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Show The Farmer and Miner. I Mr. Herbert A. Casson falls about the new American farmer. He makes him out a pretty big man. He says ifhe wore to go out of business busi-ness this, year he can clean up 80,0004millionS of dollars and he would have to sell his farm "on credit, for there is nci enough money in the whole world to pay him his price. He declares that the American farmer earns enough every seventeen days to buy out Standard Oil and enough every fifty days to wipe Carnegie and the steel trust off the industrial map, and thinks ordinary or-dinary trusts are little things comparatively. He says one American harvest would buy the kingdom king-dom of Belgium, king and all; two would buy Italy; three would buy Austria-Hungary, and five at a spot cash price would take Russia from the czar. He computes that with the setting of every sun the money box of the American farmer bulges with the weight of twenty-four new millions. mil-lions. That if one would place his finger on the pulse of his wrist and count the heart beats one, two, three, four with every four of those quick throbs, day and night, $1,000 clatters into the gold-bin of the American farmer. He thinks Pericles, if resurrected, would be astonished to know that the yearly revenue of his country is now no more than one day's pay for the men who till the soil of this new country, and Christopher Columbus would bo paralyzed if he could be brought back to learn that all the revenues of Portugal and Spain are not nejirly so much as the earnings of the American farmer's farm-er's hen. The exports are but a trifle of the whole. Yet the American farmer has exported onough since 1892 to enable him to buy every foot of railroad I in the United States. This describes the new farmer's situation. Rut further on ho states this suprome fact about the American farmer: He has boon just aa intelligent in-telligent and important as any ono elso in this republic. He put fourteen of his sons in the Whito House and did his full share of the work in fighting and thinking and inventing all the way down from George Washington to James Wilson, and ho adds: "Ho climbed up by self-help. self-help. He got no rebates, nor franchises, nor subsidies. The free land that was glvon him was worthless until he took it, and ho has all along been more hindered than helped by the meddling of public officials." That last admission gives away tho fact that the new farmer is only distinguished from tho old by the fact that a now factor hns como in which gives to the new farmer profits which yielded no profits to tho old ono. Ho gots a price lor what he raises a prlco abovo ooit so much above cost that ho saves a largo profit. It was not that way in the first sixty yonrg of this ooun- jH try. He toiled hard, ho raised crops, but tho host ho could do was to save a little trlllo over tho S cost, and all Mr. Casson lacks is the admission H that the American farmer has btfen madorich H because the American miner has filled tho treas- H ury of the country with monoy and so advanced B the value of all products that a profit is left to H the producer. A loaded train on tho track, no H matter how valuable may bo its cargo, cannot H move if every box in the wheels is hot. Agrlcul- H ture had been a safe and honorable employment for sixty years in this country, but it never expanded ex-panded into a profitable industry until the lubricating lubri-cating fluid of metallic money was put in the boxes and the train was enabled to move. It is true that' Urorla&ffiron"f dmrffgftOTlfoV original and perpetual want of maukind is bread, but when that only is obtained, then there is not much progress. The best that men can get is merely a living until out of the sullen hills and deserts the gold and silver is taken to give vitality vi-tality to tho world's business and to give profit to the world's work. So it is only fair to say that as agriculture is tho occupation which all the world leans upon, so mining is the occupation out of which grows civilization and enlightenment. |