Crawfordsville Daily Journal, Crawfordsville, Montgomery County, 15 October 1892 — Page 3

Tin (ilUSAT ISSUE.

or. the first time since the present

geiiera'iun lam-j on the carpet, the peo­

ple of the United States are called upon

•o decide squarely the main question of

'protection or tree trade. I'pon this

iiitfot- the platforms of the two great

parties declare as follows: A:,

RKIHHUC AN.

We affirm the doctrine of protection. We call attention to its growth abroad. We maintain that the prosperous condition of our country is largely due to the wise' revenue legislation ot the Ke-nuW^-an Congress. We believe that all a'tk'V* which cannot he produced in the I'fited States, except luxuries, should .toj-.aJmittcd free of duty, and that on alK imports coming into competition with the products of American labor there should he duties levied equal to the .dulerence between wages abroad (ati&at home.

•/. DKM'K'RATIC.

We denounce the Republican policy o: protection as a fraud on the labor of t.ie^reat majority of the American people tor the benefit of the few. We declare* it :o hi* a fundamental principle of the Democratic party that the Federal Government hah no constitutional power to •iwpo-e and collect tariff duties except tor purposes of revenue only, anil we domain! that the collection of such taxes ne limited to the necessities of the Government when honestly and economically ad ni red.

We denounce the McKinlev Tariff Law enacted by the Fifty-first Conare" the culminating atrocity of class legislation we indorse the efforts made iy/jieDemocrats of the present Congress tomodify its most oppressive features in ihe direction of free raw materials and cheaper manufactured goods :r ,it enter into general consumption aini.we promise its repeal as one of the .beneficent results that will follow the ."dittonot the people in intrusting power to the Democratic partv.

The Democratic party has played with the tariff question for many years, it h.iM .sung of "tariff reform." and MUed uottlv of incidental protection, •. fcmafc tor downright free trade.it lias -..denied the impeachment as vigorously js Peter denied his LonS. At the same .time it has done its best to make the people dissatisfied with protection. No ti.atter what law has been in force, from

Mori ill tariff to the McKinlev bill, i' has been denounced as unjust and "••nr. There has been a manifest "%««.criti and inconsistency in its po« •non all the time. Its voice has been -at uice ot Jacob, but its hands have 'vnthe hands of Esau. It has talked tariil teturm, but its arguments have ple.is for free trade. Now at last

Luiifc^cs the truth of the charge

Ali

«..!i Republicans have made for years, i- really a party of free trade. It j-'cuies 'liat the Federal Government no ^institutional power to impose collet tariff duties, except for the tarpon'*, oi revenue only." This goes -Uuhe bottom of the question. It depjotection in every form and Wurve unconstitutional. Congress

11

'-1

i,lx

imports, but "for revenue pUm words with plain mean-

lr

A d.iu on imported commodities h»w which are not produced in country, produces revenue, :f,:•

-tnne

only. It protects nothing,

Mium:.things

05

there is nothing here

t. Ot that class of commodities lea. (oik*e. India-rubber, quinine, Janar.av. pineapples, and other tropical PW'.iin.tiri'io. Itv our present policy, all in free, while articles which VJ'aj»t.te with the products of our farms, *1^ and factories pay duty. The two are squarely opposed, both in I'

:c

°ry

anti

operation. One is the free­

ze tanU oi Kngland the other the •J

rvSl

Protective tariff of the United

1

0,v

protection or free trade

^ure ami certain. lithe Kldv and light-headed, who *.5 'or none of these things, and o...osc 'aho tollow party leadership

Ml

"'y,

this signifies little. Hut there "icnwho think, and upon them is

Ca 1 l!lt

hole responsibility for their

ount weltare at a time like this.

i,t

is the thinker's campaign.

'HE THEORETICAL BASIS OF PROTECTION.

An Address delivered before the Morton Club, at Fort Wayne, October 1, 1892, by Robert S. Taylor.

I hope you will not take it as an act of irreverence if I begin what I have to say to-night with a quotation from the scripture. "And God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it."

The part of this text pertinent to the present subject is the last two words—"subdue it." The divine command to man is to subdue the earth, all of it, in all its materials, productions,-" elements and forces to his own use.

The English political economists, from whom American teachers of that science have borrowed most of their theories, include among the maxims on which they base their reasonings one to the effect that man always seeks to gratify his desires with the least possible exertion. Henry George, who adopts the most fallacious parts of the old science as the foundation for a still more fallacious superstructure of his own. savs of this principle that it is to political economy what the law of gravitation to physics.

Applied to international commerce this maxim leads directly to free trade. If a man can gratify his desires with less exertion by producing some one commodity and exchanging that for the others which his wants require, his. natural disposition will be to seek those exchanges, wherever he can make them to best present advantage, whether at home or abroad. So plausible is this argument, if the premise be admitted, and so easy is it to admit premises which have the sanction of scientific authority, that it is common to hear protectionists concede that free trade is undoubtedly right in theory, but is open to objections in practice.

