ultimate value of $500,000 parallel with the progress of a city which sustains it, while a country journal at the same time attains a value of $10,000. The proprietor would scarcely feel impoverished because his accrued capital represents a large annual interest, or desire greatly a change of place with the owner of the less valuable establishment.

It is a little like the increased valuation of a slave in 1860, worth $1,000 with cotton at 10 cents per pound, over his value in 1845, of $500, when cotton would bring only 5 cents, except that he has grown older with less producing power, while the improved farm has advanced in fertility and in real capacity for production. Yet he is worth more, because the product of his labor brings twice as much money, and represents a capital that can be realized.

The experience of Western pioneers furnishes a strong illustration of the reality and profit of the advance in values by increase of population and the stimulus of activity. They enter homesteads in part from a desire for a home and farm, and in large part from the expectation of increased selling value; as settlement progresses, roads are built, schools established, and the neighborhood enriched and beautified. The original price being nominal, the advance is rapid, with general settlement and cultivation. Not unfrequently, in fifteen to twenty years, lands costing $1.25 are readily salable at $20 per acre. This is the case in many parts of the West. Investments are made by non-residents, to take advantage or the inevitable rise caused by the labor of others. One such owner of Iowa lands, after paying taxes for fifteen years, was astonished to find that land for which he had paid $5 per acre would scarcely command the original price. A group of such investors owning a large slice of a county happened to be located together, all distant non-residents, and each depending in vain upon his neighbors for the improvements which were to enrich him. It is a great pity that the land speculators were not always thus placed by themselves. Their lands would not long be held unimproved.

The objection to which these illustrations make answer is as futile and unreal as the fancied burden of

taxes to a rich tax-payer.

While the four groups of States arranged with reference to the proportion of workers in agriculture show the steep gradation, in annual income of the worker, of $457, 3394, $261, to $160, as the proportion in agricultural pursuits rises from 18, 42, 58, to 77 per cent of all persons reported in occupations, it is admitted that other causes come in to produce local variations. Were the presence of non-agricultural population- the fact of diversity in industry-the only cause of varying prices of lands or agricultural income, the difference would exactly accord with the relative proportion of farmers, which is not the case. The fig ures above show, however, that it is the predominant, controlling cause.

Pennsylvania has 20 per cent in agriculture; her farm lands are worth $49.30 per acre. Iowa has 57 per cent in rural occupations, and her lands are valued at $22.92. In annual income, however, Iowa distances every State in her class with $448, while the average is only $261, and Pennsylvania's is $431. It is because of the fertility of Iowa soil, rich prairie areas instead of sterile mountain slopes, the ease and cheapness of cultivation, and the enterprise of a superior class of farmers. It is a case exceptional in the extreme, and the only State of thirteen in this class that approaches closely a comparison with Pennsylvania in income. Referring to Missouri, adjoining Iowa, a State of varied resources, with lands as a whole not so easily opened or so cheaply cultivated, we find 51 per cent in agriculture, lands averaging $13.47 per acre and producing $270 per capita. Manufactures are more diffused through Iowa than Missouri, exclusive of the commercial and manufacturing city, St. Louis, which communicates with and benefits Southern Iowa perhaps even more than Southern Missouri. The condition of

agriculture is generally more advanced in Iowa, the average rate of production somewhat higher, and the profits of agriculture are therefore greater. The prevalence of other industries develops mechanical skill, stimulates invention of labor-saving appliances, and gives more symmetrical practical culture to hand and brain. This is a prominent cause of the vast difference between sections almost wholly agricultural, and those in which exist harmonious and full development of the other industries. It gives more production per capita, while home markets make higher prices. Isolation tends to rust and decay; contact of industrial ideas and prevalence of mechanical skill tend to labor-saving ingenuity and manual dexterity in the work of agriculture. While various causes of difference in average incomes are admitted, the controlling influence of diversity in industry is undeniably established by the striking fact, that the average income of no State in the fourth class comes up to the average ($261) of the third; not one in the third attains the average ($394) of the second; and only two of the second, Illinois and Oregon, reach the average ($457) of the first class.

PART VIII.

