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Show TARIFF AND TRADE. In spite of the fact that there was no political platform in the last campaign cam-paign recommending a return to the low tariff policy and the protectionists protection-ists were courted from every angle it is becoming evident that there will be a real fight on new tariff legislation legisla-tion after all. The free traders may be down but they are not entirely out, at least they do not think that they are. The first of them to fire a broadside broad-side was Congressman Cordell Hull, of Tennessee, who declared in a recent re-cent statement) that the proposal of the protectionists to "move further in the direction of extreme high tariffs tar-iffs and more severe restrictions on international trade in accordance with economic formulas and notions of the pre-war vintage, should be meat by another challenge and a demand that America, instead of being further subjected to super-tariff, must in the future work toward a constructive and liberal commercial policy in the light of the transformaton and revolution in our financial, industrial and commercial com-mercial affairs since 1914. A correct interpretation of these new and changed post-war conditions clearly demands foreign markets rather than excessive tariff protection." Mr. Hull mentions the transaction rnd revolution of our policies since 1914. Although he is not exactly specific it may be taken that he is thinking in part of the fact that we have invested so much money in Europe Eur-ope and that so many foreign securities securi-ties have been floated in America. Does he mean that we shauld lower our tariff so that the European securities se-curities can be made good at the expense ex-pense of the American farmer, that : the market of the United States must be filled with European goods so that European stocks and bonds will be I worth par, even if the mills in America Amer-ica close and the workers and their families go jobless and hungry? If so, Mr. Hull will find that a grea many millions of Americans will beg to differ with him. j It is true that we need foreign trade ' but it is not true that our tariff has cut us off from foreign trade. The figures show that our foreign trade is steadily increasing year after year This is due to more than one reason. In the first place, a great flood of foreign produce comes in free in spite of our tariff, and this includes all the things which are used by the farmer exclusively on the farm. In the second sec-ond place, the protection of our home market has enabled us so to increase our production and lower our costs that "we are able to compete in countries count-ries like South America and Asia against cheaper European wages. B'.'t throw open the American market mar-ket to Europe and our mass of production pro-duction will cease and the American producer will go out of business. This phase of the situation was ex-celently ex-celently summed up recently by Mr. John Hays Hammond when he said: "The keystone of the stability of our prosperity is the maintenance of a protective tariff which will preserve unimpaired our incomparable home market the most extensive and most profitable free-trade market of the world, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Minnesota to Mexico and comprising the diversified diversi-fied products of forty-eight great states, with a purchasing power immeasurably im-measurably greater than that of the combined nations of the world. "Having thus secured mass consump- tion as a condition precedent, we can avail ourselves of the economic advantages advan-tages of mass production in a degree unequaled elsewhere. Too much stress cannot be laid on the fact that large scale operation renders possible many economies in production and distribution; distribu-tion; that it aids utilization of by-products; promotes steadier employment md higher wages for labor; increases protection against industrial accidents and further international trade." The figures of today disprove two stock assertions of the American free ' traders: first, that protection increases increas-es the actual cost to the consumer and, second that it decreases our foreign for-eign trade. |