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     At 8 o'clock P.M., October 1st, 1874, at the First Baptist church, in Omaha, Professor Perry was introduced to the audience by J. Sterling Morton, President of the Nebraska State Board of Agriculture, and proceeded as follows:

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

     For the first time in my life I find myself west of the Missouri river. From the banks of the Connecticut, on which I was born, and the banks of the Hoosac, on which I reside, to the west bank of the Missouri, on which we are now congregated, stretches a long line; but it all lies in one country, under one national government, and, so far from circumscribing this, is rather like a single plow-furrow drawn in one direction, only just in the middle of a vast field. Though so far from home, I am still at home; and the cordial welcome extended to me by your citizens, some of whom are old acquaintances, puts me entirely at my ease. The impressions that I have gained here, the astonishment that I have felt here, the promises I have seen here of future knowledge and wealth and power, will be best reported on at another time and before a more eastern audience.

     I have come a long journey at your invitation and at your expense to speak to you as farmers and as citizens. Unless you had thought that, as a political economist) I might have something to say that would prove of importance to you, you would not have taken the action you have taken; and unless I had supposed that I had something to say worth your while to hear and to ponder, I should not have responded to your call. In truth, I have something to say, and have come hither on purpose to say it. I bespeak for it your care and your candor. I bespeak your patience and your confidence. I may say some things that will seem to you strange, some things that may seem to you false, some things that may be contrary to your previous opinions and convictions; but I shall say nothing that I do not profoundly believe to he true, nothing that I am not willing to take complete responsibility for here and everywhere, nothing so far as you are concerned that does not seem to me to be practical and profitable and pressing. I speak to you as farmers especially, but also as citizens and men. It is a good thing to be a cultivator of the soil in such a noble region as this; it is a better thing to be a citizen of the state and of the nation; and it is the best thing of all to stand as a receiving and responding member of it in the mutual relations and sympathies and obligations of a society of men and women.

     My topic at this time, as already announced, is THE FOES OF THE FARMERS.

     I do not mean the natural and providential foes of the farmers, such as the grasshopper, the weevil and the drought; I mean those forms of public policy and political organization that are especially prejudicial to the farmers of this country as such, namely, paper money, protective tariffs, and party spirit. These three things are also prejudicial to all classes of the people, but upon none do they lie with so deadly a weight as upon the farmers. I shall give you the reasons for this as I proceed. I do not believe that the real interests of one class are antagonistic to the real interests of other classes. I believe that all legitimate interests are in harmony; that what is best for the farmers of this country is also best for the manufacturers of this country; and that what is best for the whole people as producers and consumers is also best for the state and national governments as the gatherers of taxes. I would not set class over against class, because in a large view the interests of both are identical; but the farmers are by far the largest class of people in the United States, and it is legitimate to inquire what it is that makes against them, what it is that retards their prosperity, and what it is that prevents them from exercising a controlling influence over the public policy of the United States.

     I turn to the national census of 1870, and I find that almost six millions of the people are directly engaged in agricultural labors, that is to say, speaking exactly, of all the persons in the United States reported as having occupations, 47.36 per centum, almost one-half of the whole, are agriculturalists; only 21.65 per centum are manufacturers and miners; just 21.47 per centum render professional and personal services; while only 9.52 per centum are engaged in trade and transportation. It is very nearly accurate to sex, that, of all the people of the United States who have anything to do, one-tenth are traders and transporters; two-tenths are, manufacturers and miners; another two-tenths render professional and personal services; while five-tenths are farmers. The farmers are thus considerably more than twice as numerous as any other class, and almost as numerous as all the other classes put together. As the families of farmers are probably more numerous on the average than the families of other classes, it is safe to say that more than one-half of the forty millions of people who to-day inhabit this land derive their sustenance directly out of the cultivated soil. Under these circumstances one would expect that the farmers would certainly influence greatly, if not completely control, the policy of these states and of this nation.

     But, as a matter of fact, we find that their influence has been exceedingly small. Not only have they not bent, as their numbers and importance fully

entitle them to do, the policy of the country in the direction of their own interests, they have not even prevented that policy from being bent in a direction exactly contrary to their interests. There were in 1870, 41,106 lawyers in the United States. I can count you one hundred of these lawyers, who have exerted more practical influence in the states and in the nation than the whole 6,000,000 farmers have exerted. There is no objection to raise to lawyers; they are a useful class of men; but there is decided objection to allowing a mere handful of them, representing another mere handful of powerful clients, to shape and mold the policy of 40,000,000 of people. That only is truly a republican form of government in which they who are entrusted with political franchises exert an influence somewhat proportionate to their numbers. The modern caucus is no friend to republican liberty; and the blind following at the polls of a mere party name is frill of danger. I have looked with approbation and with hope on the effort of the farmers of this country to organize themselves into one body with a view to promote their own interests as farmers and as citizens, and with a view to secure independently of the old parties and of all parties, the political influence that is pre-eminently their due. I do not, however, like the element of secrecy in any organization anywhere, and above all in such an organization as this, whose motives are open, whose justification is obvious, and whose ends ale good.
PRESENT AGRICULTURAL WEALTH.

