THE DECADENCE OF FARMING. 31 



tern which prevents him from, buying forty-five hundred articles 

 as cheaply as he might, and compels him to sell his own products, 

 minute in number, at the lowest price which ingenious legal arti- 

 fice can dictate, is a measure for his particular benefit. If he has 

 read a paper which denies this, the doctrine is so new to this 

 generation that he has not yet mastered it ; and he is apt to treat 

 it with conservative inattention, or as a delusive suggestion, an 

 investment in which must be set down for the present as one to be 

 treated with as much caution as he would exercise in accepting an 

 unheard-of and revolutionary scheme for working his farm. 



The siren charm with which the word " protection " asphyx- 

 iates him has only casually, as yet, lost for him its sorcery. He 

 is apt to have confidence in some regular order of things, such as 

 the seasons, the sunrise, and the sunset ; and to him " protection " 

 is, and has been, through long experience, as stable a factor in 

 affairs as the precession of the equinoxes or the laws of the solar 

 system. 



But, if he is ever to rescue his business and make it decently 

 profitable, he must awaken from this long swoon. He must see 

 and know that taxation of this sort is death to him ; and is fast 

 making it impossible for an intelligent American to live and raise 

 a family with the decent comforts of life on the best farm in the 

 New England and Middle States. Very rapidly, in New England, 

 the farms are passing into the hands of the foreigner, or distinctly 

 peasant element, a class which reduces the necessities of life to 

 the simplest scale, and which is able to do farming within the fam- 

 ily, and so can eliminate the costly feature of hired labor. The 

 question has been asked for years, " How shall we keep our boys 

 on the farm ? " But it has never been answered successfully, and 

 never can be. We ought to be profoundly thankful, considering 

 what the farm now is as a business, that we can not keep them 

 there. It is the best possible evidence attainable of the bright 

 wit and level-headedness of the boys that they wish to work 

 where gain is assured at the end of their toil. 



I may be told, very likely, that I have skipped one feature of 

 the tariff, the one on wool, which was devised especially for the 

 farmer's profit. But it was not ; and, if it had been, it has hurt 

 him instead of helping him. It was devised by men who are either 

 commercial men, or whose predominant interest is commercial 

 rather than agricultural. These men constitute what is known 

 as the Wool-Growers' Association. I think its important factor 

 is made up of middle-men, or salesmen who traffic in the wool 

 product. But, be that as it may, the duty on avooI has simply 

 handicapped the manufacturers of woolen fabrics ; and by shut- 

 ting out kinds of wool which we can not raise here, and which the 

 woolen manufacturers must have to mix with native wools, has 



