The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1884-06-25

continental and insular, are unsatisfactory and
nprofitable-indeed those relations are abso-
lutely oppressive to the financial interests of
the government and people of the United
States. In our current exchanges it requires
about $120 100000 to pay the balance which
Spanish-America brings against US every year
The amount is 30 per cent more than the av-
ersge annual product of the gold and silver
mines of the United States during the past FIVE
years. This vast sum does not, of course, go
to Spanish America in coin, but it goes across
the ocean in coin, or its equivalent,
to pay European countries for manufactured
articles which they furnish to Spanish-Ameri-
CA large proportion of which should be fur
nished by the manufacturers of the United
States
THE TARIFF AND SOUTH AMERICAN TRADE.
At this point of the argument the free trad
er appears and declares that our protective tar
if destroys our power of competition with Eu-
ropean countries, and that if we will abolish
protection we shall soon have South American
trade. Tho answer Ia not sufficient, for today
there are many articles which we can send to
South America and sell as cheaply as Euro
pean manufacturers can furnish them. 1t is
idle, of course, to make this statement to the
genuine apostle of free trade and the implaca-
Bile enemy of protection, for the great postu.
late of his argument, the foundation of his
creed, is that nothing can be made as cheaply
in America as in Europe. Nevertheless facts
are stubborn and the hard figures of arithme-
tic cannot be satisfactorily answered by airy
figures of speech. The truth remains that the
coarser descriptions of cottons and cotton
prints, boots and shoes, ordinary household
furniture, harness for draft animals, agricultu-
raj implements of all kinds, doors, sashes and
blinds, locks, bolts and hinges, silverware
plated-ware, wooden-wars, ordinary paper and
paper .hangings, common vehicles, ordinary
window glass and glassware, rubber goods,
coal oils, lard oils, kerosenes white lead, lead
pipe, and articles in which lead is a chief COM
ponent, can be and are produced as eheaply in
the United STATES as in any other spart of the
world. The list of such articles might be
heightened by the addition of those classed as
notions" butenough only are given to show
that this country would, with proper CONNER
cial arrangements, export much more largely
than it now does to Spanish America.
In the trade relations of the world it does
not follow that mere ability to produce as
cheaply as another nation insures division of
an established market, or, indeed, any partici-
patton in it. France manufactures mahy ar
ticles as cheaply as England-some articles at
even less cost. Portugal lies nearer to France
than to England, and the expense of transport
ing the French fabric to the Portuguese mark
ct is therefore less than the traHsportati on of
English fabric. And yet Great Britain has al
most monopoly in the trade of Portugal. The
same condition applies, though in less de-
gree, in the trade Of Turkey, Syria and Egypt,
which England holds to a much greater ex-
LouJ buau any u bu6 QUIET European NATIONS
that are able to produce the same fabric as
cheaply. If it be said in answer that England
has special trade relations by treaty with Por-
tugal and special obligations binding the other
countries, the ready answer is that she has no
more favorable position with regard to those
countries than can be readily and easily ac-
quired by the United States with respect to all
the countries of America. The end will be
reached whenever the United States desires it,
and wills it, and is ready to take the steps
necessary to secure it, AT present the trade
with Spanish America RUS so strongly in
channels adverse to us, that, besides our ina
bility to furnish manufactured articles, we do
not get the profit on our own raw products that
are shipped there Our petroleum reaches most
of Spanish American ports after twice cross
ing the Atlantic, paying often better profit to
the European middle man who handles it than
it does to the producer Of the oil in the north
western counties of Pennsylvania. Flour aud
pork from the West reach Cuba by way of
Spain, and though we buy and consume ninety
per cent. of the total products of Cuba, almost
that proportion of her purchases are made in
Europe-made, of course, with money fur
nisbed directly from our pockets.
THE OMNIBUS ADVERSE BALANCE OF TRADE.
