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these communities have adopted. The circumstances in which they are situated exactly square with the hypothesis of Mr. Mill. The countries are young and rising industries, as yet nascent, are thoroughly suited to the natural capacity of the region and of the people, the latter being of the same stock with the mother country, whose manufactures they prohibit and discourage. There is no reason, apparently, except that of priority in the market, why the industry of the old country should not be transplanted to the new. Hence, I repeat, Mr. Mills' concession is perpetually quoted, and is perpetually mischievous."

Some of the tariff speeches applauded in our own country have had an almost boyish enthusiasm about them. Old World legislators and importers discounted them as if they were part of Fourth of July gatherings. But the measured language of Mill, so reluctantly uttered, is of great value, and no wonder that it has been quoted in every land in which the English language is spoken. Apparently then the upper millstone of John Stuart Mill grinds out a fairly good argument for protection to infant industries.

Look next at the case of an industry which has been established, and is exposed to legislative onslaughts. Adam Smith deems that the danger of foreign competition has been overstated, and yet his reluctant admissions are striking.

The case in which it may sometimes be a matter of deliberation how far, or in what manner, it is proper to restore the free importa

tion of foreign goods, after it has been for some time interrupted, is when particular manufactures, by means of high duties or prohibitions upon all foreign goods which can come into competition with them, have been so far extended as to employ a great multitude of hands. Humanity may in this case require that the freedom of trade should be restored only by slow gradations, and with a good deal of reserve and circumspection. Were those high duties and prohibitions taken away all at once, cheaper foreign goods of the same kind might be poured so fast into the home market, as to deprive all at once many thousands of our people of their ordinary employment and means of subsistence. The disorder which this would occasion might no doubt be very considerable.

As if worried by his own concessions, Smith tries to show that reduc tions or additions of duty would not be SO destructive as is generally thought, but he wavers. In the conclusion of his chapter, he says:

The undertaker of a great manufacture, who, by the home market being suddenly laid open to the competition of foreigners, should be obliged to abandon his trade, would no doubt suffer considerably. That part of his capital which had usually been employed in purchasing materials and in paying his workmen, might, without much difficulty, perhaps, find another employment. But that part of it which was fixed in workhouses, and in the instruments of trade, could scarce be disposed of without considerable loss. The equitable regard, therefore, to his interest requires that changes of this kind should never be introduced suddenly, but slowly, gradually, and after a very long warning.

By common consent Adam Smith

Smith objected to the certain yarn duties because said removal would throw poor women out of work. Their language remains, and it is not easy to refute their arguments.

and John Stuart Mill are the strong- trade camp.
est writers on the free trade side of removal of
the question. If, therefore, Mill con-
cedes that protection may be neces-
sary to start a new industry and Smith
admits that it may be necessary to
save the life of an old one, the pro-
tectionist may be congratulated on
having such competent and unwilling
witnesses on the stand. The typical
free trade argument is crushed be-
tween the upper and the nether mill-

stone.

Mill stood by his words, although loud were the protests from the free

We never long disuse the old phrase "the irony of fate." In no economic discussion can freetraders cite the admissions of the leading protectionists. In no economic discussions do protectionists fail to quote "The Wealth of Nations" and the ablest of all the philosophers who followed its main line of reasoning.

HOME PRODUCTION THE FOUNDATION OF
CHEAP PRICES.

Tariff Duties Stimulate Production and Reduce Prices.
By Edgar J. Dwyer.

Emerson said: 'Discontent is the that there are seventeen million want of self-reliance; the infirmity thousandaires, originated from the of will."

This is undoubtedly true. Failure to succeed in life produces discontent, whether the failure is caused by the lack of ability, the want of opportunities, or by conditions entirely beyond the control of the man himself. A failure seldom remains contented.

Yet discontent is the one condition the Democratic leaders try to perpetuate; by keeping the public discontented they expect to pose as the "City of Refuge" for the persecuted people. They rant about the fact, that there are seventeen thousand millionaires in the country, as though that were a curse instead of a blessing; but never mention

same source.

They censure Wall Street as though it was the outgrowth of a debased political condition; they do not refer to illegal monetary schemes like fraudulent bucket shops, fake mining and oil companies, etc. By Wall Street they mean the financial strength and stability of the United States. From their viewpoint all corporations, like the Octopus, strangle humanity in general, no trust can become prosperous by faithfully serving the public; wealth is decried and success is regarded as evidence of corrupt business methods. Τα shield poor, down-trodden humanity against the tyranny of wealth,

is the alleged shibboleth of the Democratic party.

They persistently claim that the interests use the protective tariff to increase the cost of living and thus oppress the poor; from their highest party leader, down to their lowest ward heeler, this has always been recognized as the Simon Pure slogan of the Democratic party.

Way back in March, 1888, President Cleveland, in a message to Congress, made the following state

ment:

Our present tariff laws, the vicious, inequitable, and illogical source of

unnecessary taxation, ought to be at once revised and amended. These laws, as their primary and plain effect, raise the price to the consumer of all articles imported and subject to duty by precisely the sum paid for such duties. Thus the amount of the duty increases the tax paid by those who purchase for use those imported articles.

That message was the best illustration of a paradoxical lie ever known.

It is true that in some cases the buyer of an imported article pays the duty levied on it; but an unmitigated lie that any American industry established by an adequate tariff law, ever advanced the price of its products to the American. consumer by precisely the amount of the duty. On the contrary, every such American industry, industry, firmly established, has invariably, without one exception, decreased the price of its products to the American con

sumer.

