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PORTLAND. OREGON, SUNDAY HORNING, JULY 19, 1903
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We Mitet Help Him
Bear His Burden, De
clares Secretary Wilson
S the best fed, best housed, best dressed
nation of t he-world deliberately plan
ning to lower itself to European can
ditions of existence, where, with wages in
their pockets that would mean Lucullan
feasts to foreign laborers, American me
chanics will not be able to afiord meat on
their tables any oftener than the poor of
Europe's capitals f
One type of worker alone stands be
tween the United States and its hear dis
aster. He is an army in himself, the living
keystone of the arch of comfort, the Alias
on whose shoulders weighs the burden of
American prosperity.
He is the American farmer.
Men in that army of peaceful triumphs
not the women, or the 378,740 boys and
girls under 16 years- of age, who give
such efficient aid numbered 8,771,181 at
last counting of heads, more than twice the
total of 4,244,538 men the census showed
as being engaged in manufactures.
Is he the hope of our country's future?,
Let us see.
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IN tho years gone by the farmer had his
allies other men who came to his aid,
hardily Bupportinfr him when the burden
grew too vast. But everywhere in mine
and railroad, in factory and forest the teem
ing millions of his neighbors have robbed him
of them.
Today he stands alone, striving with ti
tanic courage to endure the 6train; yet seem
ingly doomed, in spite of his vast numbers, to
sink under his toil, unless the help he needs be
given.
If he yield, if his enormous strength give
way at last under his still more enormous toil,
no section of the mighty society borne up by
his single strength can escape the universal
ruin. '
And James Wilson, secretary of agricul
ture, declaring that tho farmer cannot much
steps must be taken to help the farmers secure
a portion of the "immigration pouring in upon
our shores."
Briefly, but not 60 forcibly as tho secretary
stated the features of 'the greatest industrial
problem a nation has ever faced, those few sen
tences can serve to bring home to all our eighty
millions some hint of what we must do to be
saved.
Their elaboration, in tho graphio terms
the secretary employed in order that the na
tion might realize the full significance of his
warning, shows the wide ramifications of the
difticulties in which all must be called upon to
share. The full statement of Secretary Wilson
declares:
"The productiveness of tho United States
along agricultural lines is not keeping pace
with the growth of our population. Meats are
dear because meat-bearing animals are falling
behind the population in relative numbers.
"Labor is scarce on the farm, and labor is
dear on the farm, because the factory, the for
est, the mine and the railroatl are taking away
the farmer's workers through wages fised at
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longer endure the strain, piscnts the most im
minent of national problems:
ileaU are dear because meat-bearing ani
mals are falling behind the population in rela
tive numbers.
"Factory, forest, mii.e and railroad are
taking away the farmer's workers.
Our immigrants do not reach our farms,
and out cf the thousands of 'men idle this
spring none have sought employment at farm
labor.
"The rwult of all this will be the bringing
about of European conditions.
"If we do not desire to hare the existing
condition of affairs go ta greater extremes.
rates which the farmer cannot afford to pay.
"The population of the United Statf is
growing both by reason of the natural increase
of the families domiciled in America and by
accretions through in; migration from abroad.
"But the immigrants do not reach to the
farm. The farmers who do come to us from
foreign countries do not find tbeir way to the
farms of this country; and the immigration
laws prevent American farmer from going to
foreign countries and selecting there th pros
pective immigrants whose services could aid
them.
"At no period cf our history has the Ameri
can farmer needed help mC much as he needs it
i
this year. There are
said to bc hundredsof
thousands of idle men
in the United States.
All of them could se
cure employment on
the farms employment aSordinc food, shelter
and living i, es.
"There are conwvjuences awaiting us. The
reult of all this will be the bringing about of
European conditions. Many of our irorking peo
ple today cannot pay the price current for
meat.
"If we do not desire to hark. this condition
of affairs go to greater extremes, tpa.honli
be taken to help the farmers secure a portion
of the immigration that pours in upon our
shores.
"Whatever may be the temporary effect -of
high prices for foodstuffs upon the prosperity
cf the farmer, the deprivations of one class of
our population is the mufortune of alL High
prices for meats and grains ara not beneficial
to the farmers of the i rut try, if the farmers
v7sorri
cannot employ the help tha. is requisite for the
growth of grains and tho production of meats.
And that is tho caso now with the farmers in a
great many states of the Union.
"The United States has made remarkable
growth as a manufacturing nation because ma
terial is cheaper and better here than in any
other country of the world.
"Our farmers are making the most ener
getic efforts to produce. They have the best
machinery the world of agriculture knows.
They themselves work and their families work.
But the demand is greater than they can sup
ply. "It would seem like needless emphasis of
tho"ffrJVl6u's" To 'aver -that the industries of tha
country depend upon the farmer. The wealth
he makes from the farm is what brings to iU3
the gold from the Old Wurld. It is what brings
that gold today, as it was the agency which
brought the gold to help the peopb iu New
York when the panic was in evidence.'
What do those "European conditions"
mean, to which the secretary refers as the in
evitable results in whic1, we are to be plunged
because the American farmer is being left to
bear his burden, which is the national burden, .
alone?
Students of the living levels of nations
have agreed upon acceptance of tho per capita -
consumption of meat as a fair test of the rela
tive richness of dietaries; for the world over,
and however fondly the advocates of fish, fruit
and vegetables may cling to their chosen sus
tenance, the mass of any population indulges
generously in meat when it can pay the price.
Given meat, in plenty all other foods are
usually available in a rich and varied supply;
and the table of a people enjoying an ample
meat diet is a3 safe to prove generous as the
table stinted of meat is safe to prove poor.
WHAT POOR FOOD MEANS
Italy, with her pitiful forty-six and a half
pounds of meat per bead annually, is today
showing, by the low vitality, of her people,
fatal as many . diseases are among them which
are mild illnesses elsewhere,' how poorly nour
ished the whole kingdom must be.
Compare tho homo of the vine, with its
sunny skies and its growing hunger, losing in
1004 its millions of workers to the United
States, with this land of broad acres which ab
sorbed them.
Their allowance of forty-six and a half
pounds of meat at homo was scarcely more
than one-fifth the average annual consumption
of the American working man. An exhaustive
study of the living expenses of the American
nxihunio, North and East. Scuth and West,
showed that he kept a table laden with the
nu'st varied foods and included rh that diet,
not fur the working class alone, but for all
the reorle of the whole aution, was an average -
yearly supply 01 meal amoutuing 10 xzvyj
pounds.
Meat-living Britain could afford less than
half that allowance; 105 pounds was the bees
tho traditional lovers of roast beef could at
tain. Germany, with her agriculture intensified t
the Inst lost corner of her fields and her manu
factures perfected by the most systematic .tech
nical education the world contains, averagee ne
more than 105' pounls, while France, with
her microscopic economies from the nursery to
the kitchen, eats only seventy-eight and nine
tenths pounds and has so little warm red blood
that she sees her citizenry Tanuhing like leaves
in autumn. -
These are the European conditions, cf
whose preliminary years of lesui kine the
United States is having now its first hungry
foretaste. , -
Popular butchers not merely Independent
cf the trust, but pledged to compete with it
for their very existence corroborate the secre
tsry of sgriculture. The utterly BDipteJ
leap of wholesale prices for dressed Lf ca
the Chicago markets this summer starw 1 the
dealers even more than the retail prices -tomsbed
the general consumer. TLy nil
ciily admit that the trust as not th'n r"r i-
OOXTIXTXO OX IXS7ES