New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1891-09-28

mechanics and workinemen the advantage of our
own markets. So long as we pay better wages
for work than is paid anywhere else in the world,
just so long the people who employ labor should
have the tariff on foreign goods so arranged ns
TO enable our own manufacturers TO pay the
extra price for labor, and still have an advantage
in the markets of our own country. To secure
this is all there is of protective tariff.
We now have in the United States, with all
our diversified Industries. more people engaged in
agriculture than has been profitable for the last
years. The theory of this correspondent would
shut up all our shoe factories and set an army
of men to raising wheat, when that army is
already large enough and stands in need of no
recruits 1t would be worse than that because
this army OF shoemakers who would increase the
supply of wheat by raising all they consume
themselves and some besides would simply add to
a surplus that already large enough; and such
a plan would take from consumers large class
Of men who do not now produce wheat but who
do eat bread Can any proposition be palmer
than this, that as u nation we should both make
shoes and grow wheat?
This free-trade notion is simply an attempt to
run the entire world as il it was all nation
and an abandonment of the attempt of each nation
TO take care Of itself. 1t is simply extension
of n visionary notion which has always been adj
vocated by impracticable men, that each in
dividual should always be working for the whole
world whereas, in practical life. the first and
NEST important duty of every individual is to
look out for himself. Nations. like individuals,
should learn to build up their own industries and
take care of their own people. OF course there
is now and then man who considers himself
competent TO run the entire universe. should
brink from a job of that kind. 1t is all l car
do quite frequently to run myself And so with
a nation-its first duty is to look after its own
immediate interests. This may seem sad to our
freetradeIs, but it is simply the way humanity
has been built and the way the world has been
made OF course i would not intimate that these
free-trade gentlemen might not have built
a better universe than was planned and produced
by the author of our present universe. They
may also in their imagination originate a utopian
government, but the difficulty with such gov
eminent is that it is always entirely different from
the one in which we compelled to live and
work to get food and clothing
/ would so arrange the affairs Of this nation
that we would furnish work of every possible
kind to all people. To do that would SO
manage that we could produce the greatest variety
possible of all articles consumed by our people.
Why does Mr. Stott insist on having some one
raise wheat 10 exchange lOr MS shoeS' WHY u'oo
no not have the wheat growers all turn shocmakers
and then exchange shoes for wheat all over the
world? / hope he will not misunderstood me
would have our people raise wheat and make
shoes too. lie seems bent on having only one
thing produced in the United States. He fixes on
wheat; some other man would fix on shoes;
would have our people grow wheat. and make
shoes, steel rails crockery, glass. silk, cotton and
woollen goods linen goods beet-sugar and tin plate
YES, and raise cattle, hogs and sheep; In fact DO
everything that it is possible to do to make our
individual people prosperous and make our nation
independent of the rest of the world
r. G.. HORR.