The Ketchum keystone. [volume] (Ketchum, Idaho) 1885-1899, 1892-03-19
Some Stupid Allegations Corrected

resulting IN the ereCClOn OF competing
establishments in a given line of manu-
facture, thereby creating an active de-
mand, at remunerative wages, for skilled
labor, and at the same time keeping the
price6f the finished products within the
bounds of q reasonable profit by reason
Of healthy competition. If protection
does not protect without advancing prices
why is it that steel rails, under strong
protective duty, have declined from $107
per ton in 1870. when the increased duty
was levied to $50 or less per ton in 18922
Why is it that steel wire nails, under a
duty of cent per pound in 1888, were
selling at e15 cents per pound, while
under duty of cents per pound levied
in 1888, they have declined to less than
cents per pound in 1S9l.-Potection
Paper.
Demand stimulates production,
and this encourages the investment
of capital, and that it is all there is
of it. Take away demand and pro-
duction ceases as does also the in
vestment of capital, and this takes
place in exactly the same proper
ton that demand is lessened. De-
stroy demand and you destroy pro-
duction and stop the investment of
capital. This is all so simple that
the merest tyro in economics should
understand it. 1t is this that makes
all of the difference between civil
cation and barbarism. The civil
lied man has wants to supply. To
supply these wants manufacturing
industries are established, capital
is invested, and both extend and
increase as the demand for manufac-
tured products increases. Among
barbarians human wants are few,
consisting mainly in bow and
arrows, a spear and a war club.
The capital invested in their pro-
duction is a sharpened flint and the
toll of the old women of the tribe.
But as they progress their wants
gain in number; and as these grow
their manufacturing skill is i'm
proved until each new want is sup
plied-a part of them by traffic with
neighboring tribes, in the sales of
furs, willow baskets, moccasins and
the like. And this traffic is the
beginning Of commerce, which pro-
tectionists would destroy. tits fun
damental to prosperity and had its
origin in the self-evident business
proposition that distribution Of
products is indispensable if losses
through accumulation of unused
excuses are to be avoided.
The home market folly, by for
bidding mutual exchanges of ex-
cesses of production, and their con-
sequent equalization by means Of
a fair and equitable interchange Of
commodities, would reverse this
beneficent rule and compel the pro-
Queer of an excess to let It lie and
rot on his premises. How strange it
is that men of ordinarily good sense
in other matters will permit them
selves to be hoodwinked into the
acceptance of dogmas which their
intellects, if they would but use
them, would at once convince them
are both false and pernicious.
Our surplus products this year
will reach, if they do not exceed ,
81 900, 100000. These our produc-
ers should not only be at liberty to
dispose Of cbroad, but to dispose Of
to the best advantage to their own
interests, and protection removed
they would be.
We will now look into the steel
rail and key of nails idiotcy a
moment.
Since 1870 the cost of iron ore
to the manufactures has been great
~ decreased 7; new processes Of max.
ing steel have been discovered and
older ones perfected, new machinery
invented and every facility for the
production of steel and the manu-
facture Of steel rails 80 greatly i'm
proved and cheapened that were
not the rails cheapened the fact
would be an unanswerable argu-
ment for returning to the old APP
pliances and old methods. Were
steel rails as high in 1892 as they
were in 1870. tina. fact would prove
invention and progress to be fail
ures as all must zee. And the came
facts apply. to the key of nails.
They are not made by the same old,
bunglesome, laborious and costly
processes employed in their pro-
duction in 1870, but by new and