Morning journal and courier., 1885-02-09
Monday, February 9, 1885.
MIR. SARGENT ON THE TARIFF.


 MIR. SARGENT ON THE TARIFF.
 In MT. Sargent's letter in our issue of Sat
 low tariff will bring more revenue than high one. We agree that that may be the case. But it is too plain for question that such a result could only be approached by making the amount of importations much greater than it now is. MT. Sargent seems practically to admit this, but apparently he expects that for such an immense loss of home market we shall gain corresponding foreign market for our manufactures, for he says, 'sThe result would also be correspon- ding increase in exports, which must be man. ufactured here in order to export, for we can not buy unless we sell to pay for it." Now the loss Of home market is plain enough, but the corresponding gain of Q foreign mar ket is not quite so plain to most people. In short, it seems too plain for question that the only way in which we can hope to success fully compete in foreign markets in the greater part of that large class of manufac- tured articles where the labor constitutes the principal part of the cost is by reducing the price of labor. MT. Sargent is reported to have said recently that ''We can pay English operatives twice the money they get at home" and then put the product of their labor in foreign markets in competition with foreign man ufactures if we can only get free s'raw mate rial" M. Sargent is said tohave admitted at the same time that ''in some departments we are hardly up to the English in cheapness and quality of machinery and in economy of management What transforming influence would make the labor of those English me chanics worth twice as much in this country as in England in the production of articles to be sent te the English market, or to any market that England suppliess He says VIC cannot buy unless we sell to pay for it, Fortunately our surplus of wheat and other food products and cotton is such that we can not only buy all that we care to import, but even more, so that there is still balance of trade in our favor which brings gold to the country.
 It has more than once been shown in our columns that the United States is the best market in the world It has been shown by statistics how many times greater our homo market is for manufactured articles than all the foreignmarkets which the principal man. ufacturing countries of Europe enjoy. Mir. Sargent claims to believe that when protection is stricken down "that good tims' will come when we shall 'sssnd the products of cur iron furnaces, of our rolling mills, of our foundries, of our forges and of eur fac tories all over the earth" It is that those great industries may not be prostrated and that labor may continue to be better reward ed here than it is in European countries that we advocate the continuance of tariff that will be incidentally protective to labor.
 Mr. Sargent takes issue with our statement ! that our steel rail mills could not continue In l removed, and, as if to substantiate his posi- 1 tion, he goes on to say, the rail mills of this country sold 30, 900 tons of rails in Canada 8 1 few months ago." etc. This might have hap pened at some favorable point and moment. l One or more of the great rail mills of the l country has Gn period of depression, l when railway building in the United | States had so largely fallen of, while the production of rails had been such
  large surplus on the hands of the makers, it | seems sent few thousand tons oyer the | border, st point remote from the board, | and sold them, doubtless without profit or at loss What does that fact indicatea l Simply, as we think, the stagnation then ex- isting, and that our steel rail mills were making no money. It certainly does not in dicate that, when English steel rails can, as now, be put down in this country at several dollars ton less than our rails bring, even when the latter pay ne profit or give the makers but the narrowest margin, as every body knows who is conversant with the sub- ject, our rail mills could continue in opera tion if English rails should come iR duty | free, unless radical reduction could at once be effected in the price of labor. All sxpe- rienoe shows that labor would not at once | accept such large reduction.
 MT. Sargent wonders why New England, which produces but a small part of the Fraw she uses (such as manufactures of | Bessemer steel, bar iron, etc. ) should consent to the continuance of duties upon such ma- terial We ought to know that 1t is not quite practicable for us to secure by congress sional enactment one rule for our little, but cherished New England, and another for the great States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Alabama and West Virginia and 90 on. 1 r II
 MT. Sargent asserts that our "talkn about excessive importations draining gold from the country ''is nonsensicsl, and not worth Is not MT. Sargent aware that oar exportations, principally of food pro ducts and cotton, have been so much in ex- cess of our importations of manufactured ar ticles in the last seven years that wsIhavs gained in that time about $200, ,000, 600 of | gold by importation, independent of the pro duct of our mines2 Is not Nr. Sargent aware | that, while the present yearly product of l our mines is estimated at about $a7, GOO, GOO, of which we coined last year some twenty-three | millions or more, we consume in nsnufac- 1 lures about s15, COG, 900 worth, and that if we l imported no gold, we should have only about l twelve millions a year for our coinagsa l But how would it be if we should import even as little as s100, ,0O0, 900 worth . year more manufactured articles than nowa That amount we think very much too low estimate of the additional importations that would follow the abolition of protective duties, especially if Mr. Sargent is corrAct in