The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-06-08

transportation and the profits of exporting
and importing merchants. BY his computa-
ton the labor of one million men in China
sufices TO produce the tea sold in the Ameri-
can markets and the labor of three or four
millions is expended in delivering the Chinese
product to the American consumers. This,
as he explains it, is the state Of the case quite
apart from the duties levied on tea by our
Government. Why, then, can henot see that,
without any duty on tea at all, the American
tea-grower would enjoy the constant adyau-
tage over his Chinese srival of producing his
crop at one-ftfth of the cost per pound Of
the foreign article Free-traders owe
Mr.. Greeley an obligation for bringing
into prominence the great advantage en-
joyed by American producers in their
own market in consequence of the cost of
transportation. Every reader must perceive
that il is superlatively absurd for an Ameri-
can to whine and beg for protection in
case where every laborer he employs can pro-
duce as much of the commodity as can be de-
livered by the labors of five men engaged in
growing and forwarding the rival commodity.
All that the native producer can need to be
protected against is the sale of the foreign
article at a lower price than the cost of pro-
ducing at home. The case selected by Mr..
Greeley is well calculated to elucidate the
principles; but it is by no means necessary
that the cost of transportation and the profits
of intermediate dealers should be three or four
times the cost of production in over to protect
the native grower against injurious cOmpeti-
ton. These expenses must always form a
considerable part of the price of everyimported
article, and, in all cases where our natural
facilities for production are equal to those of
the foreigner, these expenses are an all-suffi-
cient and irrepealable protection. If, with
this great advantage, the native producer can
be undersold by his foreign rival, that is con-
elusive evidence that the country is not
adapted to, or not yet ripe for, that kind of
production The American producer is always
protected by distance, by the cost of loading
and unloading vessels, and by the profits of
the exporting and importing merchants. If
his business cannot thrive with these advan-
tages, it is badly selected and he has no right
to call on the Government to make up his
losses. If, in cases where the expense of
transportation and the profits of foreign mer-
chants can be saved, our people are too blind
to see their advantage, it is absurd for the
Government to interfere; and the absurdity
could not be more striIngly illustrated than
it is in Mr.. Greeley's exposition.
He wants tea protected" There is already
a duty on tea of twenty cents pound in gold,
which is a hundred per cent. of the original
cost of production according to his own esti-
mate. By his own reckoning there is an adj
ditional protection of something like four
hundred per cent. by the labor and expenses
of the middlemen. And yet with this enor-
nous protection of five hundred per cent
four hundred per cent. natural and one hun
dred per cent. governmental-not pound of
American tea is produced for the market and
Mr. Greeley elaborately sets forth as his ma
ture opinion that American tea growing ought
to be forced by protection" Since the pre-
sent enormous protection fails, what rate Of
duty would he have? Utterly preposterous as
his opinion is, it is identical in principle with
the doctrine which has always been taught by
the tariff men. Free traders owe Mr.. Greeley
their thanks for presenting it in so Ineligible
form, and making it ridiculous by accepting
its legitimate consequences.
1t is hardly worth while to criticize his pre-
pOsterous statistics, for the success of the ar
gument does not depend upon their accuracy.
But the writer of a set treatise on political
economy owed it to his reputation not to
shoot so very wide of the mark. He esti-
mates that six million men are employed in
supplying the American market with tea
namely, one million of tea-growers in China,
one million laborers in the United States who
produce the values with which the tea-grow-
ers are paid, and four million sailors, dock
men, and merchants. Now the annual i'm
portation of tea, according to the finance re-
port of the Treasury Department, is about
forty million pounds; so that each of Mr.
Greeley's six million men, earns, on an
average, the value of six pounds and ten
ounces of tea, worth, according to the average
Custom House valuation, about 81 cents a
pound The American consumers of tea who
support Mr.. GreeleyS six million laborers of
course pay not only their wages, but the cost
of their subsistence; and as the value of all
the tea imported into the United States in 1867
was $12, 235, ,4S3 the six millions of men en-
ployed in supplying the American market with
tea live and support their families on about
two dollars per annum! Dismissing
these inaccuracies without further notice,
we call attention to the fact that while
Mr. Greeley thinks that one million men
suffice to produce the American supply
of tea in China he thinks it would re-
quire two millions in the United States;
thus virtually retracting his acknowledgement
opinion that the climate of America is as
well adapted to tea as that of China Even
in his protectonist hot-hed he would employ
five million laborers to supply American con
sumers with their forty million pounds o.
tea, rewarding each laborer at the munifcent
| rate of eight pounds of tea per annum, OF
| about a third of an ounce of tea per day, fol
his whole wages! AS the object of protec-
ton, as he explains it, is to save the expense
| of three or four millions of middlemen, we dc
not see that he mends the matter much by
his scheme of employing five millions of nativ,
laborers to supply the American market will
homegrown tea.
AMERICAN CITIZENS IN CUBA-TH]
CASE OF MIR. CASANOVA.
From the NJ Y. Herald
The lives and fortunes of several thousand
OF American citizens are now in a precariou
IN (,,1,, L.,