The Forrest City times., 1894-02-23
PROTECTION FOR FARMERS.
UnfuIfiied Promises of the Mckinley
 Magnates

Magnates-
 It Is about time for western farmers to ask the McKinleyites, who have been
 promising them home market at hlgh
 prices for all their products, what they
 have done for wheat. They will find 1t difficult to recall time when wheat
 was so low, and they cannot be sure that it has touched bottom yet.
 Why is this? The high-tariff 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 all the
 prod ucts 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 md
 swap it for whatever manufactured ar
 ticles they might want
 That home market-that ideal con- dition-has not been realized 1t is as ideal and remote as ever. The farmer
 is selling a larger percentage of h's wheat abroad than he did before the 1 protectionists began to make 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 l length of the haul from his farm. How does that strike the farmer as fulfill i ment of protectionist promises? How l 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 hiSwheat?
 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 a 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. lie buys less, or tries to find some other country where
 he can buy cheaper
 This is precisely what the foreigner
 has been doing with great diligence | and no little success. Repelled by our
 protectionist policy as a 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 laoor 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 tbe farmer
 may take t100 worth of wheat to Liver
 pool and exchange it for slO0 worth of
 goods But if he brings the goods back
 he is stopped at the custom-house and
 taxed e50 on them. He must part with
 another $50 worth of wheat before he
 can get his e100 worth of goods. That
 is, he must give s150 worth of wheat
 for slOO worth of goods. Under free
 trade he would get his elO0 worth of
 goods for t1OO 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 experi- ment and find out whether there is any truth in the two fundamental rules of arithmetic Herald.
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