Curiously enough, however, of all the writers who have employed this maxim not one has instilled his resort to it by the further proposition that it is best for mankind that every man shall gratify his desires with the least possible exertion. Hut, manifestly, unless this is true, the maxim has no practical value. That the general disposition of men is to get as much enjoyment with as little labor as possible is not to be doubted. Hut it mav be that to follow that disposition is not always the road to the greatest good. It is the province of political economy to point out how the energies of man can be most effectively applied to the production of wealth, taking that word to cover all material things which contribute to happiness. That this way is to be found in the guidance of enlightened judgment rather than blind impulse need not be said.

And when the question is put directly no one will say that to gratify our desires with the least present exertion is the highest good. On the contrary, the highest good is to make the greatest exertion. Man's best achievements are his victories over the torces of nature. It is these that bring him power, growth and wealth. Just in proportion as he subdues the earth he rises in the scale of being. The South Sea Islander plucks his bread from a tree the New Englander bakes his from tlour ground from grain grown on soil subjugated by labor and skill. Who eats the better bread? And which process of bread making develops the better race of men

The people of the Argentine Republic export annually over twenty million dollars worth of raw hides and skins, of which the greater part are sent to Kngland. There they go through the hands of skillful workmen, and are turned first into leather, and then into the thousand and one things made of leather, and a portion of the product is sent back in exchange for more hides. So long as cattle are plenty it may cost the South American ranchers less exertion to lasso

THE JOURNAL.

and skin them and exchange their hides tor English-made boots and saddles than to carry on the business of tannir.g and .manufacturing themselves. Hut when they have done that a hundred years what are they? Skinners of cattle still,

Meanwhile their English customers have been studying chemistry, inventing machines and processes, training skilled operatives, and building up a great and beautiful industry—that of transforming the perishable skins of dead animals into forms of permanent use and beauty, What was once the coat of the king of the herd becomes a belt transmitting the I power of an engine to thousands of spindles: what was the babv jacket of the youngest of his family furnishes a I 'binding for Tennyson's poems, to be [Wuscd, admired, enjoyed for a hundred years. Who. in this interchange of 1 commodities gets the most and the highest good from the cattle on the

South American plains

THK STKAM KNOINK.

We are never tired of dilating upon the wonders which the steam engine has worked in the world. And, indeed, it is a subject upon which exaggeration is scarcely possible. Hut how has it brought mankind such incalculable I good? Tartly in mere diminution of labor, undoubtedly, but more in the development of the race. The men who design, make and use steam machinery and its accessories form the most splendid armv that ever trod the earth.

Here is one of them—a plain looking man in soiled overalls and with workhardened hands. Me modestly calls himself a mechanic. Hut he has the brain, the eye, the hand to fashion and join together the parts and organs of that king among machines—a locomotive engine. Not a man, not all the men on the face of the earth nine generations ago could have done it. Hv his side stands his comrade the engineer—the bravest soldier in the industrial army, a true heroin the service of humanity. Who does not doff his mind's cap in involuntary admiration to see him mount the footboard to take out bis train? The grandest acts become commonplace bv repetition but when one stops to think of the wild charge of the night express into the battlements of darkness, and of the courage and nerve of the one man whose eve is on the track and whose ham! is on the throttle, he must be made of soggy clav whose pulse does not quicken as though he read of the stand of the Greeks at Thermopyhe, or the charge of the Old Guard at Waterloo.

The steam engine has cheapened the cost of all commodities. Hut a more important fact is. that it has increased the consumption oi them. It has multiplied our wants and created new ideals of happiness and standards of comfort. Men's desires have so grown with their growth that it costs as much exertion to gratify them now as it ever did—if

any odds, more. Hut life has become a new experience. Once beggar* from nature, we have become her taskmasters. It is a good thing to have the steam engine transport us and our goods over the world swiftly and cheaply, and lake the place of human bone and muscle in the labor of life, but greater than this is the change it has wrought in us. It has lifted us up to a new place in the universe it has made us lords and masters of fire and water it has enabled us to accomplish more in the subjugation of the earth within the last hundred years than our predecessors accomplished in five thousand years preceding.

KI.KCT'RK'ITY.

Man's latest triumph over the forces of nature is the conquest of electricity. In all our schools young men are eagcrlv studying its nature and laws. Inventors are wrestling with its problems, and thousands of workmen are building and learning to build those weird, mvsterious machines by which it is turned into light, heat and power. In a few years the occupations of electrical engineering and .mechanics .will rival

the steam engineering and mechanics of to-day and, like them, will be occupations to develop the best powers ot all who enter them. The electric light is a beautiful thing, and the electric, car is a convenient thing, hut the coming electrical armv is more than either.

Suppose, to put a very extreme case, that we could make a bargain with England to supply us with all the electrical apparatus we shall use lor a bun dred years to come and take her pay in potatoes. We have the land potato culture is one of the simplest forms of labor such a market for such a crop would realize a free trader's fondest dream. And yet, who would not pronounce it folly to make such a bargain? What price could she pay us for the tubers that would compensate us for the loss of the industry

THK I.KSSON OF HISTORY.

