Mason, D: How Western Farmers Are Benefited by Protection (C

Excerpt from How Western Farmers Are Benefited by Protection

My object in writing the articles contained in these pages has been to convince the public generally, and farmers particularly, that the policy of Protection to home industry is promotive of their interests and conducive to their welfare. Our present tariff system has been so wickedly misrepresented, and even willfully lied about, that it is high time the other side Should be heard on its merits, and that the people should investigate for themselves.

The principal propositions which I think have been conclusively established in the following pages are these: That farmers have obtained much better prices for their produce, and have been able to export it in larger quantities, under Protec tion than under partial Free Trade. That the Protective policy operates to bring the manufacturer to the side of the farmer, thus dispensing with useless transporta tion between the two, and with super¿uous middlemen. That the same policy constantly tends, with accelerating force, to enhance the value of land, of labor, and Of raw materials, including the produce Of the soil, while diminishing the value of manufactured articles - the more, too, as these take on higher forms of reproduction. That the foreign market is secondary in importance, the market at home being the one in which the great mass of domestic products must be sold and consumed. That foreigners either partly or wholly pay a very considerable amount of the duties levied on imports, and thus are forced to contribute to the support Of our Government as an offset to the privilege of our markets, diminish ing the taxes that otherwise woluld have to be paid by our own people. That railroad construction and transportation have been cheapened by the tariff on rails. That the sell dear, buy cheap maxim is merely a delusive form Of words. That an increasing proportion of manufactures enters into our domestic exports under the Protective system. That Protection is highly beneficial to the manufacturer, as'well as to the public, notwithstanding that it operates to reduce the prices of his products. And that the price of everything the farmer has to buy has been cheapened by Protection.

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