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Confessing The Truth

Confessing The Truth image
Parent Issue
Day
24
Month
April
Year
1891
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The Amencan Economist is the weekly paper published by the American Protective Tariff league for the dissemination of protectiye ideas. It goes into the offices of a large number of country papers in sympathy with protection, for the purpose of enlightening the brethren on the beauties of protection. This Economist is an "amoosln' little cuss." It has for a long time been trying to disprove the law that a nation cannot sell unless it will buy, and that in international trade, therefore, exports and importa must always be equal, or nearly so. In casting about for facts with whioh to undermine this fundamental principie of trade The Economist absurdly enough examined the statistics of trade between two countries only, rather than the simple and more obviously correct method of comparing the exports and imports of each country singly. Af ter The Economist1 s method of proof it could point to the f act that our exporte to England exceed our imports from the country by about $200,000,000. Yet it is well known that our imports from the American markets south of us are now more than $100,000,000 above our exports to them, and The Economist knows that England and the United States exchange their debts in those countries, we sending England an excess of agricultural producís, and England paying our debt in South America and the West Indies with manufactured products which we try to exclude through high tariiïs. In this way, by bilis of exchange, international debts are : terrea, and so in the long run exports and importe will always be made equal. There may be in some cases a large excess of importe over exports, as is trne oí England, to pay interest on foreign investments, ocean freights, insurance premiums, etc. , or exports may be greater than importe, as is the case with us, in paying out commodities to meet those same expenses. This is all very obvious, is in f act the A, B, C of international trade. Bnt nobody would have expected to see The Economist admit it, considering its frantic efforts to prove the contrary. In a late ntunber, however, The Economist says: "Probably no economie law is more rigid than that a nation's importe must in the long run be paid for by ite exports. If ite export of goods falls short it must inake up the deficiency by ite export of gold and süver. If these are continuously exported the consequent scarcity of gold and silver money will produce poverty and depression of prices until the import of goods is checked and the outflow of merchandise is enlarged." Just what you have been denying all along, and just the position taken by the opponente of McKinleyism all over the world. Now, af ter The Economist has learned the alphabet of trade, let it go a step further, put two letters together, and see if it does not inevitably follow from this rigid law that foreign nations cannot increase their purchases of our farm producto and manufactures, exoept as we increase our parchases from them; and that therefore when we erect tariff barriers to diminish importe we thereby strike a blow at our export trade; that in protecting our manufactures in the home market we injure our farmers in their foreign market