The Minneapolis journal., 1902-06-14
STRENGTH OF AGRICULTURAL NATIONS

AS the tariff policy of the United States
has for so many years been devoted TO
building up our manufacturing industries
it is mott remarkable that there has grown
up a sort of contempt for agriculture as
compared, with manufacture. There is
feeling abroad that it is somehow a
glorious thing to be a great manufactur--
ing country, but not especially glorious to
Be a great agricultural country We are
proud Of our agricultural output, of
course, but we are inclined to judge the
progress of nations by their manufac-
lures instead of their produce.
Yet the strongest NATIONS in the world
to- day are the great agricultural nations.
Men can get along without most manu-
factured articles, but they cannot get
along without food. -
The closing of factories in manufacture
ing countries which do not raise their
own food supplies may cause industrial
depression in the agricultural countries,
but it cannot starve them, whereas, the
following of the food fields and the ces-
sation of preparation of food, though it
would produce distress in the agricultural
country, would ruin the manufacturing
country. - "
In the June North American Review Mr..
j. D. Whepley writes:
| Americans are apt to refer rather dispara-
l gngly to the United States as a raw material
| country, and to note with pride and satisfac-
| ton the increasing percentage of manufac-
tured goods in the total exports. It is exi-
| dent. however, that the strong grasp of this
| country upon the affairs of the world is due
| largely to these material exports and not
SO much to the manufactured goods. The
! latter enter into competition with the labor OF
| countries whose entire energies are concen-
| trated upon similar production, but which
cannot produce enough food to keep their in
| dustriaI population alive To expand and
Nstrengthen in every way the productive power
| of American soil, to encourage the building OF
| homes upon agricultural lands, to prevent the
:, absorption of those lands by those whose pur-
pose, is other than tillage, is manifestly a
| wise national policy. TO enable production
Ito keep pace with the growing appetite Of the
world and to prevent the United States from
| losing its control Of the great food supply
necessary to satisfy this appetite, is even
more statesmanlike policy than toadevote al
/ time and energy to the building of great cities
and the creation of industrial armies to be
fed from abroad, to be perhaps dependent al
intervals upon an enemy for daily bread.
The United States is the great food pro-
WIDER of the world. It is better to be that
/ than the great manufacturer. We could
! close our ports Tomorrow and live COM
fertably for years, but England would be
starving within month.
England imports from all the world
$9O0;O0O,000 worth of foodstuffs. We send
her $54O O000, 900 and our expectations in
clude the bulk of the essentials. When
this fact is taken into consideration with
that other fact that the United Kingdom
has three times as much trade with coun-
tries outside the British empire as those
4 within it it is easy to predict that the
colonial 1apremiers who are going up to
London from the four corners of the
world enwraping empire, will soon be
coming home disillusiened.
! The price of preference is one they will
not pay. Sir Michael Hicks Beach named
it the other day when he said that 1t was
free trade within, the empire. England