The St. Johns herald., 1892-04-28
Au InsOIent Taxeater.

Agricultural Statistics" presided
 over by Mir. J. B. Dodge. This per. son has been supported at public expense until he has become fat and insolent on the taxes he has eaten. In a proclamation recently issued he calls the gentlemen composing the St. Louis Cotton Exchange "a band of speculators suffering from their own rashness and bad judge ment," and incidentally in another place describes them as wolves of speculation"
 All this is because the exchange has protested against the attempt of this Bureaucrat to show that there is an "overproduction" of wheat and cotton, and, consequent ly, the wheat and cotton prices will go lower.
 Now, it is very likely that this may be the case. With the McKin- ley bill preventing the exchange of our surplus for that of Europe i; with our exports forcing gold to a higher premium ill Europe under the Mckinley bill, we cannot expect good prices for our agricultural pro- ducts except as a result of drought and famine here or in Europe.
 But how is it the business of Mir. Dodge or any other taxeater to use the money paid as taxes by our workers and producers to advertise "overproduction," and to invite Eu- ropean buyers to hold off for prices still lower than now? We say 1t is none of his business. We say that when his reports contain anything more than the bare figures when he injects comments calculated to benefit speculators on any side of the market, he should be discharged from hls position. It is by no means his first offense. For years he has been taking statistics, always more or less incomplete and partial and using them as a text for his own views of what the markets will be, or what he thinks they ought to be.
 Where he says that our farmers are over-producers it is a fiat false hood, If we had our right of-way unimpeded to and from our mar kets. we could double and treble our surplus of wheat, cotton, corn, pro- visions and all other foodstuffs and agricultural raw materials. and on this vastly increased surplus we would realize a much larger return per pound and per bushel than we can ever get even in drought and famine years when our return car goes are so taxed that we cannot fairly exchange with Europe; that we must keep our surplus on hand as "overproduction," valueless to us and harmful to the producer be- cause he is not allowed to exchange it for the supplies he needs.
 While the Republican party is shutting out the Mississippi Valley from it's markets and prohibiting it from exchanging it's surplus for the surplus of Europe, it is intolerable that this agent of the Plutocratic Corporation Protection system should issue his official bulletins" from the Department of Agricul- ture warning possible buyers of the surplus that is kept on our hands, that it is immense in quantity, and that we have heavily 'overproduced' ourselves, because if there were such a thing as overproduction every pound or bushel overpro- duced would be utterly and wholly valueless. And when to such in- jury he adds the insult of calling citizens who are taxed to fatten him in his small official insolence wolves of speculation" because they protest that he is breaking down the prices of Mississippi Val ley products, it is time that he and all like him were kicked out of of flee and compelled to go to work for