MERIDEN CUTLERY CO., FINE TABLE CUTLERY, MERIDEN, CONN.

NEW YORK OFFICE, 80 Chambers Street.

GOODELL COMPANY,

MANUFACTURERS OF

CATALOGUE FREE,

ENGINE WORKS.

Roach's Shipyard, Chester, Pa.

SHIP AND ENGINE BUILDERS. New York Office: Morgan Iron Works, Foot E. 9th St.

SILKS.

CONN.. Silk Manufacturers. Spun Silk Yarns

HENEY BROTHERS, SOUTH MANCHESTER,

in the gray, Dyed or Printed, on Spools Warped or in the Hank. Organzines and Trams, Fast Colors, warranted. Special Yarns made to order for all sorts of Silk or Silk Mixture Goods.

Twist, Sewings and Dress Silks. THE L. D. BROWN & SON CO. 598 Broadway, N. Y. 114-116 Bedford St., Boston, 1015-1017 Filbert St., Philadelphia.

SODA AND SODA ASH.

Church & Dwight Co., SODA MANUFACTURERS, BI-CARBONATE and SALSODA,

63 & 65 Wall Street New York. MICHIGAN ALKALI COMPANY, Wyandotte, Mich.,

Manufacturers of SODA ASH, CAUSTIC SODA and

BICARBONATE of SODA. All full strength, and the purest goods in the market. THE SOLVAY PROCESS CO., SYRACUSE, N. Y., and DETROIT, MICH. Manufacturers of Alkali, Carbonates, Caustic and Crystals. SPIRITS.

COLUMBIAN SPIRITS

TRADE MARK.

MANUFACTURERS' OFFICE.

Do You Want to Establish a New York Office?

to Change your

We can let you in on the Ground Floor. No danger from nor waiting for Elevator. $15 to $50 per month (according to spac) includes kent, Light, Hea and Care. Telephone 621 Franklin. E. S. HARTSHORN, Cable Flax Mills, 52 Leonard St, New York.

PADLOCKS.
PADLOCKS.

CAST AND WROUGHT IRON.

STEAMSHIPS.

N. Y.

AMERICAN and RED STAR LINES. First class steamers sailing between New YorkSouthampton; New York-Antwerp; PhiladelphiaQueenstown-Liverpool; Philadelphia-Antwerp. For rates and full information apply to INTERNATIONAL NAVIGATION COMPANY 6 Bowling Green, New York; 807 Walnut St., Philadelphia.

MAWORY Td. Fl. and Sat. A DELIGHTFUL

ALLORY STEAMSHIP LINES.

TRIP BY SEA to the Ports of TEXAS-GEORGIA-
FLORIDA Tickets to all points in Texas, Colorado.
Utah, Arizona, California, and
Manual, mailed free. O. H. MALLOPY & CO..
Pier 20. E. R., N. Y.

MIDDLETOWN, CONN., U. S A.

The Celebrated Pillsbury's Best Flour. No Department Store complete without them.

Manufacturers of High Grade Open Hearth Steel Castings up to 60,000 lbs. Specialty of metal for electrical purposes of high permeability. The Lone Star Automatic M. C. B. Steel Coupler. Principal Office, Franklin, Pa. Branch Office, 253 Broadway, New York,

PAGE AND IS CONTINUED

ON LAST PAGE.

[Correspondence AMERICAN ECONOMIST ] WASHINGTON, February 2, 1899.-The transportation problem promises soon to have a foremost place in the deliberations if the two houses. During the week both committees of Congress which have been considering the oversea transportation question, have reported favorably the bounty and subsidy shipping bills introduced in the Senate by Mr. Hanna and in the House by Mr. Payne.

In both committees the reports were ordered on the bills by strict party votes, the Republicans voting to report the bills, except in the case of Senator Murphy of New York, who voted in the Senate Committee on Commerce in favor of reporting the Hanna bill. There was an agreement between the committees as to the modifications in the measure, and in both bills as reported appears a new section following the designations of bounties and speed premiums, which provides that the Secretary of the Treasury may contract with American citizens or corporations for a navigation contract under the sections of the proposed law for the entry of vessels to be built in pursuance of the bond within five years, under a penal bond of $5 per gross ton of the vessel so to be entered, conditioned upon the entry of such vessel into the navigation contract provided in the law within five years, which time is given for building or making ready such vessel for the service; but the Secretary is permitted to waive breach of the conditions where it is not the result of fault or negligence on the part of the

persons or corporations so engaging to build and equip the vessel or vessels during the five year period. The committee made other minor changes in the bills.

