204 AMERICAN FARMS. 



but slight efforts to jump over it. On the other hand, 

 notwithstanding the high-tariff wall placed against foreign 

 manufactures, $i is imported to each $7 produced, while 

 the home market for manufactures is made so profitable 

 to the home producer, by reason of forced tributes from 

 the home consumers, that less than ^i finds its way from 

 the country to the $100 produced.' 



In fact, since it is requisite that a protected area be 

 even more than world-wide in extent, to save the farmer 

 from the avarice of the manufacturing combines, and 

 extremely small to be of any service in enabling farmers 

 to combine for their advantage, the question of what would 

 be a just and equal system of protection seems a difficult 

 problem to solve. And yet, if protection is to be the 

 order of the day, it is the protectionist legislators' duty 

 to devise some scheme that will give the farmer his full 

 share of advantages.'' 



The miller wants $1 or $1.50 per barrel duty on flour. 

 His right is just as good to 20 per cent, protection as 

 that of the manufacturer of shovels to 35 per cent, and 

 free raw materials. The pork-packer wants $4 per 

 barrel duty on pork. He has as good a right to it as the 

 manufacturer of scythes to 50 per cent., and so has the 

 apple producer to $1 per barrel. Only, in these changes, 

 the farmers should see that an undoubted portion of the 

 legalized plunder really comes into their hands.^ 



' Measured by Canada's trade and navigation returns in terms of 

 money, the farmers of Canada get less than $1.10 protection per 

 capita, the manufacturers more than $130 per capita. 



^ When an effort is made to apply protection equitably, it is then 

 seen what a fribble, a burlesque, a farce, it really is. 



^ Not a few, of even those who pass for free traders, contend that 

 only articles of luxury should bear taxes, but we must remember that 

 great aggregates of capital produced through a whisky or a cigar- 



