1

Only for Gain do People Turn From Home Exchange. "Whenever our citizens are rich enough to employ these great resources, my hope is that they will be rich. enough to consume their products themselves." Might not the reason of this hope apply somewhat to Ohio, or at least to the wide area of the South since it began to manufacture? Since clearly it is gain that leads the different sections of our country to trade with one another, is it anything else that would lead them under lower tariffs to trade with Europe? And as America had from the start those kinds of manufacture necessary for war, with diversified industry springing up everywhere as needed, has not the effect of protection, in unnaturally hastening a development already rapid, been outweighed by its reduction of the people's income of commodities in every line where protection protects ?

The World's Greatest Buyers. — The claim that our 76,000,000 people are equal to half the world in buying capacity, affects the case only by enabling them to prosper in spite of their losses by protection. No less are they equal to half the world in producing capacity, for each must first produce everything he has to buy with. true in practice as in theory. Thiers was a logical protectionist when he objected to railroad building in France. So was Carey when he hoped our communication with Europe might be cut off. Absence of outside trade keeps a mountain district near barbarism. Cheaper transportation, everywhere desired, which has caused modern civilization by making trade easier and freer, tends to overcome tariff obstructions. This is a reason why higher and higher protection is demanded. (Shearman.)

1T. B. Reed, speech in Congress, Feb. 1894.

Home Consumption of All Products would not now be mentioned by protectionists as desirable, since the recent trebling of American exports of manufactures. As explained at the close of the last chapter, it would prevent profitable exchange, even if we produced every article cheaper than any other nation.

Other nations consume less because their overworked resources yield less. Their labor is the same as ours when put to work on our resources. Anybody except a Chinaman is an American laborer who happens to be working in the United States. Is it not unfortunate that our people did not confine their work to the many things they can do best, and allow the foreigner to do for us the few things he can do best?

The Great Speech of the Champion Protectionist quoted might be further questioned, though its support of assertion by reason was unusual. As the heavy work of the pioneer was done under "free trade tariffs," or with a fraction of the people protected - the country settled, and resources developed for the mightiest war of all history-could our thirty-one millions of nature conquerors in 1860, a year of great low tariff prosperity, with their unequalled shipping and railroads, and with their steady inflow of foreign labor and capital, have been expected to achieve less without protection than our subsequent progress? Was it not greater to build up our industrial system originally than to reap a later success that was already assured?

Wages Being the Same, is Not Something Wrong?— And have not our inventors chiefly produced things unprotected—railroad and electrical appliances, farm machinery, printing presses, sewing machines, and typewriters? If our protected industries have made productcheapening inventions, and are at home here, why can they not, like the unprotected, offer as many or more goods for a dollar than the foreign competitor? Those producers who can do this, whether they have a tariff duty or not, are unprotected if by means of a trust they do not habitually sell cheaper abroad than at home.

Wages being the same to both these classes of home producers, does not the fact that the smaller class, after many years of protection, are still unable to give as much value as the foreigner, prove that there is something wrong with their industries in America ? And is not the same indicated by many failures of woolen factories, highly protected, against rapid growth and few failures in the shoe industry, under a tariff inoperative? (Atkinson.)

CHAPTER XIII.

PROTECTION AND WAGES.

The Good Effect of Manufacturing on Prices of Farm Products, and on wages, is not involved here if with our varied resources, and our enterprising people, manufacturing would have come without the tariff. The good effect of manufacturing is chiefly in teaching people to know more, to produce more, and to require the higher grade of living they are able to maintain. They then receive high wages because they earn them; and if they went where wages are lowest, they would earn and get more pay than the average there. A large manufacturing population has little or no effect on the price of a farm product heavily exported, like wheat, whose local price, aside from slight variations of local demand, is that of Liverpool, less the expense of taking it to that city; nor on hay or potatoes, not largely exported, but shipped from state to state; nor on ordinary garden products where easily produced or shipped in, these being as cheap at Detroit as in villages far removed from factories. The high price of farm products in New England is due to factories only through the pressure of large population on poor land. Price for all of a farm product bought must be high enough to keep in business the grower of that part of the necessary supply which is produced at greatest cost. If all the people and factories of New England were moved to fertile Kansas, enough more people would grow vegetables there to bring down their

price to about the present level. In farming in Kansas, a business more people can easily enter, profits cannot remain above the average in other occupations for the farmer's grade of capacity. Without protection, the growth of population, capital, and intelligence, with increasing wants, which is accompanied by growth of towns and of variety in occupation, affords naturally all the local markets that can bring net benefit to the farmer. In two-thirds of our large country, to pretend to create manufacturing centers of local demand much better than would have come anyhow, would require state or county tariffs, which if successful would deprive New England factories of their markets. Costs in transportation, and in middlemen's profits, we have in home trade nearly as much as in foreign.

As to Raising Land Values also, the claims of protectionists must now be given up. There are over a thousand farms for sale in New England, "often in the most fortunate locations, most of which can be bought for much less than the value of the buildings. Many have wood enough to pay for them." A Massachusetts report showed a similar condition ten years ago. The case is different in Oklahoma, where there will be no factories of importance for many years. The former value of New England land, due to location near market, has been taken away by cheap transportation, which has given value to the more fertile land of Oklahoma.

Protection's Chief Recommendation. When in an industry started by protection, competition among home producers lowers the price of its commodity to the foreign level, neither price nor wages are then affected by the tariff. The home producers make no use of the tariff 1 New England Magazine, August, 1901.