The Valley Virginian. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1865-1895, 1880-09-30
The Boston ''Pilot" on Protection and
Free Trade

correspondent having asked the Boston Pilot to
define Free Trade and Protection, that journal re-
plies.
l. Free trade means unrestricted competition In
labor. he object of ell labor is the universal good,
and free trade would have it unregulated, uncon-
trolled by any rule or law. Thus tree trade is law
leS5nesS. Free trade is mockery IL is letting
| everybody loose to prey upon everybody else Free
| trade means bringing American workers into COM
petition with the worst paid and worst led workers
OF Europe, and TO compete successf lily with them,
Americans must pc satisfied 10 work longer hours,
and for, at most half the wages they pres
! ent. The consequence of this would be life of
| chronic starvation. But men who must have three
| good meals day, and who consider nine hours d
lair days work. cannot compete with workers who
labor twelve hours day and live on bread or even
worse corn meal and potatoes. Let judge of free
trade by its results. What has it accom- pished? 1t
has ruined and Impoverished Ireland India and
Turkey. 1t has created periodical famines in the
most productive agricultural nations. Before the
union of Ireland with England Irish manufacturers
were protected by very high tariff. In year
the union, 1900, there six thousand hands iii
Dublin fully employed in the wooden manufacturers.
forty years AFTER when the population had bled,
ifee Trade with England had reduced The workers
IN the WOODEN manufactures down to six hundred
ana sixty In the year 1900 in the city Cork, there
were IN 1ull work six thousand weavers and
thousand wool combers and hoSiers. In 1884 there
were put three hundred and forty weavers, and
hundred anu thirty hosters and wool combers. In
the year 1890 there We're about one thousand fan
mel looms at work in the county OF Wicklow In 1s4O
Inefe was not one. The small towns OF Balgriggam
had two thousand cotton looms at work In the year
,oou II lo4l mere were but Two hundred and TWEEN
ty looms at work These hut few eyatnpIas. all
trades suffered greater an extent as those
we have mentioned, some to greater and some be-
came extinct. sixty years ago Turkish musIins
gfnghams, ETC., largely imported into The IIni.
ted States. But Turkey adopted free trade policy
and levied duty OF only three per cent on i,nnorts
and twelve per cent ON domestic exports What was
the consequence? III 1912 there We're six hundred
looms at work in Scutari in 1881 only two hundred
There were two thousand weaving establish nents
in Tournova in 1872: there were only two hundred
in 1881 In 1913 the trade of India was thrown oman
and the native industries thrown open to unlinl-
tied competition 1t took only twenty years to com
pleteiy destroy the native industries. Men, women
from ThA
nelds, and ali demand for labor at end except
IN raising rice,cotton indigo and opium. Under free
trace 1an.lnes are of frequent Occurrences. of
the finest tracts of lands nave been 1orsaken and
given up to the untamod beasts Of the jungle. Mr..
Ihompsoh an English menoer of Parliament trsav
eled through Ind1i.. aud twenty five years ago in a
speech delivered In the House u Commons describ-
Ing the results OF free trade said SEQ with me TO
the northwest provinces of the Bengal presidency,
and will show you the bleaching skeletons of Avs
hundred thousand human beings who persisted from
hunger In the space of few short MONTHS yes, and
OF munger In what has beeu called the griLnery of
the world"
q Protection is simply defense Of our industries
against foreign competition Protection fiyors the
growth of trade 1t diversihes the industries of a
nation. finds employment for young ii nd old, male
and female, makes ali OF them producers, and thus
creates an abundance of the necessares OF life
as IL provides employment and wages for all 1t
bles all to purchase largely of the abundance crea-
ted. Napoleon had an idea worthy of him. sForm-
erly, he said, there only one kind of property.
iund; another has since risen, ,adustry !" and he
held 1t as wise and necessary to protect the
ton on the earth has attained leading position;
not nation In the past or present has maintained
the rank that entitled 1t to be called spower'
cept those who have firmly maintained policy of
protection. Belgium is highly prosperous under
strictly protective system. Protective Belgium in
creased her population sixteen per cent between
the years 1910 and 1850, while free Brit
Ian grew but eight per cent in the time Again
the Immigrants to the United during per-
1od Oh 1910 to 1860 from Belgium, equal only
twotenh of one per cent Of her population in 1885,
while those from Great Britain amounted to three
and efghtenths Of her population; the chance of
living at home was ninteen times better in protect
i've Belgium than in free trade England France,
under protective system, maintained from the
earliest days OF the first Bonaparte, has grown,
through all her political disturbances TO be the
leading manufacturing nation of Europe. Russia
under STORMY protective system, has risen within
the memory of living men from barbaliSm and con-
tempt to the rank of s'power' second to none in
Europe.