United States and would in the long run help our country as a whole. The beet sugar men deny this premise, and their action would be justified if the proposed reciprocity did not leave them adequate protection. But we But we believe it would. This is a question of fact about which men can differ if they are disposed to differ, but if they should try to agree it would not be difficult to convince themselves that 80 per cent or even 50 per cent is adequate protection for an industry that is far distant from the source of competition, provided there is no unfair discrimination in freight rates, and if there is the law provides a remedy aside from the tariff. lumber, although some of them do suggest that the subject be referred to reciprocity, well knowing the difficulties in treating with Canada. Some of them favor reconvening the Joint High Commission, just as though the Boston Herald had not recently pronounced that tribunal dead, and just as though the Canadians had not made it impossible for the United States to wring reciprocity from them without purchasing it with a slice of Alaska. Whether it is reciprocity or tariff revision that our Western friends consider, like all the rest of us and perhaps a little more so, they first inquire how it will affect their local The same Washington dispatches interests. If the Washington corwhich represent the Western mem- respondent of the Boston Transcript, bers as happy over the defeat of reci- who is usually very trustworthy, is to procity with Cuba show them at odds be believed, be believed, Senator Warren of with each other over proposed reci- Wyoming recently said to him, "We procity with Canada. The Boston have just three items in the tarifffree traders have worked the Western wool, hides and lead-while New boards of trade as they worked those England has three hundred; they in Massachusetts, and the Democrats will all stand or all fall, you may and unwary Republicans have be- safely predict.' To be sure, and so come somewhat clamorous for such they should unless some of them are reductions in duties as they think mistakes or are no longer necessary, will help their local industries. For for protection is a national policy and example, the Minneapolis flour manshould not be sectional. But we wish ufacturers desire free wheat from to remind Senator Warren and all Canada, but some of the Minnesota other Western statesmen, that New farmers are wondering how this could England is more interested in wool, help them. Some of the farmers who hides and lead than Wyoming is, for have no pine lands would like free New England not only produces lumber from Canada, but the Northwestern lumber manufacturers even Mr. Babcock of Wisconsin-have not come forward to suggest a reduction of the admittedly excessive duty on them, but New England men are interested in their production all over the West. Besides, the West is interested in every one of the "three hundred" articles which the senator thinks New England has in the tariff, for if Western people were not interested as stockholders in New England mills, or as brothers and sisters to New England operatives, as some of them are, it is of immense importance to them that New England manufacturers should prosper, that they may continue to consume so many of the products of the West. The tariff is not a local question and Western Republicans have no need to treat it as such. They may well leave that to the disciples of Gen. Hancock. Of course, when the tariff is undergoing revision, it is natural that there should be contention as to the need or utility of this or that duty, but the day has gone by when Republican manufacturers will ask for free raw material unless they can show that such freedom will hurt no important industry, section or class and will help the country as a whole, and we should like to believe that the time has come when every intelligent man can see that the placing of duties upon manufactures is because those articles. are most subject to unfair foreign competition, and therefore it is not so much a sectional or a personal bene fit as it is the establishment of a national policy, the benefits of which diffuse themselves to every part like the atmosphere and impose no unequal or unjust burdens upon any person, class or section. Probably there has never been in this world a greater fallacy taught in the name of science, since the downfall of the Ptolemaic theory of astronomy, than the cheap sophistry that "the consumer pays the tax." The fact is that we are all consumers; and that in one way or another we are all producers.— Boston Advertiser. BEET SUGAR IN EUROPE. ALMOST EVERY COUNTRY LIMITING A area PRODUCTION. CONCERTED effort is reported from almost every sugar beet producing country in Europe to reduce the planting area for 1902. Frank H. Mason, United States Consul General at Berlin, writes to the State Department that Germany has planted this spring 1,046,396 acres, a decrease of 11.2 per cent from the Every planted last year. province shows a decrease, and the reduction of acreage ranges from 1.2 per cent in Pomerania to 36 per cent in Baden, 45 per cent in Bavaria and 54.1 per cent in Hesse-Nassau. Four factories, Hattersheim, Hunfeld, Ossendorf and Fiddichow, are shut down, and will remain closed, so that there will be only 392 German factories in commission, against 396 last year. Reports from the other European sugar producing countries show the following variations of beet area as compared with last year: Increase. Per cent. Decrease. Per cent. 16.2 551,774 23.8 .1,470,566 1.0 ... 130,516 25.9 77,009 35.7 59,887 16.4 35,830 4.8 Only two increase-Russia and Denmark. Four factories in Belgium and eight in Holland will suspend operations in 1902-3, and the mean average reduction in area of beet cultivation in these eight sugar growing countries of Europe will be 11.34 per cent of the total beet acreage of 1901. BRITISH PREFERENTIAL TRADE. PRESENT indications are that the conference of colonial premiers will not lead to the adoption of an imperial federation plan. Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, the Secretary for the Colonies, has not spoken so plainly and definitely in favor of it since the ministry was known to disapprove it as he had before. He has received the premiers with hospitality and expressed gratitude for their support of the Empire in the South African struggle, but has been nebulous on the subject of preferential duties. Mr. Robert Giffen, chief statistician of the Board of Trade (a government department), wrote a communication to the London Times, in which he compared the receipts from customs by the United Kingdom and by the principal colonies on imports from foreign countries, and showed that a 10 per cent tax on such importations would amount to 41.4 million pounds in the United Kingdom, 1.8 millions in India, 1.1 in Australia, 0.5 in Natal and Cape Colony, and 2.4 in Canada and Newfoundland, from which he contends that "the contribution"-for like all other free traders he assumes that the tariff is wholly a tax on the country collecting it-"of the United Kingdom would be over 41 million pounds. At the same time the selfgoverning colonies, Australia and Canada, would contribute 3 million pounds only, although their popula tion is one-fourth that of the United Kingdom, and their proportionate contribution, on the basis of popula tion, to any common tax, when the United Kingdom pays 41 million Our imports from the colonies, largely the self-governing colonies, gain £11,000,000 annually by the are £110,000,000, who would thus higher prices for their goods in the United Kingdom if we put on the differential duty on foreign goods proposed, as against the £3,500,000 of tax they would themselves have to pay. sponding gain on our exports from We could look for no correthe United Kingdom to the selfgoverning colonies, whose whole imports from our European competitors are about £6,000,000 to £7,000,000 only. erential arrangements would impose In other words, the proposed prefa charge of £42,000,000 plus £11,000,000 on the people of the United Kingdom, while the colonies, in return for their increased taxation, amounting in the self-governing colonies to £3,500,000, would obtain au additional price of £11,000,000 from the people of the United Kingdom for their goods and would thus be largely the gainers. Preferential arrangements of this peculiar kind but there cannot be room for the may thus be popular in the colonies, same enthusiasm in the United Kingdom. N his up-to-date Fourth of July If we wished to help British feder- THE PRESIDENT ON TRUSTS. ation, it would be very easy to answer Mr. Giffen, but it is not our affair. He is unwilling that Canada should make $40,000,000 a year as a result of the higher prices of her products sold to the mother country, and we are perfectly willing that he and everybody else in Great Britain should believe that exports from the United States and other countries would not have to pay the principal part of it. All we can say is that if Great Britain begrudges Canada the price of her loyalty, as thus figured by Mr. Giffen, she could make more than twice as much by joining the American Union. The patient and long suffering Canadians have asked very little and apparently that is to be denied because the disciples of Cobden cannot get it out of their heads that the tariff is invariably a tax upon the consumer. So it is doubtful if any commercial gain will result from the conference. Sir J. Gordon Sprigg, the Cape premier, has gone home on account of the early meeting of his parliament, and Sir Wilfred Laurier, the Canadian premier, is too much of a free trader to exact for his country terms involving the abandonment of that policy, and so Canada will continue to pay a great price for her few titles of nobility. Mr. Charles H. Hutchins, president of the Crompton & Knowles Loom Works and of the Home Market Club, gave an address before the alumni of the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art, on "Industrial Education," at Philadelphia, late in June, in connection with the annual commencement. oration in Pittsburg, President Roosevelt courageously and conservatively dealt with the trust problem in the following paragraph, which the shows that he has studied subject: "Gentlemen, we have great probWe can only solve them by lems. degrees. We can only solve them by doing well each particular bit of work as it comes up for solution. Much can be done along the lines of supervision and regulation of the great industrial combinations which have become so marked a feature in our civilization; but if we recklessly try without proper thought, without proper caution, to do too much, we shall do nothing or else we shall work a ruin that will be felt most acutely among those of our citizens who are most helpless. It is no easy task to deal with great industrial tendencies. To deal with them in a spirit of presumptuous and rash folly, and above all to deal with them in a spirit of envy and hatred and malice, would be to invite disaster, a disaster which would be so widespread that this country would rock to its foundations. The Mississippi sometimes causes immense damages by flood. If you cannot dam it and stop the floods, you can regulate and control them by levees. You can regulate and control the current; you can eliminate its destructive features; but you can do it only by studying what a current is and what your own powers are. It is just exactly so in dealing with the great tendencies of our industrial civilization. We cannot turn back the wheels of progress. If we could it would mean the absolute destruction of just such indus trial centres as this. We will either do nothing or we will do damage, if we strive ignorantly to achieve the impossible. But the fact does not excuse us for failure to strive to do what is possible. Special legislation is needed; some of that legislation must come through municipalities, some through state, some through the national government, but above and beyond all legislation, we need honest and fearless administration of the laws as they are on the statute books. Honest and fearless administration of those laws in the interest of neither the rich man as such, nor of the poor man as such, but in the interest of exact and equal justice to all alike, and such administration you will surely have while Mr. Knox remains as attorney-general in the cabinet at Washington." NATIONAL REVENUE AND EXPENSES. THE HE fiscal year closed June 30 with an available cash balance of $208,630,022, which is the amount of money remaining in the Treasury after $150,000,000 of gold has been set apart for the redemption of legal tender notes, $830,579,089 of gold and silver has been set apart for the redemption of gold and silver certificates and "Sherman" notes, and after $81,147,979 has been set apart to meet the requirements of the national bank 5 per cent fund, of all the disbursing officers, of the post office department, and some smaller items of liabilities. But the surplus will be small this current year; on the basis of the past year's receipts and expenditures it will not be over $20,000, OLONEL TASKER H. BLISS, collector of customs in Cuba during the period of our occupancy, was recently asked what he thought of the many predictions as to the impending bankruptcy of the republic of Cuba. "I see no reason," replied Colonel Bliss, "why the government of the republic of Cuba cannot successfully meet all its financial obligations. If it does succeed, there is no reason why the hopes of all well-wishers of Cuba for the successful continuance of its government should not be completely realized. Of course, an economical administration will be necessary, but with such an able, upright man as Estrada Palma at the head of affairs, there is every reason to ex pect such an administration." "It has been stated repeatedly that the expenses of the new government |