     The property of the agricultural population in 1870 was valued at $11,124,558,747. This was strictly the agricultural wealth of the country at that time. Dividing this by the agricultural population of 5,922,471, we have an average property of $1,878 in the hands of each person, yielding probably a net yearly income of $360. At this rate each million of persons added to the agricultural population adds $I,878,000,000 to the national wealth. As the present yearly increase of this population is 82,432, an additional million of farmers will he gained every thirteen years. The ten interior states north of the Ohio river and on the upper lakes and upper Mississippi and Missouri, produced, in the year 1870, 812,151,925 bushels of grain, weighing more than 21,000,000 of tons. This immense product is annually increasing, so that, by the end of this century, or twenty-five years from now, these same ten states will probably produce forty millions tons of cereals a year. Thus we see that the farmers are the great wealth-producers of this country, and that agriculture is the broad and strong foundation of the national prosperity; and, consequently, that whatever in the way of public policy makes in favor of the farmers ought on that very account to be encouraged, and that whatever makes against them ought to be reprobated and abolished.

     There is an economical principle of much importance to which I must call your attention before I speak of those things that now bear so heavily against the interests of the farmers, namely this, that, in a natural state of things, a given quantity of an agricultural product tends, as time goes on, to buy more and more of any manufactured product. A load of hay, a bushel of wheat, a pound of cheese, all farm products whatever, tend constantly to buy more and more of cloth, of clocks, of cutlery, of all manufactured articles whatever. A pound of raw cotton, for example, will now buy three times as much of cotton cloth as the same would buy seventy years ago. The products of the farm are constantly becoming more valuable relatively to the products of the factory. There are three reasons for this first, machinery can be applied more completely in manufactures than in agriculture; second, division of labor can be carried further in manufactures than in agriculture; and, third, nothing can hasten the time during which the fruits of the earth mature, while the processes of manufacture can all be hurried up. The result is, that the price of the raw materials tends to approach the price of the finished goods made out of them, owing to the relatively less and less cost of manufacture. For the same reasons food products rise in their power to purchase clothing, furniture, and so on; it takes, for example, almost year by year, fewer and fewer bushels of corn to buy, a good watch, a good plough, a good sewing machine; and thus we see that there is in wrought into the very framework of things a provision by which the masses of mankind, who have always been the tillers of the soil, may continually rise in a scale of comforts as the years roll on. This one law of political economy is the physical law of progress for the masses.

     Farmers have another natural advantage that also rests back upon an economical law. Unlike the loom or the mowing machine, each of which can do one thing only, the soil is adapted to produce several kinds of crops; and if the principal crop is overabundant and cheap, that very circumstance opens up a better market for some subsidiary crop or product. If people can buy their wheat cheaper than before, then they will have, other things being equal, more money to spend on butter or cheese or vegetables. The subsidiary crops bear a high price, just because the principal crop bears a low price. It seems to me that the farmer should always calculate to have something to sell besides that on which his main strength is put, because he thereby increases his chances, not merely numerically, but also economically. There is a great law that underlies this, although it is ill understood and worse practiced on. Cheaper wheat means dearer eggs, for the demand for eggs is thereby increased. Cheaper corn means dearer butcher's meat, because people can now afford to eat more fresh meat and will buy it. Natural laws,

believe it, gentlemen, befriend the tillers of the soil. Natural laws, if left unimpeded, if intelligently made use of, lift, like a great lever, to elevate and enrich the masses.

     But the short-sighted selfishness of certain men, forgetting that the welfare of each is always best found in the welfare of all, throws impediments and obstructions across the path of natural laws. Men undertake by legislation to redistribute the rewards of industry. They undertake to promote artificially their own special interests, and become blind to the potent fact that they cannot do this without infringing on the interests of others. They try to reverse natural tendencies, to make water run up hill, to create artificial markets, to make a promise to pay the same thing as the pay itself and to do various other things by law, --all which results in a dead loss. As the farmers are always the most numerous class in the community and the least acquainted with tricks, so also are they always the heaviest sufferers from these freaks of legislation. They are like the ass that carries most of the burden and eats least of the hay. The more natural and free the general state of things the better it is for the farmers and for everybody else; while the more of law, and the more of restraint, and the more of regulation, and the more of things artificial and not real the worse in the long run for everybody, and particularly for farmers.

