Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1888 — WATTERSON ON TARIFF. [ARTICLE]

WATTERSON ON TARIFF.

He Shows that High Protection Reduces the Rewards of Labor. Taxing One Man to Enrich Another—How the Farmers Are Robbed. Cheapening of Goods Due Wholly to the Labor-Saving Invention#. Our High Tariff 'Protects England Against American Competition in Foreign Markets. LHenry W attar boh, in Harper’s Magazine.] To the average understanding of this generation of Americans no word connected with the operations of government preseute, in proportion to its significance, so slight a meaning as the little word “Tariff.® Although the discussion of the “tariff” has occupied a share of public attention during our time equal to If not greater than that given anjr one of the questions which have aroused the universal and excited feeling of the people and arrayed sections and parties in angry controversy, the subject has tailed to take iiold of the popular imagination iu a degree approaching its actual relation to the business and bosoms of men. The Georgian who for the sake of hospitality submitted to every manner of indignity from his guests, until, having reduced the company to two, the offender began “deliberately to talk about the tariff”—when he was prompt y ejected —affords a humorous aud not an entirely exaggerated illustration of the aversion with which a large class of citizens turn away from what it regards as beyond ordinary comprehension. Yet no single function of government refers so directly and so incessantly to the personal affairs of men, women and children as the power to tax applied to the taxation of foreign commodities, aud, as it shall be the purpose of this paper to show, no question is simpler of elucidation when stripped of the sophisms that invest it and reduced to the dimensions of a business transaction between the Government and its citizens, which as a matter of fact it is, no more and no less. The natural right of maD to dispose of his handiwork as he pleases, subject alone to the public necessity, is unquestioned. In ancient times no Imitations were set upon this individual freedom of trade. The theory of restriction, as it is known to the European world and advocated in the United Slates, is of comparatively modern growth, having its origin in the need of money to maintain the increasing coat of monarchy and a mistaken belief on the part of the mercantilism which succeeded the feudalism of the middle ages that artificial restrains set upon commerce somehow affected the currency, and woul i keep money at homo. The war of the American revolution was the direct consequence of the policy of restriction established by Great Britain over her colonies, and so fixed was the adherence to that policy, with its prescriptive rights and preferred classes, its taxation of the many for the benefit of the few, that after the establishment of the Government of the United States, England declined our proposal to institute free trade between the two countries. In those days it was not pretended that restriction protected the work-people. It was an exclusive prerogative of the aristocracy, who had no motive to conceal its actual operation and effect in securing to them the full advantage of the monopolies they enjoy by reason of royal favor, in which the mass of mankind had no part nor lot. The exposure and overthrow of the monetary error, which misled the merchants, did not destroy the dogma of restriction (protection) it had brought into being. Founded in the selfishness and avarice of man, that dogma has sought successive points of refuge and defense, as sxperience lias demonstrated its fallacies and compelled it to retreat from untenable positions. In America we are chiefly concerned with the inconsistencies it has disclosed to us during nearly a century of special pleading. It secured its admission to our national policy in the dual character of a patriot aiming to make us self-sustainiug in time of war and an economist bent only upon the development of our infant industr.es. Before it could attain recognition and access, however, it had to ignore that clause in our Declaration of Independence, born of resistance to oppressive taxation, which denounces King George the Third “lor cutting off our trade with all parts of the world.” To hold its own it haß had to violate the spirit and letter of the Federal Constitution, which limits the power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imports and excises” exclusively to public purposes, defined “to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.” Driven from tho absurdity of nourishing “infants” older than the Republic itself, aud unable longer to dispute a construction of the organic law of the land from our highest judicial tribunal, which declares that “to lay with one hand the power of the Government on the property of the citizen and with the other bestow it upon favored individuals to aid private enterprises and build tip private fortunes, is none the less robbet~y because it is done under the forms of law and is called taxation,” this dogma of restriction, which from its inception has never toen anything other than an instrument of the capitalist and au axiom in the gospel of Mammon, now turns to the work-people, hitherto so unconsidered, and, masquerading as a philanthropist, proclaims its mission to be the “protection of American industry from the pauper labor of Europe.” Thus brought to a final issue, the dogma of restriction, or “protection,” as it prefers to call itself, is reduced to two false claims—the first, that it is necessary to enable our domestic manufacturers to compete with their foreign rivals; and the second, that it guarantees to those engaged in manufactures certain and high wages, securing to the country, meanwhile, diversified indhstries and a home market

