Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1896-09-10
Writer Introduces Himself to tho
Farmers Telling Of His Own
Rural Experiences
WHAT'S WRONG WITH FARMING2
Propounds and Answers This Question
Advocating Mckinley and His
Policy as 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 l.
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 /, and there is no light
work / would like better now than plow-
ing corn when it is about as nigh as
plowboy. The trouble t en- is it is so brit
tie, and it is very provoking to have the
pretty stalks broken-and many horse
have damned as a punishment for put
ting his rude foot into hill of corn.
was a great boy to bind wheat, rye, oats
or barley with double bands, and once l
tied up blacksnake in sheaf of wheat
so tight he could not get out, and there
never was snake or boy more aston
ished. 1 could beat the girls dropping
contour grains to the hill-and l 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
ging potatoes without cutting them, and
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
line of information not pulled out Of
books or picked up in schools. l know,
too, about the way good old farms grow
Ianr NlNynh 40 20 Of fnt fyrI nff
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 a 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 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
a patent medicine to cure the rheuma-
tism, heartburn, enrache, fistula, dyspep-
STA 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
nothing in free silver for farmers.
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 a petty and frac-
tional 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 it may be to right
the wrong, there should not be farm
err in all America so ignorant as not to
know that the man who has done most to
| frame n tariff law to help the farmers is
William Mckinley.