Thus even the strongest and most powerful industries greatly need protection still against foreign competition. It is, Thomas Reed has said, entirely mistaken to look on protection as a sort of medicine, to be left off as soon as possible. It is not medicine, but nourishment. The high tariff has not only nursed infant industries, but it is to feed them through life. For it is not a happy expedient, but a system which is justified by its results, and of which the final import is that the American market is for the American people. Protection is a wall behind which the American people can carry on their industrial life, and so arrange it that wages shall be not only absolutely but relatively greater than wages in Europe.
At a time when everything looked so prosperous as in the last few years of industrial activity, it is difficult to contest the powerful argument which the Republicans make in appealing to success. Every one is afraid that a change in tariff might turn back this tide. And if there have been reverses in the last few years it has been pointed out that speculators and corporation magnates have been the chief sufferers, and they are the ones who, least of all, would wish the tariffs removed.
It has been an unfavourable time, therefore, for the free-traders, and their really powerful party has been rather faint-hearted in its fight against the Dingley Tariff. Its satisfaction with the Wilson Tariff was not unmixed, and although it could truthfully say that the law as actually passed was not a Democratic measure since it received six hundred and forty amendments in the Senate, nevertheless it realizes that the legislative measures of the last Democratic régime pleased nobody thoroughly and contributed a good deal to the subsequent Republican victory.
Nevertheless, the Democrats feel that the Republican arguments are fallacious. It is not the protective tariff, they say, which has brought about American prosperity, but the natural wealth of the country, together with the energy and intelligence of its inhabitants. The high level of education, the free government, the pioneer ardour of the people, and the blessings of quick and rapid railway connections have made America great and prosperous. If, indeed, any legal expedients have been decisive in producing this happy result, these have been the free-trade measures, since the Republicans quite overlook the fact that the main factor making for our success has been the absolute free-trade prevailing between the forty-five states. What would have become of American industries if the states had enacted tariffs against one another, as the country does against the rest of the world, and as the countries of Europe do against one another? The entire freedom of trade from Maine to California, and from Canada to Mexico, that is, the total absence of all legislative hindrances and the possibility of free exchange of natural products and manufactures without payment of duties, has made American industry what it is; and it is the same idea which the Democrats cherish for the whole world. They desire to get for America the advantages from free-trade which England has derived.
All the well-known free-trade arguments—moral, political, and economic—are then urged; and it is shown, again and again, that every nation will succeed best in the long run by carrying on only such industries as it is able to in free competition with the world. It is true, admittedly, that if our tariff were removed a number of manufactures would have to be discontinued, and that the labourers would for a time be without work, as happens whenever a new machine is discovered, or whenever means of transportation are facilitated. The immediate effect is to take labour from the workman. But in a short time adaptation takes place, and in the end the new conditions automatically provide a much greater number of workmen with profitable employment than before. America would lose a part of the home market if she adopted free-trade, but would be able to open as many more doors to foreign countries as recompense. Her total production would in the end be greater, and all articles of consumption would be cheaper, so that the workmen could buy the same wares with a less amount of labour, and the adjustment of the American scale of wages would better enable the Americans to compete with the labour of other countries.
But no doubt the times do not favour such logic. The Americans are too ready to believe the statement of Harrison, that the man who buys a cheaper coat is the cheaper man. And quite too easily the protectionists reply to all arguments against excluding foreign goods with the opposite showing that, in spite of the high tariff, the imports from abroad are steadily increasing. Under the Dingley Tariff, in the year 1903, not only the raw materials, but also the half and wholly manufactured articles, and articles of luxury, imported increased to a degree which had never been reached in the years of the Wilson Tariff. The raw materials imported under a Democratic tariff reached their high point in 1897, with $207,000,000; when the Dingley Tariff was adopted the figure decreased to $188,000,000, but then rose rapidly and amounted in 1902 to $328,000,000, and in 1903 to $383,000,000. Finished products declined at first from $165,000,000 to $94,000,000, but increased in 1903 to $169,000,000. Articles of luxury sank from $92,000,000 to $74,000,000, but then mounted steadily until in the year 1903 they were at the unprecedented figure of $145,000,000.
In spite of this, the Democratic outlook is improving; not because people incline to free-trade, but because they feel that the tariff must be revised, that certain duties must be decreased, and others, so far as reciprocity can be arranged with other countries, abolished. Everybody sees that the international trade balance of last year shows a movement which cannot keep on. America cannot, in the long run, sell where she does not buy. She will not find it profitable to become the creditor of other nations, and will feel it to be a wiser policy to close commercial treaties with other nations to the advantage of both sides. Reciprocity is not a theory of the Democratic party merely, but is the sub-conscious wish of the entire nation, as may be concluded from the fact that McKinley’s last great speech voiced this new desire.
He had, more than any one else, a fine scent for coming political tendencies; and his greatness always consisted in voicing to-day what the people would be coming to want by to-morrow. On the fifth of September, 1901, at the Buffalo Exposition, he made a memorable speech, in which he said: “We must not repose in fancied security that we can forever sell everything and buy little or nothing. If such a thing were possible, it would not be best for us or for those with whom we deal. We should take from our customers such of their products as we can use without harm to our industries and labour. Reciprocity is the natural outgrowth of our wonderful industrial development under the domestic policy now firmly established. What we produce beyond our domestic consumption must have a vent abroad. The excess must be relieved through a foreign outlet, and we should sell anywhere we can and buy wherever the buying will enlarge our sales and productions, and thereby make a greater demand for home labour. The period of exclusiveness is past. The expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars are unprofitable. A policy of good will and friendly trade relations will prevent reprisals. Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of the times. Measures of retaliation are not.
“If perchance some of our tariffs are no longer needed for revenue or to encourage and protect our industries at home, why should they not be employed to extend and promote our markets abroad?”
This was the same McKinley whose name had been the apprehension of Europe, and who in fact more than any one else was morally responsible for the high-tariff movement in the United States. The unique position which his service of protection had won him in the party, would perhaps have enabled this one man to lead the Republican party down from its high tariff to reciprocity. But McKinley has unhappily passed away, and no one is here to take his place.