The Farmers' Burdens

THE FARMERS' BURDENS.
The Comments of a Southern Journal on an Opinion from the West.
The Kansas City Times says the farmers are no longer rich. They no longer have more than they can spend. In our once prosperous agricultural districts they are reduced almost to poverty.
In the eyes of the public farming has ceased to be the pleasant and profitable occupation of a former generation. In the older states it is a common thing to see farm houses going to decay, while in the new states dugouts and shanties are the rule. Everywhere may be seen the track of the loan agent and the blight of the mortgage.
The fact cannot be disguised that the farmers of the west are growing poorer every day, while the farmers of the south are seriously hampered in their progress. And yet this is all wrong. Agriculture should be the great source of the nation's prosperity, and when it decays the entire country will suffer.
It will not do to say that the farmers are idle and thriftless. They work hard. They are economical. They make the best of their hard lot. It is easy enough to explain the present state of affairs. Our farmers pay a heavy tax on nearly every article they buy, and nearly all they sell must go at prices fixed in the markets where the producers of the world compete for buyers. If a protective tariff puts money in the pockets of those who are engaged in manufacturing pursuits, it does not compel them to pay higher prices for agricultural products. The value of everything raised on a farm is largely determined by the price of our surplus supply in foreign markets. Farmers, therefore, when they sell have to compete with the producers of the world, and when they buy they have to pay an exorbitant tax to a privileged class on our eastern seaboard, for those whose benefit the McKinley bill was enacted.
In conclusion, our Kansas City contemporary declares that our farmers under existing conditions are mere serfs, and will never be any better off until we have tariff reform. These are stubborn facts, but tariff reform is not a sufficient remedy. We must overhaul our entire systems of finance and taxation. We must have a currency that will meet the wants of this rapidly developing country, and we must have local banks of issue that will not outlaw the farmers by rejecting real estate as a security for loans. When we get all these reforms we may expect to see the agricultural interest enjoy its olden prosperity, but not before.--Atlanta Constitution.

A Hint to Railroads.
The Listener saw a sight the other day which has moved him to make a protest. On the Back Bay, at the crossing of the Boston and Albany and Providence railroad tracks, a gang of men were engaged in burning up a lot of railroad ties. Evidently the ties made capital fuel, for the fire was crackling merrily. They were evidently disused but by no means rotten. Of course the railroad would not venture to keep ties in place on the roadbed until they were rotten. The Listener has often seen ties burning on the tracks near the city itself, and actually within a short stone's throw of the homes of the poor people who would have been only too glad to relieve the railroad corporation of every stick of their disused ties at an hour's notice.
Did it ever occur to you, Messrs. Railroad Superintendents or Directors, or whoever is responsible for this destruction of good fuel, that your old ties would give at least a little warmth to a good many households that have had none, or next to none, through all this cruel weather? There would be no need of advertising for people to come and take the ties; every laborer among the number who work at the task of destroying them must know families who would be glad enough to get them. The railroads could actually save money by giving the wood away.--Boston Transcript.