Cheapness Can Be Bought Too Dearly.

At last we have received the long promised report by the British Board of Trade about the comparative conditions, from the workingman's point of view, in England and the United States. The report is long overdue, but there is a good reason for that. It is bitter reading for the British Free-Trader

in whose hands the control of England's government is at present.

About six years ago the British Board of Trade undertook a comprehensive investigation of labor conditions in England and other countries. We have had the report on England and those on France and Germany, and while the latter two were not all that were desired by the FreeTraders, still they were capable of distortion at election times. They showed that wages in France and Germany, which are both Protected countries, were a little lower than in England, and your Free-Traders could make great play with that. They also showed that food was cheaper and that employment was far steadier in those countries. But no good Free-Trader, of course, was obliged to mention these facts.

In the meantime everyone was looking forward to the report on America, which everyone admitted would give a better basis of comparison as to the effects of Free-Trade and Protection than the French and German reports. But the American report was strangely delayed.

Churchill's party won, and no more was heard about the report.

Then there was another election, but still no American report. But now it is issued at the moment of all others when it can do the Free-Traders least harm. To begin with, there is no general election immediately in prospect, and if one should come on suddenly, the only possi

amusing itself in some less expensive way. Newspaper publishers look for only half their usual circulation during these holidays. So a good many thousands of Englishmen will never hear of this terrible report at all.

Now, what is it and why is it so terrible? Those misguided Americans who have been clamoring for Free-Trade

It was due over two years ago, but a general election was coming off in Great Britain, and the report did not appear. Winston Churchill, a Free-Trader, and one of the cleverest politicians in England, was at the head of the Board of Trade then, and he promised it in a few months. The election took place and

ble issues would be the reform of the House of Lords and Irish Home Rule. These questions must be settled before England tackles anything else.

Then the report was issued on the eve of the Easter holidays, when Parliament had just risen, and when half of England is playing golf, or motoring, or

and blaming the Tariff for the high cost of living should be compelled to read it through from cover to cover, and although it is a bulky volume of nearly 600 big pages, they would be well repaid for reading it. It disposes once for all of the old fallacy that cheap food and lodging spell prosperity, and it knocks the wind out of the FreeTraders' favorite assertion that the British workingman is better off than his American cousin, because if he does receive lower wages his

living costs him less.

Of course anyone

who has lived in both countries knows that the American work

ingman wouldn't house his dog in the hovels occupied by most English workingmen, and would hesitate about feeding his pigs with the food they eat. But here it is all set down in cold figures by the British Board of Trade experts. After all allowances are made for higher cost of living, higher rent, and higher standard of comfort in America, these experts come to the conclusion that the American workingman is 78 per cent. better off than his English cousin.

Three typical trades were taken for the investigation, the building trades, printing trades and engineering trades, which in England mean machinery trades. It was found that in actual money the American workmen received $230 for every $100 received by the Englishmen, while in the building trades they worked 7 fewer hours a week, and in the printing trades 31⁄2

fewer hours, while in the engineering trades the American hours were about three more a week.

On the other side of the balance sheet the American has to pay $207 for rent, against the Englishman's $100, and $138 for food, against the Englishman's $100. It is stated in the report, however, that the food figures are based on the assumption that the American would eat exactly the same kind of food as the EnglishOf course a good many articles of his diet are not produced in the United States. If he ate superior American food in equal quantity his food bill would be $125 to the Englishman's $100.

man.

Another consideration which is not pointed out by the compilers of the report is that practically every ounce of food which passes the American workingman's lips is produced by American farmers. Nearly every ounce which the British workingman eats comes from abroad, for Free-Trade long ago killed farming in England. Imagine what that means

for the workingmen. Every time the American mechanic eats a slice of bread and butter he is putting money in the pocket of an American farmer, who in turn will buy what the workingman produces. When the Englishman breakfasts off a salted herring his pennies go to enrich a German or a Russian fisherman who will never spend any of those pennies in England.