Wages of Farm Labor.*

In the same report, Statistician Dodge pursues his inquiry further and proves that the farm laborer is also benefited by increased wages wherever there is an increased proportion of non-agricultural to agricultural workers. That protection fosters manufactures and increases the non-agricultural population, none would dream of denying. The statistics given in this chapter therefore prove beyond a doubt that protection does not protect merely those engaged in manufacturing the articles which are protected by the tariff, but that it protects the owner of the farm, the cultivator of the farm, and the farm laborer, each and every one of them. Says Mr. Dodge, who treats the matter as one of pure statistics, and not of politics:

Having shown that the value of the farm and the income of the farmer are enlarged by increasing the proportion of non-agricultural laborers in a State, it is important to inquire whether the farm laborer shares in the advantage to the owner and cultivator of the soil. Fortunately a definite answer can be given from repeated and trustworthy returns of the wages of farm labor to the Department of Agriculture.

In 1870, when wages and prices generally were high, the average wages of farm labor in the first or manufacturing class of States was $34, while in the last, exclusively agricultural class, it was but $15. When the panic came, and years of manufacturing depression followed, mechanics and artisans competed with farm laborers and reduced the price of rural labor. It is a fact that prices at different times furnish an accurate measure both of the industrial status of the laborers and the prosperity of the great industries of the country.

In 1882 the wages of agricultural labor averaged nearly $25 in the first and second class, $19.50 in the third, and $13.20 in the fourth. The demand for wheat and corn, beef and pork, the product of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and other States of the second class, to supply home, Eastern, and foreign markets, brought up the value of farm labor to an equality with wages in the States of the first class. The scarcity of laborers, who prefer farms of their own, also contributed to high rates in this class. Where more than half of the workers are farmers, the competition of laborers reduces inevitably the rate of wages. So we find that where the proportion reaches three-fourths, the reduction usually amounts to 50 per cent.

The influence of manufactures, of mining, of any productive industries, on local prices, whether of farms or farm products or farm labor, is plainly traceable in States, and in various districts within the States, by the furnace fires, the mines, the factories that thickly dot the location where high prices for farm labor prevail.

PART IX.

The Farmers of America demand more Protection instead of less.

Early in 1887 the New York Tribune, in view of the fact that, through low duties on some farm products, no duties on others, and frauds in importation, "the country was being flooded with foreign wool, potatoes, eggs, fruits, tobacco, and other articles, and that the whole American farming interest was thereby injured and menaced with serious injury," addressed to every Grange, Agricultural Society, and Farmers' Club in the United States a letter asking "exactly what changes, if any, do the farmers want in the rates of duty upon agricultural products ?" Nearly 5,000 responses were received. These were referred to a committee of gentlemen of national reputation, -Senators, Governors, Representatives, and others from various States of the East and West to report thereon to the entire body of American farmers. The report was agreed to and signed by the committee, Messrs. Warner Miller, Cyrus C. Carpenter, John T. Rich, W. C. Morse, Edw. Burrough, J. D. Lyman, J. H. Hale, and William M. Grosvenor, Jan. 11, 1888, and the following is taken from it:

Hon. Warner Miller's report on 5,000 Farmers' letters.

The great majority of these letters express the conomissions, has contributed powerfully to the growth viction that the tariff, notwithstanding defects and and welfare of agriculture. Few are hostile or indif. ferent. An overwhelming majority of the writers realize that the protective system, by building up other industries, has enormously enlarged the demand for it has greatly diminished the number of those who agricultural products. While increasing the demand,

It

would otherwise have been forced, for lack of other employment, to crowd into agriculture and to compete with each other in supplying that demand. has helped to bring to this country nine million immigrants since its adoption, and during the past fifteen years not one in twelve of them have 6,000,000, more than 5,500,000 have been of other occubeen farmers, farm laborers, or shepherds; out of pations. It has especially aided the development of manufactures and mining near the farms, so that the safest and most profitable of all markets for farm farming States of the West, the increase in acres of products has been enlarged. Thus in the ten great improved land in farms from 1860 to 1880 was 160 per cent. A growth so remarkable could not have occurred without disaster to farmers, indeed, it would have been utterly impossible, if there had not been a far more rapid growth of other branches of industry. For during the same years, and in the same great farming States, the hands employed in manufactures increased 251 per cent, the wages paid to them increased 303 per cent, and the materials used in manufactures, bought mainly from farms, increased 389 per cent. The wages which manufacturing hands in these States had to spend, mainly in buying farm products, averaged $1.10 for each improved acre in 1860, and had risen to $1.71 for each improved acre in 1880. The value of materials purchased for manufacture in these States, mainly from farms, averaged $4.02 for each improved acre in farms of those States in 1860, but had risen to $7.58 for each improved acre in farms in 1880. The following tables, prepared from census reports, verify these statements:

