The Grenada sentinel., 1907-01-19
SHAw'S SILLY Wall
SECRETARY REPRESENTS DIS
CREDITED SCHOOL OF ECO.
NOMICS.
Would Have All Nations Buy from
Us, But Sell Us Nothing-Attl-
tude Typical Of the
Standpatters.

on those willing to listen to him. AS
soon as he retires to private life he
will be as harmless as a sucking
dove or a cooling pigeon. But while
he is secretary of the treasury he
is certain of an audience to some ex.
tent, so his utterances have to be
noticed, and when likely to do harm
criticised. In speech at the com.
mercial congress at Kansas City he
expressed his anxiety lest while we
delay in getting access to expanding
foreign markets our surplus Of prod
ucts will ''set back upon us like a be-
lated tide to the inundation and
swamping of our prosperity which is
now our boast"
| Dread Of plenty and a reduction of
trust high prices seems to weigh upon
the heart of Shaw, for his only idea is
to get rid of our products by export
ing them. He cannot see that reduced
prices will lead to greater home con-
sumption. Shaw in his economic cog
itations has no place for imports, he
wants the pauper of Europe to buy,
but thinks 1t is impertinence for him
| to sell to us. But fortunately the
| Shaw school of economics is scOrned
by the worlds traders, and recipro-
city OF trade is a necessity, except
for such raw products as are needed,
that are not natural products of the
importing nation or that are not
raised in sufficient quantity to supply
the home necessities. Those neces-
must be bought by the nation need
ing them, and protective tariffs play
but little part In their general world
distribution.
The Shaw cry is export! export!
but he would prevent imports. He
pays no attention to the fact that
England, the greatest trading nation,
is always importing more than she
is exporting, and has become the
richest country in the world by the
profits of this trade. No tariff wall is
raised by her to prevent free ingress
or egress of goods or persons ex-
cept low tariff on few articles for
revenue purposes. The Shaw school,
who have not yet passed through the
kindergarten stage of political econ
omy, would raise our tariff wall still
higher by the imposition of maximum
rates of tariff duties to force other
nations to lower their barriers against
our imports.
Shaw would consider a tariff for
revenue, which would vastly increase
our foreign trade, device of the evil
one. For our people to be able to
buy cheap woolen goods instead Of
mercerized cotton and shoddy from
the tariff-protected woolen trust would
be ruinous to producers and consum-
ers alike according to the perverted
theories of Shaw. To allow iron and
steel and tools and agricultural i'm
plements and building material to be
imported under reduced duties would
strike down the profits of those gigan-
tic corporations, the steel trust, the
harvester trust and the lumber trust,
SO that their magnates would be un-
able, without a measure of self-sacri-
fee, to respond to the call of the Re-
publican campaign fund collector for
Doodle to save the country and "the
party" The specter of gaunt hunger
of the corporations, if the spoils of
the trusts are reduced by tariff revis-
ion, haunts the waking and sleeping
moments of trust guardians, such as
Shaw, when they think of what the
wicked Democrats would do to "the
great protected interests of the coun-
try" If installed in power. The sugar
trust would dissolve and it's luscious
contributions would no longer sweeten
the path of the politicians, but it
would be sweeter to the people in the
form of cheaper sugar The Standard
has declared is not protected by the
tariff, would find it's enormous divi-
dends of 40 per cent. go up in smoke
as sweet incense to those who have
compelled it's profits to be reasonable
instead of to be plundered by it.
And so the list of trusts might be
gone over and the Shaw heart riven
by the tales of woe of trust magnates
and Republican leaders alike, of the
evil days that will succeed the fat
and prosperous years for the pro-
tected trusts. The standpatters may
stand aghast at our surplus Of prod
ucts, but the consumers will regard
such plenty with equanimity as the
club that will beat down monopoly.
So it comes to this, the Republican
party has created conditions that they
fear to face, for the tariff taxed peo-
pie are unable to pay high trust prices |
for more goods than they are now
consuming and foreign nations have
raised a rival tariff wall against our |
surplus products. To reform the tariff |
would result in reducing trust profits |
and not to revise the tariff will pre-
vent our getting access to expanding |
foreign markets"
What a dilemma for the standpat- |
ters. 1t never seems to occur to these |
worshipers of protectionism that to |
lower the tariff will reduce prices and |
thus allow millions of our people to |
buy more. They prate of "our home |
market" but the result Of the trust |
fostering tariff is to limit consumn-