The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1890-10-17
WHAT FREE TRADE HAS DONE
FOR ENGLISH FARMERS

weight with the Alliance wing of the
British free-trade Democracy that was
not of foreign origin, and therefore,
MI. Editor, l propose to make this ar
ticle mostly from selections from high
toned British authorities. England is
called a free-trade nation, but it is not;
and in a recent article publishedin your
columns, the average per cent. of tariff
levied upon dutiable goods was shown
to be 81 per cent. and from British au-
thority, too. And right here let me
give your readers a little cumulative
proof on that point. In a pamphlet
published as far back as 1882. the cost
of collecting England's internal revenue
is given as 60, 1850, 491. As & 6d-nearly
$14, 600 1000, and Sir John Eardly Wilmot,
BIT. and M. P. said: "While we talk of
free-trade and ridicule those who doubt
our policy in the present anomalous
mode Of it's being carried out, our coast
bristles with custom houses and we even
find the solitary officer in his hut on the
summit of Shakespeare's cliff at Dover,
carefully guarding against the introduce
ton of brandy or cigars from the oppo-
site shores of France"
When the discussion in parliament. of
the question of the repeal of the corn
laws, which our farmers suppose made
England a free.trade nation, was in
progress in 1S43, Richard Golden, the
great father of free-trade in England,
author and fnisher of the faith of Robt..
@. Mills and Grover Cleveland and the
Cobdenite free-traders of the United
States, In reply to the arguments of the
more sagacious and far-seeIng oppo-
nents of the measure on the ground that
fearful injury to the wheat growers of
England from American competition,
AMERICAN WHEAT,
said he fairly believed that it could not
beimported atall with a farthingo of duty.
"Wheat from that country had to be
conveyed at least 1900 miles by navi-
cation in the interior, if not over the
Allegheny mountains. 1t was brought
across Lake Michigan and Erie, through
canals, down the Hudson River, and
was three times transhipped before it
reached the ocean,. Would they then
tell him that they could not compete
with the Americans, whose corn was
also grown at the expense of As ($l.O0)
a day for labor. Why did they think
they could not? because they suffered
themselves to be bamboozled."
In a speech made in London, July Sd,
1914, Mr.. Golden said in reply to his OPP
ponents, "To counteract the warnings
put forth by the protectlonists, that
English agriculture would ultimately be
ruined if the corn laws should be re-
pealed. Mr. Golden said: "They have
told them, the farmers, with all the
high authority that belongs to their life
and station, that the corn laws will be
abolished; they tell their tools, the pa
pers, like grand-mamma, to deal out in
their diurnal twaddle the argument that
if the corn laws are abolished the farm
ers would be ruined even if they paid
no rent. That is the language of grand
mamma of to-day. That is the sort of
slip -slop in answer to the admirable ar
ticle in yesterdays Times"
Sir Robert Peel's sliding scale was first
tried. This bill made the duty on wheat
proportional to the price of wheat in
the English market. Of this law Nc
Cauley said: cit lisa measure which set
ties nothing; it is a measure which no.
body asks for, and which nobody thanks
him for; it is a measure which will nei-
Their extend trade nor relieve distress"
The final death blow to British agri-
culture was gwen when the corn laws
we're repealed in 1916 and English
markets thrown open to American
wheat; and here is what Lord Sails.
bury, Prime Minister, recently says of
that:
'sTHE RESULT HAS BEEF MISERY AMI RUIN.
England's rapacious greed, seeking con-
troll of the markets of the world, result
ed in the sacrifice of her agriculture,
and the loss of all the civilized markets
reduced her to mendicancy, begging,
and bribing, to gain an entrance to ours.
In manufacturing she is no longer SUI
preme, her American child distances
her 500, 600 900 a year, while her labor
ers, who receive no aid from her we'll
paid American relatives or friends, and
are without the means of emigrating
from the country of free-trade to the
land of protection, have but one pros
pect for their old age-the pauper's fate,
tenancy and death in the poor house."
Here is what the BishopSof Stafford
said in February, 1889, of the terrible
distress existing in Manchester, the
birth place of the English free-trader,
upward of forty-two years after it was
bern:
"He had long felt a great interest in
the welfare of the working classes, and
he thought of the misery and suffering
they endured, and the. moral degrada-
ton which was worse than physical suf-
fering, was enough to appeal to the
heart of any man. In Manchester alone
there were 80, people who lived up
on sums varying from 3 to As a week, as
he learned from the statistics of a we'll
known authority in the city-statistics
also which had been Endorsed by the
Manchester Board of Guardians. The
fact was also stated that of every six