A Better Way

A BETTER WAY.

The American Society of Equity of Indianapolis has issued a bulletin to the farmers of the United States demanding an increase in the price of wheat, arguing that the minimum price of wheat should be $1 a bushel and urging the farmers not to sell for less than $1. The Society was organized a year ago, with that city as a national headquarters, to maintain higher prices for farm products by co-operation of the farmers of the country, and this is the first formal demand for increase in prices. The bulletin reasons that because of the low visible supply of wheat and the high cost of production, owing to high prices for most other commodities, $1 at Chicago is only an equitable price for wheat.

It may be heresy, but it may be suggested to the Equity Society that there is another and easier and a more certain way for the farmers to accomplish the result aimed at, and it does not involve the risk and almost certain failure of attempting to imitate the manufacturing trusts. In the first place the price of wheat is fixed in Liverpool and not in Chicago, and if we ceased entirely to export the chances are that the price in Chicago would not go to one dollar. There are too many farmers and they are too widely scattered to form a trust, and even if they were not they are not protected by the tariff rates, as are the manufacturers. The latter can get together, form a trust and force the prices as high as the tariff wall at any time they choose. The farmers can do no such thing. The manufacturers have thus forced up the prices that the farmer must pay for manufactured goods an average of about 40 per cent since the Dingley tariff bill became a law. The prices of many articles, such as barb wire, wire nails, tin plate, window glass, etc, have been forced up 100, 200 or 300 per cent in our markets, though sold at very low prices to foreigners.

If tariff duties on trust products were taken off, manufactured goods which now sell for $1 would sell for 60 cents. The farmer could then buy as much with his bushel of wheat selling at 75 cents in Chicago as he would get if he could force the price of wheat up to $1 while paying the present high trust prices for his goods.

It is entirely feasible for the farmers, by voting for no tariff on trust goods, to reduce the cost of what they have to buy. It is not at all feasible for them to get together long enough to artificially raise the price of wheat 30 or 40 per cent. The farmers are the backbone of protection in this country, although, as a learning in this country, late Ben Butterworth- said in 1890: "The manufacturers and the trusts get the protection and the profits of the tariff; the farmer gets the husks and the humbug." How much longer will the farmer continue to buy republican gold bricks?