Twice-a-week plain dealer. (Cresco, Howard County, Iowa) 1895-1913, 1896-02-18
Official Paper of County.
Facts In Finance for Farmers.

Facts In Finance for Farmers.
The men who have made princely
fortunes manipulating legislation in
the special interest of their class, as
sumo that questions of finance are too
intricate for the compreh ension of
farmers, mechanics and laboring men.
They, however, can study their own
products, and from their prices draw
lessons in finance with the logic Of
irresistible conclusions. Suppose
that five, fifteen or twenty years ago,
you had bought q farm, for which
you were to deliver specified num-
Der of bushels of wheat, oats and corn
annually in payment. that you had
procured needed agricultural nipple
ments to start with upon the same
terms and conditions, also the few
needed domestic animals such as a
team, COW and q few sheep, and
that while you are preparing your
ground for the seed they who have
sold you this farm and the stock and
the agricultural implements procure
legislation making the bushel meas
ure twice as large as it was when you
purchased the farm and
its fixtures. They would
then only have done what they have
accomplished in another way-made
the dollar measure twice as many
bushels of your grain as it did when
the contracts were made for the farm
and its equipments. Your farm is as
productive now as then, but it takes
twice as many bushels and twice as
much labor to pay for it now as when
contract and purchase was made.
And if your contract was payable in
dollars they are to be procured from
the production and sale of these pro-
ducts, which, from the destruction of
one-half the money of the country
are worth in dollars but half the
price they would bring with a full
money supply. Thus the bushel
measure has had its capacity doubled
by increasing the purchasing power
of the dollar.
Another danger to the prosperity
3 of the American farmer which has
grown to formidable proportions is
the extensive wheat and cotton fields
established in Japan and Asia by
Great Britain and which will increase
in magnitude and Importance in the
future, remaining constant
menace to the American
farmer and his products. This
has largely been brought about by
the finacial legislation which made
silver, as are our farm products, a
commodity in place of maintaining it
as one of our money metals, thus de-
preciating its bullion price to such an
extent, that purchased at its COM
modify price in this country, and
taken to Europe, and there coined
would purchase in the silver-using
countries of Asia, with their cheap
labor, as much as when the silver
bullion commanded twice as much
Ii the products of American mines
to be sold in European markets at
gold price it is futile to attempt to
make the producers of such commodi-
ties in the west pay eastern manu-
facturers the protected prices they
demand. Protection and gold stand
ard can not stand together. One or
the other must go, and the SENATE in
attaching free silver coinage to the
House tariff measure SO notified the
protected east. AS the Silver knight
says:
''The man who will give the manu-
facturers of the East high protection,
and will not demand that the South
and West shall be protected from
Asiatic competition by the equallza-
ton of exchange, is false to his con-
stituents and false to his country and
should be dealt with as an enemy of
the people,"