RECIPROCITY: WHY THE FARMER OBJECTS
Hughes, Hugh J.
Reciprocity: Why the Farmer Objects (How will the proposed Canadian reciprocity agreement affect the farmer? Will he be injured by its adoption? We present to the readers of La Follette'S the...
...I imagine we could do that now without any cut in the price of wheat...
...Bread with the order...
...26 Per cent, going to all others...
...Remember Our Winona speech and the aftermath, even unto the the elections that retired, for a season, our friend and co-worker the Honorable Jim Tawney, from the teeming political marts of Washington D. C, to the cool and sequestered shades of Winona, Minn., together with other concussions and rebounds too painful to mention...
...We raise wheat, most of it to use at home, and some to sell in foreign markets...
...And I for one, an eater of bread and also of beef, when I can afford the latter, sadly confess I do not know...
...And so the old idol with its smiling face, built upon Privilege, will fall, hurled into ruin by the beneficiaries of a System that has outlived its day...
...It costs the average farmer, counting land at $40—$50 per acre, $10.00 an acre to grow wheat...
...What will happen to us if our forty-per-cent...
...has to sell, without cheapening scarce anything he has to buy...
...Its methods circle the old orbit...
...What effect will it have on the farmer...
...Those who argue for Reciprocity assure us in one breath that it will cheapen food, in the same breath they assure us that it will not injure agriculture...
...live weight...
...What he will do remains to be seen, but that he will do something is as certain as day-dawn...
...Wherefore, throwing punctilious custom to the winds, let us tackle the High Cost of Living below the belt, and deal the spectre of Starvation a staggering blow by cheapening everything the farmer (40 per cent...
...The farmer has not spoken save as he has voiced his indignation through his agricultural papers and organizations...
...No, this is not an infant class...
...Now number One if you please...
...The questions are asked with a solemn visage, and no laughter in the sleeve...
...Under such conditions we would not buy until our own demand exceeded our supply...
...Ditto meats...
...Let me tell you...
...Having served faithfully without pay, he is discharged without notice...
...It assumes that the average, farmer actually got Dec...
...But these, we are reminded, are not farmers' prices...
...You are told in the daily press that the proposed pact is satisfactory to the farmers...
...Softly, good friend, I agree with you...
...I dunno sah...
...Obviously as long as we both are selling in a common market, that market will fix the price of our surplus product...
...We feel that this article will be deeply interesting to every reader, irrespective of profession.—Editor's Note...
...For 'wheat' in the foregoing discussion, substitute oats, barley, flax, live stock,—the staple cash crops of the Western tiller of the soil—and the argument holds...
...If he is perforce made, through Executive Enactment, a free-trader, he will see to it that the system is extended to apply to the things he of necessity buys as well as to the things he has to sell...
...The rest of the years are a series of "goose-eggs," so far as tariff benefits are concerned...
...It was written by an editor who knows what the farmer is thinking...
...A tariff for purposes of bunco only, the tariff on grain has soothed the troubled spirits of the man who didn't quite see where his share of the protective benefits came in...
...However to draw together the scattered threads of this argument, let us not prophesy, but assert, or shall we rather say guess...
...There was once a man who had a goose that laid, daily, a golden egg," the story repeats...
...Touches your pocket, and straightway you are dead against it...
...The Baker Is Seen BUT THE High Cost of Living: it must be within reach, if we only can smoke it out...
...It costs Dalrymple $8.41 an acre, including depreciation and interest on money invested, to grow, harvest, and market an acre of wheat—and he has no long haul to market...
...When he harvested his grain with a binder that sells in Russia for less than it does in Wimbledon, N. D., and pitched it into the cylinder of the threshing machine with a fifty cent fork, the duplicate of which retails in Norway for thirty cents...
...74 equals 100% Now I submit that if the tariff on breadstuffs and meat is removed it will require close figuring to locate the benefit to the consumer of "Ham and...
...We reckons the bread free, and charges all the expenses to the meat and vegetables, sah...
...We are living in parlous times, my brethren, when the nation to-day does not know wherewithal the nation tomorrow shall be fed...
...Has the Tariff Helped the Farmer REMOVING THE TARIFF on grain is taking from the farmer something he never had—a protection that exists 'de jure' as our shining legal lights say, and not 'de facto.' Shall I explain...
