The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-12-29
ENGLISH FAIR TRADE.
Necessity of Some Modification in Great
Britain's Fiscal System.


Necessity of Some Modification III Great
Britain's Fiscal System.
Joseph Hatton in Boston Herald.
Political economy and fiscal policies offer so
many sides of controversy that it is just as easy,
it seems to me, to argue we'll on one side as on
the other; but thoughtful men in England, who
watch the gradual and sure decay of her great
industries, and the equally gradual and certain
establishment Of foreign competition in her own
markets, have long since come to the conclusion
that modification of her present fiscal system
is absolutely essential to her commercial saliva
tion.
1t is generally asserted by active political free
traders this side of the Atlantic that the cleo
ton of Governor Cleveland is a triumph for the
free-trade party in America The idea is per
sistently circulated that the presidential election
was fought upon the question of free trade
or protection. Mr.. John Bright works
this 3sHa, with triumphant energy. The
Golden Club men talk of it continually.
They encourage themselves with this
belief they epdeayor to awe opponents with it.
How far they are right or wrong is best known
to my readers but it seems to me that at the
present time free-traders in England feel the
ground little shaky beneath them. They
snatch at the slightest opportunities that may
tend to strengthen their position. In the mean
time, fair trade" so called, (Which does not as
the Cobdenites declare, mean a return to simple
protectionl is advancing among the intelligent
working classes, and a distinguished fair trader
said to me only yesterday:
1.-THE party to which belong will be only too
glad TO see a broad wide and deep extension of
the franchise for nothing is more certain in poll
ties than the rapid conversion of the working
men to our side. They see their wages decreas-
ing year by year. They see every commodity of
life, except bread, growing in price. They find
that however cheap bread may be their money
capacity to purchase is not what it was, and sup
posing they were thoroughly and entirely
represented in the House of Commons, l am
convinced that they would do all that we wish
and when it is said that we advocate return to
protection our views are not truthfully inter
preted. We simply desire to place the foreign
competitor on a level footing with our own man
utactures. We pay rent, and rates. and income
tax, and other national claims, before we can
put our goods into the market We say, let the
foreigner stand on the same footing and we be-
lieve that 10 per cent. all around would meet the
case.
Eat the same time we also believe in resisting,
by countervailing duties the annhilative tariffs
and subsidies of foreign governments against
our special manufactures. Free trade is not
free trade that is confined to one country, and
that manufacturing country which depends
more upon its business abroad than upon
its business at home. OF course. we are
met all the time by the party cry of
cheap bread and would you tax the
posr mans foodP The imposition of a
duty of two or three shilings quarter upon
wheat would add Immensely to our revenue,
would do something toward putting the En-
glish produces on a level with the foreign com
petitor, and would make no appreciate differ
ence in the current price of q four pound Loaf.
But what we fair traders chiefly desire is tax
upon luxuries, pure and simple and the right to
fight with counteryaiing duties the bitter, brutal
and unreasonable competition of foreign govern
ments which push US out of their markets and
are welcomed freely with their subsidized goods
in cur own"
My friend Mr. Lang of Sheffield, who is be-
coming, if he is not already, the great authority
upon the fair trade question, declares that it is
irony to say we have free trade in this country.
He remind me of a special interview had few
years ago with the American consul at Leeds,
who exploited this point in very mastery way,
and whose views published at the time in an
American journal at great length
Mr.. Leng on the same track, reminds the free
trader that tax beer, tea. coffee, tobacco, the
houses in which we live, the railway trains in
which we travel that we levy duties on our
buyings and settings. our wills and contracts;
that we tax our profits and also our losses by
bankruptcy We are taxed in our dwellings and
in our collins: for while the duties which burden
US in life are heavy the death duties are heavier
far. Tea is British product so is coffee; beer
is especially British, and SO might tobacco be, if
the state would permit its growth We make
our own houses, we don't import them. We tax
all these, things while admitting free of charge
hundreds of others, which, if not made for us
abroad by foreigners. would be made by our own
people in these islands We cannot manufacture
artificial flowers toys, clocks, Watches 80 per
cent. of the value of which represents labor or
wages, might be made in this country by per-
sons who would spend their earnings in the
home neutrality-suspicious. at once producers and
consumers, employers of others as we'll en-
ployed
The growers of Indian teas and coffees are
subjects of our Queen, and the more they sell to
us the more they buy in return The work we
give them helps them, also, to give our
wageearners work, and the Chinese are no less
liberal in matters of trade. Why tax their
products while letting in toll free those of for
eigners who are, commercially speaking, at war
with us. and whose tariffs are in their uncom-
promising hostility, acts of war; Mr., Leng
argues that our working people are producers,
and, after their own manner, protectionists.
Their trades guilds unions exist as they
frankly say, for the protection Of their labor.
They legislate in their associations to guard
their occupations against the competition of
persons who, if not restrained, would work for
wages unduly low or during hours excessively
long; and yet they admit the work of the alien
nobstick. which IS a greater damage than their
own local competition. How strange that any
English trades unionist should strike against the
British non-unonist, and then straightway vel
come with outstretched arms the products which
represent the direct rivalry of entire nations of
non -1lnionists