Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 October 1890 — HE IS FOR RECIPROCITY. [ARTICLE]

HE IS FOR RECIPROCITY.

MR. BLAINE WRITES ANOTHER LETTER ON THE QUESTION. He Explain* Whjv According to Hi* View*, Such a Policy Would Be of Advantage to the West —Free Trade Touched Upon. Boston dispatch; The following letter dated at Bar Harbor, Maine, is given out for publication: “Col. W. W. Clapp, Editor Boston Journal—My Dear Sir: lam in receipt of your favor asking me if I can attend the annual banquet of the Boot and Shoe club of Boston in October. You add that the members are ‘in hearty sympathy with my views regarding the best method of extending American trade, and would be glad to have me address them.’ “I regret that my engagements will not permit me to accept the invitation, but you will please thank the club for the compliment they pay me. I am glad to hear that tho members of the club are interested In a system of reciprocal trade with Latin America. They can do great good by counteracting a certain phase of New England opinion, entertained at home as well as in Washington—an opinion which \ must regard as in the highest degree unjvise and hurtful to New England interests. Now England is to receive in tho new tariff the amplest protection for every manufacturing industry within her borders, both great and small, and it will, in ray Judgment, be both inexpedient and injurious for her representatives to disregard a measure which will promote Western interests. “I have lately received a letter from Mr. J. F. Imbs of St. Louis, a leading representative of the flour Interests and president of the late convention of millers at Minneapolis. Speaking for the grain and flouring interest of that great section Mr. Imbs savs that ‘advices of recent date from Cuba state that the duties now collected on American flour are at a higher rate than was first supposed to be the case.’ And he adds; ‘1 respectfully submit that the American miller will be unable to retain any part of the Cuban flour trade unless immediate relief is secured.’ “In view of these facts is it possible that a protectionist Congress can even think of opening our markets to Cqba’s products free while allowing a great Western interest to be absolutely excluded from her market by a prohibitory tariff? With reciprocity the West can annually sell many hundred thousand barrels of flour in the markets of Cuba and Porto Rico, together with a large mass of other agricultural products. Without reciprocity she will be driven more and more from those markets.

“Giving the fullest protection to ail Eastern interests, as the proposed tariff does, surely no man of good Judgment, certainly no protectionist of wise forecast, wishes to expose a Westera Interest to serious injury, especially when It Is manifestly easy to protect and promote it—manifestly easy because at this very time tho boards of trade, the chambers of commerce, and public opinion In Havana are demanding reciprocal trade with the United States. I select Cuba apd. Port Rico for examples because in certain quarters it has been said that, while we might secure reelprocy with some little countries in South America, we could do nothing with the Spanish islands. Let us at least give the Spanish islands an opportunity to speak for themselves. “Certain wise men ask: How can wo sell farm products in South America when the same things are produced there? Cereals are undoubtedly grown in tho southernmost parts of South America, but tho wise men will remember that cereals and sugar do not grow in the same soil, and that the sugar countries of South and Central America and the West India Islands contain 40.000,000 of people, who import the largest portion of their breadstuffs. Indeed, the largest part of the sugar product of all Latin America is at our doors, and we can greatly enlarge our exchanges there if Congress will give ns the opportunity for reciprocal trade. “Ido not mean,in anything I have said, to imply that reciprocity is only a Western interest. As I remarked in a note to Senator Frye, it will prove beneficial and profitable both to the farm and the shop. What, for instance, could be more natural or more just than that in giving a free market in the Uiflted States to hides from tho Argentine Republic we should ask the Argentine Republic to give a better market than we now have for the product of leather from the United States? Tho many forms in which our business interests will be promoted by reciprocity cannot be known until the aotive commercial men of the United states shall have developed those forms by investigation and experience. We shall not realize the full benefit of the poliev ia a day or a year, but shall we therefore throw away countless millions of trade, In addition to tho $60,000,000 we have already thrown away, and then ignorantly declare, without trial that the system won’t work? “Finally, there is one fact that should have great weight, especially with the protectionists. Every freetrader in the Senate voted against the reciprocity provision. The free-trade papers throughout the country are showing determined hostility to it. It is evident tnat the free-trade Senators and tho free-trade papers have a specific reason for their course. They know and feel that, with a system of reciprocity established and growing, their policy of ftee trade receives a most serious blow. The protectionist who opposes reciprocity in the form in which it is now presented knocks away one of the strongest supports of his system. The enactment of reciprocity is the safeguard of protection. The defeat of reciprocity is the opportunity of free trade. “Yours verv respectfully, “James G. Blaine.” Why should we open our hearts to the world ? It laughs at our weaknesses, it does not pity our sorrows.— Chateaubriand. Bebgen, Norway, was founded A. D. 1070, and was the royal residence during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Run if you like, but try to keep your breath. Work like a man, but don’t be worked to death.— Holmes. The area of the United States embraces 3,570,271 square miles; that oi Canada 3,470,392 square miles. Economy is the easy-chair of old age. — Franklin, ■