The Owosso times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1897-1926, 1921-04-08
THE MORAL SIDE OF PROTEC.
TIVE POLICY

Washington, April 5.-"Those
philanthropic free traders who are
so fearful that the Republicans will
pass tariff law which will interfere
with importers profits, would do well
to consider some of the objections of
American manufacturers to unre-
stricted competition with European
and Oriental countries, particularly
Germany and JAPAN" declares the
Republican Publicity Association,
through its President, Hon. Jonathan
Bourne, Jr., Representatives OF the
American toy industry, for example,
enumerate among other phases OF the
radically unfair competition to which
American manufacturers are subject
ed and which calls for immediate and
imperatively necessary treatment
the fact that the German and Japan
csc toy industries are ungoverned by
sanitary, union or child labor restric-
tons; that in the large proportion OF
home work done in both countries the
earnings of an entire family are less
than the wage of an individual Amer
lean toy factory employee, and that
all of the most important and popu-
lar American toy inventions and de-
vices are copied outright in both
countries, neither Of which is known
to have a toy of Importance to its
credit as creator These toys cop
led by foreign makers are sent to this
country and offered for sale at less
than the American cost of actual pro-
duction because of the wide differ
ence between the wage scales and
habits of life in the countries in ques-
ton and those of the United States,
according to the American toy MAX
ers. = riIl - y ~ 49,
eff there is any good reason why
American manufacturers should be
penalized for their efficiency by un-
regulated competition in the products
Of countries which employ child la
Dor, the labor of old women, carried
on under insanitary conditions and
unlimited as to hours, the free trad
ers have not yet adduced it. If their
propaganda for free trade is actuated
by desire to be helpful to human
ity, instead of by the wish to add to
their profits through escaping pro-
tective duty rates, they might well
extend their philanthropy to Europe
and Asia first, where labor conditions
and the standards of living are such
as no American, union or non-union,
would for moment tolerate.
Protection has a moral as well as
an economic side. Our employees
have become habituated to higher
standard of living, better clothes, bet
ter education for their children, bet
ter housing, and enlarged oportun-
tiles for recreation and mental i'm
provement. The American laborer is
no clod, no mere newer of wood and
drawer of water. And all this has
been brought about through wages
two or three times greater than pre-
vail in Europe, five times those pre-
ivailing in the Orient, and an ever in
creasing appreciation of humanitar-
'ianism on the part of this nation gen.
orally.
!, "With free trade the rule in this
policy which is supported
by dwindling minority, the ten
sdency of labor conditions would be to
descend to the level of those prevail
ing in Europe and the Orient. The
wage scale would be the first to drop,
followed quickly by lowering Of the
living standards. 1t is a mere plati-
tude to say that laboring man can
not live as well, or support his fam
lily as well, on a wage curtailed by
foreign competition as he can when
that competition is restricted and the
products Of his labor are given the
predominant place in the domestic
market. The free traders argue that
the efficiency Of the American work
men will Offset the foreign wage
scales and then in the same breath
declare that Europe can never pay
her Indebtedness unless she is given
a monopoly in the American market.
But the Republican party intends to
restore the protective policy, and If
these free traders are still philan-
thropically inclined, they will find
plenty of work to do in inducing
foreign employers to raise the stand
ards of their operatives"