Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1901-06-06
FREE TRADE :. DEAD ONE.
England Has TardiIy Discovered
the Superiority of
Protection.

FrotectfNn.
Even in the house of its friends the
once much-vaunted policy of free
trade, the idol of the Cobdenites, com
mands but scant respect. 1t gets more
kicks and abuse than praise in the
England of to-day, net because all or
even majority of nglish free trad
ers have been converted to protection,
but because they have lost faith in the
system TO such an extent that they no
longer defend ii, even if they cannot
bring themselves to openly cordemn
it. Now that it is "a condition." not a
theory" that confronts England, in
the form of foreign trade competition,
it is being discovered that free trade
is not the great national blessing that
was once preteLded. The Englishmen
who have for years believed that the
building up of their country's great
commerce was made possible by the
repeal of the so-called corn laws and
the adoption of a free trade system
are rapidly revising their opinions,
and on every side doubts are being ex-
pressed as to the advisability of re-
tanning an economic policy which
handicaps instead of helping.
The National Review, never an advo-
cate of free trade, but a conservative
representative of British public op;n-
ion, points out the proof that has come
to hand of late of the fallacy of the
contention that Great Britain's na-
tional prosperity during the last half
of the nineteenth century was due to
free trade. The National Review
says:
so long as we had no serious industrial
competitors for the markets of the world.
our commercial and fiscal system worked
well enough. 1t was not seriously tested.
We are apt to overlook the fact that the
lines of our Industrial greatness were laid
during an age of monopoly-we being the
monopolists-and that our methods are
only now beginning to be tried by competi-
tion. We had very long start from which
we shall derive some benefit, but already
we suffer from this threefold disadvantage
% Our home market is very seriously
eaten into by foreign competitors; (2) the
markets of our competitors are almost
sealed against us; go in the neutral mar
kets of the world free trade England is be-
ing rapidly overhauled by protectionist
America and protectionist Germany. The
age of foreign compe etition has succeeded
the age of British monopoly, and the rival
systems are now, for the first time, seri-
ously pitted against one another. The
omens are unfavorable for free trade"
1t is not only interesting but impor-
tant for us to learn that British opin-
ion concerning the relative merits of
free trade and protection is gradually
a change. If it were not
that the British move somewhat slow
Iy, we would be in danger of an imme-
date revision of the British system
and would have to prepare to meet
a commercial enemy fighting us with
our own weapons. But it is not to be
expected that in Great Britain protec-
ton will soon be substituted for free
trade, although it would seem as
though it must come to that in time.
Americans, however, will be well con-
tent to see things remain as they are
now. We do not want to be kept out of
the British markets where we have
been bsilding up so profitable busi-
ness, and as long as the British cannot
bring themselves to break with the
free trade system that business can
continue.
But the tardy discovery made by
of the superiority of the
protective over the free trade system
is undoubtedly a vindication of Amer
lean judgment. The people of the
United States have repeatedly shown
their faith in the protective system,
and only upon one or two occasions
have they displayed any wavering in
that belief. The free traders have al
most invariably been in the minority,
and to-day that minority has shrunk
almost to the vanishing point. The
nation from its own experience knows
that protection is the policy that builds
up trade, both domestic and foreign.
1t would have known this even with
out any English testimony on the sub
iect, but it is nevertheless gratifying
to have that testimony presented
Troy Times.