A Rhyme And A Moral

"Bah! Bah! black sheep. Have you any wool?" "Yes, I have, ma6ter, Three batrs full, One for the master One lor the dame, One for McKinley, Who cries in the Jane." This country is harvesting the best crops in its history, if we except the cotton erop. For the year just closed the erop was 8,625,000 bales, an excess of 1,340,000 bales over the highest previously recorded. It is not probable these figures will be equaled for several years. Yet we will have at least 5,500,000 bales of cotton to sell in foreign markets. We will haYe f rom 200,000,000 to 250)000,000 bushels of wheat for which we must find foreign purchasers. In addition, we will have tobáceo and meat to sell in large quantities. If we had no foreign markets at all, or if they were even partially closed to us, the large surplus would have to be mar keted at home, and the resultwould be the lowest range of prices ever known. Fortunately now, as in 1877 1878, and 1879, a combination o events works for the prosperity o the American people. While we are gathering these fruits of the field while with us the husbandman is rewarded abundantly, in Europe the rains have fallen at unpropitious periods, and drouth and storm have laid waste their fields. To avoic famine, Russia forbids the exporta tion of grain, and leaves America in ündisputed possession of the markets. Hunger undermines the tariff wall of Germany and meat and ""grain from America wil be eagerly demanded. Englanc seeks food always where she can get it cheapest, believing that a na tion is enriched, not by what it sends away, but by what it receives in exchange. The one difficulty in the way of a fair and profitable exchange o: these vast crops is the American tariff. The one nation that, by its laws, places an embargo on its own grain trade, is America. The farm ers may, under the McKinley law send wheat to Europe, but thev can not exchange this wheat for other articles, for clothing, for instance, for household furniture, for tools and implements of agriculture, except on the pain of forfeiture o: one-third of the return cargo. We will send abroad 250,000,000 bushels of wheat. For it we will receive say L250,000,000. This will be invested in clothing, in carpets, in linens, in furniture, in chinaware, in tinware, in hardware, etc, etc. When these cargoes reach New York they are seized by Federal officers. They are weighed and measured and valued, and the owners are compelled to pay in duties 50 per cent. of the value of the cargoes. This will be a tax of $125,000,000. In other words, the farmers raust send abroad three bushels of wheat in order to get in return the exchange value of two. Last year the expórts of cotton amounted to 5,800,000 bales. Onethird of the return cargoes were confiscáted under the plea of protection. Of last year's cotton erop, twothirds were exported, one-third was consumed at home. It required all the cotton sold to American milis to pay the duties on the return cargoes taken in exchange for the 5,800,000 bales sold abroad. Here we have an object lesson illustrating the injustice and the oppression of our whole system of protection, so-called. The farmer, he pays the freight; he pays the tax; he pays the pensions. To do this he has to cultivate three acres in order to have for his own use the product of two. It is the most stupendous system of iniquity and oppression to which any free people ever submitted, and yet the farmer who works three days for two days' wages, is expected to walk upto the polls in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, and in the Great Northwest and vote for McKinley and Protection. Down with the war tariff! - Henry Watterson in Louisville Courier Journal.