Alexandria gazette. [volume] (Alexandria, D.C.) 1834-1974, 1894-10-25

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COL. MOSBY ON THE TARIFF BILL
To the Editor of the Alexandria Gazette:
l notice that Congressman Wilson
says that the English free traders agree
with him that the effect Of our new
tariff will be to make us competitors
with them in foreign markets and for
the carrying trade of the world. This
is fairy tale which it will be hard to
make people of common sense believe.
Men are uot so generous these days as
to give banquets to those who are try
ing to destroy their business. When
they have good thing they don't hail
with delight the appearance OF COM
petitor who is going to take it away.
rhe London merchants didn't give any
banquet to Blaine when he was there.
| am sure they wouldn't give one to
Tom Reed or Mckinley. The GAZETTE
has always insisted that the Mckinley
bill was framed so as to give enormous
bounties to manufacturers. Be it 80.
As bounty to any interest must stim-
ulate i,s production, the tendency OF
the Mckinley bill must have been to
encourage the growth of the manufac-
turing industries it protected. Its re-
peal then must have the opposite eff
feet. 1t gave bounty on sugar and
put it on the free list. The immediate
result was a great development of that
industry; sugar was never before SO
cheap. The bounty has been removed
and a duty imposed. The consequence
is rise in the price of sugar. Now
either Wilson is wrong or the GAZETTE
is wrong. / can't see how we are to
become successful competitors of the
Euglish in foreign markets without
something to sell and great increase
in manufactured production. Then if
the Wilson, German bill is going to
have this effect it must be more favor
able TO the manufacturers than the Nc
Kinley bill; therefore the manufactur-
ers were fools for allowing the republi-
cans 'to FRY the fat" out of them las
the GAZETTE said they did) to prevent
the repeal of the Mckinley law. If
Wilson is right the manufacturers
ought to be free traders, and it is all a
fiction about their being the benefci-
aries of protective tariff. II, as
charged, the manufacturing interests
were q monopoly, could understand
the meaning of Wilson's phrase, "break-
ina the tetters of trade" Now, this is
ali theoretical wind so far as it is in
tended to apply to American produc-
tons. the only letters imposed by the
Mckinley act were not on our exports,
but imports. can understand very
well why the English should hurrah
when these were broken. l don't
blame them. A monopoly is grant of
a special and exclusive privilege. The
Tudor Princes often made such grants
TO court favorites. l have never heard
of anybody in the United States who
enjoyed such favor. AS q protective
tariff stimulates manufacturing indus
tries, it at the same time creates com
petition.
If the manufacturers profits are so
enormous las you say), why don't the
Virginia people go into the business?
Between the States, at least, there is
free trade, an New England has no
monopoly. Either the manufacturers
large profits are fabulous or the Vir-
ginia people are blind in not getting a
share of them. The truth is that more
big fortunes have been made by import
ers than manufacturers. There is just
as much proof that the importing inter-
ests contrib tied money to get the Will
son bill as that the so-called protected
ones used money to defeat it. The old
Wings always charged that the passage
of the Walker tariff act of 1916 was
bought with British gold" (see ante
bellum files Of the GAzETTE). And now
comes Prof. Wilson who says in effect
that the manufacturers who were
against his bill didn't know it was
Grecian gift to dest roy the British, and
that he was working for them, and that
the London merchants who gave him
the feast only did so in the despairing
spirit OF the gladiator going to die, when
he saluted Cesar. Happy are they,
says the Roman poet, who know their
own good. l see, too, that Gen. Hun
ton in his speech at Culpeper defends
his vote for free wool because, he said,
il would make cheap blankets, and then,
to appease the farmers, said that the
consequence had been rise in the price
ofwool.
He did not attempt to explain how
removing the duty on wool made it
higher in the market, or how an in
crease in the price of the raw material
of which they are made could make
blankets cheaper. The free traders
have always insisted that the consumer
of the goods pays the duty. But, ac-
cor3iug to General Hunton, free trade
makes them higher. Wilson says that
free trade will open the markets of the
world to American manufactures, and
again give us the carrying trade. We
suypose it was over this prospect that
the London traders smiled when they
uncorked their champagne bottles and
drank to Wilson's health. The fallacy
of Wilson's idea is in assuming that
foreign markets have ever been closed,
or that there was any restriction on
exports to other countries, Foreign