limit our exports. As they are well aware that the sentiment of the country is opposed to general tariff revision at this time, we find them attacking the protective policy at every vulnerable point and giving their support to insidious special measures which are intended to make serious breaches in our tariff wall. The fact that their proposed experiments in tariff legislation are generally of the same character as those which have proved so disastrous to the country in low tariff periods has no restraining influence upon their purposes; and party pledges to maintain adequate protection for all industries that require it are treated by them with indifference and contempt. Dominated by a craze or greed for foreign markets, they have no concern for the interests of the home market. In short they have profited nothing from the lessons of experience and are altogether blind to the ultimate consequences of their ill-advised movement.

To a great extent their theories in regard to tariff conditions are fallacious. It may be true that a limited number of industries no longer need protection or at least that the stronger concerns in such industries do not; but the most of them still need it, and the interests of the many are more to be considered than the interests of the few. As Charles Heber Clark remarked in the Reciprocity Convention: "The right of the less fortunate manufacturer to continued protection is quite equal to that of the other man to make

gains for himself by mutilating the system that made him so strong." Furthermore, if a duty has become inoperative for either protection or revenue, as they claim, its retention in the tariff can harm no one, and it seems hardly worth while to compel a general revision of the tariff to get rid of it.

The cry of “overproduction" is the twin bugbear of "foreign retaliation," and both are being used to frighten the American people into granting special favors to a few greedy exporters and to foreign producers. It is true that excessive competition in some manufacturing lines may create an inconvenient surplus, but the remedy for this is not to be found in a policy that would gain new markets abroad at the cost of increasing imports and sacrificing a part of the home market. Conservative and sagacious manufacturers conduct their operations with a prudent regard for prevailing conditions, and they do not "discount the future" by producing goods greatly in excess of the present or prospective requirements of the market. Under a stable and efficient protective tariff which mantains a high purchasing power, there is little danger of overproduction for the greater number of our industries, for when our manufacturers are able to control the home market they can the better adapt production to demand; but the real danger comes when, under a "freer trade policy," which the new foes of protection are clamoring for, there is a larger sub

may need it much more. It is found that our exports of woolen manufactures in 1896, under "free wool," amounted in value to only $913,000, but in the last fiscal year, with duties on wool, they were over $1,500,000. Again, the exports of boots and shoes in 1896, under "free hides," were in value $1,436,686, but in the last fiscal year, with a duty on hides, they were $5,526,290.

How do they know that any industry is getting too much protection? They do not admit that any duties are too low, and yet this may be the fact in not a few instances. Whether duties are too high or too low can only be determined by careful investigation by persons who are most familiar with the condition and needs of our industries; and the opinions of theoretical free traders in these matters are without particular value. This part of their theory seems wholly based upon the assumption that some concerns are selling their products abroad for a less price than they charge domestic sumers, and that a protective tariff enables them to do this; but as this has been the practice of producers under all tariffis, when trying to get foreign market and it is likewise the common practice of proin all foreign countries, it

or hold

ducers

a

therefore furnishes

no

con

argument

The presumption seems quite reasonable that the field which produces the raw materials, or which imports them free of customs duty, should be the cheapest place where they may be worked up into manufactured goods; nevertheless, where the labor cost is high, as in the United States, it may not be possible even with the advantages afforded by improved machinery and better industrial methods to rival in cheapness of production countries where the cost of labor is from 30 to 75 per cent less. Thus the lower labor cost in some coun

more

tries may in some instances than offset the greater labor efficiency in other countries, and this fully explains the necessity for the

tion.

The theory that duties upon raw materials obstruct export trade is a

the competition of cheap labor countries. The misguided people who are

tection

case it must be conceded that the dois to be maintained in any

mestic

are entitled to it in no less degree

producers of raw materials

than those who work the materials

into

manufactured goods, and they

lustrate the current free trade misimportance of external trade. To ilrepresentation of facts and conditions we quote this sentence from an edi

torial in the Boston Herald: "We

are essentially dependent for our business well-being upon the maintenance and expansion of our export trade." This is not true; for the statistics of our last census show that our total of manufactured exports constitute in value not more than 5.15 per cent of the net domestic production; and when we compare the value of our entire export trade, covering natural and manufactured products, with what we sell and consume at home, the former cuts but a small figure. While we concede the relative importance of our export trade, and favor getting more of it if it can be obtained by sound economic methods and without sacrificing any domestic interest, there is no sufficient reason for giving it undue prominence; for it is a fact, as has often been proved, that foreign trade is no real test of a nation's prosperity and that the home market is, and must continue to be, the chief reliance of the vastly greater number of our producers. There is the further fact that only a fraction of our 76,000,000 people are directly or vitally interested in export trade in manufactures; and of our 512,585 manufacturing establishments (only those having an annual product in excess of $500 being included in this total) it is safe to say that only a comparatively limited number are so in

terested.

