Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1890-02-03

fact. and a fact Of no small dimensions,
ST a. IA estimating the material develop
eia.ta America, cannot DE lost sight of.
If na country, | suppose, has there been SO
ra:t al q cultivation Of the inventive faculty,
ana in America the scarcity of labo has,
in truth, supplied the great republic with
an essential element of severe and salutary
iiseipliue Thus it has come about that a
race CIdued with consummate ability for
labor has also become the richest of all races
in instruments for dispensing with labor.
It is hus obvious enough that remark
able faculty and habit of invention, which
goes direct to cheapness, helps to fill up that
gap in your productive results which is
created by the wastefuness of protection
The leakage in the national cistern is more
than compensated by the efficiency of the
pumps that supply it,
America makes no scrupIes, then, to cheaper
ever ything in which labor is concerned, be
cause this is the road to national wealth.
Therefore, she has no mercy upon labor, but
displaces it right and left. Yet when we
come to the case where capital is most in
question, she enables her ship builders, her
iron masters and her mill owners to charge
double or seni-double prices; which, if her
practice as to labor saving be right, must be
the road to national poverty. converse,
if she be right in shutting out foreign ships
can capitalist, why does she not tax the reap
ing machine to raise the receipts of the
American labOrer?
ENGLAND NOT YET FREE ENOUGH.
| have still to notice one remaining point.
do not doubt that production is much
cheapened in America by the absence of all
kinds of class legislation except that which is
termed projections an instance alike vicious
and gigantic but still an instance only. In
our British legislation, the interest of the in
dividual or the class still rather largely pre-
walls against that Of the public In America,
as | understand the matter, the public OBJ
tains full and equal justice. | take for ex
ample the case of the railroads; that vast
creation, one of almost universal good to-
mankind, now approaching to one-tenth OF
one-twelfth of our entire national possessions.
1t is believed that in unnecessary parliament
tary expenditure, and in abnormal pricss
paid for land, the raiip.~;rs of this country
were taxed to between fifty and hundred
millions sterling beyond the natural cost of
their creation Thus does the spirit of pro-
lection, only shifting its form, still go raven
ing about among US Nothing is SO common
here as to receive compensation, and we get
1t not only for injuries, but for benefits But
while the great nation of the Union rightly
rcjoices i'll her freedom from our superstitions,
WHY should she desire, create ana worship
superstitions Of her own?
THE MORAL ASPECT OF THE SUBJECT.
L urge, also that all protection is morally
as well as economically bad This is a very
different thing from saying that all protec
tionists are bad.
have seen and known, and had Che oppor-
tunity of comparing, the temper and frame of
mind engendered first by our protectionism
which we now look back upon servitude,
and then by the commercial freedom and
equality which we have enjoyed for the last
thirty or forty years. The one tended to har
den into positive selishness; the other has
done much to foster a more liberal tone of
mind
The American love of freedom will, beyond
all doubt, be to some extent qualified, per
haps in some cases impaired, by the subtle in
duence of gold, aggregated by many hands IN
vaster masses than have yet been known.
How will the majestic figure, about to be-
come the most powerful on the stage of the
worlds history, make of his power? Will
it be instinct with moral life in proportion to
its material strength!
May Heaven avert every darker omen, and
grant that the latest and largest growth of
the great Christian civilization shall also be
the brightest and the best!
w. E. GLADSTONE.