Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1910-08-11
With Pleasure!

using a wooden plow.
We are obliged to you for reprint
ing SO many CT our editorials because
it gets them before your 5000 (minus
three) readers. And here are some
more of the points you have request
ed; we hope you will publish them.
If the people of Maine want another
Democratic tariff they must have for
gotten the disasters that their indus
tries have always suffered under a
Democratic tariff The manufacturers
and farmers of this country have
grown up and prospered together by
protecting the products of labor and
| industries for the American pro-
Queer Every producer is a customer
fer the product of another industry.
The farmer produces for the laborers
| in mills, factories. shops and mines,
and his prosperity depends on the
prosperity of the people who buy his
products. In turn the employment
and wages of all these depend upon
industry in which they are engaged.
The Republican party has fought
for two conditions-protectio of
market that affords high prices for
farm products. and high wages for
labor. These two spell prosperity, and
when you deny either of them you
bring about conditions such as were
suffered in 1896, because when you
deny one you deny the other. The
those days of idle Industries, hungry
la Dor and daily increasing farm mort
cages.
For half a century the Democratic
press and orators have been telling
the farmers how they We're being rob
bed by the manufacturers. The editor
of the Sun is old enough to remember
what the country has been through
in the years in which the Democratic
scheme has prevailed. but the young
man of today was a child when the
Wilson German tariff was enacted.
The young man who votes for the first
time this year knows nothing of the
struggle which people went through
in those days. To the young farmer
$12 hogs and 75-cent corn look good,
and he cannot realize what the 81
hogs and 15-cent corn of Wilson
German days would mean to him.
Democratic tariff revision sixteen
years ago plunged the country into
panic and ruin. Business went on, to
be sure. but about the only people
who got rich returns were those who
We're diligent enough to sell short on
declining markets: those who profited
by buying things at the bottom and
waiting for rise. and the pawn
brokers' who took advantage of the
general distress.
Our Androscoggin neighbor says:
"The difference is due to the differ
ence in the volume of trade. due to
crops and other factors far more
powerful than tariff changes"
Wrong again! The volume of trade
responds to tariff changes more
quickly than to any other influence.
And the crops, too, depend upon the
probable market. Tariff and markets
are closely related. When the farmers
can sell their crops for good prices
the factories. If it costs more to pro-
duce bushel of grain than the market
warrants what would be the advan-
tage in our present enormous crops?
In the half century of the policy of
protection. which the Democrats call
iniquitous. our national progress. with
the exception of the halt in the period
as specified above has been more rap
id and marvellous than that of any peo-
Pile in any period The only pause was
when we We're buying (when we could
by hook or crook get the money! the
cheap products of the low-paid labor
of the world. while our own Industries
and labor We're idle That period was
during the last Democratic admins
|tration.
The Sun speaks of Maine farmers
in the same breath with free trade
England's' farmers as enjoying COM
forts" today that they did not 80
years ago. We hope he does not wish
to declare that in free trade England
the accumulation of comforts has been
as rapid as in the State of Maine.
Let him read what the last British
government blue book says of the free
trade policy. 1t abounds in hard
facts and is full of definite informa-
ton. For instance it gives the follow
ing table of the population of the four
principal countries of the world:
Annual Average Increase
lSS0-S4 l905-OS Mills, Per cent