THE PROTECTIONIST. A Monthly Magazine of Political Science and Industrial Progress. Signed articles are not to be understood as expressing Vol. XXII. DECEMBER, 1910. No. 260 HOME MARKET CLUB ANNUAL MEETING. New By-Laws and Many New Officers.-Failure of an Effort by Hon. Joseph Walker to Show the Club Opposed to President Taft.-Address by Retiring President James R. MacColl.-Not Much Debate But Several Letters in Reply to Mr. Walker.-The Executive Committee's Resolutions Substituted for Mr. Walker's 40 to 8.-Proxies If Used Would The annual meeting of the Home Market Club was held at the club's rooms Nov. 16, and was adjourned to Wesleyan Hall, 36 Bromfield Street. The retiring president, James R. MacColl of Providence, presided, and spoke as follows: Speech of President MacColl. un I wish to refer briefly to some sound doctrines that have been promulgated during the recent political campaign, for the purpose of obtaining votes, because it seems to me to be the business of the Home Market Club to carry on a campaign of education, with the full confidence that the American people will finally arrive at a thorough understanding of the questions involved, and a wise decision regarding them. There has been much careless denunciation of corporations, combinations of capital, and captains of industry. In the minds of many it seems to be approaching a crime to be interested in large business enterprises or to be a large employer of labor. There is need of a revision of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law that will discriminate more clearly between combinations that are injuring the consuming public by monopoly (either complete or partial) that raises prices improperly, and combinations that tend to greater efficiency and economy of production, and the ultimate lowering of prices to the consumer. In close relation to this question is the outcry against the so-called high cost of living, for which in some quarters the tariff is blamed. There is one most effective way by which the cost of living can be reduced, and that is by reckless agitators bringing about a long period of business depression in which there is no return to capital and labor is largely unemployed. People will then learn to do without many things that they have thought were necessities. Capital will not have the means and the courage to push ahead with new enterprises, supply will exceed demand, wages will decline, prices will go lower, the cost of living will be reduced, and soup kitchens will be in order. If railroads have to increase wages and other costs of operation, and are restrained from advancing their rates, they cannot maintain dividends and issue new securities for the extensions and developments, which the country demands. Before long the people of this country will awake to the fact that all this unreasoning agitation is destroying business, and that with its |