1891 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
99 
THE STRIKING LESSONS OF THE 
FARMERS’ MOVEMENT. 
As Reviewed from the Standpoint of 
Distinguished Men of Different 
Parties and Occupations. 
In the last number of the American Agri¬ 
culturist this momentous question is ably 
discussed. Ex-President A. D. White (Cor¬ 
nell University), in the course of his argu¬ 
ment says that there never has been in our 
country any well considered system of taxa¬ 
tion, all has been hap hazard. The rich men 
of the great cities, while wretchedly plun¬ 
dered as regards city affairs, have not, as a 
rule, paid their share of State or National 
taxes. The burden has been shifted con¬ 
stantly on those least able to bear it. All 
history is before us to show that this, while 
injurious to all classes, falls with most 
crushing weight upon the whole producing 
class. It was tried in France, first by the 
old Bourbons, and again by the wild Rev¬ 
olutionists, and in each case it bankrupted 
the country. It was tried in Austria, 
Spain and Italy, under various tyrannies, 
and in each country left the whole produc¬ 
ing class impoverished. It has gone on in 
the Spanish Republics of South America 
and the West Indies, and destroyed all 
thrift. Daniel Webster summed up these 
results perfectly when he said, in substance, 
that of all the machinery for impoverishing 
the working classes of a nation, the most 
perfect is an inflated currency. 
Mr. White is emphatic in his opinion that 
the farmers should discard tonguey dema¬ 
gogues or wire-pulling politicians, or 
cranks, and should select honest and 
capable men to make and administer the 
laws, and should watch them. If, on the 
other hand, the movement is led by dema¬ 
gogues, schemers, cranks, it will simply go 
out of existence, and will be looked back 
upon by the historian as a passing fever 
which left the whole agricultural popula¬ 
tion in a more hopeless state than ever before. 
Secretary Rusk says that the great 
majority of farmers do not strictly define 
in their own minds the limitations between 
State and National authority. Since the 
war they have been spelling “ National ” 
•vith such a big “ N that a good manj k 
them seem to have forgotten that while 
the war decided the supremacy of the 
Nation over the State, it did not substitute 
National for State government. In the 
matter of domestic taxation, for Instance, 
the farmer must necessarily look for relief 
to State legislation. We must have no 
juggling, he says, with names with a view 
to deceiving the purchaser as to the true 
character of what he buys. He must know 
that it is what its name indicates it to be, 
and he must know, furthermore, that it is 
a pure and wholesome article of its kind. 
So with the condition of our live stock sent 
abroad: it must be absolutely above sus¬ 
picion. In addition to all this, we must 
study foreign markets, and extend our 
study to all foreign markets, in order that 
there may not be a market in the world 
where a demand exists for anything which 
American agriculture can produce, which 
will not be known to us. 
As to the currency question, unquestion¬ 
ably one lesson of the farmers’ movement 
is, that an increase in the circulative 
medium is demanded, and with this de¬ 
mand, so far as it can be granted con¬ 
sistently with the preservation of a sound 
currency, he is heartily in sympathy. The 
true fiscal policy is to provide a circulating 
medium ample to meet all the require¬ 
ments of business, established on a basis 
so sure as to avoid all danger of deprecia¬ 
tion, and yet so elastic as to permit of 
ready expansion to meet growing wants. 
As to the specific legislation proposed by 
the farmers, Edward Bellamy is, as a Na¬ 
tionalist, particularly interested in their 
unanimous demands for the nationaliza¬ 
tion of the telegraphs, telephones, express 
services and railroads of the country, to be 
henceforth conducted by the nation at cost 
and not for profit—for the benefit of the 
whole people, and no longer for the enrich¬ 
ment of individuals. There is no more 
significant feature of the present situation 
than the way in which all the progressive 
parties of the country, the Nationalists, 
the Farmers’ Alliance, the Knights of La¬ 
bor and the various labor parties, the So¬ 
cialists, together with the advanced por¬ 
tions of the old parties, especially in the 
West, are coming to unite in declaring that 
the beginning of industrial reform must 
consist in placing these gigantic monopolies 
under public control. There is no question 
that if the proposition to do this could be 
put to a general vote to-day, it would carry 
the country. That it will ere long get to 
be voted on and will become a law, no one 
can doubt who does not believe the lobby 
to be more powerful than the people. 
William B. Hatch says that long-con¬ 
tinued and repeated legislative discrimina¬ 
tions, oppressive and increasing rates of 
taxation, with diminished prices for farm 
products and shrinkage in values of the 
best lines of property held by them, at last 
gave an impetus to the farmers’ movement 
that is unparalleled in its proportions and 
astounding in the velocity with which it 
has spread over the land, and the unanimity 
of its acceptance by farmers of all sections 
of the Union, and the growers of all prin¬ 
cipal farm products. It Is marvelous that 
the rice and cotton planters of the extreme 
South, the tobacco growers of Tennessee 
and Kentucky, the wheat growers of our 
entire country, the stock raisers of all sec¬ 
tions of the Union, and the painstaking 
and diversified farming interests of New 
England should have been so well prepared 
to receive any practical suggestions of re¬ 
lief ; that when the “ movement ” began in 
earnest, less than two years ago, it should 
sweep over the country with the velocity 
of a cyclone, and arouse the enthusiasm of 
a civil revolution. Unless all experience is 
worthless and human judgment unreliable, 
continues Mr. Hatch, the present financial 
condition of our country is critical, and the 
immediate future fraught with convulsions 
and disasters that will embrace in their 
destructive consequences all sections of the 
country and all classes of citizens. 
