The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-04-14
s1TFLING COMMERCE.

Whether President Harding con-
scientiously approves of the proposed
emergency tariff, or has suceumbed to
the popular clamor for such an enact
ment it will be unfortunate for the
country and for his administration If
it should be enacted into law. This
country has goods to sell and already
is barred from the markets of the
world to a considerable extent because
other peoples are unable to pay the
prices we demand. The announced
design of the FcSdney bill is to en-
nance the money returns to American
producers.
A similar enactment has been pro-
posed in England, which has been
known as a free trade country since
1916. Once the thing is started per-
haps other nations having goods to
sell will follow suit. When all be-
come sellers and refuse to be buyers,
what will become of the business of
the world? What use will there be
for ships?
The late James J. Hill in an address
which he delivered before the Ma
tional Foreign Trade convention held
in Washington in May, 1914, said:
widespread and long continued in
dustrial distress in England comes
from attempting to hold markets
against competitors while maintaining
a wage scale that does not permit her
to meet their prices, and does not Of
fer to capital an inducement to go into
new fields of development, or even to
remain where it has hitherto been &C.
cupied. She meets this not. by remov-
ing the shackles from her industries
but by fastening other shaekles on her
capitalists that must be add
ed later to those that already gall the
limbs of labor. She has entered upon
the most elaborate experiment ever
seen to compensate the worker for the
work he has lost thru insisting upon
impossible economic terms, now that
work is no longer to be had. by a vast
e1eemo synary system which makes the
state pay for his unemployment, his
sickness, his misfortune and his death
He is to be sustained in his posi-
ton of inability to compete with other
workers; and he is to be protected
against the penalty of his economic
defiance at the expense of the whole
community.
Reduced to it's simplest terms, this
project is not Humanitarian but I'M
speakably cruel; tho that high-sound-
ing word and its familiar fellow So
cial Justice are common cloaks for
legislature cowardice or incapacity
that does not dare apply the real rem
edy to the obvious disease. 1t merely
postpones the inevitable. and intensi-
fies the catastrophe which can no
more be averted than hunger can
satisfy itself on air.
Great Britain is now maintaining
many of her industries in an artificial
condition by appropriating for the
support of one class of her people the
property of another class. Let it be
understood that this discussion has
nothing to do with the moral of the
process, but only with it's economic
consequences. The British empire is
now sustaining itself by sequestering
accumulations of past generations.
The end of that policy comes when
this accumulated capital is exhausted
or has removed itself beyond the reach
of legal capture. When that day ar
rives, Great Britain will be face to
face with her real problem. Its mag
nitude and it's difficulty will be almost
unique in history"
The day foretold by Mr.. Hill seems
to have arrived and the United States
appears to be drifting in the direction
that England has taken. The ten
dency to make one class of citizens
pay for advancing the interests of an
other class is seen in the government
awards of wages to railroad employees
and in the attempt now being made to
subsidize the farmers at the expense
of the consuming public.