Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 January 1901 — RESORT TO A TRICK. [ARTICLE]

RESORT TO A TRICK.

ENEMIES OF THE SHIPPING BILL BECOMING ALARMED. Take Steps to Prevent Passage of the Measure bjrXnfiaming the Public Mind Against It —Great Foreign Steamship Lobby Present in Washington. Washington correspondence: If the number of misstatements being circulated concerning the merchant marine revival bill, and most o£ which are alleged to originate in Washington, indicate anything at all, it is that the enemies of that measure are alarmed, and are taking steps to prevent its passage by the old trick of inflaming the public mind against it. Not a day passes but an, alleged “special” from Washington is published in this or that newspaper—and it may be said with truth that the great dallies in New York seem to be worked more often and at greater length than any others—which dispatches predict the failure of the shipping bill. The fact that the administration favors the passage of the bill, as is well* known here, is never alluded to in the dispatches referred to. The fact that the great leaders on the Republican side in each branch of Congress have all expressed themselves as determined to do their utmost to pass that bill scarcely ever appears in type. The presence in Washington of a great lobby, representing the foreign steamship lines, finds no space in the opposition newspapers, nor is the peculiar work that these lobbyists do pointed out, as it should be, for the information of the people at large. These kinds of tactics may succeed for a while, and the people may be fooled by them, but it can’t last forever. Here is a measure that has been favorably reported for passage to the Senate and to the House by the proper committees in two successive Congresses. It has been under consider-* ation for over three years in a public way, and has been discussed from one end of the country to the other. Its provisions are well known; it has been indorsed by State legislatures, by chambers of commerce, boards of trade, agricultural organizations and other representative associations. It has been indorsed by political conventions and by-industrial conventions. Nearly three hundred different organisations, many of which are representative of the greatest industrial and commercial interests of the country, have petitioned Congress to pass it, and Congress is right on the eve of doing so, when opposition, instigated by the foreign Interests menaced by the bill, appears in Washington determined to defeat it. But the people will not stand for this thing. It is very clear,that the public are determined to see American ships succeed to a portion—a majority portion, too—of our foreign carrying. The idea of paying to foreign shipowners each year as much as we collect at all of our custom houses, the idea of having paid during the past generation to foreign ship owners twice as much as the sum of our national debt at the close of our civil war, is becoming intolerable to the people. This sort of thing, they see, is indefinitely deferring the time when the United States shall become a creditor, and cease to be a debtor, nation. Nothing but American interests, they see, will be advanced if the bill passes—only certain foreign interests will be injured If It passes. This is a sort of situation that will become so elear to the people that they will be very apt to manifest their displeasure in a drastic manner, If Congress again adjourns without enacting legislation that will start the country on the way of building up its shipping in the foreign trade. The producers of the country have peen where they will b§ benefitted through the enactment of a shipping bill. They have been shown that American ships will only be able to secure the carrying of exports from the United States, now enjoyed by foreign ships, by a reduction in the rates of ocean freight. No one will be willing to give an American ship a larger amount of freight money for carrying away our exports than a foreign s>Jp will be willing to carry it for, and the passage of a measure of this kind, it is seen, will raise up rivals to the foreign lines that now monopolize our export carrying, and which charge us practically what they like for it. It was clearly pointed out by Senator Frye, in his great speech in the Senate, that there would be an average cut of 25 per cent In the cost of carrying our exports and imports, as soon as the measure then and now pending got into good w’orklng form. Such a reduction, in the saving in freight rates alone, he pointed ouf, would amount to $50,000,900 a year, so enormous is the annual gUm now paid for our foreign carrying. To save such a sum, by sending our exports abroad in our own ships, and to give to our own people the employment that comes from the expenditure in the United States of the whole $200,000,000 a year now paid for ocean freight transportation, is a pretty big undertaking, and naturally the opposition will be fierce on the part of those who now enjoy that carrying and the enormous enrichment that follow’s therefrom. But that Is precisely what Congress is expected to do, and precisely what those in the majority in Congress have for the past five years been promising will be done. Much surprise was felt in some quarters at the size of the vote on the HayPauncefote treaty. The President has, through Secretary of State Hay, already transmitted the treaty to the British Government, and Its acceptance or rejection of it is expected to be announced during the next couple of months—before Congress adjourns.

