PROTECTION NEEDED. GEORGE W. RUSSELL, ATKINSON, N. H., ASKS CONTINUED PROTECTION FOR THE PRODUCTS OF AMERICAN LABOR. ATKINSON, N. H., December 11, 1908. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE COMMITTEE, Washington, D. C. GENTLEMEN: You desire facts. I shall try to give them from the view of a wage-earner. In 1898, the first year of the Dingley tariff, our production of wool was 266,720,684 pounds. In 1907 our production of wool was 316,032,099. There is talk among people inclined to freer trade about a tariff in the interest of the consumer as well as in the interest of the producer. An adequately protective tariff is always in the interest of the consumer and also in the interest of the producer. In 1892, under the McKinley tariff, with the people generally at work at good wages, our annual consumption of wheat per capita was 5.91 bushels; of corn, 30.33 bushels; of cotton, 24.3 pounds. In 1894, under the threat and fact of the Wilson tariff, our annual consumption of wheat per capita was 3.41 bushels, a loss to the farmers market of 42 per cent; of corn, 22.76 bushels, a loss to the farmers' market of 25 per cent; of cotton, 15.91 pounds, a loss to the farmers' market of 33 per cent. Dun's Review of February 22, 1896, said: "Prices of commodities are now at the lowest average ever known." Breadstuffs have declined 25 per cent since February, 1893; meats, 28 per cent; and dairy and garden products, 45 per cent. The above figures show that the producers were hurt by lower prices and smaller consumption. Neither were consumers benefited by lower prices. Exports of farm products also largely decreased. We are all in the same country and our interests can not be divided. To be prosperous every person must be adequately protected, whether he produces hides, coal, shoes, wool, wheat, or any other product. Labor and capital must be alike defended. It is not an exaggeration to say that we, as a people, are on an average twice as well fed, clothed, and housed as any other like number of people on the globe. This means that what we want to consume costs, relatively, one-half as much as it costs any other like number of people. The average year's work will buy twice as much of what we want to consume as the year's work of any other people. These conditions can only be maintained by adequate defense. We must keep our people employed or support an army of unemployed. Wages can never be kept up to the standard of the first half of 1907 without all are employed. Our free traders tell us about competing with the world. We can compete with the world, but to do it we must accept the world's conditions. This is inevitable. Our imports of competing products are constantly increasing under present duties, which shows that lower duties or free competition are impossible. Asia is beginning to manufacture competing products, with American and European machinery, run on a wage scale possibly one-twelfth of ours. German competition under the Roosevelt amendments of the Dingley tariff is driving our producers and working people out of our home market, and we have no redress but to reduce wages and dividends. The Boston Advertiser of August 11, 1908, said: Christmas from a child's point of view was vividiy recalled, where the German steamship Belgravia, from Hamburg, docked yesterday and began discharging her immense cargo, consisting chiefly of toys. This shipment of the product of Teutonic skill is only the forerunner of similar shipments which will arrive from Germany from now on to meet the Christmas holiday demand. A knit-goods manufacturer writes the President that only onefourth of his machinery is running and that unless he has relief soon it will all be idle. There is a demand for lower duties on iron and its products by people who want to deprive us working people of doing our own work. Under present duties our imports of iron and its products have increased from $19,549,848 in 1904 to $33,633,075 in 1907. These figures show conclusively that present duties need to be increased and not decreased. The average price of steel rails in Great Britain from 1895 to 1905, inclusive, was $26.05 per ton. The average price in the United States. for the same years was $26.22 per ton-British prices given by the secretary of British Iron Trade Association; American prices by American Iron and Steel Association. Under protective duties of $35 per ton on iron and its products if imported in foreign ships, and $30 per ton if imported in British ships, Great Britain produced nearly all of the world's consumption of iron and its products. Under free trade she stands third in the production of iron and its products. Under the Dingley tariff in 1905 the United States produced 22,992,380 gross tons of iron. The same year the world outside of the United States produced 31,005,585 gross tons. An adequately defensive tariff is in no one's way except that of the foreign exporter or the American