been expended upon an article, that moment it ceases to be raw material, and becomes somebody's finished product.

Wool is the farmer's finished product, as soon as it is clipped from the sheep; but it is then the cloth manufacturer's raw material. When he has woven it into cloth, it is his finished product; but it is then the tailor's raw material. What then are raw materials? They are materials just as we find them in nature, before any labor whatever, has been expended upon them-such as iron ore, or coal in the mountain, or standing trees in the forest.

Now the free trader wants all these, and similar articles, admitted here free of duty, and feels deeply aggrieved because they are subjected to a protective duty when brought here. He evidently thinks it would be better to get his wool from South America or Australia; his coal from Nova Scotia; his lead from Mexico; his tin from Wales, etc., rather than, by the help of a protective tariff, develop these industries from our

own native resources.

The protectionist believes the latter course much the better for our country, because it thereby developes our own resources gives remunerative wages to our own workmen, affords fair returns to our own capital, and keeps in our own country the money that would otherwise go abroad to pay for such materials and labors; and also because it prevents the reduction of the wages of our own working people nearly or quite fifty per cent to the level of the cheap foreign labor.

But ignoring all these benefits, the free trader reiterates his plea : "Let us have free raw materials, and the cost of home-made goods will be so reduced that we can export largely and take the foreign markets."

We have not for years paid any duties on cottons, hides, paper stock, silk, and many other articles. Yet with these raw materials free we do not export of the manufactured goods in these lines, as much as we import, as the following table proves:

52,513

FOR THE FREE TRADER TO EXPLAIN.-Now a very pertinent question arises at this point, and it demands a satisfactory answer from the free trader : If your plea is true, why is it that, with free raw materials in these four important articles—and the list might be largely extendedour imports of articles manufactured therefrom, so greatly exceed our exports of the manufactured articles in the same lines?

R. Q. MILLS' BRILLIANT ANSWER.-At a great Democratic mass meeting in New Haven in the campaign of 1888 Mr. R. Q. Mills, of Texas,

the great free trade leader, after making the familiar plea for raw materials, etc., was asked this very question by a respectable gentleman in the audience. Mr. Mills was evidently taken by surprise, but he answered it promptly by saying: "Go home, sir, and soak your head!" The wit and the lofty dignity of this answer were immense, and his audience cheered wildly. The protectionist need not discuss the politeness nor the pertinence of the answer, but he thinks that the facts warrant him in saying that it probably is as clear and intelligent an answer as any other free trader can formulate.

As already stated, cotton is a free raw material, and yet it is an undeniable fact that our exports of manufactured cotton goods is constantly falling off. In 1889 our exports in these goods was, in yards, 42,331,080 less than in 1888, and, in values, $2,706,383 less.

In 1889 we manufactured of these goods not less than $250,000,000 worth, fully the equal of English goods in this line. But protectionists have another and complete answer for our free trade friends. For many years whenever any article has been imported for manufacture and export Congress has allowed a drawback of ninety per cent of the duty paid on the import when the manufactured article was exported; and under the McKinley Act this drawback is increased to ninety-nine per cent of the tariff duty, which is giving them practically free raw materials. The free trader should explain why we cut so sorry a figure as an exporter of goods when we have the raw material free.

OUR HOME MARKET.-But though the free trader will not, or cannot, give a satisfactory explanation, there is one and a good one; and there is an answer to the question so brutally answered by Mr. Mills much more gentlemanly and conclusive than the one he gave.

The great and satisfactory reason why we do not export more of our American productions is that we have a home market more accessible and more profitable where we can readily dispose of about ninety-five per cent of all our agricultural and manufactured products.

DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, one of our greatest statesmen in Revolutionary times, wrote: "Every manufacture encouraged in our own country makes a home market, and saves so much money to the country that must otherwise be exported. In England it is well known that whenever a manufactory is established which employs a number of hands it raises the value of the land in the neighboring country all around it, partly by the greater demand near at hand for the products of the land and partly by the increase of money drawn by the manufactures to that place. It seems, therefore, to the interest of all our farmers and owners of land to encourage home manufactures in preference to foreign ones imported from different countries.”

This lucid statement of Dr. Franklin is the very essential element of American protection.

In a country like ours, possessing such a diversity of materials, and such an abundance of mechanical power, it should be, and is, the great object of a protective tariff to create and sustain a variety of manufactur

ing industries. For whenever a manufacturing town or center is created we have established at the same time a center of consumption for agricultural products; and the neighboring farmers are the first to profit by the enterprise, as shown by Dr. Franklin.

This law is infallible and allows of no exception.

Now if, instead of one, we have hundreds and thousands of these great centers of manufacture and consumption, as the fact is, it follows absolutely that the advantage to the neighboring farmer, and no less to the home manufacturer, is multiplied proportionally. Each of these classes becomes a helper and an assistant to the other. As a rule, each can sell at his own door to the other whatever he produces, and both are thereby saved the frequent losses and heavy expenses necessitated by long transportation. And thus, under the beneficent workings of a protective tariff, we have created a home market the like of which was never seen in any other country.

Our Commissioner of Agriculture reported in 1881 that the value of our annual agricultural and mechanical productions amounts to about $15,000,000,000, and the Census of 1890 is showing a much larger aggregate than that of 1880.

The Custom House books show that of all this enormous aggregate we now export not over five per cent, while fully ninety-five per cent is consumed by our home market.

IMMENSITY OF OUR HOME TRADE.—Mr. Edward Atkinson, the eminent statistician and opponent of protection, in September (1890) Bradstreet's produced figures and tables which show that our American home trade amounts to $50,000,000,000, and our foreign trade to only $1,600,000,000, or less than three and one-half per cent of the amount of our home trade.