...all he sells is hereafter to be on a free trade basis...
...There are others better informed, who know that he will not...
...3 Northern grade, five to ten cents per bushel off to the farmer...
...Here is the story told graphically: The cost line has perhaps shifted during the years, but not to any large extent...
...Reciprocity: Why the Farmer Objects (How will the proposed Canadian reciprocity agreement affect the farmer...
...Suppose the prices do fall, it means a cut in profits to the farmer, without any appreciable effect upon living cost...
...At any rate the raw stuff out of which the paper is made will be cheaper to the paper trust...
...A lemon is a lemon still though it bears the stamp of Reciprocity and has the sanction of the endorser of the "best ever" tariff and the plaudits of the beef trust, the milling concerns, the wheat-line railroads, and the man on the street who has not stopped to figure out what he is going to get out of it...
...says the Consumer, that H. Cabot Lodge myth...
...This makes the holder of the Reciprocity pact bag somewhat impatient, and may lead to the results previously darkly hinted at...
...What you are told is a lie...
...That five cents a bushel represents net profit, and there are many cents below it before you come to the no-profits line, and below that the business-like farmer will decline to go, even though you, my friend, and I, want bread ever so badly...
...1. prices, whereas the farmer usually has to sell direct from the machine, when prices are at a bottom level, so you will see the chances favor the table of prices rather than the farmer...
...The bread in our sandwich weighs 2.1 ounces...
...Is not that clear...
...It may effect an actual lowering of prices of farm produce, thereby lessening the purchasing power of forty per cent, of our population, or second, it may simply prevent those prices from mounting any higher, while land, labor, machinery and living as a whole are on the upward trend, in which case the same ultimate effect is more slowly produced...
...He has recently awakened to the fact that the grain tariff was for purposes of party fealty only...
...Practically all he buys is taxed...
...Suppose, which never by any chance happens, that our 25 cent per bushel tariff cut in price carried through to the counter, we could then buy the 54 loaves at wholesale for $2.45...
...Let us hope that the Canadian Reciprocity will be adopted...
...Chalk up one big emphatic "One" on the tallyboard of your imagination, George...
...Consumer himself, and you and I are sixty-per-cent...
...Suppose they don't fall, what effect will such a result have on the "high cost of living...
...Moreover, political strategy...
...Let me try...
...Perhaps...
...Now there is a record extant of what he has got, or rather what he might have got for his wheat, had he held it each year until Dec...
...Five cents on a bushel is seventy cents on the average acre...
...However, it is in error...
...he may rip the party of his fathers wide open by a demand for reciprocal Reciprocity—a reciprocity that gives him free clothing and groceries, for instance—or led on by the benefits of his enforced conversion to the Free Trade standard, he may join the Beef Trust in its laudable efforts to tear down the remaining tariff wall...
...2 Northern into No...
...The tariff on wheat did help the American farmer a bit that season...
...Possibly we shall find a material saving in the butter, or in the ham...
...The Ultimate Result . "C1HEER NONSENSE...
...Once the walls of Protection begin to crumble, no man can tell just when the Altar and the Idol itself will fall...
...The answer is, of course, that in this particular instance he is the 'goat...
...Do not be too sure about that...
...Stopping on the way back to the office, we find that ham is worth 17 cents a pound, butter 28 cents, and flour, the best patent, $5.10 a barrel...
...An apparent exception to this occurred in 1904—the "rust" year—when the poor milling quality of the American wheat made it especially desirable that Canadian wheat be imported...
...It gets its cue from the Interests, and the Interests in this case are the Beef Trust, the Milling Trust, the Railroads, together with minor stars in the galaxy of Big Business...
...Question Number Two, answer, please...
...I wish I did...
...Figure it out for yourself...
...Let us go farther...
...The returns based upon local prices, would be something less—from five to ten per cent, less for the wheat and pork...
...It is hard to see just where cheap wheat to the farmer would mean cheap bread to the Mythical Consumer...
...Taking the whole value per acre and cost of production since 1884 up to the present, the showing is not an inspiring one for the wheat grower, is it...
...The farmer, as I have heretofore remarked, is a forty-per-cent...
...So we go to the baker...
...Naturally too as long as we have wheat by the millions of bushels to sell we will not buy of our competitor unless there are clear advantages in milling grade...
