It has not occurred to any one to suggest that the tariff is responsible for the shortage of coal or its high price. Faneuil Hall hints at "monopoly," yet one does not have much respect for the intellectual ability or honesty of those who argue that monopoly has anything whatever to do with the present price of coal. There is not enough of the coal itself. The duty of sixty-seven cents a ton de ters no one from buying foreign coal which is ten times that amount higher than it usually is. The repeal of the tariff duty would not reduce the price to consumers by one cent a ton, because, since the price is wholly controlled just now by the relation of the supply to the demand, and since importers are straining every nerve to bring in all they can get, such repeal would not result in the importation of a pound more than is now brought across the water.

THE USE OF SHODDY.

[Theodore Justice in The Manufacturer.]

While I have no census figures as to the quantities of adulterants used in Europe, I have obtained a fair idea of the extent of the use of reworked wool abroad from foreign trained woolen manufacturers now settled in the United States, and who are perfectly competent to form an opinion as to a sound proportion of shoddy to pure wool used in Europe, where the situation is almost the reverse of that in the United States, for in Europe 30 per cent of pure wool to 70 per cent of adulterants is near the rule, while according to the census of 1900 the proportion in this country is 75 per cent of pure wool to only 25 per cent of shoddy. The figures are as follows: 69,000,000 pounds of shoddy to 205,000,000 pounds of pure scoured wool, a total of 274,000,000 pounds, of which 69,000,000 pounds is just about 25 per cent.

The very low purchasing power of the

UR share in the British import trade of 1901 is shown by the following figures. The total imports were $2,609,950,990, of which we sold $705,077,325, being an increase of $11,131,020 over 1900. We sent two and one-half times as much as did our chief competitor, France; and $177,208,795 more than was sent by all of Great Britain's gigantic system of protectorates, colonies and possessions. We need not fear German competition in British trade, as that Empire buys more from Great Britain than Great Britain buys from it. Little Holland exports more to the British Isles than does Germany. Against our sales to Great Britain of $705,077,325, Great Britain sold to us $188,255,750, an increase over 1900 of only $1,535,795, against our sales increase of $11,131,020. This left the balance of trade $516,821,575 in our favor, a net increase over 1900 of $9,595,225. Had it not been for our short corn crop and phenomenal home demand for iron and steel and their manufactures, the trade balance in our favor would have been much larger. Eighty per cent of Great Britain's consumption of breadstuffs comes from abroad, and the United States holds first place in supplying the demand.

CANADIAN COMPETITION.

Canada may be, as she so boastfully claims, the "Granary of the Empire," but if so the "granary" must be sparsely filled, as her total exports to her "mother country" in 1901 were the smallest in four years, being only $99,272,925, a decrease of $9,947,180 as compared with 1900. In round figures the United States' increase was $2,000,000 more than Canada's decrease. This rather takes the gilt off Canada's "Granary of the Empire" coronation arch. Still, we must not lose sight of the fact that Canada is making strenuous efforts to secure British business. It will not be long before a fast line of subsidized steamships will be running between Liverpool and Canada, winter and summer, with freight rates favorable to Canadian goods. As Congress, so far, persists in refusing protection to American ocean shipping, it is very fortunate in this emergency that American capital and American energy control the large fleet of the International Mercantile Marine Company. That enterprise may be a trust, but like other so-called trusts, it is just what is needed for the development of American resources, American energy and the employment of American labor. Another plan which will be to our disadvantage is that Canadian products may be sold to British consumers without the intervention

of "middlemen." Let us make no mistake. We dare not dismiss Canadian competition in the British market as a bugaboo. These are cold facts, weighty facts, apart entirely from the recently enlarged "imperial sentiment." "Imperialism" was and is a will-o'-the-wisp cry with us, but between Canada and Great Britain it rests on a family foundation. Leading men of Canada have recently traveled all over the British Islands preaching that Great Britain's food supply must, and will, come from Canada and the other colonies, instead of from the United States. Our able consul at Liverpool, Mr. James Boyle, warns us fully and urgently on this point. While Canada's one-third tariff preferential in favor of Great Britain is not by any means securing to Great Britain the trade of Canada, the increase in 1901 being less than a million dollars out of forty-six millions, yet the total increase in that year of Great Britain's sales to her colonies was $55,471,550. The closer Great Britain and her colonies draw together in trade, the harder we must work to retain our present favorable foothold in the British market. As Longfellow so encouragingly said, "Let us then be up and doing," or we may suffer seriously.