     The greatest foe the farmers of this country have had for the past dozen years has been the paper money. Some of you have suffered fearfully this year from the devastations of the grasshoppers; I would not belittle your losses, for they have been great, and they moved me to pity; but the swath of your grasshoppers has been comparatively a narrow swath, and the losses, though great, have been local and not national; but the swath of the greenback-grasshoppers has been a wide swath, and the losses have been national and not local. I hold in my hand a silver dollar. It is a long time since you have all seen one. You all seem to be as glad to see it as if it were an old friend. In truth, it is an old friend, whom you have unwisely discarded, but who is just as ready to serve you faithfully as he ever was. This dollar is a reality. There is no sham about it. There is nothing mysterious about it. There is nothing magical about it. It is just so much silver metal stamped, but the stamp adds only a slight fraction to the value. It took honest labor to get this silver out of the earth, refine, alloy, and coin it, and therefore it is just the thing to help exchange other things that have cost honest labor. This dollar is just like a bushel of wheat, it has cost something, it is adapted to a human want, and therefore it is good for something. Labor for

labor is the law of exchange, and therefore the dollar that has cost labor is the only honest dollar. It is the only dollar about which there is no trick. It is the only dollar that defrauds nobody. It is a real equivalent. It is indeed only a tool to help exchange other things, but it is an honest tool. We take it only to part with it again, but when we take it we get an equivalent for what we give, and when we part with it we give an equivalent for what we get. Money is indeed a medium to exchange other things with, but it is of vast consequence that the medium be a good medium, a real medium, an intelligible medium, a medium that gives no advantage in the exchange to either party.

     Moreover, this silver dollar is the same thing year in and year out. The first silver dollar was coined in this country in 1794, just eighty years ago, and there was put into it 371 1/4 grains of pure silver, and that quantity of pure silver has been put into every silver dollar coined since so that, so far as the word dollar has depended on the silver coin of that name (and the same principles of course apply to the gold dollar), the word has had a steady significance. Men knew what they were talking about when they were bargaining in dollars. The thing dollar was a perfectly definite thing, and consequently the denomination dollar was a steady denomination. In values you reckon in dollars just as in grains you reckon in bushels. Gold and silver money give you steady denomination dollars to reckon in, to bargain by, to make calculations with. As things, dollars are a medium to exchange other things with as denominations, dollars are a measure of all other values whatsoever; and it is impossible to have steady denominations unless you have steady coin dollars behind them.

     I now hold in my hand a so-called paper dollar. It is not a dollar at all. It is only a promise to pay a dollar. Read it and you will see that it is so. "The United States will pay to Bearer one dollar." It carries the truth upon its very face. It is only a promise. Unfortunately also, it is a promise that has not been kept. It is an unfilled promise. Worse than that, it is a promise that the promiser refuses to fulfill. It is a broken promise. It is a dishonored promise. It is failed paper. Because it is an unfulfilled promise, it is of course worth less than that which it promises to pay. It is depreciated. It always has been depreciated, and it is depreciated now. It has been at times very much depreciated. Now, we have seen that the dollar as a thing is a medium helping exchange all other things, and also that the dollar as a denomination is a measure measuring all other values. But a measure of other things should itself be uniform. A bushel measure should he the same thing year in and year out--to buy and sell by. A yard-stick should he thirty-six inches lung, 110 more and no less, made of solid material that just holds its own, and not of india rubber, expansible and contractible, of one length today and another tomorrow, and nobody knows what length the next time.

     Why, this very dollar bill has fluctuated in value as compared with a gold dollar all the way from thirty-five cents up to ninety-three cents and a fraction and yet, we have been calling it a dollar all the while; we have been estimating our property in these dancing dollars; we have been buying when the dollar was at one value and selling when it has been at another; a bushel measure holding three peeks at one time, (our pecks at another time, and five peeks at another, is much more sensible than such a variable dollar, inasmuch as the bushel only measures grain, while the dollar, in the way of estimate, bargain, or sale, attempts to measure all values whatsoever. Even during the last year, 1873, there has been a variation of thirteen per cent. in the value of this paper dollar as compared with gold-from 106 1/2 to 119 1/2, and now almost back again. These constant fluctuations in paper money--and they are inherent in it unless the paper is instantly convertible into gold--make it abominable as a measure of value for everybody, and particularly for farmers.

     An inconvertible paper money always depreciated and always variable is worse for farmers than for almost anybody else; first, on the ground of its depreciation, and second, on the ground of its variability. As the value of money goes down, of course general prices tend to rise; but, unfortunately, they do not rise equally, nor in equal times; and sonic prices do not rise at all. For example, manufactured goods are quickest to experience a rise of price owing to a depreciation of the currency, because as a rule manufacturers are intelligent men and know the tendency of depreciated money to depreciate more, and thus hasten to insure themselves by putting a higher price on their goods. Wages rise much more slowly than goods, and never proportionally, because laborers do not well understand the situation, and never act quickly enough to insure themselves; and so they are always great sufferers from a depreciated money. Real estate rises slowly and irregularly, though at times tumultuously, under such money, and never on the average so high as manufactured goods rise; while agricultural products, some parts of which are exported to foreign countries, scarcely rise in price at all. The reason for this is, that the foreign gold price of that part which is exported largely determines the home price of the whole crop. There is only one wholesale price of wheat of the same grade in New York city, whether it is for export or whether it is for home consumption. The gold price in Liverpool determines the currency price in New York just so long as any wheat is exported; and the price in New York determines the price in Chicago and Omaha. If he premium on gold, in consequence of the use of a depreciated currency were as high as the average rise of prices arising from that depreciation, it

