Magna Carta, and Other Addresses

by William D. Guthrie

The people of the United States are, therefore, now asked by the Democratic party to vote in favor of the proposition that, no matter what foreign competition there may be, even from Asiatics, the American national government has neither the right nor the power to protect a single industry or a single workman. Such a proposition may well amaze and delight foreign countries, and no wonder they all desire the success of the Democratic party. Every other national government not only has the power to protect its industries, but has again and again exercised that power whenever the interests of its people demanded protection. The power in one form or another is being exercised to-day against American products by almost every government in the world, including the colonies of England, as witness Canada. The power would be exercised by England again to-morrow if it should appear to be for her interest to do so. Yet, no matter that our factories may be closed and our wage-earners thrown out of work as in 1894, 1895 and 1896, no matter how easily Europe and Asia could make our country their dumping-ground and could make a prey of our necessities after closing our workshops and destroying our industries, no matter how beneficial to all classes it may be to have a diversity of industries—the Democratic party, nevertheless, proclaims that our national government is powerless, and that there is neither the right nor the power to enact a tariff except for revenue.

We Republicans firmly believe that if there be one feature or element of right and power within the spirit and scope of the Constitution of the United States, and clearly vested in Congress, it is the right and power to impose duties for the purpose of protecting American industries and American labor. The very first tariff act, approved July 4, 1789, one hundred and twenty-three years ago, declared that one of its purposes, one of its objects, one of its inducing motives, was "the encouragement and protection of manufactures." Washington approved and signed that bill. Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe—all of them of the generation that framed the federal Constitution—recognized the existence of the power to protect and recommended the protection of American industries. But the American people are now asked in 1912 to vote for a party and a platform which repudiate both the right and the power of Congress to protect American workmen, farmers and manufacturers.

It is impossible in this outline of issues adequately to discuss the principles and policy of a protective tariff. The details of that important and vital subject must be taken up and analyzed at other times. Generalizations would be of little value. The facts are readily at hand, and they demonstrate that the material welfare of the country and of nearly every class and section has been promoted by the protective policy, and it will continue to be so promoted. Although we may now be willing to face free competition with Europeans, we cannot be blind to the menace and danger of free competition with Asiatics. Just across the Pacific ocean, with constantly cheapening freight and passenger rates, are populations of 50,000,000 in Japan, 450,000,000 in China, 300,000,000 in India—800,000,000—who will furnish efficient labor at wages ranging from 10 to 30 cents a day for twelve hours' work on the same kind of machines at which American men and women are now working. Shall we open the flood-gates? Shall we elect as President the historian who, but a few years ago in the quiet and impartial atmosphere of his study, declared to the world his sympathy for needy Asiatics and his opinion that "the Chinese were more to be desired, as workmen if not as citizens, than most of the coarse crew that came crowding in every year at the eastern ports"?

This generation has had one bitter experience of Democratic tariff legislation. In 1892, the Democratic party was, for the first time in thirty-two years, placed in control of both houses of Congress and the presidency. It came into office committed to free trade, as it would now again come into office pledged to free trade. It passed the Wilson bill in August, 1894, and thereby took its first step towards the abandonment of the policy of protection for American industries. There followed, principally as the direct result of this Democratic tariff legislation and the antecedent menace, an acute period of industrial and financial depression. I had supposed that the fateful years 1894, 1895 and 1896 would never be forgotten by those who suffered through them. As Governor Wilson himself well said in his "History of the American People," in describing this period of misery: "Men of the poorer sort were idle everywhere, and filled with a sort of despair. All the large cities and manufacturing towns teemed with unemployed workingmen who were with the utmost difficulty kept from starvation by the systematic efforts of organized charity." This was also a time of unprecedented social unrest and discontent and of Coxey's ragged "Army of the Commonweal of Christ" crying for food and work. It was a period of misery and depression, of popular discontent and disturbance, of strikes, riots, destruction of property, murder and maiming in industrial disputes. No one could deny, as the historian pointed out, that the country had fallen upon evil times and that American workmen found it harder than ever to live.

