The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-08-27

country exports more than it inports-that
Is, gives more than it receives.
4 back number of tho sheet said:
During the same year usS9. our loss OF the
precious metals by net export was a.,total of
Sol .695, Co.,
And we naturally asked. ''Who lost this
exported gold. Not the Iowners of it, for
they received full value with profit
added. or they would have been fools to
make the exchange. But If the owners did
not lose it, then who did2'' Here is the
organs answer:
We do not dispute that. What we mean to
say is that the nation that keeps up that kind
OF work, paying out all its gold and silver gets
poor. etc.
The italics in the above sentence are
ours. The organ had shown that the
United States had, during one year, sent
out some of its gold and silver, and said the
gold and silver thus sent was lost. We
asked who lost it, and it now intimates that
If a country should send all its gold and
silver out, there would be the deuce to pay,
etc.
We do not know what might happen if a
country should export all it's gold and
silver coin. Nothing very serious, we
should say, judging by the recent green
back experience of several countries; but
that is not the question. We have no time
to argue about what might happen in sup
positions cases or msgined circumstances.
We are only concerned with the fact that
the accidental excess Of coin and bullion
exports Or imports, cuts no practical
figure in the commerce of the world as it
now stands, since imported goods pay for
those exported, and the specie exchanges
are ridiculously small in comparison. The
organ might as well say to the owners of
the Ontario mine ''Do not send your bull
lion away, or you will be losing it, If they
should reply, "Why, we get good price
for it, so what do we lose?' the Tribune
would answer, swell, if you keep up that
kind of work you will be ruin I'd"
When THE HERALD showed that no man
ufacturing establishments would be closed
by a reduction of the tariff, by quoting the
| advertisements of manufacturers who sell
! their goods to foreigners cheaper than to
Americans, and compete with 'pauper labor
in foreign markets, the organ attempts the
usual argument that our manufacturers
lower the price of goods by charging US
more for them than they charge foreigners
This Is true so far as the Foreigners are
concerned-they buy American sugar at AZ
to cents a pound, while we pay to 10
cents; but the organ tries to show tina pro-
lection lowers the price to US as well as to
foreigners. Thus sugar once cost dollar
pound we have protected sugar for
a long time, and it now costs only ten cents;
therefore protection has lowered the an
cicnt cost to our present cheap rate, etc.
The fault with the argument Is that it
fails to state that countries which do not
protect sugar, get it for less than we do,
and the difference is wholly due to the
tariff. When the organ attempts to show
that the effect of tariff is to
reduce the price, by simply say
ing that many articles are cheaper now
than they were once, it makes the weakest
of all possible arguments, as thousands of
causes have operated to produce this re-
| suit.
Can it be shown that a general reduction
Of prices has occurred only in countries
where protection is the policy of the gov
eminent! On the contrary, the decline in
values has been greater in England than in
the United States.
Can it be shown that only articles effec
tually protected have suffered decline?
By no means.
The cheapening of products by protection
is myth. Prices of products are regu-
lated by the law of supply and demand, the
great principle of the economic world
When exchanges are free, improved pro-
cesses have tendency to lower the cost of
production, and competition secures to the
consumer his share of the cheapness which
results from such processes. The object of
protection is to pro luce an artificial reduc-
tion of the supply, so that the producer
may keep up the prices, and deny to the
consumer any benefit from the lower cost
of production. Whenever it fails to &C
complish this, as owing to particular cir
cumstances it may sometimes do, the eX-
pected benefit does not accrue But it is
observed that most Of the highly protected
classes are anxious to retain the system,
which would not be the case if tLey did not
believe that it enabled them to get better
prices. Men do not lobby and contribute
to campaign funds in order to put down the
prices of what they have to sell. To pre-
tend that they do is to insult the INTEL i
gence of the people.
There is one other point. on which the
organ fairly spreads itself:
THE HERALD declares that only per cent.
of our laborers are protected in the least by the
T,ix-%
by CLEVELAND or at least revamped by him
and the figures are reached in this way: A
manufacturing establishment in PENNSYLVANIA
is owned by corporation of five men. They
employ 5000 men. The theory of Mr. CLEvE-
LAND was that only the five men were protected
by the tariff
Excepting the quotation from THE
HERALD In the first line of the foregoing,
there is not a statement in it that is not a
deliberate untruth. President CLEVELAND
had nothing to do with formulating the
mathematical truth that only about 5 per
cent of our workers are in any way pro.
tected by the tariff laws. In 1856, the sec
rotary of the treasury applied to FoRD, the
chief of the bureau of statistics, to Ell
LOTT, the United States government actu
airy, and to NEwcoMB, the superintendent
of the Nautical Almanac, three statistical
experts of unquestioned accuracy and
veracity, to ascertain the number of
our working population in any way
shielded by our tariff laws. They are the
authorities for the statement that only
about five per cent of our working popula-
ton can be in any way protected by the
operation of the tariff laws The quarrel