The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1904-08-11
THE WISDOM OF PROTECTION IN
THE UNITED STATES"

| ". BLAINE, Of -HGI7le, TO Hon. VIM.
Il. Gladstone, published IN North
american Rerie10 Of January 1890,
and printed IN daily Congressional
Record, June 8, 1896.
Measuring from 1912, when a pro-
tective tariff was enacted to give
strength and stability to the Govern
ment in the approaching war with
Great Britain, to 1891, when a protec-
tive tariff was enacted to give strength
and stability to the government in
the impending revolt of the Southern
States, we haye fifty years of sugges-
tive experience in the history of the
Republic. During this tong period
freetrGde tariffs mere thrice fOUoaCed
by iRduStrjal stagndtion, financial
embarrassment, by distress among all
classes dependent for subsistence up
on their own labor. Thrice were these
burdens removed by the enactment
of protective tariff. Thrice the pro-
tective tariff promptly led TO indus
VI lcll 10y. W CCSt, W DEOS-
perity among the people. And this
happy condition lasted in each case,
with no diminution of its beneficient
influence, until illegitimate political
combinations, having their origin in
personal and sectional aims, precipi-
tated another era of free trade. A
perfectly impartial man, answer
we'd by the excitement which this
question engenders in popular dis
cussiOn, might safely be asked if the
half century's experience, with its
three trials of both systems, did not
establish the wisdom of protection
in the United States. = = AS an
offset to the charge that free-trade
tariffs have always ended in panics
and long periods Of financial, distress
the advocates of free-trade point to
the fact that financial panic ofgreat
severity fell upon the country in 1873,
when the protective tariff of 1861 was
in full force, and that, therefore, pan
ic and distress follow periods of pro-
lection as well asperiods of free trade.
The panic of 1878 was widely
different in its true origin from those
which | have been exposing. The
civil war, which closed in 1865,
had sacrificed on both sides vast
amount of property. = \ = A half
million men had been killed. A mill
ion more had been disabled. 4 y
The public debt, that must be funded,
reached nearly three thousand mill
ions. y The country was on a
basis of paper money, and all gold
payments added heavy premium to
the weight of the obligation. The sit
uationwas about parallel. \ Not
withstanding the evil prophecies on
both sides, the panic did not come I'M
til eight and a half years after the fir
ing of the last gun in the civil war;
Nor did it come until after the two
great calamities in the years immedi-
ately preceding had caused the expen-
| diture of more than two hundred mil
lion dollars, suddenly withdrawn
from the ordinary channels of bust
ness. The rapid and extensive rebuild
ing in Chicago and Boston after the
destructive fires of 1871 and 1872 hada
closer connection with the Panic of
1873 than is commonly thought Still
further, the six years depression, from
1873 to 1879, involved Individual stuff
ering rather than general distress.
The country as whole never adyan.
ced in wealth more rapidly than dur
ing that period. The entire experience
strengthened the belief that the war
for the Union could not have been
maintained upon free-trade basis,
and that the panic of 1873 only proved
the strength of the safeguard which
protection supplies to a people sur
rounded by such multiform embar-
easements as were the people of the
United States during the few years
Immediately following the war. And,
strongest of all points, the financial
distress was relieved and prosperity
restored under protection, whereas
the ruinous effects of panics under
free trade have never been removed
except by a resort to protection.