Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1890 — A Nation Developed by Protection Cheapens Goods the World Over. [ARTICLE]

A Nation Developed by Protection Cheapens Goods the World Over.

j The attention of tkog&Jslio advocate Free-trade on the broad ground of the broth(?rhood of man and the principle that national development, instead of being provision for one’s own social fannJy* is selfishness, is respectfully invited to the following remarks of an exchange: “The first tendency of a Protective Tariff is undoubtedly to raise prices. But high prices in turn stimulate home competition, and this lowers pricee, whereby the :.balanceis restored, with thedifference in our favor that, whereas j before Protection was adopted we imported our manufactured goods, I now we produce them. And the difference is such an enormous gain to us that we might well afford to pay a higher range of prices for such products than prevails in the countries that formerly supplied us.

“And this suggests a truth of a gravity that if it could be made clear to every mind it would make the nation practically unanimous in favor of the Protective policy. It is this: That the Tariff policy of the United States in the past quarter century has lowered the prices of all products affected thereby all over the civilized world. It has done this by adding to the world’s supply of these products. The Protective Tariff induces home protection and competition. Competition reduces home prices and throws back upon foreign countries the products they formerly sold here. This reduces the prices in these foreign countries, and this reduction is immediately felt in our own country, causing a corresponding reduction here. “Tito Tariff preserves the differ- ! ence m the level u£ wages, hut it does not prevent the competition of foreign producers with our own, as our enormous importations of manufactured goods prove. This competition at home I and abroad has stimulated invention and economy in production, which have contributed much to lower the level of prices. But if i our part of the competition in the i world’s markets had never been | created, and it never could have ! been created on any other than ' the European level of wages without protection, products the world j over would have been much higher in price than now. And if our share ip that competition should be crippled or destroyed by abolishing Protection, prices- throughout the world would be enhanced as certainly as water finds its level. Such being the case, dhe seeming paradox of a Tariff levied effectivdx t * l- .**»»&. theta, app.c m 3 as normal understandable-as any rebo i- av •• cause to effect.”