The Owosso times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1897-1926, 1910-08-26

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slogan he is carrying up and down
Michigan in this campaign"
Farmers Strong for Protection.
Senior Depew of New York in re-.
cent address made plain why most
farmers are protectionists and recalled
for the benefit of the wage earners
some of the things which occurred un.
der the operation of the Wilson tariff
bill. He said in part:
"The 30, 600, 900 people who are in gain
full pursuits, eliminating those who are
single, and giving an average family to
those who are married, make up nearly
the entire population of the United
States. In their living as we'll as in
their prosperity they are absolutely
dependent upon each other. None of
them can live by himself and no occu-
patton can exist by itself. 1t is the
interdependence of the industries of our
states which constitutes the strength of
the American people and the wealth of
the American union. I was asked by
Mr.. Mckinley in 1896 to make cam
paign speeches through the wheat and
corn belts of the west. 1 found the
farmers everywhere looking to free
silver or any other panacea for relief
from their condition. Wheat was 60
cents and corn rs cents bushel. Upon
that they could not meet the interest
upon their mortgages and they had
difficulty in paying their taxes and
there was no market for their horses
and cattle. Why was there this condi-
ton among the farmers? We had a
larger population in 1896 than we had
in 1890 when they were prosperous. 1t
was because the experiment of modified
free trade had closed the factories and
turned 5000, 900 wage earners in posses
sion of jobs to 5000, 900 out of job and
out Of money. In other words, the
farmer had lost his market because the
consumer had lost his job.
We have had since 1897 phenomenal
prosperity, employment, and wages,
the farmers now getting dollar and
twenty-five cents bushel for wheat
and sixty cents for corn, and there is an
open market for their stock. The farm.
ers have paid off their mortgages, they
have large surplus in the banks, and
they are enjoying a prosperity such as
has never been known by any agricul-
tural people in the world and never
known by our farmers before. 1t is be-
cause protection has created the market,
has created the money maker, has Gre
ated the money spender, and has dem.
onstrated the interdependence between
the farm and the factory and between
the producer and the consumer. The
rise in the cost Of living is not in rents,
clothes, boots and shoes, or railroad
travel. but it is in food. To suppose
that under these conditions the farmers
of the country believe that under this
principle they are burdened and op.
pressed in order to support their fellow.
countrymen who are engaged in other
pursuits and who, by being engaged in
these remunerative pursuits, are their
consumers and customers, is absurd.
The newspapers tell us that Spain is
on the eve of revolution which recalls
the remark of distinguished observer
concerning Paris, that hotbed of revo-
luton, that to maintain peace and or.
der Paris had to he shot over about
once in every thirty years. do not
know that there is any truth in this
broad generalization, because broad
congratulations are seldom true, but it is
true, and that has been our history.
that it requires lesson in modified free
trade to bring our people to full reali.
zation of its effects.
The lambs in their gambols frisked
us fifteen years ago into wool SEIZED.
ule which reduced the focks from USE
full producers of national wealth to ex-
pensive ornaments on the plains and on
the hillsides. The lambs Of the present
day have forgotten their experience,
and 1t may require II cent wool to
smash, as 1t did twelve years ago, cthe
rainbows and dreams of the college
idealists and the political theorists.