would not be so unjust; but it never is; gold is generally the cheapest thing a-going, so soon as an inferior currency has demonetised it and thrown it out of demand; and the whole consequence to farmers of the use of such a poor money is, that they have to pay a great deal more for all that they need to buy, and only get a very little more or nothing at all for all that they have to sell. Wheat was no higher in currency in 1873 than it was in gold in 1860; hams were not; lard was not; and salt pork was not. These are all exportable agricultural products whose current price is determined by the gold money of the world's great market. These things are what farmers sell. But harnesses, boots and shoes, hats and caps, blankets, all manner of clothing, were much higher in 1873 than they were in 1860. These manufactures are what farmers have to buy.

     The mischief of paper money is, that it affects different classes differently, and the largest class the most injuriously of all. It raises some prices much, other prices little, and still other prices not at all. Some prices are raised quickly and pretty regularly, and other prices are raised slowly and irregularly; so that the shrewd ones always take advantage of the ignorant ones, and the dishonest ones of the honest ones. The whole trick of the thing is a trick of distribution. So no men may get rich out of it, but this is always at the expense of other men. All classes of the people are ultimately great losers in wealth and reputation from the destruction of the stable measure of value--from disturbing the meaning of the word dollar. A huge crop of defaulters and of failures and of bursted speculations and of ruined reputations are always the harvest of that sowing. But farmers always have been and always will be the greatest losers from rag-money; partly for the reason that I have just given, namely, that what they have to buy is enhanced in price by it, while what they have to sell is not enhanced in price by it; and partly also, because it takes the farmer almost a year to realize on his crops, and he cannot meanwhile insure himself against the inevitable changes in the currency. The dollar in which he calculates the expenses of his crop is almost sure not to be the dollar in which he realizes the results of his crops. He cannot calculate. He cannot insure himself. He is helpless. The manufacturer who turns off his product weekly or monthly can vary his prices weekly or monthly, and save himself at least in part but the farmer, poor man, can do no such thing. lie is at the mercy of currency-tinkers. Because all our paper money is only a promise to pay, and an unfulfilled promise at that; because it is depreciated far below the solid money of the world's market; because it is variable in value from day to day and from year to year, unsettling the measure of all other values; because such money always stimulates speculation and hampers productive industry; because it corrupts public morals, undermines honesty, and makes defaulters, by destroying the

stable standard of value; because it unjustly distributes the rewards of industry, and cheats by wholesale the whole farming interests; and because such money has always been followed by these results wheresoever the experiment has been tried; I do hereby invite all farmers, east and west, all grangers, north and south, and all other, trite men, to unite with me in raising a cry that shall pierce the dulled ears of our rulers--AN HONEST CRY FOR AN HONEST DOLLAR.

     Next to the irredeemable paper money, the greatest obstacle to the prosperity of the farmers of the United States at the present moment is the so-called Protective tariff. This is not so bad as it was two or three years ago. It has been twice reduced and simplified in the fear that the honest indignation of the people would otherwise overthrow it altogether. But it is still bad enough

     It is still too bad. It is an old trick of the devil to take a good word and cover up with it an evil thing. Precisely this is done whenever the word "Protective" is applied to any tariff. The word protective is a good word when used in its legitimate sense. As signifying the security of person and property under a good government, it is an admirable word, and describes an indispensable thing; but as applied to a tariff the word is full of deceit, inasmuch as a tariff from its very nature cannot "Protect" anybody or anything. It can redistribute property by raising the prices of some things and depressing the prices of other things, but it cannot possibly raise the average prices of things in general. The trick of a protective tariff is just the same as the trick of paper money, the juggler's trick of putting existing things in strange places. A tariff creates nothing, produces nothing, adds nothing to existing wealth, but it distributes a great deal; and we must now examine this matter, especially in its bearing on the farmers.

     There is a town in Spain, situated in the narrowest part of the Strait of Gibraltar, on the southernmost point of the kingdom, which is named Tarifa, in honor of Tarif ibn Malik, a Berber chief who first landed here from Africa to reconnoitre the country, before the conquest of Spain by the Mohammedan Moors in the eighth century of our Lord. These. Moors occupied parts of Spain until the year of the discovery of America, 1492; and it was in the joy of her heart at the fortunate conquest of Grenada, their last stronghold, that Queen Isabella pledged her jewels to the enterprise of Columbus. The Moors built a castle at Tarifa which commanded the strait, and, during their domination in Spain, compelled all vessels passing through the strait to stop and pay "duties" to them, at such rates as they dictated; and from this custom thus originating at Tarifa, the word Tariff, derived from the name of that town, passed into the English and other European languages. The name

Tariff accordingly has not a very respectable origin, for those "duties" were nothing in the world but blackmail; they were the equivalent for no service rendered they conferred no benefits oil anybody except the robber-like receivers of the money; they were commanded and paid tinder compulsion and they took just so much out without return from the profits of the voyages of the ships which passed inward and outward through the strait.