While there are Democrats in the House who are inclined to vote for the bounty and subsidy bill, the majority of the members of that party are standing out against it, and favor a free ship bill. One of the members of the House Committee, Representative Fitzgerald, of Boston, said:

'Absence from the city during part of the time while the bill was under consideration has prevented me giving the attention to the subject that is necessary to a thorough understanding of its provisions. I am inclined to think that the bounties and subsidies are too liberal. But I am not sure that a free ship bill would give to American shipping the Protection that is needed. I do not favor the discriminating duty scheme. Although I voted against reporting the Payne bill, I am not sure that I shall not vote for a subsidy bill in some form, if one can be devised that is equitable."

Leading Democrats are studying the question with a view to determining the course they shall take as party representatives on the shipping question. They are opposed to subsidies generally, but some of them are impressed with the discriminating duty bill introduced by Mr. Sulzer.

In his report on the bill Mr. Payne of New York discusses the free ship, discriminating duty plan and the pending bounty and subsidy scheme as means for upbuilding our merchant marine. This point at the beginning of the report is noteworthy: "Immediately after the adoption of the Constitution the fathers began to look around for means to remedy the evil (11 per cent. of our commerce only under the American flag). By a system of discrimination, by way of tonnage taxes and increased duties against foreign vessels, the growth of the American merchant marine soon attained wonderful proportions." Then the report proceeds to show how free ships, by providing no means of Protection for the higher cost of navigation, would not be effective, and the conclusion is reached that, because of the time required to abrogate existing commercial conventions, and possibilities of retaliation by foreign governments, it would be unwise to adopt discriminating duties, and therefore the bounty and subsidy plan is the better means of building up our merchant marine.

No time has yet been agreed upon for considering the bill in either house. Many of the members are giving close study to the subject, and they decline to say how they would vote upon it until they have read the report and com

pared the various free ship bills, the discriminating duty measure and the bounty and subsidy plan.

The Record of 1898.

If there is still any one who doubts that 1898 was a prosperous year, the following concise statement of the record in the various lines of business that are fundamental and indicative of commercial activity ought to be convincing. The comparison in every instance refers to the United States alone:

1. Largest wheat crop except that of 1891.

2. Highest price recorded for wheat except in 1888.

3. Largest cotton crop.

4. Largest exports of breadstuffs. 5. Largest exports of manufactured goods.

6. Largest aggregate exports of produce and merchandise.

7. Largest production of iron ore. S. Largest production of pig iron. 9. Largest production of coal. 10. Largest production of copper. 11. Largest production of silver except that of 1892.

12. Largest production of gold. 13. Largest gold holdings.

14. Largest per capita circulation of all forms of money.

15. Largest aggregate bank clearings. 16. Largest aggregate railroad earnings.

17. Largest aggregate sales of bonds. 18. Largest aggregate sales of stocks on New York Stock Exchange since 1882.

19. Smallest number of failures and smallest aggregate liabilities since 1892. -St. Paul (Minn.) "Pioneer Press."

Let the Tariff Alone. There is not a page of American history on which a single paragraph of Tariff experience is chronicled which does not contain an eloquent warning against a return at this time to the dismal habitation of Free-Trade so recently deserted. No matter what the present purpose of return may be, whether for cheaper wool or iron or coal or lumber, or cheaper products of the mill or farm, all would necessarily be connected and included, and with their inclusion the bitter experiences of several similar experiments would be repeated.

Present conditions may not be ideal, but they are better than the conditions from which we are progressing, and they should not be discarded through the adoption in whole or in part of a policy which in the past has brought to our people more loss and distress than all the foreign wars our country ever waged.-Cadillac (Mich.) News and Express."

COBDENISM IN EXTREMIS.

Great Britain Seriously Contemplates Abandoning Free-Trade.

[New York Tribune ]

The year ended with a Cobdenite wail.

It was emitted by Prof. Goldwin Smith, who describes himself correctly as one of the last survivors of the simon-pure Cobdenite coterie. He addresses his lamentation to the British public through the columns of the London "Times." With a candor at once rare and refreshing he confesses that Free-Trade is disparaged in Great Britain, that it has failed to fulfill the confident predictions and expectations of its first great apostle, and that it is in actual danger of being abandoned outright by the only considerable nation in the world that now practices it. That is, we repeat, a confession the candor of which is rare, for the average FreeTrader is wont to represent the "pagan creed" of Protection as being already "in the gutter" and certainly doomed to speedy annihilation. But it is absolutely true. Free-Trade is disparaged and discredited in Great Britain, even at Manchester and Birmingham. It has egregiously failed to fulfill the cocksure promise of Cobden, who told his followers they had no more right to doubt that within fifty years the whole world would adopt Free-Trade than they had to doubt that the sun would rise on the morrow. Instead of being thus universally adopted, Free-Trade remains in practice in Great Britain alone of all great nations. All others are more strongly Protectionist than before.

