The weekly register. [volume] (Point Pleasant, Va. [W. Va.]) 1862-1909, 1904-11-02
FACTS FOR FARMERS.
WHY THEIR VOTES SHOULD BE GIVEN
FOR ALTON B. PARKER.
What the Tariff and Trusts, on Which
Roosevelt Stands Pat, Cost The
American AgricuIturist.

No class of American citizens suffers
more severely from the excessive and
unjust Republican tariff system than
the farmers. 1t is well-known fact
that the cost of all production falls I'LL
timately upon the land, that whoever
dances the farmer has to pay the piper,
that when the great heads of Republic
can trusts travel over the world in
their yachts and automobiles, it is the
farmer planting his corn and gathering
in his crops who has to pay for their
enjoyment, while he and his help
sweat and tug in the field and the
barn. AS all wealth is really based on
land and its products the farmer, who
is nearest the land, ought to have his
fair share of it. But does he? Let us
see.
The Republican high tariff gives the
trust yacht-owning, champagne-guZ-
cling monopolists the power to charge
what prices they please in the United
States, where competition has been
practically destroyed by the trusts,
while the same monopolists, when they
sell their American goods abroad, have
to meet competition there. and as n
consequence they sell to foreigners
cheaper than they sell to Americans.
The American farmer has 20 pay, for
instance. S11 for a trust-made Ameri-
can cultivator, while the same Ameri-
can cultivator is sold abroad for $40.
The American farmer pays $14 for a
trust-made American pillow, which is
sold abroad for $12.6O.
The American farmer pays SS.25
dozen for trust-made American axes.
which the same trust manufacturer
sells abroad to the foreigner for 500
dozen.
The American farmer has to pay an
American trust So per 100 pounds for
barbed wire, when the same American
trust sells the same barbed wire
abroad to the foreigner for 81 per 100
pounds.
If the American farmer wants a fine
sewing machine for his wife he has to
pay the American tariff protected sew
ing machine trust $27.50 for a machine
which the same trust sells abroad for
$2075. And about the same difference
in prices here and abroad applies to
sewing machines.
And so on through everything used
by the American farmer. 1t has been
carefully estimated that the 600, 600
families in the United States engaged
in agricultural pursuits pay tribute
annually to the Republican tariff pro-
tected trusts of $517.700000. This
vast amount the RepuDl1can trust mag
mates are enabled to extort from the
farmers of the United States by means
of high tariff which prevents compe-
tition from abroad, and of unlawful
trade combinations which the Repub-
lican Administration has done nothing
to break up, and which virtually con-
troll that Administration.
Judge Parker. Democratic candidate
for the Presidency, is pledged by his
own utterances and the party platform
to bring about such revision of the
tariff as will prevent the trusts from
discriminating in favor of the foreign
er and against the American farmer
in the sale of American goods.
Judge Parker is also pledged to
break up the unlawful conspiracies
called trusts. and reduce prices by re.
storing competition. To this end he
will enforce statute law, and, where
that is lacking, the common law.
President Roosevelt, on the other
hand. says distinctly that he and his
party stand pat on the tariff and trusts
that the trusts, under protection OF
the Republican high tariff, will be per.
mitted, If the Republican party is sue.
cessful in November, to continue to
] extort about S51s. ooo. 900 year in the