The farmers see that the rapid increase of agricultural production here, which has been the wonder of the world, could not have occurred without ruining farm-owners and degrading farm labor, had not the still more rapid and more wonderful development of other industries been encouraged by protection. But the letters urge with great unanimity that farm as well as other labor needs direct defence, and for the same reason. For all American labor has in common the responsibilities and burdens of citizenship to bear. There is no justice in forcing it to compete at any point with the labor of serfs or slaves, crofters or coolies. The American worker rightly claims, with his position as a self-governing citizen, a measure of independence in his industry, of comfort in his home, of respectability in his circumstances, of education for his children, of time for acquiring information. These are rights. Their denial tends to undermine intelligent and self-respecting citizenship, and threatens the safety of the Nation. . . .

Gaps in the Farmers' Barriers.

But the barrier around farming industry, at all points relatively low, has many gaps, partly from early oversight and partly from mistaken revision within the past few years. Even at this hour, some important products of American farms are undersold in many of our cities and towns by the products of ill paid or unpaid labor. Onions from Spain and Egypt appear in markets as far west as Chicago. Tobacco raised by coolies in Sumatra lessens the reward of American growers. Wool clipped by slaves, by convicts, or by creatures scarcely less degraded, stops wool-growing by an army of American farmers, and sends 6,000,000 sheep to the slaughter. Potatoes and cabbages by the cargo, from places where women work daily in the fields, come hither as ballast, with eggs by the shipload from Holland, cattle from Mexico, and barley from Canada. The home market, which the farmer defends for other labor, he must at some points fight for with his worst rivals. Debasing competition with the worst-paid labor in the world, from which he helps to shield other industries, is suffered to beat down his rewards.

Thousands of farmers therefore appeal, through the letters considered, to all other farmers throughout the country, to unite in demanding for their great industry, not only indirect benefits, but the fair measure of direct protection it deserves. They urge that fraudulent or law-evading importations of cattle, tobacco, and wool should be stopped; that duties on farm products should be so arranged as to give farmers more varied opportunities to secure fair returns; that heavy taxes now paid by consumers, of which farmers pay nearly half, should be repealed, since they are no longer needed for revenue; that the protecting arm of the government should be extended as well to farmers near the seaports and the Canadian or Mexican border as to those of the interior. Prostration of agriculture at any point involves overcrowding elsewhere....

Cattle fraudulently imported.

1. The fraudulent importation of cattle for slaughter, across Northern and Southern boundaries, on pretenee that they are for breeding purposes only, and by law free of duty, should be effectually prevented. It is quite enough that 73,000 head were last year imported at a duty of only 20 per cent, which would be thought scanty protection for any other industry. But 12,000 head were brought in from Mexico, professedly for breeding; and many more from Canada, though American producers have for years been unable to get living prices. The collapse of extensive specula tions in cattle and ranches caused a great number of animals to be sacrificed at low prices; and though consumers gained relatively little, one of the chief industries of the country was rendered almost wholly unprofitable. The greatest danger will come if similar speculations arise in Mexico or Canada. At their collapse, immense numbers of cattle may again be forced upon our market, in spite of the low duty, which will then prove no protection. But the fraudulent evasion of the law already increases, and can be indefinitely extended. The act leaves to collectors at all points a discretion which has been often, and can be extensively, abused, as to the evidence they may require that importations are for breeding only. Rulings of the department could afford but a temporary

and partial defence. The law itself should rigidly prescribe the evidence to be given, if any animals not of certified pedigree are to be admitted free of duty. It should not be forgotten that countless hordes are north and south of us, and a loose law might at any time bring disaster to a great industry.

