The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-08-29

] farmer. It is hard to see where hi partnership was recognized at all I
 is true that low tariff duties were es | abolished on many products of tht l farm, but nobody has in our tim, seriously feared that the farmers O 1 other countries would successfully compete in the food markets of tn, United States with our own farmers a 1 home. It is notorious that Ameri ca has been the granary of the world l We have sold food to other nations not bought it from them. The tariff. on products of the soil was not needed l by the farmer and did him no good , and in the meantime the things which he needed every day to produce hif crops had very heavy tariff duties laid upon them, and their prices were made stiffer and stiffer.
 The defenders of our high protec- tive tariff have often laughed very condescendingly at those who made themselves champions of "the con sumer,'' and have maintained with a very starlight face that no such per sons as consumers could be picked out from the general body of our peo . pie We. were all producers they said, as of course we are in one way or another, and since. we were all producers tariff intended to protect producers was for the benefit of all of us But if they really want to see a great body of consumers I cont mend them to look upon the farmers of the United States and see if they do not fill the description They are producers indeed, indispensable to every one Of our lives but they are not the producers who are protected and they have always been consunl- CTS upon. a large scale, paying no small part of the enormous price which the country has paid for it's protective tariff.
 MT. Roosevelt has proclaimed him. self a convert to the protective pol icy,-I say a convert because he at one time very frankly avowed a differ ent opinion.-and has said that while he admitted that, no doubt, some du ties were too high and ought to be lowered, on the whole the policy pur- sued by Republican administrations had been the right one; and he thought the prize money" which had been received under that system by the manufacturers of the country was legitimate booty. The analogy is very interesting one. Prize money is generally acquired by capture and not by any process of earning, but MT Roosevelt is always frank and saws that his only objection to the system is that too much of the prize money remains in the hands of the officers and too little of it is distrib-
 
 he avows to be to see to it that more of the prize money gets into the pay envelopes of those whom the free booters employ. The interesting point I wish to raise now is who sup plies the plunder? from whom is the prize money taken? I suspect that a vast proportion of it comes out of the pockets of the farmer, unwillingly enough no doubt, but inevitab bly,, for | I see in him that great helpless class l the unbeneflted consumer
 This great inequity involves a great | shame upon us and an enormous dis | advantage to the nation for the far | mer surely is one of the fundamental original partners Of every govern. ment. It is a significant thing that the petition "Give us this day our daily bread" comes first among ths petitions of the Lords Prayer. Al spiritual requests come after it. We can not conceive our best interests oI follow our best instincts until we art fed until our StomachS are filled anC it would be natural to suppose tha in every we'll ordered government tn, | farmer would at least have equal con, I sideration with everybody else in Do liticai policy.
 | But the trustees of our governmen
 have not looked upon 1t so The
 present Democratic Congress had tn, oId-fashioned idea of government I They supposed that it's benefits an projections were to be distributed ane Il eal4a14Y sharad. It saUght to reateV