Warren sheaf. [volume] (Warren, Marshall County, Minn.) 1880-current, 1911-08-31
FARMER IS THE
REAL BACKBONE
There can be no Substantial Prosper
ity When Agriculture is not Pro-
perly Remunerated.

>.
the days when the brothers of Joseph
went down into Egypt to buy corn,''
the prosperity of every country has
depended upon the farmer, and if re
ciprocity with Canada would in any
way injure the American farmer or
tend to make his occupation less pro-
titable, we would be opposed to it.
But the two countries being physical
ly one, and the rates of wages and the
degree of civilization similar in both,
the benefits would be mutual. While
farmers on the northwest border
would perhaps get little less for
their wheat, they would be able to
buy other things cheaper, and thus
save on the one hand what they would
lose on the other. Senator Burton,
in his recent address in the Senate,
explained how wheat prices would be
affected in this way:
The production of wheat in Canada
for the year 1910 was 15O,0OO,0 200 bu-
shells; the United States produced
737 100000 bushels or near FIVE times
as much. The aggregate production
of the two countries is an essential
part of the worlds supply, nearly one
third of the worlds entire production.
The removal of the barriers between
the two countries must mean a like
scale of prices in the two countries.
If the Canadian price is lower, it will
rise very nearly in the inverse pro-
portion which it bears to the total
product of the two countries - five
sixths in the United States and one
sixth in Canada. That is il wheat is
l2 cents higher in the United States
than in Canada, her price will be in
creased fve-sixths Of the difference,
or 10 cents, while ours will be lowered
only one-sixth, or cents.
While the farmer may safely de
pend for his own prosperity upon the
of the cities, the people of
towns and cities are benefited by the
prosperity of the farmers, who are
among our best customers for all
kinds Of goods.
There can be no substantial prog
ress, moral or physical, where the ag-
ricultural portion of the population
is not properly remunerated. Cities
must be constantly recruited from the
farms, and when farming is not suf-
ficiently remunerative to attract large
numbers of the people to the soil, ma
tional deterioration is sure to result.
Rome owes her decline, according to
Gibbon, to the fact that farming was
rendered Improbable through compe-
tition with the grain fields of the val
leys of the Euphrates, the Tigris and
the Nile. 1t was the depression of
the agricultural interests in Germany
that led Bismarck to decide upon the
protective policy for that country.
During a debate in the Reichstag in
1873, Mr.. Bismarck said:
Is not the moment approaching
when our agriculture will no longer
be able to exist, because corr is
pressed down to a price at which it
can not be remun eratively produced
in Germany, taxation, the cost of Iliv-
ing, and the cost of land being as
they are? When that moment cones.
then not only agriculture but The
Prussian State and the German Elm.
pire will go to ruin as we'll.
We should, by all means. adopt suth
fiscal policies as will insure the pros-
perity of agricultural pursuits, for thi
farmer is the real backbone OF the
country.
Mrs. A. J Carlson and son, Free
dolph, are visiting at Alvarado today