FARMERS TAXED TO DEATH. 79 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



FARMERS TAXED TO DEATH. 



DURING 1871 the New York Free Trade League distributed all 

 through the West immense numbers of an illustrated sheet, en- 

 titled "The People's Pictorial Tax-payer," in which appeared astate- 

 ment, profusely elucidated with wood-cuts, to the effect that "The 

 farmer rises in the morning, puts on his flannel shirt taxed 65 per 

 cent. ; and his trousers, taxed 60 per cent.; his vest, taxed 60 per 

 cent.; and his overcoat, taxed from 40 to 150 per cent; draws on 

 his boots, taxed 35 per cent.; puts some coal, taxed 60 per cent., 

 in his stove, taxed 55 per cent.; sits down to his breakfast from a 

 plate taxed 45 per cent.; seasons his food with salt taxed 108 per 

 cent." and so on, until the poor fellow, taxed to death, sinks to 

 rest in a grave covered with a heavily taxed tombstone, and slum- 

 bers where tariffs molest and vex no more. 



Notwithstanding that the only truth in the whole representation 

 was that "the farmer rises in the morning," all the other state- 

 ments being false, this caricature of the facts was spread broadcast 

 among our agricultural classes, as incontrovertible evidence that 

 they symbolized Issachar " a strong ass, couching down between 

 two burdens" all on account of our iniquitous and oppress- 

 ive tariff system. The Free Trade press took up the cry, foremost 

 among which was the Chicago Tribune, and repeated it to our 

 farmers, in a multitude of forms from week to week. Tillers of 

 the soil were everywhere told, with due emphasis, in the words 

 of the Hon. Horatio C. Burchard, that " a double burden falls 

 upon those the value of whose products must be measured by 

 the price in the foreign market;" that " the enhanced price occa- 

 sioned by the duty bears directly upon them as consumers, and 

 ultimately they pay a portion of the tax imposed upon articles con- 

 sumed by non-protected trades whose services they require;" and 



