St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-03-10


of increased price brought by protection
is meanly stolen from American labor.
How is the former affected by protec-
ton? First, by the increase of 40 per
cent in the cost of everything he buys,
and to this increase the farmers pay
over 500, 100000 every year. Then
comes the purchasing power of his grain
abroad. A farmer takes 1000 bushels
of wheat to Liverpool and exchanges it
for 1000 yards of cloth. But
when he returns, his cloth is taxed
30 per cent, so the custom house
cut the cloth in two, and the former
brings back only 500 yards to Mime
sofa. Robbed of just one-half. So it is
with every transaction he may make,
and whether he buys cloth and brings il
back or whether he gets gold and buys
cloth afterward. the effect is the same.
1t reduces the purchasing power of his
grain just to the extent of the tariff.
But the formers market is in trouble.
We have raised 1O0,GOe,000 bushels of
wheat more than we can use in America
and 1t must be sent abroad. Does pro-
lection help him there? Does protec-
ton save him from competition there?
If that price, by competition, affected
Liverpool alone. we'll would it be for
the former; but that price governs the
price at every station, elevator and mill
in America. Why don't we sell our
wheat in Canada? There is a duty of
Is cents bushel on wheat that goes
into Canada. Germany is building
up a wall against us and so
is France, and thus are our
markets being closed off from
us. We cannot 1egislate for the world,
and as we build up wall against the
world, so will the world build wall
against us. One hundred and fifty
million people shut their markets
against the wheat of Minnesota, because
our markets are shut against them by
this system of protection.
Several quotations by which Gladstone
demolished fair trade, were given amid
considerable applause. The speaker
laid still greater stress upon the fact
foreign markets. Home markets for the
farmer are delusions, and prOtectiOnists
know it. What the end will be, who
can tell? If this system continues
what will become of our farmers
in five years? Sweden and
Denmark are shutting themselves
against US with protection wall. Eng
land alone remains, and India is al
ready sending 100,O00,000 bushels of
wheat to compete with us. With our
limitless and fertile fields, what will the
farmer come to at last? The manufac-
turer is becoming in the same condition.
Keep all the wheels In America
going, and in six months the products
will more than supply the home de-
mand, and where is any foreign market?
Nothing but commercial liberty can
open these markets. The manufacture
ers themselves begin to see this. But
they have leaned so long on the arm of
the government that they cannot
stand alone, and like children
how protection BENEFITS them, these man
ufacturers say vaguely that prices in
their line are kept up, but they can't
tell what the price is for any one day.
When asked how much they paid, in in
creased price, for their plants, their
tools, their brick, for everything they
use, they admit they never thought of it.
Turning to comparisons of English
and American commerce with South
America the speaker produced statistics
which took away the breath of his audi
ence. Even the Sandwich Islands show
the benificent results of free trade, from
which the speaker drew moral for the
benefit of manufacturers.
The ordinary protection proposition
is that wages are made high by tariff,
or, being high, they are kept high by
tariff. But, according to their own
theory, the tariff should be upon the
labor, and the labor is free. Already
the position that a tariff raises wages
is being abandoned, and the speaker
produced figures to show that in many
branches of industry American labor
received less than corresponding labor
in France, England or Germany.
The destruction of our carrying trade
has followed the protection idea. Our
merchant marine is fast disappearing
and American ships are far and far be-
tween on the high seas. And yet our
eminent American has just cOngratula-
ted his country upon the fact that 1t
has no foreign trade and that
the balance of trade is in our favor.
Oh, the heresy Of that platitude! 1t is
as when the man from Maine ships
$1,000 worth of stoves to Cuba and for
them brings back $4,000 of sugar and
molaSses. The protectiOnist tells us
there is balance of $1,000 against us.
He lies. This is Gods argument for
free trade, that each country shall pro-
duce that for which 1t is best adapted
and exchange.
From this point the speaker continued
upon his perOration. He pictured the
maritime glories of Tyre and Sidon. of
Venice and then of England under free
trade, and the markets of the world,
and then brought to close his admira-
BILE lecture by declaring all these tri-
umphs would fade like dream before
the actual splendor of America when
her hopes of no tariff and the free mar
kets of the world were realized.