GENERAL DRAPER ON TARIFF REVISION. ination I should be willing to have my personal motives gone into and compared with his; but I will simply [From the Boston Sunday Journal, express my views on the general sub GEN September 21.] EN. WILLIAM F. DRAPER was asked Saturday afternoon by a reporter of the Boston Journal to express himself on the tariff situation in the light of the agitation against the policy of the Republican party, by means of which Mr. Foss of Jamaica Plain is seeking to secure the Republican nomination for Congress in the Eleventh District. Gen. Draper declined to speak in detail, but authorized the publication of the following statement: "I would be glad to have the readers of the Journal understand that I have sought no interview, either in connection with the question in the Eleventh District or in connection with the broader question on which I understand we are likely to hear something from the President at Cincinnati. I hold no public office, and am a candidate for none, and what I say must be taken, therefore, from the standpoint of a private citizen interested in business prosperity, and also from the standpoint of a Republican who has voted the ticket every year without a break since his first vote in 1864. "I do not propose to make any reply to Mr. Foss's allusion to me or the Draper Company in his speeches, as I do not consider that such remarks demand any reply. If I were competing with him in the Eleventh District for the Congressional nom ject of protection as it now stands. "The Dingley tariff bill, taken as a whole, is the best tariff bill we have ever had. "Under it the industries of the nation, and hence the nation itself have prospered as never before. "Changing circumstances may in time require its revision, but it is wiser to defer such revision until the need for it at least equals the harm that it will necessarily bring; and that time, in my opinion, has not yet come. "Any revision in the direction of lowering duties will bring more or less business depression, and such revision as demanded by Mr. Foss and some of the Western Republicans might bring financial panic. "I am opposed to Mr. Foss's platform as a Republican and a protectionist. "I am also opposed as a conservative business man to the opening of a campaign within the Republican party on tariff issues. "Better stand by our principles than abandon or apologize for them." The Connecticut Republican state convention declared opposition to a general revision of the tariff at this time as inopportune and unnecessary. In his speech in the convention, Senator O. H. Platt said on this question: "Whenever and however there shall be tariff revision, it should be a revision which will not destroy our home market or take away work from our own workmen to give it to the workmen of foreign countries. Tariff revision should be attempted only when it will not seriously disturb the business of the country or check our developing activities. When that time shall come, and the need shall be apparent, the Republican party may be relied upon to undertake this work. Tariff schedules are not sacred. The principle of protection should be held sacred in the United States. The Democratic cry for tariff revision which is sounding through the country is pitched upon one key the destruction of protection, which is the main factor of our prosperity." FARM MACHINERY AND THE KNITTING INDUSTRY. T [From the Textile Record.] HE agitation for reciprocity arrangements between this country and European nations is promoted chiefly by the American makers of agricultural machinery. One of these persons recently complained in the public press that the only obstacles to reciprocity are certain "small industries" which fear European rivalry in our own market. The knitting industry is here referred to. The American makers of farm machines fear no such rivalry, for they are in perfect command of the situation. No machines better and cheaper than theirs are made in Europe. No European builder of such machines dreams of invading the American market, and so the American builder, for himself, cares nothing for the tariff. He can push into a foreign market and undersell the foreign builders, where such people exist. These Americans have made heaps of money at home and. other heaps abroad, and they still have the wide world for their market. Under such circumstances their expressed desire to knife the knitting business, or any other domestic industry, that they may increase their gains, is a manifestation of revolting greed and selfishness. "Because we need no protection," they say, "nobody should have protection;" but the fact is that the policy of this nation is to arrange the protective system according to the requirements of the industries that need it, not at all in conformity to the wishes of the people who do not need it. Dollar for dollar of product, the American knitting industry is just as important for the country as the business of making farm machinery, but, large or small, it is an industry in which Americans are engaged, and it should not be sacrificed in the smallest de-gree for the interest of anybody. THE WOOLEN STRIKE ENDED.. [New York Commercial Bulletin.] AFTER a duration of nine months the greatest strike ever experienced in the American woolen manufacture has collapsed as to nearly all the persons em ployed, but the point over which the struggle occurred is still unsettled. Last winter 250 weavers in one of the Ameri can Woolen Company's mills near Providence, struck against running two looms on fancy fabrics. They soon got the single loom weavers in the same and neighboring mills to strike sympathetically. The strike spread to distant mills of the company, which retaliated with a lockout, but this was soon lifted. The American Woolen Company made great efforts to replace the strikers. It enough and foolish enough to join in that crusade, Mr. Henderson at least does not intend to be caught in such company. If we should let down. the tariff bars, we would thereby only let in the foreign "trusts." We would destroy our home market and invite widespread commercial depression. If a domestic "trust" is bad, a foreign "trust" searched for labor of every sort that was willing to learn weaving. The strikers attempted to interfere with and intimidate these new workers, and the courts put a stop to their course. Lately men