The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-11-11
UNFINISHED WORK OF THE ALLIANCE

1t may be considered debatable question
III certain respects whether the collapse of
the Farmers Alliance is an unmixed bless
Ing. In some places it accomplished good,
and as general thing it's members were
actuated by praiseworthy motives. 1t was
most active and determined in the south,
and here its its most mischievous features
developed. 1t forced some its principles
upon the Democratic party, and compelled
the nomination of its favorites by Demo
critic conventions. In one state, South
Carolina, it, or an organization similar,
succeeded in capturing the Democracy by
oVerpowering numbers, driving Senator
HAMPTON, one Of the most popular leaders
OF the south, into political retirement,
1t aimed to disenthrall the farming iR-
! terest from its subsection to the man
ufacturing, commercial and specializing in
terests-and this was praiseworthy but
some OF the measures by which it sought to
accomplish the object were communistic
and irrational. For example, the formu-
lated proposition of the Alliance declared
that agriculture should receive from tho
government equal protection with manu-
facturing-and it cannot be denied that if
manufacturers are entitled to the govern
ments favor, agriculture is, too. But the
scheme demanded that the government
should purchase all the staple crops OF the
country, year by year, ct certain fixed
prices-l0 cents per pound for cotton and
50 cents per bushel for corn-aud store
them in its own warehouses to sell at an
advance just sufficient to pay cost of stor-
age and delivery, The prices named were
not excessive. Nor can it be gainsaid that
II 1t is right to compel the people to pay
high price for certain manufactures, IL is
right also to compel them to pay at least
living prices to planters and farmers for
their crops. Our tariff makes the price of
81 worth of sheeting or shirting TO be 81. 40:
81 worth of earthenware 81. so; 81 worth of
window-glass s1.60-and so on: and it is no
wonder that the Alliance leaders asserted
that if this favor to manufacturers was
right 1t would he right 10 fix the price of
the planters and the farmers products in
proportion.
But the fact is, neither is right. Both
are wrong. And it is the fault of the west
ern farmers that the government makes
them pay 80 dearly for cotton goods, earth
enware, window glass, binding Irvine. etc.
They could have stopped it twenty years
ago, if they had said the word; and they
can stop 1t now, if they say the word. 1t is
not the governments favor the farmers
need; it is exemption from protective tar
ifs.
Leaving aside the chimerical plan of gov
eminent warehouses and advances. and the
equally Utopian scheme of government
loans on agricultural lands at nominal
rate OF interest the gist of the Alliance de-
mand, as announced in national conyen-
ton, was "free and unlimited coinage of
silver" and a removal of the existing
heavy duties on the necessaries of life. -
Notwithstanding the virtual disband-
ment OF the party those two declarations
contain the present points of conflict be-
tween the farmers and the Republican
party. There is no community of inter
ests between the two. They are necessa-
rily antagoDistic. For thirty years the
Republican party has labored, all too .uc.
cessfully, to build I'D one industry at the
expense of Observation-Disclosures at the
expense OF farming. If the Democratic
House, chosen November 4, 1899, were now
in session, it would exhaust more than one.
half the Alliance platform by embodying it
in bills which it would pass by an over
whelming majority. The Democracy can
well be relied on to do the unfinished work
of the Alliance