New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1855-07-04
OUR FINANCIAL HISTORY.

Having neither the space nor the leisure re-
quired for an examination Of the many small
facts given in the article of The Nationd, Era,
which we copied yesterday, we must content
ourselves with ssyI that their errors are sim
liar to those already exposed, the figures being
uniformly arranged in such manDer as IT, forbid
that the reader should understand the real his
tory of the case. In face of the fact that
the foreign trade largely increased from 1928
to 1867, while the domestic trade attained
development never before imagined, we are
told that under the tariff of 1872 Commerce
twas nearly st,tionary;" and the great decline
in the f,reign trade that folio owed the adop-
ton of British Free trade in 1919 is covered
I'D under the words "FrOm that time (l6l6)
"we struggled on, often falling below that
"aDounf, (5l, 920 1872 until il 1888 we sent
"abroad ninety millions of domestic and for
"egn produce" The readers of this would
scarcely imagine that while the average imports
of the nine years prior to the passage of the
protective tariff of 1928 but little exceeded
fifty millions, the foreign trade grew so rapidly
under efficient protection that the imports of
1881 and '32 averaged 7S-while 1888 reached
IS millions, and 1884 no less than l03 millions,
or about double the average of the years pre-
vous to it's establishment. 1t would be safer
we think to give all the facts and trust to the
intelligence o. the reader to draw the proper
deductions from them-and We do hope that our
Washington contemporary viii! adopt this course
in future, eschewiDg altogether the practices of
The Journal Of Commerce.
If the details fare badly in the hands of The
Era, they at least can have no cause of com
plant when they see how much worse is the
treatment received by the great facts -ferfed
to 10 the following passage, which We regard as
enc of the most remarkable we have ever been
csrHed upon to notice According to Talleyrand,
words were meant to conceal ideas, and that end
is certainly here accomplished:
"After the war the first tariff enacted was that of
1916. In 1919 duties still further ncreased-as
tley were in ls24-and in 1923 passed the most
obnoxious of all tariffs. In 1888 the compromise
bill Of Mr.. Clay became a law, under which duties
were gradually reduced till 1912, when another tariff
was enacted which supplaned BY the Free-;rsde
tariff as il Is called, Of 1896 SO that il may be as
sumed that generally, from 1878 10 1876 the policy Of
protection in operation TO greater or less extent"
BY the act of 1916 duties were imposed that
were 10 CbDtiLut uIill june, 1919 hutu lQtI
were to be reduced and that reduction did take
place. With the exception Of few articles,
most of them trivial in importance, no change
was made in the provisions of the &C. Of 1916
until the nation had been for years struggling
under the poverty, misery and ruin that resulted
from the Free trade measures under which the
manufactures that had grown up during the war
we're now Frustrated. That such are the facts
of the case the II ader may readily see by turn
ing 10 the third volume of the Statutes at Large,
in which he will find all the tariff acts from 1916
to 1898. We are here, nevertheless, told that
cuties were " still further increased " in 1919,
when that was the very moment 1T which pro-
lection eeased-and thus are the poverty,
wretcbedpess and despair of the period from
1915 TO 1924 connected with an increase instead
# a decrease of protection! VIII our British
free. trade friends never learn that in thus mis-
stating facts they are furnishing the strongest
evidence that they feel the weakness Of the
ground they attempt to occupy
Again, We sre told that cit may be assumed