In such circumstances it is not strange that the British themselves should, as Professor Smith fears, think seriously of abandoning the discredited fetich. Why not? They are of all peoples the most intensely practical. If they are not, in the phrase which Bonaparte borrowed from Samuel Adams, altogether a "nation of shopkeepers," they are the most shopkeeping and manufacturing and trading people on the globe. And they propose to folow that policy which is best for their shops and factories and

commerce.

Let us grant that Free-Trade has been best, and that under it they have enjoyed a prosperity rivaled by that of only one other nation-the latter a Protectionist nation, be it noted. The fact is not to be ignored that their prosperity is not now what it was. It is waning. Their import trade is increasing and their export trade is decreasing at an ominous rate. It is easy to sneer at the "balance of trade," and to argue that a nation may buy more than it sells and yet be prosperous. Yes; but it cannot do so forever and to an unlimited extent. Pretty soon it will be living on its capital, and not even a Cobdenite will contend that that is sound finance.

We may be sure that when they find a chronic and enormous balance of trade against them the British shopkeepers and manufacturers and merchants will begin to ask questions embarrassing for Cobdenites to answer.

Nor are the British blind to other signs of the times. They see, for example, the United States building up an enormous tin plate industry, of which they once had a practical monopoly. How? Through "McKinleyism." They see American locomotives ordered for British railroads, and American rails, too; and American machinery and rails and what not ordered in vast quantities for use in India and Australia and Russia. Why? Because of "Dingleyism." They see our export trade increasing and their own decreasing, and they remember that we are Protectionists and they Free-Traders. They see "Made in Germany" staring at them everywhere, and find that Germany is crowding them out of the world's markets, even the markets of their own colonies, and they remember that Germany is a Protectionist country, and that all its marvelous development of manufactures and commerce has been effected under Protection. They see their colonies, once prosperous, reduced to bankruptcy and ruin, and realize that it is through Free-Trade and that because of the fetters of Free-Trade to use a perfectly truthful paradox-they are unable to help them except by giving alms.

Such is the case as the British are beginning to see it, and as this eminent survivor of simon-pure Cobdenism sees it. It is Athanasius against the world. That is a heroic attitude to assume in a moral cause. But when no moral principle is involved, and nothing but questions of practical self-interest, the hard-headed Briton is likely to come to the conclusion that, however magnificent it may be, it is not business. Cobden's rallying cry was "Free-Trade, Peace and Good Will!" Professor Smith sadly owns that in respect to the latter two "the world has certainly been going against us."

Does he imagine the first of the three to be so much more important and so much dearer to men that it will be adopted while the others are neglected? The truth is that it is a monstrous injustice to attempt to identify FreeTrade with peace, and to claim for Free-Traders a monopoly of peace-loving. One might as well say that Presbyterianism is identical with longevity, or that students of mathematics have a monopoly of sound digestion. There is simply no necessary connection between the two whatever. And if the world has been going against the Cobdenite ideal of peace and good will, it has still more been going against the other ideal which Cobden sought incongruously to link with them. Of that fact the eloquent Professor Smith himself is wit

ness.

UTAH'S DEMOCRATIC SENATOR.

Will He Stand for the Tariff Interest of His State?

[Salt Lake Tribune ]

The senator to be elected from Utah will be a Democrat. In theory he will be a "Tariff for revenue only" senator. But the Chicago platform was a little softening down of the old iron-clad Bourbon faith, and contented itself with a demand that all Tariffs should apply equally to all portions of the country. On this we think the Democratic Legislature can demand a pledge from each candidate that, if elected, he will look to the interests in Utah now protected by the Tariff; that in any future adjustment he will use his best endeavors to see that Utah is not discriminated against. This is essential just now for the reason that lead mining is made possible because of the Tariff, and the old determination to have full reciprocity with Mexico will be sprung just as soon as there is a probability of obtaining a favorable response. The work in this will be done chiefly in committee, and there is where the labor will be needed.

The lead combine will probably never relax their efforts until they secure free Mexican lead. In this they are always helped by Republicans and Democrats alike from Texas, Kansas, Arkansas and Nebraska, and the plausible arguthose ment is that with free lead States would obtain a largely increased market for their flour and corn. That the silver-lead States are very much better patrons than the States of Mexico, is plain enough, but the belief of those people is that they are bound to have the Western trade anyway, and they want the Mexican trade also. We believe that Senator Rawlins on more than one occasion, has gone into committee and fought for the Utah Tariff. It would be just as well if the Senate candidates for the present would pledge themselves, if elected, to do the same thing, for in Congress the caucus is most binding, and when members are fully committed to it, they cannot avoid its edicts. A pledge given in advance would enable the Senator elected to make specific exceptions to the iron rule.

