The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1904-09-12

mis- produce which does not so directly
70 food supply. In 1909 81 per cent or
a little over half. of the total value OF
the farm products of the nation was
consumed IN manufacturing Industries
as the raw materials of the factories.
Evidently the manufacturer is the
farmers best and most direct customer
Moreover, the American manufacturer
purchases his farm supplies almost ex-
cluSively in his own country. Nine
tenthS of all the raw materials of eV-
cry kind and description consumed in
American manufactures are of Ameri-
can production. The manufacturing
establishments tend steadily TO migrate
into the heart of the great agricultural
districts. The center. of the manufac-
turing industry in 1900 was near the
middle of Ohio. and it is moving west
ward at the rate of about thirty miles
in every decade; and this movement is
invariably accompanied by a marked
increase in the value of farm lands.
Local causes notably the competition
between new farm lands and old farm
| lands tend here and there to obscure
what IS happening; bur IL is as certain
as the operation of any economic law.
that in the cOuntr-- as a whole farm
values will continue to Increase as the
partnership between manufacturer and
farmer grows more intimate through
further advance of industrial science
The American manufacturer never
could have placed this nation at the
| head of the manufacturing nations of
the world IL he had not had behind him,
securing MIN every variety of raw ma
terial, the exhaustless resources of the
American farm, developed by the skill
| and the enterprise of Intelligent and
| educated American farmers. On the
other hand. the debt of the farmers to
| the manufacturers is heavy. and the
future Of American agriculture is
l bound up in the future of American
! manufactures. The two industries have
4 become. under the economic policy of
our government. so closely interviewer,
so mutually interdependent. that Meth
er can hope to maintain Itself at the
high-water mark of progress without
the other. Whatever makes to the ad-
vantage of one is equally to the ad-
vantage of the other
Protection and the "open Shop"
So it is as between the capitalist and
the Wageworker. Here and there there
may be an unequal sharing as between
the two in the benefits that have COM
oy protection; but benefits ,have come
10 both; and reversal in pblicy would
mean damage TO both; and while the
damage would be heavy TO ALL it would
be heaviest, and it would fall soonest,
upon those who are paid in the form OF
wages each week or each month for
that weeks or that months work.
Conditions change and the laws must
be modified from time TO time to fit new
eXigencieS. But the genuine underly-
ing principle Of protection, as it has
been embodied in all but one of the
American tariff laws for the last forty
years, has worked out results so bene-
bcent, so evenly and widely spread. so
advantageous alike to farmers and
capitalists and workingmen. TO COM
merce and trade of every kind, that the
American people, If they show their
usual practical business sense, will in
sist that when these laws are modified
they shall be modified with the utmost
care and conservatism, and by the
friends and not the enemies of the
protective system. They cannot afford
to trust the modification to those who
treat protection and robbery as synony-
NOUS terms.