Bisbee daily review., 1904-03-23


 Raise the Price of Bananas-Hot- houses Cannot Re Expected to Compete With Tropical Sunshine. The Hon. John Sharp Williams. tine 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 a few men may be hothoused by legis- lation into artificial prosperity. As 8 supplementary definition protection is a system of taxation whereby capital and labor are defected from naturally prof itable pursuits and enterprises into the channels of naturally unproftable pur- suits and enterprises. And as a corol- lary the method whereby they are de- fected is by the enactment of laws forcing the consumer to pay to the arti- icial hothoused enterprises a higher price than with a free commerce the consumer would have to pay.
 That brings me, Mir. Chairman. to my fayorite banana theory. There is not in the United States. 1 suppose, a hundred acres of land where bananas can be grown in the open air. and yet l could were the legislating body of this country or were I 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 a tax of dollar apiece on bananas which are now selling at three for a nickel. and inside of five years I could with 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. Jerseymen and Mississippians- could not.
 If l continued that system of taxa ton in existence for twenty years at the end of that time there would have come to the front q new generation 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 tlemen who knew not Joseph and had gone into the American banana busi- ness and perhaps formed a 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 you going to reduce the duty from a dollar apiece on bananas to so centsf We can't stand it. It will ruin us Are you going to make the people en- gagged in banana raising go to the soup houses? Are you going to discriminate tn favor of pauper tropical sunshine against self respecting American hot house laborers.'
 "1et us stop a moment and follow the banana theory a little further be- cause I am fond of bananas. What would have been the result of estab- fishing that industry? Merely this. that you would have deflected a cer- tain amount of American labor and capital engaged in the general hot house industry into a different chan nel of hothouse proceedings, and in stead of having their hothouses for the purpose they have them now they would have converted them into ba- mana nurseries. and the consumers would be paying a dollar apiece or per haps 90 cents apiece for bananas be- cause the protected interest would have to undersell somewhat the foreign mar 1 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 I on the stump and within these walls | with due solemnity and without nu- l tual smile: To and behold, See how l a protective tariff has reduced the | price of bananas from 90 cents apiece in 1850 to 40 cents apiece in 1865. near | ly 90 per cent decrease in price to the | consumer. Protection did it.
 "Yes: reduction from superlative ex- ! tortion to comparative extortion.
 "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 of labor? Not particle. You would mere ly have defected 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" 1"