I06 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



The farmers of this country have taken such a broad view of 

 this great question before the public, broader than any other 

 class of citizens has taken in all this land, that he has said that 

 " Although my immediate interests will be advanced by free 

 trade, still I am a citizen in a common country, and the inter- 

 ests of my country will be advanced by the protection of these 

 industries even though it goes against my personal interest," 

 and the farmer has voted for protection. It is one of the 

 grandest things in our political history that the farmers voted 

 for protection. I do not say whether protection is good or 

 bad. I am not discussing the merits of the question. 1 am 

 only talking about the way the farmers have acquitted them- 

 selves in times past. What is the result? You know that 

 our financial policy is controlled by the committee of ways and 

 means of the House of Representatives at Washington. 

 And do you know that the chairman of that committee, the 

 man who has more to say than any other man on the com- 

 mittee, represents a purely agricultural district in the State 

 of New York. There is not a city in his district — Sereno 

 E. Payne. He represents nothing but farmers, yet he con- 

 trols the financial policy of this government in connection 

 with that great committee. The last tariff bill was enacted by 

 Congress under the leadership of the chairman of the ways 

 and means committee, Dingley of Maine, a man who repre- 

 sented the district away down in the eastern corner of the 

 State. There is not a city in it. He represented it until his 

 untimely death. He represented nothing but farmers and 

 fishermen. No manufacturing, or but comparatively little, 

 in all his district, and yet he was the author of the Dingley 

 tariff bill. And the man who was the author of the tariff bill 

 preceding that was a man who represented an agricultural 

 district in the State of Ohio, William McKinley. Now the 

 farmers in these matters, like good citizens, have looked away 

 from their immediate interests, and taking in the situation in 

 ' the whole country at large, have said : " Let our immediate 

 interests be what they will, our greatest interest is the com- 

 mon interest of the whole land," and so the farmers have de- 

 termined this policy. 



I might speak of many other things that the farmers have 

 done in these matters of citizenship, but this illustrates the 

 point. There is, however, one thing further in regard to the 



