1893 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
8o3 
SECRETARY MORTON'S ADDRESS. 
“THE FARMERS’ NEEDS AND OPPORTUNITIES.” 
On November 6 we wrote to the Secretary of Agri¬ 
culture, asking if the published accounts of his ad¬ 
dress at Chicago October 16 were substantially correct. 
On the 9th ult. we received the following note in 
reply : 
Dear 8ir: I am directed by the Secretary of Agriculture to Inform 
you that a printed copy of his address delivered at Chicago will be at 
your disposal within a day or two. I have just returned second page 
revise to the printer. I ought to say that Mr. Morton Is having this 
address printed for his own use and at his own expense. 
Geo. Wm. Hill, Chief, Division Records and Editing. 
On the 15th inst. the printed copy was received. 
We have carefully read the address and omitted in 
the following reprint only portions which may fairly 
be omitted without breaking the connection or im¬ 
pairing the strength of the address. Our readers will 
pass upon its merits for themselves. At present The 
R- N.-Y. need have no further comment to make : 
Land has in and of itself no more value than air or 
water, for land values are evolved by human efforts 
put forth upon, or in relation to, land. 
It was my fortune to look out from my log cabin on 
the west bank of the Missouri River upon the prairies 
of Nebraska, as a settler there in 1854, when, beyond 
that rude domicile, there was not a single permanent 
habitation of civilized man until you reached the val¬ 
leys and mountains of Utah. The lands of Nebraska 
were fertile and desirable beyond comparison. And 
yet they had no value. As late as I860 I attempted to 
sell 20,000 acres of land in eastern Nebraska for 
$20,000, and could find no market for the same at such 
an enormous price. The very lands which could find 
no purchasers at $1 pqr acre in 1866 are to-day in 
great demand at $25 to $75 per acre. And the foun¬ 
dation cause of this enormous advance in land values 
is largely the efforts put forth by capital to build 
railroads which should relate those lands and the pro¬ 
ducers thereon intimately and profitably with the 
great cities and populational centers of the East. 
These urban communities are the consumers who ex¬ 
change the products of the labor which they sell in 
the cities for the products of farm labor in the country. 
Farm Life and City Life Contrasted. 
It is a most agreeable thing to observe and exalt the 
independence of those who live upon farms. They can 
subsist year in and year out, wholesomely and com¬ 
fortably, and have no communication whatever with 
the great cities of the continent. 
It is strange that with this independence of the 
farm so marked, so italicized and accentuated, there 
should be an almost universal desire on the part of 
those reared in the country to abandon farm life and 
enter upon life in the cities. The tendency to grega¬ 
riousness at populational centers seems to intensify 
itself from year to year. The son of the farmer seeks 
a salaried position with the railroad, the bank, the 
merchant, or tne manufacturer. He prefers certain 
cash stipends, payable every Saturday night; and, as a 
rule, he expends his income as it is earned. Thrift and 
economy are not evolved in city as in rural life. 
Humanity in great groups breeds extravagance and 
thriftlessness in living. The wage-earner frequently, 
therefore, in the city accumulates nothing. He merely 
lives. The fluctuations of commerce and manufac¬ 
ture, or lack of confidence in the ultimate standard of 
debt payments, or doubt as to whether the United 
States has gold enough to buy all the silver of the 
earth and pay for it in gold, and then maintain it as 
money at a parity with gold, induces a panic. The 
wage-earner, having saved nothing in the city, finds 
himself upon the verge of starvation. He is trans¬ 
formed from the once industrious and contented 
farmer’s son to a private in the procession of the un¬ 
employed. He attends meetings wherein the “ wage- 
slave ” is described and the “ capitalistic master” is 
denounced. He is taught in these socialistic schools 
that the Government of the United States is thor¬ 
oughly paternal. He ts made to believe that it is the duty 
of the Government to furnish work to the unemployed at 
remunerative figures. He is told that certain indescrib¬ 
able members of the human family, who are not dis¬ 
cernible with the naked eye, in the every-day walks of 
life, called “plutocrats,” are conspiring to crush out 
labor everywhere, and to ruin all the so-called debtor 
classes of America. His emotional nature is so wrought 
up by the fervid barrel-organ oratory of pseudo-labor- 
leaders that he is almost ready to declare for no gov¬ 
ernment at alL He forgets that when the capitalist 
destroys the debtor class he has obliterated the mar¬ 
ket in which he loans his own money, and also de¬ 
prived those who owe him of the power to pay him. 