Of course it is not the business of the British Board of Trade experts to draw these conclusions. They have compiled the facts, however, from which any one who is interested can learn many lessons. The report ought to be even more valuable in the United States than it is in England. It ought to be in the hands of every Democratic and "Progressive" congressman and senator in Washington who is shouting for lower Tariffs and "reduced cost of living." This British report shows that cheapness can be bought too dearly.

A Strange Phenomenon.

It is indeed a strange phenomenon in national politics to see a Republican President, ostensibly the head of a Protective Tariff party, enthusiastically building and using all of his administrative powers and seeking the aid of Democratic members of Congress to make permanent, a progressive stepping stone for the Free-Trade element of the Democratic party.-Ohio Farmer.

This, Mr. President and Republican Senators and Representatives of the Sixty-second Congress, is what several million American farmers are thinking and saying. Many of them go even further and say that the Republican party has coming to it a lesson in decent politics and fair treatment of its supporters, and that at the next Presidential lesson the farmers of the United States will see to it that the lesson is forthcoming. It is a condition and not a theory, as Grover Cleveland used to say.

The Economic Results of Free-Trade in

Farm Products.

We have been favored with some important and valuable considerations regarding certain economic aspects of the proposed inauguration of the policy of Free-Trade in agricultural products in the form of a letter from Mr. George R. Meyercord, a Chicago business man and a large employer of labor in the lithographing and allied industries. In his letter Mr. Meyercord directs attention to a phase of the question that has been quite generally ignored or overlooked. In his judgment the most serious factor of all is the fact that we are practically putting our young farmers on a FreeTrade basis with Canada. He says:

During the last three or four years the farms of Northwest Canada have appeared so attractive to the young men of the Central Western States, in fact all of the Mississippi Valley States, that by the hundreds of thousands they have emi grated to Canada. If the Canadian reciprocity act becomes a law we only accelerate the movement of our young men to Canada. The last census actually showed the state of Iowa decreased in population.

The profit on a bushel of wheat in Canada is about 22 or 23 cents, and if the American market is thrown open to Canadian wheat it will raise the profit 6 or 8 cents a bushel, or an advanced profit of about 30 to 35 per cent. to the Canadian farmer. This would, of course, boom Canadian land to such an extent as to increase and accelerate the rush of our American boys up there.

As the natural result of this greatly increased profit on wheat growing in Canada, where wheat lands are cheaper and vastly more productive than are the wheat lands of the United States, the younger men of the United States farming sections will be drawn from their present acres to the vast areas of the Canadian Northwest.

Mr. Meyercord estimates

that upwards of one million of our very best blood will be attracted away from American farms, and will carry with them a fabulous sum of money and transfer it to the Dominion as a permanent investment. If his calculation should prove true, and there is every reason to believe it would, "reciprocity" would cost the American nation heavily in money as well as in citizenship. The following computation will be found to be fairly accurate: Farmers leaving the United States for Canada

1,000,000

Total capital withdrawn from the United States and transferred to Canada

.$7,500,000,000 Mr. Meyercord closes his interesting letter as follows:

The Canadian Pacific Railway Land Department can well afford to maintain a many milliondollar lobby at Washington to force the "reciprocity" act.

As a matter of personal interest I might state that this feature of the "reciprociy" act has been forcibly brought home to me by inquiries and orders secured from Canadian land companies for advertising purposes. These Canadian land companies are looking for a fabulous development from the emigration to Canada. It is big enough now without our government setting a premium on it to promote it.

great speech of April 15 demonstrates that. In another part of this paper the speech is given practically entire. It would be hard to name a man who in the past fifty years has spoken more eloquently, more ably or more convincingly on the subject of Protection. Certainly none has better earned the title of the Farmers' Advocate in the Halls of Congress. It is for the farmers, not alone of his own State,who are vitally concerned, but of the whole United States, that Representative Hinds speaks. His appeal is in behalf of the farmer's right to a full share of Protection's benefits, chief among those benefits being the maintenance of an equilibrium in the market for what the farmer produces. In no speech that we recall has this question been more forcibly presented. Asher P. Hinds is worth reading, every word of him.

