I mean that for the first time in the history of the United States the President recommends retaining the internal tax in order that the tariff may be forced down even below the fair revenue standard.” . . . “Do you think if the President's recommendations were adopted it would increase our export trade? "Possibly in some few articles of peculiar construction it might, but it would increase our import trade ten-fold as much in the great staple fabrics, in woolen and cotton goods, in iron, in steel, in all the thousand and one shapes in which they are wrought. How are we to export staple fabrics to the markets of Europe unless we make them cheaper than they do in Errope, and how are we to manufacture them cheaper than they do in Europe unless we get cheaper labor than they have in Europe?" “Then you think that the question of labor underlies the whole subject?" "Of course it does. It is, in fact, the entire question. Whenever we can force carpenters, masons, ironworkers and mechanics in every department to work as cheaply and live as poorly in the United States as similar workmen in Europe, we can, of course, manufacture as cheaply as they do in England and France. But I am totally opposed to a policy that would entail such results. To attempt it is equivalent to a social and financial revolution, one that would bring untold distress." "Yes, but might not the great farming class be benefited by importing articles from Europe instead of buying them at higher prices at home?” "The moment,” answered Mr. Blaine, “you begin to import freely from Europe you drive our own workmen from mechanical and manufacturing pursuits. In the same proportion they become tillers of the soil, increasing steadily the agricultural product and decreasing steadily the large home demand which is constantly enlarging as home manufactures enlarge. That, of course, works great injury to the farmer, glutting the market with his products and tending constantly to lower prices." "Yes, but the foreign demand for farm products would be increased in like ratio, would it not?” "Even suppose it were," said Mr. Blaine, "how do you know the source from which it will be supplied? The tendency in Russia today and in the Asiatic possessions of England is toward a large increase of the grain supply, the grain being raised by the cheapest possible labor. Manufacturing countries will buy their breadstuffs where they can get them cheapest, and the enlarging of the home market for the American farmer being checked, he would search in vain for one of the same value. His foreign. sales are already checked by the great competition abroad. There never was a time when the increase of a large home market was so valuable to him. The best proof is that the farmers are prosperous in proportion to the nearness of manufacturing centers, and a protective tariff tends to spread manufactures." ९९ "But what about the existing surplus?" "The abstract of the message I have seen,” replied Mr. Blaine, contains no reference to that point. I therefore make no comment further than to endorse Mr. Fred. Grant's remark that a surplus is always much easier to handle than a deficit. . . . "The President's recommendation enacted into a law would result as did an experiment in draining of a man who wished to turn a swamp into a productive field. He dug a drain to a neighboring river, but it happened, unfortunately, that the level of the river was higher than the level of the swamp. The consequence need not be told. A parallel would be found when the President's policy in attempting to open a channel for an increase of exports should simply succeed in making way for a deluging inflow of fabrics to the destruction of home industry. ... It is not our foreign trade that has caused the wonderful growth and expansion of the Republic. It is the vast domestic trade between thirty-eight States and eight Territories, with their population of perhaps 62,000,000 today. The whole amount of our export and import trade together has never, I think, reached $1,900,000,000 in any one year. Our internal home trade on 130,000 miles of railroad, along 15,000 miles of ocean coast, over the five great lakes, and along 20,000 miles of navigable rivers, reaches the enormous annual aggregate of more than $40,000,000,000, and perhaps this year $50,000,000,000. 111. The New South [429] "It is into this illimitable trade, even now in its infancy, and destined to attain a magnitude not dreamed of twenty years ago, that the Europeans are struggling to enter. It is the heritage of the American people, of their children and of their children's children. It gives an absolutely free trade over a territory nearly as large as all Europe, and the profit is all our own. . . . President Cleveland now plainly proposes a policy that will admit Europe to a share in this trade.” "What must be the marked and general effect of the President's message?" "It will bring the country where it ought to be brought-to a full and fair contest on the question of protection. The President himself makes it the one issue by presenting no other in his message. I think it well to have the question settled. The Democratic party in power is a standing menace to the industrial prosperity of the country. That menace should be removed or the policy it foreshadows should be made certain. Nothing is