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Show i'HE FRIENDS (?) OF THE FARMERS. FARM-ERS. j Our high tariff politicians, who for a generation have posed as the friends of the farmers, have been put to great straits of late. Their tariff has worked just as it wa3 intended to do not to aid in the development of this country, for it has rather retarded it not wholly to check our prosperity, for, with the most enterprising people and the greatest great-est natural resources that ever blessed a nation and with absolute free trade between all parts of our own vast country, coun-try, we had prospered in spite of restrictive re-strictive laws; but to secure to the manufacturers and mine owners, who procured the tariff to be enacted, the lion's share of such prosperity as it permitted. The farmer is, unfortunately, too bitterly bit-terly familiar with the facts, as to which there is no dispute can be none. Duri g each decade since 1850, the wealth of the country has greatly decreased, both in ratio and extent. ex-tent. During but one decade 1850-60 has the increase in favor of values kept pace with the increase in other respects. re-spects. That was the decade when we had practical free trade. We have had high protection ever since 1SG1, and in every decade since 1860 the prosperity of agriculturists has fallen far below that of the other classes of our citizens. During the last decade 1880-1890 the increase of wealth has been greater than ever before, and our manufacturing wealth has grown faster than ever; but during these ten years the wealth of our agriculturists has actually decreased. This is not merely the case for the country as a whole, but from Maine to Kansas, from Maryland Mary-land to Minnesota, comes the same views of the loss of property, of prestige and of influence on the part of farmers. During the last ten years, manufacturing, mining, railroad and banking stocks have steadily risen in value, as has real estate in cities and villages, while expensive improvements, new and elegant dwellings, beautiful parks, all paid for by somebody, are making more and more comfortable the lives of the constantly increasing numbers num-bers who live at the farmer's expense. On the other hand, the farmers about these very cities and villages are steadily getting poorer. And these contrasts are nowhere more general and more marked than in the very quarters when, before this era of "high protection," our agricultural communities were longer established estab-lished and mst prosperous; and where, since our miners and manufacturers manu-facturers have been allowed to tax the rest of us, manufacturers and miners have most thrived, and the number of wealthy consumers (who were to give the farmers such wonderful home markets) mar-kets) most largely increased in New England, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The farmers are coming to the conclusion con-clusion of an eastern farmer who, the other day, said to his neighbors: "I don't know much about the tariff; I never thought I did; but I want a let-up on this tariff that takes up contributions contribu-tions from us to help somebody else God knowTs who but I euspect." |