     This origin of the name throws considerable light oil the nature of the thing. The modern tariff is a more complicated piece of machinery than the ancient Moorish one, but that ancient one gave the pitch to the tune that has been sung by all tariffs ever since. In one respect that tariff was more respectable than almost any other one ever laid,--it was perfectly simple and above hoard. There was no hypocrisy about it. The Moors wanted money, they were in a position to extort it, and they took it without compunction, apology, or pretenses of any kind. They did not pretend that they were "protecting" their victims while compelling them to pay tribute. It was indeed downright robbery, but it was done on the square. It was an open, straightforward, daylight performance; and in this point of view contrasts strongly, as we shall see shortly, with some modern tariffs, which pretend to benefit the people, while they really impoverish them. They are enacted in the name of patriotism and righteousness, but when one looks narrowly into them he sees that they have remained true at bottom to the spirit of their origin. The thing Tariff corresponds pretty well to the name Tariff.

     My old grandfather, whose boyhood fell in the time of the Revolutionary War, and who, consequently, never went to school but six weeks in his life, was a long-headed man nevertheless; and, sending three of his sons to college, of whom my father was one, the old farmer used sometimes to puzzle them in their vacations with problems which he had thought out at his leisure dead stand-still, used to draw up his chair, chalk in hand, to the immense hearthstone of the Worcester farmhouse, and say, "Boys, let's look into the natur on't!" That is an excellent rule in all training of the young, and in all discussions of any topic whatever but it is particularly in order in all discussions on the Tariff, because it is a subject easily confused, and the only way to walk through it safely is to be sure of the ground at every step, to look into the nature of the Tariff, to see what the motives are that lead men to get tariff duties put on, and to know what the consequences of such duties are, first to the goods on which they are laid, and second to the domestic products of the country in which they are laid. It is only because it has been my business for many years to do these very things in connection with successive classes of young men, that I venture to offer

myself as a guide to others, and especially to the farmers of the United States, in freely raising and fully answering the questions that belong to a tariff. What I myself may personally believe is a matter of very little consequence to anybody; but the grounds oil which I believe it are of the utmost consequence to everybody; and accordingly I now propose carefully and candidly to exhibit these grounds.

     At first sight a tariff seems to he nothing but a series of taxes on certain foreign goods. One may read a Tariff-Act from beginning to end, or begin in the middle and read both ways, and he will find nothing but demands repeated over and over again. "Thou shalt pay!" is the only word that a tariff utters or can utter. I will quote from the tariff now in force in this country, from a copy just received from the Secretary of the Treasury, as codified and re-enacted in June last, premising that the demands quoted are taken at random under the different schedules, and premising also that there are by actual count just 756 different rates of duty specified to be assessed upon different things and classes of things. For example

     Spool-thread--six cents per dozen, and 35 per centum.

     Slates and slate-pencils-35 per centum.

     Aniline dyes--50 cents per pound, and 35 per centum.

     Woolen shawls--50 cents per pound, and 35 per centum.

     Bunting--20 cents per square yard, and 35 per centum.

     Ready-made clothing--50 cents per pound, and 40 per centum.

     Webbing for shoes--50 cents per pound and 50 per centum.

     Hand-saws--$1 per dozen, and 30 per centum.

     Hair-pins (iron)--56 per centum.

     Druggets and bockings--25 cents per square yard, and 35 per centum.

     These, and all the rest, are demands. A tariff gives nothing. It takes. At its best estate, when most simple and honest, when there are no ''protective'' features in it, and no combination of specific and ad valorem duties on the same article, which is a device of" protection," as in some of the samples above given, a Tariff is a body of taxes, which the people have to pay. It is needful to note this distinctly at the outset; because there are some people who seem to think a tariff has a sort of creative power, that it is a positive, productive agent, that it can do good, that it has something to confer, - Not so. From the very nature of it, it pours nothing in but only takes -something out. Its sign is minus and not plus. It comes to take something from the people, and not to give anything to the people.

