870 GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 



If the industrialist, the newspaperman, and the labor man do not want equality 

 here at home, why, then, do they ask that trade agreements be extended and say 

 that these various nations must be on an equality with the United States? The 

 answer is not far to seek. 



The industrialist sees in Latin and South America and the islands of the sea 

 vast sources of cheap raw materials and agricultural crops and he wants the 

 American farmer and producer of raw material equalized with other countries 

 that produce agricultural products and raw materials. 



The labor leader, already enjoying the great benefits of organization against 

 the unorganized farmer, sees vast sovirces of cheap food in other lands and would 

 like the American farmer to produce on equal terms with coimtries of rich land 

 and cheap labor. 



The newspaper editor and columnist, whose very existence is bound up with 

 big business and organized minorities, are simply parroilike repeating the hollow 

 call for equality of nations and world prices. 



If you gentlemen of Congress will prepare a bill that actually provides for 

 ecjuality for all people and nations, the din of protest, from the White House to 

 the Department of Labor, will drown out all other noise. Yoy provide for free 

 imports of manufactured goods and you will be forced to stop your ears to protect 

 your eardrums. The cry of protest from these advocates of trade treaties will 

 make the welkin ring in Washington as it has never done since the first Battle 

 of Bull Run. 



You provide for free imjjortation into the United States of 20, 30, and 40 cents 

 a day labor from Central and South America and provide that there shall be 

 no labor union unless the farmers are equally well organized, and these labor 

 leaders who advocate these trade treaties will call every union strike in protest 

 before the sun goes down. 



The only people I know who w^ould actually be willing to see American workers 

 put on an ecpiality with the pauper peon labor of other countries is the inter- 

 national multimillionaires of the State Department and the international Imnkers. 

 I do not believe the New Dealers with some few exceptions would go along with 

 this intentionally. I cannot imagine the majority permitting the American 

 people to be put on an equality with the people of other countries. 



Originally the great profits of protective tariffs were reaped by the owners 

 and operators of the great industrial plants of New England and the East. The 

 protection of American industry against competition from ICngland, Germany, the 

 Netherlands, Belgium, France, and other countries made it possible for American 

 industry to demand and receive fabulous prices for their products while the 

 export of raw cotton from American to these industrial countries brought in 

 a flow of gold which made possible the building of transcontinental railroads, 

 skyscrapers, and the development of the great industrial and business world 

 w^liich we have enjoyed for several generations. 



The high prices of American industrial products made the cost of producing 

 cotton and wheat so high in this country that with the growing of cotton, wheat 

 w^as successfully developed in other countries the American farmer lost his world 

 markets for raw cotton. 



The introduction into the United States of cheap agricultural products from 

 fertile countries with cheap labor, if continued, will lose the American farmer 

 his home market also — not only for cotton, but for his wheat, his corn, his meat, 

 and every other farm crop and product. 



Gentlemen of this committee, is not the result obvious? The farmer of South 

 America can undersell the southern cotton grower in the luarkets of Europe and 

 Canada and Great Britain. With equal ease, the cotton grower of Brazil can 

 undersell the southern cotton grower right here in the United States, if we but let 

 him do it. 



If the Brazilian farmer can undersell the American farmer here in the United 

 States as to cotton, he can also undersell the wheat grower, the corn grower, the 

 meat producer, and the farmer of all other crops. 



It is impossible to raise the living standards of the people of the world so long 

 as all the profits from machinery and labor-saving devices go into the pockets 

 of a comparatively few people. 



Eighty years ago, hundreds of thousands of northern and western farmers 

 fought the bloodiest w^ar in history, with the men carrying the rifles and bayonets 

 believing they were fighting to liberate slaves. Is it possible that we are now 

 ready to enslave all farmers, black and white, in this country at the behest of a 

 bunch of unpatriotic internationalists? 



As the American manufacturer waxed rich behind the protection of tariff walls 

 the laborers who labored in these factories gradually began to awaken to the 



