St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1893-04-24
sENATOR PEFFER,s HINT.

Senator PETER is one of senatorial
commission which will use up the sum-
mer and $1,000 in trying to find out what
is the matter with the farmers of this
country; why they are complaining of
poverty instead of being holders of
stocks in trusts and railroads and banks
and other profitable industries. He out
lines a plan of research which will
gather a formidable lot of data, which.
after it is all put together and duly tab
ulated and analysed, will be used by
him to bolster up his paternaliStic bill
providing for the loan of treasury notes
to impecunious farmers at or per
cent interest.
If the senator wishes to learn the
chief cause of this depression which
comes from the very slim margin be-
tween the cost of production and the
selling price of farm produce, the
GLOBE can give it to him in a nutshell
not larger than cocOanut. ANDREW
CARNEGIE stated the cause III very
terse and striking form when he assured
an English inquirer who asked how it
came that America produced so many
millionaires that it was because the
major part of the people of this blessed,
free and highly Intelligent country
''were economic FOOLS"
Farm products are not exempt from
the law which, save where baked by
trusts and combines, fixes the price of
all staples. If more is produced than is
needed the price falls; if less is pro-
duced the price rises. Additions to
supply tend to lower prices. This is
elementary. of course, but this country
is in several muddleS, financial, COM
mercial and other. because ele-
mentary laws are disregarded as anti
quated notions which answered well
enough in the days of coaches and spin
ming wheels. but are of no account in
these days of railroads and looms.
There has been for good many years
too many in fact-a party kept in con-
troll of the federal government mainly
by the votes of these same depressed
farmers which proclaimed as its policy
III 1t the people of this country should
make at home all they wanted; that all
bought abroad was nearly clean loss.
They told these gullible farmers that
they would thus build up home market
for them which would consume all they
raised ut better prices that they could
get abroad, in England, say. And the
patient, trusting, ploddIng farmers who
couldn't focus their common sense on so
large subject swallowed the sophisms
and toiled on waiting for the appetite
of that home market to get strong and
lusty enough to eat up the produce of
their farms. They are waiting yet.
They are also waiting for the millennium.
Both will get along about the same
time.
But it takes at least two to make a
bargain. The people across the waters
who made things to sell to other peoples
concluded that if our people did not
want to buy what they made they must
find others who did. They hadn't lost
faith in that old notion that if you sell
you must buy, and 50 they sought for
peoples who had something to sell
which they wanted, and who wanted
the things the people over seas had to
sell.
So England, that old scarecrow in the
political corn field, drove railways up
the valleys of India to the table lands,
and we soon began to hear of Indian
wheat in the markets. Then she went
to South America, and built railroads
ana opened farms, and soon we heard of
wheat from the ArgentineS, and wool
from there and from Australia. And
as the millions of wheat poured into the
market. increasing the supply. the price
fell, and has been falling pretty stead
lily ever since. That is mainly what is
the matter with the farmer. and he has
himself to thank and to blame for it.