     The United States has been accustomed, from the beginning of the government under the present constitution, to raise the principal part of its revenue from tariff-taxes on imported goods. These taxes, of course,* raise the price

of the goods on which they are laid considerably more to the consumers than the amount of the tax itself, because the tax having to he advanced by the importer and the jobber, becomes larger from the profits on the money advanced, and frequently, also, the tax is made a cover or excuse, under which the consumer is charged a sum additional to the original tax and the profits on it. In the ultimate price of the taxed goods the consumer pays for the goods, pays the tax and all profits on the tax, and frequently also something additional under cover of the tax. There are decided objections, as we shall see, to raising a revenue in this way, even when the sole purpose in laying the duties is to get revenue, and when the duties are so adjusted as that the government really gets the most that the people have to pay in consequence of the duties. It is very plain, that whenever tariff-taxes are levied solely for the sake of the revenue to be derived from them, they ought to be laid in accordance with these fundamental principles:--first, on goods like tea and coffee, for example, which are wholly imported from abroad, and not also grown or made at home, otherwise the tax on the portion imported will also incidentally raise the price of the portion produced at home, and the people will have to pay more in consequence of the tax than the government gets in revenue, because the government only gets the tax on the part imported; second, if such taxes are to be productive, they must be levied at comparatively low rates, so as not to interfere essentially with the bringing in of the goods, or encourage smuggling at all, for in either of those cases the revenue from the importations would fall off; third, the taxes should be simple, so that every body can calculate their amount, and know how much of the price paid is owing to the tax; and it is just as much for the interest of the revenue as for that of the people that these taxes should be simple and honest, so that both importers and consumers calculating them before hand and knowing just how much the government is to take, will not be deterred from importing and buying by indefinite taxes; and fourth, it is agreeable to reason and has been found true in experience that it is not needful to levy even low rates on all articles imported, in order to realize as large revenue, but only on certain classes of them, so as to burden at as few points as possible the ongoing of international and profitable exchanges. Laid strictly on these four principles, which are very important, (I) on goods wholly imported, (2) at low rates, (3) at simple rates easily calculable, (4) on few classes of goods used by almost everybody, tariff taxes, though objectionable because falling unequally on rich and poor, are yet endurable, and are infinitely preferable to the tariff-taxes laid at present in this country.

     The English, after having violated for a long time every one of these four fundamental principles, now at length levy their tariff-taxes in strict accordance with them. I quote from the Monthly Report of the Bureau of Sta-

tistics of the United States for December, 1872, the following facts -All tariff duties in Great Britain are levied under nine heads, as follows "--1, Tobaccos; 2, Sugars; 3, Tea, Coffee, Chickory, and Cocoa; 4, Spirits; 5, Wines; 6 Dried Fruits; 7, Malt Products; 8, Table Ware; 9, Playing Cards. The taxes on these are all specific, that is, by the pound, gallon, dozen, and so on, so that anybody can calculate them; they are laid on things exclusively imported, or, whenever they are not, as in the case of spirits and malt, a corresponding excise tax is put on the domestic product, so that the government gets all that the people are compelled to pay as the result of the tariff-taxes; and while the duties in some cases may be said to be high, they are not so high in any case as to discourage the importation of the things on which they are laid. There is no tariff tax on any portion of the food of the people, except sugars; no tariff-tax on any article of clothing; and no tariff-tax on any raw materials or implements of production. This tariff of Great Britain. which can almost be written on the palm of one's hand, yielded in the fiscal year 1872, $101,630,000 of revenue, which was $3.20 for each man, woman and child in the United Kingdom. If there are to be tariffs at all, this is the only form of a tariff that even approaches towards justice and equality. 'taxes on stimulants and sugar, which yield almost the whole of British customs' revenue, are as unexceptionable as any taxes on commodities can he, because everybody uses them in some form, and because it is optionable with everybody how much of them they shall use. But we shall see that there is a more excellent way of taxation than this.

     The only just taxation is the taxation of incomes, because the net annual income is the exact gains of one's exchanges for the year; and as one can only pay his taxes out of the gains of his exchanges, the taxes ought to he proportioned to those gains. In a country organized as this is, in which there are municipal, state and national taxes, the local authorities ought to ascertain (and they would surely be able to ascertain) the net income of every person within their limits; and, taxing this income a certain fraction for local purposes, then report it to the state for another fraction of state taxation and then the state, reporting incomes to the nation, would be the medium, through its local officers, of collecting the third fraction for national purposes. Under this plan one set of local officers could gather all three kinds of taxes at one time in the cheapest possible way; custom houses and national internal revenue offices, with all their political abuses and pecuniary corruptions, could be abolished; it would make no difference where the property was located, whether in one's own state or elsewhere, or whence the income was drawn, whether from commodities or services or credits,--a man's domicile would mark the place of his taxation, and he would be taxed throughout exactly in proportion to his income. The more you think about this scheme

the better you will like it, and the fewer objections and more excellencies you will see in it; but I have no expectation of seeing it adopted in my day, because habits and prejudices are against it, political parties could make nothing out of it, and personal aggrandizements would have no chance in connection with it. The towns, counties, and states will probably continue to raise their taxes on real estate and corporations; and the nation will long continue to raise its revenue by excise and by tariff.

