Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 81, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 June 1899 — Free Traders Ideas. [ARTICLE]

Free Traders Ideas.

The Free-Trade element is, as our readers know, clamoring for the repeal of the Protective Tariff as a method of stamping out trusts. There is no donbt that the introduction of FreeTrade as our national policy wpuld stamp out many trusts; but it would stamp them out by stamping out the industries of the country. If there are no industries, there can be no industrial trusts. That’s sure. And Free-Trade has proved itself a hustler in gettingjrid of industries. But however anxious the people of the country may he to get rid of trusts, they are not likely to be willing to get rid of them at that cost. If a man has a boil on his leg he can get rid of it, beyond a doubt, by cutting off his leg. But there are other ways. The cutting off of the leg would be the method approved of by the Free-Traders, if they would be consistent. Kill the trusts, they say, by killing the industries. Protectionist prefer to keep the industries, and to deal with trusts in some other way. The question is a complicated one, and will need for its satisfactory solution the broadest statesmanship and the maximum of ability. That it will be rightly solved in time there can be little doubt. The American people have a pretty good record for solving difficult problems. Just what the solution will be the future alone can show. It is safe to prophesy however, that the solution will not involve the wholesale industrial ruin which would be the inevitable result of an abandonment of the Protective policy. American Economist J