Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1888-11-29
British Interests IN American Protec.
tion.

Yours truly, PRIVATE DALZELL.
British Interests IN American Protec-
tion.
| From Belford's Magazine.
| There is an Irish tradition Of a pig
| that was induced to go 10 Cork by
! making it believe that its owner
wanted it to go to Dublin. Ameri-
| cans who adopt the reasoning process
es of the hog are determined supporters
of the protective system, because they
have been impressed with the idea
that Englishmen want US to adopt a
free-trade policy. It is doubtless true
that many English manufacturers are
short-sighted enough to wish that the
United States would abandon its pro-
tective spstem. They are thinking of
the goods they might send TO this
country this month, or this year, if our
duties were only lower, But there are
plenty of EDglishmen who have OBJ
served that we are already able to ex-
port some manufactured goods and
sell them in England and in foreign
markets that England has been in the
habit of supplying, and who know
that it is not our high wages but our
high raw materials that prevent our
exporting great many more goods,
and seriously affecting the English
trade with Mexico, South America,
China, Japan, and even Europe.
They are far-signted enough to see
| that EUgland would lose in the United
States and in all other parts Of the
world by change in the American
tariff that would promote our manu-
featuring interests by cheapening raw
materials, and so enabling us to re-
duce selling prices till we could keep
more English goods out of our market
by competition than we now keep out
by tariff. and enable US to get into
foreign markets that England has
claimed as her own. Mr.. William
Rathbone, member of Parliament. said
in an essay on Protection and Com
munism," published in 1882:
SIT would be great mistake to suppose
that at the present time Englishmen were
very anxious for their own sakes to see
America adopt free trade. There is, on
the contrary, great and growing feeling in
this country that it is IN the interest of En-
gland that the United States should still ad-
here to prot ection. As long as they do so
it is thought England is safe from her only
dangerous competitor in the markets Of the
world"
He then quotes Mr.. Joseph Cham
berlain, who is sufficiently We'll
known to Americans as leader in
English politics, and whose success,
with Sir Charles Tupper and Sir
Lionel Sackvi West, in negotiating
the fishery treaty stamps him as a
man of eminent ability, as follows:
"For myself" said Mr.. Chamberlain, at
the last annual dinner of the Golden Club,
speaking only as an Englishman, | look
forward with anxiety, not unmingled with
alarm, to the time when our merchants and
manufacturers will have to face the free and
unrestricted competition of the great west
ern republic when the unparalleled resource
es of its soil will no longer be shackled and
handicapped by the artificial restrictions
which have hitherto impeded the full deYel-
opment of its external commerce."
Lord Brassey, in his Lectures on
the Labor Question, - said:
"But 1t must also be remembered thdt,
assuming the cost of labor in the United
States to be 25 per cent in excess OF the cost
in this country, the addition TO the value OF
and if the duties imposed in, the United
States nn all raw materials should be re-
pealed, and if, as We may reasonably antici-
pate, the cost Of living should be materially
lessoned, the cost of production under those
more favorable circumstances would be SO
much reduced thar the present advantages
Of the British manufacturer would cease,
and there would no longer be a sufficient
margin to cover the cost of expectation
from this country to America"
Mr.. Daniel Pidgeon, who has stud.
led manufacturing in England and
America with the advantage Of pre-
vious practical training, says in his in
teresting little book, nOld World
Questions aud New World Answere:u
sBut sooner or later the day will come
when American enterprise shall enter un-
shackled the markets of the world, and,
plume ourselves as we may on the fact that
in spite of hostile tariffs we send yearly
twenty five millions of manufactured goods
into the States. while they only return us
three millions, that will be black or
bright day for England as we ourselves
shall make it. II when America adopts
free trade we have not gained that greater