Furthermore, the transformed farmer forgets that it 
is essential to laborers that large capital should be con¬ 
stantly in the United States, and constantly increas¬ 
ing. Labor, without capital to employ it, is as 
valueless as a beautiful picture or a gorgeous sunset 
to a blind man. And capital, with no labor to employ, 
is as utterly unproductive as the power of a great mill- 
stream with no wheels to turn. 
During the late perturbations in the field of finance 
and commerce the farmers of this country have suf¬ 
fered less than any other class. In their homes the 
sheriff has appeared but seldom. Among their farms 
no processions of the “ unemployed ” have marched. 
In their fields and farms there has been no cessation 
of the hum of contented industry and the hymn of 
domestic enjoyment. All through these last six months 
the farmer has furnished fewer failures, less of pro¬ 
tested paper, and least of want of all the employments 
of humanity in this great Republic. 
Foes of the American Farmer. 
But the American farmer has foes to contend with. 
They are not merely the natural foes—not the weevil 
in the wheat, not the murrain in cattle, nor the chol¬ 
era in swine, nor the drought, nor the chinch-bug. 
The most insidious and destructive foe to the farmer is the 
“ jrrofessional ” farmer, who, as a “ promoter ” of Oranges 
and Alliances, for political purposes, farms the farmer. 
It is tiue that American farm life is isolated, and that 
in the newer sections of the Union there is too little 
of social pleasure and festivities, and sometimes I 
think it would have been better if our lands had been 
surveyed so as to bring the owners into villages, rather 
than to make them half a mile apart by quarter sec¬ 
tions. A resurvey in the new States and Territories 
is not impossible, by which country villages may be 
established, and thus more charm and felicity be given 
to the home life of the people by closer, more neigh¬ 
borly associations. 
But my hope for the future of the farmer is not 
based upon gregariousness. He will not succeed better 
by forming granges and alliances—which too often seek to 
attend to some other business than farming, and frequently 
propose to run railroads and banks, and even to establish 
new systems of coinage for the Government— than he will by 
individual investigation of economic questions. Humanity 
generally, and the farmer particularly, has no enemy 
equal, in efficiency for evil, to ignorance. Therefore 
each tiller of the soil, each farmer, should for himself, 
individually, investigate the various methods of cultivat¬ 
ing land, of producing good crops, and of securing remun¬ 
erative markets. That education is best for a human 
being which enables him most perfectly and com¬ 
pletely to live in this world, and enjoy it. There is 
one volume which every farmer can obtain, at small 
cost, and which, thoroughly studied, will open to him 
plainly and clearly his relations to the world of con¬ 
sumers and commerce. It will teach him that the 
relation of supply to demand is the sole regulator of 
value, and that this inexorable law is everywhere in 
its operations, touching all things produced and sold, 
all things manufactured and consumed. The one 
book which I can recommend to farmers for their 
perusal, without fear of being charged with partiality to a 
contemporary, or with working in the interests of a coi>y- 
right, is Adam Smith's. —[All italics are ours | The 
Wealth of Nations ought to be in the library of every 
farmer in the United States. It is to political economy 
as the New Testament is to the Christian religion. 
And it is to this book, thus eulogized by one of the 
greatest thinkers and writers in the English language, 
that I would turn the attention of the individual 
farmer, rather than to the vacuous literature of modern 
paternalism and its vagaries. The latter, instead of 
developing the individuality, evolves dependence and 
cultivates helplessness. Paternalism in a republican 
form of government is as impracticable and absurd as 
the attempt of your son to establish, by evidence, the 
allegation that he is his own father. 
It is the business of government to give each citizen 
an equal chance, within the limits of the public good, 
for life, liberty, the accumulation of property, and the 
pursuit of happiness. After that, it depends upon the 
individual and his intelligent efforts as to how much 
enjoyment he shall secure in life, liberty and property. 
Enlightened selfishness prompts every man to do 
the very best he can for himself and his family. Every 
citizen who determines, and properly endeavors, to do 
the best he can for himself is, therefore, doing the 
best he can for the Government and the country. If 
there be a republic of fertile lands and genial climes 
anywhere upon this globe where each citizen is doing 
the best he can for himself, that republic typifies 
Paradise Regained, and to it I would emigrate myself, 
and take with me all my kindred, friends, and ac¬ 
quaintances. In that perfect abode there can be no 
extortionate taxation, no prisons, no anarchists, no 
fiat money, and no poverty. As an entity, the Govern¬ 
ment of the United States is simply “ all of us.” And 
when each is doing, within the limits of the public 
good, strenuously and intelligently to the best of his 
ability, the best he can for himself, the Government 
and the people are at the highest tide of flush pros¬ 
perity. The farmers of America need individualization 
and development by personal study and investigation. 
