The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-01
sPxRxr OF THE PRESS.
editorial Opinions ofthe Leading Journals
upon Current opios-Compiled Every
s Day for the Evening Telegraph.
THE CoOLIE QUESTION AND FREE
TRADE.

city journal recently undertook 10 snow
that the Democratic party cannot oppose
great influx of coolie laborers without involv-
ing itself in inconsistency. That journal
asserts, truly enough, that the Democratic
party is free-trade party; but draws the un-
warrantable inference that free-trade party
cannot, without stultifying itself, resist the
introduction of cheap labor while it favors the
introduction of cheap goods This is one of
those plausible crotchets that explode as soon
as the light falls upon them. 1t is true
enough that labor is employed in the produc-
tion of commodities but it is not true that
cheap labor and cheap commodities always go
together.
The trade question and the labor
question are SO distinct that no sophistry can
confuse them. The labor question hinges
upon the equitable division of the products
of labor between employers and employees.
Mr.. Samson, of North Adams, does not intend
to give the community cheaper shoes, but
to increase his own profits. Selling shoes at
the same price, the less he pays to his coolie
workmep, the more he will have left to
increase his capital. The tariff and coolie
immigration have the same object, namely
to enhance the profits of the manufacturer.
Free trade rests for its defense upon the
great fact that the Creator has diversified the
globe on which we dwell with an infinite va
riety of soils, climates, productions, mineral
resources, and other capabilities, and that
these inequalities between different countries
are increased by differences in civilization,
and in the capacities, wants, and modes of
living of their inhabitants If both oranges
and ice were produced with equal facility in
the Island of Cuba and the State of Maine,
there could never arise question of the in
terchaDge of these productions between these
places because any differences in the price
of labor would be more than cancelled by
the cost of transportation. Ice can be pro-
duced in the West Indies by processes we'll
known to chemists; oranges can be grown
in Maine by hot-house culture; but it
would require a hundred times the
labor to produce either in such struggle
against climate that is needed to pick the
oranges where they are given in perfection
by the spontaneous bounty of the tropics, or
to cut and ship the ice which the rigor of a
Northern winter congeals on the surface of
every lake and stream. The cost of trans
portation is a trife compared with this differ
ence in the facility of production. The same
amount of human labor can deliver hundred
times as much ice in Havana by gathering
oranges in the interior of Cuba, as it could do
by generating ice with powerful air-pump;
and SO, on the other hand, Yankee could lay
down on a Portland dock hundred times as
many barrels of oranges by employing him.
self in cutting ice, as he could deliver by cul-
tivating oranges in a greenhouse. The
comparative rates of wages in Maine and in
Cuba, but between the productiveness of the
same amount of labor when employed on
the same commodity. Free trade gives to
the inhabitants of every country the full ad-
vantage of the prodigal bounty of nature in the
every other. 1t enables every region of the
globe to procure the peculiar commodities of
every other, with only the labor they cost in
others plus the transportation. 1t enriches
the human race by increasing the general
stock of the products of labor; and as the
fruit of abundance is cheapness, it enables
every individual who has wages to expend to
get the greatest sum of comforts in exchange
for them. Free trade, instead of lowering
wages, increases their value by cheapening
the prices of goods. 1t is the undisputed
purpose of protective tariff to raise prices
for the benefit of the home producer.
Between the introduction of cheap foreign
goods and cheap foreign labor, there is this
great difference: that the cheap goods bene-
fit the whole mass of buyers who make up the
community, whereas the cheap labor benefits
only the individuals who employ it so long as
the prices of commodities are regulated and
kept up by the tariff The tariff renders
labor unproductive by forcing it into unpro-
fitable employments, and taxing the whole
body of laborers and consumers to make up
the loss. The question between capital and
labor relates to the division of products; but
as no more can be divided than is produced,
capital can get it's customary profits in an un-
productive employment only by diminishing
wages, either directly or by the enhanced cost
of living. With free trade our domestic labor
would all be engaged in the most profitable
employments increasing the common fund
to be apportioned between capitalists and
operatives.
The introduction of cheap labor merely to
benefit the manufacturing monopolists would
be no advantage to the country. Cheap labor
in China gives us cheap tea; but if coolies
were brought here to cultivate the tea-plant
under a high protective tariff, the effect
would be to diminish American wages and at
the same time augment the cost of living.
When the coolies raise tea for us in China we
get the full advantage of their cheap labor,
and, what is more important, of its employ
ment in a productive occupation. If they
should raise tea in this country under
a tariff high enough to enable capital
to make a profit, the cheapness of
their labor would benefit nobody but
the employer, and inflict upon the rest
of the community the double evil of dear tea
and injurious competition for employment.
The same reasoning will equally apply to the
importation of coolies for any of the protected
industries. With free trade we should have
the full advantage of the cheap labor of other
countries and of it's employment under favor
ing influences of soil and climate. Using it
in this way, we should confer benefit on
our own laborers by cheapening the cost of
living without reducing their wages, and
without raising new jealousies or antagonisms
of race, or introducing new complications
into our politics by further degrading the
suffrage.