The Bridgeport evening farmer. [volume] (Bridgeport, Conn.) 1866-1917, 1913-10-29

list, but left tanning materials on the
dutiab1e list, and put the duty high
er. This nul11fted free hides in part,
for in your sole leather there is as
much tanning material and weighing
material as there is hide substance,
pound for pound. You will think OF
tanners as located in great hemlock
regions and as moving on when the
bark is gone. That is all changed.
1t is all done with extracts, and the
duty on them has been removed; and
while today there is only one small
tannery in Connecticut, in Westport,
any point on the coast with deep wa
ter is fitted for the tanning industry
as well as Peabody, Mass, or New
ark, N. J.
Raw materials are good to import,
because they contain very little labor.
Manufactured products are the things
to export because they contain much
labor. This new bill is framed ON
these lines, designed to make raw
materials as available to American
manufacturers as they are to Belgium,
Germany, or England, and the man
ufactured products may be distribut-
ed over the world from Bridgeport as
well as from Liverpool.
They say that removing the duties
from foods will not lower the price or
the cost of living. Already we have
had in anticipation of this bill the
importation of 100000 pounds of
beef from Argentina, the best in the
world, in the past three months. We
will have 100000 pounds more in
the next three. Last Spring potatoes
were As cents a peck, $3.50 a bushel
in Bridgeport. For a few weeks they
were imported from Scotland, and on
one cargo the duty of rs cents a BUSH
ell amounted to $4,000. This added
500, 900 to the cost of that cargo
to the consumer.
But we must consider the farmer.
The old tariff undoubtedly raised his
prices in some things, but it was at
frightfuI expense to. the whole coun-
try. The new tariff will lower his
prices on some things but they will
still be high, and highly profitable to
him. But he has other remedies be-
yond any other industry in the world.
Today our farming is inadequate and
Unreasonable. Crops are meagre. He
can increase them, and they are in
creased by two or three thoughtful
farmers in this country. 100 bushels
of Npotatoes, or a ton of hay or half
a bale of cotton to the acre Is a pitt
full return. George p. Bowman raised
$50 bushels to the acre on poor land
in @Massac husetts, the first year he
tried it, on a measured ten acres, by
having his soil analysed, by fertilizing
according to it's needs, and he had
Cry season at that. The combines
son raised steers in Bethel, but could
not sell them in Danbury, because the
retailers could not get meat from
the beef trust if they bought his.
There will be a time when they can.
The tariff on foods does not al
ways help the farmers after all. The
duty of rs cents helped James A.
Patten to corner May wheat in 1909,
and he made six million dollars in two
months. Flour went up a dollar
barrel If wheat could have been
brought in free of duty from Can
ada, he could not have established
the corner. Not long will farmers
be content with high duties and poor
crops. Then too, they Will have a
cooperative cold storage plant in ev-
cry county, with tidewater on one
side and a railroad on the other; not
for the greedy purposes of the spec
ulator, but for the legitimate storing
of crops by the farmer himself.
But you will say that labor is so
high in this country, that even with
raw materials on the sea level we
cannot compete. But we do compete,
i'm agricultural implements of all
kinds and in machinery, and eIectri-
cal machinery too, and in countless
products made in Bridgeport; and this
further thing is true, that American
labor at our high wages is cheaper in
the product than anywhere else in the
world.
These Industries established on the
coast where manufacturing for ex-
port is most favorable, relieve what
would otherwise be competition in the
interior. Part of the raw material
is brought in from over the. sea. 1t
is saturated on this coast with Amer
lean labor, American business sagac-
fty and American capital 1t is sent
back over the sea in competition. with
80
with the labor cost as shown by cost
sheets cheaper here than there, in the
product, and this may go on indefi-
nite1y, under better manufacturing,
better living conditions, under this
new tariff bill than have existed be-
fore in Connecticut in sixty years.
The Scountry saw this coming, the
merchants bought from hand to
mouth to await these better conditions
stocks are depleted throughout the
country, an unprecented demand for
goods is upon us, and we are Justified
in looking upward and forward. True,
there is deep unrest over the coun-
try; there have been unjust things
done; combines have not always rec
ognized their obligations; but we have
the Sherman antitrust law which
some consider Intellectual, but in my
judgment is far-reaching. We will
not always have restraint of trade by
LSTI1LOIy, ny rivals,
by agreements for high prices. The
law has been established both on the
criminal and civil side. If we could
only have amnesty now, on the GRIM
inaI side, for the past, nothing could
disturb the prosperity already so au-
spfciously begun. Last summer I
wrote this letter to the President:
THE PRESIDENT:
If the great need of the country is
rest for a, time. with constructive
tariff bill assured, a remedial bank
ing and currency measure probable,
and the Sherman Antitrust Act es-
tab1ished on the criminal and civil
side, may not general amnesty for the
past under the Sherman Antitrust
Act. by a proclamation of the Presi-
dent, be practical, constructive, wise
rounding out of Democratic policy?
BY the rider on the NSundFy Civil
Bill, the President is virtually advis-