The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1871-08-10
evening Stats 3lol,rnat.
thursday EvE'G. AUGUST 10, 1871.
Rule of the "cobdcn Club


The Capital contains the following very
excellent contribution from L. X, which
we commend TO our readers as sound doc.
trine for new States, especially like oul
own:
We are sick Of dependence on England,
therefore, in our weak way, we struggle on
with a view to change. If the ''Cobden
Z Cub, is anything it is congress of repre-
sentative men, who rally around the ghost
of the departed free-tradcr, to carry out his
principles. The assemblage has for its
leading objects so to direct the industries of
the world so as to build up and sustain
such compact countries as England at the
expense of sparsely settled countries like
America. The work of the Golden Club
is in the interest of bankers, manufacture
ers, and traders. Accumulated wealth
they would maintain in few hands by max
ing the rich richer by useless trade between
remote points, and reduce the poor to the
extreme of low prices for the result of their
work.
IL ought to be manifest to any thinking
man, that forced free exchange of commo-
dities between laborers four thousand miles
apart would be very hard on the workers.
The Golden Club English system of free
trade is precisely a forced trade with re-
mote countries, not easily to be shaken off
by any process of home supplies, however
cheap. The thousands of English factories.
carried on by machinery, hold firm grip
on the earnings of American farmers upon
the unequal footing of one Englishman pro-
ducing goods enough to pay the surplus sta
Piles OF hundred American farmers. But
the vast profits of such trade go to support
English aristocracy and intermediate bank
ers, shippers and traders, and not to the
men who do the work. They dhe workers)
are Obliged toput up with low prices, wor-
RED down to the lowest notch by the COM
pick machinery of remote trade. But in
our case the inequality Of the trade is ag-
grayated by our sending out heavy and
bulky staples to pay for light goods /; and
besides we generally take the risk of trans
portatlon on both ways, even in their ships.
Golden and those who follow in his foot
steps have no doubt smoothed the way for
the vast sales made by the European f;lcto-
RES to all parts of. the world, and especially
TO America. The trade has added strength
to them but weakness to us. We are
bnJh'tg people, and profuscly spend and
squander our vast resources in support of a
foreign trade, which makes the rich richer,
while it merely provides a starving pittance
to the operatives who produce the goods
we so lavishly purchase. The Golden Club
may not have much American support, but
the free-trade party in this country is large
and growing, and the restrictions on our ex-
cessiye imports are likely to melt away so
as to admit a vast import from countries
eager to sell. The pressure to sell will
doubtless be very great in Europe, and par
tlcularly in France, until she fully recuper-
ates. |
American recuperation and specie pay
ments are in the distant future. The time |
may come for reform, when we will quit |
selling bonds to Europe to pay our bal |
ances when we will induce our idle people
to learn trades, and go to work and produce
ample supplies to take the place of i'm
ported goods. We hope that happy time
will come when Golden clubs will not be
popular, and when political parties will all
umtc IN making our country scll-support-
ing, and IN no way dependent on England
or any other country for anything what
ever that can be produced at home. In
our case remote. trade is false trade when it
IS, like the English and American trade,
loaded down with intermediate charges and
losses OF one-sided character, and our
country can do better by shaking off her
dependence OH foreign countries and their
factories, and organizing her own industry,
and running her own machinery, producing
home supplies in such abundance as to re-
ileye the country from its excessive inn
ports, which have heretofore SO demoralzed
AMERICAN hapits. II. X.