Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1888-09-19
PROTECTION In EUROPE.


From the Milwaukee Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin has recalled the fact
to the attention of it's readers that for
over 500 years the English nation was
and persistently and consist
entity engaged in building up her do
nestle industries by the most stringent
protective tariff laws ever enacted by
any government on earth. And it may
interest many a young Republican in
Wisconsin who has little time for close
examination of the subject to know
what other nations of the Old World
have done in the past in order to make
themselves independent in peace and
in war, by fostering their own manu-
features.
A distinguished writer on this ali-ab-
sorbing question closes his last chapter
with the following striking sentence
which the reader will do we'll to care
fully ponder because 1T is the unim-
peachable truth: Universal history
testifies ii at not a single nation on the
globe, in the whole range of history, has
reached independence and wealth, not
nation even holds the rank attained,
but such as have firmly maintained
protective policy in the regulation of
their international trade"
That is emphatically true of England,
Germany, Prussia, Belgium, France and
Holland. Belgium, with territory
smaller than the state of Maryland, and
not one-fourth the area of the state of
New York, has population as large as
the Empire State, which gives Belgium
433 persons TO the square mile, or near
ly three times the population of Massa
chusetts. She supports her people by
the greatest diversity of employment;
bv prohibiting all competition with her
skilled industries; by barring out all
foreign rivalry with her manufacturing
products, and by fostering her home
markets. Her lands are cultivated like
a garden, and her factories are alive with
industry. In the manufacture of glass,
silk, linen, wooden goods, iron, steel,
carpets, laces and thread, Belgium
stands in the front rank. Her tariff
laws. which have produced the grandest
results for her swarming population, are
for protection primarily, and not "for
revenue only" The Morrill, tariff law
is mild in comparison with hers. Here
is specimen: Raw sugar is admitted
at cents per ton, but the refined arti-
Gle must pay a duty of Sl.S5 per ton.
Raw wool is free, but all manufactured
WOODEN goods must pay b gh duty,
some of them 40 per cent. Goods that
come in foreign vessels are made TO
pay much higher duty than those car
ried in her own ships. So all the way
through every line of the tariff law. the
stiffest kind of protection is maintained.
The free trade authority, J. B Say,
speaking of the system of international
commerce of France. says: 'For thirty
III 10
tom house matters has been intended
either to establish or to consolidate the
system of protection or prohibition"
Again he says: France at present con-
tains the most beautiful manufactures
of silk and wool in the world, and is
probably indebted Tor them to the wise
announcement of Colbert's administra-
ton. He advanced to the manufacture
ers two thousand francs for every loom
at work" Through all her bloody and
boisterous career, from the advent of the
first Napoleon to the fall of the
third, France has preserved her indus
trial system by the most absolutely re-
strictive and prohibitory laws, until she
is to-day one Of the leading manufactur
ing nations of the world-and one of the
richest. Look how promptly she paid
the enormous tribute which Germany
levied upon her at the close of the late
Franco-German war, the money being
contributed for the most part from the
savings of her own people.
Germany is another example of the
benefits resulting from protection, and
now the ablest and most discreet states
man in all Europe, Bismarck, is urging
the German Reichstag to adopt still
more stringent protective system, hold
ing up the phenomenal career of the
United States during what Bismarck
calls 1.-THE most expensive war IN his
tory" as an example Of what wise
protective policy enables a nation to
achieve
But it is needless to multiply these
examples of all the historic nations
that have grown rich, powerful and in
dependent under the restrictive inter
national system which the Democratic
party is intending to strike down in this
country. Let the student who studies
this question look also at some of the
nations that have been ruined by free
Turkey, Ireland and
India-every one of them tracing her
commercial downfall directly to some
treaty with England whereby English
made goods were admitted into their
ports at a low duty.
EtSuGy years dSo3 VI OOIOI0 Vic uuiOu
with Great Britain, Ireland did large
manufacturing business, but all these
Industries were crushed out by England,
and the result is poverty, discomfort,
starvation and xpatriation-strong
men and women fleeing from the land
of their birth, and the aged and help
less reduced to diet of potatoes and
cabbage.
Turkey is the Sick Man of Europe,
and the Turks have as little to buy with
as the Irish. Both peoples are paupers
and are the poorest customers in the
commercial world. Fifty years ago
Turkish goods were imported to- Amer
lea, but now they are not seen here be-
cause they are not made. One writer
says: s'The Turkish manufacturers of
muslins, ginghams, handkerchief,
shawls, ETC., have suffered severely
from the extraordinary importation of
British goods;' and he gives the statis
tics showing the rapid decline of the
trade. Long ago the Sultan of Turkey
was a sort of Grover Cleveland and
proclaimed the unlimited freedom of
foreign trade. He adopted the Demo
cratic policy of buying where he could
buy the cheapest, and the result is