very profitably distributed here at 5 and 6 cents. The producer and consumer are thus both fleeced.

Defective apples, costing 10 to 20 cents a bushel in many counties of this state, are partly cored and partly pared by machinery, dried, and then from $2.50 to $3.50 is charged and received for the product of each 20 cent bushel.

The fruit grower at Middletown, N. Y., or Red Bank, N. J., raises fine apples, peaches, pears, buys his barrels and ships his fruit here, receiving about 75 cents a barrel for fruit, barrel and all. The consumer here pays from $7 to $10 a barrel at retail prices for this same fruit. Again both the producer and consumer are thoroughly fleeced.

The local meat dealers with few exceptions keep several men very busy selling 8 to 12 cent meat at 23 to 35 cents, and each man is expected to make his wages each day by the one-half to three ounces which he adds in fixing the price to the true weight of nearly every purchase.

Finally, here, where tons of freshly caught fish are brought in from the sea every week and sold at from 2 to 4 cents a pound, we victims pay from 12 to 30 cents.

To repeat the question. What has the tariff or the fall of Tibet got to do with these things?

TARIFF AGITATION.

From Fibre and Fabric.

A man who has always been in the habit of buying fifteen-dollar suits, came into the office in his new spring suit, a neat, good looking outfit, and his first remark seemed so appropriate that it is worth record

ing as representing the views in general of the masses whom the tariff reformers are so pleased to hold up as being imposed upon by the provisions of the present tariff law. This man had almost convinced himself that he was certain to be robbed when he bought his new suit, and when he remarked concerning it, "I am satisfied that I have as good value as I ever got for the money," it demonstrated to our mind how easily the country would adapt itself to the new conditions, if agitation would cease.

The fifteen dollars a suit man is particularly the one representing the masses, the hard working kind and the kind most dangerous as persons of action when aroused. But as a class they are not dissatisfied with the conditions. They are not the tenderloin steak element, and the substantial food they crave is not prohibitive by any means, as the 20 and 25 cent dinner is as good as ever, and the only thing out of tune in the whole situation is due to agitation.

Now what is the primary reason for the continual opening of the sore? There is absolutely no public demand for tariff changes in schedule K, and we have substantiated our recent statement that not one in ten men of the working classes know or care what schedule K represents. The agitation is lost energy if for the benefit of this class, as they are not even interested, as a canvass of 30 men in one of the big railroad yards revealed to be the case, and anywhere else we believe the same results would show. Consequently, we must assume that the primary reason for the agitation to revise schedule K is more personal with the

From the New York Journal of Commerce.

Labor pays a heavier part of the cost of needless and fruitless strikes than capital and is in no position to recover it, because the capital upon which it depends for employment and for wages is in other hands. That must be used to afford work and wages to labor. Capital is in constant competition with capital in different employments, and there is a certain established rate of return from its use necessary to keep it at work employing and paying for labor. Where it does not get that return it shrinks or slips away to find other use. In so far as it is di

minished in amount or impaired in productiveness by strikes labor suffers loss. Workmen have less to do and get less pay. Where capital has borne its temporary loss and the strikes have failed, it can get labor on easier terms than before and will make all haste to recoup its losses, while labor must struggle along worse off than before, because it cannot shrink or slip away and find other use where capital is not in control. It cannot recover what it has lost and what it can get has been lessened by its own behavior. Another economic effect of strikes, where they are frequent, extended or prolongd, is to increase the cost of production as well as to curtail its fruits, and that has its effect upon the price of the products of industry. Here the cost is diffused among consumers. Strikes must of necessity cause loss and diminished production. Nobody wholly escapes the consequences, but they fall most heavily upon laboring men who depend upon wages. For these consethose who instigate or cause the strikes are responsible.

quences

THE TARIFF IN INDIANA.

From the Hampshire Gazette.

The attitude of the Indiana Republicans on the tariff is interesting. Their state convention platform demands immediate revision of the tariff to make the prices of goods only as much higher here as is the cost of production. In the speech of Senator Beveridge there is a long list of complaints against the present tariff bill. He gives a great many classes of goods on which the tariff should be lowered. Iron, lumber, sugar and all the manufactured things of New England these are all too high to please the Indiana people. But not one word do you see about corn and wheat, pork and beef and horses, butter

Washington Cor. Boston Transcript.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Taft is not at all certain that the anti-tariff cries which have gone up from the Middle West represent the bulk of honest Republican opinion. He knows very well that the farmers can make little just complaint of the Payne rates, except on manufactures, and that they have been unwilling to surrender any of the duties on the raw materials they produce which give excuse for the very high rates on the finished products. He has vigorously stated his opinion that there is a large class of substantial men, those not affected by "muck-raking" publications, who will decline to share in what the Chief Executive has described as "hysteria." These men, Mr. Taft believes, are not given to noise, but are vitally necessary to the Republican party in an election. Whether they will accept an insurgent State patform and vote the Republican ticket rather than take chances with a Democrat remains to be seen. Only the November elections can determine this question.