The details of the import trade of the United States in the year just ended, the first full calendar year of the Dingley Tariff, have just been completed by the Bureau of Statistics. They show the smallest importation in twenty years, with the single exception of the year 1885. The total imports for the year are $634,958,229, the revised figures being slightly in excess of those of the preliminary statement issued by the Bureau of Statistics earlier in the month. This is $100,000,000 less than the imports of 1897, and $200,000,000 less than those of 1892, while, as already indicated, they are the lowest in twenty years with the single exception of 1885. The reduction of imports is altogether in articles free of duty, the dutiable im

of

in

$100,000,

ports in 1898. being $366,595,549, while those of 1897 were $365,302,240, while the free of duty articles imported amounted in value in 1898 to $268,362,680, against $377,329,110 1897. This reduction 000 in the importation of non-dutiable articles is due, first, to a very great reduction in the importations of woo! and the transfer of wool from the free to the dutiable list; second, to a reduction in the free importation of manufactured articles whether for use in the mechanic arts or for consumption; third, to the transfer of tea from the free list to the dutiable list, and, fourth, to a reduction in the prices and also a slight reduction in the quantity of coffee imported.

Articles manufactured for use in the mechanic arts fell from $25,293,522 in 1897 to $19,166,517 in 1898; articles manufactured for consumption fell from $20,942,277 in 1897 to $7,842,537 in 1898, and articles of voluntary use, luxury, etc., fell from $6,702,370 in 1897 to $3.851,377 in 1898. The above statements all relate to the non-dutiable importations.

Under the dutiable head the imports of 1898, as already indicated, differ but little from those of 1897. Articles of food and live animals coming in under the dutiable list amounted in 1898 to $100,506,148, against $102,349,373 in 1897. Articles in a crude condition for domestic industry show a marked increase, being $49,070,823 in 1898, against $32,555,794 in 1897, this being due to the general activity on the part of manufacturers and to the fact that wool was in July, 1897, transferred from the free to the dutiable list. Articles manufactured for use in the mechanic arts amounted in 1898 to $39,961,169, against $55,878,363 in 1897, and articles manufactured for consumption amounted to $96,962,272 in 1898, against $97,893,605 in 1897, and $100,381,308 in 1896.

Articles of voluntary use, luxuries, etc., under the dutiable list, amounted in value to $80,095,132 in 1898, against $76,625,105 in 1897. This increase is explained by the greater prosperity and greater purchasing power of the people under Protection. Of the total importations of 1898, 42.2 per cent. were imported free of duty, against 50.9 per cent. in 1897, 48 per cent. in 1895, 56.7 per cent. in 1894, 51.8 per cent. in 1891. 35 per cent. in 1890, and from 32 to 35 per cent. in the years ranging from 1884 to 1891.

The reduction of more than $100,000,000 in imports is apportioned among the great groups as follows: Articles manufactured for consumption, $14,000,000; articles manufactured for use in the mechanic arts, $22,000,000; articles of food and live animals, $32,000,000,

1898. Dollars.

118,144,740 87.323,654

206,246,201 150,178,595

25.293.522 19.166,517 20.942.277 7,842,537

6,702,370 3,851,377

I would be well for the Free-Traders to reflect upon the comments of British authorities upon these points. This quotation from the Birmingham "Daily Mail" should be pasted in the hat of every American:

By cheaper methods of production, America is overtaking us in more than one department of manufacture. Startling to the Midlands are the figures published to-day. concerning nails. Statistics show that the exportation of wire nails from the United States has grown from 1,547,078 pounds in the fiscal year 1888 to 22,894,099 pounds in the fiscal year 1898. The growth, which has been phenomenal ever since the beginning, has been especially so in the last two or three years. In 1895 the exportations were 4,367,267 pounds; in 1896, 8,031,927 pounds, thus practically doubling in one year; and in 1898, 22,894,099 pounds, showing a similar gain in the last two years, the exports of 1898 being five times more than in 1895. This is not very pleasant when one puts this. side by side with the fate of the nail trade in the Midlands. Moreover, Chicago has become the seat of an iron bedstead Industry that threatens to defy competition, the United States generally is knocking even Germany out in the manufacture of cheap boots, and, besides this, American steel rails are being sent to Ireland and Bombay, while the estimates sent in for the supply of plates for the construction of a 6,000-ton ship show that in accepting an American contract there will be an economy of $10,000 as compared with the lowest English tender.