AS our exports to Spanish America grow
less, as European imports constantly grow
larger, the balance against us will show an
annual increase, and will continue to exhaust
our supply of the precious metals. We are
increasing our imports from South America,
and the millions we annually pay for coffee,
wool, hides, guano, cinchona caoutcbouc,
cabinet woods, dyewoods and other articles, 90
for the ultimate benefit of European manu-
facturers, who take the gold from us and send
their fabrics to Spanish America. If we could
send our fabrics, our gold would stay at home
and our general prosperity would be sensibly
increased. But so long as we repel Spanish
America, so long as we leave her to cultivate
intimate relations with Europe alone, so long
our trade relations will remain unsatisfactory
and even embarrassing. Those countries sell
lightly. And the amount they bring us in
debt each year is larger than the heaviest ag-
gregate balance of trade we ever have against
us in the worst of times. The average balance
against us for the whole world in the five most
ad verse years we ever experienced was about
one hundred millions of dollars. This plainly
shows that in our European exchanges there
is always balance in our favor and that our
chief deficiency arises from our mal-adjusted
commercial relations with Spanish America.
1t follows that if our Spanish-American trade
were placed on better and more equitable
foundation it would be almost impossible,
even in years most unfavorable to us, to bring
us in debt to the world.
With such heavy purchases as we are COM
PEELED to make from Spanish America, it could
hardly be expected that we should be able to
adjust the entire account by exports. But the
balance against Us of one hundred and twenty
millions in gold coin is far too large, and in
time of stringency is a standing menace of
final disaster. 1t should not be forgotten that
every million dollars of products OF fabrics
that we sell In Spanish America is a million
dollars in gold saved to our own country. The
immediate profit is to the producer and export
or, but the entire country realizes gain in the
ease and atfluence of the money market which
is insured by keeping our gold at home. The
question involved is so large, the object to be
onh 10 pn hot OaffN RI.
of the Government to accomplish it could be
too earnest or too long continued.
1t is only claimed for the Peace Congress-
designed under the Administration OF Garfield
that it was an important and impressive step
on the part Of the United States toward closer
relationship with our continental nei ghbors.
The present tendency in those countries is to-
ward Europe, and 1t is lamentabe fact that
their people are not so near TO us in feeling as
they were sixty We rs ago when they threw off
the yoke of Spanish tyranny. We were then
a weak Republic of but ten millions, but we
did not hesitate to recognize the independence
of the new Governments even at the risk of
war with Spain. Our foreign policy at that
time was specially designed to extend our in-
huence in the Western Hemisphere, and the
statesmen of that era-the era of Dewitt Gin
ton, and the younger Adams, of Clay and of
Crawford, of Webster and Calhoun, of Van
Buren, and Benton, of jackson and of Edward
Livingston-were always courageous in the in
spring measures which they advocated for the
expansion of our commercial dominion.
THE PERIL TO BE AVOIDED BY THE UNION.
Three score years have passed. The power
OF the republic in many directions has grown
beyond all anticipation, but we have relatively
lost ground in some great fields of enterprise
We have added thousands of miles TO our
ocean front, but our commerce has fallen off
and from ardent friendship with Spanish
America, we have drifted into indifference, if
not into GOODNESS. 1t is but one step farther
to roach a condition of positive unfriendlness,
which may end in what would be equivalent
to commercial alliance against us. Already
one of the most dangerous of movements
that OF European guarantee and guardian
ship of the interoceanic CANALS suggested
and urged upon the great foreign powers by
representatives of South American country.
If these tendencies are to be averted, if Span
ish-American frien d5hip Is to be reganed, il
the commercial empire that legitimately be-
longs to us is to be ours, we must not lie idle
and witness its transfer to others. If we
would reconquer it a great first step must be
taken. 1t is the first step that costs 1t is al
SO the first step that counts. Can there be
suggested wiser step than the peace congress
of the two Americas, that was devised under
Garfield and had the weight of his great
name?
In no event could harm have resulted in the
assembling of the Peace Congress. Failure
was next to impossible. Success might be re-
garded as certain. The subject to be discussed
was peace, and how it can be permanently