SHORT HOURS AND PRICES.

From the Shoe and Leather Reporter.

It is not so many years ago that wage earners were willing to work ten hours a day in pretty much all industries; in fact many of them worked longer hours. Today there seems to be a general tendency all through the country to work a much shorter week at much larger pay, to include among the necessities many

things which used to be considered luxuries, to dress better and to live better generally. Far be it from us to discourage the desire of anybody to live better, but we think it unwarranted that there should be so much indignation expressed at high prices and high cost of living, when practically the entire country has expressed its desire to live on a materially higher plane, gratifying wishes regardless of cost.

Conditions have changed wonderfully within a comparatively short period, and in spite of investigations which are going on at the present time, it would be found difficult to legislate low prices into effect when the people wish to do less work for more money, and at the same time constantly increase the numerous whims which must be gratified. The so-called trusts and big corporations can be nagged and legislated against and made to pay increased taxes, but before we get a system whereby the people can save more out of their earnings on the present basis, they must concede a little something on their side.

A WESTERN "TARIFF RE

FORMER."

From the Pleasanton (Kan.) Observer.

A well-known resident and a formerly active Republican of the central part of the county was in Pleasanton recently and in conservation with the "Observer" man said that he was about ready to join the Democratic party. When asked for his reasons for talking that way he replied that he had become a Free-Trader and was in favor of taking off all Tariffs; that prices of everything were too high; that he was compelled to buy his meats and all other eatables and that everything sold in the meat shop and on the farm and in the grocery store was too high; that money was too plentiful and too cheap. He said that he would rather have the low prices of Cleveland's administration than the high prices of the Taft administration, and therefore he was about ready to work and vote for a Democratic ticket and try and bring about the good old Democratic times of 15-cent butter, 6-cent eggs, 15-cent oats, 3-cent hogs, 30-cent corn, 40-cent wheat and everything else accordingly. He said that Bristow was about the only Republican left that he could indorse. The man's name is not published, for the reason that he did not authorize an interview, and the fact is he may get over this spell that now seems to have come over him and later return to the party of his first love. The point about this man's change of conviction on the Tariff question simply illustrates what is likely to happen to any man if he gets to talking Tariff reform and Tariff reduction and soon becomes a FreeTrader. This case is probably a rare one, but many Kansas Republicans have been talking Tariff reform and Tariff revision downward, and before they hardly realize where it was leading them they have become almost Free-Traders. It will take some good Republican teaching to brush away this false notion that has taken possession of many of the oldtime Republicans.

THE FARMERS' EXODUS TO

CANADA.

There is no mystery about the migration of American farmers. A correspondent says: In recent years land has risen greatly in value; many farmers in the Middle West being offered many times the price they paid for their land, have sold it and, going into the Northwest, have offered the farmers there prices that represented a heavy increase over their original investment. They, in their turn, have sold and gone into Canada and purchased land for a few dollars an acre, taking their personal property and frequently their stock with them. This has been easier for them to do, because, in the first place, there is nothing in natural topography to mark the line between the Northwestern States and Canada, and it is necessary in crossing the line to find one of the iron boundary posts to tell in which country one is. In the second place, wheat was the great crop of the Northwest, and for years it was supposed that wheat would not ripen before frost on

the great plains of Western Canada and that they were destined to be cattle ranges always. Some years ago it was demonstrated that this is a mistake. So it is very natural for the farmers in the Northwestern States, who once raised forty to sixty bushels of wheat to the acre where they now raise twelve to fourteen, to sell for $60 to $80 an acre lands that cost them from nothing to $5 an acre and to emigrate to a new section, where they can again buy cheap lands, raise large crops of their favorite grain, and also profit by the inevitable raise in the value of the land itself. In spite of this emigration, the census will show that the Western and Northwestern States are increasing in population. So it is evident that in this movement there is nothing the matter with the United States or with Canada. It is solely a matter of some farmers improving their financial conditions.

TARIFF LESSONS.

From the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

In the great coal strike during the first Roosevelt administration Congress suspended the duty on coal. According to Democratic speakers the duty of 67 cents a ton was the main cause of high prices and threatened to bring on a famine in the industry. But the removal of the duty had no effect on the American coal market. When the duty went off in this country foreign shippers marked up their prices. Consequently, foreign coal was not ordered. Nothing could be made by dealers or consumers by its importation. Another example dates back to the time when the American duty on coffee was dropped in response to the demand for a free breakfast table. No sooner was coffee admitted free at our ports than the foreign exporters increased their prices so as to cover the new margin of difference. Random talk about a "robber Tariff" is freely indulged in by demagogues. Their party has always failed in constructiveness. It is recklessly destructive, and also ignorant of practical results when duties are removed.