OUR FARMERS.
The test of profitable farming is the state of the account at the end of the year. Under free trade the evidence multiplies that the English farmer comes to the end of the year with no surplus, often in debt, bare and discontented. Their laborers rarely know the luxury of meat, not over sixteen ounces per week,[[87]] and never expect to own a rood of the soil.
But under the protective policy the American farmer holds and cultivates his own land, has a surplus at the end of the year for permanent investments or improvements, and educates and brings up his sons and daughters with the advantages and comforts of good society. There are more American houses with carpets than in any other country of the world. I believe it will not be disputed that the down-trodden tillers of the soil in Great Britain are not well fed; that they are coarsely underclad, and that for lack of common-school culture they would hardly be regarded as fit associates here for Americans who drive their teams afield, or for the young men who start in life as laborers upon farms. The claim that free trade is the true policy of the American farmer would seem to be, therefore, a very courageous falsehood.
It is an unfortunate tendency of the age that nearly one-half of the population of the globe is concentrated in cities, often badly governed, and sharply exposed to extravagance, pauperism, immorality, and all the crimes and vices which overtake mankind reared in hot-beds. I would neither undervalue the men of brilliant parts, nor blot out the material splendor of cities, but regret to see the rural districts depopulated for their unhealthy aggrandizement. Free trade builds up a few of these custom-house cities, where gain from foreign trade is the chief object sought, where mechanics, greater in numbers than any other class, often hang their heads, though Crœsus rolls in Pactolian wealth, and Shylock wins his pound of flesh; but protection assembles artisans and skilled workmen in tidy villages and towns, details many squadrons of industry to other and distant localities, puts idle and playful waterfalls at work, opens, builds up, and illumines, as with an electric light, the whole interior of the country; and the farmer of Texas or of New England, of Iowa or of Wisconsin, is benefited by such reinforcements of consumers, whether they are by his side or across the river, at Atlanta or South Bend, at Paterson or at Providence. The farmers own and occupy more than nineteen-twentieths of our whole territory, and their interest is in harmony with the even-handed growth and prosperity of the whole country.
There is not a State whose interests would not be jeopardized by free trade, and I should like to dwell upon the salient facts as to Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, Alabama, Illinois, and many other States, but I shall only refer to one. The State of Texas, surpassing empires in its vast domains, doubling its population within a decade, and expending over twenty million dollars within a year in the construction of additional railroads, with a promised expenditure within the next fifteen months of over twenty-seven millions more, has sent to market as raw material the past year 12,262,052 pounds of hides, 20,671,639 pounds of wool, and 1,260,247 bales of cotton. Her mineral resources, though known to be immense, are as yet untouched. Her bullocks, in countless herds on their way to market, annually crowd and crop the prairies from Denver to Chicago. But now possessed of a liberal system of railroads, how long will the dashing spirit of the Lone Star State—where precious memories still survive of Austin, of Houston, of Rusk, and of Schleicher—be content to send off unmanufactured her immense bulk of precious raw materials, which should be doubled in value at home, and by the same process largely multiply her population? With half as many in number now as had the original thirteen, and soon to pass our largest States, wanting indefinite quantities of future manufactures at home, Texas should also prepare to supply the opening trade with Mexico, in all of its magnitude and variety, and far more worthy of ambition than in the golden days of Montezuma.
No State can run and maintain railroads unless the way-stations, active and growing settlements and towns, are numerous enough to offer a large, constant, and increasing support. The through business of long lines of railroads is of great importance to the termini, and gives the roads some prestige, but the prosperity and dividends mainly accrue from the local business of thrifty towns on the line of the roads. It is these, especially manufacturing towns, which make freight both ways, to and from, that free trade must ever fail to do, and while through freights, owing to inevitable competition, pay little or no profit, the local freights sustain the roads, and are and must be the basis of their chief future value. Without this efficient local support, cheap and rapid long transportation would be wholly impracticable.
The Southern States, in the production of cotton, have possibly already reached the maximum quantity that can be cultivated with greatest profit, unless the demand of the world expands. A short crop now often brings producers a larger sum than a full crop. The amount of the surplus sent abroad determines the price of the whole crop. Production appears likely soon to outrun the demand. Texas alone has latent power to overstock the world. Is it not time, therefore, to curtail the crop, or to stop any large increase of it, while sure to obtain as much or more for it, and to turn unfruitful capital and labor into other and more profitable channels of industry? The untrodden fields, where capital and labor wait to be organized for the development of Southern manufactures and mining, offer unrivaled temptations to leaders among men in search of legitimate wealth.
The same facts are almost equally applicable to general agriculture, but more particularly to the great grain-growing regions of the West. A great harvest frequently tends to render the labor of the whole year almost profitless, whenever foreign countries are blessed with comparatively an equal abundance. The export of corn last year in October was 8,535,067 bushels, valued at $4,604,840, but the export of only 4,974,661 bushels this year brings $3,605,813. An equal difference appears in the increased value of exports of flour. A much larger share of crops must be consumed nearer home, if any sure and regular market is to be permanently secured. The foreign demand, fitful and uncertain as it is, rarely exceeds one-twentieth of even the present home requirements, and the losses from long transportation, incident to products of great bulk, can never be successfully avoided except by an adequate home demand.
Farmers do not look for a market for grain among farmers, but solely among non-producing consumers, and these it is greatly to their interest to multiply rather than to diminish by forcing them to join in producing or doubling crops for which there may be an insufficient demand. Every ship-load of wheat sent abroad tends to bring down foreign prices; and such far-off markets should be sought only when the surplus at home is excessive or when foreign prices are extraordinarily remunerative.
The wheat regions of the West, superb as they undoubtedly are, it is to be feared, have too little staying character to be prodigally squandered, and their natural fertility noticeably vanishes in the rear unless retained by costly fertilizers almost as rapidly as new fields open in front. Some of the Middle States as well as the New England, though seeking fertilizers far and near, already look to the West for much of their corn and bread; and there is written all over Eastern fields, as Western visitors may read, the old epitaph, “As we are now so you may be.” It will take time for this threatened decadence, but not long in the life of nations. The wheat crop runs away from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, and sinks in other localities as it looms up in Minnesota, Nebraska, and Dakota. Six years of cropping in California, it is said, reduces the yield per acre nearly one-half.