Morning journal and courier., 1883-02-24

taxation. Abolish the tariff and save the cost of maintaining custom houses, says he. lSee MT. Summers article in the No7th Amer sc0n Re0teso for March. Precisely how cor responding direct taxes could be collected without an expense at least equal to that of maintaining custom houses it is not attempted to explain. Direct taxes are odious at the best, and free traders keep that issue out of sight as far as possible. How much better 1t would be for the workingman or any other citizen to pay government tax upon his head or his land than upon a few articles which he purchases is not very apparent. Of course few men believe that if our manu- features were destroyed, and we were obliged to seek in foreign countries for the things we
 ow make at home, we should long be able to buy as cheaply abroad as we now can. The increased demand for skilled labor there would enhance the price of both the labor and its product. But aside from all that, does not every careful student of political economy understand that it is of great i'm portance that the balance of trade shall be in our favor? It Is barely so to day. How would cur prosperity be affected if, with largely increased importations, the stock of money in the country should be largely re- duced? But, says the free trade professor, let the mechanic "go to the land," which is abundant and fertile. Tt is not even neces- sary here to pursue painstaking industry. No skill and little division of labor are re- quired .in agriculture. If that gentleman should try it as pioneer in the far West without capital possibly his opinion in this regard would be modified. He says that the immigrants to this country Ego to the land, and that they do not add to the competitors in the labor market" No comment on this statement is necessary. But suppose that the millions now dependent upon the pay of the employed in our manufacturing estab- lishments, from Maine to the Gulf and from the Atlantic to the Golden Gate, could be transferred to the yet unbroken soil of the far West (penniless. as most of them would be after the chaos of that heart breaking enforced transition), there to obtain the "h1gh grade of comfort from the land" which the professor so complacently pie lures. How then would it fare with the ag- rlculturlsts who now supply those millions with bread and meat ? Oh, is the ready an- sTer, send the greatly increased agricultural product abroad, and dot the ocean with myr lads of sails. But we now have foreign market for only moderate surplus, and 8 slight increase in an exceptional year of plen- ty reduces prices. How would it be with eulturist gets dollar bushel for his wheat now, would he get more than fifty cents a busheE then?
 In one of the professors recently pub llshed letters he darts his ghbbest sneers against anti-slavery, anti-polygamy and pro 6ecE1ou1St New England. Yet that New Eng land which he thinks so laggard now in the path of truth and civilization" that New England which regards the tariff question as not one of morals, but rather of expediency and of national economy, that New England which produced and has nurtured Yale col lege, and has thus given him a vantage-p point from which to hprl his resonant but harmless torpedoes at our great manufacturing indus tries-is the same New England whose ideas have been instrumental in. reconstructing pro-slavery, nullifcation and free trade South Carolina, and in making her the free, loyal, Misunderstanding State that she is to-day. AL though, according to MT. Sumner, ''the big ger the cottonl n1ills'' of South Carolina and Georgia, which have been built and thrive under the New England policy, ''the bigger the nuisance" Does not everybody know that those southern States which, be- fore the war, produced little except few staples, coming directly from the soil (and which were then, barring African slavery, in much the same condition free traders seem to regard as the best for the whole country to-day). have, in the few years which have since elapsed, through diversified industries, achieved hitherto unattained prosperity. Let us hope that they are not all flying in the face of truth and civilization" even if their people have ceased to be disciples of and now prefer the teachings of Henry Clay and Horace Greeley.
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