In this emergency the representative 
farmers of the United States, without re¬ 
gard to sections or political affiliations, and 
embracing all and every agricultural or¬ 
ganization in the land, supplemented by 
the labor organizations of the villages, 
towns and great cities demand a complete 
restoration of silver coinage to a perfect 
equality with gold, that the criminal dis¬ 
crimination first made in the act of 1873 
and partially sustained to this hour shall 
be done away with in an act for the free 
and unlimited coinage of silver dollars. 
Mr. Hatch does not contend that this will 
bring complete relief, it is only a single step 
in the right direction. But the demand for 
it comes from an overwhelming majority 
of our people, and if not complied with at 
this time, will be persistently insisted upon 
until it is accomplished. 
The gradual and steady decline of farm 
products began with the demonetization of 
silver; he confidently believes that its res¬ 
toration to a perfect equality with gold as 
to coinage, bullion and certificates, based 
upon the ratio fixed by our laws will be 
greatly beneficial in restoring prices of 
farm products to an average that will be 
remunerative, If not profitable, to the pro¬ 
ducers. Free coinage of silver, with an 
increase of our paper circulation commen¬ 
surate with our increased population and 
constantly augmenting commercial de¬ 
mands will bring at once activity in trade, 
hope and buoyancy in all lines of com¬ 
merce, and certain relief as well as in¬ 
creased prosperity to our great productive 
industries. 
Our people further demand that the 
most exaggerated system of high national 
taxation ever devised in modern times 
must be readjusted upon the principles of 
right, equality and justice; must be so laid 
that the consumers who constitute the 
masses of the people, embracing all who 
labor for daily bread and subsistence, may 
be lightly burdened, and that the great 
producers of the country, the agricultur¬ 
ists, shall not be specially taxed beyond 
their share of the national demands; that 
national taxation shall be limited to the 
actual needs of the govern ment economic¬ 
ally and honestly administered, and that 
we shall return to certain abandoned but 
just subjects of taxation upon wealth and 
capital, and to this end the prompt restora¬ 
tion of a fair and equitable tax upon In¬ 
comes. That we shall return to the prin¬ 
ciples and administrations of the founders 
of our system of government and recognize 
in our laws that commerce and manufac¬ 
tures may be fostered and encouraged as 
the handmaids of agriculture, but not spe¬ 
cially protected until as now, agriculture 
becomes the slave of these great industries. 
chained to their victorious chariot wheels 
until its destruction means financial en¬ 
slavement of the greater class of our people, 
and a diminution if not destruction of 
national prosperity. 
A fruitful source of the ills complained 
of, according to Mr. Hatch, comes from the 
modern methods and practices of our 
Boards of Trade, so called; as a rule they 
should be denominated *• licensed gamblers 
in the products of the soil.” Legitimate 
trading is the selling of that which one 
owns, not that which one does not own. 
The legitimate merchant or trader is the 
one who has for sale that which he sells. 
And the party who sells a thing before he 
acquires it is, in fact, no matter what his 
purpose may be, simply a speculator or 
gambler in that particular contract. 
The evil In these practices is in the fact 
that every crop produced and harvested in 
the country is sold in advance of its deliv¬ 
ery for legitimate consumption a hundred 
or a thousand times over; sold for future 
delivery by men who never owned and 
never expect to own in good faith one 
pound or one bushel of the commodity sold, 
but whose sole purpose and endeavor is in 
concert with hundreds of others, allied in 
interest and organized by selfish greed, to 
depreciate, lower, break down, and if possi¬ 
ble destroy the actual value of such com¬ 
modities in the markets of the world based 
upon the legitimate, and but for these prac¬ 
tices, the inexorable laws of supply and de¬ 
mand. With united voice and determined 
purpose the farmers of the United States 
have decreed that these nefarious and de¬ 
moralizing practices shall cease. 
Will the present Congress give heed to 
this reasonable demand ? And give the re¬ 
lief that will come to the promised crops 
of 1891 by honest and legitimate trading ? 
Or will they postpone so just a measure of 
relief to the detriment of all classes of our 
people in the interest alone of an insignifi¬ 
cant and undeserving few ? 
Always name The R. N.-Y. in writing to 
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No. 1 Farm Harness. 
For 18 Years have dealt direct with consumers, 
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M 
EARLY IN FEBRUARY. 
The Hew Potato Culture.” 
By ELBERT S. CABMAN, Editor of 
THE RURAL NEW YORKER. This book 
will give the results of the author’s investi¬ 
gations and experiments during the past 
fifteen years. Its object will be to show 
solely or for market as w 11 that the yield may be increased threefold without a corresponding increase In the cost: to sho W h that the firtie* garden natch^ f of a fo 
of an acre perhaps, may Justas welly ield ten bushels as three bushels : to Induce farmers and gardeners to experiment with fertilizersnot o nly as to the kind™ 1 
to say, the constituents and their most effective proportions, but as to the most economical quantity to.use ; to experiment as to the most teBing preparation of i 
the depth to plant, the size of seed, the number of eves, the distance apart. These will be among the subjects considered notin a theoreticalwav it an h, 
outcome of fifteen years of experimentation earnestly made in the hope of advancing our knowledge of this mighty Industry It Is respectfulfv submitted that t 
experiments so long carried on at * he Rural Grounds, have, directly and indirectly, thrown more light upon the various problems Involved^tn s cct^f uTnotato 
than any other experiments which have been carried on in America. v 0 mvoiveu in successiui potato 
Price, cloth, 75 cents ; paper, 40 cents. 
I HE KL'HAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, Times Building, IVew 
