Show GREAT SPEECH IN THE rV By P. J. of North Fair to the You are complaining about prices paid for Do ever stop and think what it costs to produce that beef of the years of labor bestowed upon It takes about four years to produce a steer in the best condition for beef Before the farmer could own that steer he must expend from one-half to two-thirds of his working life in earning the farm on which the steer is to be He must then vate that he must raise crops of hay and corn and other produce to feed that He must then for four long years dance attendance upon the wants and the requirements of that He must feed him and shelter him and take care of him with a three-tine fork at one end and a four-tine fork at the other At the expiration of that time he ships to pays the freight and feed and stock-yard charges and turns him over to the beef That represents the amount of labor expended upon that steer by the What then becomes of within thirty minutes after he goes into the hands of the beef trust he is beef and in cold storage and ready for shipment to the city of Washington or to other what are the comparative prices that are received by the farmer and that are received I have before me a bill of fare taken from the United States Senate cafe down I look at that bill of fare and I observe the prices of I notice that the ordinary sirloin steak will run from up to per I notice that the tenderloin will run about the and I find that the porterhouse will run from up to about in the ordinary I had a meat man a short time ago give me an estimate of what a four-year-old steer would bring if at one of the restaurants here in the city of at these taking all the items that you will find in this and he estimated that it would bring from to The farmer's price is about to with all of the four years that he expended upon that With the little additional thirty minutes in the city of Chicago and transporting him here to the city of Washington and cooking him at your he advances from to or enough to pay half the price of a Yet the people who are paying those prices for this same steer served are introducing bills in Congress andl asking that the tariff or protection be taken away from the farmer's product on which he has expended all these years of Let us take which probably represents the least margin of difference between what the farmer receives and what is received for it at the t bakery or at the The farmer in my stately received about ninety cents a bushel for his last year's crop of One bushel of wheat will make about seventy-five loaves of The loaf is about fourteen ounces in and it contains considerable moisture in making up its Before the farmer became the owner of that bushel of wheat he had to spend two-thirds of his working-life in order to become the owner of the farm on it was Then he had to plow that land he had-to cultivate the next spring he had to seed had to furnish He then had to harvest the cut it and bind and thresh and pay the and then haul it to the That represents his work upon I want any man to compare the amount of energy expended in producing a bushel of wheat on the farm with the amount of energy expended in transporting that wheat to the city of Minneapolis or to grinding it into transporting it to the bakery and ing it into I think you will find that there has been at least double the amount of energy expended in producing it than was expended upon it after it left the farmer's And taking the average price that the baker say five cents a you will find that that bushel has advanced from ninety cents to a or an increase of per I want to follow that bushel of wheat a step to meet the objections of the people who claim that they are paying too high prices for food products and blame the protection to the farmer for that Let us follow it to the res- When that is served down here in your res- or in any other restaurant in the city of if you order bread and butter you are paying the way from ten cents to twenty cents a You will probably use about a couple of That same loaf of sells upon the table in the restaurant for about fifty and enty-five at fifty cents means for that bushel of Then we the farm- p er's ninety cents a The price after the farmer has let go of it and it reaches the consumer on J the table is per 1 Let us take I saw a farmer the other day and he told me he was receiving thirty or thirty-five cents a bushel for his I find from this same bill of fare that if you take one of those potatoes and hash it brown down here you pay fifteen cents for In other two potatoes served here cost as much as the entire bushel of about potatoes that was sold by the an increase of about per and this leaves out of account entirely the other half bushels that has to be turned over to the colored for serving that one Men have become millionaires by manufacturing men have become millionaires by making chewing men have become millionaires by ing up a few harmless herbs with a little poor whisky and palming it off on the public as a This t f world is full of men who have become millionaires and multimillionaires by producing things that have been of no avail or value whatever to the population of this and yet history fails to record a single where any man has become a millionaire by farming the It does thousands who have become by farming And yet we have wondered why the ambitious young man was always wanting to leave the Today you are ask-ing him to return to the and while your flatter ing words are still ringing in his while you are depicting the beauty and independence of farm you are threatening to boycott the farm produce and threatening to make life on the farm less Today there is a greater demand for the soil than ev er because there is a growing belief that here-after farm life will be more But you im-mediately check that tendency by attempting to strike a blow at farm 1 |