112 FARMERS' SUPPLIES CHEAPENED BY PROTECTION. 



We have hundreds of factories, and the consequence is that farmers are getting 

 50 cents a pound for their wool, and paying only $2 to $5 for their broadcloths. 

 And yet these unscrupulous, false sheets tell them that they are obliged to sell 

 their products for half of their value, and pay twice as much as they ought for 

 their manufactured goods, when the very reverse of this is true, and they are 

 actually getting twice as much for their products and paying only half as much 

 for manufactured articles as they did fifty years ago, when we were dependent on 

 England. 



I remember that fifty years ago, before we had a cotton mill in this country, 

 common calicoes sold for twenty-five to forty cents per yard, and a young woman 

 at domestic service would get but seventy -five cents per week for her wages, and 

 it would take a month's earnings to pay for a common calico dress. But what 

 is the fact now, since we have got cotton mills of our own ? Why, the price of 

 calico is down to ten to fifteen cents a yard, and any young woman with a month's 

 earnings can buy half a dozen calico dresses. In this connection let me state 

 another fact for the attentive consideration of our farmers. If it had not been 

 for the American Protective tariff we should not have had a cotton mill, nor a 

 woolen factory, in this country to this day. We are indebted to that system for 

 the innumerable manufacturing establishments that have sprung up in the Eastern 

 States and made them so wealthy, and which are now springing up as if by magic 

 throughout the West. But for that system we should have been the slaves of 

 England still, compelled to pay her former higher prices for all manufactured 

 goods, and to receive the former low prices, or whatever she chose to pay, for 

 our raw products. Our fathers wearied of the galling vassalage, and threw off 

 the yoke ; and let there be none so mean and servile as to seek to subject their 

 necks to that galling yoke again. 



I remember when farmers used to get 40 cents per bushel for wheat, and 12*4 

 cents per bushel for corn and potatoes, and 6 cents per dozen for eggs, and for 

 fat, well-dressed chickens and other things in proportion. But now, just think 

 of the altered state of things, down here in Southeast Missouri, all along the 

 line of Mr. Allen's Iron Mountain road, where the iron furnaces and foundries 

 have sprung up. Our farmers are unable to supply the market with their pro- 

 ducts, and are getting $i a. bushel for all the corn they can raise, $1.10 for pota- 

 toes, 30 to 40 cents for butter, and everything else in proportion. Should not 

 these villainous sheets be ashamed to utter such falsehoods? Do they think 

 they mislead our farmers? They might as well attempt to change the course of 

 water, or dam up the Mississippi and make it run up stream. 



