HOW WESTERN FARMERS ARE BENEFITED BY 

 PROTECTION. 



CHAPTER I. 



OUR MARKETS, THE HOME AND THE FOREIGN. 



THE vast importance of the foreign market the dependence of 

 Western farmers upon the foreign market the danger of ob- 

 structing the foreign market these are subjects upon which Free 

 Trade writers and speakers lay great emphasis. It never seems to 

 occur to these persons that the home market is the vital consideration 

 after all. In the home market the bulk of our productions is con- 

 sumed. The activity of the home market forms the basis of indi- 

 vidual and national prosperity. Although the foreign market is 

 valuable, that valuableness is not primary, but secondary valuable 

 as an adjunct or appendix to internal commerce and trade. For- 

 eign countries take only a very small proportion of our products. 

 In the census year 1870 the total amount of our manufactures was 

 $4,232,325,442, and of farm produce $2,447,538,658, or $6,679,- 

 864,100 for both. That the immense quantity of articles here 

 represented, except a small fraction, must have been sold and con- 

 sumed in our home market, is plain from the fact that the aggregate 

 of our exports from the beginning of the Government to June 30, 

 1875, covering a period of eighty-six years, was just $13,299,706,- 

 575, or not quite double the value of our manufactures and farm 

 products in a single year. Take another illustration : According to 

 the agricultural reports of our Government, the four corn crops of 

 1870,1871, 1872 and 1873 footed up 4, 111,119,000 bushels, and the 



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