and more within forty years. Cereals, poultry, beef, pork, hay, the product of the dairy, every thing the farmer puts on the market has gone up, while woollens, cotton goods, hats, shoes, agricultural imple. ments, every manufacture, indeed, the laboring man buys has steadily gone down. Mr. Chairman, remember when, as a boy, forty years ago, I stood behind the counter of a country store in my district; we bought butter at from 5 to 10 cents per pound, eggs at 3 to 6 cents per dozen, chickens at 75 cents to $1 per dozen, pork at from $1.50 to $2.50 per hundred net, and other farm products at prices equally low. These products have advanced three to four hundred per cent since then. On the other hand, cotton fabrics, such as prints, brown sheetings, tickings, drills, etc., that sold then at 12 to 15 cents per yard, are to be had to-day in the same market for from 6 to 9 cents. There have been like reductions in the prices of lawns, cassimeres, cloths, flannels; but I need not give details, as these facts stand admitted. The conclusion is clear; we can safely continue a policy that has brought these conditions to the country. Dutiable agricultural products-The foreigner bears the burden of the duties which protect the American farmer. Representative Chace of Rhode Island, in his speech before the House, April 16, 1884, said: years' standing, and I am to be read out of the These are facts and ought to be known.. Below are the totals given in a table, prepared by the Bureau of Statistics, showing the amounts of duti- I assert it as a fact, for I brought it to the attention able agricultural products imported into this country of the State Department when I occupied a very honor. during the years 1882 and 1883, and the rate and amount able position in the other branch as head of a comof duties collected on them. Among them are $4,000,- mittee, that the trade-marks of Massachusetts and 000 worth of live animals, $12,667,000 worth of bread- Connecticut are stolen by Great Britain to-day-four stuffs and farinaceous foods, $18,000,000 worth of fruit, in my own State, and four in the State of Massa. nearly $1,000,000 worth of hay, more than $1,000,000 of chusetts; that she cannot sell her own wares in her potatoes, and $1,800,000 worth of provisions, including own country without stealing the trade-marks of the $939,000 worth of butter. Included in the item of bread- United States. (Applause.) stuffs is $1,893,406 worth of rice, the duty on which is a direct protection to the Southern farmer. East Indian rice is worth in bond in New York from 24 cents to 2 cents per pound wholesale, the duty being 2% cents per pound, and the average ad valorem rate last year being 114.8 per cent. The average duty on fruits was 25.35 per cent, on sugar and molasses 52.88 per cent, and 31.17 per cent of all the duties collected was on agricultural articles. A favorite method of figuring with the free-trade doctrinaires is to assume that if an article is imported on which there is a duty, that fact is proof that all such articles produced and consumed in this country are enhanced by so much. I annex a table, prepared by the Agricultural bureau, showing that the gross agricultural products of this country in 1882 amounted to $3,600,000,000; the average duties, being 31 per cent, would amount to $1,116,000,000: either an utter absurdity, or we are paying our farmers a great bonus. It is pure nonsense. The fact is, the foreigner generally pays the whole or a part of the duty on all articles. PART V. A Distinguished Democrat admits that Protection Cheapens all Articles used by the Farmer and others- The Farmer will soon Demand more Protection for the Home Market. Representative and Ex-Senator Eaton, of Connecticut, in spite of threats to read him out of the Free-Trade Democratic Party if he dared to utter even a part of the truth as to the benefits of Protection, said, in his peech in the House, May 1, 1884: The duty, then, of the patriot alone has gone by. patriot alone I would not have this question beCongress; but now I come to it as a party man, a rat of forty years' standing yes, sir; of forty Now a little story. Mr. Lincoln used to point an argument with a story. Suppose I do it, although I know it will not be as good as his stories were. There was a certain professor in my county, a theorist of the first water, a man who does not know any more about the practical tariff than I know about the Hebrew that he is well acquainted with. This professor came up into a large manufacturing village in my county to make a theoretical speech, such a one as my friend from Ohio (Mr. Hurd) delights in. There was a farmer standing by a post in the lecture-room, and the professor thought he might be a good subject to operate upon; so he said to him, "My friend, you are a farmer?" "Yes.". -"You live here?"