WHEAT AND SILVER-Continued.

future, as markets always do, without waiting for the ceremony of inauguration day.

These changes in the price of wheat followed immediately after elections in 1884, 1888, and 1892.

Unless God repeals the laws of nature and of economics, similar results may be looked for in December, 1896. That is the only hope of relief for the wheat farmer.

Notice in the table how remarkably even the area runs-between thirty-four and thirty-nine million acres.

The biggest pile of gold for the whole crop, and the biggest pile of gold per acre, was got in 1891.

Five crops under Grover (1884, 1885, 1886, 1887, and 1892) were marketed near the eight-dollar per-acre mark.

Only one crop (1889) was ever marketed under Republican auspices for less than $9 per acre, and that lacked only 2 cents of the nine-dollar mark.

The other three crops marketed under Grover (1893, 1894, and 1895) have gone glimmering at $6.16, $6.48, and $6.99 per acre re spectively.

The wheat farmers are not unreasonable. They do not expect to get rich out of one or two years' work, but they do expect to get a decent living and a moderate profit on their capital and labor. This they have not had for the last three years.

No. 393.

WHEAT-Price in India, 1873 to 1893.

Average price of wheat, per bushel, in India, reduced to equivalents in U S. gold coin, by the Department of Agriculture, February, 1896.

Prices of wheat have sometimes been higher in India. and some

times in America,

WHEAT-Price, etc.—Continued.

The fact of these ups and downs admits of no dispute. The only room for disagreement is as to the causes which produced them. The Populist-Democratic-Free-Silver teachers affect to believe that one cause, and only one cause, viz., the "crime of 1873" has produced all these ups and downs. The Republicans believe and teach that very many causes and forces may have combined to produce the result. Wheat was very high in India from 1877 to 1880. But the farmers of India had no wheat for sale during those four years of the "great famine." The famine was quite sufficient to account for the price of wheat.

Wheat was low in the United States from 1884 to 1888, and again these last three years of grace.

That is a fact. It is also a fact that Mr. Cleveland was Presidert of the United States during those years. Generally speaking, it is strictly true that the price of wheat has never been higher in India than in America except when there was either a famine to abnor mally raise prices in India or a triumphant Democracy to abnormally depress prices in America. Instead of wasting time trying to restore the conditions of 1873, let us help the farmers of America to deliver themselves from the blunder of 1892.

We were more prosperous in 1892 than in 1872. We now have hard times and have had hard times for three years, but in casting about for cause and remedies of all our ills it is utterly futile to compare the present with the less prosperous period of 1872 rather than with the more prosperous period ending in 1892. Whatever cause produced the present result commenced to operate and showed its effects after 1892 and not 1872.

No. 394.

WHEAT-Price Not Controlled by Silver.

The total value of the silver product of the United States in 1892, even when reckoned at the price before 1873, was $82,101,000, and this was the greatest yield in the history of our silver production. (Mint Report, page 242.)

According to the Statistical Abstract, page 267, the farm value of the cotton crop of this country in 1891 was $350,000,000; that of the wheat crop was, in round numbers, $400,000,000, and that of the corn crop was over $800,000,000. The value of our corn crop alone was ten times the value of the silver crop of this country and four

WHEAT—Price, etc.—Continued.

times the value of all the silver produced in the whole world that year. Why, the clucking hens of our farms produce more wealth every year than these silver miners, who so patronizingly tell the farmers what they will do for them.

Are the farmers and planters silly enough to pause in the presence of these figures, $1,550,000,000, produced in one year from cotton, wheat, and corn, and say that $625,600,000 of silver, which has required one hundred and seven years for its accumulation, has caused all the trouble? The conditions of 1873 never can be restored, even if the mints were opened to the free coinage of silver. The producers of cotton and wheat might do much toward restoring the former prices of their product by voting for increased consumption, by giving increased employment to the great army of wage-earners and consumers. The people of the United States consumed 147,788,510 bushels less of wheat in 1895 than in 1890, being 2.36 bushels per capita.

WOOL-A Study for Farmers in Free Trade.

Free trade in the raw material of woolen manufacturers means nearly double the quantity of foreign wool used here, to the detriment of American wool, and just double the amount of gold sent abroad to pay for it. The extra $16,818,883 shipped to foreign farmers would have served a much better purpose had it been distributed among American sheep-raisers. It would have helped our own people wonderfully in paying interest on their farm mortgages, perhaps in preventing the mortgages of their farms, or in improving them, or in paying off a little of the village store account. But

WOOL-A Study, etc.—Continued.

farmers must not expect this under free trade. They can only wait patiently until we have a Republican Congress and a Republican President in 1897, when, we trust, such a tariff law will be enacted as will exclude every pound of foreign wool, and enable American farmers to secure the whole of the thirty-odd millions of dollars of gold that we shipped abroad last year to pay for it.

A communication from Hon. Charles Hilton, an extensive wool grower of Eastern Oregon, states the effects of placing wool on the free list in Oregon as follows:

"THE DALLES, OREG., Dec. 6, 1893. "I have been engaged in the business for eighteen years, and have run from ten to twelve thousand head. I have made it a point each year for a period of thirty days to accurately ascertain the actual cost of all my sheep camps in the way of supplies, and you can accept the following figures as trustworthy, since they are an average from all these records:

COST OF RUNNING 2,000 SHEEP ONE YEAR.

Camp tender to help move and furnish camp.

Salt, 2 tons, at $30.....

Hay, 50 tons, at $8.

Extra help during lambing season.....

Extra help during winter feeding season...

Shearing 2,000 sheep, at 7 cents per head.

Board of shearers....

Extra help sacking wool, etc....

50 wool sacks, at 40 cents.

$420

180

200

60

400

100

50

140

30

25

20

Hauling 16,000 pounds wool to railroad, at 4 cents..

120

"The only possible reduction that can be made in the cost of running a band of sheep is in wages, as the plow has driven the stock so far back into the hills that the cost of feed is greater, as there is so little land that will produce, and freight to and from the railroad figures largely in salt and other supplies in shipping wool.

"Thus you will see that at 6 cents per pound for wool, which is the highest price we can expect with free wool for the class of wool raised here, calculating the weight of each fleece at 8 pounds, which is about the average, and the increase at 35 per cent. (which is all an ordinary band of stock sheep will produce, as we have to carry the male until two years old and past before they are suitable for market and can not breed the ewes until two years old) the owner would be about $200 loser on the year's work. This, leaving out of consideration all the taxes, interest on capital invested, and wear and tear to camp accouterments, which is considerable.

"For the last four or five years I have averaged 15 cents per pound for my wool and $2.75 for my mutton sheep. The latter cannot now be sold for more than $1.50 (at the ranch), and our wool is now being sold in Boston for 10 cents. The cost of freight, including insurance and commissions, amounts to about 4 cents a pound.

"There is one thing which you may not have had brought to your notice, and that is that destruction of the sheep industry means the abandonment of thousands of acres of land which now furnish good sheep pasture in Eastern Oregon.

"The only vegetation which now exists is weeds and the small sheep grass which will support nothing but sheep, and upon which they will thrive; take away the sheep and this is waste land and can never be anything else.