The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-12-11
TARIFFS AND NoN-TARmFs.
An Examination of the Condition of Coun-
tries Where Protection and Free Trade
Hold Sway.


tries Where Protection and Free Trade
Hold Sway.
Hon. D. P Baldwin, in Logansport Journal.
Concerning the great and all-absorbing tar
if question-free trade, protection or tariff
for revenue only-which | had hoped to find
the materials for a ready solution in the old
world l came away greatly disappointed. [
thought had found a complete solution for
this yexed question in England. Free trade
seemed so perfect a success there that said
to m yself The problem is solved at last"
Crossing bit of water only twenty-five miles
wide | was amazed to find a succession of
splendid countries, France, Germany and
Italy, just as prosperous as England and all
working under high protective tariff This
lead me to broader thoughts, and l found
that the success or failure of tariff depends
on something more than mere exchanges or
even commercial principles. Tariffs, like
politics, run in the blood. Their success de-
Ponds upon national characteristics cir
cumstances and ideas. Race soil and history
have great deal more to do with free trade
and protection than mere reader Of books
and statistics ever dreamed OF. England, for
example, has no land and cannot begin to
raise her own food. She has national debt
that she never expects to pay; she has vast
substratum ofignorant and brutalized labor
who will, upon all opportunities, go down in
the dirt before nobleman. Besides that in
j. e.; the aristocracy govern in the name of
the people.
France, on the other hand, raises her own
food, her land is universally distributed
among her citizens and she has an intelligent
and self-respechng peasantry who call no man
lord, and expect to pay every dollar OF her
debt. Besides that, the French are not, as the
English, race of shop-keepers, whose only
idea is to get rich and whose whole history
is one long record of commercial sefishnesS,
holding nothing sacred when it stood in the
way OF trade. With these differences of race,
soil and national aims, the success of both of
the two rival systems, free trade in England
and protection in France and on the CONT
nent is easily explained. And what is true
of France is equally true of Germany and
Italy.
Accordingly, return from the old world
with the conviction that America must
make her own tariffs with little or no regard
to the various systems of the old world.
Their experiences are valuable as informa-
ton and as raw material out of which to aid
our judgments, but in this matter as in all
others where there are radical differences of
situation and circumstance, it is a clear case
of America for Americans One thing il
very significant. The cost of living and all
the necessaries of life is less in the nations Of
the continent that have protective tariffs
than in free trade England, and the condition
of their working people infinitely better.
The enormous wealth of England originally
came from her colonies and is still kept up
by India, and was accumulated before 1916,
the date of her present free-trade system,
and although free trade is just the thing for
England after centuries of protection had
accomplished their perfect work, it is not
the thing for Italy, France, Belgium or Ger
many, or otherwise Bismarck, Cavour and
the French statesmen would have adopted it
long ago.