They do not need to pool their thinking faculties and their 
energies in vast associations, which are too often turned to 
political rather than to agricultural and domestic purposes. 
No man should give a power of attorney to any society, 
organization, or person to think for him. All the 
droughts, all the locusts, all the cinch-bugs, all the 
diseases of domestic animals which have a fflicted agri¬ 
culture are not half such dangerous foes to the farmer 
as an inconvertible or irredeemable currency; not 
half so impoverishing as cheap money of violently 
fluctuating purchasing power; not half so dangerous 
to his interests as a system of laws which compels him 
to sell his product in competition with all the world 
and to buy his manufactured articles in a market 
whence all competition is excluded; not half so threat¬ 
ening as a blind adherence to the teachings of ignor¬ 
ant leaders, vicious demagogues, and the allurements 
of party catch-words and party names, which, politi¬ 
cally, hypnotize his reasoning faculties. 
Cause of Low Prices -The Remedy. 
The producers of grain are now complaining because 
of small profits. Tell me why farmers should not be 
growing and selling at a profit twice as much grain 
as is now in sight in the United States? Is it not be¬ 
cause their natural world market is shut off from them 
by law? Has not legislation brought the price of 
wheat down to 65 cents? Does not every dollar’s 
worth of imports kept out by a protective tariff keep in 
a dollar’s worth of export grain that would otherwise 
leap to go out? Would not the farmer, under a decent, 
commercial freedom, be growing three dollars’ worth 
of products where he is now growing only one, be¬ 
cause a world’s market is a great deal wider than a 
woefully restricted home market? Would not the de¬ 
mand for laborers be lifted up by making and grow¬ 
ing three times as many products as we do now, and 
would not the demand for more laborers raise the 
wages of laborers? And then, would not the profits 
of capital, now idle or dissipated in doubtful specula¬ 
tion, be increased by a safe and legitimate increasing 
commerce of three to one? 
Free trade does not compel anybody to trade; it does 
not even recommend anybody to trade. It simply al¬ 
lows those to trade who find it profitable to do so. 
Why, then, should not the laws of the United States, 
in their majesty and justice, permit each citizen to 
decide for himself how, when, and where it is profit¬ 
able for him to make his trades? Is it asking too 
much, in a land which boasts of the liberty of its 
citizens, that the citizen be permitted to exchange the 
result of his services for commodities in those countries 
where he can secure for himself the most remunera¬ 
tive returns? 
Having secured for every farm-house a copy of 
“ The Wealth of Nations,” and induced the head of 
the family and the youth to study it thoroughly, I 
would have, if possible, a daily newspaper from a 
great city at every fireside. The daily newspaper is 
an educator, because it leads out into full view, every 
morning, all the markets of the world. It turns the 
light upon all the causes of fluctuating markets. It 
illuminates the prices paid in every mart of the civi¬ 
lized globe. It constantly illustrates the terse truth¬ 
fulness of that greatest sentence in modern political 
economy, evolved by Prof. Arthur L. Perry, of Wil¬ 
liams College, that “ A market for products is pro-, 
ducts in market.” Less legislation and nore learn¬ 
ing, less gregariousness and more individuality, less 
dependence upon associations with the Alliances and 
the Granges, and more self-reliant independence, 
based upon acquired facts, is a fair statement of the 
necessities of the American farmer. 
The Acquisition of Valuable Land. 
Arable land is limited in area. There are no more 
farms to be given away. The relation of the supply 
of land to the demand for land is constantly changing, 
so that demand will soon be far in excess of the di¬ 
minishing supply. During the next 10 years rural 
land values in the United States will advance steadily 
and speedily, so that at the end of a quarter of a cen¬ 
tury every acre of fertile farms in the United States 
will certainly sell for twice or three times its present 
value. The wise farmer, far-seeing, who loves his 
home and family, will endeavor to keep them on the 
fruitful lands which he now consecrates as a home, 
and with his industry and frugality endeavor to pur¬ 
chase more good lands, so that his descendants may 
inherit health, industry, knowledge and sturdy inde¬ 
pendence. 
(To be continued.) 
“ Our sugar bill is something fearful !” Said a poor 
man as the grocer gathered in his cash. Why was it? 
Because he and his family believed in sweetened dish¬ 
water. For the lack of a spoon in the cup they wasted 
sugar enough to buy the wife a dress. Don’t laugh, 
you farmer—may be because you will not cut and 
soften your straw and stalks you lose feeding value 
which if sold in the form of hay would buy your 
daughter a piano ! 
