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Freer Trade With Canada

Freer Trade With Canada image
Parent Issue
Day
27
Month
November
Year
1903
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Canada is not only our third best customer, but in proportion to population, our very best. In the fiscal year ending with June 30, Canada bought from this country merchandise to the value of $126,000,000. that makes an average of more than $25 for every man, woman and child in British North America. In the same period the purchases of the United Kingdom, our largest customer, amounded to only only about $12.50 per capita. This was despite Canadian preference of 33 1/3 per cent to British imports, and despite tariff obstacles which kept Canada's sales to the United States down to about one-third of the value of goods bough from us. 

There is a growing sentiment along our northern border that this Canadian market is worth more consideration from American law-makers. It is argued that a good customer should be treated with conciliation and friendliness, not in a spirit of contempt or of hostility. That is the rule in private business. Why should it not be in national business? ask the merchants and manufacturers of the National Reciprocity League, whose membership extends from Maine to St. Paul. In 1898, when the Joint High Commission of British-Canadian and American representatives met at Montreal, the first question on its list was trade reciprocity; while the obstacle which prevented an agreement was the Alaska boundary, now settled.

Our tariff against Canada is illogical in many ways. Canada is now a great wheat-producing country. Following the natural course of trade, Canadian wheat should come to the American mills at Minneapolis and other cities to be ground. It is turned back by a tariff of twenty-five cents a bushel. The duty does not affect the price of American wheat. That is fixed in Liverpool. Canadian lumber comes in under a high duty, which raises the price to American home builders. On the other hand, American manufacturers are being forced to build branch plants in Canada because of the tariff barriers.

New England already has the benefit of free coal from Canada, although the law removing the duty is only temporary. But what reciprocity especially means for New England is a greatly enlarged market, close at hand, for her immense manufactures of boots and shoes, cotton and woollen goods, and other products of her ever-busy factories. - Collier's Weekly.