A Problem for Political Strategists.

Ohio, normally Republican and very positively Protectionist, has elected three Democratic governors in succession, and is now represented in the United States Senate by one Republican and one Democrat. The farmers of Ohio are a unit against Free-Trade "reciprocity," and the manufacturers of Ohio are for the most part opposed to President Taft's fatuous scheme for the undermining of Protection. These combined conditions may easily take Ohio out of the Republican electoral column in 1912. Even Bryan might carry the State. It might be worth while for our political strategists to survey somewhat carefully the situation in Ohio and in several other States now reckoned as safely Republican in presidential years, and make calculations as to how to get the Republican party back on its feet again.

"Unpatriotic Conspirators?"

The Statesman, a formerly Protectionist newspaper published at Salem, Ore., seems to have "gone Democratic" on the subject of Free-Trade in agricultural products. Among other things, it greatly disapproves of the sending out by THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE TARIFF LEAGUE of blank postal cards to be filled in with protests against the enactment of the Canadian agreement bill and mailed to Senators and Representatives at Washington. Thus the Statesman (?) :

We are convinced that the great majority of the American people, however, appreciate the importance of an immediate ratification of the pact with Canada. The agreement will benefit the country as a whole even though it deprives certain favored interests of the privilege of levying extortionate tribute upon the ultimate consumers of the nation. A man would be a fool to sign one of the post-cards sent out by these unpatriotic conspirators. The arguments of THE LEAGUE are false, and the attempt to thwart President Taft and his assistants in Congress, of whatever party they be, is a fraud.

The business men who employ hundreds of thousands of workmen and whose payrolls run up into many hundreds of millions of dollars in the course of a year believe that they see in this Free-Trade departure of a Republican administration the certain doom of the system of Protection to all forms of American labor and industry. They realize the absolute injustice of compelling the farmer to buy what he needs in a Protected market while selling what he has to sell in a Free-Trade market. They feel certain that the farmer will not consent to an arrangement so utterly unfair and one-sided and that he will naturally and logically turn against the entire system of Protection. These men of business, these big wage payers, further comprehend the fact that if the prices which the farmer receives for his products are lowered as the result of Free-Trade competition with the products of the cheaper and more fertile farm lands of Canada, the purchasing and consuming power, the spendable income of the farmer will be diminished in proportion as he is compelled to accept lower prices for what he produces, and that this diminished purchasing power of nearly one-third of our entire population must of necessity make itself injuriously felt in practically all lines of business; in manufacturing, in merchandising, in transportation, in banking, in insurance, etc., etc.

These, briefly stated, are the chief reasons for the opposition to Free-Trade in farm products on the part of the men whom the Statesman (?) characterizes as "unpatriotic conspirators." Is it unpatriotic to want to do the fair thing by the great body of American farmers? Is it the work of conspirators when the industrial producers unite in open and above-board measures to defeat a mistaken administration policy whose certain consequences would be the complete overthrow of the American system of Pro

tection? Is it reprehensible that earnest and loyal Republicans should seek to prevent the destruction of the Republican party through the alienation of the farmer vote?

We wish that the Salem Statesman might give some consideration to these questions before it condemns as "unpatriotic conspirators" the members of THE TARIFF LEAGUE, and many thousands of business men who are not LEAGUE members, merely because they want to avert the threatened era of Free-Trade ruin and poverty. Are they deserving of such censure in seeking to revive and prolong Protection prosperity?

Destined to a Rude Awakening.

