The Chanute times., 1904-08-26
The Tariff Not an Artificial Wall.


A tariff upon imports, instead of
being an artificial creation is the
natural and proper thing for a ma
ton. Free foreign trade is the
artificial thing. A nation must be
regarded as family, all of whose
members should stand together.
AS between members of that family
undoubtedly unrestricted trade is
natural condition. To deny to
strangers, however, benefits that we
might confer on the members of the
family, is not unnatural.
One of the highest duties of
government is the adoption of such
economic policy as may encourage
every industry to which the soil and
climate of the country are adapted
and when established to protect
such industries from destructive
foreign competition. Industries
which, owing to climatic or other
insuperable barriers it would be
manifestly impossible to develop
should not be attempted. We
would not undertake TO foster the
India-rubber growing, or tea grow
ing industry, or to raise bananas
under glass. But, whenever a given
degree of mental and physical force
exerted in this country will accom-
plish results equal to those accom-
plished by an equal degree of such
force exerted abroad, our tariff wall
should furnish the protective for Its
exertion.
With that principle in practical
operation the compensation for
labor would be regulated not by
competition between Our workmen
and those of lower forms of civiliza
ton but by the natural unrestricted
competition among workmen wholly
within the borders of our country
who are partakers of and contrlbu-
tors to the same civilization who
are prepared to sustain with their
lives the perpetulty of our Govern
ment.
The natural wage of every man,
the amount to which he is fairly
entitled, is the amount he can earn
in free and unrestricted competition
in his own country with men who
are subjected to the same laws and
responsibilities, accustomed to the
same manner and standard living.
To subject men to any keener
competition than this or to exact a
lower standard of wages than would
result from the operation of that
principle would be to substantially de-
clare the ultimate and fundamental
standard of wages for the world at
large to be that rate at which the
least skilled workman of the lowest
civilization will consent to work
The American workman will never
accept such a standard and he never
should do so.
1t is much better to do justice at
the outset, to concede that the
nation is one great family and tn t
no member of that family has the
moral right to supply his wants with
a cheaper workman than his own
country affords. A country that
employs cheap labor will find tina: it
reacts on those who employ it and
that in the long run, instead of
profit they will experience a loss
by the operation. Our workmen
are entitled to the control of our
markets for the product of their
industry. They pay the taxes; they
constitute the people.
Every man in the United States
should be willing to pay such rates
of wages as obtain by the free and
competition of al
workmen in his own country. The
compensation which he receives for
his own services, in whatever occu-
patton he may be employed, and
there are few of our people who do |
not work, is based on the average |
wages of his own community. He |
IS not entitled to get other mems
abor at any cheaper rate In pro-
portion to value of service than he
charges for his own; and this is
what an adequate tariff justly pre-
rents him from doing.