To these ends the vast majority of the people, including all the farmers who are engaged in unprotected employment?, are required to pay a bounty averaging nearly fifty per cent and the principles of wise and just taxation, Which, as tho dews of Heaven, should fall on all alike, are, in defiance of the cited opinion of our Supreme Court, made to wait attendant upon the private interests of a favored elass. Nay, nor is this the worst of it, .for in order that it 3 theory of development may continue to assess the many to enrich a few, to widen tho distance between capital and labor, to create deeper and darker contrasts in human conditions—prolonging forever a system of excessive taxation, which was imposed to meet the exigencies of war, and admitted by those who imposed it to be a great popular and patriotic sacrifice—it is argued that we must abate no part of the exactions imposed, under penalty of destroying the business of the country and relegating our work-people to starvation. If I should be asked to furnish a title-page for the history of a career at once so adaptable and so pragmatic, I should imitate the brevity of the current play-billl and call it "Assurance.” Certainly that quality has• not been wanting to the varying face it has from time to time turned to the public, its latest and present aspect being one of menace. Starting out as a patriot who would levy a small tax for purposes of common safety and defense, then assuming the role of a statesman who would temporarily advance this

tax until our infant industries should gain their stature and stand upon a sure footing, tuen donning the garments of the humanitarian who lives only 10 establish and maintain mstuntions of eleemosynary enterprise, our dogma, high protection, feeis itself at last strong enough to threaten us with industrial extinction unless we yield ourselves wholly and permanently and without question to a domination which until lately was not dreamed of by the most sanguine apostles of protection. Circumstance has certainly favorad restrictive tnsories in the United States. During twenty years they were ieit m undisputed possession of the nnnds of the people and the pubiio policy. In spite, however, of tiie pretensions they now put forward, and the vast accumulations ot wealth to the creation ot which tney lay exclusive claim, the ideal state so confidently pred cted for the era of protection was not realized. On the contrary, tue inevitable consequences of restriction—beginuing with artihcial stimulation, hign prices, and pieniy of work, to end with glutted markets, excessive competition, strikes, lockouts, aud the survival of the fittest—called the question once again to the front. Tue exactions ot the tariff having’ at last accumulated in the National Treasury a surplus that cannot be disregarded, and must be considered—au urgency which brings forward for review tne whole question of Federal taxation and revenue—tney now insist that the doctnue of protection, pure aud simple, is not merely au eoouomic truth to be proclaimed at ail hazards, but a fixed national policy which shall not be dis turned On tne case so made up, party forces are about to be joined; and if aome conclusion be not reached m Congress at the coming session, tne question will go to the country as me chief issue iu the Presidential campaign. The situation is one wnich revenue reformers have long wished for, aud which they hail with satisfaction. They think they see in it the beginning of the end of excessive, and tnerefore of needless aud unjust, taxation. Protection is advertised to do many other things, such as the building of cities and the opening of mines, unconscious, or refusing to aLow, that cities spring from a concentration of population, altogether independent of tariff laws, aud that wherever accessible mineral wealtn has been discovered in a sufficient abundance to justify its development, capital has never been wanting. But the mainstays of the prevailing protectionist argument are the manuiacturer, who thinks hs cannot stand without the help of high import duties levied upon the commodities of his foreign rival, and the operative, who is induced 10 believe that these dudes affect his wages, and in some way keep him out of the poorhouse.

