Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1894-02-22
Low WHEAT AND HIGH TARIFF.
UrfulfiIled Promises or the Mckinley


UnfulhIled Promises OF the Mckinley
Magnntes.
It is about time for western farmers
to ask the McKin1eyites, who have been
promising them home market at high
prices for all their products, what they
have done for wheat. They will find it
difficult to recall q time when wheat
was so low, and they cannot be sure
that it has touched bottom yet.
Why is this? The high-tarif philos-
ophers and home-market makers have
had things all their own way for thir-
ty-three years They have made the
tariff to suit themselves all these years,
and they have not ceased to tell the
farmers of the good time coming when,
under the policy of protection, they
would have home customers paying
them the highest prices for nll the
products of the soil Not very long ago
President Harrison swung around the
circle. telling the rural population
about the ideal condition in which
they would take their produce in their
own wagons to the factory doors and
swap it for whatever manufactured ar
ticles they might want
That home market-that ideal con-
ideal and remote as ever. The farmer
is selling larger percentage of his
wheat abroad than he did before the
protectionists began to make a home
market for him away back in the six
ties. And still the price he can get
abroad governs the price he gets at
home. How does he like the price?
Sixty cents or under per bushel at tide
water, and less in proportion to the
length of the haul from his farm. How
does that strike the farmer as a fulfill
ment of protectionist promises? How
much longer does he think he can
stand it to wait for that home market
and pay the fine of some fifty per cent
on the goods that he has to buy with
the proceeds of his wheat?
One would think he might be grow
ing tired of the home market theory in
its practical application by this time.
Let him look at it for moment The
first step in making that home market
is to shut out foreign goods as much as
possible by taxing them enormously.
The first step is to prevent the farmer
from buying goods of the foreigner.
That done, the foreigner has less in
clination and less ability to buy the
farmers produce. He buys less, or
tries to find some other country where
he cap buy cheaper.
This is precisely what the foreigner
has been doing with great diligence
protectionist policy as q customer Of
the American farmer, he has built rail-
ways in India and furnished the means
to build others in Argentina The re-
suit is that he is getting large quanti-
ties of wheat produced by the exceed
ingly cheap labor of those countries.
and down goes the price. That is the
way the home market theory works
when reduced to practice by the high
tariff economists. The price of wheat
has fallen one-half or more under the
practical working of that theory.
Under the Mckinley tariff the farmer
may take 500 worth of wheat to Liver
pool and exchange it for 800 worth Of
goods. But if he brings the goods back
he is stopped at the custom-house and
taxed $50 on them. He must part with
another $50 worth of wheat before he
can get his 500 worth of goods. That
is, he must give $3.50 worth Of wheat
for S1GO worth of goods Under free
trade he would get his 500 worth OF
goods for 500 worth of wheat, and
have $50 worth of wheat left to ex-
change for other goods or to invest
Now doesn't the farmer think that
with wheat at its present price it would
stand him in hand to try the free trade
plan for awhile? Doesn't he think he
could survive little longer if he could
keep the whole of that wretchedly low
price instead of having one third of it
taxed away from him? He ought at
least to be willing to try the expert
ment and find out whether there is any
truth in the two fundamental rules OF
arithmetic. Chicago Herald.