-"Yes.""Do you know these manufacturers in this village are robbing you?" "Why, no, I do not know it. How can they rob me? I came here ten years ago with $500; I bought a farm, running in debt $2,500 for my farm and stock. I went to work raising truck for this village. I paid my debt and have got money in the savings bank, and do not owe any man a dollar. How have they ruined me?" The professor said, "Well, it appears you have been a hard-working man and have lived it through. But you pay six cents a yard duty for the very cloth your shirt is made of." "Well, professor," replied the farmer, you may think so, but you cannot prove it by your algebra or your loga. rithms; you cannot prove it unless by Esop's Fables, for I did not give but five cents a yard for the cloth." (Great laughter.) production of wheat for export has hitherto been limited by the want of agricultural machinery, railroads leading to the nearest seaports, and a system of elevators. When these improvements shall be intro. duced, in connection with the little better than Indian wages that are paid to Russian peasants, the foreign market for grain produced on our high-priced land, and at from one to two thousand miles from ports of shipment, will not pay the cost of production and transportation. But it will be asked, is there danger of the establishment of such means of competition? No reply to this question. I beg leave to tell gentlemen that the Russian government has been and is again in negotiation with American parties to establish in the heart of this great wheat-growing country factories for the production of agricultural implements, to undertake the construction of railroads over the level surface of this prairie land, and of systems of elevators at convenient points along the railroads, and in the shipping ports to which they will lead. I am no prophet of evil, no Cassandra, and have not risen to say to our farmers this overwhelming competition is your inevi table and immediate fate; my mission is now, as it has been for all the years of my mature life, to avert, if wise counsels can do it, such disaster to any portion of the American people. And Representative Evans, of Pennsylvania, April 22, 1884, during the same debate, said: It is the opinion of the best-informed political economists that the farmer will soon need a much higher protection on his cereal products to prevent importation of like products into this country to feed the millions of our people who are employed in manufactures and different pursuits other than agriculture. It is an admitted fact that we can no longer rely upon a foreign market for their consumption. America, India, Australia, and Russia are building railroads and improving their facilities to make cheaper transportation. British India alone has increased her exports of wheat enormously in the last four years. In 1880 she exported 4,000,000 bushels; in 1881, 12,000,000 bushels; and in 1883, 36,000,000 bushels. Her soil is fertile and well adapted to wheat-raising. It is said that the rates of freight from India and Russia to Liverpool are no higher than from the United States to Liverpool. Her rate of wages, although having risen 100 per cent in the last thirty years, is now about eight cents per day; farm labor can be had for five cents per day. It is with this pauper labor we will have to compete in our exports of grain; and at the rate they are increasing their annual products, we will not only be compelled to give up the foreign market, except in times of failure, but they will be knocking very soon at the doors of our ports with their cereal products. Then you will find that the farmer will plead as he has never pleaded before for protection, and instead of twenty cents per bushel on wheat and barley he will want perhaps three times that amount. It is said that wheat can be produced at a profit in India for thirty cents a bushel. Representative Russell, of Massachusetts, also said during that debate: India is displacing the old rude implements of agriculture with new and modern ones, improving her lands by irrigation, and pushing railroads into the wheat-growing sections of the country. A new railroad line now constructing from Calcutta will open an outlet for from fifty to eighty million bushels per year. Another proposed line would draw traffic from 27,000 square miles of wheat cultivation, or more than 17,000,000 acres, capable of producing 150,000,000 bushels thus increasing rapidly her growth and exper year, ports of wheat. In his valuable report for December, 1883, Mr. J. R. Dodge, Statistician of the Agricultral Department at Washington, D.C., dedemonstrates a fact of great interest to the American farmer, to wit, that "values in agriculture are enhanced by increase of nonagricultural population." Comparison between States. He takes Virginia and Pennsylvania as preliminary examples to test the truth of that law. Says he: More than half of the people of Virginia are farmers; only one in five of the Pennsylvanians are engaged in agriculture. Does the greater number in the former State make a greater demand for land and a higher price by reason of the competition? No; the competition is between one farmer and another in the sale of produce for which there is no near market; and the cheapening of products also cheapens the acres on which they are grown. So, Virginia farmlands are valued at $10.89 per acre, while those of Pennsylvania command $49.30. So says the census of 1880. It also says that the average farm-worker of Virginia produces crops worth $180, while the Pennsylvania agriculturist gets $431. Why is this? Because of the other four mouths seeking to be filled and competing for the supply. Besides, high prices are a stimulus to large production, and fertilizers are more abundant in a district full of towns and villages. There are nearly twice as many agricultural producers in the fourth class as are found in the first, yet the crops of the million are worth much more money than all the results of labor of the two million workers. The class that has 58 per cent in agriculture makes $101 per annum more than that which has 77 per cent, and the class with the lower average of 42 per cent gets $133 above the earnings of that which averages 58 per cent in agriculture. 