Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 February 1893 — A Protectionist Dilemma. [ARTICLE]

A Protectionist Dilemma.

A protection and subsidy organ of this city finds itself occasionally at odds with one or the other of its tenets. For example, it recently undertook, in the interest of sub sidies, to show that “we export finished products for sale beneath the very shadow of England’s free-trade factories.” It printed a table which shows that

during the ten months ending Oct. 31 a number of our protected articles had been exported to England, some for consumption and some for reexportation to South America. The value of these exportations aggregated nearly $14,000,000. The American manufacturers of the articles are so afraid of English and other foreign competition in our own markets that they have purchased heavy protective duties of the Republican party. And yet they can compete with the Englishmen at home, where the tax is against them to the amount of the freight charges at least. If they can undersell Englishmen in England and also in South America after paying freight from New York to Liverpool aud again from Liverpool to South American ports, why do they need protection at home? The organ ought to drop one of its tenets. If it proves that our manufacturers can compete with foreigners in foreign countries, it shows that we can maintain an ocean-carrying trade, but it also proves not only that the protection war on commerce is hurtful to the manufacturers, hut that our manufac urers do not need protection at all.—New York World.