Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Canadian Agreement as Related to the Farm Home and Cost of Living in Cities: Speech
Mr. Chairman: I can not remove from my mind the firm conviction that the policy proposed in this bill is of an importance out of all proportion to the scantiness of the investigation which has preceded it. The farmers of this Nation are more than a third of its people, and whatsoever affects the basis of their industries affects all. I know how hard it is to bring the realization of this fact home to those who dwell in great cities, especially to those who con trol stupendous industrial and commercial interests, beside which a farm of 150 acres seems an inconsiderable enterprise. Even the great intellect of Horace Greeley succumbed to the prevailing delusion, if we may credit the statement of the brilliant eulogist of Lincoln who said that Horace Greeley thought him self a bigger man than Abraham Lincoln because he lived in a bigger town. But I am convinced that if the dwellers in cities will look below the surface of this question they will see that it does not concern the farmer alone. If in what I am to say I shall seem to speak of him entirely, it is because his industry is at the foundation of our prosperity, and in speaking of him I speak of all. The dwellers in cities can not disassociate their interest from that of the farmers. Diminish the purchasing power of the American farmer and you diminish by so much the prosperity of every city and of every laborer, clerk, merchant, and banker within its limits.
A hundred and twenty-nve years ago, when our fathers were first agitating the question of a tariff, the New York Chamber of Commerce reminded the opposing farmers that agriculture could not flourish without commerce. To-day the merchant and manufacturer may well be reminded that commerce and manufactures are not likely to ?ourish without a successful agriculture.
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