     But protective tariffs, so-called, will doubtless pass off from our statute books, as they have already passed out of the laws of Great Britain, Belgium, and largely also of France, because they are monstrously unjust; because by raising the price of the corresponding domestic article as well as of the foreign article taxed, they make the people pay in ostensible taxes a great deal more than the government gets; because, since all foreign trade is an exchange of commodities, just so far as a protective tariff keeps foreign goods out, it keeps in of necessity domestic goods that would gladly go out, and thus domestic producers lose their best and freely chosen market; because there is no general gain in taking money out of one set of pockets in the mostly vain hope of transferring it to another set f pockets; because, so soon as the systems becomes general, even manufacturers, who have to buy "protected" materials, soon have pay more protection than they get; and because, just so far as the importables are raised in value by protective tariff taxes, the exportables are depressed in value, thus throwing the vast losses of the system upon those who grow the exportables.

     No man in his senses can pretend that, protective tariff taxes are a direct benefit to farmers, since these taxes cannot increase the number of mouths that eat the farmer's produce, and since we do not import agricultural produce to any great extent to be raised in price by these taxes so that our farmers can sell their produce for more. On the other hand, it is perfectly plain that these taxes cause an enormous loss to farmers, because they grow the exportables that are necessarily depressed in value by just so much as the importables are enhanced in value by these taxes. According to the Bureau of Statistics, this country exported in 1873, $649,132,563. Of this immense sum, $449,328,590, or more than two thirds of the whole, was in strictly agricultural products. What we export buys all that we import; most that we export is farmer's produce; but so far as the imports are burdened with protective taxes, the farmer's exports are lessened in value, that is to say, they will not go so far, they will not buy so much. The farmer has to give more of his grain, his hams, his pork, his lard in order to get what he wants in return. It makes no difference that others come in to help him make this ex-

change. He is the real exchanger. These middle-men pay him less for his produce than they would otherwise gladly pay him. His exports suffer a loss in price equal to the gain in price of the imports caused by the protective taxes.

     Under protection the farmer suffers a double loss. He must submit to pay a great deal more for his supplies, whether these be foreign goods protectively taxed, or domestic goods raised in price by such taxes; and on the other hand, he cannot get nearly so much for what he has to sell. He is smitten on the one cheek, and then told by his masters in Pennsylvania and New England to turn the other also. He sends out more than two-thirds of all the exportables of the country, to have them shaved and whittled down in price and value by the artificial obstacles set up in our ports to prevent the return of the things which these exportables went forth to buy. If everything else that I say to-night be forgotten, I beg the farmers of the west to remember, that Protection cuts right into the heart of the value of their exportable commodities. Nay more; it sometimes prevents the export of these commodities altogether. The harvest in Europe this season has been unusually good the European demand for the bread-stuffs and other food products of our country is likly (sic) in consequence to be rather slack; already the price of wheat in New York and Chicago has felt the influence of this in a decline; still, if we were allowed by the tariff to take into this country freely the things which we want, of which foreigners have a surplus to sell, they would take now freely of its our surplus bread-stuffs, and we could afford to let them have them. In one word, we could export more food products at all times, with a greater profit on each transaction provided we could get our return cargoes free of protective taxes. We could sell more when the price was high, and longer after it became lower, than we can possibly do now. A protective tariff tends to stop the exports by making the imports dearer; and as the farmers furnish the bulk of the exports, the principal losses of the tariff fall upon them. As things now are it is true indeed that the gold price of produce in Liverpool determines the point of profitable export from New York; but a lower gold price in Liverpool would still allow a profitable export from New York, provided the gold price received here would buy more of all the commodities wanted by the farmers. Thus we see that Protection is a double foe to the farmers; it causes them to get less for what they raise and to give more for what they buy. Protection in its best estate is a short-sighted, narrow-minded, prejudice; whenever it passes beyond that, it becomes a consciously deceitful scheme of plunder, by which a few seek to enrich themselves at the expense of the many. Those many are mainly the farmers. They are abundantly able numerically and otherwise, if they will only unite to do it, to put down forever this monstrous injustice of legislation. I hope, that their rising intelligence, and the courage that is born of union, will seize this lying

fraud by the throat, and shake the life out of it, as a dog shakes the breath out of a woodchuck!

     Poor money and protective tariffs are natural allies; carry on their work of destruction in similar ways; each intensifies the mischief of the other; and both combine their results in hostility to the agricultural interests, since each compels the farmer to give more for his supplies and take less for his produce. On the other hand, hard money and free trade are natural allies also, working in the same harness, defrauding nobody, just to all because natural and free, and enabling the masses of mankind to maintain the advantageous places which the Heavenly Father designed them to hold. To be consistent with himself a hard money man should be a free trader also; and a man who believes that legislators are wiser than natural laws should consistently believe both in commercial restriction and in rag-money, since both are artificial creatures of the Legislature. Accordingly, there has been considerable tendency during the last fifty years for men to range themselves in parties on the one side or the other of these two combined questions; but unfortunately they have come to think more of the party name and organization than of the principles on which parties profess to be originally founded; and when the perversion has thoroughly taken place, as it has in this country at this moment, scarcely anything is a greater foe to real progress than this hollow party spirit. What is it to be a Republican to-day? What is it to be a Democrat to-day ? No man can possibly answer these questions, because there are no vital and general differences now involved in these names.

