Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1888 — The Free Trade Plea of Cheapness. [ARTICLE]

The Free Trade Plea of Cheapness.

The free trade advocates claim as the chief merit of proposed tariff reduction that it will reduce prices. And in this they are at least partially correct. The recent experience bf England under the fiscal policy now advocated for this country shows that cheaper wheat from India, cheaper meat from America, cheaper wool from Australia and South America, have made unprofitable lauds at home; that values of English farms have fallen off 40 to 70 per cent while each year large tracts are withdrawn from tillage. -If a like result of cheapness is to follow an approach to free trade here, an alternative- is presented which it is well for a large class of our people to seriously consider before aiding to strike down the policy under which our country has hitherto made such advances in wealth and greatness. We may well be appalled in contemplating a shrinkage in real estate values in the United States to one half the extent experienced in England, and the 15sses of farms and homes it would entail upon those industrious toilers who have incurred debts in securing homes for themselves and families.- Under a decline q£ one fourth its present value, the* man who had bought a home for S2OOO, and by years of industry and saving paid SI,OOO, would still find himself owing SI,OOO for property worth but $1,500. In the midst of the “cheapness” with which he had been cajoled, the payment of this sum would be more difficult than the Original $2,000 under the existing conditions of ready sale of products and fair returns for labor. If the adoption of the English policy by the United States should be followed by one half the redaction in real estate values that England has experienced within the past few years, mortgaged farms and homes would revert by thousands to creditors, who, like the landlords of England, would permit what could not be rented to go out of tillage. - In no other country than ours does so large a percentage of farmers own the lands they cultivate. In no other country is there so large a proportion of workingmen who own the homes they occupy. In no other country does the fiscal policy so decidedly favor the man who honestly and industronsly endeavors to better his condition in life.- Nowhere else in the world can the laborer get so many of the necessaries and comforts of life for a day’s work as here in the United States. All this we are asked to menace by adopting a policy that has thrice .brought disaster to the business of this country; a policy, with but one aggressive advocate among all the nations of Europe—and that one nation to-day presenting within her borders some of the strongest possible arguments against the policy she seeks to enforce upon others. While the Cobden Club and leading British journals are preaching, the benefits of free trade the British farmer is depressed, 800,000 workmen are idle, and the police of London are kept busy suppressing uprisings df made desperate by hearing their children cry for bread. Nothing can be dearer than “cheapness” bought at such a price; nothing more un-American than a policy which makes such a condition possible.