Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1895-08-05

West India Islands, but now the Democrats
have destroyed that advantage.
There is food for thought in the figures
of our wheat production. expectation and
prices. computed in five-year aver ages ESQ
as TO overcome seasonable influences) Tor
the last fifteen years;
Wheat Pr~'Jct Of United States for Las'
Three Halt. Decades, with Percentage Ex'
ported and Price Per BusheI.
Calendar Bushels Per cent F P1IRSe
| ,sso m 81 ,256, S5s.2ls 1904 SLID
1855 to Fo...... 2 .29s' ss2 0oe 81 -
The average export price of the last
twalv,. months was only Sc cents In
Wow of the greatly increased foreign com.
netition shown by the first table, and OF
the fact that Russia, by building the
Siberian railway, is opening as fine ana
LARGE a wheat country as there is IN the
world there is no reason for hoping that
tbe nrice will much or permanently I'M
prove. ;,o,
In many places in the West few miles
from railroads, owing to the partial 1all-
ure of the corn crop, wheat was led TO
stock last winter, not SO much from neces-
citv as becausc it was thought to be more
nroftahle to feed it than to sell 1t at the
market price And yet no farmer mas
ever thought it would pay to grow wheat
| for stock and none thinks so now. Ihe
comnetition of cheaper countries, with
whatever effect the appreciation OF gold
has produced, has simply destroyed all
nroft ON at least one of our largest ex
| ports.
But there is a brighter side to this picture.
| In the last half decade above cited, al
though our exports were 65,6 4lo push-
els more than In the first period, they bore
a slightly smaller relation to the total pro
dnct. This shows that the divcrsificatlon
of industries resulting from protection hao
largely increased the farmers home mar
ket, In other words, the people OF this
country consumed about 1872 mill1o"
bushels more wheat from 1890 to 1879
than they did from 1880 to 1883. The
same proportion held good in relation to
other food products.
tits probable that high water mark In our
exportation of cereals has been reached,
for these reasons; Q) The area now
available for cultivation has become SO re-
duced Rhat farm settlements cannot in
crease so fast as during the last twenty
years; CD over large areas there is
smaller production per acre, because the
virgin fertility has become partially ex-
hausted and the farmers have not yet
thought it necessary or profitable to re-
turn anything to the soil (3) because the
gain in population from 1880 to 1890 was
considerably more than twice as great in
other pursuits as it was in agriculture,
and something like this proportion will
| be continued if we do not deprive our
people of employment by exposing in
dustry to ruinous foreign competition,
and CD because foreign markets, which
are beyond our control, are now being so
largely supplied by the newer agriculture
| of other countries.
The home market is the best market.
When consumption overtakes production,
the price improves, provided, of course,
| there is, as there should be, a fairly pro-
tective duty. All the wheat exported from
this country last year came to only $685.
1888, 200. We certainly imported more than
500, 600, 900 of manufactures which
might have been and ought to have been
produced at home. When we stop that
waste, the increased employment afforded
here will create home demand for all our
surplus wheat.
The real problem that confronts the
country, therefore, is not, as Mr.. David
Lubin of Sacramento thinks it is-how to
equalize protection to our farmers by
holping them to reach foreign markets at
a lower cost for transportation, though
that of course is desirable If it can be
achieved in the right way, but how to
save them all that cost and give them
sufficient home market at prices that can
not be unfairly depressed by semi-civilized
competition.