make,
might well stagger the most obtuse.
OF course all men do not affect to be
reasoners, but all will and do draw con
is it the laity merely that draw the con-
clusion that the farmers are growing poor
by over production; for men Of apparent
| intelligence and of known ability in some
directions, are the leaders in this strange
philosophy of wealth, that poverty follows
extensive production.
1t is sufficient answer to the over pro
duction theory to remark that millions of
human beings are actually in want of the
farm products for which the farmers can
find no market, and have, moreover, the
products of their own labor to offer in ex-
change for the farmers crops. Why, then,
do the farm products find no market.
There is u reason for it. If the farmer
sells his products to the foreign millions
who desire them, he must receive from
the foreigners the things they have to
sell. In other words, he must simply ex
change products with them, and i'm
port their goods in payment for the goods
he sends them. Foreigners cannot SEND
money to the farmer, nor can the farmer
send money to the foreigner. Neither one
has the money to send, but each has goods
that the other wants. They exchange
their products, through agents acting fol
them.
But when the farmer brings in the goods
that are the pay for his crops, the govern
ment levies tax averaging 80 per cent o.
their value, which the farmer must pay be
fore he lands the goods. One,third of hi:
pay goes to the government, for the protec.
ton of men who desire TO make the sam,
articles that the farmer imports Why ia,
farmer should not be PERMITTED to max,
these goods on his farm by raising a sur
plus and exchanging it for the goods, ha
never been explained. If he is prevente,
by the tax he pays from exchanging hi
surplus for the goods, he will stop raising
surplus, and will discharge his extra men
These men might then find employment il
the protected industries, and the resul
would be a substitution of one kind of worl
for another-the transformation of farme
into wage Garner.
This is the object of the present attacl
on the farming industry; the farmer
must be prevented from raising q surplus
in order that they shall not bring in good.
that some men wish to make in mills.
The attack upon the farms by the tarit
laws has been measurably successful, an