The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1888-07-13

CATTLE" But when II is shown that the total
number engaged in all forms Of food cultiva
twenty years, that there was a permanent
depopulation of tho United Kingdom, Ire
hand losing 5000, 900 and Scotland and Eng
land two-thirds as many more of their food
growers, the free trader still third time
shifts his base and says, with Shadwell, "It
Is better that they lessened In this manner
tho pressure upon the means of subsistence
Then the protectionist follows up with
proofs that the means of subsistence contract
quite as rapidly as the population-that with
every diminution in population there is
corresponding surrender Of land once titled to
waste fen and moor, and hence that the less
ened remnant do not draw an increased
store OF food per capita from nature, but re-
main as closeto the verge of suffering as
ever. t.f.f t t|lTt} .
Thus, one by one, the free trade positions
are yielded, and it's battle assumes the forms
Of a retreat, because its successive positions
have all been subterfuges, and not principles
or an the SO called histories of the free
trade movement IN England not one attempts
to prove by price lists that corn or bread was
made cheaper by the repeal of protection,
though their rhetoric often implies it. Not
one attempt to show that the farmers of
England were not driven out Of tho business
of raising corn by the repeal of the duties
on corn, with rapidity that left vacancy
in the domestic supply exactly equal to the
importation.
Now IL the poor were not benefited, and
the farmers were driven ont, and the import
ers handled no more of foreign wheat than
as domestic traders they would have handled
of domestic wheat, who was benefited by the
free corn hgislations
1t was paralleled exactly by the effects of
giving away corn in ancient Rome. The
farmers Of italy raised so much less that
the corn given away could not be made
equal in quantity to the quantity whose
production was prevented by the gratuity.
It naturally followed that so much ex-
pense and effort was devoted to securing,
grabbing and dividing the gratuitous corn
as had previously been devoted to Guilt
waiting and marketing the home corn which
Italians had stopped producing. Hence
free foreign corn left corn a trifie scarcer
and dearer than the cultivated Italian corn
had been. All forms and modes of getting
things cheap by importation at the cost of
sacrificing and suppressing the domestic pro-
duction are but repetitions of the Roman ex-
pertinent Of making bread cheap by giving
away foreign corn-a policy that tended in
creasingly each year toward famine in
Italy.
Another bread misconception underlying
the notion that it is a bright thing to favor
free trade because the English favor it, is
that the thing known as free trade in Eng
land is the same as the thing known as free
trade in the United States. On the contrary
they are opposite. Free trade in England is
like the subjugation of India, or tho British
colonial empire, or the British landed aris-
tocracy, or any other peculiarly British
thing, which can no more be transplanted
and set down on this side in all its parts and
substance than can the established church or
royalty. Free trade in Great Britain means
that when a country has protected its indus
tries by tariffs, prohibitions, subsidies, wars
of conquest, treaties and the like for 500
years, and has thereby come into possession
Of tho mastery and precedence relatively to
all other countries in capital, machinery,
manufactures, banking and ships and
steamers, and when its area of agricultural
land is believed to be too small to supply
its manufacturing populations with food,
so that to continue to protect its
features, it may with profit sacrifice the well
fare of its farmers by withdrawing protec-
ton from them if it can thereby so cheaper
food as to assist its manufacturers in under
selling the cheap labor Of China and Japan,
provided adequate English armies so far
hold those countries in durance as to give
English manufacturers substantially exclu-
sive control of their markets.
But free trade in America lacks every one
Of these conditions. 1t means here that a
country which Is struggling for leave to
manufacture one-half the goods it uses may
with profit throw down the bars to a Compel
ing country which can in one week of alb
solute free trade close every factory. furnace
and foundry in the country, except a few
Touring and lumber mills. In England
free trade is the offer Of the lion to meet the
lamb in equal combat. Free trade in
America is the offer of the lamb to meet the
lion in open fight. The former requires no
courage The latter precludes all rescue.
vi. A sixth class of free traders are the
importers and merchants, who expect to
handle the increased supply Of foreign
goods which would accompany free
trade, and the newspapers which live
upon the advertising patronage of the
importing class. This is the small but
wealthy and solid nucleus Of the entire free
trade agitation in the United States. The
effective work of the free trade leagues de-
rives all its pap and sap from this class. It
centers in New York, and for many years its
most effective chiefs have been two or three
leading New York merchants. One or more
Of them have kept an open house at WASH
ington and established intimate relations
with the journalists and politicians through
whom free trade work could best be done.
No brass band was sounded. No organization
with long lists of vice presidents and secre.
taries was published. But when money was
wanted in chs nnels in which it would be sup
posed to express popular sentiment, control
conventions or aid candidates, it was forth
coming The work was all the more effect
i've in that it issued no proclamations. In
this respect tho free traders have great adj
vantage over the protectionists. It is at all
times easier to borrow 500, 900 with which
to control newspaper, nominate congress-
man or run convention in the interests Of
free trade than to raise $1,000 with which to
print a protectionist work of the value Of
Carey's, though when printed it may pass
into a dozen languages. Let 1t not be in
ferred from this that Carey's works were SO
r. 4 II