The Tariff in Its Relation to the Farmer and the Home

Builder.

SPEECH

OF

HON. ROBERT M. WALLACE,

OF ARKANSAS,

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

Thursday, December 19, 1907.

Mr. WALLACE said:

Winston Churchill, in his Crisis, puts it into the mouth of a character to say:

Wealth not yet dreamed of will flow out of this land and rot all save the pure, and corrupt all save the incorruptible. Half-hearted men will go down before that flood.

Is this fiction or fact? I need not go back to the ancients for an answer. Recently the glitter of South African diamond fields excited England's cupidity, and as an evil magnet drew down her armies on a child republic and removed it from the family of nations. Indeed, I need not look to other lands, either ancient or modern, for warning. I have but to point to the operation of laws over one class alone in my own country to apprehend that not only "half-hearted" men, but men of brawn and brain, strong-willed, whole-hearted men, may "go down in that flood "-that flood of tariff inequality which now bears down upon the farmers, the honest yeomanry of this country.

When thinkers throw out the life line is it not wise for us to grasp it and avoid the breakers ahead? Particularly so when the nation is cruising the high seas as a world power. I envy no man his wealth. I conceive it to be no crime to own property. I have little patience with the spirit that stirs hatred between the rich and the poor. I have less patience, however, for the instrumentalities of a law that foster and enrich one class to the prejudice and impoverishment of another. "Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted; but the rich, that he is made low; because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away."

The farmers of this country are its flesh and blood-the bone and sinew of its government. They ask the least of it, contribute the most to it, and are the least protected by it. Mr. Seward said these words of the agricultural class of our country:

Farmers planted these colonies-all of them-and organized their governments. They were farmers who defied the British at Bunker Hill and drove them back from Lexington. They were farmers who reorganized the several States and the Federal Government and established all on the principles of equality and affiliation. Our nation is rolling forward to a high career, exposed to shocks and dangers.

It needs the bravest wisdom and virtue to guide it safely; it needs the steady and enlightened direction which of all others the farmers of the United States can best exercise, because, being freeholders and invested with equal rights of suffrage, they are at once the most liberal and conservative element of the country.

Years afterwards Mr. Seward stated in the Senate that, the North, grown rich and powerful, was about to take possession of the Government. Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, replied:

Do not forget-it can never be forgotten; it is written on the highest page of human history-that we, the farmers of the South, took our country in her infancy, and, after ruling her sixty out of seventy years of her existence, we shall surrender her to you without a stain upon her honor, boundless in her prosperity, incalculable in her strength, the wonder and the admiration of the world! Time will show what you will make of her, but no time, sir, will ever diminish our glory or your responsibility.

And it is true. The glory of the rule of equality of our farmer fathers is the one bright page that redeems and illu

mines our whole history. The responsibility of Mr. Seward and his party has not diminished.

But to the testimony and the law, the results, the facts, without undue coloring or effort to choke the heroics out of them with the dust of statistics.

OUR FOREIGN TRADE DEPENDENT UPON SHIPMENTS OF UNPROTECTED GOODS.

We have just experienced a panic and from it we may learn valuable lessons about the tariff.

We are forced to see, as we would not have seen but for the flurry, that the prosperity of the country depends at last not upon the tariff-protected manufacturers and the trusts, but solely and alone on the shipment of agricultural products from the unprotected class. Currency, under Republican mismanagement, contracted to the verge of bankruptcy. The Government rushed to the aid of the powerful banks, but entirely overlooked the weaker ones in the farming districts. Banks issued cashiers' checks and refused to pay depositors their money except by stated amounts each day or week; they then took the depositors to task for drawing out their own moneymoney for which they received no interest-and created drastic rules to prohibit a man from getting his own; they criticized and condemned the farmer for holding back his crops for higher prices and threatened not to lend money on stored cotton.

The banks were virtually bankrupt. They had all the money of the country in their coffers and refused to pay it out; they forced currency to a premium in order that they might further profit thereby; the parity we have read so much about was destroyed; gold was at a premium, but gold must be had. At this crucial moment two things were discovered:

First. The protected manufacturers and the trusts could not produce gold.

Second. Unprotected cotton and breadstuffs alone could save the national honor.

