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
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