so mischievous to business as uncertainty, nothing so paralyzing as doubt." A BILLION-DOLLAR COUNTRY The most distinguished citizen of the South in the generation following the Civil War was Henry W. Grady of Atlanta, Georgia. Gifted with rare oratorical power, constructive statesmanship, and generous sympathies, he devoted his great talents to the encouragement of the South in the development of its material resources and the cultivation of a broad national spirit. "He was the leader of the New South, and died in the great work of impressing its marvellous growth and national aspirations upon the willing ear of the North." He also impressed 1 Remark of Chauncey M. Depew at a dinner of the New England Society of New York, December 23, 1889, on the reception of a telegram announcing the death of Grady. The reference in Depew's remark is to a visit made to Boston by Grady, only a few days before his death, to address the Merchants' Association — a visit in which he these ideas on the minds of the South, most eloquently, perhaps, in a speech at a state fair at Dallas, Texas, October 26, 1887, from which the following passages are taken: What of the South's industrial problem? There is a figure with which history has dealt lightly, but that, standing pathetic and heroic in the genesis of our new growth, has interested me greatly—our soldier farmer of '65. What chance had he for the future as he wandered amid his empty barns, his stock, labor, and implements gone — gathered up the fragments of his wreck urging kindly his borrowed mule-paying sixty per cent. for all that he bought, and buying all on credit - his crop mortgaged before it was planted—his children in want, his neighborhood in chaos-working under new conditions and retrieving every error by a costly year - plodding all day down the furrow, hopeless and adrift, save when at night he went back to his broken home, where his wife, cheerful even then, renewed his courage, while she ministered to him in loving tenderness. Who would have thought... that he would in twenty years, having carried these burdens uncomplainingly, make a crop of $800,000,000? Yet this he has done, and from his bounty the South has rebuilded her cities, and recouped her losses. While we exult in his splendid achievement, let us take account of his standing. . . . With amazing rapidity [the South] has moved away from the one crop idea that was once her curse. In 1880 she was esteemed prosperous. Since that time she has added 393,000,ooo bushels to her grain crops, and 182,000,000 head to her live stock. This has not lost one bale of her cotton crop, which, on the contrary, has increased nearly 200,000 bales. With equal swiftness she has moved away from the folly of shipping out her ore at $2 a ton and buying it back in implements from $20 to $100 per ton; her cotton at 10 cents a pound, and contracted a fatal case of pneumonia. "New York mingles her tears with those of his kindred," continued Depew, " and offers to his memory a tribute of her profoundest admiration.”—J. C. Harris, The Life of Henry W. Grady, p. 624. buying it back in cloth at 20 to 80 cents per pound; her timber at $8 per thousand [feet] and buying it back in furniture at ten to twenty times as much. In the past eight years $250,000,000 have been invested in new shops and factories in her States; 225,000 are now working who eight years ago were idle or worked elsewhere, and these added $227,000,000 to the value of her raw material more than half the value of her cotton. Add to this the value of her increased grain crops and stock, and in the past eight years she has grown in her fields or created in her shops manufactures more than the value of her cotton crop. The incoming tide has begun to rise. Every train brings manufacturers from the East and West seeking to establish themselves or their sons near the raw material and in this growing market. Let the fullness of the tide roll in. It will not exhaust our materials, nor shall we glut our markets. When the growing demand of our Southern market, feeding on its own growth, is met, we shall find new markets for the South. We buy from Brazil $50,000,000 worth of goods, and sell her $8,500,000. England buys on $29,000,000, and sells her $35,000,000. Of $65,000,000 in cotton goods bought by Central and South America, over $50,000,000 went to England. Of $331,000,000 sent abroad by the southern half of our hemisphere, England secures over half, although we buy from that section nearly twice as much as England. Our neighbors to the south need every article we make; we need nearly everything they produce. Less than 2,500 miles of road must be built to bind by rail the two American continents. When this is done, and even before, we shall find exhaustless markets to the South. . . . The South, under the rapid diversification of crops and diversification of industries, is thrilling with new life. As this new prosperity comes to us, it will bring no sweeter thought to me, and to you, my countrymen, I am sure, than that it adds not only to the comfort and happiness of our neighbors, but that it makes broader the glory and deeper the majesty, and more enduring the strength, of the Union which reigns supreme in our hearts. In this republic of ours is lodged the hope of free government on earth.... Let us once estranged and thereby |