...But his profits, as yet purely speculative, are removed by the fraternal agreement that readjusts the old maxim to read "What's the farmer between friends...
...The head waiter is not busy...
...To undo which, and to restore Our-self to popular favor, particularly in the West, that Land of the Free and Home of the Brave...
...Sharpen your pencils and figure on the sole of your shoe...
...The Tariff a Local Issue "THERE YOU GO...
...Suppose free wheat, the price quotations remain the same, but arbitrary grading throws No...
...He mined his phosphorous and his nitrogen and his potash and sold them for nothing, he gave his labor and that of his family, and marketed it cheaper than such labor can profitably be sold to any bidder, and the five cents per bushel a cut in grades might easily make is no small matter to our farmer friend who is charging interest on the valuation of his land, paying himself a tolerable wage, and trying to show a clear balance sheet at the end of the year...
...Query...
...Most assuredly...
...The daily press neither understands the farmer, nor does it attempt to do so...
...I propose to have it...
...Reckon wheat at one dollar a bushel—several cents higher than it is on the farm, butter at 28 cents, and pork at $7.60 per cwt...
...where it hits you "BUT THAT doesn't trouble us," says the mythical Consumer...
...The Farmer Is Not Heard PROPHECIES are dangerous things, particularly if one is young and has hopes of worldly preferment...
...Come down to Proctor's with me...
...Here it is...
...consumer of all we Americans produce...
...in the cost of wheat and all that cheapening of the High Cost of Living was carried along until you got the undivided benefit, it would cheapen your sandwich .075 of one cent...
...I think you are correct Number one, but let us make sure if we can...
...FAR BE IT FROM ME, who am but a near-farmer, to invoke the inviolability of the Tariff as against those who would give us Reciprocity— with a capital R—with the farmers in the highly diverting role of holder of the bag...
...Let us see how much of the five cents goes to the farmer...
...And that is the maximum benefit claimed for the tariff taking dollar wheat as the standard...
...To be sure...
...find the farmers' evil influence on the high cost of living...
...We now have a standard fair to the farmer and fair to the eater of sandwiches...
...The farmer cannot afford to sell cheap wheat, and in the end, if we persist in asking him to do so, he will quit raising it...
...There are some who say that he will...
...Waiter, between you and me and the hitching post, how much does this bread cost George and me...
...the case of the ham sandwich H.ERE IS A HAM SANDWICH, bought in a restaurant of the middle class, where they serve a regular twenty-five cent meal, where the seven-dollar-a-week shop girl and the fifty-dollar-a-month clerk go for lunch...
...If there is any fount of misrepresentation gushing forth a more clear absence of fact, it has so far failed of the writer's observation...
...Shall we not protect our own...
...Here wave the Star Spangled Banner and sing "My Coupon, 'Tis of Thee") we will obliterate, level down, do away with, and abolish that part of the Tariff speciously framed and theoretically in favor of the farmer, lest it should, under the pressure of existing and forthcoming demands for the raw materials of food, finally and at last effectually protect him from the pauper wheat, flax, barley, et cetera, of the Canadian Northwest—an event highly to be deplored, lest, with the exhilirating sensation of a bank draft instead of a mortgage in his pocket, he wander into political ways devious and alien, and vote for a Socialist for President, or worse yet, for a Democrat, who might be elected...
...Ditto other grains and live stock...
...1. It is published by the Department of Agriculture at Washington, D. C, therefore it is official...
...If it does, it can do so in one of two ways, either of which is detrimental to agriculture...
...Perhaps...
...Some such limpid reasoning as this must have preceded the negotiations whereby, through treaty, the Executive proposes to give the American people reciprocity with our Lady of the Snows, and hand to the American farmer, artlessly concealed in the orange wrapper of industrial interchange, the lemon of free trade in agricultural products...
...And yet the blow at high prices is aimed directly at wheat, oats, barley, flax, cattle, hogs, sheep—the staple cash products of the farm...
...Customer gets a cramp in the pocket book...
...A Choice of Views WE ARE CONFRONTED with what the canny Scot would call a "kittle pint...
...Tabulated the showing is as follows: I pay ........................$.05 Wheat..........003 Farmer gets Butter..........004 Pork...........006 013 Per cent of sandwich going to the farmer...
...Good will result from this pact—the good that comes from the disruption of an economic system that benefits from the top down, and not from the bottom, up...
