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10 Conservative *
who wrote rooiprocity in the plat
form , preached it on the stump , and
thcu killed it in the Senate , well
know what they wore about.
The ultra-protectionists now have
possession of every branch of the
government : they are inside the
breastworks , and they are determined
to hold the fort. Let the fate of the
Kasson treaties show how futile it is
to approach them with doffed cap and
bending knee , humbly craving the
least concession of reciprocity. Let
the petition for reciprocity with Can
ada signed by ton thousand of the
loading manufacturers and merchants
of New England and recently pre
sented to the Senate , there received
with the rebuke of our senior senator
and consigned to that tomb of peti
tions , a senatorial committee , answer
still more loudly. Is it not high time
to drop this timid , apologetic prayer
for protection-reciprocity , and to
make a manly demand to the ultimate
tribunal , public opinion ? But the
man that seeks reciprocity must
abandon protection.
But real reciprocity is not ended by
any means. The industrial condi
tion of the country makes that im
possible. Stimulated by the promises
of protection , but still more by the
energy and brains "of our people and
our unrivalled natural resources ,
our manufactures have greatly out
grown the domestic needs , have
glutted the homo market , in nine
months , probably much less , they
supply the country for the entire
year , and business stagnation and
failures must follow unless the sur
plus prqducts can bo marketed
abroad. Under the pressure of this
situation our exports of manufactured
goods have grown four-fold in ton
years , and the conviction of the
absolute necessity of gaining the
world's markets is forced upon our
manufacturers and merchants.
Hence their growing anxiety to se
cure these markets , hence their fear
of hostile tariffs , hence their eager
ness for reciprocity , especially for
protection-reciprocity.
In truth , the industrial conditions
in the United States today are alto
gether abnormal. By high protection
wo arc keeping prices above their
normal level. By shutting out for
eign competition wo are aiding the
trusts to raise the prices of many
things still higher. By tariff taxes
upon crude materials , wool , hides ,
iron , stool , load , lumber , fibres , ores ,
coal , chemicals , otc. , wo are discrim
inating against our own manufactures
in favor of their foreign rivals. Yet
wo must gain foreign markets for our
surplus products to prevent ruinous
overproduction and business de
pression.
Now there are two ways out of this
. n
unnatural and solf-confliotiug state ,
reciprocity and protection-reciproc
ity. The ouo is to repeal all restric
tive laws , lot prices fall to their
normal level , and trade take its
natural channels. This course we
are now well prepared and able to
take. Our exports prove that the
country has outgrown protection , and
no longer needs its support , granting
that it over needed it. It would re
move great burdens from the people
and from the factories , and would not
cost the nation at largo a dollar ; but
tariff-trust prices would fall , some
ill-gotten gains would disappear ,
and sheaves of stock would reach the
waste basket. This is free trade.
This is reciprocity , if you prefer that
word.
The other way is protection-reci
procity. We have already entered
upon it , and the trusts and protec
tionists are determined to make us
follow it to the bitter cud. It con
sists in maintaining high prices at
home to fill their pockets , and selling
the surplus at low prices abroad ,
which are to be augmented and eked
out by rebates , bounties , and subsi
dies out of the national treasury.
How far wo have progressed on this
road to ruin is hard to measure , but
that we have made considerable progress -
gross is but too clear.
Every intelligent man knows in
deed , it has become common knowledge -
lodge that , under the beneficent
rule of protection and trusts , a whole
host of our products are being ex
ported and sold abroad at prices far
loss than those exacted at home. We
are the greatest producers of copper ,
exporting 140,000,000 worth last year ;
yet copper sold in London , at $80 a
ton less than in Now York. Ameri
can manufacturers have actually pur
chased American copper in England ,
and paid freight on it back across
the ocean at less cost than the price
exacted by the copper trust at home.
We are the greatest producers of
iron and stool , yet American rails
and ship plates are sold abroad to
the foreign rivals of our railroads
and ship-yards at loss prices than to
our own shops and yards. President
Charles M. Schwab , of the great
stool trust , boasts to Joseph Law-
roiico , the English Member of Par
liament , that the trust could deliver
steel billets in England for $16.50 a
ton ; but ho charges his American
customers $26.
Ex-Governor and ox-Sonator Wash-
burn of Minnesota , a lifelong Repub
lican , one of the founders of the Re
publican Party , and the leading
manufacturer of flour in the United
States , declared in a recent interview
that "stool rails can be manufactured
at about $16 a ton. Sold as they
wore two years and a half ago at
$17.60 a ton , , there was a profit of
$1.50 a ton , which is more than the
present profit on flour of 10 cents a
barrel. Yet such rails are now being -
ing sold at $28 a ton , making it easy
to understand with such enormous
profits how the steel mills are en
abled to pay dividends on shares
three-fourths of which are water.
And yet with this condition of things
wo now have a duty of $7.80 a tenon
on steel rails. If this is not robbery ,
I should like to find some stronger
word to characterize it. ' '
The bounty on exported leather , in
the guise of a rebate on the imported
hides of which it is made , enables
the foreign manufacturer to purchase
American leather 5 to 10 per cent ,
cheaper than our own manufacturers
can buy it. Hon. William B. Rice ,
one of the leading shoe manufacturers
of New England , says of this duty :
" As a revenue duty , it is a failure ;
for the rapidly increasing rebate , to
gether with the costs of collection ,
will soon absorb the income , and the
opportunities and temptations to
fraud are numerous. It protects the
foreign manufacturer against the
American , and nobody else. It en
courages the tanner of leather for expert -
port to buy foreign hides whenever
they can be bought for nearly the
same price as the domestic , because
ho can get his profit in the rebate. "
This is simply a specimen of the
subsidies in the form of rebates and
the frauds sure to attend them.
Now wo have the Secretary of
Agriculture , provided with an appro
priation , guaranteeing the exporters
of fruit against loss on their ven
tures , such losses to bo/ / paid by the
government. He defends this re
markable policy as a moans of start
ing our export trade in this line ;
but will not the beneficiaries of this
form of subsidy claim the right to
have it continued as Ipug as they
need it , like all the other infant in
dustries ?
The ship subsidy , so long and oven
now dominating the halls of Con
gress , will form an indirect subsidy
on exports if it cheapens freights , as
its advocaters claim ; but if it fail to
do so , and the whole of the govern
ment bounty be absorbed by the ship
owners , ship-yards , and stpel trusts ,
without any benefit to the people ,
as its opponents contend , then the
demand will surely bo made for
direct subsidies.on . exports. In
deed , the farmers' granges of several
States have already petitioned Con
gress for subsidy on their exported
products.
The United States is the first great
nation which ever signalized its rise
to power by giving away a largo
share of its tangible wealth to for
eigners. Rome , Spain , Franco , Bri-