The farmer, already overtaxed by the tariff and the trusts, must be further punished by refused loans unless he patriotically sacrificed his pocketbook to the further relief of the banks. He must ship his goods at once-at low price or at any priceto bring gold to the country and to further contribute to the great prosperity of the country, which takes special care of the manufacturers and the trusts.

The Saturday Evening Post of November 9, 1907, contains these words:

WHAT WE TRADE ON.

It seems to be a kind of treason this fall for planters to withhold their cotton from market in the hope of forcing higher prices. Not only is money tight, but at this writing foreign exchange is rising, involving a threat of gold export. We must depend principally upon cotton, which Europe will buy in great quantities and which runs into money very fast, to overcome this menace and turn the tide our way. That, in view of such a public need, planters should hold cotton for merely personal gain is truly reprehensible. We read that the banks generally will keep them in the path of duty by refusing to extend loans on stored cotton.

A similar situation arises every fall. Cotton makes nearly onequarter of our total exports. Much more than anything else, it is what keeps our trade with the world going. We must each year hurry out the great staple to meet our balances in Europe. The function of the cotton industry in financing our foreign trade is so important, indeed, that one might almest expect to see a bill in Congress-introduced by a gentleman from Pennsylvania and backed by the stand-pat league forbidding planters to withhold a single bale that was ready for export.

We have marvelous resources in ore and fuel for the steel industry, but we can not trade with the world very much on them. Artificial prices, made by the tariff, prevent that. Exports of iron and steel in all forms amount to only one-sixth the exports of stuff produced on the farm. It is the unprotected producer upon whom we must depend to settle for the articles we buy abroad. Unprotected cotton and foodstuffs, comprising about 60 per cent of our total exports, enable us to do business with the world.

Remarkable words for this Philadelphia journalist, located in the region of protected smokestacks and stand-pat territory. According to the Monthly Summary of Commerce and Finance

3

of the Department of Commerce and Labor we find the following most interesting figures, showing the exports from the farm for the year ending June 30, 1907:

The total exports of all goods amounted to $1,880,851,078. Cotton alone amounted to $481,277,797.

Instead of being nearly one-quarter, as stated by the editor of the Saturday Evening Post, it was something more than a quarter.

We exported grains, absolutely unmanufactured, to the extent of $111,275,396 and live animals to the extent of $41,203,080. The following table, which we have collated from the preceding report, will show that between 50 per cent and 60 per cent of all the exported goods come from the farm:

NEW YORK SMART SET.

$2, 313, 410 1, 122, 162 62, 175, 397 2, 115, 848 26, 367, 287 3,848, 198 7. 182, 688 26, 470, 972 23, 698, 207 15, 167, 058 57. 497, 980 6, 166, 910 2,012, 626 17, 062, 594 8, 675, 877

420, 104 813, 224

661, 405 3, 645, 180

968, 771, 521

In this connection it may occur to thinking men the country over that in a certain money center on the country's border we have an exceptionally smart set, and a set, too, exceptionally set on its smartness. A type menacing to good times, good morals, and good government, and who deserve more to be bound with fetters of brass and "grind in the prison house" than Samson ever did for stampeding into the standing corn of the Philistines 300 foxes with their tails on fire! It seems recently, too, to have played the Administration as the Don Quixote of chivalry in modern finance.

It is hard indeed, sir, to observe that the time is here when private vice can have her way, and public virtue no tongue to rebuke her pride and no power to crush her infamy! But we will that it shall not be so. My countrymen, smite the rock of the public conscience and the streams of reform shall come forth; down with the putrid forms and forces of corruption and civic virtue shall spring to its feet!

Josh Billings said: "Thar is two things in this world for which we are never fully prepared, and that is twins." Looking into the Republican party's hypocrisy at every available angle I feel there is one thing at least with which it has never been fully provided, and that is an elastic currency in times of panic under a gold standard and a high tariff! I wish at this juncture to turn to a recent discovery made by a Wisconsin man in his travels through the South. He was some

what late in his discovery, as many can attest, but here is the find that he made:

64

DISCOVERS THE FARMER'S UNION.

