The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-26
THE EUROPEAN WAR AND AMERICAN
. POLITICS-FREE TRADE.

From the N. Y. World.
The great war which is about to ravage
Europe will enlarge the mental horizon of the
American people and familiarize their
thoughts with the influence of our foreign
relations on our internal prosperity. The
fierce domestic controversies which have torn
and distracted this country for the last fifteen
years have concentrated attention on home
affairs, and made us oblivious to the fact that
our country is member of the great COM
munity of nations, and that it's prosperity is
affected by it's environment as we'll as its in
ternal organization.
The immediate and perhaps the most inn
portant effect of the war on our interests will
be to raise the prices of our agricultural pro-
ducts and increase our exports. Now, in
proportion as we become an exporting nation
and our attention is more and more fixed on
the state of foreign markets, our people will
be proselytized to the doctrines of free trade.
England stands in the forefront of all free
trade nations, because she is, beyond all
others, the great exporting nation. Our
Southern States have always, for similar
reason, led the van of free trade in this coun-
try. AS soon as cotton came to be cultivated
on such scale that the home market could
not take the crop, and a great part of it had
to be exported, the cotton States stood as
solid phalapx to fight the battles of free COM
merce. The impulse which will be given by
this war to the expectation of Western pro-
ducts will rapidly ripen the free trade senti-
ments which have already made such crafty
ing progress in that section.
In the early part of this century, when all
Europe was involved in the great Napoleonic
wars, and the United States, from their posi-
tion as neutrals, were the chief carriers of
foreign commerce, and our crops were taken
at high prices by European consumers there
aAu nf milf
although the science of political economy was
then in its infancy. The favorite political
motto of that period was, ''Free Trade and
Sailors Rights" The war with Great Britain
declared in 1912, cut off our foreign COM
merce and stimulated domestic manufactures
Soon after the close of that war, Waterloo and
the exile of Napoleon restored peace to
Europe, and as soon as the industry of that
quarter of the globe began to recuperate, we
lost the foreign markets which had en-
riched us for the first ten or twelve years
of the century. 1t was then that the cry for
protection arose and became for many years
the rallying point of our politics. The result
was, first, the protective tariff of 1924; after
wards, the more highly protective tariff of
1928, denounced as the "bill of abomina-
tions;" then South Carolina notification, fol-
lowed by the immediate reduction of duties
by Mr.. Clay's celebrated compromise tariff of
1888. Ihe Leading argument or the protec-
tionists, from the time the controversy
opened after the peace of 1915 down to the
triumph of free trade in the Democratic reve-
nue. tariff of 1885, was the importance of
manufactures as affording market for our
agricultural products. During all that period
the question of protection was discussed as
question of markets; and it is perhaps only
in this view that it can find ready access to
the popular mind.
When our civil war broke out, our exports
were arrested, and a vast home market for
everything we could produce was created by
the consumption of our armies. The protec
tionists never dominated over us with such
absolute and oppressive sway as during this
interruption of our export trade. Within
two or three years after the close of the war
when our countrymen began to realize again
the importance of foreign markets, free
trade reaction set in, and all the most widely
circulated public journals of the West, of
both political parties, have become jealous
-protectionists The European war, by
increasing the foreign demand for our pro
ducts and increasing our exports, viii further
develop this tendency and give new impetus
to the free-trade movement.
The reason why exporting communities
favor free trade is easily explained People
who sell abroad must of course buy abroad