The truth is that protection in America, as little as free trade m England, has wrought what was claimed for it and expected of it by its partisans —to wit: tno extinction of pauperism. Nor will thoughtlul men looa to any theory of legislation or plan of government to do that As long as tuere are inequalities in human character they will show themselves in human conditions. The frugal man wul save whilst the thriftless man wastes his substance, and tp the end of time the reward of sobriety and skill will be set against the penalties attached to incapacity aud sloth. Alt that statesmen can do is to consider what is right and what is best, and contrasting opposite policies and systems with assistance 01 collected ml ormation, follow the injunction of Paul, and “bold to that which is good. ” Government is more or less a compromise, and too much in wisdom may not be required of it But wise and free men should have a care that its compromises are just to all, and not the artifices of self-interest and class-inierest, disguised as philanthropists. 'those who demaud the revision of our war tariff, the reduction of its duties, and the reform of its abuses do not deceive themselves, and have no wish to dupe the people into the notion that the simple righting of a wrong, however great, is going to work a miracle in die state of the country. They dream of no Utopia. They advance no visionary theories. They are at once practical in their aims and conservative in tliair methods. They point to the excess of rovenue wrung from the people as a proof of needless aud therefore unjust taxation. They point to duties levied rather upon the necessaries of life than on its luxuries, aud so fixed as to yield the largest bounty to the manufacturer, the highest cost to the consumer, and the least revenue to the Government, yet* notwithstanding, amassing a vast surplus in the Treasury. They deny that such a sacrifice of tho taxpayer is either expedient or just, that it represents any right of domestic industry, that it confers any blessing on the domestic workman, and stigmatizing it, as the Supreme Court has stigmatized it, as “robbery under the forms of the law,” they propose to substitute in place of the system which exacts it a system less restrictive to commerce and less cistly to the great body of tho people. But the strength of their case lies in the assumptions of the protectionist theory that the country can be enriched by taxation, aud its attendant claim that Congress has the right to levy taxes for any other than for public purposes. In considering tne question here I shall lim't myself to the two propositions on which the advocates of protective duties mainly rely —that they cheapen the home market aud insure high wages. If the error of these pretensions cau be shown the claim of protection upon the community at large aud the operative in particular falls to tho ground. There is but one way, however, to tell the truth, and that is never complex. No moralist cau successfully maintain that in a free Government like ours it is right to tax one man for the benefit of another, and no statistician can demonstrate how prices can be lowered by increasing the cost of production. The 30,000,000 of American farmers, for instance— 10 say nothing of tho millions of Americans engaged in mercantile and professional pursuits, who are in the same boat with the farmers—have no protection for their products. They pay relatively as high for the labor they employ as the American manufacturer. Indeed, tho difference between the wages he pays his work-people and those paid by his foreign rivals to their work-people is often greater than the difference in wages paid respectively by American and European manufacturers. Yet the American farmer maintains a successful competition with “the pauper labor of Europe.” Why is this? and is it not an answer to the plea for protection to the manufacturer which is neither given to nor asked by the farmer? The farmer takes his products abroad and sells them at a profit in the home market of his foreign rival. But he cannot purchase in that market what ho wants without paying a bounty in tho form of protective duties, collected the moment he touches hiq native shore, for the benefit of the American manufacturer. In other words, he is compelled by law to pay out of what he gets for his unprotected produce, a tax to enable his fel-low-citizen, the protected manufacturer, to make a profit on what he produces. What reimbursement does the farmer get for his forced tribute to the manufacturer? He gets nothing. He is told that he gets a home market for what he has to sell, and a cheaper market for what he has to buy. If he did, that would end the argument But he does not, because if he had not exhausted the home market he would have nothing to send abroad to sell, and if the home manufacturer could and did undersell the foreign market, from which the farmer is excluded by protective duties, what nee 1 would the home manufacturer have for those duties? They are levied. to enable him to make a profit against his foreign rival, and to the extent of his wants the American farmer must pay the difference. No casuistry, supported by a great array of figures, can alter this fact, which is perfectly understood by the American farmers. That rich mineral deposits invite population and that their development makes wealth no one will deny. The discovery of gold in California is a case in point As* by magic a new world sprang into existence, with every man-

ner of diversified industry. All that the advocates of protection olaim for their theory was realized su be tantiaily under free trade, and in an incredibly short period of time. Yet the gold-digger neither asked nor obtained protection against “the pauper labor of Europe,” and in the subsequent outcry against Chinese cheap labor the protectionist idea, as we are need to hearing it, cut no figure whatever. Diversified industries and high-pnoed food are the results, not of tariff laws, but of the concentration of masses of psople at given points favorable to .commerce and manufactures, which spring from the concentration, and not the concentration from them. The protectionists confuse cause and effect They claim everything for their dogma, and allow nothing to natura But let us return to the question of prices and see how the account stands between the manufacturer and the consumer. It is assuredly true that in the last twenty-five years there has been a decline in prices. There have been causes operating universally which have lowered to a remarkable extent the price of most manufactured articles, viz.: the laborsaving machines of the busy inventors. In this multiplication of the comforts of life through inventions, America has shared to some extent, but to a much less extent than she would have shared had her productions not been restricted by the “protective system. The products of mechanical skill are lower in price in America to-day than prior to 1860; yet this decline can not be traced to local causes, for the decline is general. (Invention accounts for it.) Certainly the United States tariff has not lowered the price of English products. That the American products are not as low as those of Eugiand is evident from a comparison of the export trade of England and that of this country. In the metals England exported $237,500,000 in 1880, against $14,116,0W of American exports. In textiles England exported in 1880 $534,500,000 against #1C,210,000 exported by the United States. In 18S0 we exported raw cotton to all countries to the value of $239,000,000; but during the same year Great Britain, besides supplying her own domestic consumption from the raw cotton she bought of us, exported manufactured cotton to the value of #375,000,000. England can undersell us only because the tariff has not reduced tho prices in this country to tho level of prices in England. In 1880 our manufacturers sent to Central aud South America #3,899,400 worth of manufactured cotton goods; but the English sent to the same territory—a territory contiguous to us, and under normal conditions exclusively 0ur5—#51,235.0j0; or, to state it differently, Great Britain sells thirteen dollars’ worth of cotton goods to these American States south of us to one dollar’s worth sent by our owu manufacturers. Manifestly England controls this trade because she furnishes the goods cheaper than does the manufacturer iu the United States.

