34 THE FARMERS WOOL AND IRON QUESTIONS. 



If any reader will take the trouble, as we have done, to check 

 off, without regard to dates, the highest number of pounds of wool 

 for a ton of iron under Protection, against the highest number 

 under partial Free Trade, he will find in every case that it required 

 fewer pounds to make the purchase under Protection. Recollect, this 

 is no restricted contrast between scattered months or years, 

 selected merely to make out a case, but a comparison between two 

 periods, each of six consecutive years divided into months, under 

 different systems of tariff. We ask, in all candor, appealing to 

 common sense, whether the result of our investigation supports the 

 Protectionists or the Free Traders? Can farmers believe they are 

 duped, victimized, robbed by tariffs under which the purchasing 

 power of their wool for bar iron has been so largely increased? 



When we confine the comparisons to sets of two years, there is 

 a similar showing. In the whole range of the exhibit for 1853 

 there are only two months in which a ton of iron could have been 

 bought with fewer pounds of wool than in 1869. In 1870 the 

 highest number of pounds of wool required to make the exchange was 

 less considerably less than the lowest number needful in 1854. 

 The same fact is true in comparing 1871 with 1855. ^ n only three 

 months of 1856 would nearly as few pounds of wool as in 1872 

 exchange for a ton of iron. The only showing in the whole state 

 ment in favor of partial Free Trade is in 1857 the panic year 

 when, for eight months out of the twelve, the purchasing power of 

 wool was greater than in 1873, also a year of financial revulsion. 

 Finally, comparing highest with highest purchasing power, there 

 were only two months in 1858 when wool would pay for more iron 

 than in 1874. These conclusive statistics demonstrate that the 

 Free Traders are wrong, and leave no peg to hang a doubt upon. 

 It will be noticed that the prices of wool have been much higher 

 under Protection than they were under partial Free Trade. This 

 is due to our policy of Protective tariffs, which has created an 

 active home demand for the domestic product, that not yet 

 amounting to an adequate supply. During the four fiscal years 

 ending June 30, 1861, under the low tariff of 1857, we exported 

 4&amp;gt;494&amp;gt;57 2 pounds of wool, valued at $1,194,782 ; during the four 

 fiscal years ending June 30, 1875, we exported only 713,278 

 pounds, valued at $188,981 We have now a demand at home for 

 the wool crop, and our farmers do not need to look abroad for 



