The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1888-02-23
A WOMAN'S VIEW OF 1T.

usual SOURCES paper lately read by one
Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy before an English
fair-trade lodge. 'Fair trade" in England
means protection for certain home industries,
the term being used by the advocates of the
idea as one less likely to arouse antagonism,
just as e-traders in the United States at
tempt to disguise their real purpose by label
ing themselves "tariff reformers." Mrs
Elmy, however, although denouncing the
methods of the modern free traders and their
departure from the principles of the original
ors of the system, evidently clings to the
theory that in some future millennial state
untrammeled commerce will be the winged
messenger of love and brotherhood" and
universal prosperity result. In the meantime
matters are all wrong British industries
or are kept at starvation wages, and distress
is widespread. The taxation of imports is
not mentioned by this writer remedy for
the evil; she appeals not to legislators and
statesmen, but to the women of her country.
The cause of all the difficulty lies, she argues
most forcibly, in the trade doctrine that
cheapness of products is the prime good
AS an illustration of the falsity
of this theory she takes the sugar
trade and shows that the purchase of
German beet sugar by English consumers,
merely because it is to be had at less price
than cane sugar, tends to the destruction of
the colonial sugar industry. The purpose of
the German manufacturers in underselling is.
it is pointed out to accomplish precisely this
thing, and to increase the price of their own
sugar. How far they have already succeeded
is shown by ruined English sugar refners and
thirty thousand idle and starving workmen.
As women control the collective expenditures
of the country they have it in their power,
this earnest theorist urges, to overcome this
evil by refusing to buy the foreign products
and by patronizing home industries although
the present market price of the former be less.
The British matron is requested to consider
that the cheapness in which she rejoices is
Fictitious, and will last only while the now de-
caying sugar industries of England and the
West Indies continue to exist, and is further
asked whether patriot she does not hold
the ruin of one of our fairest dependencies
and the restitution of so many British work
men somewhat too high price to pay for the
privilege of buying for few years in
cheaper marketW
Another example which even closer
home is the silk trade-"after long years of de-
preston, almost in its last agony, thanks to
the unjust competition of foreign manufactur-
ers." tWill any lady tell me" inquiries Mrs.
Elmy, ''that she holds it a just bar gain that
in order to secure to her for the same money
an extra silk gown or two year, work shall
cease in all our English silk centers and the
workers be reduced to starvation and pauper-
ismf Yet this again." she declares, sis the
result of the strict observance of the free
trade doctrine of buying in the cheapest
market, irrespective of the conditions un-
der which such cheapness is attained"
The condition of English agricultural in
dustries is another illustration at her hand
Gin spite of the inevitable and most serious
fall of rents, farms everywhere, and especially
whilst the impoverished tenants of such as
are still in occupation are year by year spend
ing their little savings, living on capital in
stead Of income, in the vain hope of those
better times which cannot come so long as
one-third of our food supplies-the actual fact
at this present time-are imported from
abroad, chiefly from America" Other ex-
amples are not wanting; cotton-nills are work
ing short time and the iron and coal trades
languish. care we," she asks Ito continue
in our present course till all our industries
have perishedf When every industry has de-
cayed, where will be the fixed incomes Of
those who, themselves non producers, do not
at present feel the cruel grip under which
all is well, because they themselves. for the
moment, benefit from spurious and unjust
cheapness."
That Mrs Elmy is visionary in her applica-
ton of remedy there is no question. It is
not that her fellow-countrywomen cannot, but
that they will not, as body, practice the
truer economy that consists in patronizing
home industries. American women, who
could give struggling home manufacturers
wonderful prosperity by giving their products
the preference, choose to buy foreign goods for
fashions sa Ike, and it is not probable that the
English sister will be more patriotic and self
denying, under the additional temptation of
lower prices. But, although the proposed
remedy is not likely to be effective, the paper
is a strong and impressive showing of the
actual workings of free trade, and of the
falsity of the specious plea that cheapness of
manufactured products means general pros
perity. With the tariff on American imports
removed, the price of the wooden shirt might be