Perhaps the most striking fact of recent industrial history is the improvement m the manufacture of steel rails (by the Bessemer English method), by which the price in England has fallen from #61.59 in 1868 to #lB in in 1886. In the same time the price in America, which in 1868 was #l5B in depre ciatel currency, declined to #26 m 1886, and in the last twelve months has #44. It is customary for the protectionist tt> point to this steel-rail industry as convincing proof of the value of the tariff in decreasing prices, but as the price has fallen in England far below the American level, the cause cannot be local. It must be general; it must be due to an influence that worki as effectively elsewhere as here. This influence is the inventive genius of the age. This steel-rail tix is a perpetual burden. The lowest quotation on Bntisfi rails in 1886 was #1&15; freight by steamer to New Orleans, $2.25; dockage, eta, #1; duty, #l7; total, $35.40, allowing nothing for commission. When the American price advanced to S4O importations increased. Iu the year 1886 the product of the American Htoel-ltail Combination was 1,500,0 0 tons. There are in tue United States about 140,000 miles of railroad, and this year the new roads will reach to 10,000 miles, possibly 12,000. One hundred tons of steel rails are requirel for every mile of road where steel is used. It is safe to say that the steel rails cost the companies sls more, year inaDd year out, becauseof the tariff, or $1,500 for every mile of road built, Multiplying this by 10,000, the number of milos to be built iu 1887, for tho new roads alone the tax is $15,000,000. These rails last only ten years. The entire railroad system of the* United States has to be renewed every ten years, or at the rate at present of 14,000 miles a year. The additional cost of this at #1,5J0 per mile, or for the 14,000 miles, is #21,000,000. In other words tue tariff will soon impose upon the builders of new roads, and on those who renew the old ones as they wear out, a tax of $36,000,000 in excess of what the cost would be were tho American railroads permitted to purchase rails wbere they could buy them cheapest A part of this tax is capitaiiz d, and goes into the cost of the roads; the remainder increases the operating expenses to that extent, and falls chiefly on the farmers.

A more striking example than this of the real character of the high protective system may not be found, and it ought to serve both as a revelation and a warniug. All those vast profits, forced by law out of the whole people, havo gone into a few hands, aud have, in a few years, Luilt up enormous private wealth at the public expense. They were, aud they continue to be, an assessment upon every mde of travel made, and every pound of freight carried, for the benefit of a specially favored and a very small class. Yet, though larger in degree, they are not different in kind from cbuntless other impositions of the tariff to which the country is indented for tho startling inequalities of fortune witnessed by the present generation of Americans. The old English statute that, under rigid penalties, required the dead to be buried in woolens, for the purpose of encouraging the manufacture of textile fabrics, was scarcely more grotesque than are some of the jobs which have crept into our tariff, which, if they were not so unjust and audacious, would lie laugbable. For example, after the great Chicago fire, when Congress in an impulse of generosity had remitted from taxation for one year ail building material designed for the reconstruction of the stricken city, it was found that an item excluding lumber from the proposed exemption had mysteriously imbedded itself in the act. [A trick of Senator Ferry, of Michigan.] They also show how, as long as such ODportunities for private gain exist in our protective system, the public, with its general interests, will stand at a great disadvantage against private enterprise, with its incessant and pointed activity ever present at Washington, aud ever watchful of the course and tendency of legislation. The strerfgth of the ultra-proteotionist's hold upon the American workman, which is admitted, springs from the workman’s dread of want, and the danger of this want is a direct result of conditions brought about by the ultra-protectionist and his theory of high protection.

