The San Francisco call., 1898-02-03
THE FARMERS STAKE IN ANNEXATION

HE mission of President Dole seems to be a failure His presence in Washington has
 brought strength to the annexation treaty, and he about to leave for tour through the South and will sail for home in a few weeks.
 The wisdom of the makers of the constitution in requiring of two-thirds of the Senate to ratify treaty is again illustrated as it was in the San Domingo affair The annexationists boasted in November of one vote too many and gave notice that the treaty would go through early in December The Call at that time denied their strength and de- cared that the treaty would not be ratified in De- cember, nor at all. Our position was proved to be correct by the proposition to by joint resolu- tion We have shown the unconstitutionaity ot such method. Congress may admit States" by such reso- lutlon or by bill but 1t cannot annex alien terri tory in any other way than by treaty.
 While the friends Of the treaty laboring hold what strength they have in Congress the antagons,n Tn the country is consolidating and increasing The farmers in the reliable Republican States of the Upper Mississippi Valley are asserting themselves in way that admonishes the Republican party The Congressional elections this year are of the graves importance The Republican party cannot afford to alienate the rural communities which were its staff and stay in 1896. The farmers want for themselves our domestic sugar market of $Ioo, o,ooooto year They have the land the white labor and the disposi ton to take that market and hold it.
 The tinplate market annually was small fraction of that sum, but the tnplate manufacturers deter mined to have it for themselves Under the stimulus afforded by the Mckinley bill, American ingenuity took that trade. It adapted devices in manufacture cheapened production and bettered the product un- til now American meats, o fruits vegetables and even plum buildings go all over the world cased in American tin
 What done for tinp1ate and for steel rails for benefit of the American manufacturers, can be done in far greater degree for the American farmers by letting them conquer the home sugar market with their beet product. Cane sugar has to be produced by some form of cheap labor It is tropical product and white labor has never been domesticated in trop- ical plantations and never will be. Beet sugar. on the other hand, IS product of the temperate zone It is produced by white labor, paid and living on the scale of temperate civilization Thirty millions of people get their living in this country from its farms. They add to the profits of their present crops and add to that the profit of new crop, if they are permitted to supply to American consumers the $Ioooooooo worth of sugar they use every year The crop used in rotation will benefit the soil and will increase by least one-fourth the farm value of the crop with which it rotates
 All of these facts known to the American farm CTS. They are watching the politicians and it will go hard with any political party that snatches this prize from their grasp by annexing distant fields of competition in the far tropics
 The treaty being dead 1t is best to let it stay dead Domestic problems crowd Congress for solution Let them occupy the legislative mind