318 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



imported, because we do not raise enough to supply the, de- 

 mand for our woollen mills which are heavily protected on 

 the goods they make. You can buy nothing made of wool 

 for your personal or domestic use, that does not pay a duty 

 of at least fifty per cent. 



How can we make money and become millionaires, or 

 how can our farm hands afford to work for the wages we can 

 afford to pay, when the cost of everything is enhanced by 

 needless and cumulative taxation? Take the fine wool that 

 is raised in New England, if it has ever been increased in 

 price by the duty of ten and twelve cents a pound imposed 

 upon foreign wool of the same class, adding that much to the 

 cost of the domestic manufactured goods, it is but a drop in 

 the bucket, compared to the amount of tax you have to pay, 

 directly or indirectly, on all that you wear or use, except 

 tea and coflee, and some few other articles, and among them 

 eggs and feathers, which are duty free. 



Raw hides come in duty free to the amount of 27,500,000 

 dollars ; the cattle growers and slaughterers do not ask pro- 

 tection ; the leather trade flourishes, and we get our shoes, 

 harnesses and the like, by so much the cheaper. This rule 

 or policy could be extended much to our advantage. Then 

 look at steel. A duty of three cents a pound is levied on 

 the greater part of the large quantity imported. Some classes 

 pay more, but none less than two and a quarter cents a pound. 

 You well know how much this article enters into the cost of 

 your implements, and of the machinery which makes so many 

 of the articles necessary to you. 



Acain, let me ask, how then has protection helped the 

 farmer? In answering this question, let me call your atten- 

 tion to a point worthy of note and of thought, made by Mr. 

 Carlisle of Kentucky, in a speech in Congress last year. 

 The protection of the tariff is given under the specious and 

 attractive cry of protecting American labor against the pau- 

 per labor of Europe, but where does this come in? I cannot 

 see, when we are forced to send, as has been done for two 

 years past, an average of 650,000,000 dollars' worth of 

 produce a year across the ocean, to be sold in competition 

 with the poorest and meanest paid labor in the world, 

 that of Russian peasants, and of the half-starved and half- 