1st Class* States and Territories.with Tess 3d Class-States with 50 and less than 70 per than 30 per cent of thein total workers cent of total workers engaged in agricul $3,632,403 $200 18 146,197,415 43 52 Rhode Island.. 514,813 25,882,079 50 27 28883 9 Virginia... Missouri 9 Minnesota 19,835,785 $216,028,107 $10 89 51 27,879,276 375,633,307 13 47 13,403,019 193,724,260 14 45 Arizona... 135,573 1,127,946 8 32 15 Iowa Nebraska W. Virginia Connecticut 2,453,541 121,063,910 49 34 18 Kentucky Florida Kansas Tennessee... California 16,593,742 262,051,282 15 79 21 Texas.... Total..... 237,873,040 3,218,108,970 13 52 58 * "In this list the most diverse conditions are represented. On one extreme the District of Columbia has but 18,146 acres of agricultural land, which is valued at $200 per acre as suburban property under the shadow of a large city. On the other, small areas in the Territories are surrounded by immense bodies of unoccupied lands, which are given away by the United States Government, keeping the prices of cultivated farms low, though they are rising with great rapidity. California and Colorado are similarly situ ated, yet further advanced in point of time and in development of industries, and of course showing higher prices. In the States in which there is no public land to depress prices, there is no average that is not higher than the general average of the next class of States having 30 to 50 per cent in agriculture; the range of prices is from $32.33 per acre in Maryland to $65.16 in New Jersey. Though New Jersey has 15 per cent in agriculture, the influence of the adjacent populations of Philadelphia, New York, and Brooklyn reduces practically her percentage to a lower proportion than Massachusetts and Rhode Island."- Mr. Dodge's Report, Dec. 1883. "This list embraces also a few of the Territories and a State or two in which the unoccupied public lands continue to depress prices of farm-lands.' Ibid. Comparisons within each State. In his February, 1884, number, Mr. Dodge continues his interesting statistical investigations, thus: In the December number it was shown conclusively, by figures of the census of 1880, that increase of non-agricultural population enhances prices of lands and farm products. There was found a relation, other things being equal, of such prices to relative numbers of agriculturists and other workers. The larger the proportion of farmers, the smaller were found values in agriculture. Now, in view of the above considerations of nearness of producers to consumers, it is important to know whether, within the States, the proximity of different classes of workers increases locally such prices. It would be reasonable to suppose it would. To test the supposition by the figures of the census which show the value of the products of manufacture, which represent usually the largest element in non-agricultural industry, let us take the principal manufacturing counties, average the value of their farm-lands, and compare the result with the average value of all the remaining farm-lands within the State. There is a great difference in the aggregate value of manufactures of the different States. Mississippi and Nevada have no county with $1,000,000 worth of manufactured products. Massachusetts has only two with less than $10,000,000, and has one with $134,567,625. Therefore it is necessary, in a comparison between the principal manufacturing counties and those of less importance, to take a different minimum of value in Alabama, as a line of separation, from the minimum taken for Massachusetts. The minimum proposed for each of the States south of Pennsylvania and the Ohio River is $1,000,000. Each county having not less than that amount of value in manufacturing production is placed in a group, and the average value of their lands compared with the average value of all the remaining lands in the State. Then the agricultural States, in which other industries are more important, are allowed a minimum of $2,000,000 per county. In this group come the thriving North-western States, new and largely agricultural, yet progressive, and already diversifying their industries, rural and manufacturing, quite rapidly. They are Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa, and California is classed with them. Then come the four States of the Ohio Basin, which lie between the river and the Great Lakes, which are already prominent in industrial development. It is necessary to make $5,000,000 the minimum, so general is the distribution of the industries. With Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois are placed the States of Northern New England; viz., Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. In a fourth group, comprising each of the Middle States, having a larger industrial development, $10,000,000 per county will make a fair exhibit of the more advanced industrial counties. These four groups comprise all the States, except those in Southern New England, which have a very exceptional degree of industrial advancement. In these, Connecticut has three of her eight counties, with more than $25,000,000 each. In Massachusetts and Rhode Island the minimum is fixed at $50,000,000. The result of this comparison shows, in every State, without exception, a higher average value of farm-land in that portion of each State which makes the largest value of the products of manufacturing industry. These two sections of each State are contrasted in the following statement, which also gives the totals for each State, as follows: Statement showing the local variation of prices in each State. |