THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN.
IT is hardly possible to conceive a subject of political controversy which places a great democracy in so undignified a position as a recondite economical issue such as is about to be decided temporarily, and we may almost say without any kind of qualification for deciding it rightly, by the people of the -United States. Even if it were only the issue between Free-trade and Protection which had to be decided, we may be sure that the bewilderment of the ordinary elector, at least if he knew enough to be as much bewildered as he ought to be, would be profound. In this country, which depends, very fortunately for itself, on the rest of the world for its most necessary food, we have only to remember how many men of the highest distinction and culture have changed their minds fundamentally within the last twenty or thirty years on the leading doctrines of Free-trade and Pro- tection, to convince ourselves how bewildered our ordinary electors would be to be asked to give any reasoned verdict on that controversy, were it not evident that we should all be starved as well as deprived of many other necessaries of our modern life besides food, if we did not make it as easy and as profitable as we can to the producers of other countries to send us what we want, and to take what we produce here in exchange. We learn thus much by the simplest of all lessons, the lesson that we cannot grow nearly enough food for our own people, and that we can produce a great many things which would be of no possible use to us if we were starving, but which, luckily for us, we can exchange on satisfactory terms for the food which other great nations produce in an abundance far greater than they need. This elementary condition of our national existence keeps us fairly straight in relation to Free.trade. But there are a great many other countries which are not circumstanced as we are ; indeed the 'United States, which cover a considerable continent, and so are able to produce a great deal more food than they need for their own consumption, have not yet got a glimpse of the rationale of Free-trade, and vibrate like a pendulum from Free-trade to Protec- tion and from Protection to Free-trade, without finding any clear solution of the economical problem which is always besetting them in some new form,—the problem whether they should " foster " their own industries by discouraging the competition of other nations, or foster the industries of other nations that they may sell their own surplus produce to these other nations on more profitable terms. The -United States have not yet made up their mind on this subject, and, so far as we can judge, are not at all likely to make it up. They vibrate from one view to the other, not from any clearer insight into the theoretic conditions, but from the pinch due to the particular choice which, for the moment, they happen to have made. Four years ago they declared in favour of trying—not exactly Free-trade, but a less oppressively hampered trade than they had been trying before, but the choice made was so hesitating and ambiguous, that they did not reap at all the kind of prosperity for which they had hoped ; and now they are apparently disposed to fall back into the arms of the Protectionists, of which the only result will be to learn that they have not bettered themselves, but rather worsened their condition by the change. In such a continent as North America, the variety of climates, soils, and human ingenuities is so great that their people,—with Free-trade secured at least amongst all these various climates and human ingenuities,—do not learn the lesson of their comparative dependence on foreign countries at all adequately. They do not recognise that they can never receive the full reward of their labour without Free- trade, as Englishmen have learned to recognise it, and go on exchanging one form of inconvenience for another without knowing exactly which is the worse. If they let in more of the competition of the old world, the American capitalists, who are only half-prepared for such competi- tion, raise a wail of dismay, and though the consumer gets an advantage, he does not get it so soon and so obviously as to drown the complaints of his manufacturing neighbour ; while if they shut out competition from the old world, though the consumer begins to find himself straitened in all his means, he is not so severely straitened as to feel quite sure whether he might not be relieved if he would but take the advice of those who tell him to "take a hair of the dog that bit him," and increase the protective tariff till his manufacturing neighbours are satisfied. And so they go on, trying first Mr. McKinley's doctrine that the labourers of their own country are " degraded " by Free-trade, and then Mr. Bryan's doctrine that Free-trade is good but needs cheap money to help it out, till they are quite bewildered by the strange confusion of good and evil with which their political doctors ply them.
And unfortunately the Free-trade problem is only a. small part of the party issue. Mr. Bryan assures the people of the United States that their depreciated silver ought to pay their debts as easily as it did in the old days when it was much more valuable, and those who are in debt believe him and shout against the oppressors who want to "crucify them on a cross of gold." Mr. McKinley tells them that it will never do to let the bankers and merchants who have lent gold accept a depreciated silver at its old value by way of payment, and those who have lent their capital to their poorer neighbours accept that reasonable teaching and cry out Jr for honesty, but do not see that when Mr. McKinley goes on to say that they would be all the richer for having no European competitors to reduce their profits and cut down the wages of their labourers, he is talking nonsense and taking away with the left hand what he offers with the right ; that shutting out competition is both shutting out the natural advantages of other soils and other climates, and is also blinding them to the value of their own natural advantages, and teaching them to rely on temporary and artificial restrictions instead of on the per- manent and inherent bounty of their own country. And so the swinging of the pendulum goes on, each leader mingling so much falsehood with his truth, that the people are quite unable to discriminate the one from the other, and keep on swallowing the poison and the antidote so elaborately mingled that they are quite unable to discover which drug it is that hurts, and which that benefits them. In one of Grimm's fairy-tales there is a bewitched apple- tree, the fruit of which makes the consumer's nose grow to an enormous length, and a bewitched pear-tree, whose fruit makes its consumer's nose contract again ; and the hero of the tale administers these fruits alternately to the patient who has cheated him, till he has fully persuaded him that there is some evil spell counteracting the effect of his treatment, and must give back that of which he had robbed him, after which he gives him nothing but the healing pear ; and restores the exaggerated feature to its normal size. That seems to us a good parable of the treatment which the American nation is now receiving from its com- peting politicians, except that neither of them knows the secret of his own incapacity to cure the patient. If Mr. McKinley is elected he will endeavour to make up for defending sound money by administering a ruinous dose of Protection. If Mr. Bryan succeeds, he will endeavour to make up for Free-trade by breaking down confidence in the honesty of the American people, which will probably more than outweigh the advantage of his sounder fiscal policy. But the confusion of the situation is that neither of these rival doctors knows which of the drugs he administers or wants to administer, is doing the good, and which the harm, and that the people who are to be doctored are quite as ignorant as the doctors. Each of the latter is half-quack and half-physician, and each of them is far more deeply attached to his quack medicine than he is to his healing drug. He gives the useful drug on the authority of other doctors, but the quack medicine is his own discovery and his own favourite. It is a pity that he does not administer it alone, and then the nation would perhaps learn how poisonous it is. But mixed up with something really salutary, its pernicious effect is greatly diminished.
We suppose that as a matter of fact Mr. McKinley will carry the election, but whether he will thereby get the means of restoring Protection to its former ruinous height, is not so certain. We could wish that the pre- scriptions of the two candidates had not been so unfor- tunately compounded of good and evil. Then the victory of .either would at least have been instructive, whereas, as it is, it will probably make confusion worse confounded. All the beneficent result (if any) will be attributed by the successful candidate to his quack medicine, and all the evil to the restrictions placed upon the administration of it by his saner-minded colleagues. Mr. McKinley will probably win, but Mr. Bryan's failure will not be dramatic enough to prevent a great disturbance of the public mind now, and another (perhaps more successful) contest at the close of the century.
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