and encourage American industries), while it encourages the importation of necessary foreign products such as tea, coffee, &c., that we cannot produce, by admitting them free of duty. The different opinions held concerning the tariff may be classified under two topics-that of Protection and Free Trade. Protectionists have generally demanded that no duties should be laid on tea, coffee, spices, tropical fruits, woods, roots and barks, ivory, cochineal, and products not producible in the United States, owing to lack of climate, soil, or other natural facilities for their production. Free Traders have asked that duties be laid upon these things only, and maintain that the prosperity of a state or nation can best be promoted by freeing the exchange of all commodities and services between its own people, and between its own people and the people of other nations, to the greatest possible extent from all interferences and obstructions. But Free Trade is not antagonistic to the imposition of equitable duties on imports, provided the end sought to be obtained is simply revenue, and the circumstances of the state render such form of taxation expedient. The Free Traders assert that the general result for which all men labor is to increase the abundance or to diminish the scarcity of those things which are essential to their subsistence and happiness. Different countries exhibit great diversity as to soil, climate, natural products and opportunity, and therefore every individual and every country should follow the trade or produce the fruit or material for which it is best calcula ted; and for the mutual benefit of all, the greatest possible facility should be afforded to producers for the interchange of their several products and services. This Free Trade between man and man, it is maintained, is in accordance with the teachings of nature, and by rendering commodities cheap, tends to promote abundance and to increase consumption. Free Traders claim that the first effect of the tariff may be to give an impulse and activity to business, but in a short time the increased cost of production, and the advance in the price of labor and the products of labor, will be greater than the profits arising from a tariff, and that a nation or a community can attain the greatest prosperity and secure to its people the greatest degree of material abundance only when it utilizes its natural resources and labor to the best advantage and with the least waste and loss, whatever may be the nominal rate of wages paid to its laborers. Protectionists wish all duties placed on those articles of foreign production which compete with our own products in our own markets, and to the extent of their importation suspend the profitable employment of our capital engaged in such production and discharge our laborers from employment. Free Traders desire, on the other hand, that foreign articles which compete with our own products, viz.: iron and steel manufactures, wool, woolens, cotton goods, silks, crockery, salt, lumber, coal, sugar, &c., be either placed on the free list, or admitted under the lowest possible duties. Free Traders put their free list exactly where Protectionists desire to put the duties, and vice versa-Pro tectionists put the duties exactly where Free Traders put their free list. As to articles in whose production we cannot compete, Protectionists are the party of free trade and the so-called Free Traders are the Protectionists. Protectionists also generally desire specific duties, i.e., duties levied on the article according to its weight, bulk, length, per yard, per ton, or per dozen, as affording less room for fraudulent evasions of the revenue. Free Traders generally desire duties laid ad valorem, i.e., according to the estimated value of the article, but not necessarily the same ad valorem rate on all articles. No nation in the world practises free trade in its absolute sense. In all there is some form of tariff on imports, thus producing a revenue for supporting the government. Turkey, Portugal, Greece and England are technically Free Traders, but with unpromising results. England was the first nation to practise the protective system, and her tariff still is protective in some respects. Other countries having protective tariffs are France, Russia, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Australia, the United States, Canada and Mexico. The United States has never removed the tariff from all imported articles; various articles have been dutiable and then admitted free-but the free articles have been always few in comparison with the number dutiable. All cargoes must be entered and duties paid before permission is given to discharge. A bonded warehouse is a place for the storage of merchandise on which duties have not been paid. |