The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1922-10-06
THE WIFE OF THE FARMER is
THE ABLE BUSINESS PART
NER OF HER HUSBAND.
She Understands About Costs and
Prices, and Knows the Value
of the Tariff.

To save the women Of the fam
| lily financial anxiety has been
somewhat the idea of chivalry of
the city business man. The
women of his class gave them
selves more or less to the pleas
ures of life and were to be
shielded from the knowledge of
everything unpleasant, especial
ly from the strain and worries of
their husbands business life.
But in the country, the exact
opposite has been true, from the
days when they pioneered across
country with their children and
their belongings in their covered
wagon. The rural wife has
known and shared all the ups and
downs and ms and outs of their
joint business, farming. At the
family board, or around the even
ing lamp, they have discussed to-
gether the conditions of the
fields, or the stock, or the crops,
the repairs to be done on rainy
days, the best time for the
threshing, the clover hulling, or
the barn raising. Even the trips
to town are timed to suit the
convenience of both.
On account of this sharing in
the business problems of the
farm, the rural women of Am
erica have come to see the value
of the tariff.
In the early days of our coun-
try when the urban population
was small and each family raised
most of the agricultural products
it consumed, and when the far
mers best market was abroad and
the home market of neglible
value, then the farmer did not
feel the necessity of guarding
the home market. He did not
think of American citizens as
consumers of his product, whose
patronage it was to his interest
to keep for himself.
But times have changed, Am
erica now consumes 95 per cent
of the farmers product and the
foreign market 5 per cent. 1t
behooves the farmer now to shut
out the importation of foreign
farm products and to save Am
erican markets for himself.
He is not in favor of shipping
potatoes from Canada, butter
from Denmark, eggs from China,
wool from Australia, and live
stock, corn and wheat from
South America. Directly these
things compete with what he has
to sell, and this is his first inter-
est in the tariff.
His second interest in the
tariff is to keep the business
class, the industrial class and all
the people Of the towns employ
ed at reasonable income that
they may be able to buy his
products. In Europe the labor
ers work for only one-tenth the
daily wage of the American
laborer. AS consumers, they do
not compare at all with the Am
erican laborer. If this country
is flooded with the products of
foreign factories and our own
mills driven to idleness on that
account, the thousands and thou
sands of business men depend
ent upon them will not be able
to buy what the farmer raises.
He is in favor of the tariff to
protect these laborers and the
blsiness people to keep them IN
employment and their pay en-
velope sure.
Labor is the best patron the
farmer has. A rich man may
buy more of fine furnishings but
he cannot consume more food
than the laborer. To keep Am
erican mill wheels going is the
great aim of the American far
mer. This assures him steady
and profitable market.
The farmer has just had a
demonstration of what tariff
means to him. Before the war,
with the Democratic low tariff,
farm products began to fall IN
price. Then came the war, max
ing the utmost demand for all the
American farmer could raise, to
feed the fighting world. But as
soon as the war was ended
Europe began to produce her
own foodstuffs. Under the Demo
cratic low tariff our country was
very soon flooded with foreign
products. Labor was unemploy-
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