Here is another fact or two, to elucidate the immensity of our home trade : "The tonnage which passed through the Detroit River alone during the two hundred and thirty-four days of navigation in 1889, exceeded by 2,468,127 tons the entire British and foreign tonnage which entered and cleared at London and Liverpool that year in the foreign and coastwise trade. The freight carried on the railroads of the United States in 1890 exceeded by over 36,000,000 tons the aggregate carried on all the railroads of Great Britain, Germany, France and Russia, in 1889." (Windom.)

Is it not, then, the part of wisdom for America to develop, extend and protect our home markets, and let the foreign markets take care of themselves?

THE "GOODS FOR GOODS" THEORY.-Another favorite, but very fallacious doctrine of our free trade friends has been that we ought to buy largely of manufactured foreign products, as we should thereby surely enlarge the foreign demand for our own productions; in other words, if we would sell to them, we must buy from them.

Two or three facts will be more satisfactory and conclusive than pages of argument. The following table is taken from a report of a Royal Com

mission to Parliament to show the annual sales by Great Britain and to her from 1880 to 1884 inclusive, in her trade with the leading nations of the world:

Great Britain is par excellence the greatest manufacturing nation on the globe and manufactures her goods to sell, and pushes her wares into every possible market; but we see by the above table that the "goods for goods" doctrine worked against her to the enormous sum of $660,000,000 per year, or $3,300,000,000 in five years.

Remember, too, that this tremendous balance, not being paid in goods, had to be paid in money. How long can even a rich nation stand such an annual drain of money for imports?

Many other facts of similar figures and similar results between other nations could be given if we had the space, but if the above table is not convincing, no other would be.

And yet, as late as the second week in March, 1891, so eminent an authority among free traders as Professor Perry, in a speech before the Tariff Reform League, of Boston, argued that foreign trade is everything, and our home markets unworthy of consideration; and also held, that “a tariff that keeps out a dollar's worth of goods that we want to buy, keeps in a dollar's worth of goods that we want to sell,”—the old "goods for goods" theory. The Boston Journal met that statement with this crushing reply: "In 1865 we sold to Great Britain $18,000,000 more than we bought from her. The next year we sold her $85,000,000 more than we bought. With some fluctuations this discrepancy continued to increase till 1881 when we sold of our products to Great Britain $306,000,000 more than she was able to sell us of her own. For the entire period since 1865, Great Britain's purchases of our products in excess of her sales to us of her products reached the enormous total of $4,054,000,000. What becomes of Professor Perry's ("goods for goods ") axiom, in view of these figures?"

"In 1890, the United States sold to British Australia goods to the value of $11,266,484, but we bought therefrom goods to the value of only $4,277,676. It is well known that we do not import any railway cars, and but very few carriages; but in seven months ending January 31, 1891, we exported American built carriages and railway cars amounting to $3,128,668."-N. Y. Press.

In the annual report of the British Chamber of Commerce in Paris, published in 1891. some of the lessons for Englishmen to learn, relative to

French trade and the French tariff, are pointed out; and among other things we find the following: "Of late years, there has been a steady decline in the value of English exports to France, the cause of this being attributed to French duties; while French exports to England have progressively risen. It is estimated that the excess of exports in favor of France gives employment to 95,000 French workmen."

These "cold facts" positively contradict the free trade dogma that we cannot sell to other nations unless we buy from them. A fact is something that is; a theory is a scheme, a speculation or hypothesis, which may be true or may be a delusion. Since free trade theory and actual facts, as set forth above, do not and cannot agree. which will the reader accept and believe?

OUR RAILROAD FREIGHTS VS. THE IMPORTS OF THE WORLD.—From a carefully prepared article in the New York Tribune of November 6, 1890, I take the following: "The value of the freight carried on the railroads of the United States in 1889 was $13,930,587,840, almost $14,000,000,000, to say nothing of that carried by water and other means. More than ninety-two per cent of this was consumed in our home market."

Suppose we should open our "home market " to the world, and thereby capture the markets of the entire world, what would we gain? The aggregate value of the imports for 1888 of Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Turkey, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, Greece, Netherlands, Mexico, Bolivia, Brazil, Chili, China, Japan, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uraguay, Argentine, Venezuela, Peru, Gautemala, Corea, Hayti, Hawaii, Morocco and Nicaragua, was $6,710,468,409. From this sum deduct our exports to those countries—$660,000,000—and we have as the imports of the world, in all their own ports, the sum of $6,050,468,409; or less than half the value of the freight carried on our own railroads. In other words, from the value of our railroad freights alone we could have supplied all the imports of the world except our own, and have had left about $8,000,000,000.

THE HOME MARKET AND THE FARMER.- "The home market, created by increased manufactories, encouraged by a protective tariff, has changed the condition of the agriculturists of the country to their advantage and profit. This system has given to the farmers of this country, whether they grow cotton or corn, wheat or wool, the best domestic market anywhere offered; has given to our people a diversity of employments, to our industries wider range, and to our labor better wages, than can be found elsewhere. Aside from the men who labor in shop or mine, no class of our citizens to-day are so deeply interested in the maintenance of a protective system as the farmers. They sell ninety-five per cent of all their products at home, and every mile of transportation saved is money earned. There is no portion of our people, except labor, which would be so seriously affected in income and profits, from the policy of free trade, as the farmers. The recent census shows the remarkable growth of agriculture in the last ten years under protection. In one department, that of truck-farming, the progress was almost phenominal.