Again, the Herald says that "the prohibitory schedules of the tariff prevent foreign competition in the home market except in extreme cases." This statement is as untrue as the other; for in the last fiscal

year we imported manufactured goods from Europe to the value of $267,594,471, while the value of manufactured goods we exported to Europe was $31,000,000 less. Certain it is that Europe has little reason to complain of our "onerous tariff restrictions," when she has SO much the best of the trade exchange in manufactures. We do not doubt that foreign producers would be duly grateful for greater privileges in our home market, but this favor would not deter them from continuing their efforts to supply their own markets. Every concession we should make to them would only serve to strengthen their industrial position and to weaken our own.

or

The most pernicious of the schemes that threatens the integrity of the protective policy is that formulated by certain producing interests that need no protection, think they don't, to extend their trade abroad at the expense of other interests that have and still need protection. It requires little reflection to realize that this scheme is grossly unfair, not to say iniquitous. No person can be so mentally obtuse as not to see that a proposition to injure or destroy your neighbor's industry to benefit your own is immoral and indefensible. If by building up industries for ourselves we diminish the prosperity of similar industries in other countries our course is perfectly justifiable on ethical grounds, for no nation has a right to sacrifice the welfare of its own people to benefit another; but the case is essentially different with industries within the country, where all are entitled to an equal measure of protection from spoliation. No sound reasons can be urged in behalf of the scheme to promote export interests by withdrawing protection from other interests; and it is an indisputable fact that it is to the protective policy that the nation owes its present ability to export manufactures. The exporting interests appear to be doing well enough under present conditions; and their notion that our export trade would be greatly increased under a lower tariff is controverted by all the former experience of this country under low tariffs, and also by the experience of other protective nations which have tried the experiment with unfavorable results. They should further consider that the outcome of their efforts to break down other people's prosperity may be to endanger their own as well.

There are some lessons that we have learned from our national expe

rience under should

never

a

industry is to increase employment and enhance wages; that it is labor, more than all else, that needs continued protection, that it may not be reduced to the lowest level of any civilized country a level incompatible with a standard of comfortable living; that the interests of all classes of people are promoted by maintaining through steady and well-paid employment the purchasing power of the masses; and that the greatest industrial and commercial progress has been made under high or adequate tariff duties, while, as all must know, industrial growth and prosperity have been seriously retarded by making the tariff wall too low. These results are striking proofs of the economic value and soundness of the protective principle, and we should not abandon it for a

protective policy that be forgotten, and

though they seem familiar enough they need to be often repeated: That home Production and consumption are the sources of prosperity;

returned

as finished products, or the

an

unnecessary

expenditure of

money and energy; that to diversify

disturbance to business, than can be gained by special measures like that or by commercial treaties like those negotiated by Mr. Kasson, or by precipitating a general tariff upheaval in Congress when no extended or radical changes are demanded. An old-time protection writer forcibly said, and it is as pertinent to-day: "The principle of protection is a broad and general one, applicable to all American products, and its proper application to each product and industry requires, not piecemeal haphazard action, such as comes from bills for special interests, but comprehensive consideration of the entire industrial field, so that the operation of the beneficent system may be fairly and wisely adjusted."

The present attacks on our protective system, though they may be ineffective to secure immediate tariff changes, may nevertheless result in serious disturbance to business and a consequent decline in the present universal prosperity; but if, in the course of the next three or four years, the free traders and "tariff reformers" are allowed to carry out their plans the country may be subjected once more to a repetition of the destructive experiences that followed the tariff agitation and legislation of 1894. If this should be the outcome, it is certain that after paying the inevitable penalty for this folly the country would as surely return to the policy of protection as it has done several times before. This has likewise been the experience of all other countries that have a protective system: protectionist reactions have invariably succeeded periods of low tariffs. The fixed purpose of the leading nations of continental Europe to maintain and

strengthen their protective system makes it all the more necessary for the United States to pursue the same course unless we are to take a secondary place among the industrial nations of the world. As the commerce and industry of the country have become well adjusted to the present tariff, to abandon it now for a fiscal policy that is radically different, if not altogether experimental, would be to exchange a haven of security for a "sea of troubles."

IN 1899 Mr. Bayard Cutting published a statement showing that the beet sugar manufacturers could succeed even without protection. He based his whole calculations upon the price of sugar under the McKinley law. Even with sugar on the free list, the price was over 4 cents a pound. Of course he did not foresee that in 1902, under possible free trade, with improved methods of production and the European bounty, sugar would be less than 3 cents a pound, which would necessarily destroy the whole basis of the calculation. Notwithstanding that the conditions had so changed as to destroy the basis of the entire calculation and make it obvious that what Mr. Cutting showed would be profitable in 1899 would be ruinous in 1902, the New York Evening Post published the

article as having full reference to conditions to-day, and that has been printed and reprinted and circulated by the millions, when it has no more relation to present conditions than the price of cotton cloth has to-day to the price of raw cotton in 1865. —Gunton's Magazine.

WHENEVER Americans have struggled too eagerly for foreign trade they have sacrificed a profitable home trade, and at the same time have failed to increase their external trade. Colorado Springs Gazette.