The Owosso times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1897-1926, 1903-06-05
RIGHT SORT OF RECIPROCITY.
That Which Accords to and Demands
From All Nations Equal Trade Privi-


heges.
There is no question that the United
Statescan get all the reciprocity treaties
it wants or can aspire to, if it will to
that end cut down sufficiently it's pro-
tective duties and make sacrificial offer
ings of it's home industries. 1t may be
claimed in many instances and perhaps
proven in some that the particular sacri-
fees demanded are small in comparison
with the general advantage to be gained;
but such reasoning will never be salts
factory to- the industries to be sacrificed
er prejudiced; nor is it at all likely,
nor desirable, that congress will ever
place unreservedly the power to slaugh-
ter protective duties in the hands of the
president, who in the course of time
and events might be actuated by an
oyer-anxiety to make reciprocity
record or even by hostility to protection
as a principle. So the industries threat
ened defend themselves through their
friends in congress and have the moral
support outside of people who without
being well advised in the premises be-
lieve in fair play to every legitimate
American industry and view with in
stinctive suspicion any proposition to
find foreign market for some products
by impairing the home market for other
products.
From all of which it appears not mere
ly that reciprocity, as it has been recent
BY proposed, has failed to work, but that
from the conditions surrounding it it
was from the start destined to failure,
and may as well now be relegated defin-
itely to the limbo of attractive but i'm
practicable schemes
Acceptance of this situation should
not, however, carry with it abandon
ment of efforts to promote the foreign
trade and commercial expansion of the
country. Rather should the frank rele-
CATION Of any unavailable instrument
make easier the search for an effective
weapon for a most proper purpose. Reel
procity at best is piecemeal PROPOSE
hon, involving haggle with each sepa-
rate nation over the mutual concessions
10 be made, and by its necessary and in
terminable delays wearying its friends
and disgusting every one. The dignity
Of the United States and the practical
necessities of the case alike demand the
adoption of some policy that shall be
susceptible of general applications that
shall protect the American producer and
shipper against petty exactions and dis
ordinations in foreign markets, and
that shall, in short, compel in every
quarter the "open door" for American
trade, but that shall be content when
that door is just as open to American
trade as it is to any other trade.
The time was when the United States
was not Of sufficient commercial conse-
quence to enable it successfully to in
augurate such policy; but the time is
when the United States with its i'm.
mense population, unprecedented wealth
and unapproached consuming capacity
for nearly all sorts of products is in DO
sition, if it admits the products of an
other nation upon the same terms as it
admits the products of all other nations,
10 demand from that nation like treat
ment for its own products.
To ask more would be to ask what
other nations are very likely prohibited
by their existing agreements from grant
ing; but equality of treatment the
United States may justly and should in
insist upon; and the nation
which denies this much should be made
10 pay upon all its exports to this coun-
try discriminating duty, either uni
form for all nations of its class or
graduated according to the discrimina-
tons which American exports suffer in
its markets.
BY such policy of dignified insistance
and retaliation must the United States
in the end protect its interests in the
markets of jealous nations; and with
such protection assured there is every
reason to anticipate that the era of |
American commercial expansion will |
soon appear to be only well begun -
Nevada Ua.) Representative.