Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 June 1891 — How Many Are Protected? [ARTICLE]

How Many Are Protected?

In 1886 the Secretary of the Treasury, tho late Daniel Manning, in preparing his aunual report applied to three of tho most skillful and expert statisticians in tho Government service for an estimato of the number of people in the United States engaged in gainful occupations, grouping separately those subject to foreign com- 1 petition and those who are not. These throe specialists were "Worthington C. Ford, Chief of the Bureau of Statistics of tho State Department; E.’ B. Elliott, United States Government Actuary; and Prof. Simon Newcomb, Superintendent of the Nautical Almanac, published by tho Navy Department. The result of their calculations, separately conducted, was that tho numbor of per-ons in any way subject to foreign competition, wero statod as follows, with their percentage to the entire number engaged in gainful occupations: l*er Number. Cont. By Ford 827,184 4.70 By EUlott 825,0 XJ 4.75 By Newcomb ~9j5,00.) 6 20 Averages 8.V2.M00 UfS The percentages given arc, each based upon a slightly different estimate of the the total number of workers. Stating the result in tho rough, then, wo may say that about 850,001 of our people are directly interested in protection, and thiit 95 per cent., or nineteen out of twenty, have no interest whatovor in it. Whenever tho protectionists try, therefore, to persuade those ninetoon men that they will be ruined, unless they tax themselves for the benefit of tho twentieth man, thoy a o guilty of an absurdity which ought to move an owl to mirth. These figures, givon forth with the authority of the men best fitted to speak on tho subject, should give the farmer some light on tho venerable “homo market th ory." If nineteen farmers wero asked by some twentieth man to tax themselves for his good, and he in return would buy all his corn, Hour, vegetables and moat from thorn, they would laugh him out of tho country. They won d say at once that a one-man-power hoipo market was far too small to bo of any valuo to nineteen thrifty farmers, and certainly such a maiketwas not worth taxing themselves so would even give It upontiiely rather than tax tliolnselves.

Yet it Is on precisely such a flimsy basis as this that tho protectionist! rest tholr easo. They asfi: the nineteen ,to pay higher prices for what the one makos, and then ho will loturn the favor by buying from them—but of course,at current market rates.