AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 747 



At the present time the rapid increase of city populations, the 

 development of manufacturing industries, and the larger expendi- 

 ture of energy in the production of such articles as eggs, butter, 

 small fruits, etc., are tending to reduce the plethora of those 

 engaged in the production of the staple products of the farm, 

 and to bring about a more healthy balance of industries. It is 

 difficult to realize the rapidity with which the people of the 

 United States are passing industrially from agriculture to manu- 

 facturing. Between 1850 and 1890 the capital invested in manu- 

 factures increased from $533,000,000 to $6,180,000,000, and 

 the wages annually paid from $237,000,000 to $2,000,000,000. 

 The manufactures of the United States "exceed those of the 

 mother country in the proportion of 7 to 4 and are increas- 

 ing at a rate which, if maintained for a quarter of a century, 

 will make the United States as important a source of supply for 

 manufactured articles as it now is of agricultural products." The 

 United States is going into the business of manufacturing for 

 export at a rate which is causing grave apprehensions to English 

 and other European manufacturers, and " will probably in the 

 near future dominate all the markets of the world in the produc- 

 tion of manufactured goods." American steel, dry goods, paper, 

 and carpets are successfully competing in the markets of the 

 world, even in those of England herself. Only recently a press 

 dispatch announced the shipment of a cargo of twenty loco- 

 motives on a single vessel to Russia. 



All this is indicative of the direction in which the highest 

 economic interests of the nation lie. However much relief legis- 

 lative remedies may afford the farmer, his prosperity is largely 

 dependent upon such a spontaneous redistribution of the work- 

 ing energy of the people as will secure the wisest adjustment 

 of economic force. A fiscal policy like the export bounty, which 

 would counteract this tendency, would strike at a process from 

 the further progress of which the farmer has much to gain, 

 and would prevent the most effective application of the wealth- 

 producing power of the nation. 



To summarize : in considering the proposal to establish a sys- 

 tem of bounties upon exports of agricultural staples, we have found 



