Morning journal and courier., 1880-10-22
Price Four Cents.

to some extent, the creature of his ciIcum- stances that he belongs to an existing order of things which cannot be disturbed without affecting him. If by this order of things he has been educated to, and become established in, one kind of employment, and by change in this order of things he is deprived of that employment without being furnished with another, he is simply pauperized and sustains 1rreparable injury. And this is the true an- swer to the question, "What effect would the repeal of the protective tariff have upon the workmen In our protected industries ?" By the growth and development of these indus tries there has been created a great body of laborers who are now dependent for both work and wages upon the continuation and prosperity of the industries which created them. Strike down these industries by 8 withdrawal of the protection which has hith- erto fostered them, and the work and wages of the laborer are gone. A repeal of tariff creates no new industries, and even if em- ployments, now unprotected, increase under the impetus of trade augmented by large imports of foreign goods, this increase must be very gradual, and where shall the laborer in the meantime find his work and wages
 There is no escape from this consequence. In theory protection may be an evil and free trade the true policy of every nation which is able to apply it's maxims to it's own social life But that, at the present moment and under existing circumstances, the workmen
 
 eft from the destruction of these industries, Is proposition whose very statement is it's refutation
 The argument of the learned professor in support of his claim that the general public as distinguished from the workmen in protect ed industries, would be benefited by the repeal of the protective tariff has some practical sub stance and value. I freely concede that if we could purchase commodities at a lower price than at present, it would be of advan- tage to us all and 1t is equally clear to my mind that a repeal of the protective tariff would, for a time at least, lower the price of many commodities. But this is a very one- sided and partial view of this question. It results from considering the protection ques- tion as if it were some abstract proposition in science, instead of being what it really is, a question practically interwoven with many other questions and incapable of being sev- cred from its relations with them. Grant ed that protection results in levying tax upon the consumer of certain commodities for the benefit of the producer that constitutes in view of all the facts, no reason why protection should be withdrawn. It is vastly better for all to endure our present burden than to have these workmen thrown upon the community, to live in even temporary idleness and undergo the fearful temptations which are born of Restitution and a sense of public wrong. It is own act nation which has created the present state of things, and justice therefore, as well as policy requires that we submit to 1t rather than throw the whole consequences of our mistake, if 1t was one, on those whom we have induced to put themselves in our power. Hence even if the tax laid on the consumer were accompanied with no pecuniary benefit to him, and were burden, pure and simple, upon his purse and labor, there sufficient reasons why the system out of which it grows should not be disturbed until it can be done with justice to all and with injury to none.
 But the tax, so-called and mis, called, is not a burden, pure and simple, but on the con- trary is accompanied with benefits which, on the whole, vastly outweigh its evils. Be it remembered that I am not dealing with an abstract proposition. l do not say that there is inherent in protection itself blessing which more than compensates for it's cuIse, nor am I discussing the question whether in a community where protection never has ob- tained it would be desirable and profitable to introduce it. It is a fact that protec- tion bas become an established sys- tenn in this country. In connection with it, and partly a consequence of it, great enterprises have been undertaken and are now ip the full tide of successful opera tion. Villages and cities have sprung up around the mills and shops in which protect ed industries carried on. Land hitherto worthless has become valuable Retail and wholesale tradesmen have developed an inn portant commerce in the protected commodi- ties themselves or in other goods for the SUD- ply of the laborers in the protected indus tries In this manner the entire financial system of the nation is connected with and made in some degree dependent upon these enterprises, and is liable to disturbance or ruin from whatever disturbs or ruins them.
 Now what brickmaker or bricklayer or bod carrier what umber-growe or lumber dealer or carpenter, what lron-mlner or iron smelter or nail maker, or other of the inRu- merable material-men and laborers, who erected all these mills and shops and their attendant stores and dwellings, school houses and churches, ever paid tax enough to the producer of the protected commodities which he consumed to offset the value which he re- ceived from the work and wages furnished to him in the construction of these build ings? What grocer or dry goods deaier, lawyer, doctor, clergyman real estate owner is now paying enough tax to such pro- ducer to equal the benefit which he is now deriving from the operation of these protect ed industries Stop the mills of Meriden, of Waterbury, of New Haven, and scatter the workmen to the four winds, who of loses by it?-nay, who does not lose? Is 1t the workmen only who suffer? What of the tenement-house owner, the store-keeper, the local physician and attorney, the minister, the journalist, &c., they well of as before? What of the wholesale merchants from whom the retail dealers bought their goods? What of other manufacturers, pro- tected or unprotected, who found here market for their products? What Of the workmen in other employments now con- pelled to compete for work with these dis charged operatives, who, rather than remain idle, offer their unskilled labor at reduced wages in these already well-flled occupations? Where does the evil stop, unless perhaps with the non taxable bondholder, or the re- cipient of certain salary drawn from se- ,Jo1,Y Tuhn InfaraSt n business world is to make his income go far as possible
 In view of all these consequences, vastly greater and more far-reaching than any one of us coniectures, what man dare say that to escape the so-called tax paid by the consumer to the protected industry, tax which we do not feel and should never think of but for the efforts of persistent agitators, it is best for us to repeal the protective features of our tariff and destroy the industry itself? Will any sane man advise it for Connecticut, for Pennsylvania, or the nation as whole :? For where would even the grain growers of the West be five years hence if the protected industries of the East were ruined, and it's money-lenders, no longer able to live on the profits of home trade and labor, were con- pelled to call in the mortgage loans, with out which these western farmers never could have begun and could not now continue their agricultural operations
 In this discussion have conceded, for the sake of the argument, most of what the professor has asserted in regard to the real character of a protective tariff, to the evils which attend protection and to the depend ence of our protected industries upon posi- tive legislation as the only force which keeps them in existence. Whatever the accuracy of his definitions, whatever the truth of his premises whatever the l gical necessity of his conclusions on all these subjects, facts show that protection must continue to be the policy of this country in regard to many if not all of our present protected industries until, in some way that none of us can now foresee, such provision can be made for the security of all our people and of all our in terests, that justly, wisely and economi- cally for all, the change from Protec- tion to free trade or revenue tariff can be made. That day may come and come speedily but it is not yet. l believe in providence which shapes the destinies of na- tions as well as individuals, and which often oyerrules greater evils than protection to the advancement of national prosperity and hap piness Has it not been so in our own his tory? Have not our manufactures, all more or less connected with protected industry, developed until we have become a selfsus- taining people, able to do without the services