WHAT AM ERICA.V FARMERS PAY FOR PROTECTION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 6261, 10 December 1881, Page 7

WHAT AM ERICA.V FARMERS PAY FOR PROTECTION.

«> As an instance of "the blessings of protection" in America, the Chicago Times points to the little State of lowa, which contains about sixty per cent, of farmers, and shows iaow protection affects them, protection denies them the comforts of life. A pound of sugar for which an English farmer pays seven cents, costs the lowa man twelve. He wears coarse clothing, because a suit that he could buy for fifteen dollars in Canada is charged twenty-five to thirty at home. His wife's dress, made by herself, costs ten dollars—six, says the Chicago Times, for the goods, and four for Protection. A flannel shirt is twice as dear as in England. Every article of clothing, every bit of cutlery, all the manufactured goods in the kitchen, in the homestead, or in the farm "cost from 35 to 125 per cent, more than they should do because of protection." So it is all through his personal, and family, and business expenditure. He is a slave who toils aud saves for the rich manufacturers who are making fortunes in the Eastern cities. He is beginning to see this. He will see it more every year. But while the Western farmer is thus awakening to the need of free trade it cannot be that our own farmers should wish to go with open eyes into similar slavery. They will never succeed in getting a duty put on corn ; but they might help in restoring protective duties on some manufactures, and in doing so deprive themselves of the one great advantage which the universal cheapness of English goods gives them over their burdened brothers in the AVest.