92 AMERICAN FARMS, 



It is these unnatural conditions which are a chief 

 cause of the relative decline of the farmer's share in the 

 national income ; which are causing the rapid increase of 

 our tenanted and mortgaged farms ; which make the 

 manufacturers and other combiners wealthy, and the 

 farmers comparatively poor ; which cause the fierceness 

 of competition to appear so much more severe in agri- 

 culture than in other occupations ; which do much to 

 dishearten our rural denizens and make them appear 

 unequal to the struggle of life ; which deprive our best 

 citizens of the pleasurable enjoyment and profiting con- 

 sumption of their just and natural share in the results of 

 the progress of the age. 



American shipping engaged in foreign trade is gov- 

 erned by natural laws, the normal condition, on the one 

 hand, and, like agriculture, is crushed by vicious arti- 

 ficial laws on the other, and is being exterminated. 

 When these obstacles were taken from this industry by 

 England's free-trade policy, English shipping received 

 new life. 



From doing but 26 per cent, of the world's ocean 

 carrying-trade at the time of the removal of duties, she 

 now does over 50 per cent. Whereas, in the United States, 

 burdens have been laid upon shipping until United 

 States ships have been pretty nearly driven from the 

 seas. Thirty-five years ago the United States had five 

 million tons of ships sailing the oceans ; they now have 

 less than one million'. 



' It is frequently contended that it is England's superior advan- 

 tages for building iron steamships that gives her the chance to control 

 the world's carrying-trade. We ask : Did she build all the ships 

 she owned during the first twenty-five years after the repeal of ob- 

 structions to ship-building and ship-owning ? Why cannot America 

 buy, sail, and repair English ships, as England has done in the past 

 with American, and prospered by so doing? 



