Speech #470178468

Now. gentlemen on this side rushed with commendable zeal a few days ago to the relief of the cotton farmers of the country from the duty on cottonties. amounting to the compartively insignificant sum of $400.000 or $500.000. Here is an opportunity presented of relieving agriculture ofaburden of $15.000.000 per annum. Are the gentlemen on the othir side who have avowed themselves so anxious to give some measure of relief to agriculture in this country ready to come up and do for the American thrmer what they do for t1he foreign pauper farmlaborers of the rest of the world? Let me read you the law as it is now. and see if you understand the enormous extent to which you discriminate against the American agricultural laborer and in favor of foreign laborers engaged in agricultural pursuits. And let me call attention right here to the fact. in passing. that there are more actual laborers engaged in agriculture than in all other industrial pursuits put together in this country. Agriculture directly employs. clothes. and Ibeds more than onehalf of our entire population. It furnishes 75 per cent. of all of our annual products. and supplies ho less than &5 per cent. of all our foreign exports. Our American farmers are dependent upon the lbreign market for the sale of the surplus of their products above the demand for domestic consumption. and to that extent they come in direct competition with foreign "pauper labor." as it is termedthe fellahin of Egypt. the debased Mongolian labor of Asia and ]ndia. the serfs of Russia. the peasants of Europe. and the slaves of Cuba and Brazil. Are you willing to give our Anieriedn farmlaborers an equal chance as against these? Will you give them the "tools of their trade" at the same price that you dothese?