The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1897-07-16
NOTHING FOR FARMERS
Why the Proposed Beet Sugar
Bounty Failed.
FEAR OF DELAYING THE TARIFF.

But a Western Senator Thinks if We Are
to Have Protection For Capital and La
Dor In Large Centers That Farmers
Should Have 1t Also.
WASHINGTON, July 10.-[Special Not
withstanding the fact that the Republicans
of the senate did not dare make the beet
sugar bounty party policy, on account of
fear of delaying the tariff BILL there is
general belief among public men here that
within short time the proposed bounty
will be given, and that it will result in
building up a new agricultural industry in
this country. Men who hold to Jefferso.
MAN principles or who are opposed to
subsidies and bounties look upon any sort
of bounty as something beyond the proper
function of government. With the argu-
ments on one side or the other the average
man has little to do. There is very much
to be said both for and against a bounty.
People who do not care to bother them
selves about principles and who look only
to effects see in the proposed bounty on
beet sugar chance to do something tangl-
BILE toward building up the American farm
er. l know number of men who do not
believe in bounties as matter of princi-
pie, but who favor this beet sugar bounty
because, as a western senator puts 1t, III
we are going to have protective system
throughout our national life for the benefit
of the manufacturer, and the trusts, and
the workmen in cities, and the capital gen
orally invested in large centers of popula-
ton, say that system should be extended
to the farmer as we'll.
"The protective system has helped the
hi
senator, eff it has helped him at all. 1t
has given work to a greater number of
men, increased the purchasing power of
our own people and thus given the farmer
a better home market. This is the argu-
ment of the supporters of the protection
theory, and if it is true, then all that has
been done for the farmer is in most in
direct way. He has been compelled to pay
more for the things he buys that he may
have better market for the things he has
to SELL Now, if we are to continue the
high protection system-and it looks as if
we were-the farmer should have direct
as well as indirect benefit from it. The
sugar bounty would be of direct advantage
to him.
The Farmers Condition.
zone of the great questions before the
American people, said another public
! man who has given careful study to eco
nomic subjects, ''is whether or not we are
going to permit our farmer to drop down
to the level of the agricultural populations
of other countries No other nation has
such farming people as we have-no
other is so intelligent, so refined, so high
| ly civilized. Our farming population is the
| backbon of the nation. 1t produces our
| best men, our leaders, our great armies,
| our geniuses. Our farmers live WE'LL are
| surrounded by comforts; they have their
| books and magazines; their children are
| we'll educated Other countries have in
| comparison serfs or peasants, denizens of
| matched huts, women working in the
| fields. Only in America is the farming
population at the top of the ladder of Gull
ture and character.
"Can we hold them there? We can do
SO only by enabling them to make their
| lands earn what they should earn. Wheat
! is playing out as a profitable crop. Time
was when we controlled the wheat mar
kets of the world. Now we are met by
wheat from Argentina, India Russia
! South Africa, in keen competition. This
foreign wheat is grown by farmers and by
| labor against which our farmers and our
labor cannot compete, for the simple rea
son that our agricultural people will not
| live as those people live. If our farmers
are to thrive as they ought to thrive, they
must have some better crop for their lands
than wheat. They must get away from
competition with the peasants.
The Sugar Industry.
"In an average year we sell abroad
about 800, 900, 600 worth of wheat. That
! is very large sum of money. But what
next happens? Why, we turn right around
! and pay out just about that same sum for
the sugar which we import. Sugar, like
! wheat, is an agricultural product 1t is
! grown by farmers. 1t is astonishing to
| think that sum of money equal to all we
| get for our wheat crop is paid out for a
single product of the farms of other coun-
tries. This is the more amazing when we
remember that the United States is known
to be one OF the best countries in the
world for sugar raising. FOur-fifths of
our farming land is adaptable to the sugar
beet. Starting in on the Atlantic coast
and running to the Pacific, from North
! Carolina northward and west of the Hud-
son, is all good sugar country.
Zone justification for the protective pol
icy is that it has helped build up industries
which could not have been established in
GIlo lace VI lOrGlSu COLlp6UlUloIt UuU LUZ un6
help of the law. The same argument ap-
plies to bounty for beet sugar. Experts
say that if the growing of sugar beets ca ~
be stimulated by government bounty for
few years, the industry will then be able
to stand alone. 1t certainly would be a
great thing if the United States could grow
its own sugar.
| Natural Laws.
GAS a rule, it is not good principle to
give protection or bounty to a trade OF
product that is unnatural. Law should
not try to interfere with natural laws and
to make things grow where nature did not
intend them to grow or to stimulate the
manufacture of articles which can be made
much cheaper and better elsewhere. But
no such objection applies in this case. The
United States has the soil and the climate
for sugar growing. 1t is just as natural a
crop in this country as it is in Germany
where the annual output of beet sugar is
now 1, $50, 900 tons.
Germany gives an export bounty or
beet sugar; so does Austria Hungary, and
so do other countries. Even England seeks
trade and commerce by means of subsidies
to steamship lines. All her vast colonial
SYSTEM her great navy that reaches out
and protects British trade all over the
: | &c n fOr11, IF cTh for