tHE TINPLATE TRADE.
[To TIM EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Rees (July 18th) and Mr. Harry Jones (July 25th) have between them succeeded in proving that the tin- plate trade of South Wales is quite as flourishing to-day as it was when Mr. McKinley attacked it fourteen years ago. And no voice comes from South Wales to impugn the cheerful conclusion which you have drawn from their arguments that the trade has positively benefited by the attack. The Spectator has always held that
"Victories for the truth By the true alone are won,"
:rid I conceive that it will not be unwilling to permit one who suffered by the McKinley assault to put a point or two for which neither Mr. Rees nor Mr. Jones seems to have had an eye :- (1) The export of tinplates is now larger than ever, but it is far from what it would have been if the normal annual in- crease of the .decade 1878-88 had been maintained. The McKinley Tariff arrested the development of the trade, and still hinders it.
(2) The "new markets" of which your correspondents and you speak had mostly been discovered, and were actually being opened up, before Mr. McKinley delivered his attack.
(3) An enormous amount of capital was dissipated by the hostile Tariff. Works, e.g., which had cost ..£4.5,000 to build were afterwards sold for £7,000 (I speak of that I do know). Bought at this panic valuation, they are now able to yield a modest return upon the shrunk capital.
(4) Scores of capitalists were ruined and their families beggared.
(5) For a period of seven or eight years thirty or forty thousand people in South Wales who had lived in comfort, unexampled perhaps -among the operatives of our country, were compelled to subsist on "short-time" wages just above the starvation line. 'Thousands more turned to other occupations for which they were more or less com- pletely unfitted by the special training they had undergone. Yet other thousands, and they the most• enterprising and highly skilled, were lured by higher wages to America, where they contributed to the undoing of their fellows in the Old Country, and where they have since built up an industry which is already the keenest competitor of that which they forsook.
It is in my mind to comment upon some of the statements with which your correspondents have interlined their main contentions ; but remembering that the wit is all on the side of the Free-traders, I content myself with the subscription,
SOSPAN FACT/.
Grand Hiitel de r Etablissement, Contrexiville.
[Our correspondent has missed the point. We never denied that the McKinley Tariff, especially when it was first imposed, did greatly impair the profits in the tinplate trade. What our correspondents have proved is that our refusal to retaliate on America, and our determination to maintain our system a Free-trade, have not ended in the ruin of the tinplate trade, for that industry is still alive and well—En. Spectator.]
Previous page
