Bisbee daily review., 1904-03-24
PROTECTION RIDICULED
Leader Williams Tells What 1t
 Is and How 1t Works.
THE GREAT BANANA INDUSTRY.

Protection Robs Many to Produce
 Raise the Price of Bananas-Hot-
 houses Cannot Be Expected to
 Compete With Tropical Sunshine.
 The Hon. John Sharp Williams. the new minority leader in congress, is making his Republican opponents un- comfortable whenever he rises to speak. which is quite often. In his rattling speech on Cuban reciprocity he said in part:
 Protection is a system of taxation whereby many are robbed in order that few men may be hothoused by legis- iation into artificial prosperity. As a supplementary definition protection is Q system of taxation whereby capital and labor are deflected from naturally prof itable pursuits and enterprises into the channels of naturally unprofitable pur- suits and enterprises. And as a corol- iary the method whereby they are de- fected is by the enactment of laws forcing the consumer to pay to the arti- ficial hothoused enterprises a higher price than with a free commerce the consumer would have to pay.
 That brings me, Mir. Chairman. to my favorite banana theory. There is not in the United States, I suppose, hundred acres of land where bananas can be grown in the open air. and yet could were the legislating body of this country or were l the czar. with abso- lute power and disposed to make people pay the price for it. create a great American banana industry l could put tax of dollar apiece on bananas which are now selling at three for a nickel. and inside of five years could with a good custom house service have created and exploited a vast banana industry. It is true that a great many people who formerly ate bananas could not buy any bananas at all, but it is also true that great many people who are plutocrats and aristocratS would eat them because the common people dagoes, Jerseymcn and Mississippians- could not.
 l l ton in existence for twenty years at | the end of that time there would have 1 come to the front new generation 1 that knew not Joseph nor cheap ba- nanas. and the moment sensible peo- | pie came into power with the idea of | revising the banana schedule these gen 1 tlenen who knew not Joseph and had | gone Into the American banana busi- | ness and perhaps formed banana | trust would come to the committee | room of the national legislature. knock | ing upon the doors all the time and | giving utterance to cries of unutterable woe; Are you going to strike down the , great American banana industry? Are i you going to reduce the duty from a l dollar apiece on bananas to 80 centsf ! We can't stand it. It will ruin us. 1 Are you going to make the people en- ! gagged in banana raising go to the soup ! houses? Are you going to discriminate
 in favor of pauper tropical sunshine
 against self respecting American hot , house laborers.'
 l Let us stop a moment and follow
 the banana theory little further be- | cause l am fond of bananas. What would have been the result of estab-
 fishing that industry? Merely this,
 that you would have defiected a cer- 1 tain amount of American labor and | capital engaged fin the general hot | house industry into different chan nei of hothouse proceedings, and in-
 stead of having their hothouses for the l purpose they have them now they would have converted them into ba- I mana nurseries, and the consumers
 would be paying dollar apiece or per
 haps 90 cents apiece for bananas be-
 cause the protected interest would have to undersell somewhat the foreign mar
 kets.
 After fifteen or twenty years home | competition would have reduced the
 price of bananas in the American mar
 ket to, let us say, 10 cents apiece, and
 then Republican orators and politicians
 would say privately, in newspapers and
 on the stump and within these walls
 with due solemnity and without mu-
 tual smile: To and behold! See how protective tariff has reduced the
 price of bananas from 90 cents apiece
 in 1850 to 40 cents apiece in 1865, near
 ly 50 per cent decrease in price to the
 consumer Protection did it
 "Yes; a reduction from superlative ex
 tortion to comparative extortion.
 l But in all this picture keep in mind
 one thing-while protection lasted ba
 nanas would never reach three for a
 nickel, because if they did that public
 enemy, tropical sunshine, would be
 master.
 What would you have accomplished
 Would you have increased the wages oi
 labor? Not a particle. You would mere
 ly have defiected capital from one chan
 nel to another, from one sort of hot
 house production to another or from
 one production which was not hot
 housed at all to hothouse production