Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1892 — A COMMERCIAL CURSE. [ARTICLE]

A COMMERCIAL CURSE.

THE TARIFF WALLS BETWEEN US AND CANADA. Trade with Our Neighbor Is ns Effectually Impaired as Though She AVer© Situated In tho South Sea—Tarlfl'Trusts and Tramps. As a Wall Between Us. That there is as little use for tariff walls between tho United Statos and Canada as between different States, should bo evident to oil who think on the question. If tariff walls around each of our States would be unmitigated evils —as they certainly would be—those between us and Canada would naturally fall into the same catagory. Tho more numerous the tariff walls, and tho smaller the territory and population inolosed by each, the greater will be the injury done. Thus tho United Statos is surrounded by a tariff wall so high and obnoxious that if built around each of the fifty subdivisions, It would within a few years, render much of our territory and many of our States uninhabitable, and leave us in a most miserable condition. As it is, wo call ourselves prosperous in spite of the groat obstruction to commerce that surrounds us. Canada having a much smaller population than tho United States, naturally suffers more from hor tariff wall, though it is not so high as ours. The following portions of a letter in the Standard, of New York, for Juno 1, 1892, contains suggestions for us as well as for Canadians. It was written by Air. W. A. Douglass, of Toronto, Canada:

"Canada is about as compact as a whip-lash—much length, little width. I do not refer to her acreage, but to her settlements. It is the men and women that make a country, not the superficies. She is a settlement’of provinces, stretching across the continent like beads on a string. To tho north there is a vast extent of Arctic waste, from which thero 1b no possible danger of an inundation of cheap goods, but to the south lies the richest country on tho face of tho earth, with which she might enjoy a trade laden with wealth and fraught with beneflts; but from the dreaded inundation of American goods she carefully guards herself with a barbed wire fence, bristling with taxes. In fact, It is a doubly built fence, one-half supported In a neighborly way by tho United States to keep the Canadian farmer or lumberman from carrying his goods to tho best market, and then the Canadian government maintains a picket lino to spoil him of a largo part of his returns as he tries to bring them home.

"Here we have one of the most remarkable phenomena the world has ever witnessed—two nations, similar In language, In historical origin, in political institutions, In literary tastes, in every way so similar that the traveler may pass from one country to tho other without detecting any more difference than ho finds between two contiguous States, and yet, so far as trade is oonoerned, they are as widely separated as though they were on opposite sides of the planot. A bushel of wheat is conveyed from New York to Liverpool, throe thousand miles, for live cents; to carry the same bdshel one foot from Maine to Now Brunswick, across un Invisible line, costs fifteen cents. Geographically, as God placed thorn, Malno and New Brunswick lie contiguous. Cornmoras men place them, they are ten thousand miles apart. “A line, an invisible lino, purely Imaginary, eomo 4,0(10 or 5,000 miles long, all length, no width, is marked across this continent, cutting it in twain That boundary is dotted with a picket lino of watchmen, lynx-eyed by day and sleepless by night, guarding the people of the two nations, lest, like foolish sheep, In their weakness for abundance, they should stray to a more fertile pasture, to a richer supply, to satisfy their manifold wants. “ ‘Tho Canadian will inundate us and beget a slaughter market,’ says the American. ‘The American will inundate us and beget a slaughter market,’ says tho Canadian, and in mutual dread they try to guard themselves as a herdsman would herd tils cattle. No wonder we call tho Indians barbarians and savages! They don’t know enough to have a protective tariff. We bow down to a theory that teaches that mon have not sense enough to be trusted to buy their dry goods and groceries wherever their common sense would guide them; that abundance Is a curse; that trado is a mutuul fraud; that tho practical man must not bo trusted to his own Judgment, but must be fenced in lest he commit commercial suicido, “Hence Canadian commerce, instead of developing naturally, is developing as a fish grows in a water pipe. British Columbia, by hor sea route, has admirable access to California, and between these two countries there should be an Immense trade; but wo Impose huge penalties both ways to prevent this intercourse, and then we saddle the country with an enormous debt to build a railway across the continent, and develop a trad© in another and less advantageous direction. We try to separate the contiguous and to unite the distant; but nature laughs at our puerile imbecilities. What u curse is freedom! The Chinaman beats Ills tom-toms to scare away the devil, and we tax ourselves to scare away trade. "Between Ontario and New York, between the Eastern provinces and the New England States, botween Manitoba and Minnesota or Dakota there would be, If free, enormous trade, mutually advantageous; but the tyranny of our superstitions, what calamities it inflicts! “Every large city has its soup kitchen, its almshouses, its increasing race of paupers. The mortgage sales of the Ontario loan companies alone rango somewhere nearly one thousand annually, the increase of chattel mortgages during the last few years has been phenomenal, the debt of the General Government Increases about seven millions yearly, and now amounts to upward of (230,000,000. “Of course, there is &reat dissatisfaction with the farmers, ground between the ‘national policy’ und the McKinley bill, with the workmen subjected to the intensified competition of an emigration policy that floods the labor market, while his wealthy employer is protected with a government manipulated by a band of protected manufacturers. “Why such disastrous results in this country is not hard to see. The rich are aided to combine, tho poor are compelled to compete. “Her commercial policy could not be more contradictory. To build railways she has saddled herself with a heavy debt. Then to stop the conveyance of the goods she burdens herself with a huge debt. The building of the Canadian Pacific Railway cost tne country upward of a hundred .million dollars, and then when goods are brought into the country, either from Asia or Europe, a special penalty is Imposed, in the shape of heavy duties, to prevent their landing in this country, so that goods from China can be conveyed to and sold in England much cheaper than they can bo sold in Toronto. The railway is-thus made more advantageous to foreign countries than to our own. We do not sacrifice our wife’s relations with the generosity, of Artemus Ward, but we sacrifice ourselves. Build a huge railway and then forbid the landing of

goods iu the country! That is a specimen brick of our statesmanship. "