Judge — August 4, 1888 — page 8: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This Judge magazine cartoon satirizes the Mills Free Trade Bill's impact on American farmers. The image shows distressed farmers (identifiable by their hats and rural setting) confronting what appears to be a well-dressed politician or proponent of free trade, with a dog present. The caption's rhetorical question—"What shall we do? We cannot compete with [European farmers]"—expresses farmers' anxiety that free trade would flood American markets with cheaper foreign agricultural products, undercutting domestic prices and livelihoods. The cartoon mocks the disconnect between free-trade ideology and rural economic reality, presenting farmers as victims of policies benefiting traders and merchants rather than agricultural workers. This reflects late-19th-century political tensions between industrial free-traders and protectionist-leaning farmers.