While traveling in Texas, I was struck by the organization in that country called the Farmer's Union,' which is, in my opinion, a very desirable thing. The object of the union is to control the price of the product instead of allowing the commission men and trust to do it. To educate the farmers in the science of agriculture is another of the aims of the union, and to promote cooperation among the tillers of the soil. The union as now organized will not attempt to dabble in politics, and that is, in my mind, one of its greatest advantages. It will of course ask for the passage of certain laws which are beneficial to farmers and will use its influence to that end. No stores, banks, or factories will be started, but the union will endeavor to do away with middlemen as much as possible and bring about a fair price for commodities," said John Rodger Bratton, of Milwaukee.

FRUITS OF THE WORK OF THE ORGANIZATION.

Its work is manifest in the activity against futures and undesirable immigration, the establishment of warehouses for the storage and holding of cotton, advanced prices of products, better relations between spinners and growers, buyers and sellers, greater diversification of crops, better cultural methods, an impetus to improved methods of classification, handling, and baling, more stable markets, elimination of speculators and middlemen, and firmly established confidence and cooperation between local bankers and merchants on the one hand and farmers and workingmen on the other. A clever start indeed for the good first fruits of the organization!

But the gamblers' earthquake struck New York, and the blow stunned the body of finance in every quarter. But remember the boys in the trenches are still at their posts. The future will develop, if the present has not already revealed, that behind its sturdy yeomanry rests the invincible power of this Government. It is futile for reckless financiers to look to the Congress for relief from all their inexcusable blunders or criminal speculations. It can go carefully so far and no farther. It is high time for men who call themselves business men to do business aright, and do it so that it will stand against the temptation for quick fortunes, and at the same time hearken unto Democratic prophecy-of the approaching hour for the bubble of Republican fictitious prosperity to "bust."

But in doing this it would be well for them at the very be ginning to take into their confidence that modest though courageous type of yeomanry known as the "American farmer." For have ye not heard this scripture? "The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner."

PHASE OF THE BUSINESS MAN.

We hear much of the "business man," and the term may be elastic enough to cover anything from bill collectors to captains of industry. But the man who takes unto himself a loving helpmate for life, and year by year witnesses the increase of his home rival the nest of the woods, and rising with the early dawn wends his way to shop and mill, or follows the plow through the long, hot hours of the day, and lies down to pleasant dreams at night, is stumbling on a business career. Roused at midnight by baby's demands, and with arms full of animated kicks and squalls, he paces the floor and blesses the hour he was born-that man, my friends, is strictly in business! And thus as he toils by day, and nurses his wrath and responsibilities by night, problems of grave import confront him. It is not what bounty the Government is going to prohis little herd will grow into cattle upon a thousand hills; nor how his humble farm will spread into broad acres, or blocks of brick and mortar along the boulevards of some bustling city. His problem is, how to protect the sacred charges God has given him; how to shield the bodies of his dozen children from winter's blast, or summer's heat; how bread shall come in the sweat of his brow; how the seasons shall hit and the harvest spring forth, or insect or drought or flood mock and blight his toil. In short, his problem is, how shall he provide for his family and serve his country and his God? The walk of that man ought to be the walk of the just. The reward of that man ought to be the reward of the blest. He is one of my ideals of a business man, and may God prosper his business and his tribe never grow less. In the pure and simple words of Bobby Burns, let his epitaph be:

vide; nor what he will win on futures or the races; nor how

An honest man here lies at rest
As e'er God with His image blest;
The friend of man, the friend of truth,
The friend of age, and guide of youth;
Few hearts like his with virtue warmed,
Few hearts with knowledge so informed;
If there's another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.

But we are not like the character of Dickens that yearned to give everything to everybody, but hope to bring everybody

together for the common good. We wish to stifle the spirit, if it ever obtained, which Shylock bore to the pound of flesh and welcome that other spirit which warned him that if one drop of blood were spilled in its cutting, Shylock himself shall be the only victim of the law. Yea, and that even higher and nobler sentiment:

Owe no one anything but to love one another; for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.

THE TARIFF AND THE FARMER.

