TABLE NO. 1-Total value of imports and exports into and from the United States from October 1, 1789, to June 30, 1907, under low and protective tariffs, respectively—Continued. Fiscal Merchandise. Excess of 1877- 451,323,126 602,475,220 151,152,904 1877- 1878 437,051,532 694,865,766 257,814,234 1878- 1879__ 445,777,775 710,439,441 264,661,666 1879__ 1880 667,954,746 835,638,658 1881. 642,664,628 902,377,346 259,712,718 1881_ Protective. 44,088,694 188628,863,443 1887- 1888 68,518,275 1890__ Pro tective. 1907- 1908 1,484,421,425 1,880,851,078 446,429,653 1907- Total----- 40,243,189,595 46,828,278,811 0,085,088,716 Protection steadily enlarges the home market for farm products.-Hon. L. R. Casey. I am a protectionist because our country has prospered with protection and languished without it.-Hon. B. F. Jones, in the American Economist. As a result in a large degree of our protective tariff system, the United States has become one of the foremost nations of the world.-Hon. S. M. Cullom. The present business system of the country rests on the protective tariff and any attempt to change it to a free trade basis will certainly lead to disaster.-Hon. Wm. H. Taft, at Columbus, Ohio. The Republican priciple of the protective tariff is, as I understand it, that through the customs revenue law a tariff should be collected on all imported products that compete with American products, which will at least equal a difference in the cost of production in this country and abroad, and that proper allowance should be made in this difference for the reasonable profits to the American manufacturer.-Hon. Wm. H. Taft, at Columbus, Ohio. We shall continue our American system of Protection developed and perfected by the Republican party. We shall continue to raise a large portion of our revenues and at the same time protect our labor and industries by adequate and equitable duties on competing imports. We shall continue to maintain the highest wage seale on earth and keep our standard of living the best of all nations through the home market that is, and I believe always will be, the envy of the civilized world.-Hon. James S. Sherman. Under our policy of free trade we have lost that commercial and industrial superiority we acquired under the policy of strict protection. Our policy of direct taxation bears heavily upon our industries and reacts on the working classes in reduction of wages and employment. Our agriculture has been ruined and our industries are struggling hard for existence. Other nations, under a policy of strict protection, are beating us in the race of competition, not only in neutral, but in our own markets.-Sir Guilford L. Molesworth on Free Trade in England. One vital, dominating fact confronts the Democratic party which no oratory, which no eloquence, which no rhetoric can obscure: BRYAN'S NOMINATION MEANS TAFT'S FLECTION.-New York World, Receipts and expenditures of the United States Government from 1791 to 1907. [From official reports of the United States Government, 1907.] 40,948,383.12 2,644,505.76 1860. 469,570,241.65 1866 1867. 28,453,330.93 27,327, 126.88 25,173,913.59 417,650,980.56 606,639,330.67 621,556,129.63 973,068,131.39 927,208.04 846,729,325.78 116,117,354.14 Protective. Protec Low. Protective. Low. tive. Receipts and expenditures of the United States Government from 1791 to 1907-Continued. Our Government should be as exacting from foreigners as from Americans. Make them pay duty while we pay taxes.Hon. P. C. Cheney. I believe in the reciprocity of Blaine and McKinley, reciprocity in non-competitive goods, but not in reciprocity in competitive goods, which is simply free trade.-Hon. Andrew J. Volstead, in Congress, Feb. 8, 1904. Protection furnishes an opportunity for every person to find the employment best adapted to his or her genius and capacity that will secure the largest income or the greatest happiness.-Hon. J. S. Morrill, in the American Economist. Everyone knows that the average American consumer pays more than the average British consumer. Yet the British consumer, in spite of that advantage, is by no means so well off as the American consumer.-The London Daily Telegraph. We have prospered marvelously at home. As a nation we stand in the very forefront in the giant international competition of the day. We cannot afford by any freak or folly to forfeit the position to which we have thus triumphantly attained.-President Roosevelt at Minneapolis, April 4, 1903. In the ten years which has elapsed since the enactment of the Dingley Tariff, the conditions have so changed as to make a number of the schedules under that tariff too high and some too low. This renders it necessary to re-examine the schedules in order that the tariff shall be placed on a purely protective basis. By that I mean it should properly protect, against foreign competition, and afford a reasonable profit to all manufacturers, farmers, and business men, but should not be so high as to furnish a temptation to the formation of monopolies to appropriate the undue profit of excessive rates.-Hon. Wm. H. Taft, at Kansas City, Mo. One vital, dominating fact confronts the Democratic party which no oratory, which no eloquence, which no rhetoric can obscure: BRYAN'S NOMINATION MEANS TAFT'S ELECTION.