THE NEW FREE-TRADE MOVEMENT IN AMERICA.
THE new departure of the American Democrats, if they have really taken it, will be in one way a source of per- plexity to English Radicals. For a quarter of a century past they have adhered very steadily, through evil report and good report, to the American Republicans. They have perceived that this party, in spite of its Protectionism, of its partial failure in remodelling the South, and of its intolerable toler- ance for official corruption, has been the party of freedom, has fought slavery steadily, and has preferred the claim of the nation to that of its component fractions. They perceive that it has maintained a sound foreign policy as free from aggressiveness as from fear, that it has cultivated a reasonable friendship with England, and that it has within it the germ of a policy which would secure in all Departments
pure administration. They have, therefore, with a rare steadiness continued almost for a generation to sympathise with Republican successes and to respect Republican nominees, but they will be perplexed, perhaps shaken, if in the fiscal battle supposed to be approaching the Democrats become aggressive Free-traders, and the Republicans stolid advocates of Protection. English Radicals, partly from circumstances, but chiefly from reason, are convinced that Protection, apart from its fiscal imbecilities, involves what is virtually caste government,—that it taxes the whole people for the benefit of a class, and that it defends itself by deceiving the workers, whom it renders poor.
They bate it, therefore, for moral, as well as commer- cial reasons, and can hardly believe in the honesty of a party which, to swell manufacturers' profits, makes the necessaries of life—clothes, for instance—so insupportably dear. If the Democrats decide for Free-trade, thousands of Northern Radicals will be unable to separate Republican prin- ciples from the fiscal folly which degrades them, and will find themselves wishing that the Democrats may succeed, just long enough, at all events, to sweep away the tariff. They would feel this, even if their interests were not concerned ; but of course the North of England holds that American Free-trade would be greatly to the interest of British manufactures. We are not quite sure that it will, having, like Sir Charles Mice, an idea that the American manufacturers, once brought under the stimulus of Free-trade, may rival us in all the markets of the world, but it is useless to conceal that this is the general English impression. The Radicals, therefore, must lose for a time much of their sympathy with the Republican side. Upon the whole, and with a reservation upon one point, we think it probable that the Democrats will take this line, and that the Republicans will for a time resist. The Democrats are obviously very sick of the rather trumpery issues they have lately been raising, and of the worn-out men, Tilden and Hen- driks, for whom they have been doing battle. They have given up their currency craze as too utterly unpopular. They see that the people, who never like going back upon events, do not really care about the squabble as to the fairness of the election in 1880, and they wish heartily for a new cry, to be fought for by new men. The election of Mr. Carlisle, the Kentuckian Free-trader, as Speaker of the House means that, at least if it means no more. The old men wanted Mr. Randall, who would have stood on the old lines, and the unexpected movement for his rival was not their work, but that of the rank and file. The obscure men from the West and South combined in the caucus held before the vote to defeat the party leaders. It is evident from the success of this combination that a low tariff has great support in the Congressional Districts ; and it is most probable, though not proved, that the support is among Democrats nearly universal. A few Eastern Democrats dare not be Free-traders, being pledged to the manufacturers, and a few Pennsylvanians probably believe in Protection as a theory ; but the body of the party, Southerners and Western men, have always held that import duties should be limited by the necessities of the Treasury, which just now is crushed and worried with huge surpluses. The Debt is being paid off till the paper currency is contracted, there being no Bonds for the Banks to hold against their issues. The Democrats in the South and West are planters and farmers, and they have therefore no " interests " to make them fancy that dear clothes and dear tools, and dear appliances of all kinds, can be for their benefit. They do not get their living from wages, and are not therefore under the odd illusion that without Protection wages must go down. They can think without bias, and so thinking, they can see that they are taxed, and heavily taxed, in order that the shareholders in manu- facturing corporations should earn their large dividends with as little trouble as possible. That is the meaning of Protection to them, and the moment they wake up to the facts we do not doubt that they will vote it down ; and that if the Republicans fight on this issue, their opponents will be strong enough to carry both Legislature and Presidency. They cannot carry New England, but the numbers are not there. Apart from the scientific argument, it is not in human nature for farmers whose corn is unprotected to like to pay a fifth of their income for the protection of traders whose rapidly accu- mulating wealth brings to farmers nothing whatever, except a sense of the increasing social inequality.
