It is evident that you are not a practical farmer. However, your non-acquaintance with the figures is not to be wondered at when we consider what has been said by great scholars and statesmen. I recently heard a politician, and one of perfectly Himalayan greatness, say in debate that a day's work on an Illinois farm would now produce more than twice as much as in 1870, and another clinched it by adding that a man could pay for a good farm by his surplus from five years' crops. Now go to some practical farmer and get him to make the calculation, and you will find that what he has saved by reduced prices is less than one-fifth of what he has lost from the same cause. The average farm family in the central West consists of five persons, and their greatest saving has been on clothing. You may set that at $30 per year. The next is in sugar, for which they pay but half the price of 1873. There is no other item that will reach $5, not even including all the iron or steel they have to buy in a year. The largest estimate of gains, unless they go into luxuries, does not exceed $90 per year. At least a third of this gain is offset by increased taxes. Now let us see what this farm family has lost, counting only the price of the surplus it sells and taking our average from the official reports. On 500 bushels of wheat, at least $250; on 600 bushels of corn, $120; on ten tons of hay, $30; on rye, oats, potatoes, and so forth, $50; on three horses and mules sold per year, $100. Total, $550, being more than ten times the net gain over taxes. The Agricultural Department figures indicate that, taking the United States as a whole, including even the intensive farming near the cities, the reduction of annual income is a few cents over $6 per acre. Thus something like $1,800,000,000 has been taken from the farmers' annual income, and the farmer being just like any other man, in that he cannot spend money that he does not get, this withdraws $1,800,000,000 from the manufacturers' and general market. In view of these figures--and if anything I have understated them--what conceivable good would a raise in the tariff do the manufacturers so long as our farmers must sell on a gold basis and be subject at the same time to the rapidly increasing competition of silver basis countries? I have said nothing of fixed charges which do not decline, or of the cost of the federal government, which steadily and rapidly increases. Have you heard of any decline in official salaries, taxes, debts, bonds, or mortgages? =That is plausible at first view, but it cannot be true as to the country generally, because wages have risen; or at least they had risen continuously till 1892, as is clearly shown in the Aldrich Report.=