OCR Text |
Show V PLACING STRESS ON TARIFF. Why does a man of the pre-eminence of Secretary of Agriculture Wilson persist in such rot, on the necessity of high tariff, as in this statement of his made in Kenton. Ohio, today: "A revision of the tariff has lost no man his job; no panic has followed. A further reduction of the tariffs generally gen-erally would hit the working people first. Europe has lower wages than the United States and would promptly take advantage of lower duties. The farmer would lose his customers cus-tomers and prices of both factory and farm goods would come down." Secretary Wilson knows that the American manufacturers have undersold, and can undersell, the foreigners in their own markets, regardless of the small difference in the scale of wages. This country is exporting billions of dollars of manufactured goods every decade, and could double its exportations, if an organized campaign for the close study of foreign markets were inaugurated. American machinery and efficiency, combined with unequaled natural resources, of late years, has made this country industrially capable of meeting the competition of the world, and it is outrageously outrage-ously belittling for men like Secretary Wilson to be constantly indulging in-dulging in this political buncombe of America's inability to resist the brain and brawn of foreign lands without an artificial, arbitrary barrier bar-rier of huge proportions- provided by law. The Progressives, within the Republican party, recognize that the infant industries of the United States, protected for half a century, have grown to be lusty fellows and no longer require an excessively high protective tariff in combination with the powerful assistance of the American trusts. |