Cobden said, forcibly and truly, that “when two employers run after one workman wages rise, and when two workman run after one employer wages falL” In the JJnited States the restriction of manufacturers to the home market, with no real restriction to immigration, coupled with the increase of the use of labor-saving machinery, has wrought this result, making work a boon, so that, in spite of the escapes and reliefs afforded our workpeople by cheap lands, discontent among them is universal It must be a bad system which in such a country produces such an outcry. In the face of it, where is the ultra-protectionist’s argument that the American operative is the most prosperous and happy in the world? That he has more of what is called liberty is true. That his opportunities for improving his fortune are greater in a free, fresh, young country, not yet half occupied, than they are. or can be, in the crowded countries of Europe, with tne.ancient aristocratic fences and con-

▼rations still upon thorn, goes without saying: Tnesa beneficent and exceptional features of the New World over the cramped oonditious of the Old World are no more referable to the tariff, however, than they are referable to the simple rule of three. Yet in spite of them the American workman is less satisfied and makes louder complaint than the English or the French workman. If protection gave him such constant work and sufficient wages, as is claimed, why the clamor, why the strikes and why the locxonts? Certain it is that no such things came to pass among us until the theory and practice of protection had reached their fullest recognition and development As an argument to sustain the plea that the tariff increases wages we are told that wages are higher than they were prior to 186 T That wages are higher generally is a statement not open to dispute. During these twenty-five yeirs the inventor has revolutionized all mechanical industries; in other words, the manufacturer has employed machines to such au extent that the amount of manual labor engaged in the industry iu proportion to product has been greatly decreased. It is roughly estimated that iu the last 100 vears, or since the application of steam to machinery, considering only the various processes of cotton cultivation and manufacture, machinery has so improved that one man does the work it then required twenty-five to da Hence we find that there haß been a steady increase in the v.ilue (purchasing power) of labor and a depression in the value of monev.

The sixteenth annual report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics deals at length with the advance in wages from 1830 to 1860. It shows there has been an advance, with only slight fluctuations, from the earliest time until now. Even the commercial revulsions of 1837 and 1857 served only as a check, and had no positive effect in tho opposite direction. Still further, these tables show that the revenue tariff established in 1846, aud being greatly reduced by the Republicans in 1857, and continuing till 1861, did not interfere with this movement toward increased wages. During all that period, according to these tables, the upward movement continued without interruption, if not with accelerated foroe.

Turning to the fifteenth annual report of the same bureau for information concerning the course of wages, we find (page 424)uotioed a continual advanoe from 1860 until 1872; then, a steady dechue until 1880; then a rally and a continued improvement until 1883. Iu the United States, from 1860 to 1883, the advanoe was 28.86 per cent In Great Britain wages advanced from 1872 to 1877, fell off between 1877 and 1880, and advanced again between 1880 aud 1883. From 1872 to 1883 the advance in Great Britain was 9.74 per cent In Massachusetts wages iu 1883 were 5.41 per cant lower than in 1882, notwithstanding the rally in 1880. In this same report Col Wright submits some figures as to the course of wage t in Great Britain sot a few of the most important industries, pr<P pared by Goorge Lord, President of the Manchester Board of Trade, showing an average increase in wages from 1850 to 1883 of 39. IS per cent

These facts make it clear that the advance in wages is independent of the tariff. Wages advanoed in America from 1830 to 1860 steadily through all tariff changes, and during a period of fourteen years when we had a tariff for revenue only. From 1860 to 1883, during a period of war and financial demoralization and political excitement, the advance continued, but with periods of fluctuation more plainly marked, registering in the twentythree years an increase of 28.36 per cent. In Great Britain, uuder a near approach to free trade, we find in the principal mechanical industries an advance from 1850 to 1883 of 39.18 percent, and—what was not the case to anything like the same extent in Americaaccompanied by a marvelous expansion of export of manufactured goods Except for our vast area of choap, fertile and unoccupied lands we should have had far greater want among our work people thau they have ever yet known, aud when ihore are no more such lands open to occupation, who shall say that the load we have put upon ourselves shall not be heavier than we can bear? This view of the case disposes effectually, 1 think, of the pretense that the American operative owes anything of his improved condition over the European operat ve to the high tariff. At the same time it clearly illustrates the way our great centers of population are drained of their surplus laburers when tlie results of overproduction, inseparable from protected machinery and restricted markets, have culminated m the inevitable lockouts which such processes compel. Manufactured products may be divided into three elements—the labor, the raw material, and the capital required to bring these two together. If the price of the raw material is high, labor’s reward must be low. If the use of money—or the rate of interest—is high, there is a corresponding decrease in the rewards of labor. But political economists have noticed during the last fifty years, as capital has accumulated, the rate of interest aud the tendency of profit have been downward. As these elements in the cost of production decrease, there is a greater margin allowed for the reward of labor. Because of the vast improvement in mechanical machines and the wonderful progress made in transportation by Besße ner steel rails, the general condition of the laboring classes throughout the world has been advanoed. Iu this advance the laborer *ot America has shared; but in so far as the war tar.ff enhances the cost of tho raw material used by the manufacturer, the wages of the American laborer suffer. In so far as the market of the American product is restricted, and the uncertainty of th e rewards of capital caused thereby is augmented, the laborer pays the penalty. In order that labor may secure the highest reward it is essential that the productive power of money and machinery shall bi greatest, for it is from the product of th s jo.nt labor of man aud machinery that his wages must ultimately come. The high tariff enhances the cost of machinery and raw material and restricts the markets of American products, preventing exportation, and in so doing instead of enhancing its effect is to decrease the wages of the American workingman.

