Grand Forks herald. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1916-1955, 1922-11-27
he Farmers
Forum
THE BURDEN BORNE
By THE FARMER

Can any industry be prosperous II
It is, forced to sell all its products in
a cheap market and buy all its mo-,
cessities In a dear market: Yet that
is the very thing that agriculture iii
the United States has been forced to
do. The price Of our wheat is fixed
IN Europe. The North Dakota farmer
must pay transportation charges on
ms wheat to Europe and then take
what the Eur0ptan purchaser can at
ford to give. II we take 1000 bushels
OF wheat|to minneapolis or Chicago
we find that they can consume only
SEQ bushels leaving 200 bushels for
export. The foreign buyer comes to
the Chicago market ana buys his 200
eign buyer pays for that 200 bushels
fixes the price for the whole 1000
%pusne.s. Inc Cnicaso grain ma
would be fool indeed if he paid
more for his 500 bushels than the
European buyer paid for his 200
bushels. h price received for our
cxportablc surplus 1ixcs the price for
our whole crop.
We must take our wheat to Europe
In ouder to market it. In Europe we
ave to sell wheat to a poverty-strick-
en- people where labor is cheap and
gold is dear. Our 1000 bushels Of
wheat would buy a great many things
in Europe-it would buy u great many
suits of clothes, a great deal of sug-
ar, and (per McCumEer) a great many
clodks. In other words our wheat in
Europe would buy a great many hours
or labor as, in it's final analysis, la
Dor is the measure Of purchasing pow
CIR. But il. in Europe, we exchange
our 1000 bushels of wheat for sugar,
clothing and other necessities we
must then pay freight on our pur-
chases ana when we come to the
United States we must also pay a
high tariff on those purchases. Who
pays the tariff? The North Dakota
farmer who must sell ,his wheat in
Europe-he pnysjthe tariff. The Iowa
farmer who must sell his corn and
pork for What it will bring in a
try whose purchasing power has been
almost ruined by war and who must
then turn around n buy his cloth
ing, his farm implements and all the
necessities Of life in a country where
labor is according to Gompers) still
getting within five per cen Of it's war
wages. The United States farmer pays
the tariff. The farmer must buy his
necessities in q country which holds
W - - q oul'ptS VI SOAu,
he must sell his products in countries
where gold is an almost unknown
quantity and yet it IS only when his
sale-price in Europe is expressed in
terms of gold That it has any mean
ing for him in terms If purchasing
power in the United States.
Tariff Blamed. .,
This thing has been going on for
years and years. The tariff has been
sucking the life-blood out of our ag-
ricultural communities and giving 1t
to the factories and cities Of the u.
S. And now we hold up vi hands in
horror and wonder why it is that the
cities are growing at the expense Of
the country. What have we been do
ing for the past century BUT pet and
pamper factories m factory laborers!
Greatness consisted, we thought, in
having big factories and big cities and
We forgot that a prosperous and con-
tented agricultural community is the
foundation stone of all great nations.
The war has simply capped the eli
max that we lave been approaching
for years. So long as we had virgin
soil, so long as land could be had for
the asking agriculture, bore the bur
den Of selling it's products in a cheap
market and buying its necessities in
a dear market. But our farm lands
became valuable, there was no more
free land, our soil fertility decreased