Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1886-07-29
THE NORTHWEST
Open Up Trade on the High Seas.

Indiana, delivered on the ON INST at 1erre
Haute:
Another point, however, arises in this con-
nection which is Of deep and vital interest to
the laboring and producing classes of the
United States at this time. We hear of
ovER-PRoDUcTIoN
as one of the prominent reasons for the
stagnation and depression in trade which we
witness now on all hands. Oyer-production
does not mean that you work too much for
your own good, but it means that you, or
those who employ you, cannot sell all your
produce. Marketms, arkets at home and
abroad, are the great and crying need of
American labor at the present iuncture of af-
fairs. That policy of government which will
most successfully establish markets at home,
and also open up channels Of trade with
foreign nations, thus furnishing markets
abroad for the sale of American productions,
will be justly hailed as the results of wise
and comprehensive craftsmanship, In my
Judgment every opportunity should be enh.
braced to enlarge our commerce, and more
especially with neighboring trade in South
America, the West Indies and Mexico which
can be obtained for our great industries BY
but small effort and the exercise of the
piainestprinciples of political economy. The
report of the South American Commission,
sent to find key to the problem, bears
evidence on every page that the markets in
that portion of the Western Hemisphere
are waiting and anxious to receive all that
we can send them, provided only the means
are furnished to reach them. In reading that
report find the merchants of the South
American countries almost unanimous in
saying that the United States would have
large share of the trade now going to Eng
land if equal facilities for transportation
were afforded. I see a statement made by a
merchant in Chill, who says he pays $40
ton freight on the merchandise he imports
from the United States, and only from SIS
to $19 ton on the merchandise he imports
from Europe. see the Argentine Republic
and Uruguay, the two nations which with
Chill, are the most prosperous on the South
ern continent, and have twenty-one lines of
bt0dln0Ip W GuIOpCJ pSAuluS 1IOLu LOIby ANO
to sixty vessels every month, and enjoying
trade amounting to over $150,0O0,000, have
no means whatever of communicating direct
ly with the United States. There is the
Argentine Republic alone, which imports
over $S0,000,000 of manufactured merchan-
disc, of which we furnish only about $4,O0O,-
600; England at the same time about $40,-
100000, France nearly $2O,0O00OO, Germany
$10,000,000, and Belgium, Spain, Italy and
other small nations send them more goods
than we do. The merchants of that country
told the South American Commission they
would prefer to trade with the United States
if they had the means of transportation, but
that no one had the courage to establish the
means of transportation as long Us the Gov
ernment of the United States refused to give
them any encouragement.
have taken some pains to look into this
question and to ascertain the character of the
trade which we could command by even pay
ing for the transportation of the United
States mail, in America ships, on the ocean,
the same rates we pay railroads, steamboats,
and stage coaches in this country. A short
time since I examined the manifest of a
Brazilian ship which had purchased its cargo
in this country for the Brazilian market and
was assured that it was of class of mer-
chandise eagerly sought in all the markets of
South America. The owners of the ship had
taken the trouble to trace the origin of every
package of their freight, and 1 found that
the cargo was furnished by twenty-six States
and Territories, and the great majority of it
came from the Mississippi Valley. The
manifest looks like the the inventory of a
country variety store, and includes every
thing imaginable, from thrashing machine
to paper of pins or a plug of tobacco, pianos
and organs, pumps and plated jewelry, print
ing presses and patent medicines, plated ware
and tacks, printing ink and quinine pills,
books and locomotives, rubber goods and
cigarettes, perfumery and glassware, horse
cars and horseshoes, chairs and canned fruit,
vermifuge and tooth powder, soap and
scientific instruments, sewing machines
and buttons, baking powder and canned
oysters, kegs of nails and Office desks, furni-
ture and shoe backing, wooled underclothes
and watches, petroleum and candles, stoves
and corn starch, lamps and bacon, leather
goods and fire crackers, dried apples and
lard, Florida water and cod liver oil, moving
machines and writing ink, school states and
wheelbarrows, plows and velocipedes,
syringes and toilet paper, lamp-wicks and
vaseline, printers type and packages of pa
per, crackers and ginger cakes, trusses and
cardboard, corn shelters and harness, trunks
and Photographic meterials; cotton cloths
from Georgia, rosin from North Carolina,
flour from Virginia, tobacco from Maryland,
locomotives from Delaware, machinery from
Pennsylvania. watches and clocks from Con-
necticut, cotton goods from Rhode Island
and Massachusetts, marble from Vermont,
granite from Maine, petroleum from Penn
sylvania, bacon and hams and cornmeal
from Ohio, furniture from Michigan, agri-
cultural implements from Indiana, Illinois
and Wisconsin, -four from Minnesota, bacon
from Kansas, canned meats and beer from
Missouri, and a sample of every article that
man could possibly think of. These goods
are furnished by the manufacturers and the
farmers of the West and the East and of the
South.
TwENTY-sIX STATES ARE REPRESENTED,
and this cargo of goods, which was worth
about 100000, was almost equally divided
between the Mississippi Valley and the States
along the Atlantic seaboard. Before this
steamship line was established no such variety