The Chanute times. [volume] (Chanute, Kan.) 1897-1913, 1899-03-24
THEY GO HAND IN HAND.
Farmers and Manufacturers
Travelling the Same 0J1d to
Prosperity.
(Now York Commercially

An examination or American eN-
ports for 1898 reveals the fact that
for every dollars worth of American
manufactures rather more than So
worth of American agricultural pro-
ducts found their way abroad. How
long this gratifying proportion will
continue it is very hard to guess, in
view of the strides which American
manufacturers are now taking to Sc
cure their full share of foreign trade.
But the lead which agriculture still
has in this country over manufactur-
ing is sufficient to promise a long
lease of life to American industrial
progress along present lines.
Time was in our history when the
cultivation of the soil embraced in
terests so preponderant that they
had but to demand certain policy
at the polls for that policy to be adj
opted, no matter how entirely de-
structive it might prove to every
other than the agricultural interests.
Under such circumstances manufac-
turing had pretty hard Shedding in
this country for many years. No
sooner had it lifted its head and at
tempted to flourish as it should than
the agricultural interests, conceiving
that American manufacturers were
being encouraged at the expense of
the tiller of the soil, changed the
policy of encouragement to manu-
features at home to one of encour-
agement to manufactures abroad,
leaving the smokeless chimneys of
American plants as pathetic monu-
ment to the tickle patriotism of Am
erican farmers and the pitiful short
slghtedness of unbridled human sell
fshness in general.
Times have vastly changed since
then. The farmer has learned the
value of the adjacent manufacturing
village as a market, and has come
forth fully to realize the truth of
Adam Smiths declaration that the
home market is twice as valuable,
sale for sale, as the foreign market.
On the whole, though availing him
self of the foreign market as an out
let for his surplus. the farmer has
become sturdy champion of Am
erican manufacturing. The reason
why a good lead in agriculture is ne
cessary to the country'S general in
dustrial thrift is that large agricul-
tural export indicates that food is
cheaper here than it is at least in
the countries which purchase our
food, which are chiefly the manu-
featuring countries. AS long as for
eign laborers engaged in manufac-
ture are compelled to pay at least as
dearly for their food as American
laborers in the same pursuits, our
manufacturers cannot complain that
they are hampered in their struggle
for foreign markets by the higher
cost of provisions here and their
consequent compulsion on that score
to pay higher wages, and thus go
handicapped into the foreign mar
ket.
Just as long as manufacturing and
agriculture 60 hand in hand and
agree mutually to enjoy between
them the great blessings of the
American policy of American mar
kets for American products, SO long
will the road to American greatness
and predominating influence in
the worlds affairs be unobstructed.
But if either of these great interests
becomes jealous of the other and
carries its grievance to the polls, an
internecine struggle is likely to re-
suit, turing which the wealth of the
great American market will be dis
sipated among foreign producers.
Then the American people will
again learn the bitter lesson that
family quarrels are the most destuct-
i've, as they are the least excusable,
of all quarrels.