Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1888-10-04
BeIntu&tt Gltrn1tirlr.
THURSDAY. OCTOBER I, 1855.
PROTECTIVE DUTIES NOT TATAX

Tariff League Bulletin.
The current Commercial Price-Lists
show conelusively that the price Of the
homemade commodity is less than the
price of the foreign commodity, Plus the
duty, and nearly all the articles Of con-
sumption in the average household cost
here less than abroad.
But there is a wider sence, in which it
is plainly to be shown, that the price Of
sundry manufactures, the products Of
both domestic and foreign industries, are
not taration at all, but simply the cost
of the increased comfort which our citi-
zens are now enabled to indulge. If the
abundance we are now enabled to enjoy
is alone the result of the organization of
the American system of production
the only source of the American supply,
then the labor of our artisans is an in
dispenSable part of that supply, and the
wages of that labor cannot be taxation
in any true sense. No one ever pretend
ed OF desired that Protection could or
did raise the wages and profits in the
protected industries above the rates cur
rent in the country If they did so pre-
tend it would be false; for if anything is
settled in, around or about the science of
political economy it is this, which Adam
Smith wrote more than hundIed years
ago, "that no industry can for any length
of time obtain a surplus rate of profit
than that which is common in the
country"
The staple form of the Free Trade
argument is that the farmers, with the
necessary carpenters, blackSmiths and
maSons, the schOolmasters, doctors and
ministers, whose services can only be
performed upon the spot, are robbed by
those who carry on the protected indus
tries. What the farmer pays these vari-
Gus cO-wOrkerS in the society to which
he belongs is of course not tGrGtjOn; it
is simply the cost of living, and he is
compelled, "by the ordinance of nature"
to admit them to participation of the
abundance enjoyed by the agricultural
population. He must pay these various
persons wages enough to keep them in
their trade and keep them out of agri-
culture.
But, so runs the argument, the makers
of his clothes, his boots, his glass, his
carpets, ETC., need not live in his midst,
and he need not care whether they live
on this side of the Atlantic at all or not.
He thinks there is no necessity for these
industries to be carried on in the United
States. But the moment he turns to the
statistics of the trade and commerce of
the United States, he discovers that he
cannot trade off his surplus agricultural
products to Europe in exchange for these
various manufactured products. He can
not 6Iy the labor of the men who make
them, if they must live on the other side
of the Atlantic, for they do not need and
will not take the pay he offers, as do the
various artisans who live in his neigh
borhood.
The power of the farmers surplus to
satisfy our wants of these sundry arti-
cles is the question of fact to be settled,
and it is settled against him by the facts
of our foreign commerce Foreign
countries will take enough of that sur
plus to enable us to buy about the eighth
of the goods we need.
The rest must, then, be made at home |
The size of the surplus and its saleable-
ness depend on the wants of buyers; and
the advantages to be derived from the |
exchange we lose for the reason that
their market does not contain all that we
want.
The moment this community, the
United States, were compelled to make
any part of these Sundry articleS-as a
fact in our case, seven-eighthS of them
then the abundance enjoyed by the
agricultural population failed for ex-
change purpose abroad. Without the
one hundred and fifty classes of work
men, cooperating in our industrial sys-
TEN, the agricultural population would
have no abundance. They might have
enough of mere food-so have the Esqui-
mau and the Patagonian.
The abundance of commodities which
Americans are to consume lies spread
before us in the richness and prodigality
of nature about us.
Their cheapness depends on the skill
and fidelity with which we overcome the
obstacles which nature alone offers to us.
Their distribution depends on the Just
and fair rewards for services rendered,
by the DEGREES of a strong,
highly civilized and well governed State.
If, then, the indispensable services of
the artisans, in nOn-protected industries, 1
are in no true sense a tax, so neither are
the Indispensable services of those in the t
protected" industries tax. They have S
necessary relations to the society, and J
have right to share in the abundance
of that society. They do hot tax it. We t
are thus compelled by the ordinance of I
nature to share with each other; and in e
order that the protected" industries may
exist, this ordinance of nature is re-en- |
forced by the ordinance of the State I
the protective statute. We thus average I
our efficiences, and the resultant average a
constitutes the highest level of wages
and profits ever known in the industrial Q
history of the human family.
TsNT SITTING IN THE CII TE GPOUTD L