The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1894-02-20
THOMAS B. REEDS GREAT
SPEECH FOR A PR0TEC-
TIVE TARIFF.

N.
The humblest student of economics may
feel no diffidence in COUGHING a lance against
the Maine statesman in his Interpretation of
industrial history and its problems. The
basis of his argument is a sneer at political
economy and its teachers; his associates in
Congress and the great Republican organs
refer to Mr.. Wilson as 'sthe professor be-
cause once upon a time the modest Vir-
ginian honored himself by teaching school
for a livelihood. So the possessor of merely
elementary knowledge upon this great
tariff problem need not shrink from taking
issue, while those who really know some
thing of this great question are at once in
stalled, by the very admissions of Nh. Reed
and his associates, in a position OF super
iority.
1t is not fair, however, to presume upon
this. We must remember that those who are
the advance guard of the Democratic party
are also teachers, appealing to the great laws
which govern the production and distribu-
ton of wealth-appealing to the great facts
of industrial development and their under
lying causes. Our opponents may shirk the
issue by declaring that the works of men
whose minds were devoted to the questions
of wealth and wages, the commerce of ma
lions and the growth of industry, are all un-
important, because nearly all SO unquali-
fiedly hostile to the doctrine of governmental
interference with trade. The assertion
which Mr.. Reed makes is more than a charge
of uselessness against the economists-it is
almost a declaration against the utility of
mind to discover laws, to deduct, to general
ize; and it is at least an assertion that the
great minds which have been doing this for a
hundred years have, in one field at least,
given us little that is important and less
that legislators duly elected by intelligent
voters need trouble themselves about.
Mr.. Reed has as idea that if England were
a continent instead of an island in the sea-,
she would not have permitted Golden to i'm
pose free trade upon her-'snot, he cries, i n
a burst of ~fervor, 'f he had been sacked by
all the angelic host" This argument is not
new, but it is always amusing. For see
what it implies; Free trade is a weakness;
ergo, little countries like England. with linn
tied natural resources, with wages relatively
higher than anywhere else in Europe, can
| stand it; but the United States, which is a
| continent, possessing nearly all natural re-
sources, would be ruined by it. In other
words, we have SO much salt in the Onondaga
Valley that we must have a tariff OF salt.
If God hadn't given us so much of it we
should have got it cheaper. We have the
finest quality and largest supply of copper in
the world; therefore, it needs protection,
though in the work of protecting it a dozen
industries which relied on copper
were crushed out of existence
as ruthlessly as we crush an
eggshell. We have almost illimitahle fields
of soft and hard coal, there is no anthracite
coal to speak of within some thousand miles
of us, and as any duty on bituminous coal
will regulate just as well the revenues of the
anthracite men, why we must have a duty of
seventy-ive cents a ton on bituminous coal,
because we are so unfortunate as to possess
| coal enough for a thousand years to come
the Almighty having visited us with
| that sore misfortune. England, with coal
not so near the surface, puts no tariff on and
| gets it cheaper-happy England, where God
has only been a little angry with her! Then
there is iron ore, out of which can be made
| the heaviest ordnance or the finest 6essemer
! steel, right here at our doors-God having
been that wroth with us. There may be real
tin in the Black Hills or Temescal; but, if
you love your country, pray earnestly that it
may not be so, for the more we have of it
the more we'll pay for it-because continents
with every natural resource must have pro-
lection and pay artificial prices, but little
| countries like England, with no natural re-
sources, may have free trade and get things
cheap.
1 ask my Republican readers indulgence
for what may seem to him the triviality of
this rejoinder, and yet the reasoning does
not admit of anything but this kind of a
reply. Is it a tenable or even a serious con-
tention that the richer a country is, and the
greater its resources and area, the less able
it is to compete with countries poorer in
resources, and more dense in population,
without lowering its rate of wages, or its
Standard of prosperity To minds even more
deliberately contemptuous of economic laws
4 tudH Ill AN6cu o suCu toaoOAAA6 SoutN A%ANJ
fail to appear other than as a gay and fam
boyant flight of humor.
1 confess to you that the question of wages is
| to me the vital question. To insure our growth.
in civilization aud wealth we must not only have
wages as high as they are now, but constantly
and steadily Increasing. This desire OF mine for
constantly increasing wage does not have It's
origin in love for the indivi iual. but III love for
the whole nation in that enlightened seihshness
which recognizes the great truth that your rate
aud mine. Mr.. Speaker, and the fate OF your
descendants and mine are so wrapped up In the
fate OF all others that whatever contributes to
their progress gives to us all a nobler future and
a higher hope.
This is a fine aspiration, expressed in sim
Pile and noble English. Blu if Mr.. Reed will
cast his eye for one moment in the direction
of the Senate, where the sugar trust is
m~aneuvering for an imposition of the duty
on sugar, it will puzzle him to reconcile that
kind of thing with his laHdable aspiration
for a constant increase in the rate of wages,
or with ga nobler future and a higher hope,n
unless it be the hope of seeing the infamous
conspiracy defeated.
Is there any real connection between this
fight of rhetoric and the theory that wages
can be raised by taxing imported commo-
ditiesa The young republican who reads
this is stirred with the words of his party
leader, for instinctively he recog-
nizes them to be true, but
because of his party enthusiasm
a,d admiration for the leader. he cannot