Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1893 — Tarifi Policies of Nations. [ARTICLE]

Tarifi Policies of Nations.

Now let us look around and view the various countries where eithfer one of the systems, piotectlon or free trade, predominates. Australia (except, New South Wales), the United States, and Canada, among the new countries have protective tariffs. Wages and profit* hero fire so high that workingmen and capitalists from all over the world emigrate to those countries in order to hotter their conditions. It Is true, though, of Canada, that, since its adoption of a rigid protective tariff in 1870, it lias been steadily losing ground in the struggle for commercial equality with other nations. At the same time wages and profits upon investments have gone down, causing a decrease of immigration and the exodus of tens of thousands of its sons annually to its southern neighbor, whero a larger population and more diversified means for employment cause the baneful influences of protection to he not so keenly felt as in less thickly populated Canada. But the new countries to the south of tho United States also have tariffs high enough to protect any industry, and to enable their people to start new Industries. Yet wages there are rather low, and almost the only means of subsistence are such pursuits as cannot be protected anyway, even if protection could he made to protect. Germany, Italy, Spain, Franco, Austria-Hungary, among the old countries enjoy protective tariffs, and their inhabitants (with the exception of those of France) are leaving these countries by tens of thousands in order to try to earn better wages in other lands. Hundreds of thousands at the same time are obliged to stay, hut would gladly follow their more fortunate countrymen, If they had the money needed for the journey. (heat Britain, among the leading old countries, lias virtual free trade, and the percentage of the emigration from that country is not only compaiatively small hut thousands are annually Immigrating from old and “protected” countries into Great Britain. Wages in the unprotected British industries are so very much higher than-in the protected industries of other old countries, that the protected workmen eagerly avail themselves of the opportunities offered in the unprotected country. Russia, which is practically a new country, is perhaps as rich and twice as large ns the United States, while it has not as many inhabitants to the square mile as the great republic of the west. Yet, notwithstanding the fact that Its tariff wall is fully as high as that of the United States, its resources are undeveloped, wages are low, and thousands of its people, not merely the persecuted Jews, are annually leaving its domains in order to seek better means of subsistence elsewhere, All of this seems to show that high tariffs or “protective” systems cannot be responsible for the higher rate of wages paid in one country than in another.—Dingman Versteeg, in Tariff Reform.