There is some suggestion that tne passage of the Nicaragua Canal bill will be deferred until the attitude of England on the Hay-Pauncefote treaty is made known, but that rumor does not jibe with the determination and confidence shown by the friends of that measure to secure its passage before adjournment. What X* WanteL We want the trade of the Orient, all of it that we can secure on a profitable basis, the same as we trade with England and the Continental countries. We want the trade of France, all of it that we can do on the same basis. But we do not want the trade of France at. the expense of our fruit growers, by a reciprocal arrangement that would admit the dried fruit and other products of that country at a lower rate of duty. The followers of Bryan said in 1896 that we could not have expansion of our foreign trade without giving foreigners free access to our own markets. The followers of Bryan w’ere discredited and defeated in the campaign of 1896, and the Dingley tariff bill took the place of the Wilson tariff law. Expansion of our foreign trade followed, despite prediction to the contrary—a greater extension than ever before In the history of the country. We can have the trade of other countries without ruining our own manufacturers and producers or reducing our laborers to a state of pauperism. What is vastly more important, we can preserve our home markets, the best in the world, and bound to continue the best as long as our people are prosperous, our laborers employed at remunerative wages. There are chances, no doubt, to make additional reciprocal arrangements, such as would not affect Injuriously our producers and laborers; but we want none such as the one proposed with France; we want none with the Oriental countries that would let in free or at reduced rates the products of the pauper labor of the teeming millions there.—Oregon Statesman. The West la Ready. A recent dispatch from Omaha, Neb., says: “So scarce has manual labor become through 'the West that employment agents representing railroads operating west of the Missouri have been sent to New York and other Eastern cities to secure men to work on the tracks and grades through Nebraska, Wyoming and Utah. ♦ ♦ ♦ Wages of railroad workers are now $2.50 per' day and board throughout the West. This is double what this form of labor has commanded in past years. * ♦ ♦ Not in the history of the West has railroad labor been so difficult to secure as today. On every hand railroad work has been suspended because the labor cannot, be secured.” The West is prosperous. There can be no question of that. And the vote of the Western States in the recent election shows that the people of the West, most of them, realize perfectly well that they owe their prosperity to the McKinley policy of keeping the American market for the American producer, and of putting American interests ahead of everything else in every case. The old idea which men like Mr. Bryan tried to stir up, that the interests of the East and the W’est are dissimilar and antagonistic has almost disappeared, and the West is ready to unite with the East in the promotion of the industrial supremacy of the United States which our system of protection has made possible.

Fosterinsi Home Production. The practical proof of the Importance and advantages of a protective tariff for certain agricultural Industries is often overlooked or lost sight of. The Scientific American ‘recently pointed out the fact that there are now thirty beet sugar factories in operation in the country, and five more are in process of construction, which will have a total capacity of 22,500 tons dally. This industry was started just before the Cleveland free trade spasm seized the country, when the total output was only 12,000 tons for the year. This year the Louisiana sugar cane crop amouhts to about 400,000 tons. The annual consumption of sugar in thie country amounts to about 2,000,000 tons. The beet sugar industry is adding to our national wealth and prosperity, and only those afflicted with the free trade fanaticism will doubt the benefits derived from fostering home production of everything which the farmers can supply.—Springfield (Mass.) Union. Too Stranjre to Be True. The protective policy is quite in accord with the Biblical injunction to “return evil with good.” In spite of the blows given to it in the Southern States it still continues to heap up wealth and prosperity for those same States. The latest instance of this is shown in the increased trade In cotton. During October the exports of cotton from this country were* more than double, both In quantity and value, the exports of October, 1899. According to the figures given, 1,211,234 bales were exported, as against 790,855 bales in October, 1899, the value being $00,391,107, as against $28,348,418, the value of the exports in October, 1899. In view of this showing under the administration of President McKinley, in view of the wonderful stories told every day of the marvelous prosperity of the South under our present policy of Protection. can It be possible that the South was sincere in its role of Nov. 6? It hardly seems credible. All on Account of McKin'er, The present outlook is that Kansas farmers will have to worry along as best they can with coal fires this winter. Corn Is quite too expensive to burn. -Kansas City (Mo.) Journal. Argce with a fool and you will always lose—esjeciall; |lme.