The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-06-17

| foreigners feel that the only way in
 which they can defend themselves is l by practising the methods which we
 have adopted for our own purposes. 1 Many of our public men have been proclaiming early and late that Amer | 1can prosperity, even to the extent of our great export trade, is entirely due to the protective tariff, and that by the side of this, natural resources, abil- ity, ingenuity and exertion count for very little. It is not at all strange that foreign legislators hearing this doc- , Urine repeatedly from our own leaders, witnessing the great industrial advance which we have made and being, fur- thermore, aware that unless they in some way check the incoming of Amer ican goods some of their domestic in- dustries will suffer from an oversharp competition, are persuaded that, if an almost impossible wall of protection is good policy for the United States, it is also good policy for Germany, France, Austria, Italy, Russia and oth- CT of the great civilized countries. The more that we insist that it is through congressional legislation in the form of tariff laws, rather than through our in herent ability, that our progress has been made, the more we run the risk of having foreigners take us at our word and peremptorily shut us out of our markets by copying this alleged royal road to success.
 That in the absence of special inter- national agreements we shall find it in the future harder and harder to market our surplus wares is fact too evident to be ignored Our nearest and best customer, considering the limited num- Der of its people, is the Dominion of ' Canada; and, while 1t may seem that Canadian trade is free to a greater de- gree than trade with certain of the countries of continental Europe from a possible loss by high tariff restrictions, the one who regards the economic con- dition of the world in a broad way must realize that we are in an age of transition and that changes of tremen- dous importance may take place at any time. There is in Canada, Australia and in England a growing movement in favor of that form of imperial fede- ration by which the trade between and it's colonies and depen- dencies themselves, can be carried on
 
 It may seem to some impossible that England should abandon the free trade policy which has been the basis of her trade for more than half century; but the adoption of that trade method came about through the ascen- dency of what is called the Manchester school of economics, and in many re- spects the theories of that school are In much less favor in England now than they were two or three decades ago. Imperial policy might dictate 8 complete economic change, particularly f it should be found that by so doing -he distant self-governing colonies were brought nearer to the mother country and were in T physical condi- ion to furnish her with the food sup plies needed by her people. A change such as this possible one would partly shut US out from markets in which we ire now annually selling our products If all kinds to the value of hundreds of millions of dollars. We can hold our 'wn in the future only by extending tb 'thers some of the trade opportunities which we demand for ourselves, and which are essential to our industrial By means of g reciprocal
  rade treaty with Canada, which would nable the Canadians to find in the United States a larger market than hey now have for the sale of the re- ults of their industries, we could tie >anada 50 closely to us by bands of mutual trade interest that it would be o longer an object for Canadian tatesmen to encourage the idea of i'm erial federation on tariff lines, and hus through Canada we could safe- uard the permanency and the enlarge lent of the market that we have in ,ngland It is this far-reaching result hat the Boston chamber of commerce. aiming to secure, and we trust that s action will receive, as it's resolutions the hearty CO., operation of cards of trade and chambers of com- lerce throughout the country.-Boston IeI aid.