     Party spirit has been particularly injurious to the farmers of this country, because they have ranged themselves pretty evenly in both of the two political parties, and the two parts have thus completely neutralized each other. The interests of the farmers have had no weight in either of the political parties, simply because the farmers themselves stood over against each other in two opposing camps. Thus the farmers, as such, lost all weight and influence in political affairs. They are to be congratulated and applauded that the mass of them have made up their minds to act no longer with the old political parties, or with any other parties in fact, for the present. Let them adhere to this determination,, the country will be all the better for it. Let them avoid entangling alliances; and snap their fingers at the caucus. Let them act as a unit in accordance with their own deliberate conviction of their own interests,, for their true interests are also the true interests of the whole country. Let them hold this attitude steadily for five years, and there is not a single point of public policy favorable to themselves that they cannot triumphantly carry. If they come to see eye to eye, as pray God they may, that a labor wrought dollar, and not a printing press dollar, it the only dollar fit to be ex-

changed against their own labor wrought produce, then they can confer upon themselves and the whole country the inestimable boon of labor wrought dollars! If they come to see, as please God they will, that what is called "protection" is only another name for spoliation, that what is called "fostering" industry only makes industry to flounder; that tariffs take but never give, that trade is good and gainful; that the world's market, whether to sell in or buy in, is always better than the market of a single country; that natural competition is the life of business and of progress, that restrictive tariffs keep home things in that want to go out, as well as foreign things out that want to come in,' that exportables are depressed in value in proportion as importables are artificially enhanced in value; and that God Almighty knows better how to adjust all the obstacles to international traffic than any Congress that ever sat or ever will sit;--then can they easily abolish this antiquated scheme of greed and grab, and open up for themselves and for all their fellow citizens, both to sell in and to buy in, the unrestricted markets of the world!

     But in order that they may be able to do this, in order that they may be able to act in a body for' the complete recognition of themselves and their own interests, as well as for the welfare of the whole country-for the two things are identical-they will have to practice that eternal vigilance that is the price of success in difficulties as well as the price of liberty. They will have to watch and pray. Gentlemen, although I know some stories, I have been too much in earnest to stop to tell any even to illustrate my points as I passed along. I am now, however, so near to the end that I will tell just one, the authenticity of which I can vouch for, and the moral of which in this connection will apply itself. In my native town in New Hampshire, when I was a boy, there lived a big, burly fellow, not over bright but excessively good-natured, whose name was John Latham. If any of you happen to know that my middle name is Latham, I hope you will not jump to the conclusion that John and I were relatives. I hasten to assure you that we were not, though John was son to the man after whom I was named. I am sorry to say that John, though a gigantic fellow and well able to work, was a vagabond. His two middle fingers of both hands were grown together--a never-ceasing wonder to the boys; and besides, his pockets, like some ships, usually carried an assorted cargo. "Let's see what's in your pockets, John," was generally the signal for hauling out successively the most promiscuous and most numerous collection of things that ever found themselves inside a man's trousers. John was generally willing to amuse the boys, and I am sorry to be obliged to add that they were sometimes willing to abuse him. Getting him near the edge of Post Pond one day, the little rascals plunged him in. John puffed and blowed like a whale, but came out safely and

said nothing. l.ong afterwards sonic other boys, who had heard of this, finding John on the bank of the Connecticut, and knowing that they could not souse him without a stratagem, said, '' John, do you know how to pray ?'' "Ah! yes," said John, "I know how to pray." "Suppose you kneel down right here, and let's hear you pray." John knelt as he was bid and began to pray, but the boys observed that he kept his eyes open all the while, 'Oh! John, that's not the way to pray-you must always shut your eyes up when you pray.'' " Ah!'' said John, ''we are commanded to WATCH as well as PRAY."

     Ladies and Gentlemen:--I thank you for your kind and patient attention. Will you now allow me in conclusion to enumerate and emphasize the points which we have made together:-

     1. Farmers are really most everybody, but have been heretofore politically nobody, and have now wisely made up their minds to become some body.

     2. Nature is a friend to the tillers of the soil.

     3. Farmers generally will do well to have one, two, three, or more, products to sell subsidiary to their main crop.

     4. The best legislation for farmers is ''let alone;" but actual legislation is almost always against them.

     5. When dollars begin to dance up and down in value, farmers begin to dance to a doleful tune.

     6. Greenback-grasshoppers are worse than any other kind of grasshoppers for the farmers.

     7. Protection is to industry what a clinking collar is to a man. It stops healthful circulation both ways,

     8. Permanent parties, and especially parties with the principles slipped out, are of doubtful utility. Farmers are the men to abolish them.

     9. Vote only for good men, who believe substantially as you do, without the slightest reference to worn out names and shibboleths.

     10. Keep the eyes open; look into the nature of things '' watch and pray;'' and hate a debt next to the devil.

     

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