Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 80, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 June 1899 — IRONY OF HISTORY. [ARTICLE]

IRONY OF HISTORY.

SOUTHERN DEMOCRATS FACING TOWARD PROTECTION They Are Urged to Forget the Free Trade Follies of the Peat and to Avail Themselves of the Policy that Brings Prosperity. “Between prosperity and tradition the choice should be prosperity." Such is the closing sentence of an article of exceptional interest which lately appeared in the New Orleans “States,” a Democratic‘newspaper, over the signature “W. H. R.” It is a conclusion full of force and strength. WeU indeed it would be for the South if it had long ago chosen for its motto, “Prosperity rather than tradition.” The tenor of the article printed by the “States” is Protectionist. Obviously written by a Democrat and a former free-trader, its argument la all the more effective in favor of the support of protection by the people of the Southern States. He says: If the South forces the tariff issue to the front again it will be detrimental to the best Interests of this section. • * • It is an inexorable fact that the South now needs a protective tariff more than any section of the Union. With cotton and its other agricultural staples at present prices there is no apparent possibility in this section of rivaling the North in the accumulation of wealth as long as the chief local interest is agriculture. The South is naturally the best manufacturing region of the country. It has the ores, the coal, the timber and the intelligent population to compete in industrial enterprises with any portion of the world, and its future prosperity depends more upon the number of factories that are built here than the quantity of cotton which can be raised to the acre. The South for years has borne what was to this section no doubt a burden in the form of a protective tariff, and at this hour when its industrial development has just begun it would indeed be superlative folly to cast aside what in the fntnre will not be a load, but a fostering influence in the development of its resonrees. What the tariff has done in the past for the North it is calculated to do in the future for the South. The infant industries of the present are located below the Mason and Dixon line, and it is a question if a large percentage of Northern manufacturers would not soon be better off and unrestricted European competition than with protection by tariff and the South doing as much industrially as its resources warrant. Then follows a stirring appeal to the Democrats of the Southern States to follow Samuel J. Randall’s advice and “get together.” But it is to be a new sort of getting together. Instead of maintaining an unbroken front for free trade, as they have done for nearly three-quarters of & century, they are now urged to “get together” on the tariff question and concentrate their strength for the conunuiitfon of the protective policy. Perhaps the oddest feature of this rallying caU is the reason cited in support of the plea for prompt action—namely, the possibHlty that the flourishing industries of the North may, in a few years’ time, decide to abandon protection rather than see Its aid extended to the establishment of powerful competing industries in the South. It is the dread of such an eventuality that impels the writer in the States to say to his fellow Democrats: - The Republican party is not so wedded to the protective tariff theory that it will seek to perpetuate the Dingiey or any other variety of the article a day longer than it serves the mercantile interests of the States it controls. It would be the irony of fate, indeed, if tariff for revenue only, or free trade, became a national policy at the hour when it would blight the infant industries of the South like a Dakota blizzard. Whatever the irony of fate may have in store for Southern Democrats in the far future, it is the irony of history to find so queer a turn as this in the meandering ways of politics—to find the party wlhieh followed Calhoun’s lead Into the ranks of free trade chicly because protection was building up New England and the Eastern States into great manufacturing commonwealths whose potency In national affairs menaced the South's supremacy, now contemplating a swift right-about face to protection lest that policy should be abandoned by the North through fear or jealousy of a great Industrial rivalry from the mills and factories which she South shall build up by the aid of protection. Politics has furnished few developments more unique than this. In any case, however, It is to be construed as a cheering indication of the dawn of better things in the South. That portion of our common country wiU prosper mightily when its people shall once for all turn their backs upon a pest full of mistakes and stand with thek faces toward a future full of promise. As “between prosperity and tradition the choice should be prosperity.” Undoubted]?.—American Economist.