The weekly Ottumwa courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1857-1872, 1869-09-09
For the Courier.
Protection.

pretty well determined that the sys.
tom Of extending careful protection
to the manufacturing interests ofthe
east, at the expense of the consum-
ers in our agricultural districts, is
pernicious and unjust, to say the
least. The question of high tariffs
VI free trade, is assuring greater
prominence day by day; and bids
fair to engross at no distant day the
individual attention of our political
economists.
1t is certainly fitting that the por-
tails of q Republic 80 great and grand
as this, should be thrown open to
free intercourse with all nations
The feeling seems to be gaining
ground, not only at home but abroad,
that the Chinese walls Of custom
houses surrounding the outer limits
of this and other nations, have long
enough retarded the progress and
embarrassed the national intercourse
Of the Christian people Of the earth.
That the time is fast approaching
when governments will be obliged to
devise other means for oiling the
wheels Of their machinery, than by
revenues raised on importations, is
no longer a matter of doubt. And
when we see the people of other ma
tions, whose importations are COM
parstiyeIy high, clamorous for free
trade. is it not suggested that we
who import SO heavily are the ones
to start the ball in motion, to inau-
gurate the era that will be fraught
with SO much good, that willso ma
terially increase the amity and good
fellowship of nations2
Reasons multiply why the doors
Of the Republic should be SO opened
to commerce. We do not mean just
now; but, when our burthen OF debt
is lifted from our shoulders, or the
interest barring portion of it funded,
and when we are thoroughly settled
back into the grooves of economy
from which the nation was 60 un-
ceremoniously elected by our Demo
cratic fellow-citizens, J. Davis, G..
Gillaspy, and others.
The Eastern capitalists have fat
tened long enough off the West
There is no valid reason why four
fifths, nay, nineteen-twentieths of
the people of this country should
rob themselves for the benefit of the
remaining few. There is no good
reason why the American farmer
should not buy in Manchester for
SO cts. o yard, the cloth for which he
now pays Splague and others one
dollars or moro. There is no shad-
ow of argument in favor of protec-
tion unless we look, as the great
philosophers Of the Tribune does,
from purely Eastern standpoint.
The talk about fostering" home
manufactures, is bosh and twaddle.
If Europe can supply us at half the
cost Of supplying ourselves, why do
we want to manufacture? What is
the object of SO doing?
But, it is unreasonable to suppose
that our manufacturing interests
would suffer materially from the re-
form. 1t would only have the effect
Of breaking up monopoly, of attract
ing skilled labor, or, in the alterna-
tive, OF spreading over the west a
few of those millions now boarded
up by the rich men of the east. II
we could not compete for home trade
with England, who ships across a
stormy and perilous sea of over three
thousand miles in width, it would be
the fault of our system of manufac-
lures, and the bad management OF
the capitalists.
1t is a strange truth indeed il
America, with her coal, her iron, her
lead and copper, gold and silver, with
her wonderful wealth of minerals
and fertility of her soil, her rushing
streams and falling cataracts, cannot
compete with foreign capital and To-
Dor, without protection, and withou,
the ROBBERY of the people.
This question will be agitated in
the future, as it never has boen in
former years. The young Giant Of
the West, upon the resumption ol
specie, will demand free trade as Q
right, demand it on principle, demand
it as the rightful Inheritance of a free
people and free Republic. -