Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 April 1893 — Blessings of Commerce. [ARTICLE]

Blessings of Commerce.

The inhabitants of the various sections of the world produce for each other. The temperate zones, for instance, exchange tho commodities they can produce most easily and cheaply for the product that can be best produced in a warmer climate. This exchange of products, or commerce, not only gives employment to thousands upon thousand of hands, but brings it about that tho people of the various sections can better satisfy their wants by being enabled to procure what they themselves cannot produce at all, or could produce only at the expense of a great deal of time and labor. Tills great expenditure of time and labor would, of course, make the desired products not only dearer, but In many cases, such as, for instance, tropical fruits and vegetables that had to be grown In hot houses, so dear that only tho very rich would be ablo to enjoy them. But commerce, in order to bo efficient, has need of means of communication and transportation. Where such facilities are entirely lacking, no commerce can exist. Where they are very efficient, commerce will he facilitated,and products of all kinds and of every clime will not only be abundant but oven cheap, so that they can come within tho reach of everybody. Improved means of communication and transportation, because they bring the various sections of the globe closer together by shortening distances, have cheapened production and brought about tho lowering of rents of all natural agents as land and mines In the more thickly settled old countries, where no socalled protective system prevented tho free importation of tho products of other hands. The superior advantages of transportation during the past half century have brought «the old and new, countries so close together that the virtual monopoly in the soil and Its products, by land owners has been broken, and landlords, etc., in those old countries are compelled to accept much lower rents than when the facilities for intercourse were much inferior. and the cost of transportation consequently much higher. And who have been benefited by it? The Inhabitants of the old countries. For the cheaper agricultural rents are, the less product goes to the landlord, and the more to the laborer. This is plainly to be seen in Gjyeat Britain, where, It is said, about forty years ago, the landlord received as rent for his land more than one-half of what it produced, while at present, owing to the removal of prote;tive duties, and the efficient, quick and cheap means of transportation, he hardly averages one-fourth of Its product in the shape of rent. The landowners have lost, but the British people have gained immensely. It may be well here to recall that international commerce is nothing but barter upon a grand scale, and that the products which one section buys of another section are paid for In commodities and very seldom in money. People do not produce for the sake of getting money, but only to obtain commodities to satisfy their wants. As money, however, is the payment, In most instances, for work done, it must be plain that the more productive a country W, the more money it will possess and the more money Its laborers will receive as wages. High money wages, therefore, can never cause high prices of commodities, and low money wages are never conducive to cheapening the prices of commodities. Low money wages are a consequence of small productiveness, or rents, or both combined. High "fooney wages can only be paid where there is a laige product and little of it goes to non-producers. For those reasons the high-paid Englfsh workman has nothing to fear from the competition of his low-priced confreres on the continent of Europe, and for the same reasons the American workmen need have no fear that free trade will bring down the American wages to the level of English wages.—Dingman Versteeg, in Tariff Reform. Ff.w persons understand the cause of their own failures. Judging other affairs as they do their own, they could not tell why a barrel Is empty when it has a hole in the bottom.—Century.