The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1892-04-29

PROTECTION AND FOREIGN TRADE.

PROTECTION AND FOREIGN TRADE
The fool killers work, it is said, is
never ended, and the same thing
is true of the work of those public jour
nails and public men whose duty it is tC
expose tariff reform tricks and sub
| terfuges. In one of his recent speeches
| in Rhode Island, Major Mckinley con.
graduated the country on the increase
of its foreign trade. His meaning was
perfectly Ineligible, and was expressed
in the clearest, and most carefully chOs-
en- words. Yet, for the sake of scoring
an apparent point on political oppOn-
emit, nearly all of the tariff reform" pa
pers of this vicinity have pretended to
misunderstood his remark, and to re-
gard it as a confession that the new
tariff law which bears his name was not
accomplishing his purpose.
1t scarcely need be said that the Nc
Kinley tariff was not intended to restrict
all foreign trade. That is not the pro-
| lection policy. The great founder OF
the Democratic party, to be sure, wished
that the Atlantic ocean was a sea of fire
to exclude all descriptions of foreign
| goods, but Thomas JeffersOn's extreme
views are not shared by Major Mckinley
and other protectionists of our modern
era. More moderate in their opinions,
they favor foreign commerce in such ar
ticles as we cannot produce by the same
expenditure of labor as foreign coun-
tries. They favor, for instance, the free
introduction of sugar from the West In
dies, the coffee, cocoa and rubber of
South America, and the tea of China
and Japan. Not content with removing
all duties on these non-cOmpeting arti-
cles, they believe in substituting Ameri-
can steamship lines to bring them to our
ports as cheaply and expeditiously as
possible, and to carry out our manufac-
lures, grain and provisions. Protection
lists not only believe in this kind of for
eign commerce, but they are actively
employing all the energies of the Gov
eminent to promote it. The more SUI
gar and coffee and cocoa and rubber and
other non-competing foreign products
we import and consume the better it
suits their purposes.
The kind of imports that protection
lists do not believe in and seek to restrict
is the imports of such articles as wooden
and cotton cloth, tools, boots and shoes,
cutlery, machinery, ETC., which we have
the facilities for producing with as little
expenditure of labor as any other cOun-
try in the world. They believe that it is
better for our country that we should
produce these articles in our own work
shops, rather then depend on foreign
sources of supply. In other words they
believe that industrial independence is
essential to political independence.
That is the doctrine of Washington and
Hamilton and jefferson and Jackson
and of every important leader of both
political parties down to the time of
Calhoun. The free trade doctrine in
this country had its origin among the
cotton planters of South Carolina. They
did not believe in industrial independ-
ence. They wanted to send their cotton
to Great Britain and swap" It there
for their tools and clothing. Because
they could not carry their point, they
threatened to secede from the Union in
1882, and they did secede 80 years later,
taking the remainder of the South with
them and establishing a Confederacy
with free trade and slavery as its corner
stones.
We think that we have made it plain
that there is kind of foreign commerce
which protectionsts favor and kind
which they do not favor. The McKin-
ley tariff was intended to promote the
imports of non-competing articles and
to discourage the import of articles
which compete with American indus
tries. We have the word of a leading
English journal for it that it is work
ing out the idea of it's designers with
the precision and effectiveness of ma
chine" 1t is increasing the imports of
sugar, coffee, cocoa, ETC., and decreas-
ing the imports of foreign manufactured
goods. But the former is increasing
even more rapidly than the latter is de-
creasing, while our exports, both of ag-
ricultural and manufactured products,
have reached unprecedented dimensions.
This is the condition of things which
Major Mckinley referred to. 1t is the
increase of foreign commerce VIII ich
he rejoiced in. He did right to rejoice
in it, for this increase of our foreign
commerce is fulfilling to the letter the
predictions of the protectionists and
confounding the prophecies of free trad
ers.-BOStOn Journal.