The Coconino weekly sun., 1896-09-03
Writer IntrQduces Himself to the Farmers Telling of His Own
 Rural Experiences.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH FARMING7
Propounds and Answers This Question Advocating Mckinley and His
 Policy as Panacea
Special Correspondence of the Chicago Daily
 News.

News.
 New York, Aug 5.-I 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 blows 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 would like better now than plow- ing corn when it is about as high as & plowboy. The trouble then is 1t 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 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 q boy more aston- ished. l could beat the girls dropping corn-fOur 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 ging potatoes without cutting them. and mixing green and dry food for horses, snd 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, fa-- miliar. The practical farmers will de- tect in these observations the presence of a line of information not pulled out of books or picked up in schools. 1 know. too, about the way good old farms grow less valuable, in spite of faithful atten-- tion, 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 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- frightened are liable to vote for Bryan and Watson or Bryan and Sewall. They have heard so much about free silver as n patent medicine to cure the rheuma- tism, heartburn, earache, fistula. 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 nothing in free silver for farmers. Whatever they want for relief it cer- tainly is not appreciated 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 a dollar will not help any honest man. unless it is incidentally and in 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- pression is not exclusively American. The trouble is acknowledged-what is the remedy? Whatever may be wrong, and however difficult it may be to right the wrong, there should not be farm CT in all America so ignorant as not to know that the man who has done most to frame q 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 10 remain as he drew it Nebras- ka by this time would have teemed with beet-sugar manufactories, every one a help to the farmers, and the soil of Nebraska is better for sugar beets than that of Germany-only needs 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- versifed 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 portation has cheapened labor and ex- tended available territory. Argentina is a prodgious 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, cheapen 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 the price of butter go up in New York to 25 or 30 cents a Dound-a living can be made producing butter at those fig ures-what happens? A cable message gees 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 at 12' cents a pound. It cannot be produced in New York at those figures. This H. 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 help. We ought to raise our own barley, our own hops, 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. in it, to our own people. The produc-- tion of articles we have just named would turn over to American working men 1OO, 1000, 900 of gold dollars annually, and then custom would improve the value of the farms. There is no patent