From a Concord, N. H., dispatch of April 23, we learn that Nabum J. Bachelder, Master of the National Grange, has "called down" Samuel W. McCall of Massachusetts for his statement in the House of Representatives to the effect that the opposition to the Canadian agreement bill does not represent the genuine sentiment of the farmers themselves. In an open letter to Representative McCall, Mr. Bachelder writes:

For your information I would state that so far as I have been able to find out there is not a single working farmer in the country who favors "reciprocity," and if the farmers had a chance to vote on that proposition the vote against it would be in the ratio of 1,000 to 1. I receive regularly each week about forty farm journals. published in all sections of the country, and of these only one has failed to denounce reciprocity, and that one has not dared to favor it.

If you and your associates who call themselves Protectionists, but vote for Free-Trade for the farmer, have any doubt as to the real sentiment of the great majority of the farmers of all the New England, Northern and Northwestern States on this question, you are destined to a rude awakening on the first Tuesday of November, 1912.

Mr. Bachelder's statement regarding the attitude of the farm journals exactly tallies with facts known by the AMERICAN ECONOMIST. A large proportion of the agricultural papers of the United States is on our exchange list. They are practically a unit against the bogus "reciprocity" scheme, and they are printing in every one of their issues vigorous editorial protests against the Free-Trade monstrosity fathered by President Taft, and in their columns are also to be found large numbers of indignant letters from their subscribers.

Another fact of peculiar significance has been developed in this aggressive campaign of the farm journals against the Canadian agreement. It is this: Hitherto these farm journals have been silent upon the Tariff question. Practically none among them has favored Protection. In many instances they have leaned toward Free-Trade. Now, however, these same newspapers, with practical unanimity, are directly or by implication asserting that Protection has benefited the farmer, and that it is an injustice amounting to an outrage to remove Protection from farm products while

retaining Protection for manufactures.

The important thing in this development is that the farmers of the United States in the proportion of 1,000 to 1, as Mr. Bachelder says, are now, for the first time on record, substantially a unit in demanding Protection for their products. That is a big central fact in the situation. How is it possible to ignore this fact? If Republicans in the House or Senate persist in ignoring it, they are beyond a doubt "destined to a rude awakening on the first Tuesday of November, 1912." Hadn't they best wake up before that date?

In Chairman Underwood's District.

A Birmingham, Ala., telegram of April 20 to the New York Times says that construction work on the $3,000,000 plant of the American Steel and Wire Company, at Corey, a subsidiary of the Steel Corporation, has stopped, throwing 600 men out of work. It would have been completed in August and have employed about 2,500 skilled workmen. Officials of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, the Steel Corporation's local branch, declare the stoppage to have been caused by the introduction of the Farmers' Free List bill in Congress, making hooped steel, barbed wire fencing, wire rope, staples and other steel products free of duty. Nine of the twenty-five blast furnaces in the district are already banked, and it is rumored that the Steel Corporation's big rail mill at Ensley will close April 25. It is said that the men thrown out of work at Corey will circulate petitions imploring Mr. Underwood, representative from that district and chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, to strike steel products from the free list, and that mass meetings of all local commercial bodies will be called for the same purpose.

One would think that such a condition in his own district and among his own people would jolt even a Free-Trade Democrat. But if it doesn't jolt Mr. Underwood now, it may a year from next November, when he comes, up for reelection.

EQUILIBRIUM BETWEEN AGRICULTURE AND MANUFACTURES.

(Continued from page 243.)

Mr. Yoakum shows that the price of rice increased five times from the hands of the farmer to the hands of the consumer. If this high au thority is correct, has anyone searched the people who have that rice between the time it leaves the farmer's hands and gets to the consumer? And if no one has, ought it not to be done before we try and convict the rice farmer and take from him the duty of 2 cents a pound? This bill, it is true, does not touch rice; but does the rice farmer of the Carolinas think that Protection is going to last for the few after it is stripped from the many?

Mr. Yoakum shows that the price of eggs doubles from the time they leave the farmer's hands to the time they reach the consumer's hands in New York. As our own Agricultural Department has published figures tending to confirm this estimate, it gives confidence in the estimates as to other commodities.

