The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1890-01-14

more for their services, for his produce
would sell for more than now, for in
stead of trusts reaping the advantages,
the farmer would hold his products
until prices were satisfactory.
You may call this fighting Belze6ub
with fire. So long as it is just and
right, by bringing to the laborer a
Just return for labor we care not W hat
may be said.
We may be slow to learn, but we
certainly do learn we are taught by
precept and example.
No country ever prospered, no
country is to day prosperous whose
wages are low or money scarce. With
a greater volume of currency, better
prices for products of the soil would
naturally follow; wages would be in
creased, because if products were
profitable to the husbandman the de-
mand for labor would increase, and
thus labor would secure the just share
of the wealth it creates.
THE MANUFACTURER.
But what of the manufacturer ? Ii
he desired cotton or wool, wheat or
corn, the kinds and amounts he might
need could be had at the government
warehouses, and he would not be
compelled to hold in large amounts as
now. This would enable him to in
crease his plant and business, and to
do away with brokerage fees and COM
missions and get from any point he
chooses because railroad rates would
not then be prohibitory) and to the
cotton farmer, millions in a decade
would be saved in weights, in surplus,
and other commissions.
This would place the producer and
the manufacturer SO close to each
other that middlemen would have to
seek other business.
Banks, as generators of currency
would go out of existence and the
postal, express and telegraph system,
could be so arranged that in every
hamlet there would be bank of de-
posit, or savings bank.
MORTGAGES AND BONDS.
The Indebtedness of the country
would be paid off, saving millions Of
dollars in premiums now paid to bond
holders, the bonds replaced by treas
ury notes would save fifty millions
yearly in interest, thus giving relief in
all forms and enabling landed pro,
prietors to borrow money at low rates
of interest, thereby saving usury and
interest and in this way reduce the
mortgage indebtedness on the lands
of the farmer.
VALUE OF LANDS ENHANCED.
A farm that produced Is or 20
years ago 1000 bushels of wheat in
excess of the amount needed to pay
hands and feed and clothe the family
could have been sold for what the ex-
cess represented in interest.
Thus, if wheat sold at ST. SO per
bushel, 1000 bushels would be worth
ST. 500, the farm paying interest at
per cent on $25, 1000, while wheat at
60 cents per bushel, the same excess
would only be worth $500, so that
the farm would only be worth $lo, 900,
as an investment. Low prices for
products lowers the value of lands, so
by raising the price of farm products
the farms would increase in the exact
ratio of the value of the products
raised.
A volume of currency equalling 80
per cent. of the entire products of the
soil would double the values of the
farms of this country
With no government bonds, no rail
road stocks or bonds, over four billions
of money would be loosed that is now
locked up, and values of land and all
real property, mines and mandatory
stocks would correspondingly increase
in value.
Our farms and villages, our forests
and mines, our factories and furnaces
would increase in value as rapidly as
they did in the North during the war.
apital would not remain idle, and
the wage-earner once again be pros
porous. Coal miners and iron work
ers instead of earning miserable pit
tance, would be enabled to live as they
deserve to, not on starvation wages
and in huts and novels, but with such
environments as would enable them
to have the comforts of home.
BUT HOW SHALL ALL THIS BE ACCOM-
PLIsHED?
However profitable to the farmer
or Knights of Labor, reasoning and
good, kind words will be of no more
avail to the money lords and railroad |
kings than were the pleadings of our
forefathers century ago.
They will heed them no more than |
the prophecies and admonitions of |
Moses were needed or cared for by
Pharaoh.
We must use our ballots as nlapues |