Perhaps the most helpful commentary on these figures, and on
the gloomy reports of unemployment in our great industrial centres, is to be found in the admirable speech of Mr. Franklin Pierce, the distinguished American Free-trader, who was entertained at luncheon by the Glasgow and West of Scotland Unionist Free-Trade Club yesterday week. Mr. Franklin Pierce reminded his bearers that in highly Pro- tectionist countries they had even more unemployment— about thirty-five per cent. of the Trade-Unionists were out of employment last winter in America—while the price of labour was higher here than in any of the Continental countries where high Protection prevailed. The people of Great Britain, he went on, were the most modest in the world; they did not appreciate their greatness. They had made a record under Free-trade which was without parallel; yet they were not satisfied, and' talked about change. If they did not appreciate the magnitude of their achievements in the last sixty years, they ought almost to go over to Protection and get a dose of it. When people talked of moderate Protection they were guilty of a contradiction in terms. They could not be moderate in Protection any more than they could fall half- way down Niagara.
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