“The abstract of the message I have seen,” replied Mr. Blaine, “contains no reference to that point. I, therefore, make no comment further that to endorse Mr. Fred. Grant’s remark, that a surplus is always easier to handle than a deficit.”
The reporter repeated the question whether the President’s recommendation would not, if adopted, give us the advantage of a large increase in exports.
“I only repeat,” answered Mr. Blaine, “it would vastly increase our imports while the only export it would seriously increase would be our gold and silver. That would flow out bounteously, just as it did under the tariff of 1846. The President’s recommendation enacted into law would result, as did an experiment in drainage of a man who wished to turn a swamp into a productive field. He dug a drain to a neighboring river, but it happened, unfortunately, that the level of the river was higher than the level of the swamp. The consequence need not be told. A parallel would be found when the President’s policy in attempting to open a channel for an increase of exports should simply succeed in making way for a deluging inflow of fabrics to the destruction of home industry.”
“But don’t you think it important to increase our export trade?”
“Undoubtedly; but it is vastly more important not to lose our own great market or our own people in vain effort to reach the impossible. It is not our foreign trade that has caused the wonderful growth and expansion of the republic. It is the vast domestic trade between thirty-eight States and eight Territories, with their population of, perhaps, 62,000,000 to-day. The whole amount of our export and import trade together has never, I think, reached $1,900,000,000 any one year. Our internal home trade on 130,000 miles of railway, along 15,000 miles of ocean coast, over the five great lakes and along 20,000 miles of navigable rivers, reaches the enormous annual aggregate of more than $40,000,000,000, and perhaps this year $50,000,000,000.
“It is into this illimitable trade, even now in its infancy and destined to attain a magnitude not dreamed of twenty years ago, that the Europeans are struggling to enter. It is the heritage of the American people, of their children, and of their children’s children. It gives an absolutely free trade over a territory nearly as large as all Europe, and the profit is all our own. The genuine Free-trader appears unable to see or comprehend that this continental trade—not our exchanges with Europe—is the great source of our prosperity. President Cleveland now plainly proposes a policy that will admit Europe to a share of this trade.”
“But you are in favor of extending our foreign trade, are you not?”
“Certainly I am, in all practical and advantageous ways, but not on the principle of the Free-traders, by which we shall be constantly exchanging dollar for dime. Moreover, the foreign trade is often very delusive. Cotton is manufactured in the city of my residence. If a box of cotton goods is sent 200 miles to the province Of New Brunswick, it is foreign trade. If shipped 17,000 miles round Cape Horn to Washington Territory it is domestic trade. The magnitude of the Union and the immensity of its internal trade require a new political economy. The treatises written for European States do not grasp our peculiar situation.”
“How will the President’s message be received in the South?”
“I don’t dare to answer that question. The truth has been so long obscured by certain local questions of unreasoning prejudice that nobody can hope for industrial enlightenment among the leaders just yet. But in my view the South above all sections of the Union needs a protective tariff. The two Virginias, North Carolina, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia have enormous resources and facilities for developing and handling manufactures. They cannot do anything without protection. Even progress so vast as some of those States have made will be checked if the President’s message is enacted into law. Their Senators and Representatives can prevent it, but they are so used to following anything labelled ‘democratic’ that very probably they will follow the President and the progress already made. By the time some of the Southern States get free iron ore and coal, while tobacco is taxed, they may have occasion to sit down and calculate the value of democratic free trade to their local interests.,”