l8 THE WESTERN FARMER 



the foreigner, all that money would be saved to the farmers; 

 but as they cannot, the farmers are made to pay the 

 difference. Nothing whatever is got by anybody in return 

 for those $340,000,000; and that sum is simply thrown 

 away and sacrificed to make up for the want of skill, or of 

 capital, or of whatever else it may be, by reason of which 

 the Eastern manufacturer makes no more profit by selling 

 an article at Si 40 than the Britisher does by selling the 

 same article at $100. If, indeed, tlie Eastern manufacturer 

 could produce the article for $100, and if he did get $140 

 for it, he would be benefited and enriched ; and it might 

 be some consolation to the farmers for their loss of 

 $340,000,000 a year that it went to form large accumula- 

 tions of wealth in the pockets of their fellow-citizens in the 

 Eastern States. But this consolation does not exist, and 

 we shall presently show that, in spite of the enormous sum 

 overcharged to the farmers, the profits of the Eastern 

 manufacturer are precarious, fluctuating, and by no means 

 above the average of other occupations. His charge of 

 $140 for what the Britisher can afford to sell for §100, only 

 leaves him a bare living profit, because it costs him $40 

 more to produce the article than it costs the Britisher. Why 

 this should be the case we cannot here stay to inquire, but 

 such is the fact. Indeed, how else could British goods be 

 largely imported into the States in spite of the 42! per cent, 

 import duties which they have to pay ? 



It is these S40 uselessly spent out of 140, which, 

 added up, form the 8340,000,000 which the farmers of 

 America are called upon to throw away every year without 

 any benefit to themselves or to anybody else. It is sheer 

 waste ; just as it is sheer waste to pay one man exorbitantly 

 for doing the same work (no more and no better) which 

 another man, more expert, will do cheaply; — ^just as it 

 would be sheer waste to go on thrashing with a flail instead 

 of using a machine, merely because the man with the flail 

 was a neighbour, and tlie machine-maker was a stranger. 

 We can fancy a shrewd Western farmer saying, " A man 

 down East makes an article which he can't .fford to sell me 



