Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1891 — MORE EVIDENCE OF LOWER PRICES. [ARTICLE]

MORE EVIDENCE OF LOWER PRICES.

How nicely the five traders would progress in their efforts to deceive the people if there were no system of gathering statistics, and if there were no trade newspapers, to which political considerations are as nothing at all, but to which the purpose of advising business men as to the actual condition of trade, manufactures, mining, and agriculture is even-thing. The McKinley bill now lias been in force for four months and twelve days. The free traders told the people that its first effect’would lie to limit our foreign trade, that Europe and the rest of the world would not buy our goods if we did not buy theirs. That if we wanted to flourish we must confine ourselves to raising and exporting food and cotton, and ex porting them to other nations who would give us manufactured goods in return for them. If we placed ’protective tariffs on foreign manufacxires we were to lose our export ■ade. That was what the free trad•n told us. But Dun'a Weekly Review tells us what has happened, and it is just

what the free traders said would not happen. For the first two weeks of JaiAiary. 1891. hying the first two weeks of tlie fifth"? month of the new tariff. our exjiorte from New York alone have liccn greater by IT percent, than during the first two week.- < >f .January 1890. Our imports for the same time have decreased by 15 jkt cent. Tliat is to.say. we have kt pt 15 per cent, more of our a own money at home than we did in the first two weeks of January. 1890, and we have received 12 per cent, more money from abroad. Our income froin one lineof trade is 12 per cent, greater, and our outgo is 15 Jier cent. less.

The free traders also told us tliat the McKinley bill would make clothsowieh dearer 4hat the-woolen industry would be crippled. But Dun’s Weekly Review tells us that "the market for woolen goods is broader, and the demand from clothiers distinctly better, while the boot and shoe trade continues highly satisfactory.” How very false were the alarms of the free traders . The people are buying more clothing and boots and shoes than ever, and at prices which the advertising columns of every newspaper, free-trade papers included, show to be quite as low as those which ruled in January last. “Prints cloths have sold at the lowest prices ever recorded,” says Dttn's Review of the past week’s trade. '""Really, now, is it not absurd to talk of ‘‘higher prices on account of the tariff?— lnter Ocean.