Herald and tribune. [volume] (Jonesborough, Tenn.) 1869-current, 1892-10-06
FOR FREE TRADERS.
American Protection Viewed by a
Yorkshire (Eng.) Newspaper.
Protection of American Industry Neith-
er a Fraud nor DeluSiOn.

From the Bailey (Yorkshre) Examiner,
September H.
At the present moment, with disaster
after disaster reported in the CONNER
cial world; with such firms as that of
the Salts finding it necessary to wind
up their huge business with the de-
preston in the Bradford trade with
the ruin of the tin plate industry in
South Wales, the doom of the Ian
cashire cotton trade foretold, and the
complete overthrow of the Noting
ham lace business brought about by
the operation of hostile tariffs in for
eign countries-with all these signs of
the decay of British trade, there is no
wonder that the more thoughtful of
English workingmen are beginning to
ponder the question as to whether, after
all, free trade is the great blessing to
this country, which from their infancy
they have been led to believe.
Signs are. not wanting that the time
is rapidly approaching when instead of
the advocate of protection being put
upon his defense it will be the advocate
of such one sided free trade as England
at present enjoys (save the mark who
will find it necessary to explain his rea-
sons for maintaining the faith that is
in him.
No other trading community on the
face of the earth pursues the policy
which England has for forty years ad-
hered to. perfectly true that forty,
nay twenty years ago England prosper
ed and was prospering; that her trade
increased by leaps and bounds, that
wages were higher and fortunes rapidly
made. And free traders took the fiat
tering JUNCTION to their souls that all
the improvement was due to the adop-
ton of the Cobdenite shibboleth, for
getting that England was the pioneer
in manufacturing, in the creation of
railways, in the adoption of the cleo
trio telegraph, and that her commercial
maritime fleet gave her advantages
which no other nation on the face of
the earth enjoyed.
But by taking advantage of English
discoveries, employing English fore
men, getting English machinery to use
as patterns and excluding English goods
from their markets by high tariffs,
France, Germany and America have
brought themselves in line with us, and
while the business of free trade Eng
land today increases but at snail's
pace, the foreign trade of foreign coun-
tries is leaping forward and bidding
fair to quickly equal our own.
Whatever may be said to the con-
trary, wages are fixed, subject, of course,
to reasonable conditions of barter-by
the inexorable laws of supply and de-
mand. AS soon as orders for goods fall
off competition begins to cut down
prices, and when this has done its
worst, and orders still become fewer
mills are shut down, men are thrown
out of employment, the competitor for
work becomes keener and keener, and
men with wives and families to support
willingly take situations to keep their
families from starvation at less and
less rate of wages This is the process
now going Oh in England.
France, Germany, Spain and Ameri-
ca have all practically closed their
markets against us; and while thus
keeping their own trade to themselves,
they are competing with us in Eastern
and other markets, and so not only in
juring our trade by their refusal to ac-
cept our goods, but driving us out of
other markets.
1t is time that England brought the
nations who are now seeking her ruin
to their senses by the imposition of re-
taliatory tariffs on their goods.
| Let us give yet another instance of