Show THE FARMERS ae R S WIFE IF J E AS BUSINESS PART PARTNER 1 ER OF HER HUSBAND by florence riddick boys to save the women of the family fina financial acial anxiety has been somewhat the idea of chivalry of the city business man the women of his class gave themselves more or less to the pleasures of life and were to be shielded from the knowledge of everything unpleasant especially from the strain and worries of their husbands business life but in the country the exact opposite te has been true from the days when they pioneered across country with their children childr en and their belongings in their covered wagon the rural wife has known and shared all the ups and downs and ins and outs of their joint business farming at the family board or around the evening lamp they have discussed together the conditions of the fields or the stock or the crops the repairs to be done on rainy days the best time tor for the threshing the clover clever hulling or the barn raising even the trips to town are timed to suit the convenience of both on account of this sharing in the business problems of the farm the rural women of america have come to see the value of the tariff in the early days of our country when the urban population was sma small 11 and each family raised most of the agricultural products it consumed and when the farmers best market was abroad and the home market of neg lible value then the farmer did not feel the necessity of guarding the home market he did not think of american citizens as consumers tor for his product whose patronage it was to his interest to keep for himself but times have changed america now consumes 95 per cent of the farmers product and the foreign market 5 per cent it behooves the far to shut out the importation of foreign farm products and to save cave american markets for himself ff he is not in favor of shipping potatoes from canada butter from denmark eggs from china wooi woof from australia and live stock corn and wheat from south america directly these things compete with what he lias has to sell and this is his first interest in the tariff his second interest in the tariff is to keep the business class the industrial du dUB trial class and all the people of the towns employed at a reasonable reasonable income that they may be able to buy his bis products in europe the laborers work tor for only one tenth the daily wage of the american laborer As consumers they do not compare at all with the american laborer if this country Is flooded with the products of foreign factories and our own nills mills driven to idleness on that account the thousands and thousands of I 1 laborers laborera out of work and the thousands of business men dependent upon them will not be able to buy what the farmer raises he is in favor of the tariff to protect these laborers and the business people to keep them in employment and their pay envelope sure labor is the best patron the farmer has A rich man may buy more of tine fine furnishings but he be cannot consume more food than the laborer to keep american mill wheels going is the great aim of the american farmer this assures him a steady and profitable market markel the farmer has just had a demonstration demon station of what tariff means to him before the war with the democratic low tariff farm products began to tall fall in price then came the war making the utmost demand for all the american farmer could raise to teed feed the figh fighting tink world but as soon as the war was ended europe began to produce her own foodstuffs under the democratic low tariff our country was very soon flooded with f foreign products labor was unemployed in america by the millions and the people of europe had no money to pay tor for american products the products which the american farmer had raised at high costs had no market farmers by the thousands faced ruin and bankruptcy the price of corn was so BO low that there were stories of it being used as fuel in the west wesl realizing this situation the republican congress prom aptly passed the emergency tariff bill popularly known as the farmers tariff but it was promptly vetoed by president wilson prospects were dark indeed when the republican administration came into power in march 1921 J president harding immediately called ailed congress in special session and congress again passed the emergency or farmers tariff it saved the day prices tor for the farmer began at once to grow better his foreign competition was lessened and his home market improved by t the he bettered condition of the american laborer A contradiction to the democratic theory that tariff will raise prices Is found in the tact fact not a theory that while the farmer has received better prices for what he has raised under the tariff protection yet the price pric et of food to the consumer has bradu gradually illy diminished the american received less for his bis produce than he did during the inflation of war times but those were abnormal times when the be rest of the world was not producing duci P 9 but he receives much better prices tor for it than he would in these thes e normal times it if he were thrown into competition with the foreign producer who hires help at low wages and who lives on standards ir far below our own oali |