66 Nebraska. Independent SEPTEMBER 7, 1905 PAGE 0 COMMERCIAL UNION WHARTON BARKER FAVORS AN AMERICAN ALLIANCE. In a Letter to Reciprocity Convention He Urge3 a Bread Continental Policy Congressional Action the Proper Method. Wharton Barker, cf Philadelphia, wrote the following letter to the dele gates to the reciprocity convention in Chicago: Philadelphia, Aug. 14. 1905. Delegates to the Chicago Reciprocity Conference, Chicago, Illinois: Gentlemen Because of the many great questions that press upon the American people, for solution at this time none more important than trade relations of the United States with foreign nations and because I have been for more than twenty-five years an aggressive advocate of a commer cial union of all American nations under a common tariff with a fair dis tribution of the custom duties, I ven ture to ask you to indulge me in the presentation of some viows and sug gestions in regard to a commercial union of the nations and dependencies of America, that I believe will be ac ceptable to all, that will be permanent and i far-reaching, that will insure peace on the American continent for many years, that will go far to keep this country out of entangling al liances with European and Asiatic na tions and out of wars over European and Asiatic questions. ' Reciprocity Follows I entertain the opinion, as I have done for thirty years, that the adjust ment of trade questions can be ; best made not by treaty, not by the sinu osities of "negotiations," ..but by the direct declarations and open offers of an act of congress. The diploma tists who undertake to negotiate a reciprocity treaty, on the one side and on the other, dicker, strive to get and believe they have got the best of the bargain ; they do not proceed on the ground that the free inter change of natural products and manu factured commodities would be mutually advantageous, that both peoples, parties to the treaty, would gain from such interchange and gain equally as buyers and as sellers. No reciprocity arrangement that is made upon the basis of "grab" can be mutually advantageous. If it works as expected one people must lose what the other gains, and in such trade there is obviously no net gain, no profit in the exchange of commodi ties and it would be better if such ex change did not take place. Therefore, no broad-minded man can have patience with or give support to those who put forth so-called reciprocity propositions in the belief that by the acceptance of such propositions they would get the best of their neighbors, but that can only find acceptance if those neighbors are under the con trary belief. There is only one true way for a country to get rich and , prosper, and that is by producing wealth, not by getting the best of other countries by trade. Basis of. Mutual Gain The notion that trade is one grand scheme of cheat, that it has its sup port, not in mutual profit, but in profit derived by one party to the trade at the cost of the other, and that, there fore, there is no net gain in trade, is so absurd that it is hard to believe that it should find any acceptance. Yet just such notion is held by many of the advocates of reciprocity; it is with such absurd Ideas they they ap proach the building of a reciprocity treaty. It is petty treatment of great interests. From the exchange of commodities both parties to the trade should gain It is on mutual profit that trade and commerce rest. We want, then, reciprocal trade more than reciprocity treaties. An open and candid course is, surely, our true policy. The rocks in the path of European and Asiatic trade expension through reciprocity are many and dangerous. We cannot abandon the policy or protective tariff we have maintained for more than forty years, but we must treat industrial-trusts as conspiracies against the public and we must remove all tariff import protection from articles which the trust monopolize. The time has come when our tariff legisla tion must throw overboard unhesitat ingly every line and paragraph which is the product of jobbery and log-rolling, or which is used as the shield of monopoly. Free domestic competi tion is. the indispensable counterpart of external protective charges. Let Congress Provide The friends oi protection must be explicit in refusing to include in its scope products which are not entitled to be so included. . They must add to the free list, from time to time, ar ticles, whose free entrance will be a benefit to the general interest of the country. We should so extend our trade with European and Asiatic coun tries and we should not make special reciprocity treaties with them. We must not take from congress the power to control our economic policy with regard to them. Our relations with the Dominion of Canada, with Cuba, Haiti, San Do mingo, Mexico, Central and South American countries, are of a different nature and the course for the United States to take is clear; there are no sound objections to it. We should at once through an act of congress offer to all American nations and de pendencies, commercial union with the United States, and each other under a common tariff against European and Asiatic nations with a fair distri bution of customs receipts among the nations within the American commer cial union. Such union does not mean politicl union, nor territorial expan sion, and does not involve settlement in a general congress of any local questions. Broadest Home Rule All countries in the proposed union would have the broadest home rule, the union being confined to common economic questions. An American commercial union would ensure a very great trade expansion on natural lines a vast increase of trade among the American nations and a like falling off of trade of those nations with Great Britain and the continental European nations. To understand the situation that exists we must realize that there are countries that we may rightly expect to buy more of our pro ducts, and those are the countries which supply products of a kind we do not and cannot profitably produce, and which we must, therefore, import, and there are countries lying In differ ent latitudes from our own. To this requirement of different latitude I may add the requirement of the same gen eral longitude. This is for the reason that it is cheaper to buy from near markets than from remote markets, cheaper to buy from the West Indies than from the East Indies, cheaper to buy our coffee from Brazil than from Java, the tropical products we . con sume from Cuba and other islands of the West Indies than from the Philip pines, and it is cheaper, however, much lower may be the money cost of pro duction in the Philippines, in Java, In China, than in the West Indies or in South America. Where We Gain and Lose When natural conditions of produc tion are equal, when the cost of pro ducing in the West and East Indies; is the same, while the cost -of trans portation to our markets is less from the West Indies ( than from the East, it is to our interest to buy from our neighbors. If we buy under such 1MB THE RELIABLE STORE 2. 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