SOME FIGURES OF BRITISH PURCHASES. Inc, over 1900

Wheat, $115,406,860. United States,

1901 $67,377,655

$11,211,315

On the basis of population, 80,000,000 to 5,000,000, we should sell to Great Britain sixteen times as much as does Canada of commodities which both produce, but we are not doing so, except in hams. This is another reason, and a strong one, why we cannot afford to belittle Canadian competition in the British market. Holland sells more fresh pork to Great Britain than does any other country and also increased her sales of unmanufactured iron and steel tenfold in the one year. Belgium also largely increased her sales of pig iron, iron bars, angles and rods. We must also remember that the large purchases of American machinery were for the purpose of "Americanizing" English factories for the specific object of meeting American competition both at home and abroad. The total British trade, exports and imports, was the gigantic sum of $4,349,272,330, the imports being $2,609,950,990 and the imports $1,739,321,340. We are not anxious to overcome the gigantic import figures except by a corresponding increase of well-paid wageearning population, wanting foreign luxuries and able to pay for them. Certainly not, by reducing our national bulwark, the protective tariff. But we do want to overcome the $2,609,950,990 export figures. If Congress will do its duty and give us plenty of those best of all “drummers," American ocean going steamships, and with the aid of Manila as shipping and trading centre in the Orient, we can do it. The securing of foreign markets will compel the building of more factories, the employment of more machinery and men, and the turning out of more goods than will supply our preserved home market, which goods will be sold abroad to the profit of American interests, one and all.

Schenectady, N. Y., January 10.

THE PROPOSED COMPULSORY LABOR ARBITRATION IN BRITISH COLUMBIA.

Colonel L. Edwin Dudley, United Consul at Vancouver, describes the measure to our State Department as follows:

cial Parliament of British Columbia a bill was introduced for the settlement of labor disputes by arbitration. The minister said he would not ask for the passage of the bill at that session, preferring to submit it for the consideration of the Parliament, the people, the railway companies and their employees during the year. It is expected that it will be brought forward at the next session and its passage urged.

A CONVERT TO PROTECTION.

A

FEW years ago the Hon. W. D. Bynum was a Democratic member of Congress from Indiana, and he was such a fierce opponent of Republican measures that he sometimes exceeded parliamentary propriety and was once censured for it by the House. But Speaker Reed discerned in him better qualities than his partisanship indicated, therefore he ad-, ministered the rebuke in the simplest and kindest way, and quite likely the discipline did the young man good. At any rate he has grown. He became a gold standard man and now he has become a protectionist. A recent Washington dispatch reports him as saying he is satisfied that a majority of the American people favor the protective principle, and that if it is ever destroyed, it will be "because of the extreme, extortionate demands of its immediate beneficiaries." He thinks the question ought to be taken out of politics.

How

This shows that Mr. Bynum still has an opportunity to grow. can the tariff be taken out of politics, and was it not placed in politics by the Constitution for the very purpose of enabling the people to checkmate the influence of the "immediate beneficiaries," whose demands Mr. Bynum fears, and also for the purpose of enabling the people to preserve protection when it is assailed by foreign aggression and endangered by free trade leagues in this country?

But what Mr. Bynum really meant was that the adjustment of tariffs is

a scientific and business matter, and ought not to be made to turn on a question of partisanship. In this he is clearly right, and if the Democrats who are protectionists would say so in their party councils, as Congressman Thayer of Worcester said last fall, they would cause the party to free itself from any further commitment to free trade and then members of both parties could work together in making the scientific and businesslike adjustments from time to time which the interests of the people all the people, producers and consumers might seem to require. Politics would then cease to endanger business. It is the Democratic allegiance to free trade, originally brought about by slaveholders, which alone threatens an overthrow of the conditions of prosperity.