Belington progressive. [volume] (Belington, W. Va.) 1912-1927, 1921-06-23
Inevitable Inconsistency

friend of American industry is
impressively illustrated in an
editorial in the New York
World, says the Republican
Publicity Association, through
it's President, Hon. Jonathan
Bourne Jr. "That paper takes
the Republican Congress totask
for proposing to pass an emer-
gency tariff bill for the protect
ion of American agriculture.
Says the World:
There is hardly chief export
able commodity of Canada, or
Argentina or Brazil or Chile or
any other country in this hemis-
phere at which the bill does not
aim crushing blows. 1t does
this in the name of protection to
the farmers of the United States
But for the most part it is a pre-
tense and a fraud in that re-
spect.'
"This statement the World
contradicts itself. If the Emer-
gency Tariff Bill contains tariff
duties large enough to act as a
crushing blow to the agriculture
interests of Canada, Argentint,
Brazil and other countries, then
those duties must be such as to
keep out of this market immense
quantities of goods which would
otherwise be shipped into the
United States. Unless the tar
if bill has the effect of keeping
out large quantities of goods it
could not act as crushing blow
at those industries.
'Now, then, if those other
nations of the Western hemi-
sphere are expecting to dump
immense quantities of agricul-
tural products into the United
States, those products would
constitute injurious competition
with the American farmer. To
admit those products to the Am
erican market would deprive the
! American producer of cores
ponding portion of the domestic
market. The Emergency Tar
if Law would, therefore, give
needed protection to the farmer
of the United States and would
not be pretense or a fraud.
''The World is wrong in one
respect or the other. Either
the other countries Of the West
ern Hemisphere are not contem-
plating exporting to the United
States goods on which the En-
Urgency Tariff Law places a high
duty, or they are threatening to
injure the American market.
If they are expecting to ship us
immense quantities of goods,
then the American producer
needs prtection. If they are
not expecting to ship their pro-
ducts here, then they will not be
injured b ythe Emergency Tariff
Law. Both theories advanced
by the World can not be true.
The Emergency Tariff Law will
either not hurt our commercial
rivals or it will protect the farm
ers of the United States.
"But it is not necessary to
consider alone our agricultural
competitors in this hemisphere.
Dispatches from Tokyo tell us
that recently two officials of the
Social Bureau OF that city dress
ed themselves as laborers and
spent twenty-four hours among
Japanese laborers in order to
gain first-hand knowledge of
living conditions. They found
that a common laborer received
sixty cents for day of ten and
one-half hours. That was city
labor, and farm labor works for
a far less sum per day and for a
longer period of time.
1t is with that sort of labor, in
part, not only in Japan but in
China, that the American farm
er completes. The Southern
growers who produce cotton seed
oil as a by product, are Compel
ing with the soy bean oil pro-
ducers Of the Orient; the rice
the rice producers of California
are competing with the rice pro-
ducers of Asia; manufacturers
of various commodities in the
United States are competing
with the cheap labor of Japan
and China. 1t is against these
commercial competitors as we'll
as against the agricultural pro-
ducers of Canada and Argentina
and Brazil that the Republicans
propose to protect the Amesican
farmer.
r.