A PLEA FOR FREE TRADE 149 skill, gained step by step, in the never-ending struggle of man to subdue the forces of nature to his control and use. A PLEA FOR FREE TRADE FRANK H. HURD From a speech delivered in the national House of Representatives, February 18, 1881. No more perfect illustration of the effect of free trade has been shown than in the history of the United States. Very much of our prosperity is due to the fact that the products of each state can be sold in every other state without restriction. During the war the most potent argument for the cause of the Union was found in the apprehension that disunion meant restriction of commerce, and particularly the placing of the mouth of the Mississippi River under foreign control. The war was fought, therefore, to maintain free trade, and the victory was the triumph of free trade. The Union every day exhibits the advantages of the system. Are these due to the accident of a state being a member of that Union, or to the beneficent principle of the system itself? What would prevent similar results following if, subject only to the necessities of government, it were extended to Mexico, to Canada, to South America, to the world? In such extension the United States have everything to gain, nothing to lose. This country would soon become the supply house of the world. We shall soon have cattle and harvests enough for all nations. Our cotton is everywhere in demand. It is again king. Its crown has been restored, and in all the markets of the world it waves its royal scepter. Out of our coal and minerals can be manufactured everything which human ingenuity can devise. Our gold and silver mines will supply the greater part of the precious metals for the use of the arts and trade. With the opportunity of the unrestricted exchange of these products, how limitless the horizon of our possibilities! Let American adventurousness and genius be free upon the high seas, to go wherever they please and bring back whatever they please, and the oceans will swarm with American sails, and the land will laugh with the plenty within its borders. The trade of Tyre and Sidon, the far-extending commerce of the Venetian Republic, the wealth-producing traffic of the Netherlands, will be as dreams in contrast with the stupendous reality which American enterprise will develop in our own generation. Through the humanizing influence of the trade thus encouraged, I see nations becoming the friends of nations, and the causes of war disappear. I see the influence of the great Republic in the amelioration of the condition of the poor and the oppressed in every land, and in the moderation of the arbitrariness of power. Upon the wings of free trade will be carried the seeds of free government, to be scattered everywhere to grow and ripen into harvests of free peoples in every nation under the sun. POLITICS AND JOURNALISM 151 POLITICS AND JOURNALISM CHARLES EMORY SMITH An extract from an address delivered before the Republican Press Association of Ohio, September 8, 1896. When Jefferson said that he would rather have newspapers without a government than a government without newspapers, he indicated the vital part which newspapers play under free institutions. That was a hundred years ago. They were then printed with all the limitations of the hand-press, with only the infrequent mail as their feeder, and only the stage coach as their distributor. To-day liberty is their vital breath, but the telegraph is their nerve-centre and the railroad their arterial circulation. The government has expanded and population multiplied twenty-fold, but newspaper circulation and resources and influence have multiplied a thousand-fold. A hundred years ago newspapers were sentinels at the outposts. To-day they hold the central citadel as leaders and exponents; they are the very life-blood of free discussion. Politics and journalism have been inseparable since John Wilkes thundered against the king, and Junius, with unerring aim, shot the polished and poisoned shafts from his masked and matchless quiver. Originally journalism was little more than political pamphleteering; now it reflects and expresses the intellectual and material progress of the world in all directions. Its capabilities have grown with its requirements. The intimate connection between politics and journalism suggests the thought of the hour. This is preeminently a campaign of education. It is thus peculiarly our campaign. The journalists are the real educators. We hold school every day; we have the class before the blackboard every morning and evening. We iterate and reiterate, view and review. Education is simplification and amplification-simplifying principles and amplifying facts and illustrations. With our short lesson and daily exercise we have the opportunity of both as no other agency has. Even the statesman and orator must speak through our medium. A thousand men hear and a million men read. It is true, there are great text-books from the masters. There is a new Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" with American application; a new Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" through the slough of despond and up the hill of difficulty; a new Baxter's "Saint's Rest" under assured Republican restoration. But the old text-books are expounded by the professors in the class-room, and so the new text-books are edited with notes and index and daily elucidation by the schoolmasters of journalism. We want more real and lasting enthusiasm, a deeper and grander consecration to the high mission which is before us. If we have a just conception of this national exigency and of our opportunity, we shall prosecute our work with increased fervor and power. Let us dedicate ourselves with renewed zeal to this campaign of education. NO HATRED BETWEEN AMERICA AND ENGLAND 153 NO HATRED BETWEEN AMERICA AND ENGLAND RUFUS CHOATE No, sir, we are above all this. Let the Highland clansman, half-naked, half-civilized, half-blinded by the peat smoke of his cavern, have his hereditary enemy and his hereditary enmity, and keep the keen, deep, and precious hatred, set on fire of hell, alive if he can. Let the North American Indian have his, and hand it down from father to son, by Heaven knows what symbols of alligators, and rattlesnakes, and war-clubs smeared with vermilion and entwined with scarlet. Let such a country as Poland, cloven to the earth, the armed heel on her radiant forehead, her body dead, her soul incapable to die-let her remember the wrongs of days long past. Let the lost and wandering tribes of Israel remember theirs-the manliness and the sympathy of the world may allow or pardon this to them. But shall America, young, free, and prosperous, just setting out on the highway of Heaven, "decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just begins to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life and joy,"-shall she be supposed to be polluting and corroding her noble and happy heart, by moping over old stories of Stamp Act, and the Tea Tax, and the firing of the Leopard on the Chesapeake in time of peace? No, sir; no, sir; a thousand times, No! I protest I thought all that had been settled. I thought |