Not to pursue these illustrations further, the sum of the truth which they suggest is. that the highest good of man is to be found in the largest victory over the forces of nature. Out ot every such battle he comes equipped anew for further conquests, and with keener powers of enjoyment and stronger desires to urge him on. All history bears witness to this great truth. Man's first step toward civilization was to subdue the useful animals, to domesticate tlocks and herds his next was to subdue the soil and cultivate fields his next was to sail the sea. So were laid the foundations of agriculture and commerce. Along with these came clothesmaking, house-building, pottery, metal working, glass-blowing, and a long train of useful arts which led the favored branches of the race to a comparatively high civilization. Hut all this was slow and painful progress compared with that which has been exhibited by some nations within the last two or three centuries. And of this progress one of the remarkable features is its inequality. There are a few nations still in the barbarous state of a thousand years ago a good many that have advanced only by outside influence and pressure, and a few that go forward by irresistible powers of their own. drawing the whole world after them. And, if we look closely into the conditions which accompany these widely different stages of progress, Wc shall find in every case that they correspond to the relative advance of the people in the work of subduing the earth. A people who live by the how and arrow are a barbarous community the world over.

A people who live on flocks and herds and the productions of the soil at first hand, are poor, simple-minded, backward and unprogressive. The rich and powerful nations, the leaders of the world's progress, the nations within whose borders Art and Science flourish and life rises highest, are the nations that practice and reward invention, make and use machinery, and compel every element and force of nature— water, air, sunshine, gravity, heat, electricity and all chemical affinities—to do service in ministering to the wants of man.

There was a time, ages ago. when the richest nation was the one owning most docks and herds. There was a later time when commerce was the chief source of the greatest national wealth. Hut that time, too, has passed. Undoubtedly commerce is, and always will be, a means of large profit. Hut the main source of national wealth now, and for the future, so far as we can see it, is production and of ail production, those forms of it in which skilled and organized labor, aided by machinery, converts intrinsically valueless material into useful commodities. This is a fact often overlooked by tariff talkers. They cite the examples of Venice, and Holland and Kngland. as though nothing were neccssary in order to repeat those achievements but to open our ports and man our ships, and sail away for golden fleeces. Hut the world has taken a new departure since

those days. The hest business ot mankind no longer consists in carrving things about, but in making them..

till. II NIJAMENT.M. TKST.

pon the foundation of the^e simple principles we can now approach the tar ifT question. Every one will agree that, as between protection and free tiade, that is tlie better policv which will promote in larger degree the real and permanent prosperity of the whole people in all their interests. Upon this issue there are many arguments and many kinds of argument on each side, all of which are valid, and some of which are weighty. Hut if tlie views already expressed are sound, the whole fndd of the inquiry can be covered bv this comprehensive test Which policy will for that nation, at that time, secure to its people the better opportunity and the stronger incentives to pursue with ardor those studies, arts and occupations which lead to the subjugation of the forces of nature to the service of man This is the wav upward. It is the road to wealth, power and happiness. All laws and policies which help in that direction are good all which hinder, are bad. All relations with foreign nations which promote that progress are useful and all those which retard it are hurtful.

It is implied in this statement that protection is not necessarily and always and everywhere the better policy. And so I believe. It is in every cast* a question of time, place and circumstances. The very same reasoning which in one case demonstrates the superior advantages of protection may, in another, demonstrate the superior advantages of free trade. Of this fact, a complete illustration is found in the history and experience of the two greatest nations of the world to-day.

F.NGI.AN 1).

Fifty years ago no other nation had at once such combination of capital, machinery, inventive genius, skilled labor, ships, sailors and military and naval strength as England. With a hive of human bees crowding her little islands at home, with vast foreign possessions unsupplied with those commodities which labor-saving machinery was multiplying and cheapening, her ships, her flag and her wide-open ports were all that her people required to put within their grasp the commercial supremacy of the world. At the same time her situation was unfavorable for the highest development of the powers of her people within and among themselves. Her small area limited her natural productions to a tew things.

Wheat, grass, oats, barley, flax and vegetables were all her valuable crops. Of metals, she had only iron in abundance, with a partial supply of tin. In order to carry on manufacture upon a large anil varied scale she must buy abroad all her cotton, and the greater part of her wool, silk, hides, copper and tin, besides all materials found only in tropical regions. She was obliged to huv largely of food, and with growth and prosperity must face the necessity of buying it still more largely in the future. She could not find profitable employment for all her people without manufactures, and with the improved processes which she had recently discovered she could not find sale among her own people for the commodities manufactured. In short, she had outgrown the resources of her home territory. She could not within her own borders feed her own people, or supply them with employment without manufactures, or furnish them with material to work upon at manufacture, or find a market for their productions.

She had come to this situation after long maintenance of a protective policy. Whether she could have reached it without the aid of protection, or not, is a question which I will not stop to discuss. The broad fact is, that she did reach a point at the ftul of some centuries of protection at which, in the matter of preparation for that conquest over the forces of nature which is the distin-