importer. Neither does it add to the cost of home production, but generally decreases such cost. There is not an important schedule in the Dingley tariff that can be lowered without increasing imports, and imports are now far too large and are fast increasing. Germany has increased her duties on imports to increase her home market. France is about to do so. Shall we reduce our tariff, which is now so low that competing imports are constantly increasing and last year caused an emigration of thousands of skilled working people and an army of unemployed estimated at 2,000,000? We must do our own work or pay other countries for doing it at the expense of our own working people. Now, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, again we entreat you to stand by the American working people. Do not intrust your work to the other House to be amended. If you reduce present duties, we shall be worse off than we now are. GEORGE W. RUSSELL. Very respectfully, RECIPROCITY WITH CANADA. HON. J. C. NEEDHAM, M. C., FILES VARIOUS TELEGRAMS URGING RECIPROCAL AGREEMENTS WITH CANADA. Hon. J. C. NEEDHAM, M. C., STOCKTON, CAL., November 28, 1908. Washington, D. C.: We urge tariff measure authorizing President to make trade agreements with Canada mutually modifying tariffs on lumber and fruits. Submit this to committee. SOUTH SAN JOAQUIN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, By GEO. W. TATTERSON, L. M. LARSON, J. R. KOCH, Federal Committee. Hon. J. C. NEEDHAM, M. C., STOCKTON, CAL., November 28, 1908. Washington, D. C.: Insist on tariff measure authorizing President to make trade agreements with Canada mutually modifying tariffs on lumber and fruits. Submit this to committee. House of Representatives, Washington, D. C.: This chamber and our people favor any arrangement, reciprocal or otherwise, to secure the free entry of grapes and other California fruits into Canada. JOHN M. PERRY, President. THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK UNANIMOUSLY ADOPTS REPORT DECLARING IN FAVOR OF CANADIAN RECIPROCITY. NEW YORK CITY, December 30, 1908. To the Chamber of Commerce: This chamber has repeatedly recorded its opinion in favor of closer trade relations with the Dominion of Canada since the year 1852, when it first memorialized Congress in favor of a reciprocity treaty with our northern neighbors. The reciprocity treaty negotiated in 1854 remained in force until 1866, when it was denounced by the United States and has not been renewed. The growth of Canada in wealth and commerce will be realized when the progress made in that country during the last forty years is contemplated. At the last annual banquet of the chamber the Hon. Clifford Sifton, P. C., of Ottawa, formerly minister of the interior, illustrated this progress by the following figures: In 1868 the foreign trade of Canada was. In 1908 bank deposits were.. $131, 027, 532 650, 793, 131 48, 504, 899 246, 960, 968 2, 100, 411 28, 507, 124 37, 678, 571 650, 126, 232 The United States has contributed a large share toward Canada's rapidly growing foreign trade. Our exports to Canada in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1906, were more than double our exports to the whole of South America, and Canada as our customer now occupies the third rank in importance, Great Britain appearing first and Germany second. It is clearly to our advantage, under these circumstances, to cultivate trade relations with our neighbor; but the question is frequently asked: Why should we grant tariff concessions to a country whose purchases from us have continually increased with every year? Mr. B. E. Walker, president of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, Toronto, has given us the answer. In his interesting address at the last annual banquet of the chamber Mr. Walker spoke as follows: You sell us 60 per cent of our imports, but buy only 35 per cent of our exports and rarely buy our securities. It is true that we are improving our purchases from England, and that you are improving your purchases from us and even occasionally taking an interest in our securities, but I invite your deepest, most broad minded and wisest consideration of these most striking figures, and I ask you whether you think it is likely that trading relations so one sided can continue forever.. Beyond a peradventure if you do not open your doors a little more liberally to us, so that we can more nearly pay you in goods instead of always drawing on London for the purchase price of what she has bought from us in order to pay you, you will leave us no alternative but to keep up our tariff walls until we can create at home almost every manufactured thing you sell us on the one hand, while on the other we seek trade preferably with any nation which takes pay in goods so as to lessen our payment of actual money to you. * We are not asked to make any one-sided arrangement for the sole benefit of Canada. In fact, there is no urging on the part