The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-09-07
PROTECTION AND PROSPERITY.

The United States has undoubtedly prospered under q protective tariff. but has 1t prospered because of the tariff? It undoubtedly prospered under the Walker tariff. one of the lowest we have ever had and far more moderate than any system we have had sinco 1860. Proportionately. the fifteen years prior to the civil war show the most astounding growth we have ever had and more wonderful than any country ever witnessed. Did the tariff accom- plish these results? It is absurd tv think of 1t. The United States has de- veloped so remarkably. simply and solely because we possessed an i'm. mense area of farming. mineral and forest lands, wholly new to mankind; we had constantly increasing popula- tion, growing by natural increase and a swarming Immigration; we had open. free and unrestricted trade over three millions of square miles of territory, and nothing but the most fragrant neg lect of our opportunities could have prevented our people from going for ward by leaps and bounds to a general and widespread prosperity. To con- tend this could not have been accom- plished without our being protected against the competition of the Old World Is equivalent to saying this choicest region of the north temperate zone was not worth inhabitating for itself and could only be utilized by man on condition he should be admitted here and shut up vigorously within tariff walls and guarded against the fell con sequences of admitting free of duty the pauper made goods of Europe.
 It cannot be made too plain and It cannot be too greatly emphasized that we have prospered in spite of high or low tariffs. because immense economic progress was inherent in our economic situation. The most wisely adjusted of tariffs necessarily do something ar tifcia1ly to stimulate home production in some particular lines and so with draw capital protanto from the forms of perfectly healthy investments. Their operations are always a hindrance, not help if they contain an element of protection.
 The South alone exhibits in strik- ing way what free trade within the United States can do and has done for section. Nothing according to the protectionist theory was more hopeless than the case of the South in 1865; a people all untrained in the modern in dustrial system and thrown into direct competition with the North that for nearly a hundred years had lived under that system. Less than four decades have passed and the competition of the South has shattered the cotton mill in- dustry of New England, menaces the iron manufacturers of the Middle West, and, by putting from fifty to one hun dred millions of capital into new en- terprises every year. makes 1t certain she can never again be so far outstrip- ped by the North. Has the tariff aided the South? On the contrary, her great est staple has its price fixed at Liver pool, and nearly every item entering into the cost of her manufacturing plants has been enhanced in price by the operations of the tariff law. Pro- lection is a burden to the South with out any of the ordinary compensations of protection. Yet the South prospers. Her immense natural resources make 1t inevitable she should.