The weekly register. [volume] (Point Pleasant, Va. [W. Va.]) 1862-1909, 1891-09-30
The Farmer Rears the Burden.


it is coming to be understood that
it takes imports to move exports,
and that these imports must come
from the country to which we wish
to export. The people of Illinois
and Iowa, of Missouri and Kentucky,
very seldom see q gold piece, and
they know that there is not gold
enough in the world to carry . per
cent of the worlds trade. And
knowing that gold is as scarce
among the people of Europe as it is
here, they can understand why
their exports are cut down in guam
tity and price by the policy which
refuses to allow them to import
goods in exchange.
In order to sell what we have to
sell we must first find country that
needs it; then we must take in ex-
change what that country can pay
us or else we cannot trade with it
The Republican party has been
forced to acknowledge this in its So
called reciprocity" but even in ac-
knowledging the principle of ex-
change in trade, it seeks to turn it
against the Mississippi Valley.
South American farmers do not
need our farm products. What they
offer for export to the United States
will as imports here move out man
ufactured'goods, but not breadstuffs,
provisions and cotton. Perhaps we
might sell some wheat in Buenos
Ayres or some cotton in Brazil, but
everybody knows we could not
move the crops of the Mississippi
Valley by such trade as that. For
Buenos Ayres exports wheat, hides
and wool and Brazil cotton and
hides. These the Mississippi Val
ley produces, and under fair trade
Brazilian sugar and coffee imported
here would move out exports of
Massachusetts manufactures, while
European imports would move the
products of the Mississippi Valley to
Europe.
On this, however, Now England
puts its veto. 1t wishes to ex-
change its manufactured goods for
the agricultural products of South
America, but it denies to the Miss
issippi Valley the exchange with
Europe, through which alone the
farming states of the valley can
hope to market their surplus profit
ably.
Under this policy New England
proposes to trade. 1t admits that
trade is Il first-rate thing, and ac-
cordingIy it will use the whole pow
er of the government to build up a
trade for itself with South Ameri-
can farmers, taking their farm pro-
ducts in exchange for its manufac-
lures. 'We will do the trading,
it says to the Valley States. Free
trade is good if properly conducted,
so we will trade freely with our
South American customers; and
while we are doing it you can sell
what you can in Europe for gold,
so that you can have the gold to
give for our goods at our prices
So the high tariff wall shuts the
valley out from its European mar
ket, while New England is using
the free trade back door cut in the
wall for its convenience. The Val
ley States cannot long submit to
this. They produce wealth above
any other region of the earth and
the high tariff Custom Houses, with
the high tariff gold basis for foreign
trade, shuts out this wealth from
exchange and deprives it of a very
largo part of its exchange value.
Unless we can exchange our wheat,
corn, provisions and cotton, they
have no exchange value, and every
thing which lessons the freedom of
exchange for them deprives them
of exchange value to the extent of
the reduction. If the valley is not
allowed to exchange its products
with Europe it can never have
a sufficient supply of money or OF
the necessaries and comforts of life.
The same reciprocity New Eng
land has with Brazil and Buenos
Ayres, the Mississippi Valley must
have with its customers in England
and Ireland, in France, Germany
and Italy. The New England poll
cy is throttling the production and
the commerce of the Valley States,
and it must be changed. The coun-
try from the Alleghenies to the
Rocky Mountains and from the
Lakes to the Gulf is the wealthiest
in the world in its products, and it