-New York World. Protective. Low. Protective. Tariffs. THE IRON AND STEEL INDUSTRY. Conditions in United States Compared with Other Countries. The world produced about 58,850,000 tons of pig iron in 1906, of which over forty-three per cent. was made in the United States. The same great development is shown in the production of steel, of which the United States produced over 23,398,000 tons in 1906; Germany over 11,307,000 tons, and Great Britain 6,575,000 tons. The United States produced 5,516,000 tons more than Germany and Great Britain combined. In 1889 the United States produced 7,608,642 tons of pig iron, which at that time was the largest production ever made in this country in one year. Great Britain produced in that year 8,322,824 tons, and she had exceeded the production of the United States in each preceding year. But under the McKinley tariff the production of pig iron increased to 9,202,703 tons in 1890, in which year the product of Great Britain fell off to 7,904,214 tons. Since that time the United States has almost trebled its production, while Great Britain has made little progress. Germany, which went under a protective tariff in 1879, produced only 4,524,558 metric tons (2,204 pounds) of pig iron in 1889; but in 1906 Germany had increased the production so that her pig iron product was over 2,183,000 tons greater than that of Great Britain, and in steel she exceeded Great Britain by over 4,732,000 tons. In 1906 Germany produced of Bessemer and open-hearth steel 11,307,807 tons, while Great Britain produced only 6,462,274 tons. The United States produced 23,256,243 tons. The World's Greatest Pig Iron Producers. The following table gives the production of pig iron from 1880 to 1907 by the three great pig iron making countries. For the United States and Great Britain tons of 2,240 pounds are used, and for Germany and Luxemburg metric tons of 2,204 pounds. From 1880 to 1907 the production of pig iron in the United States under protection increased from 3,835,191 gross tons to 25,781,361 gross tons, a gain of 21,946,170 gross tons, and in Germany and Luxemburg, also under protection, it increased in the same period from 2,729,038 metric tons to 12,875,159 metric tons, a gain of 10,146,121 metric tons. Under free trade in Great Britain, however, the production increased in the same period 2,174,623 gross tons only, the gain being from 7,749,233 gross tons in 1880 to 9,923,856 gross tons in 1907. Effect of Protective Tariff upon Steel Rail Industry. The development of the steel rail industry in the United States has been of enormous benefit to the country and has demonstrated beyond question the great value of the protective tariff. When it was proposed in 1870 to place a duty of $28 a ton on steel rails the Hon. S. S. Marshall, a prominent member of the House of Representatives, earnestly protested against the proposed duty because, as he alleged, it would so increase the cost of foreign steel rails that our railroad companies could not afford to import them. The average price of Bessemer steel rails in this country at that time was $106.75 a ton in currency. The duty of $28.00 a ton was imposed in that year, and the price of steel rails fell in five years to an average of $68.75 a ton, and they never rose above those figures, but steadily fell in most of the succeeding years. The reduction in price, owing to the development of this industry, has led to the substitution of steel for iron rails, which are no longer manufactured to any extent. The durability of steel rails is many times greater than that of iron rails, and this has enabled the railroads to increase the size and power of their engines and cars, so that the cost of transportation has been enormously reduced. The United States long ago became the largest producer of steel rails in the world, Great Britain long having fallen behind. Formerly a large percentage of the rails in use were iron. Now they are practically all steel. The tariff on steel rails in 1870 was 45 per cent. ad valorem. That has been gradually reduced until now it is $7.84 a ton. In 1906 the production of all kinds of steel rails in the United States amounted to 3,977,872 tons. The United States Steel Corporation Not a Monopoly. To refute a common free trade charge we republish from the Annual Statistical Report of the American Iron and Steel Association the following table, which gives the percentages of production of all leading iron and steel products by the United States Steel Corporation and by independent companies in the year 1906, the latest year for which statistics are available. It also gives for the same year the percentages of shipments of iron ore by the Corporation and by the independent companies from the Lake Superior region and the percentages of the total production of iron ore and coke in the whole country by the Corporation and by the independent companies. The statistics of the total shipments of iron ore from the Lake Superior region and of the production of iron and steel we have obtained from the Annual Report of the American Iron and Steel Association, and the statistics of the country's total production of iron ore and coke we have obtained from the publications of the Division of Mining and Mineral Resources of the United States Geological Survey, the Corporation reporting to us its share of these shipments and production. If by asserting complete Federal control over the interstate railways of the country we can suppress secret rebates and discriminations of other kinds, we shall have gone a long way in the suppression of the unlawful trusts.Hon. Wm. H. Taft, at Columbus, Ohio. * ' Think of it, men of Rochester; you producers and manufacturers and merchants and traders and bankers and transporters, think of it! The market of our own country, the home market, in which you can transport your goods from the door of the factory to the door of the consumer, without breaking bulk a single time, is equal to the entire inter, national commerce of the world.-0. P. Austin, at Rochester. |