Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1888 — PRICE. NOT COST. [ARTICLE]

PRICE. NOT COST.

The only, advantage which free traders claim would accrue to farmI ers by the abolition of Xhe taiifi isthat it would cheapen the cost of ■ production by cheapening the cost of living. If this were true,, it would be of very little impeltance under any circumstances. The £B- - ifring with al l -producers i s not cost of production, but demand for products and the price they sell at. Now, price depends upon demand and the extent of competition—~in other words, the extent of the supply. If there is more to sell than is wanted, or more sellers than buyers, no matter what the cost of production is, competition will i educe the selling price so that there will be no profit.. The essential thing, therefore, is to secure and maintain an active market and prevent excessive competition. Experience proves the truth of this position. The cost of producing corn of whe&P' does not vary very much from year to year; but the selling price does very largely, And if you ask why the prices were high last year and are low this year, you. will at once hear that there is an over supply, or, what is in effect the same thing, a diminished demand. It is never said, as a reason for low prices, that it costs move, or less, this year or last year. It iff, then, perfectly evident that any such increase of cost, such as possibly may arise from the increased cost of protected articles used by farmers, is of very little importance as compared with the price at which they can sell their products and the conditions which fix that price—themaiket, the demand and supply, and competition between producers. 'Suppose the protected industries, so called, which now employ the" majority of the people not engaged in farming, to be curtailed or destroyed, and. those, employed in them, and in the industries which depend on them, were forced on to the land: it is manifest that an important part of the market for farm products would be cut and that a large supply and increased competition of farm products would at once lie developed; that prices would fall; that farmers would have to sell to-farmers, and very poor farmers; that profits would cease; that farmers would then have to produce cheaper by living cheaper; that the question then would be, not how much lower they could buy the products of our protected industries, but what they.could go without and livel Protection gives the market,, removes competition between farmers, increases prices of farm products, makes farming profitably, enables, farmers to biiyjwhat Jhey would otherwise go without, even if now and then they have to pay more than they would if they were so poor they could not buy at all. The same principle applies to all the unprotected industries, so called by the free traders—those industries which the Protectionists truly call the absolutely protected industries—which are protected by nature and circumstances, such as the labor of the mason, carpenter, railroad occupations, Western farm service, domestic service, and woi kers for wages of all descriptions, in pursuits which cannot be competedwith by the importation of the products of cheaper labor in other countries. All these industries in this country’ now enjoys stablg rates of wages, which are, on the average, from two to five times what they are in Europe, and twenty times wh.at they are in Inda, South America, and those semi-barbarous countries, which the power, of steam as applied to sea and land ■ transportation is rapidly bringing into direct and active competition with our highly civilized labor. AH these depend upon the continuance of a strong and unvarying home demand fur the service and Work they perform and upon absence of excessive competition among themselves. For instance, if by the destruction-of the protected industries the large classes of people depending upon them

were thrown out of work and became impoverished, many of them would be driven into naturally protected industries—say into the business of masons and carpenters —and all would be so impoverished that demand for service and werk in these occupations would be greatly diminished—the consequence would be that the prices in these kinds of work would fall. No argument is needed to prove this evident truth. All kinds of absolutely protected industries would suffer in the same way. Then the home demand for farm products would fall off; an<J so on, till at last we had reached the level of labor in other countries; and instead of general comfort, inteligence, cheerfulness, prosperity, we should have poverty, ignorance, despair and misery .-Tariff league Bulletin.