Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 January 1890 — Protection Lowers Prices. [ARTICLE]

Protection Lowers Prices.

It is now about a hundred years since Alexander Hamilton asserted™that the ultimate efiect of a protective tariff would be to cheapen the cost of the products of protected indus cries, that competition would soon do away with attempts at monopoly, and bring prices to the basis of a reasonable profit. Washington and Jefferson and other contemporary statesmen gave their assent to the soundness of this view, and aided in the passage of laws laying a round tariff on competing foreign products. In like manner, and in the same faith did Jackson and Webster and Clay advocate building up, by defensive legislation, every industry necessary to the comfort and independence of the people. And grandly have their patriotism and foresight been vindicated.

Protection has proved a boon to consumers, iu that the price of every protected article, the manufacture of which has come near supplying the popular demand, is cheaper to-day than when the tariff was first levied. But in the face of these irrefutable facts, backed by price lists of every trade, and against the judgment of the country’s wisest and most patriotic statesmen, the free trade advocates of today assert and repeat the falsehood that the amount, of duty is added to the price, not alone of what is imported, but of all corresponding domestic products. English and American makers have quoted the i same prices for steel rails within j the oast month with ’ the tariff I sf ending at sl7 per ton, while through a loug list of fabrics generally worn by the people the same relative facts exist. Certain lines of cotton goods are now exported, and American calicoes find a sale in Euglibh centers of cotton manufacture. This could not be if it were true that the amount of duty is added to the price of Ike home-made article. Iu no other | country in the world can the workingman get a better suit of clothes for a week’s labor than right here in the United States, where the free trade preacher TeHs hina he pays so much more than would be necessary if wool-growing and manufacture were not protected. And the same is true of every article commonly worn by his lyAgainst such rugged facts as these the surf of free trade theory must continue to dash in vain.