But then, will the Republicans resist, when it comes to the
point Prima facie, we should say they would. Their leaders are decidedly Protectionist, and so are the artisans of the Eastern States. They honestly believe, as thousands of
Englishmen once believed, that American manufacturers can- not resist the competition of the lower-paid English and Con-
tinental artisans ; that if the Tariff is reduced, the States will be flooded with cheap foreign goods ; and that when this happens, not only will manufacturing dividends be low, but there will be only one work remaining, agriculture, for the people to do. They think a society so uniform and so de- pendent on the crops, an inferior society, and one too dependent for the amenities of life upon foreign supplies. They think it, moreover, a society which would move Westward too fast, away from the worn-out lands, to the deep, uncropped soils, and regard with horror a change which would deprive them at once of wealth and of all political influence. They are, as Englishmen believe, utterly in the wrong, except as regards some special trades, like that of the bootmakers of Massachu- setts; but they are fully convinced, and will be most reluctant, or even unable, to surrender their convictions without at least one stand-up fight. They have plenty of money and hundreds of lecturers, they have the support of their strict party following, which has now ruled for twenty years, they can excite a strong jealousy of English manufactures, and they may appeal to a deep latent feeling in the North that if the Southern Demo- crats are raised to power again on any pretext whatever, the Union will not be safe. This cry is already rising, and while the men who fought in the war still live, and few of them have yet passed forty-five, it must always be more or less efficacious. The Republicans will not, we think, perceive that the people are against them ; and if they do not, they will undoubtedly adhere to Protection until they have been defeated in one pitched battle.
We made, however, one reservation, and it is this. We do not believe that the Republican party is prepared to lose all hold over the West for any cause whatever not positively and visibly a moral one, and, of course, Protectionism is not that. If, therefore, the dislike to high duties infects the whole West, and becomes a passion with the farmers, as it became in England with the operatives, it is more than probable, it is certain, that the Republican leaders will give way, and either offer a compromise, or abandon Protection as hopeless altogether. Such a rapid spread of sound doctrine very rarely happens, but it is always possible, especially in a community constituted like that of the Western States. The farmers there live fairly well, and in good years save money ; but they are compelled to very thrifty ways, they pay high for labour, and they watch all outgoings of actual cash with a pitiless economy. They feel the high prices forced on them by Protection very keenly, and feel them every day, for nothing is protected like iron goods and the things they wear. If, therefore, a bad harvest comes, or the Indian competition in the corn market rises to unexpected heights, or Europe should have a bumper crop, or there should occur a financial crash in the West, the whole 'Western population will feel pressed, and may with one voice demand that the protective tariff be swept away. Then the Republicans will yield. It is not in their leaders to ostracise themselves on a question of duties, nor will they fight, as they did for "hard money," with a feeling that morality as well as the economic future is at stake. They will give way rather than lose their Western following, and we shall see the United States, like England, adopting Free-trade as their permanent fiscal system. Protection, however, dies hard in all countries where it does not include protective duties on corn ; it is next to impossible to diffuse abstract economic ideas among great masses of half-educated men ; and the notion that the Union, which contains all climates, should be made self-sufficing, a planet by itself, independent of mankind for everything but
books, appeals strongly to the American imagination. We look to see Protectionism as a policy die slowly, though the
tariff may be swept away by a popular explosion, as the Income- tax was. The people would bear that tax no longer, and it perished, though every economist in the Union was convinced that without it the rich would never pay their fair share to the national taxation. Even here there would have been fluctuations, but that the Protectionists, before they can move a step, must tax the millions' food. The American Protec- tionists never have had and never can have that difficulty to contend with, and if they could only emancipate clothes and iron, might still retain for their theories, as theories, a long lease of life.
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