This reduction in the price of American goods generally becomes so pronounced that foreign goods cannot compete in price with home made goods. Consequently the price of imported goods remains high, while home made goods sell cheap. This condition induces many people (who believe that the price indicates the quality) to buy imported products.

To illustrate the effect of this condition: about twenty-five years ago the railroads began their regu lar weekly inspection of trainmen's watches, demanding that they should carry watches that would vary less than thirty seconds a week. Consequently thousands of trainmen who owned high-priced imported watches, found that they would not stand the test, and were compelled to substitute the cheaper and decidedly better American watch.

Criticising that ambiguous message of Cleveland's, Congressman Burrows of Michigan, said:

I should have thought the insensate pen with which the President wrote that paragraph would have refused to record the error. If it could have spoken it would have said to the President, 'the very pen with which you write this folly is cheaper by one-half than before the duty was imposed.'

Nothing plainer than this, in so few words, was ever said about the tariff.

It is true the world over, the foundation of cheap prices is home production; the country that manufactures its Own industrial plies is the country that

sup

sells

the cheapest to its own people.

The price of industrial imports is always high in countries that do not manufacture their own. In Mexico the price of all industrial products (except the few crude articles she manufactures herself) averages about double the price of the same in the United States.

If President Cleveland had told the full, exact truth, he would have added to his message: "But the increased home production encouraged by the duties levied on competing foreign products, reduces their price to those who buy only American made goods."

The tariff of 1824 built up the cotton textile industry in this country, reduced the price of cotton cloth more than one-half, and sounded the death-knell of the homespun cloth of Colonial days.

The imported black silk dress. that your grandmother paid four dollars a yard for, and hung in the closet until it broke in the folds could be bought for one dollar a yard after an adequate tariff law established the silk industry in the United States.

The average price of tariff fostered industrial supplies in this country before the present period of inflated war prices, exemplifies the real effect of tariff legislation on American production.

Why is it that during the war the universal shortage of dyestuffs and general chemicals did not include oxalic acid? Because there was an ample domestic supply of that valuable commodity.

Previous to 1909 there was no ox

alic acid made in this country. It was imported free of duty from Germany and sold for nine cents a pound, a price high enough to induce American capital to begin the manufacture of it, with the usual results under free trade. When the American product was placed on the market the German producers cut the price first to eight, then to seven, and finally to six cents a pound, and the high American wages forced the American producers to close; immediately the German producers raised the price to the old figures, so the American manufacturers again started business. German producers again reduced their prices, this time to five and one-half cents a pound, and the home factories closed for good.

Knowing these facts, the PayneAldrich tariff placed a duty of two cents a pound on it, and the Democrats began to assert it was a tax on the consumer, for oxalic acid could not be made in this country, but as usual they were wrong. That duty guaranteed home production and almost immediately the American factories resumed business and oxalic acid was soon selling for seven and one-half cents a pound; at the same time there was a considerable quantity imported.

But the Underwood tariff seldom fails to give the advantage to foreigners, so it cut the duty to one and one-half cents a pound, and its importation was rapidly increasing when the world's war practically cut off the German supply.

The vast difference that existed

between oxalic acid and other chemicals during the war shows the folly of depending on other nations for what we can produce ourselves under an American productive tariff. Take the coal-tar product, saccharin. The Wilson-Gorman tariff was too low to develop its production in this country, and the imported product sold for five dollars a pound. The Dingley tariff placed an ad valorem duty of 10 per cent and a specific duty of $1.50 a pound on it, which developed its American production.

If President Cleveland's interpretation had been correct, saccharin would have advanced to seven dollars a pound; on the contrary the bottom dropped out, and it kept on falling until it sold for seventy-two cents a pound. Both the Payne and the Underwood tariff laws placed the duty at sixtyfive cents a pound, which proved to be ample protection and did not affect its American production or selling price.

Previous to 1890, except when attempts were being made to establish the industry in this country, tin plate always sold very high in the United States.

American tin plate was the lusty child of the McKinley tariff law.

Without the enormous output of American tin, how could the United States have fed her military forces and furnished such a vast amount of supplies to her Allies?

The adequate tariff duties placed on tin plate by the McKinley tariff law, which founded that great American industry, was more bit

terly opposed by the Democratic minority than any other single item in the bill. That opposition extended all through the campaign of 1892. In thousands of meetings the public was told that tin plate was not being manufactured in the United States and they even hired peddlers to travel all through the West and Northwest and charge exorbitant prices for tinware, and claim that the price was the effect of the tariff.

The high prices charged for competing products by foreign producers, will not in the absence of adequate tariff duties, enable the American producers to compete with their foreign rivals. Several times when tin plate only bore a nominal duty and was selling for ten or twelve dollars a box attempts were made to establish the industry in the United States; the result was that the Welsh manufacturers reduced their prices as low as $4.50 a box, only to raise them again when the competition ceased.

It only required a duty of two and one-fifth cents a pound to firmly establish that great industry in this country, and in ten years instead of importing all the tin plate used in the United States, our output amounted to 400,000 tons annually; the price was reduced about forty per cent, and twenty thousand American workmen were employed in its production.

The "poor man's dinner pail," which cost a dollar when tin was free could be bought tax and all for twenty-five cents, and the canning industry flourished as never be

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