THE FARMER'S ADVANTAGE. 91 



measure of values, which is the current dollar, variable from 

 day to day and from year to year. Especially is this disastrous 

 to farmers, who make all their calculations in the spring and 

 only realize on them in the fall or winter. Their expenditures 

 are a long way off from their sales. They cannot tell what 

 the dollar is to be. Under a system like this, the farmer does 

 not know what to expect; his business becomes a lottery, his 

 enterprise is chilled, the shrewd take advantage of his ignorance, 

 and all his settled foundations are thrown out of course. Per- 

 haps the great injustice of the legal-tender act, which under- 

 took to make mere promises equivalent to their fulfilment, and 

 which robbed the whole creditor-class of the country of one- 

 third of their debts due, may be justified by the extremity into 

 which we were thrown by the war ; but the act added nothing 

 to the resources of the country, it merely made a violent par- 

 tition of goods among the citizens, and furnished the unscrupu- 

 lous an opportunity, which they have not failed up to the 

 present moment to improve, by the legalized destruction of the 

 old measure of value, to take advantage of the ignorance and 

 the necessities of the masses for their own profit. The money- 

 changers, the bankers, the brokers, the whole brood of per cents, 

 have rioted in the untold losses of the people. It is almost six 

 years since the war ended, and yet no repeal of the legal-tender 

 act, no intelligent effort to restore the specie standard, no con- 

 sciousness, apparently, in high places, of the national disg-race, 

 in times of peace and providential prosperity, of a thoroughly 

 debauched currency. There is no commercial need in this 

 country at this hour so pressing as the need of an honest dollar ! 

 And I invite you all to unite with me in raising the cry, that 

 shall pierce the dulled ears of our rulers, an honest cry for an 

 honest dollar ! 



In conclusion, gentlemen, and very briefly, let me call your 

 attention to the way in which what is called a protective tariff 

 makes against your interests, and neutralizes the natural ad- 

 vantage that God gave you as farmers. Did you ever think 

 distinctly what a tariff is, and how it works? Is a tariff any- 

 thing in the world but a combination of taxes which you have 

 to pay? Read the tariff from beginning to end, turn it upside 

 down and inside out, and you will find it nothing under heaven 

 but a schedule of taxes ! The only thing a tariff says, or can 



