Jasper County Democrat, Volume 8, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1905 — MR. SHAW’S DISCOVERY. [ARTICLE]

MR. SHAW’S DISCOVERY.

It Proves to Be Nothlo* More Tlum • Last Year's Bird's Negt. Secretary Shaw has just discovered that to increase our trade with South America we should make our goods to conform to the tastes and the whims of those people. That idea has been exploited in and out of congrew ever since the tariff has been discussed. Protectionists and free traders have always been In accord on that palpably plain proposition. If Secretary Shaw sbonld delvd a little deeper into his study of trade relations with foreign countries he will find there are other obstacles of even greater importance than not offering goods that customers are used to buying. The greatest of these obstacles to trade between us and foreign countries is the protection wall that the Republican party has created around this country that will not allow reciprocal trade between us and them. With the exception of Brasil, of which we are obliged to buy our coffee, because it Is the cheapest and best we can get for what it costs us, and some wool and bides from Argentina, there is but little else raised there but what we also have a surplus to dispose of. Europe, on the other hand, offers a market for .all the products of those countries and for the products of thp temperate sone, and we are competitors In the same European markets. Argentina cannot send her wheat here, because we have more than we want already, and she would find a barrier of 25 cents a bushel, which Mr. Shaw and his Republican brethren have raised against dealing with her. We tax her hides and her wool almost to the point of exclusion, and yet we wonder that her merchants do not trade with us. If New York could Impose a protective tariff against the products of lowa, would Mr. Shaw and his stand pat friends In that state buy anything of New York they could get elsewhere or do without? Trade, like water, will not run uphill; it seeks the line of least resistance, and that has been and ah ways will be the law that governs commerce between nations.