...More economical than paper and serves to remind one that the latter commodity will be cheaper after a while—perhaps...
...Leaving the answer to this question as both obvious and interesting, we get, of course, cheap bread, meat, et cetera...
...We all want what you want...
...He may merely voice his disapproval by retiring a few more statesmen and a certain excellent golf-player to private life...
...Ditto flaxseed, out of which comes the linseed oil we will have occasion to buy next spring...
...But certain facts point to a certain conclusion, and there I purpose to point out briefly as we go along together down these cheerful columns, speaking in a homely tongue, lest our words trip us up...
...But it would mean if we bought a single loaf, a trifle less than half a cent on the price of each loaf —and the baker always takes the extra half cent, you know...
...Let us proceed...
...dear friends, political strategy...
...when he hauled his crop to market in a tariff-taxed wagon, and hauled home again tariff protected coal, meat, clothing, and family necessities, he believed he had something coming to him some day—and verily it has come...
...That makes a total of 47 pounds, some four of which represent water...
...what the farmer gets ABUSHEL OF WHEAT, if ground into flour, will produce something like 54 loaves of bread, each weighing 14 ounces...
...We present to the readers of La Follette'S the following article, which presents ably and interestingly the point of view of the progressive farmer...
...Yet this extra half cent which you do not get, figured back to the farmer, means in round numbers $170,000,000 less for him to spend in the things you produce...
...Cheap farm products, with consumers' prices at their present high level, means agricultural depression, the large estate, the tenanted farm, and a declining agriculture...
...If, on the other hand no appreciable effect on agricultural prices is observable, then where is the benefit of the Executive pact...
...Either Free Trade in agricultural products will reduce the cost of living, or it will not...
...For forty and more years he has hewn and shapen and lifted into place the vast edifice of Protection, to be told at last when all seems complete, that there is not even a loft over the kitchen reserved for him...
...how he got along OF COURSE he made some money, else how came his houses and barns and big red automobiles...
...The system is no wiser now than then...
...So another basis of reckoning is necessary...
...And is not the Beef Trust in these and other foreign parts, our own dear child...
...Taking something from nothing is easy—when you know how...
...It might, in several ways...
...First...
...No cheapening of grain, no effect upon cost of living...
...What I want is cheaper bread, and by heck...
...The question is: Will we get it...
...There will be some bad jolts to our industrial, social, and economic machine before that cause works its logical effect, but the effect will be produced, given the impelling cause...
...Where the Farmer Loses Out HAVING WAITED for the tariff to come into effect when the tables turned and we began to need bread, the farmer saw his profits within sight—saw tariff-taxed wheat crossing the Canadian line, and his own profits enhanced by the aforesaid tariff...
...Now if tariff legislation could effect a cheapening of 25 per cent...
...Canada raises wheat, some to use at home, and most of it to sell in foreign markets...
...he now realizes that, when for the first time in history it begins to act in his favor, he is to be denied its benefits...
...Nice place, Proctor's—fifty cent lunch—soup, meat, two vegetables, a relish, desert and a cup of coffee...
...The ham sandwich costs five cents...
...what if prices fall THIS IS NOT admitting that they will, but suppose that the the prices of cereals and meat do fall, due to the importation of Canadian cattle and grain...
...How long do you think it will be before the Beef Trust will call for "reciprocity" in cattle with Mexico and with the Argentine...
...Following exactly the same course of reasoning we arrive at the fact that the three tenths of one ounce of butter for which the farmer received 20 cents a pound brought him the sum of four-tenths of one cent, and the ham—the most valuable part of the sandwich,— brought the farmer six-tenths of one cent after paying all shipping expenses...
...Will he stand for it...
...do you say...
...Having been ducked himself, he will give the other Ultimate Consumer boys—who are also Producers—a Free Trade ducking...
...Our 54 loaves of 14 ounce bread are ready for sale at 5 cents per loaf—$2.70, is it not...
...Call him over...
...Three cheers for Taft and Reciprocity...
...A simple calculation shows that on this basis the wheat grower has a share in our five cent investment represented by $.003...
...It is made of bread, butter, ham—agricultural products, all of them...
...The Restaurant Keeper's Viewpoint YOU ARE NOT yet convinced...
...Producers...
Vol. 3 • March 1911 • No. 10