Grain must be Protected.

2. The duty on barley should be raised to equal that on wheat; viz., 20 cents per bushel, with a proportionate increase in the duty on barley malt. Over 10,000,000 bushels of barley were imported during the last fiscal year, and probably over 13,000,000 during the last calendar year, while in 1886 the home production was 59,000,000 bushels. The regions in which it may be most profitably grown have their prices fixed in great markets which Canadian producers can reach by water, while most of our own producers cannot. The Canadian neighbors who scize American fishing vessels, in disregard of the reasonable interpretation of existing treaties, are the only people whom an additional duty on barley would disturb. To thousands of farmers near the border the opportunity to raise this crop in measur able safety from ruinous competition would be most welcome. To the argument that duties on cereals have no effect, it is a sufficient answer that wheat in Minnesota is now worth 10 cents per bushel more than wheat across an imaginary line in Manitoba. The existing duties on other cereals are of practical benefit and should be maintained.

Gardens can be made to pay.

3. The duty on potatoes and market garden prod. ucts, which at times can be brought hither in ballast in almost unlimited quantities, should be large enough to insure a fair defence to farmers near the seaboard and border. The farmer has to pay American, not foreign workers, to employ capable and independent workers, and not mere slaves of the soil. Whenever there is a surplus in any other land fronting on the Atlantic, or when vessels coming to our ports find no paying cargoes, the farmer is likely to find his only markets gorged with foreign supplies, thrust upon buyers at less than the bare cost of production here. He cannot know when the season begins what quantities his market will demand of his products, for the quantities brought from abroad depend, not upon American wants, but upon the other cargoes offered ocean vessels, or upon the crops abroad. Even when he loads his products for market, he cannot know that a ship may not arrive the same day with such quantities as to glut the market for a week. In one month, last November, there were imported 773,000 bushels of potatoes, averaging less than 31 cents per bushel. In four days of January the imports at New York alone were 149,000 bushels, from Scotland 68,000, from Holland, Denmark, and Germany 13,000, and from other distant countries. Against such killing competition it is no wonder that American market gardeners do not thrive, and supplies for Eastern cities and manufacturing centres are always liable to be scarce and dear, while agriculture is getting starved out of seaboard States. It is no wonder that the four States of New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania each raised fewer potatoes than they did 28 years ago; in 1859 their product was 44,139,700 bushels, in 1885 only 39,576,000, and in 1886 and 1887 about the same. Nor is this the only product which has been made scarce for consumers by open doors to foreign producers and uncertainty for home production. Onions and cabbages, now free, are brought by vessels from great distances; thousands of crates in a single recent carg) of onions from Spain; about 1,000,000 bushels of beans and peas were imported within the year just closed; 90,000 tons of hay, even in a year when in every part of the country our own crop was full; and probably over 18,000,000 dozen eggs. The effect of these imports, coming without warning and at most irregular times, is to destroy the only home market left for more than half a million farmers near the seacoast. Cheap transportation makes them powerless to compete in many great products with Western farmers; ballast-bearing ships leave only a ferry between them and the worst paid labor of Europe. It is believed that all farmers throughout the country will unite to support the prayer of hun dreds from seacoast and border States that a moderage protection be given in the only industry left the that duties of 25 cents per bushel on onions and $2 per

100 on cabbages, 30 per cent on fowls and poultry and on "vegetables in natural state or in salt or brine not otherwise provided for," 5 cents per dozen on eggs, 20 per cent on beans and peas, $3 per ton on hay, 10 cents per pound on hops, and 25 cents per bushel on potatoes, be imposed; and that no duty on market garden products now dutiable be removed or reduced. It is further recommended that wherever duties are needed to defend fruit-growers near seacoast or border against the hurtful influence of foreign competition, such duties be imposed; that the duty on dairy products be maintained, and that the oleomargarine law be sup. ported and enforced, as well for the protection of consumers as for the defence of producers.

Why burn our flax?

