PROTECTION IN AMERICA. LTO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTLTOB.."_1
SIR,—Our League believes that the struggle of any nation either to maintain or to establish Free-trade is a matter of international concern, and is therefore hoping to inaugurate at the Free-Trade Congress in August a general attack on Protection in the interests of humanity. With that object it is obtaining from the sufferers in protected countries accounts
of the mischief which Protection works,—a sort of "Tariff Reform Commission" No. II. These will be published else-
where. But one such, sent to us by the New York Tariff Reform Committee, has a message to England so strikingly at variance with the usual English conception of the American position that it cannot fail to interest. The main body of the letter deals with the strangling of industries by the tariffs which are meant to foster them, with their causation of unem- ployment, and their accentuation of the distress so caused by raised prices. It ends thus :—
" More than ever before, we have the active co-operation of the manufacturers and the farmers, both of whom, through their great national organisations, have recently declared strongly in favour of materially lower tariff rates. We cannot understand how Great Britain, after maintaining FiTe-trade for many years and building up her industries and commerce through a policy of unrestricted commerce, can even consider the proposition to return to a protective system. That she should thus reverse her well-known policy would be especially strange in view of the fact that the -United States is now almost certainly preparing to abandon her system of trade restrictions, and that the protective idea, at least in its more extreme forms, is entirely discredited.
Signed by BYRON W. HOLT (Chairman). JESSE F. OnToN (Secretary)."
It will be generally conceded that if the United States adopts Free-trade, universal Free-trade is within view. Those who have been privileged, like the writer, to see much of this side of American thought, will see in the movement a moral force that will not "change nor falter nor repent "; a righteous indignation against the injustice which tariffs work at home
to all except the favoured few, and abroad to other nations whose interests are really identical, which will not fail to attain its object. Surely, if English people realise the depth
of this feeling—and not in the United States only—they will refrain from any action which would tend to embarrass the struggles of Free-traders abroad. Our Fiscal Reform agita- tion has already worked intense discouragement to the cause
of Free-trade in our Colonies and abroad. Unquestionably they who would extend Free-trade are fighting in the cause of mankind. To dishearten such men, especially at a time when
our goal seems within reach, appears to us like a kind of txeason-to the cause of.humanity.—I am, Sir, &e., B. G. H. RASKETT, Secretary to the Free-Trade Crusade League, and Corre- sponding Secretary for Yorkshire to the Cobden Club.
Halton, near Leeds.
[We agree. If our correspondent and his fellow-workers are in earnest, they will surely do their best to withstand the criminal folly of the present Government, who are entering upon a fiscal policy which is preparing the ground for Pro- tection.—En. Spectator.]
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