The Republican party rewards the farmers with bouquets and false pretense, reserving its higher favors for the protected classes, for the manufacturers and trusts. The Republican party, rejecting the idea of a tariff for revenue only, openly boasts of its allegiance to a protective tariff, "and not only this, but a high protective tariff, and not only so, but the Dingley tariff, the highest protective tariff known to the world." This tariff exacts from all consumers of foreign goods an advance of something more than 50 per cent of their ad valorem value, thus excluding for the most part foreign-made goods and giving to our home manufacturers the entire home market at prices fully 50 per cent higher than should obtain. In this way the earnings of the farmers, laborers, and clerks, which should go to their own enrichment, are transferred by law from their pockets to the pockets of the protected manufacturers and their creature, the exorbitant trust. I can now take but casual notice of this bastard child of a crafty harlot. Economists have worked out carefully the average farmer's tariff taxes, based on his yearly consumption, showing the part which goes to the United States and the part which goes to the trusts. I have adopted one of these tables and print it in my remarks as a basis for the conclusions which I shall draw. The average farmer's tariff taxes.

Article.

are doing business in the United States, and that the net profits of one of these-the United States Steel Corporationhave been annually from $135,000,000 to $150,000,000, of which the tariff profits are at least $75,000,000. This one trust therefore collects about $5 per family, and it is safe to say that the other 452 will easily collect the remaining $32.10. According to the census of the United States for 1900 there were 10,438,219 persons engaged in agricultural pursuits, of which 7,600,000 represented farmers who were heads of families. At $37 per family, the ordinary farmer's tariff taxes, the enormous sum of $281,000,000 per annum represents the money taken from the pockets of the farming class and transferred inequitably to the pockets of the trusts and protected manufacturers. Every time a farmer buys $238 worth of goods under the present system he pays $18 to the Government and $37 to the trusts. This $37 per annum in all fairness should remain in the pockets of the farmer. But this is not all that the farmer loses. Some one once said, “The manufacturers and trusts get the protection and the profits of the tariff-the farmer gets the husk and the humbug." The freight on farm products is great enough to cover the extra tariff on steel rails, locomotives, bridges, etc.; much of this extra freight comes out of the farmer. In addition to this the tariff duties which keep out canning factories cost the farmers fully $20 per family per year for wasted products. Directly through the tariff, and indirectly through freights and wasted products, the farmer loses through the tariff an average of $60 per year per family. If this were saved to the farmers and put at interest it would in twenty years double the average farm wealth. That is to say, that if the farmers had kept the $37 in their own pockets instead of handing it over to the trusts, the entire farming class would represent a wealth of $10,000,000,000 to $12,000,000,000 more than they are now able to show. And this miserable showing of aggregate wealth on the part of the rural population after fifty years' trial of the tariff is one of the best allegations in the indictment against it. The following table shows how the tariff has enriched one class and impoverished another, as shown by the census figures of 1900:

Years.

.50

1.00

1.50

2.00

.20

.25

.45

12.00

.40

1.60

2.00

1850..

3.00

.05

1860.

.95

1.00

Furniture

2.00

1870..

.70

Farm implements.

1880.

1.70

1890.

5.25

box..

1900..

.50

Lead in paints, etc.. Chemicals.

Wire and other nails.

50 pounds.

2.40

.05

.85

100 pounds..

.90

.75

80 pounds..

City and rural wealth of the nation.

Total.

Tin plate....

Barb and other wire. Liquors, spirits, etc.. Tobacco. Miscellaneous

Total

$7, 136, 000, 000 16, 160, 000, 000 24,055, 000, 000 43, 642, 000, 000 65,037, ,000,000

94, 300, 000, 000

1.00 .50 2.50 .60 1.90 2.50 5.95 7.85 13.80 18.00 37.10 55.10

These figures are obtained by dividing the total consumption of the United States for each article by the number of persons constituting the population. Thus the average consumption of sugar in this country is about 360 pounds per family of five persons, with a retail value of $20. The retail value of woolen goods is about $25 per family; silk goods, $12; cotton goods, $30; furniture, $15; liquors, $40; tobacco, $30. It will therefore be seen how much less than its fair share has been allowed this average farmer family. It has been allowed about one-half as much for clothing and one-third or one-fourth as much for tobacco and liquors as the average for all families in the United States. As this farmer and his family are industrious and hard-working people, the law ought to be such as will provide them with the necessaries, and even luxuries, of life, as well as other people.

When the righteous are in authority the people rejoice; but when the wicked rule the people mourn.

