The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1899-08-02
The Foreign Trade Of the United
States.

states.
THE Journal of Commerce publishes
the figures of the foreign trade of the
United States for June, which complete
the record of one of the most remark
able fiscal years in the nations COM
mercial history. The aggregate of do
nestle exports for the year is S1,204,-
1913, 134, very surprising string of
figures. Of this total the agricultural
products are 1884 ,999, 009; domestic
manufactures, $685., 1857 ,794, the latter
sum being nearly double the amount of
domestic exports in 1896. The United
States seems to be entering "the mar
kets of the world" in the snorous
phrase of the free trade advocates, I'M
der a protective tariff at a somewhat
more rapid pace than under the Cor
man Wilson abomination of 1894.
The aggregate reports for the year
are some 100000 less than for the
year 1898; the agricultural exports are
some $6S,0OO,000 less, the domestic ex-
ports S46,OO0,000 greater. The de-
crease in the value of the agricultural
exports is owing to lower prices, par
ticularly in wheat, rather than to
shrinkage in volume, while the in
crease in domestic manufactures ex-
ported represents a direct growth in
the volume of trade. The figures for
the year reveal an excess of exports
of merchandise amounting to about
$507 ,000, 900, as compared with an ex-
cess of 1894 100000 for the fiscal year
1898. The difference, the Journal
explains, is largely due to an increased
volume of imports, but the decrease in
the value of agricultural exports has
something to do with the shrinkage in
"the balance of trade" imperial in its
magnitude, Notwithstanding its dimin-
ished proportions. The agricultural
exports are said stiil to bear the i'm
press of short crops in Europe and the
immense wheat movement of last year.
1t is possible that this element in the
trade problem will disappear to some
extent in the fiscal year that began
July l, and that the United States will
have to depend more upon exports of
finished goods to maintain it's favorable
trade balance.
The Republican doctrine of protec-
ton; under which the country has al
ways been prosperous, has received
new and probably final vindication;
the Democratic doctrine of free trade,
whose banner Cleveland raised in 1886.
which the party has carried in three
successive elections, and whose tri-
umph in 1892 brought nation of peer
less wealth and resources to the verge
of bankruptcy, will be relegated to it's
cradle in the lecture room OF colleges,
and there abide, sickly infant "puling
and puking" in the arms of it's nurses,
the theoretical and impractical pro-
iOobOlc Va pOiltlCui
The country, unless perhaps it was the
South in the time Of slavery and during
an exclusively agricultural existence,
never has believed in free trade as a
matter of practical business. The
difference of opinion on this issue
has been, for the most part,
purely political. In practical business
affairs this difference has disappeared.
AS party, however, Democrats have
denounced Republican protection as
fraud, robbery" etc., and when they
have carried national election on this
issue they have sought to perpetuate
this fraud and robbery" in the laws
they have passed, or have tried to pass |;
but they have 80 combined, as in the
Wllson-Gorman law, the merit in the
doctrine of protection with the evils of
political wickedness inhering in their
party as to embarrass the business
interests of the country, or involve
them in downright and widespread
disaster. All this had become clear be-
fore the brilliant demonstration of
commercial prosperity of the two years
following the enactment of the Ding
ley tariff. In the figures of the Jour
nal of Commerce, and in many Incl
dental circumstances-for example, the
cry of the railways for added thousands
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