As Mr. Edward Atkinson puts it, where labor is free and indnstry progressive, improvements in production result in giving increased abundance at lower prices to the consumer, and in yielding a larger proportionate sharfeof the aggregate product to the workman, at the same time compelling capital to satisfy itself with a smaller share. This is the situation in England, where forty years of freedom from restriction have improved the condition of the workpeople at least twofold. If starvation and wretchedness still exist among the English operatives it is bacanse man can devise no system to extinguish incapacity, disease, and crime. In America, on the other hand, the restrictive feature of protection has defeated the ends of the sound economic laws above stated by its denial of continuous work, its abridgment of the purchasing power of wages, and its erection in the mind of the workman of a desire for legislative help, which, seeing that it has been established in favor of his employer, be not unnaturallv or unreasonably demands for himself. Tho English workman does not dread cheap labor. His antagonist is expert labor. It w the inexpert pan per labor of E urope which is overmatched bv the skillel, high-priced labor of England. Our chief jnuropean rival is England. Yet the specter of the pauper labor of Europe, which England despises, walks his round as sentinel soy protection in America.

Altbough money wages are higher in the United States and in Australia than in Europe, wages are higher in free-trade England than in any protected European country, whilst the prices of all things manufactured or imported are lower in England than in any protected country. Unless these facts and data can be disproved they demonstrate conclusively the

fallacy that protective duties have anything whatever to do with high wages. The significance of what is railed “the labor movement” m the United States ran not be underestimated by any thoughtful person. Its aims may be visionary; the motives of its leaders may bo good or they may be ill; ite methods may be violent; but it is a fact from which the country cannot escape, and the moet serious fact of the time. It presents itself to us &b it" has never presented itself before in the annals of government, for under our system of universal suffrage and free elections each citizen is a sovereign. The vote of the humblest workman can kill the vote of the richest capitalist, and the day may not b 9 distant when there will be united organization, thorough discipline, and a determined purpose among the workmen to commit the homicide. What is the matter with them? What is their complaint? What do they want? They have, and have for twenty-five years had, all the protection which the most exacting friend of subsidy could desire. They are assured by the protectionists that they are better paid aud better off than their comrades in any part of the world, and measurably this is true, and for reasons, as I have attempted to show, other than high import duty. For years the advocates of a thorough revision and a real reform of the tariff have urged that if the interests subsidized under it suoceed in withstanding the appeals of conservative men and in continuing the policy of a refusal to consider the correction of admitted abuses, the time may come when excited and undiscriminating mobs will compass and control that which had better been intrusted to the oustody and determination of statesmen. It is the naturo of prescriptive pretensions, rights, and titles to be blind to danger nntil it is close upon them. The display of a wise forbearance and the exercise of the least foresight, according to our present ways of thinking, would, in the defenders of tho old order, witn its divinity of Kings and Queens, have savod Franoe the Terror. The French Revolution, bloody as it was and cruel, was a protest against pertinacity in taxation, errors and wrongs which would not listen to reform. The conceit that such explosions are no longer possible is born in ths vanity of civilization and the pride of nationality. That which has been may be. and to human suffering and frengy all things are possible. Each of the agos has had its angel of destruction. Ours seems to be organized monopoly; and who shall say that it mav not be permitted to run its oonrse and to flaunt its signals until it beoomes as oppressive and odious in America as feudul tenures became in Franoe, and in the end as destructive?