Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1872-02-28
Great Britain and the United States

Great Britain and the United States.
In the course of the introduction to
the volume of his speeches, letters and
addresses recently published, Hon.
VIM. D. Kelley presents the following
striking contrasts between the condi-
tion of Great Britain and the United
States:
''It was not easy to abandon opin-
ions had cherished through so many
years, and in which my faith had been
SO implicit, but it was still more diff
cult to accept the opposite system, that
OF protection, which had so often de-
nounced as false, selfish and exclusive.
Nor did I do this hastily more than
two years mad been devoted to the
writings of the ablest advocates of both
systems, and still I halted between
them. Meanwhile it became apparent
to me not only that political economy
was not science, but that it is impos-
s1ble to frame system of abstract
economic proportions that could be
universally applicable and benefcient
and, further, that the same principles
could be applied benefcially to England
and the United States. The conditions
OF the two nations are not the same,
but are IN striking contrast. England
is small island, but the United States
embrace almost the entire available
territory of continent She is
burdened by an excess of population,
and vexed by the question as to
how she shall dispose of the excess
butour great need is industrious people,
and with us the question is, how can
we increase immigration She has to
import food for half her people, and
her foreign trade is to her what seed
time and harvest are to the countries
with which she procures the breadstuffs
see requires but cannot produce; but
were they on our soil, we could feed
ten times the number of our people;
and even while | write, the mer
chants of Minnesota, Iowa,
and other northwestern states
are suffering financial embarrassment
because the farmers they supply can-
not find market for their crops. She
is dependent on foreign countries for
most of the raw material she works;
but we have within our limits exhaust
less stores of every variety not de-
pendent upon tropical heat for their
production. Her resources are ascer-
tanned and developed, but ours await
development, and in regions, any one
of which is larger than all western Eu-
rope, including the British Islands,
await definite entertainment. Her popu-
lation is compacted into narrow limits
her railroads completed and paid for;
but our people are settled sparsely over
half the continent, and our system OF
roads, for which the capital is yet TO
be procured, is to be constructed. The
charges for transportation within her
circumscribed and populous limits are
very light, but over our extended and
thinly settled country they are neces-
sarily heavy. Her factories were erect
ed and supplied with machines while
she maintained the most rigid system
of protection the world has ever seen;
but ours are to be built as experiments
in the face of threatened free trade,
which would involve % more unequal
competition than any against which she
defended hers by protective duties and
absolute prohibition. Her average
rate of interest is 3 per cent per an
mum; but ours is never less than 6 per
cent. per annum, and in large sections
of the country is often 3 per cent.
month. The great body Of her labor
ers, even since the recent extension
of the suffrage, are subjects
without civic duties but ours are citi-
zens and liable to such duties. She
pays the daily wages of her workmen
with shillings but we pay ours with
dollars worth four shiilings each, and
give many classes of them more dollars
than she does shilings. And it is pos
sible that the same economic policy
can be applied with equal advantage to
countries whose condition presents SO
many and such important contrasts. .