4. More than 1,000,000 tons of flax straw goes to waste or is burned in Western States, worth, if prepared, $26,000,000; while we pay $16,000,000 to foreign makers for linen goods, besides duties amounting to $5,500,000, which the Government does not want, and which almost wholly fail to encourage the linen manufacture. The committee believes, as many farmers ask, that the duties on flax should be raised, with the duties on linen goods manufactured from flax, to such a point as to afford effectual encouragement both to the preparation of the fibre and to the manufacture of the goods. Home manufacture has made cotton goods cheaper here than they are abroad, and the woollen goods most largely worn quite as cheap here as in any other country, and silk goods 30 per cent cheaper than they were in 1860, but the linen manufacture has never been encouraged by similar duties. The market has been left to the foreign producers, and linen goods are therefore 35 per cent dearer here than abroad. The only way to secure permanent cheapness is to develop at home the manufacture to use up the fibre already produced at home, but now wasted.

A Bounty to Sugar-Growers.

5. No less than 279 of the 326 farmers who refer at all to the duties on sugar ask the abolition of those duties. They state with truth that these duties take from the people $58,000,000, of which the farmers pay about half; that the Government does not need the revenue; and that, though millions have been paid each year to encourage sugar-growing in Louisiana, the average yield for ten years before the war was 300,000 hogsheads, and it has never been as large in any subsequent year. Then 37 per cent of the supply was from home plantations; now not one pound in ten of the entire supply is produced in this country. Last year out of fifty-one pounds per capita consumed, over forty-seven were of foreign growth. German bounties to home producers have proved far more effective; the increase in German production in only eight years would supply half of the entire consump tion of this country. It is officially reported that the problem of economic production of sugar from sorg. hum has at last been solved. It is therefore recommended that the duties on sugar and molasses be abolished, but that a bounty be paid to sugar producers of our own country. If it develops a great industry, as the bounty has in Germany, the people will be richly repaid; if it does not the money will not be taken from the Treasury, and the consumers will have saved more than $50,000,000 each year.

Tobacco Frauds must be Stopped. 6. The producers of tobacco do not ask any increase of duties, but they earnestly desire that the fraudulent importation of coolie-grown tobacco, by which their industry has been rendered unprofitable, may be stopped by more precise language in defining the classes to which existing duties were meant to apply. Since 1883 the price of American leaf tobacco has been unjustly depressed, and from 25 to 40 per cent of the production in some States has been stopped, by the large importation of the type commercially known as "wrappers," so prepared and packed as to evade the present duty on wrappers and to be admitted as "other manufactured leaf" tobacco. Prepared by coolie labor in Sumatra, at wages of 7 to 10 cents per day, this tobacco is so carefully selected and assorted after fermentation that 4,000,000 pounds imported takes the place of 15,000,000 pounds of American leaf, about 40 per cent of the entire product of wrappers, and though in fact a highly manufactured article, it is fraudulently imported as raw material.

Inferior. because of its bitter flavor, to the American leaf displaced, it is preferred only because of its cheapness, and if this country excludes coolies by law, can it justly permit the product of their labor to drive American leaf-growers out of the business, and with them a large part of the highly skilled labor of the farms and the cigar manufactories? The growers therefore ask that the law be so worded that leaf tobacco, any part of which is suitable for and commercially known as wrappers, shall pay, if not stemmed, 75 cents per pound; if stemmed, $1.00 per pound. They moreover urge that the internal tax on tobacco, which is no longer needed and which burdens consumers and limits the consumption, be repealed.

Appeal of the Wool-Growers.

7. The wool-growers have especial reasons at this time to appeal to their brother farmers for support. At a time when their industry is depressed, as it hardly ever has been before by foreign competition, permitted by a reduction of duties in 1883, by Treasury rulings since, and by systematic frauds in foreign ports, the President proposes in his annual message the repeal of all duties on wool. In the two years before the change of duty, and in the past two years, the imports for consumption were as follows:

Under efficient protection, the production of wool rose from 60,000,000 lbs. in 1860 to 308,000,000 lbs. in 1884, the year after the change of duty. It has since declined to 285,000,000 pounds in 1886, and, according to estimates of the Agricultural Bureau, to 265,000,000 pounds in 1887. Meanwhile the stocks of domestic wool unsold at the close of 1887 are greatly increased: 31,974,000 pounds are on hand, an increase of 6,620,157 pounds, at Boston alone. To the mischief done by reduced duties there is added: first, the great fraudulent importation of Donskoi and other washed wool, under pretence that it is unwashed, a systematic fraud by which the United States Consul at Odessa reports to the State Department that the Government has been defrauded for years, and of more than $15,000,000 in duties. Each pound of foreign wool thus fraudulently imported, already scoured and shrunken, takes the place of two to four pounds of American wool in natural condition.