We have only to recall to the people's minds the conditions of unemployment, poverty and misery which followed the last tariff legislation of the Democratic party, and compare conditions as they exist to-day. The people of this country will make a terrible mistake and a frightful blunder if they now vote to run the risk of a repetition of those days under the delusion that the currency system of the government was the cause of the business depression and misery that followed immediately upon the election of Cleveland in 1892 and the passage of the Wilson tariff law in 1894.

Many are now telling the people that the tariff is solely responsible for the high cost of living and for the prevalence of social unrest and discontent. Such phenomena are world-wide and exist abroad as much as, if not more than, they exist here. In England, which has no protective tariff, the complaint against the high cost of living has been even louder than here. The real causes of the increase in the cost of living with us undoubtedly are: (1) enormous increase in the world's supply of gold, necessarily diminishing the purchasing value of the dollar, for the world's gold production, which from 1850 to 1890 averaged $120,000,000 per annum and was $130,650,000 in 1891, increased to fully $461,000,000 in 1911, (2) rapid increase of population without a corresponding increase of the production of food and other necessaries of life, (3) flocking to the city and abandoning the farm, (4) appreciation in land values, (5) increase in the price of raw materials, (6) higher rates of wages and decrease in the number of hours of work, (7) better standards of living, (8) exhaustion of some sources of supply, (9) extravagance in public expenditures, and (10) withdrawal of armies of civil servants from productive industry. These are the principal and controlling causes that tend to the higher cost of living; they are world-wide, and, if explained, they will be easily understood and recognized by intelligent and candid business men and workmen, who will at once perceive that these causes will not be removed in any degree by free-trade legislation. Last year serious disturbances occurred in Europe as a result of the prevailing high cost of food supplies there, and the British board of trade is now making an investigation into the cost of living, not only in England but also in Germany, France and Belgium. In fact, an international commission is at this moment inquiring into these causes. How preposterous it would be to say that the American protective tariff was the cause of the high cost of living in free-trade England or elsewhere in Europe!

Nor is the protective tariff in any sense responsible for the spirit of social unrest and discontent except, perhaps, in so far as prosperity begets discontent and multiplies appetites. Throughout the civilized world in recent years there has developed a spirit of social unrest and discontent, of disregard of law, and of disrespect for moral principles and religious beliefs. To those who look below the surface, it is more and more evident that this world-wide symptom is due, in greatest measure, to the spread of Socialism. According to the teachings of the Socialists, avowed or unavowed (for many who are preaching its doctrines would resent being called Socialists), our entire social system and the system of laws under which we live are unjust and should be upset, property rights should be destroyed, and religious beliefs, which are the principal source of our respect for law and order and the rights of property, should be broken down. As an American student and writer has said, a single passage from Liebknecht stands fairly for opinions that may be quoted from twenty authoritative socialist sources in Europe. That passage is as follows: "It is our duty as Socialists to root out the faith in God with all our zeal, nor is any one worthy the name who does not consecrate himself to the spread of atheism." I believe that few American Socialists have gone to any such extreme, but such has certainly been the tendency and teaching of Socialism in Europe.

Unfortunately the atmosphere of the present campaign is calculated to obscure and hide the true issues in controversy and the real danger that lurks under so much noise, declamation and enthusiasm. An avowed assault and an open declaration of war on society, on our form of government, or on our courts of justice would bring the points so clearly before the American people that none of us could for a moment doubt the outcome. We Republicans would hail and welcome an open attack, because we know that the people would then quickly and overwhelmingly rally to the support of our party. The more openly constitutional government and our social system are attacked, the more strongly will they become cemented in the affection and reverence of the people.

Most of our political and social institutions which are now being assailed as antiquated are founded on truths which ought ever to be self-evident. These truths sound trite, but "trite truths are often the most valuable truths, though sometimes divested of force by their very triteness." We are constantly hearing talk about the principles of the Constitution being antiquated in the eyes of these modern iconoclasts, and the other day a leader of the Progressives in this state, who is himself a lawyer, referring to the Progressive judicial nominations boasted that they had selected men who did not believe in a "dead constitution." Yet these candidates are ready to accept a judicial office which they could not rightly fill for a minute without taking an oath to support the Constitution in which they do not believe.