Northern tribune. [volume] (Cheboygan, Mich.) 1875-1885, 1882-06-03
FREE TRADE.

FREE TRADE.
Professor Perry--rhe Old StOry--The-
DRY and Unreliable Assertion.
IT, the Editor OF the Post and Tribune.
A dozen years ago Professor Perry
came from his college cl0ister and spoke
here and in other western cities in favor
of free trade. A month ago he was here
again on the same errand, and his old
ways are unchanged. He has the same
"glittering generalities" of theory, the
same wealth of careless assertion, the
same poverty of accurate fact, the same
elegant use of such epithets as robbery"
Hypocrisy" and "mOnOpolists," as APP
piled to prOtectiOnists.
A few of his assertions may be taken
as samples. He told us that the farmer
is virtually prohibited from selling his
hogs outside his own country" by our
absurd tariff, BY the report for 1880 of
the United States agricultural depart
ment the exports were as follows:
Hogs. 1913, 3H, 1876
Bacon and hams. ................ sos 1923
$64, 331, 629
The farmers can stand such prOhibi-
ton. He likes it indeed!
The learned professor has an especial
pity for the Ohio farmer and describes,
with fine word-painting, one "whO wants
to sell hog, which, in England, would
buy two pair of wooden blankets, but
only one in this privileged land of the
Free" Farther he tells us that we i'm
port very few blankets "but use $4,000
600 worth year, and the duty at the
custom houses of Boston, New York and
San Francisco enables our manufactur-
ers to almost double the price of blan-
kets. The sole use of this duty is to
make the poor and middle classes pay
twice as much for blankets as they are
worth"
In melting and pitiful language he
pOrtrays poor mothers and scores of
children who have shivered and frozen
to death on account of the accursed tax
law (or tariff which puts this unnatural
value on Gods free warmth and WOOL"
This again is assertion. If true, our
blanket makers deserve severe punish
ment. How hard hearted they must be
to freeze poor innocent children that
mayathey make more money on their
goods!
But here comes a fact. The Boston
Commercial Bulletin says: an order to
determine the comparative price of
blankets in England and America, a New
England manufacturer recently import
ed pair of fiye-p0und blankets at the
lowest possible cost. The cost and duty
was as follows:
pair blankets, per steamer. ........ $445
Duty, 80 cents per pound. $3.50
Duty, 30 per cent. NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS.. LIS
-425
Custom house fees. $50. ...... IS
1896
If this duty is added to the price at
the cost of the consumer, as the Perry
assumption has it, the blankets ought to
be worth 1896 here, but exactly such
blankets sell in Boston, the Bulletin
says, at $500, only rs cents above the
English price without duty,-and even
this small difference comes from an ex-
ceptiOnal low price abroad.
Shoddy, too, Of the poorest kind, enters
largely into the miserable fabric of com
mon English blankets and carpets. The
best carpet yarns of great ROchdale
mill were not equal the poorest sent
there as samples from a mill in Macon.
Ga, and John Bright candidly said they
could not use our yarns as they must use
the cheapest materials to sell at low
pIlScc. lhio law 10 llOul d ldtt SpttCIl
in Congress by Judge Kelly.
Mr.. Marshall Field, of the great i'm
porting drygOods house in Chicago, one
of the largest in the country, tells Mr..
V. B. DenslOw of that city "the prices at
which ordinary cheap wOOlens and cot
tons sell in the United States are lower
than in England" On the finer cloths,
luxuries for the rich, Mr.. Fieldssaid we
could not so well compete, as our labor
costs more, -four times as high as in
some departments" than in England.
Probably that experienced merchant
who visits England on business, knows
quite as much of prices as the college
teacher. who assumes and asserts that
the tariff doubles prices on blankets.
Read to Improve.
There is no virtue and little enjoyment
in reading one after another of what are