This conservative estimate, however, shows that the average farmer expends for these articles annually not less than $238.35. That $15 per family for tariff taxes paid to the Government is reasonable is shown by the following calculation: The entire tariff taxes collected by the Government for the year ending June 30, 1906, were $300,657,413 and the estimated population 85,568,000. The per capita is therefore $3.50, and for a family of five would be $17.50. To this $17.50 several profits were, of course, added before they reached the farmers.

The estimate, $18, is therefore less than was actually paid and very reasonable as a basis for calculation. That $37.10 per family for tariff trusts is not a wild estimate is apparent from the fact that 453 industrial trusts, with $9,000,000,000 of capital,

decade from 1860 to 1880 the manufacturing population under high tariff doubled its wealth, while it took three decades, from 1860 to 1890, for the farmers to double their wealth again. These figures show that the profits of the manufacturing and trust classes are too high in comparison with the profits of the farming class, and that protection for the manufacturing class is no longer needed. Manufacturers are no longer "babes in arms," but full-fledged producers, able to hold their own against all the world. It is the little $37 per annum taken from the pockets of each farmer annually and unlawfully transferred to the pockets of the manufacturers and trusts that enables the manufacturing class to double its wealth every ten years, while the farming class must wait for thirty years. The mere statement of this proposition is a strong reason for the revision of the tariff. And yet we are told from time to time between Presidential elections that the people must continue to bear the injustice and outrage until the barons elect another high-tariff President. Was horrid Republican sin ever more damned in evils to top political effrontery!

The farmers are our greatest wealth producers, as well as our greatest exporters. Having borne the burdens of extra taxation for fifty years in order that they might practically enable the manufacturing class to pass the period of tender years and become strong, they should now be given a "square deal."

But we will not forget that such phrases and words as square deal," "paramount," "strenuous," and the like are not the coinage of current political literature and leaders. For example, "paramount" is found in some of the earlier platforms, notably the American of 1856; and "strenuous" in the Whig platform of 1844, which carried Clay for President and Theodore Freylinghuysen for Vice-President, referring to the latter as strenuous on the part of law, order, and the Constitution." Such limitations seem now to be the paradise of

66

WHO ARE THE FARMERS?

and the products of these industries were valued at $4,720,000,000. They employed 2,154,000 persons. None of these manufac

$820, 863, 000 543, 607, 000 50, 968, 000 62, 122, 000 7, 241, 000 6, 941, 000 country

The

That is to say, 55 per cent of all the exports of the are agricultural. They are not protected in any way. balance of trade in favor of the United States in 1905 was $461,329,000. But for agriculture there would have been no balance of trade, whatever that thunderbolt in political storm centers may imply. And but for the tariff wall which forces American consumers to pay higher rates than foreigners for the same goods there would have been no export in 1905 of $543,000,00 of manufactured goods.

From the Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture for 1905 we get the following enormous figures, showing what farmers did in 1905:

In other words, she's up and doing her best all the time. The Secretary continues:

Dreams of wealth production could hardly equal the preceding figures into which various items of the farmers' industry have been translated, and yet the story is not done. When other items which can not find place here are included, it appears that the wealth production on farms in the years 1905-6 reached the highest amount ever attained at that time by the farmer of this or any other country, a stupendous aggregate result of brain and muscle and machine. But they are exceeded by the grand total for 1907 of $7,412,000,000. For nine years past wealth made on the farm aggregated $53,000,000,000.

66

But according to the Post, Secretary Wilson's annual report just made public, explains why the country is in condition to drive through a financial crisis as a Lusitania drives through a wave. How can a people go broke" when their corn crop is worth $1,350,000,000? Eight such crops, says the Secretary, would pay for duplicating every mile of steam railroads in the country, as well as rolling stocks, terminals, and all other property.

