Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1888 — The Wisdom of the Protective Policy. [ARTICLE]

The Wisdom of the Protective Policy.

If, by the mutual benefits to the consumer and producer of both manufactured goods and the products of the farm, they are better able to buy home products of the loom, mine or soil than they would be were free trade or low tariff the rule or practice of our government, then it is wiser and more patriotic to protect all the interests of our people, whether manufacturers, muiers.orf armers. If free trade had been the practice of this country for seventy-five years past, it is certain the popuiatiou of the country would not be to-day over twenty-five millions, and that population would be principally farmers; and this fact proves that the protective tariff] has caused the great .jpeyease in population and'the growth in all, the different industries of thei country, Via: railroads, manufactures. mining and farming, It it be neceaMry to reduce the

revenue of the government so as to have no sui plus, it would be better to take off all the internal revenue taxes, or pay off the debt of the country, than th disturb the tariff when it is needed for protection. If tariff for revenue only should be adopted, those manufacturing interests, which such a tariff would not protect, w’ould be abandoned aiid the money invested in them would be lost; the labor employed in such factories would have to seek other employment, or migrate to other countries; then we would have to import those articles, and the revenue would be increased above the requirements of the government, and another reduction would be necessary, which second reduction would compel the abandoning of other manufactures, and so it would go until we got to free trade and no home manufacturing. —Baltimore American.