of the Canadians. The Hon. John Charlton, member of the Canadian parliament, in an address before this chamber on November 7, 1901, said: At the expiration of the reciprocity treaty, Canada felt herself largely dependent upon the American market for the sale of farm products. Unfavorable tariff regulations then adopted have since largely excluded her from that market, and she has been obliged to seek other outlets. The result of her efforts has been to attain success above her most sanguine expectation, and the Canadian producer can not now be made to realize that the American market is a matter of very great importance to him. The removal of trade barriers would develop a largely increased trade between the two countries, but neither the Canadian nor the American has had object lessons in the last thirty years to give demonstration of this fact; and so far as the Canadian is concerned, while freer trade relations would be welcomed, the anxiety to attain them which characterized public sentiment thirty years ago has ceased to manifest itself. Under the operations of the old reciprocity treaty, commercial, social, and busi ness relations between the two countries tended to grow more and more intimate year by year: Since the abrogation of that treaty and the adjustment of the present tariff policy of the United States, repellant influences have driven the two people further and further asunder in sympathy and sentiment. Mr Sifton, in his recent able address, has told us: You are perfectly able to get along without making trade arrangements with Canada, and Canada has shown itself perfectly able to get along without making trade arrangements with the United States. We sought reciprocity with you for many years. We are not seeking it now. Like you, in your large way, we, in our smaller way, are doing well. We are perfectly satisfied with matters as they stand. If, and when, it becomes in your judgment to your interest to make any changes which will be beneficial to Canada, and to make any proposals for similar changes on our part, there is no reason why these proposals should not be debated with perfect calmness and with the clear understanding that no proposals will be accepted upon either side which are not considered to be of advantage to the country which is asked to adopt them. The Canadians are perfectly able to take care of themselves; and that they have done so and propose hereafter to trade with those nations that express a desire to trade with them is proven by their new tariff policy. In 1907 the Canadian parliament adopted a triple tariff which consists of a "general" tariff containing the highest rates of duty; a "preferential" tariff which applies to Great Britain and British colonies and contains the lowest rates, and an "intermediate " tariff with rates between those of the general and the preferential tariff, the intermediate tariff to be applied to countries entering into reciprocal trade relations with Canada. So far only one reciprocity treaty has been concluded on the basis of the "intermediate" tariff, namely, with the Republic of France. This reciprocity treaty has been ratified by the Canadian parliament and by the Chamber of Deputies of the French Parliament, but is still pending in the French Senate where it is expected that it will shortly be ratified. Canada was obliged, in negotiating this treaty with France, in a number of instances to exceed the concessions authorized in the "intermediate" tariff and to make rates of duty as low as, and even lower than, those provided in the British preferential tariff. Where such concessions beyond the preferential tariff have been made, they will, of course, apply equally to British products. The United States with all other countries not governed by reciprocal treaty provisions pays, and will continue to pay, the highest rates of duty provided in the "general" tariff, and will therefore be at a disadvantage. We have thus far not felt the results of Canada's new tariff system, as no country has so far received the benefit of Canada's intermediate tariff; but upon the adoption by Canada of treaties with other important countries, to which the lower rates of duty of the intermediate tariff will be conceded, we are bound to be the losers, and we shall then realize the folly of our present illiberal policy. On the subject of the objections that may be brought against reciprocal trade relations with Canada, Mr. James J. Hill, of the Great Northern Railway Company, at the last annual banquet of the chamber, expressed himself as follows: Has the United States anything to fear from competition on the north? Let me reenforce my opinion with that of men who would be first to sound the alarm if it were true. There is, perhaps, no man in this country better informed on this phase of the industrial situation than Mr. D. M. Parry, lately president of the National Association of Manufacturers. This is what Mr. Parry said: |