The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1892-03-29
TRADE BALANCE PALACES.

If farmer selling $1,000 worth OF pro-
duce, after spending half of it for neces-
saries and comforts, invests $500 in colts
and calves. which with one years feeding
VIII be worth double what he gave for
them, ere.will be no balance of trade in
MS favor He will have bought as much as
ne sold and matters will appear even, and
so IL with the surplus $500 he buys i'm
proved implements and machines. which
VIII enable him to increase his crop one
nall, there is yet apparently no balance in
his favor
If a New York merchant ships abroad
$1,000 worth of -four and buys with the
proceeds 81, 900 worth of pig iron, the two
transactions balance one another and the
treasury figures will show neither gain nor
loss But the zig iron after being brought
to this country may be made into
bolts, rods or tools worth s.. 600 and here
IS a gain in the country's wealth of
winch the treasury returns make no no
tlce. If an individual or a nation ouys and
Consumes more in year than it sells,
tnere Is loss, and the individual or the
nation Is deyouring its substance and
en0erprising nation may buy raw materials
10 be worked up into manufactured arti-
cies; or ii may buy machinery, ships, rails,
tools, farm animals of improved breeds,
lumber and other things, which are not i'm
mediately consumed, but possess a sort of
permanent value, which become additions
to the productive capital.
There is class of political economists
who hold that the shipment of money
abroad to pay for imports we have bought
indicates a ruinous condition of our for
eign commerce, and that that only is a
healthful state Of trade in which we sell
more commodities than we buy. and gold and
silver are sent to US to settle the balance
in our favor. But country may be a gold
and silver producing land, yielding more of
those metals than it has any profitable use
Tor. Such country is ours. Gold and
silver mining is one of our most important
ndustries-indeed, in several states and
territories it is the leading industry. But
these states and territories will not keep
the precious product, and it is not wise
that they should. They need other things
morei they need machinery, implements,
animals and manufactures of various
kinds. If they invested every surplus dol
lars worth of their metal product in these
these things they would, most likely, be
the better for it. If, therefore, at the end
OF the year the treasury tables should
show that we have exported many millions
more gold and silver than we imported, it
would not be thing to lament over. We
would still have increased our stock of the
precious metals by many millions, and have
exchanged the surplus for commodities
that we have more need of.
A so-called balance OF trade in favor of
country is not, therefore, always the uner-
ring sign of prosperity that economists of
the protection school attempt to make out.
The balance or trade is always against
Great Britain, year after year-and vet
year after year the United Kingdom is
growing richer every year through its hun
dreds of millions of shipping earnings, and
its dividends and interesu-money from
other countries, which are not men
toned N the trade returns.