Who gets the great increases between the farmer and the consumer? I see no evidence that the retail merchant gets more than his necessities as to rent, display, advertising, labor and service compel him to take. We can conjecture as to the causes, but we have not ascertained scientifically.

The Tariff of No Effect on Prices to the Consumer.

The price of coffee is estimated to increase five times from the producer to the consumer; and as there is absolutely Free-Trade in coffee, here is a patent suggestion that the Tariff, while it has important bearing on the equilibrium of the farmer's market, has very little influence on what the consumer pays. In the very heighth of high prices last fall the minority Democratic members of the investigating committee of another distinguished body came to this conclusion:

"Notwithstanding the large increase in the price of farm products, the farmer has realized a small net return on his labor and investment." Can not you leave the farmer this small net return? Can not you do it in consideration of the long dearth he has suffered? There he stands, the dampness of honest toil on his brow, in his heart the satisfaction that he has lasted through the trial. He is a hero. He has won the long fight. He has done it with brains as well as muscle. When the onset was fiercest he reduced his acreage and intensified his culture; that is, he contracted the wings and strengthened the center. If he had been a man with a sword we would have given him pension and office, and that exquisite American adulation of accepting every word from his lips as the last thing in wisdom. But as he is a farmer, and as farmers are organized very imperfectly for unity of action, we pat him on the back, say he is a good fellow, and, without investigation, without even an unscientific investigation worthy the name, we turn loose on him new and unnumbered hordes. [Applause on the Republican side.]

Consumers of Coal, Flour and Meat. By admitting that this question should be settled on broad, national grounds only, I do not wish to be understood as condoning in any way the great injustices committed on certain industries and certain sections of the country. It has been a longing of New England, stimulated by the Democratic orators for more than half a century, that she might buy coal at those great and nearby mines of Nova Scotia. Gov. Foss,

of Massachusetts, told us last fall that free coal was one of the great blessings of reciprocity for us. But realizing the benefit of the broad national policy of Protection, the better judgment of our people has favored buying coal in the distant fields of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, although the freight paid to the railroads is a burden on industry. The old reciprocity treaty of 1854 gave this Canadian coal free entrance, and the official documents of the time seem to show that it found a large market on the Atlantic seaboard. This new treaty lets in over the border line freely every natural product that New England produces herself; but this great commodity that she does not produce, that her northern climate makes so precious to her people, is denied her. The old treaty wrote in "coal" in bold, satisfying black letters; this agreement, if it does anything in this line, makes only a penurious little concession by reducing the duty on coal screenings to 15 cents a ton, which it was in the Dingley law, where it was

one

intended to be in the Payne law. That may help some big mills, if they use these screenings, and is good as far as it goes; but the most sedate New England farmer, if he can control his anger at the injustice, will hardly control his mirth at the ridiculousness of an arrangement that sets in motion into his market free as air all the potatoes, beets, turnips, hay, cabbages, butter, cheese, hoof-parting and cud-chewing animals that Canada can produce, and allow himself and his neighbors such coal as will strain through a hole half an inch square.

It would be possible to go much further in criticism of details of this agreement. If duties between this country and Canada are burdens, which I do not admit, it may be pointed out that we are taking all burdens off the flourmakers and leaving much on the flour consumers; that we are taking all burden off the great incorporated butchers' trust and leaving much on the consumers of meat.

The Fisheries and Other Industries. If this were a council of national defense I would recall that the two great militant civilizations of Europe, Germany and France, protect by ample duties the hard-won spoil of their fishermen, that they may have those fishermen in their hour of need, as we have had ours in every crisis since Washington crossed the Delaware. After preserving in the field of diplomacy the fishing rights won by our fathers on the field of battle. John Quincy Adams transmitted to his posterity a seal intended to commemorate the glory both of his country and his family. And the legend on that seal was such as you could not honestly write across the face of this bill-"Piscemur, venemur, ut olim"-"We keep our fishing grounds and our hunting grounds as of old."

