The Dickinson press., 1896-09-05
HALSYEADS LETTER.
Writer Introduces Himself to the
Farmers Telling Of His Own
Rural Experiences
WHATIsWRoNG WITH FARmING7

Propounds and Answers This Question.
Advocating Mckinley and His
Policy as a Panacea.
Special Correspondence Of the Chicago Daily
News.
New York, Aug. 81 desire to intro.
duce myself to the farmers by saying
am by trade one of them, though for a
long time engaged in daily labor on the
daily papers. There are still some frosty
old friends of mine who can testify of
their own knowledge that fifty years ago
there wasn't u boy in Butler county, O.,
who could turn furrow better than I.
or was more expert in using plows left
or right handed on hillsides or level
lands, SO as to leave less unbroken land
at the turns than l, and there is no light
work l would like better now than plow-
ing corn when it is about as nigh as
plowboy. The trouble then is it is so brit
tie, and it is very provoking to have the
pretty stalks brOken-and many a horse
ting his rude foot into a hill of corn.
was great boy to bind wheat, rye, oats
or barley with double bands, and once
tied UP blacksnake in sheaf of wheat
so tight he could not get out, and there
never was snake or a boy more aston
ished. l could beat the girls dropping
all about husking frosty ears of corn
with q bone husking peg, held by strap
over the two middle fingers of the right
hand; and the accomplishments of dig
ging potatoes without cutting them, and
mixing green and dry food for horses,
and watching calves become cattle, colts
into sheep and hogs. are, with all the
hopes and fears associated with them, fa-
miliar. The practical farmers will de-
tect in these observations the presence of
q line of information not pulled out Of
books or picked up in schools. know,
too, about the way good old farms grow
less valuable, in spite of faithful aften-
tion, and how it is that some farmers
who do not buy pianos on the INSTALL
ment plan find it a pleasant experience to
borrow money.
Farmers Are Discouraged.
The news has been circulated good
deal and not conclusively contradicted
that this year good many farmers are
so discouraged by the way their affairs
have been going that they are ready to
do something unexpected in politics.
that some of them think maybe there is
something in free silver that would
just fit their case-thcrefore, that there
are Republican farmers who if not en-
lightened are liable to vote for Bryan
and Watson or Bryan and Sewall. They
have heard SO much about free silver as
patent medicine to cure the rheuma-
tism, heartburn, earache, fstula, dyspep-
sia and vertigo that they do not know
but they will try it. If they do they will
make the same mistake the workmen
did four years ago and invite even a
greater misfortune than they tumbled
upon themselves. There is absolutely
Whatever they want for relief it GER
tainly is not deprecated money-dollars
debased. We have been going on now
with dollars of the same value as that
of gold for eighteen years and change
in the purchasing power of dollar will
not help any honest man, unless it is
incidentally and in petty and frac-
tional way.
What is the matter with farming?
England, within sight of the forest of
Windsor and the towers of Windsor
castle, stated to me that wheat had got
so cheap in England that the straw was
more valuable than the grain. The de-
preston is not exclusively American.
The trouble is ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS is
the remedy? Whatever may be wrong,
and however difficult it may be to right
the wrong, there should not be a farm
er in all America SO ignorant us not to
know that the man who has done most to
frame tariff law to help the farmers is
William Mckinley.
What Mckinley Has Done.
What did he do? Consider sugar boun-
<ho L., ho1
allowed to remain as he drew it Nebras-
ka by this time would have teemed with
beet-sugar manufactures, every one 9
help to the farmers, and the soil of
Nebraska is better for sugar beets than
that of Germany-only needs a good
start to establish an enormous and in
valuable industry. The Mckinley duty
on barley caused the raising of millions
of bushels additional to the average of
former crops. and this reduced sensibly
the excess of wheat production. This is
an example of what we mean by the di-
yersified industry that the protective sys-
tenn promotes. We want more of it, and
that is McKinleyism.
Why are wheat and butter down? As
to wheat: The use of agricultural ma
chinery and the improvement in trans
| tended available territory. Argentina is
| a prodigious wheat field. The soil is
admirable, the rivers are deep. the plains
give full sweep to the machinery, the rail-
roads have nothing else to do than car
| ry the wheat to market and the steamers
carry the grain to Liverpool in huge car
goes. Sailing vessels whose sails are
pulled about by steam, saving hands,
cheaper the cost of putting down Ar
gentina wheat in Liverpool, Egypt, India,
| Canada. Russia, compete with us in the
wheat market of Western Europe. The
world is sort of country neighborhood.
What is the matter with. butter? Let
price Sf 1sns butter 60 up in MeM ene fcPa
be made producing butter at those fig
nras-what happens? A cable message
goes to Australia and there are ship
ments of thousands Of tons of excellent
butter at once. And it can be placed
in New York and profitably sold st y
in New York at those figures: This il
iustration is not imaginary. The trans
actions supposed have occurred recently.
What is the remedy? We can answer
confidently that the coinage of more
silver dollars will not be q help. we
T To5s. our own eggs. chickens, onions
and potatoes, to make our own sugar
and our own tinplate, SO as to give tha
advantage of our own markets, the most
valuable in the world or that ever were
it, to our own people SRsae af af pne%ed
would turn over to American working
men loo, ,OOO, 600 of gold dollars annually
and then custom would improve the
value of the farms. There is no patent
nostrum about this. Our records are
experience. The best thing the farm
er can do il to try McKinleyism.
Murat Halstead.