The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-02-05
THEORY AND FACT.
The Tribune said the other dav.

When England through tariff had gathered
more money and erected more machinery than
all the world outside pcssessed when she had
more ships than all the world outside; then
her statesmen and writers of political economy
decided that no other land on earth could com.
pete with theirs in the manufacture of ordinary
goods and wares, and became furious free-tra-
ders.
We remarked that the chief trouble with
the Tribune's theory was that the facts
were against it, inasmuch as the increase
per head in wealth under seventeen years
OF free trade (tariff for revenue) was
greater than the total increase under ''pro-
tection'' in nearly a thousand years.
The greatest prosperity England ever
had under protection was in 1900, her
wealth per head amounting to 1925. From
that time forward till 1910, as the country
became more densely populated, the evils
OF protection" became more manifet every
year, the wealth per head declining to $3.50,
and the poor starving.
BY 1860 England had adopted free trade
as national policy, and in seventeen years
the wealth per head had increased to 1880
an increase of 5000 per head in seventeen
years of free trade, as against an increase
no greater than that in over 500 years of
protection
How TO sustain its first assertion that
England had enriched herself through
protection before adopting free trade,
was q problem that might well puzzle the
organs tariff juggler, when the census
figures had so completely upset the con-
venient falsehood. However, something
had to be said, and the convicted liar reeled
off the following proof that England grew
rich under protection. 1t explains the pow
erty OF thousand years of protection
thus
1t THE HERALD probably never heard of the
Napoleonic wars
OF course not, but those wars ended in
1915, while the depth of the depression was
reached in 1880. But the point is not
whether wars or other disasters had kept
England poor during "protection;' for the
Tribune had declared point blank that Eng
land had grown rich under protection
and had then discarded il as a policy. Now
it admits the poverty of the protection
period and endeavors to explain it.
To explain the prosperity of the free
trade era, the organ then admits how
wrong its first assertion was by saying:
| Again, it utterly ignores the shipping away o.
tens and hundreds OF thousands OF people il
those years, which reduced the per capita; i
ignores the discovery of the gold of Australia
it1gnores the invention of the compound
marine engine also the civil war
etc.
No, we don't ignore any of those
things, for there is absolutely nc place fo
them in this discussion, which was limited
to purely historical fact: whether Eng
land had, as the organ asserted, grown ricl
under protection before adopting fret
trade. The Trtbune'S present argument t,
explain why it was that England grew ricl
so fast under free trade, gives the lie to it.
first statement that alleged her prosperit,
due TO protection"
The organ says THE HERALD constructs
the words of WEBSTER in order to max
him out free trader. Well the reade
may construe for himself these words from
the same authority:
| We have been asked in a tone of some pathos
whether we Will allow the serfs of Russia an,
Sweden to make our iron for US. Let me in
form the gentleman that those same serfs d.
not earn more than seven cents u day and tina
they work in these mines because they ar
serfs. And let me ask the gentleman further
whether we have any labor in this country tina
cannot be better employed than in bushes
which does not yield the laborer more thai
seven cents a day. Our citizens are far bette
| We had ,s1or oT -
misery, and something of servitude; if we ha
an ignorant, idle, starving population we nigh
SET up as iron makers against the world
The question is, then, shall we buy this iron c
these manufacturers and suffer our own labo
to earn it's greater reward, or shall we emplo
our own labor in a similar manufacture an,
make up to it. by tax on consumers, the los
which it must necessarily sustain.
These were WEBsrER's sentiments on tn
very day that his Massachusetts, constitu
ents forced him to contend for protection
to the shipping interests of that state.
Neither WASHINGTON nor JEFFERSON wa
a protectionist in the modern sense, thong
with the exception of ADAM SMITH himself
nearly all the rest Of the world was who'll
limbued with the protective fallacies, TO
the doctrine of free trade had scarcely
been heard of at that time, and the differ
ence between American and English wage
was greater than it is day. AS for Ham
nToN, the organ dares not let its reader
see his argument for protection" an.
more than it dares to let them see our argu
ment against it.