66 FARMERS' UNION AND FEDERATION 



The most interesting thing about our South American 

 competitor is his $127.38 dwelling and water tank. If the 

 tank costs as much as they do in Kansas it would leave 

 about $50 for the dwelling, when there should be at least 

 $15,000 worth of buildings on a farm that size for comfort 

 and convenience for a family and force large enough to op- 

 erate it. 



The next is his $21.23 horses, while they cost us from 

 $150 to $250 each ; then comes plowing, harrowing and sow- 

 ing for $1.72 an acre, while it should be about $6.00 for pre- 

 paring and seeding an acre ; next is cutting and stacking for 

 $1.72 per acre, when it should be $3.50 to $5.00 ; then comes 

 ten cents freight to port, while we pay double that from our 

 central wheat belt. 



Now the question for you wheat producers to answer is : 

 Do you wish to continue in competition with this Argentina 

 wheat grower until your standard of living is reduced to a 

 par with his? If you do not, then you simply must unionize 

 yourselves and then unionize him to stop his foolishness, or 

 else put up a high tariff wall to fence his wheat out of com- 

 petition with yours in your home market. If you adopt 

 the latter course, you must go into politics to make high 

 tariff on wheat a campaign issue in all elections, put up 

 candidates of your own class and send them out as spell- 

 binders to win votes for a protective tariff on all farm prod- 

 ucts that are unionized. They can borrow a few barrels 

 of campaign speeches from the Republican Party used by 

 their spell-binders for the last half century in advocating a 

 protective tariff on " infant industries" on the pretext of 

 saving their laborers from the alleged low standard of living 

 prevailing in Europe. Those speeches will fit the wheat 

 growers' case. They need protection from the competition 

 of pauper wheat raisers of Argentina who have no home, and 

 evidently will never be able to own one, as the above letter 

 shows. 



