Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1891-02-21
OCEAN STEAMERS AT CHICAGO.
An English Syndicate to Put on Line Of
Steamers Between Chicago and England
Opening tho Market For a Bushel of
Wheat and a Barrel of Pork.

An English Syndicate to Put on Line o
Steamers Between Chicago and Engan,
Opening tho Market For a Bushel O
Wheat and a Barrel of Pork.
A company has been organized will
a capital stock of S., 900, 600 to build anC
| operate a line Of steamers between
Chicago and England. A similar plar
about two years ago fell through, as i
was found that the Canadian canals
could not accommodate vessels drawing
nine feet of water. An improvement
however, has been made in the shallow
est canal, giving it depth of more
than nine feet. Already the scheme
has been revived, and an agent of the
company is now visiting the lake port
/ in order to make contracts for freight
Ten steamers will be built, and these
will carry out cargoes of dressed beef
dairy products, etc, and will bring
back general merchandise.
Protectionists will doubtless view
this movement with alarm, and see in
it another scheme of the greedy, grasp
ing British to enrich themselves a,
other peoples expense. The protection
notion that we should 'eat all our beef al
home and buy little or nothing abroad
is directly opposed to this scheme t.
promote trade between Chicago and
England. According to the Mckinley
standard of political orthodoxy it would
be better to fill up those Canadian ca
mails rather than deepen them.
But the farmers will not see any thing
alarming in having British ocean steam
ers loading and unloading at the wharfs
of Chicago and Detroit They will rath-
er see in this what Blaine calls opening
the market for another bushel of wheat
and another barrel of pork" and if
these ships bring back English hard
ware, wooden goods, or other articles
of merchandise, the farmers will reflect
that it is precisely such things as these
that they need, They will not hasten
to lift up their hands against a flood
of cheap goods" ... ..-t
In fact, the farmerss will be so old
fashioned as to rejoice in seeing that
higher; and they will be only too glad
to see corresponding stream of sur
plus wheat, corn, pork, beef and butter
and cheese go out in these ships in or
der to increase the flow of cheap for
eign goods into Chicago for distribution
in hundred country towns. As these
same farmers can make wheat and corn
and fatten livestock much more easily
than they can make CLOTH or knives, or
hundred other articles, they will find
it a paying business to ship these farm
products to England for the manufact-
ured products named. The farmers
will feel no harm to themselves from
such an arrangement; and it will be
difficult to make them believe that
harm results to the country at
large by the exchange described. The
fact is, as even every Acknowledgment
man knows, the permanent exchanges
which we call trade. can not exist un-
less both parties make a proiit-in other
words, unless they get something which
they like better than the thing they
parted with. A school boy will not
swap top for a set of marbles un-
less the marbles please him better than
the top; and, moreover, the boy is quite
sure that he is himself the only salts
factory judge as to which really does
please him better. If the father of the
family should step in and take go per
cent of his boys marbles and try to
persuade him that this was for the good
of the family, the boy would for once
face a problem that would beat the
mysteries of the multiplication table.
There is another point about these
ships which deserves the farmers at
tention. The ship-owners not only ex-
pcct to take away cargoes of American
produce, but they equally expect to
bring in cargoes of English goods.
Does anybody suppose that these ships
would come for our produce if they
could not bring a cargo with them? Or
if they should do so, is it not clear that
our outgoing cargo would nave to pay
two freights? Would not this make our
produce dearer when laid down in
Liverpool and less able to compete with
the produce of other countries?
If the ideal McKinleyisms were car
ried out and the tariff made absolutely
prohibitory would not the expectation
of our produce practically cease?
Would not the glut of the home market
make the prices of such produce sink to
a ruinous level?
These are simple questions in foreign
trade which are, of course, easy to an
swer: but they deserve to be thought
over again and again. They have in
them the root of the whole tariff con-
troversy.