Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1896-09-08
Writer Introduces Himself to the
Farmers Telling Of His Own
Rural Experiences.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH FARMING2
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 boy in Butler county, o.,
who could turn a furrow better than /.
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 1, and there is no light
work would like better now than plow-
ing corn when il is about as nigh as a
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
have damned as punishment for put
ting his rude foot into a hill of corn. l
was a great boy to bind wheat, rye, oats
or barley with double bands, and once l
tied up "A blacksnake in sheaf of wheat
so tight he could not get out. and there
never was snake or q boy more aston
ished. l could beat the girls dropping
contour grains to the hill-and / know
all about husking frosty ears of corn
with a bone husking peg, held by strap
over the two middle fingers of the right
hand; and the accomplishments of dig
mixing green and dry food for horses.
and watching calves become cattle, colts
evolve into horses, lambs and pigs bloom
into sheep and hogs, are, with all the
hopes and fears associated with them, ia
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. l know,
too, about the way good old farms grow
less valuable, in spite of faithful atten-
ton, and how it is that some farmers
who do not buy pianos on the INSTALL
ment plan find it pleasant experience to
borrow money.
Farmers Are Discouraged.
The news has been circulated good
deal and not conclusively contradicted
that this year a 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--therefore, that there
are Republican farmers who il 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, fistula, dyspep-
STA and vertigo that they do not know
hut they will try it. Ii they do they will
make the same mistake the workmen
greater misfortune than they tumbled
upon themselves. There is absolutely
nothing in free silver for farmers.
Whatever they want for relief it GER
tanly is not deprecated money-doliars
debased. We have been going on now
with dollars of the same value as that
of gold for eighteen years and a change
al h., nbacf xf 1,lt
not help any honest man, unless 1t is
incidentally and in petty and frac-
tonal way.
What is the matter with farming?
The owner of one of the finest farms in
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 il may be to right
the wrong. there should not be farm
er in all America so ignorant as 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-
ties, for one thing If the law had been
allowed to remain as he drew it Nebras-
ka by this time would have teemed with
beet-sugar manufactures, every one a
help to the farmers, and the soil OF
Nebraska is better for sugar beets than
that of Germany-only needs a good
start 10 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 d.
versifed industry that the protective sys-
TEN promotes. We want more OF II, and
that is McIkinleyism.
Why are wheat and butter down? As
to wheat: The use of agricultural ma
chinery and the improvement in trans
portation has cheapened labor aud ex-
tended available territory. Argentina is
prodigous 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
nv 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
/
world is a sort of country Deighborhood.
What is the matter with butter? Let
the price Of butter go up in New York
TO 25 or 80 cents a pound-a living can
he made producing butter mt those fig.
ures-what happens? A cable message
goes to Australia and there are ship
ments of thousands of tons of excellent
butter Mt once. And it can be placed
in New York and profitably sold at IL
cents n pound II cannot be produced
in New York at those figures. This IL
lustration 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 a help. We
ought to raise our own barley, our own
hons. our own eggs. chickens, onions
and potatoes, to make our own sugar
and our own tinplate, so as to give the
advantage of our own markets, the most
valuable in the world or that ever were
i'm It, to our own people. The produc-
ton of articles we have just named
would turn over to American working
men 100. 600 900 of gold dollars annually,
and then custom would improve the
value of the farms. There Is no patent
nostrum about this. Our records are
full of tho proof furnished by our own
experience. The hest thing the farm
err can do is to try McKinleyism.
Murat Halstead.