Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 September 1891 — Foreign Trade in a Nutshell. [ARTICLE]

Foreign Trade in a Nutshell.

T. E. Willson says in the New York World: Jones; an American farmer, .has 10,000 bushels of wheat He takes it to Liverpool, sells it, and receives a check on a foreign bank for SIO,OOO in payment It will not pay him to bring back gold. He could have sold his wheat at the same price in New York as in Liverpool. less freight, and at the same price in Chicago as in New York, less freight He loses his time and his work, sehing for gold, and there is no profit in it. Gold is worth less in the Untted States than in any country on earth. An ounce buys less of anything. But the value of a dollar is so much greater in Liverpool than in New York that the SIO,OOO will buy there - woolen goods worth $20,000 here. “He invests his bank check ,-,fof SIO,OOO in clo'h. and brings the cloth back to sell here It goes to the Custom House, and Jones is informed that he can have it upon payment of $12,000. which is the fine levied his competition with the wooleh mill-owners. Instead of selling his wheat at $1 he has sold at 80 cents. His net proceeds for his 10,000 bushels of wheat, after aciding the fine and selling the cloth to his countrymen, is SB,OOO. He is between the devil and the deep sea. He must soil for gold at no profit or for cloth at a losa It does not matter whether Jones, the farmer, dues it himself or hires men to do it; whether the Chicago broker hands him 80 cents anl settles at once or waits three months. The result Is the same, the law is the same, the intent is the same. “Protection is a fine levied upon the payment received for our exported farm surplus to prevent the surplus American farmer from competing with the American mill-owner.