prices are governed by the activity of our own industries. It is as follows:

"The market for hog products continues excited, with a demand ahead of the supply, and prices materially advanced yesterday both at home and abroad. Liverpool quotations, following the lead of Chicago, have been marked up nearly every day for the past week. Early in the season

dealers on the other side continued to hold off for lower prices until the English markets were very bare of supplies. They did not count upon the enormous and steadily-increasing consumption of this country, brought about by the business. revival and generally-improved condition of our industries. But while European buyers were holding back, prices have continued to advance here, until, compelled by their necessi ties, they are now coming in for supplies, and readily pay prices 25 per cent. higher than they could have bought for here two or three months ago."

This plain business statement well illustrates how a profitable export is best advanced by the profitable employment of our domestic industries.

EXPORTS NOT DEPENDENT UPON IMPORTS.

The Cobden Club essayist maintains that if our farmers do not take the manufactures of foreigners they will not buy his produce. He says, "How are the farmers to export if the manufacturers will not allow imports?" The proposition that if a nation will not import it cannot export is another of the pure assumptions of free trade which is utterly at variance with established facts. Some of the facts contradicting this assumption are well stated by the able editor* of a leading protective journal, in a reply to Mr. Mongredien's book on Free Trade and English Commerce.

"The United States is a large purchaser of Brazilian coffee and Chinese tea, but neither Brazil nor China buys

*Mr. J. M. Swank of Philadelphia.

from us one-half the value of our purchases from it. We buy from Cuba large quantities of sugar, and the balance of trade between the two countries is many millions every year in favor of Cuba. Great Britain herself has bought breadstuffs and provisions from this country in the last four years in unusually large quantities, and during the first three years of this period our purchases of her products were much less than they had previously been. She fell greatly in our debt and had to pay us hundreds of millions in gold or in our bonds which she returned to us. 'If you want to export much you must import much,' says Mr. Mongredien. This is not true to-day, as we have shown, and it never was true in a general sense. One leading function of gold and silver is to equalize the balances of trade which are constantly requiring the attention of commercial nations. England buys our wheat because she must have it or starve, and we buy the coffee of Brazil, the tea of China, and the sugar of Cuba because these articles are necessary to our comfort. England does not hesitate to buy our wheat because we have until recently refused to buy her iron, nor do we stop to dicker with Brazil and China and Cuba concerning the quantity of our products they shall buy from us."

I might add that in 1878 France took our exports to the value of over 487 million francs (according to French statistics), while we imported in that year a value of but a little over 207 million francs. For a term of ten years previously our imports exceeded our exports fifty-three million francs. annually, thus proving that exports had no relation to imports.

This assumption of free trade is devised to show that protective duties check commerce. I barely remark, for this is not the place for a full illustration, that it can be demonstrated that, so far from commerce being checked by protection, the periods of our largest general importations precisely correspond with those of our most protective tariffs; the fact

being that the prosperity induced by protection increases the purchasing power of the people, enabling them to import, not only the raw materials for manufacture, but the peculiar commodities of other countries not produced at home.*

DEPRECIATION OF AMERICAN SKILL.

Although I have now considered all the arguments of the essay under review, directly applicable to the farmers' question, I cannot overlook the imputation upon our national capacity, by no means unequivocally made, in the declaration that the manufactured products of this country are dearer than those abroad on account of the comparative inexpertness of American manufacturers, who are said to be taken from what they "can do well," viz., to dig and to hoe, and are, by means of protection, "set to do only what they can do badly," viz., to spin and to weave. I have before me the published statement of the highest German authority in the textile arts to an American correspondent, in these words: "The greatest part of your own invented machinery is superior to the English, German, or French machinery, especially your looms for finer work, your looms for cotton goods, cassimeres, carpets, and heavy work." When it is considered that perfected machinery is the recognized test of manufac turing excellence, we may regard the British depreciation as sufficiently refuted by this impartial tribute to American skill, and may be permitted to omit the enumeration of the hundreds of instances which might be cited of American inventions which have contributed to the boasted cheapness and excellence of the goods turned out by British mills.

*The above article is highly commended to the farmers of America by Hon. Henry L. Dawes and Hon. George F. Hoar.

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE INTERESTS OF THE FARMER INDEFINITELY POSTPONED.

BY PROF. JOHN BASCOM,

President of Wisconsin State University.

FA

ARMERS may well claim, and claim with more emphasis than any other class, that protective duties should be rapidly and finally removed. Farmers are one-half the community; the direct benefits of protection lie almost wholly with the other half.

It follows, then, that the burdens of protection fall chiefly on farmers.

The one grand promise of the theory of protection, that with which it fills the mouths of its friends, and assails the ears of its enemies, that on which all its justness as a theory turns is, that if the burdens of protection are quietly borne for a limited period, they will, at its expiration, be withdrawn, and will be replaced by free trade, diversified industry, and general prosperity.

The success of protection must be found in its fulfillment of this promise. I am not disposed to deny that the prom. ise may be made in good faith, and, under favorable circum. stances, if fulfilled in good faith, may be followed, at least in part, by the results indicated.

This portion of the problem it is no longer necessary for us to consider. We have accepted the theory; liberal protection has been granted for many years to many industries.

We are a great productive people, hardly any greater. Personal energy and natural advantages have wrought marvels in our behalf. Capital has accumulated with us in large amounts, even when we compare ourselves with the nations of the Old World.

Our material resources are unbounded. Skill has been acquired and enterprise called out. The various industries sustain each other through the entire circle of production. Our home labor has guaranteed to it forever the natural protection of a broad ocean.

Now, having borne protective duties for a long period, has not the time come in which that early and ever renewed promise should be fulfilled?

More than one generation has passed away while the hope of cheap goods has been deferred; how many are to follow in its steps still waiting on these renewed assurances to be met somewhere in the future?

Is all time to be given to this theory to evolve itself in? We may well insist that the place and date of settlement should now be named; that we should no longer be put off with the gains of our own labor and the incidents of our own civilization as if they were the returns of this special theory. It looks as if there were profound justness in the objection to protection, that its promises are not to be trusted, that it adds reason to reason for indefinite postpone ment, that its resources of excuse and apology are inexhaus tible, that it has never been known to say enough. We have to deal with the horseleech's daughters, crying, -Give! give!