have been getting tired of the strike and returning to work, and men who had been employed in the independent mills, which have had an enormous increase of business on account of the interruption of the business of the American Woolen Company, have been laid off and have sought work in the American Woolen Company's mills. So the strike of the one-loom weavers has been abandoned. The strike against two looms is still in force. The strikers said it hurt CHAIRMAN BABCOCK'S TARIFF their eyes and impaired their nerves to work two looms on fancy fabrics. The management replied that it only attempted to work two looms on certain simple styles of goods and the weavers could increase their earnings materially without injuring themselves at all. THE HENDERSON INCIDENT. [New York Commercial.] THE incident ought to arouse the American people to a full comprehension of the effect of the poisonous free trade notions that are being so industriously fostered just at present all over the United States under the false label of a "trust-cure." Unable to force or wheedle the people into the adoption of free trade as a commercial policy, the so-called tariff reformers are moving heaven and earth to frighten the country into its adoption as a means of settling the "trust" question; and some weak-kneed brethren among the protectionists have actually been entrapped by the device. The enemies of protection, says Speaker Henderson, "propose to kill the child dead in order to cure it. They propose to slaughter every interest in the United States, whether capital or labor, in a wild and blind effort to provide a remedy for is worse. Speaker Henderson's blunt but truthful declarations ought to open the eyes of some politicians to the folly of their "reform" notions. VIEWS. In a recent interview, Chairman Babcock of the Republican Congressional Committee, said: "I have never advocated putting goods on the free list because they were manufactured by a combination or a trust, nor do I know of any Republican who has. We have always antagonized this proposition, which is of Democratic origin. The Iowa platform and the Democratic idea of tariff reform are as far apart as the heavens are from the earth. Any changes that the Republican party would make would be strictly upon protective lines, while the Democratic idea would be a tariff for revenue only, which means free trade. The Democratic proposition to put all trust-made articles comparative cost of the manufacture of such articles in this country with the cost of similar articles in foreign countries. In this question the wages of labor is the all important factor. The Democratic idea if enacted into law would mean the closing of factories followed by idleness very like the condi trusts." tions that existed under the Wilson tar And if the Iowa Republicans are weak iff law." THE PROTECTIONIST. A Monthly Magazine of Political Science and Industrial Progress. Signed articles are not to be understood as expressing the views of the editor or publishers. SECRETARY OF THE HOME MARKET CLUB AND EX-CHAIRMAN OF N the summer of 1902 a Western senator said to a Washington reporter for a New England newspaper: "The West has only three items in the tariff-wool, hides and sugar; New England has three hundred. They will all stand or fall together." In the Boston Sunday Herald of September 21, 1902, a member of Congress from Massachusetts was reported as saying: "The West has only four items upon which it is protected: namely, sugar, hides, wool and iron; while New England has 120 items." He was also reported as saying that a demand for "free raw materials is a good platform for a New England congressman to stand upon." I publicly protested against this as soon as I read it, contending, first, that the West is much more largely interested in protection than the statement indicated, and second, that protection is and must be a national policy and that it extends and must extend to all sections and all industries alike. THE FALSE AND THE TRUE IN NEW ENGLAND. Ten years before this a great campaign had been made in Massachusetts, in which Wm. E. Russell, an exceedingly able and popular young man, as the Democratic candidate for governor, exploited the doctrine of free raw materials for New England industries, and succeeded in temporarily dividing the Republican party and getting elected. But the Home Market Club, which was and is composed of most of the great manufacturers and merchants of New England, strongly opposed the doctrine and circulated quantities of literature to show the unfairness, the unpatriotism, the delusiveness and the dishonesty of the plan, and nearly all the Republican leaders, not only in Massachusetts but throughout New England, buckled on the armor and made a campaign against it. Governor Russell had no Democratic successor and very little favor for a sectional tariff has since been shown in New England, except in the Democratic party and free trade newspapers. Unfortunately, however, a leading newspaper, professing to be independent and there are others in different parts of the country which is too extensively read by Republicans, has continued its labors for free trade, working upon the insidious and attractive plan recommended by Mr. Cobden to Louis Napoleon, of appealing to local interests or of taking one industry at a timein short, the policy of "divide and conquer." Undeniably this has made some inroads upon a consistent Republican policy, which are seen chiefly when a few Republican candidates, seeking support from the discontented in their own party and hoping to draw somewhat from the opposition, indorse the humbug for the purposes of a campaign. The great fact remains, nevertheless, that New England Republicans are practically solid for a tariff that protects the West and South as well as the East, and it may be set down for a fact and as a finality that the New England manufacturers ask nothing in the tariff for themselves that they are not willing to concede to others and that will not equally benefit their customers and their competitors throughout the country. In view of these considerations I hesitated to give this article a sectional title and would not have done so but for the remarks of the Western senator and the Eastern representative quoted at the beginning, and who without doubt expressed what has thoughtlessly become a common understanding. |