Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1887 — BLAINE’S INTERVIEW. [ARTICLE]

BLAINE’S INTERVIEW.

A Republican Newspaper on the Maine Man’s Sid lor the Nomination. A Campaign Conducted on “Slippery Jim’s” Platform Means Certain Defeat. [From the Chicago Tribune, hitherto an ardent Blaine advocate.] Mr. Blaine’s general position in this interview is that the war tariff shall be perpetuated, the. tobacco, which he oddly includes among “the necessaries of life,” shall be made tree of tax, and that Congress must devise methods (or squandering the surplus by building fortifications that may be blown to smithereens by the next improvement of dynamite weapons, instead of removing it by the obvious and natural plan suggested by the President. This position will not commend itself to the Americau people, for unquestionably an immense majority believe in remitting a large share of these oppressive tariff taxes which bear upon the producing and consuming classes with crushing weight. It is the weakest ground Mr. Blaine has ever yet occupied, and no national party can expect to go into a Presidential campaign on that issue, no matter who may be be its leader, and win. It is a sufficient explanation of Mr. Blaine’s interview that he is a Pennsylvanian. He was brought up in an atmosphere of ultra-protection. He has sat at the feet of the high-tariff Gamaliels of that State, and imbibed thoir doctrines. Like all Pennsylvanians, Republicans or Democrats, he believes in enormous duties on imports for the purpose of coddling the mill bosses and protecting the so-called “infant industries” which long ago came of age and ought to be able to go alone. Every Pennsylvanian believes that the protective system promotes his interests, and that in promoting his interests it enhances the general good of the public. He also believes that the fanners out West are not injured by paying these enormous war bounties for the goods they oonsume, provided the tax goes into the pockets of Pennsylvanians. It is needless to say that it is a very narrow view. Mr. Blaine need not fear that a reduction of the tariff would cause a rush of factory operatives to the country and a consequent impoverisment of agriculture through excessive production and the ruin of the home market. If the wages of operatives are reduced,so will be the expenses of living, and the workers will have no occasion, out of mere spite, to flee the factory towns as the Jews fled Egypt. Tho declaration that hard times, panics, or any other sudden change in commerce will lead to an invasion of the country by city workers is a prediction often made but never verified. City workmen, accustomed to light labor, short hours, and all the amusements and dissipations of town life, can not be driven into the country and compelled to endure the hard toil, solitude, and isolation of the farm laborer. They will accept any wages in the cities before they will go on the farms. Such has been the universal experience in'the hardest of hard times. Deprived of wages and employment, the only city workers who seek the farms are those who were reared in the country and trained io youth to agricultural toil. When such has been the result in the worst panics and periods of depression ever known in this country, Mr. Blaine ought to rid himself of the Pennsylvania notion that a proper and necessary reduction of the excessive profits now made by mill and factory bosses will cause them to close their establishments and discharge their employes, or that the latter will go off in a huff and take to farming. Thorough Pennsylvanian that he is, Mr. Blaine can hardly treat the tariff question without reviving certain dogmas which are held almost as religion in that State by men of all parties, but which in other sections, and particularly in tho agricultural West, receive less and less credence year after year. First comes the familiar declaration that any proposed reduction of duties is in the nature of an attempt to secure “free trade,” or the total abolition of customhouse taxation. In fact, no considerable number of people in the United States favor “free trade” or anything approaching it, and moderate protection must of necessity prevail in the future for the reason that the revenue requirements of the Government are such that a scale of duties high enough to be actually protective will be imperative and must be preserved. Theoretically there may be a choice between five distinct policies—viz.: an ultra high tariff like the present, a high tariff like the. Clay tariff of 1842, a moderate tariff like that of 1846, a revenue tariff like that of 1857, or absolute free trade. There are many steps and stages between absolute i ree trade and high bounty protection. Ev--ery tariff is protective to the extent of the tax, whether it be 1 per cent,, 10 per cent., 50 per cent., or any other amount. The question is simply one of degree, and in the present situation of the Government the only issue is between an excessive tariff ■or the one substantially like the Clay tariff -of 1842 (then considered abnormally high, and higher than any tariff known before the present war tariff was adopted), which will afford moderate, justifiable and properly effective protection. There can be at present no issue of protection versus free trade. A tax of 1 per cent, on iron, steel, or any ■other product, would be simply protection to that extent. A tariff of 10 per cent, would be ten times as protective as one of 1 per cent., a tariff of 20 per cent, twice as protective as one of 10, and so on in proportion. Inasmuch as an average duty high aB Henry Clay ever advocated will be necessary to secure the revenues needed for the support of the Government, any question as to free trade or a very low tariff cannot be taken into consideration. Yet by Pennsylvanians, of all parties, the most moderate and necessary reductions are denounced as free-tradeism and hotly opposed. If Congress should adopt Clay’s high protective tariff of 1842, and cut off 33 £ per cent, from the present excessive duties, the result, according to Mr. Blaine, would be death and destruction to all protected interests. Under the tariff of 1846 the country escaped ruin, Mr. Blaine says, solely because of foreign wars creating a demand lor American products, and even as it was we had to endure a heavy draiu of gold. At that time Europe furnished no market except for cotton, tobacco, and turpentine, and this country was poor, producing little beyond its own needs. The powerful stimulus of

trade and commerce by the invention of labor-saving machinery had only begun to set in, and the country settled its foreign balances in gold because it coaid pay easier in the yield of the mines than in the productions of factories or farms. The country exported gold because it was the cheapest and best thing to do, and not because that policy was the result of the tariff. Mr. Blaine does not face the situation as it exists to-day. W T itb an increasing scarcity and appreciation of gold, the exhaustion of the arable public domain, and a heavy im* migration from Europe, there is no prospect that the prices of farm products or even the wages paid factory operatives will be advanced. The prices of agricultural produce are very low and promise to so continue for an indefinite period. The farmer buying his goods and supplies at a high protective bounty rate must sell his surplus products in the low free-trade markets of the world. If his condition or that of the factory operative is to be improved it must be by reducing the cost of living and cheapening the necessaries of life. Higher wages or higher prices for farm products become more and more improbable, and if the great laboring classes of the United States in city and country are to be benefited it must be by lessening the cost of living.