The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1889-09-03
AMERICANS ROB THEMSELVES.

AMERICANS ROB THEMSELVES.
In referring to our merchant marine, and
especially our trade with South America,
the New York Evening Post says that $50
long as Great Britain buys freely all that
they have to sell she can enjoy the
privilege Of selling readily all that they care
to buy. The establishment of thousand
subsidized lines between here and South
America would not divert the trade to our
pcrts.;' This is a very fair statement OF
the situation between the countries, and
while it is undoubtedly the fact that we
purchase a great deal from Brazil, perhaps
more than England does, and much more
than any other port in Europe does, 1t IS
also to be recorded that Brazil does not
reciprocate by buying more than one-hal1
her imports in this country. Fully or more
than one-half of the South American en-
pire's purchases are on the eastern side OF
the Atlantic, and yet we are nearer and
should have as ample facilities for prompt
delivery as any nation in the world,
and have almost monopoly Of the
trade. The reason is two-fold. First, she
can get goods transported across the ocean
for somewhat less than she can from this
country, and second, there is, through the
operation of high protective tariff, too
little reciprocity between the nations.
Brazil is country rich in many things
that our artisans mechanics and manufac-
turers require. But the producers of that
country cannot export such articles to us
and let our people have the benefit of them
at such a rate as would make their pur-
chase an object and the working of them
up profitable, for the reason that in every
instance and at every turn they are con-
fronted by Chinese wall of protection.
Good qualities of leather, of which we
have never produced enough, and the
superior and finer fieeces of wool of which
we produce none to mix with our coarser
and perhaps more enduring clips, are all
but barred from entering at all by tariff
of immense proportions.
In vain do the Republican orators and
press seek to show that the reason why we
do not get the cream as TO richness and the
burden as to quantity of the South Ameri-
can trade is due TO England's subsidized
ships, of which the United States and
France have none. Hired bottoms have
advantage in a commercial sense beyond a
doubt; but they do not altogether account
for the driving of other nations commercial
ships from the sea, nor is that all that
enables her to establish her present COM
mercial supremacy by any means. 1t is,
undoubtedly, true that the English policy
= 90
the high seas, as well as on shore, and that
it has gained for her the appellatiOn of the
commercial pirate of the earth, yet it is not
true that she has all along succeeded so
well by means of hired craft and nothing
else. The fact is that we and the French
play into her hands from first to last by
means Of the high tariff policy adopted and
enforced by both nations, policy which is
virtually an announcements Of mo thorough
fare" that no foreigner need apply for a
landing for his cargoes.
HAnd upon whom does the burden of this
state Of things fall? This is phase of the
case which the same demagogic sources re-
ferred to carefully refrain from adequately
discussing. Bring it before them and they
will evade it, fasten them TO the point and
they will mlsrepresent and dodge and shut
1e. They know, as everybody knows who
is at all conversant with the facts and hon
est enough to admit palpable, even if un-
welcome, truths, that the stress of the stu
alton rests upon our own producers and
workers. We make and contriye thous-
and land one things of skill, instruction,
amusement and use which the less devel-
oped and cultivated nations to the south of
US require and would buy with avidity-
just as the people or India absorb the sur
plus products of Great Britain-if they
could trade with US. There is
among all nations, as well as among
communities, a certain degree of reciprocal
ton and retaliation, and, like water, trade
between US will adjust itself to a steady
position. If we buy but little from others,
we cannot reasonably expect them to buy
much from US. And when we shut our
doors and bar our gates against South
American traffic by levying an dd ualorom
duty of such great proportions upon every
article our people require that they can
better afford to purchase even at the
greatly advanced rates which the tariff
enables monopolists ut home to supply them
for, they naturally buy from the latter and
turn the foreign trade away. Thus, they
not only pay as tax so much more than
the thing purchased is worth and thus con
tribute TO the upbuilding in our midst of
privileged and favored classes while rob
hing themselves to do it, but also make it
impossible to sell their own products and
manufactures with which the country is
always gorged to those who would buy
them under other circumstances at profit
able figures.
II is worse than folly now for the Repub-
lican managers TO keep up the din and
clamor about protecting American labor
which were so industriously and success
fully employed last year. The issue as it
was then presented was new thing to the
American people, and they are not likely to
listen to the same siren song again, even If
the sirens should have the temerity to sing
it. protection" is robbery, and they are
beginning to find it out by means which
cause US all TO comprehend and remember
certain conditions-wrinkles in the pocket
book.
--.--@
A REPUBLICAN paper in New Mexico as
serts with seeming gravity that President