10 The Tariff and the Farmer. 



peting with those sold by our farmers. To remedy this 

 duties were increased from 50 to 100% on products for 

 which there was no evidence in United States annual 

 reports of commerce and navigation that any was being 

 imported. The rate of duties on wheat was advanced 

 when we were sending to all nations in 1889 to the value 

 of $96,000,000, and getting back only $125,000. Scarcely 

 any meat and dairy products came from Canada, and we 

 exported there that year $7,000,000 worth, yet the inva- 

 sion seemed so alarming that the rates on butter and 

 cheese were raised 50%, and those on ham and bacon 

 200%. The same year hog products were sent abroad 

 to the value of $66,000,000, and the total value sent in 

 was but $172,000. 



On the same occasion Mr. McKinley had visions of our 

 wheat driven from foreign markets. He also made a 

 remarkable discovery, which was that ''the time was 

 already here when the American farmer must sell his 

 products in the market of the world in competition with 

 the wheat produced by the lowest priced labor of other 

 countries." That is what the American farmer has 

 always done. He feared a great flood of wheat from 

 nations he named, some of whom had not enough to feed 

 their own people. He told the many million bushels of 

 wheat raised by different countries, but forgot to men- 

 tion the material fact, which was the amount of surplus. 

 That would have put an entirely different face on the 

 matter. 



The next phantom brought to view in the opening chap- 

 ter was conjured up by Secretary Shaw of President 

 Roosevelt's Cabinet. Probably he could not sleep nights 

 for fear of a cattle invasion. "Suppose we take the 

 tariff off beef, and then suppose the herds of cattle from 