The railroads show increased earnings during the year, but can they show an increase of $65,000,000 in a side issue of their business, as the farmer can with his hay crop? The cotton crop is not a record breaker, but with the exception of that of 1906 it will be the most valuable crop ever raised and the third largest in size. Nor is the wheat crop so bad, although the crops of 1901, 1902, and 1903 were worth a little more. The wheat crop this year will be worth more, however, than that of last year, and will bring about $500,000,000. The oats crop brings $360,000,000, more than any other crop of oats has brought in the history of the world, so far as ancient and modern records attest. Potatoes, $190,000,000, a record breaker; barley, $115,000,000, another record breaker: tobacco, $67,000,000, the highest ever reached except in 1906; sugar cane, beets, molasses, and sirup, $95,000,000; flaxseed, $26,000,000; rye, $23,000,000; rice, $19,500,000; buckwheat, $10,000,000; hops, $5,000,000, and so on.

The several cereal crops of the United States are worth $2.378,000,000, or $296,000,000 more than the crops of 1906. No such aggregate value of crops has ever been reached.'

The Secretary says:

During sixteen years past the farmer has secured a balance of $5,635,000,000 to himself in his international bookkeeping, and out of this he has offset an adverse balance of $543,000,000 in the foreign trade in products other than agricultural, and turned over to the nation from his account with other nations $5,092,000,000.

The Secretary shows that manufacturers get their strongest support from the farmers-that is to say, 86 per cent of the materials used by them are agricultural, and 56 per cent of the products made are also agricultural. He also shows that the manufacturing establishments using agricultural materials constitue 36 per cent of all manufactured products and 42 per cent of all materials. He also showed that the manufacturing establishments using agricultural material employed 37 per cent of all persons engaged in manufacturing and that the capital of these establishments was 42 per cent of all manufacturing establishments. In other words, the farm products employed in certain manufactures were valued at $2,679,000,000. The value

to any extent by the protective tariff. Even manufacturers themselves, in the interest of common justice, are demanding correction of tariff enormities. From these considerations it is safe to say that a revision of the tariff is not only necessary and wise, but that it must come. And come it will, to the undoing of conspirators and conspiracies-the overthrow of money changers and such as dwell in the tents of wickedness-to the entire satisfaction of those who are content to be doorkeepers in the house of the Lord.

Ironwork-

Lead-bar, pipe, and sheet_ Lime and cement_

Lumber
Mantels.
Marble.
Masonry
Oil, linseed.

Painting and paper hangingPaints.

Paper hangings

Plumbers' supplies

Plumbing and gas fittings.

Pumps

Roofing

Steam fittings and heating apparatus. Tin plate..

Tinsmithing and sheet-iron working. Varnish

Wood--

Total

$51, 270, 000 316, 000, 000 12, 577, 000 4, 000, 000 56, 500, 000 14, 777, 000 21, 292, 000 53, 500, 000 7,477, 000 28, 689, 000 168, 343, 000 1, 100, 000 85, 100, 000 203, 600, 000

27, 200, 000

These figures, obtained from the factories, are wholesale prices. Adding one-third for freight, middlemen's and retail dealers' profits, brings the total cost of the building of houses in the United States annually to something more than $2,100,000,000. In looking over the list, it will be seen that lumber, other than planing-mill products, is not included therein; nor is foundry, machine shop, and blacksmithing products. Each of these at a low estimate would amount to $200,000,000 per annum, which would make the total cost of our building approximately $2,500,000,000 per annum. Deducting 20 per cent of this for business and public buildings, churches, etc., we would have the enormous sum of $2,000,000,000 per annum paid by the people to protect them from wind and weather.

Why should a tariff tax be put on building materials? We do not need it for revenue, and it serves no purpose in the protection of manufacturers and wageworkers. Why place the following ad valorem rates in the tariff schedule?

Why hinder in this way the poor man's endeavor to build a home? In 1905 something more than $14,000,000 was collected by the Government from duties on building material. That is, less than 2 per cent of the Federal customs revenue comes from this source. It is not needed for revenue, yields comparatively little revenue, but enables those who command the home market to increase the price of home building fully 50 per cent, shielded as they are by the Dingley tariff. A $2,000 home under the Dingley tariff would cost $3,000, a $1,000 home would cost $1,500, and a $500 home $750. These profits make it possible to have a host of combinations that thrive unlawfully and unrighteously at the expense of American home builders. And it may be well for them who thus thrive, and for those who make it possible for them thus to thrive, to remember that, "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all."

OWN ΑΠΟΜΕ.

The removal of the tariff on building material would intensify the demand for masons, carpenters, house builders, and