The imports of woollen rags, shoddy, mungo, waste, and flocks rose to 4,902,381 pounds last year. In 1882, when the duty was 12 cents per pound, the imports were only 917,621 pounds. The reduction of duty to 10 cents is not the chief cause. The Treasury Department decided that articles must be admitted for duty under the classes by which they were commercially known. The manufacturers in Europe proceeded to manufacture a finely prepared article which they caused to be commercially known as "ring waste." In condition and value superior to the finest scoured wool, on which the duty is 60 cents per pound, manufactured in great quantities for the express purpose of evading American duty, it is admitted, under the ruling of the Department, as waste at only 10 cents per pound duty. This ruling, moreover, has been sustained by a decision of the United States Court at Philadelphia, and it effectually destroys a large measure of the protection which the reduced tariff was intended to give wool growers. In like manner, decisions admitting worsted mixtures as being, not woollen cloth, but as worsted manufactures, have greatly increased the imports at low duty of fabrics which take the place of home manufactures from American wool. Thus 30,799,035 pounds of woollen goods and waste, dutiable by the pound, were imported in 1887, against 15,588,998 pounds in 1883, and each pound displaces more than one pound of American wool.

The wool growers who appeal to other farmers throughout the country show that the prostration of their industry is imminent; that they number more than one million, and if forced to give up wool growing must devote their land to other branches of agri

culture in which competition is already severe enough; that the prostration of the manufacture would also deprive American farmers of a considerable part of their home market, and that, with woollen goods worn by nine-tenths of the people as cheap now as in any other country, quality considered, the consumers have only to pay higher prices if the enormous consumption of this country is to be supplied wholly or in part by foreign looms. They therefore ask a united effort of all farmers to obtain from Congress such action that this industry may receive the substantial protection enjoyed under the tariff of 1867; that the dividing line between

wools paying the highest and those paying the lowest rate of duty be reduced proportionately to the reduc tion in the price of foreign wool; that washed wool of all classes be subject to twice, and scoured wool to three times the duties on unwashed wool; that mixed wool be charged the highest rate of duty to which any portion of the mixture would be subject, without re gard to its commercial name; that the law be so amended as to prevent the admission of clothing wools at the rate charged on carpet wools, and that the rate on rags, shoddy, mungo and waste be such as will effectually discourage their importation.

Senator Platt,

PART I. Comparative Wages of Mechanical and Factory Labor in Massachusetts and Great Britain - Increase of Wages in Massachusetts, 1860 to 1881.

none.

That the American Protective Tariff System encourages the investment of capital in manufacturing enterprises and hence gives employment to labor is denied by That it thereby makes the Nation self-sustaining by diversifying our industries is equally patent. In the preceding chapter its great benefits to the farm-owner and farm-cultivator in all ways-whether as to increased value of his land and its products or as to decreased price of all that he needs must purchase― have been shown beyond cavil. Let us now ascertain how and to what extent this Republican American System benefits and elevates American Labor in all its practical aspects, so that the miserable working classes of Europe lift

their sad eyes with longing gaze toward the fair land where honest toil is respected, adequately compensated, and is a badge of nobility and not of degradation.

As England is the great exponent of the doctrine of Free-Trade, so America is that of Protection. Comparisons, therefore, between the results achieved in these two countries are eagerly sought by the intelligent workingman. It is difficult, of course, in a country so vast as this, with wages of the same kind of labor so much greater in some parts than in others, to make as close a comparison for the study of the laboring man and the political student as could be wished. But it is generally conceded that the fairest comparison of the sort that can be made is that between Massachusetts and Great Britain. Let us then take Massaehusetts, and compare twenty-four of the leading industries common to both of them, and we find the following to be the general aver age weekly and hourly wages paid to a employees therein engaged.