The Safe and Unsafe Course.

It is because we are in doubt as to the main features of this great problem and are overriding facts where inquiry seems to have removed doubts, that I confess a great impatience of this capital move that the House seems about to make. The European nations, where scholarship and scientific inquiry is applied to political prob. lems as nowhere else on earth, Germany and France, strictly maintain their agricultural duties. The tariff commission of England, after collecting volumes of facts, has recommended agricultural duties for England.

Years ago, on a stormy afternoon, a gallant steamer sailed down an Eastern harbor on its way to a coastwise port. As she went down that harbor other steamers running to that same coast were coming back, for the sky and sea promised ill, but that one steamer went on in defiance of the common judgment of the sea that afternoon. And she went to one of the great sea tragedies of the Atlantic. Is this House to disregard the common judg ment of the nations and without investigation plunge forward to do this great thing? Even before you change the postage rates on a few magazines you have an investigation by a learned commission. But you propose to change the fundamental conditions of 6,000,000 farm homes with no investigation worthy the name.

As one member I protest against this dangerous haste and against this bill, as tending to break up farm homes, retard rural development, and increase the congestion of the cities. [Loud applause.]

Will Arouse the Wrath of the Farmers. The Democratic party has the first opportunity it has had in sixteen years to participate effectively in the government of the country, and the first move it makes will draw on it the wrath of the farmers of the country. The Canadian reciprocity treaty will smash the price of farm products, but it will not disturb the price of the manufactured articles the farmer uses. It is a measure that favors the manufacturing interests at the expense of the American farmer. It will reduce the cost of foodstuffs, but the farmer will stand the expense. The Democratic jackass will be blamed at the next election, and he will deserve the beating he will get, if he persists in his suicidal course.-Crowley (La.) Signal.

IT WOULD NOT BE A SQUARE DEAL.

The Farmers' Free List Bill Discriminates Greatly in Favor of Southern Planters.

Washington Post.

The Southern farmer never cried out against Canadian competition in the past, nor has he joined his Northern neighbor in opposing the ratification of the reciprocity agreement. The South was not in sympathy with the imposing of a high duty on Canadian products in the first place, for the two-fold reason that it derived no appreciable benefit, and then it was contrary to the Democratic lowTariff policy. The Canadian Tariff was fixed just high enough to Protect the Northern farmer, and he alone could be affected one way or the other by taking the Tariff off.

These things being true, why should manufactures used exclusively in the South go on the "farmers' free list?" Does it profit the farming community along the Canadian border for Congress to take the Tariff off cotton gins, cotton bagging, gunny cloth, and all devices suitable for handling cotton, together with other articles of manufacture never seen in that latitude? The framers of the free list set up the plea that they would remove the Tariff on articles used especially by the farmers in order to compensate them for any losses they might suffer through reciprocity, but how can they reconcile their words with their deeds? Besides, as the South-farmers and everybody-would share with the North any gain which might accrue from the adoption of the free list exclusive of the articles above mentioned, it would look as if the committee had deliberately gone out of the way to give the Southern farmer all the Northern farmer gets and untold millions more.

Unless this discrimination in favor of the South can be justified on better grounds than the House Ways and Means Committee has urged, it would seem very doubtful that the "farmers' free list" would meet the approval of the Senate and the President. For another thing, it is a contradiction of the Democratic profession of the square deal, and is at variance with the declaration that "no legitimate business has cause for alarm,”

etc.

Our farmers are entitled, above all other citizens, to all the benefits that may be implied in Tariff Protection, and it is not surprising that, almost to a man, they are opposed to the foolish reciprocity with agreement Canada.-New York Farmer.

The threat of Canadian Free-Trade continues to hang like a dark cloud over the farm produce market.-Des Moines Capital.