Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1891 — WHY I AMA PROTECTIONIST. [ARTICLE]

WHY I AMA PROTECTIONIST.

By James M. Swank.

Geneilal Manager of the American Iron and Steel Association. [Brzttm for American Economist.'] I am a Protectionist because I am an American. The free admission of foreign commodities, or their admission at Yates of duty which are levied for purely revenue purposes, may suit the economic conditions and meet the financial needs of other countries, but history teaches that the prosperity of our own country is best promoted by a Tariff which is levied for Protection as well as for revenue. Many of our great industries, including the silk industry, the tery industry, the carpet industry and the steel-rail industry, had only a nominal existence until adequately Protective duties were imposed on competing foreign products. All other considerations aside, older manufacturing countries could command lower wages for labor "than- this country, and Protective duties were therefore needed to equalize the labor cost of’ production. Our tin-plate industry is to-day an infant industry because we have not had a Protective duty on foreign tin plates. We shall always need Protective duties as long as our people insist upon a higher standard of wages and scale of living than prevail abroad. If they were notf willing to accept the same wages and the same social conditions which the people of other countries are compelled to accept, our Protectivepolicy conld be greatly modified,, if not wholly dispensed with. Whatever it may have been in the past, this policy is therefore today chiefly a question of wages.