408 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



FARMING AND THE TARIFF. 

 Editor Popular Science Monthly : 



DEAR SIR : The article in your Novem- 

 ber issue, by Joel Benton, on "The 

 Decadence of Farming," greatly interested 

 me, as it must every lover of our country, 

 and it suggested several questions which I 

 believe should be considered, that we may 

 get at the facts. 



The reasoning is that, because farming 

 has decayed at the same time that a protect- 

 ive tariff has prevailed, which has enhanced, 

 as it is claimed, the cost of what the farmer 

 has had to buy, therefore the tariff is re- 

 sponsible for this decay. Saying nothing of 

 the claim that the tariff does in the long 

 time enhance the price of what the farmer 

 has to buy, let us ask how free trade has 

 helped the farmers in Great Britain. Is it 

 not a fact that during these same years farm- 

 ing has decayed there fully as much as in 

 our own country? The wonder is how, 

 with produce so low, the Irish farmers 

 can pay their rent, and many can not, and 

 the land-owners' profits have almost disap- 

 peared. A Yorkshireman recently told the 

 writer that he knew of many large farms 

 the owners of which would be glad to give 

 a lease for a term of years for no rent, if 

 the land could be kept up. Now, by parity 

 of reasoning, may we not say that, seeing 

 farming has decayed in Great Britain, at 

 the same time that free trade has prevailed, 

 which has brought down the price of what 

 the farmer has to buy, therefore free trade 

 has caused the decay of farming ? Is it any 

 better in free-trade Holland, from which the 

 farm laborers are coming to the writer's 

 own community, because the best farm la- 

 borer there can get but forty cents a day, 

 whereas here he gets at once more than 

 double ? Do not these facts suggest the 

 question whether there are not other causes 

 besides tariff or free trade which may account 

 for this manifest decay of farming ? 



Has not the wonderful cheapening of 

 transportation brought cheaper and, for a 

 time, more fertile soils into competition with 

 the dearer and worn-out soil of our older 

 States ? Cereals and meat and wool can be 

 raised so cheaply on these new lands that 

 the Western farmer, with the low cost of 

 transportation added, can undersell the farm- 

 ers of the older States. The same is true 

 in the case of Great Britain. And this power 

 to undersell is increased by the use of ma- 

 chinery in farming, which use can be so 

 much greater and more effectual on the large 

 farms of the new States than in the older 

 States. A bushel of wheat or corn can be 

 raised with a small part of the labor cost in 



Kansas or Dakota as compared with New 

 York. The result is, that in the older States 

 the farmer is compelled to look for his 

 profits to raising the products that will not 

 bear transportation, cither because they are 

 perishable, as milk, or because they are too 

 bulky, as hay. He must depend upon the 

 near-by market, and supply it with what the 

 farmers of the West can not send it. 



Does not this suggest another thought ? 

 We must look for relief, not in the direction 

 of urging more to engage in farming, but by 

 finding, if possible, other employments for 

 men which are more profitable; and this, 

 many of us still believe, can be done better 

 with a wisely adjusted protective tariff than 

 with free trade, which would tend to crowd 

 still more the already overfull ranks of the 

 farmers. John R. Thurston. 



Whitinsville. Mass., October 30, 18S9. 



A REMONSTRANCE. 



Editor Popular Science Monthly: 



Sir: I have been accustomed to read 

 with a high degree of pleasure the contribu- 

 tions of Mr. Grant Allen which I have seen 

 from time to time in your pages. Read- 

 ing in your December number his " Plain 

 Words on the Woman Question," copied 

 from the "Fortnightly Review," I rubbed 

 my eyes once or twice over the following 

 words, which seem, after a second or third 

 perusal, much too plain : 



" Whether we have wives or not and 

 that is a minor point about which I, for one, 

 am supremely unprejudiced we must at 

 least have mothers." 



Calving must go on, no doubt, if the race 

 of horned cattle is to be kept up, and it is 

 not important that calves should know their 

 own fathers, or have an acknowledged par- 

 entage on the male side. It is quite other- 

 wise with human beings, and I submit that 

 no teacher of biology can afford to be with- 

 out a bias in favor of wives, looking strictly 

 at human progress, which is the great desid- 

 eratum of the article in which this extraor- 

 dinary passage occurs. 



Possibly the words quoted may have a 

 biological meaning somewhat different from 

 the obvious meaning. If so, Mr. Grant Al- 

 len should be cautioned, when writing for 

 the laity, to use the kind of language which 

 they understand. If the obvious meaning is 

 the real meaning, I have only to say to him, 

 " Never more be officer of mine." H. W. 



New York, November 30, 18S9. 



Mr. Allen, we are sure, is the very last 

 man who would deliberately say anything 

 calculated to encourage immoral tendencies. 



