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"Rich men are doing, and willing to do, their part in this war. They are ready to pay, some of them have already paid, their children's lives to the defence of democracy; and they should be taxed, and are willing to be taxed, high. They ought not to be maligned in addition. The few men at Washington who habitually insult wealth and 'the rich' are trying to divide a country in which all patriots should be united. It will not escape attention that the bitterest plutophobes are usually opponents of the war or seekers of a dishonest and fatal peace."

We have smashed the railroads. What is the result? Less railroad mileage being built and more railroads facing or emerging from receivership than ever before. We have violently dismembered the socalled trusts. We have been doing this patiently and persistently for twenty years. We were told that this would reduce the cost of living. The cost of living is the highest on record.

We are fixing the prices of wheat, coal, paper and sugar, and threatening to take possession of our railroads, coal mines, oil and other industries, unless their owners will agree to reduce their temporary and exceptional war profits to the low average of a peace basis. Meanwhile the cost of the war has risen to the frightful figure of a million dollars an hour. To meet this appalling expense, many times greater than that of the War between the States, Congress proposes to tax

to death all the big incomes and big business in sight.

Is it a wonder that business halts, that capital withdraws from new enterprises and that labor prepares to shift for itself?

We are having a regular orgy of socialism. "Let the devil take the hindmost." After this the deluge!

PROHIBITION AND PRO

TECTION.

HAS CONGRESS POWER TO DESTROY
AN INDUSTRY AND NO POWER
TO BUILD UP INDUSTRIES?

By Roland Ringwalt.

War prohibition may lead to prohibition as a settled policy. It certainly makes such a line of action more than possible, and there is no legislator of either party who does not look for the ultimate success of the prohibition forces. Moreover, both parties are divided, and in each an aggressive element demands action without delay.

This has an indirect, if not a direct bearing on the speeches so often made against protection. In the Democratic platforms of 1892 and 1912 protection was condemned as unconstitutional. Many speakers have taken the same ground, and editorials by the hundred have followed in that line. Some of the orators have now declared for prohibition, and this may involve some embarrassment.

No one has claimed that the Constitution in so many words gives authority to impose protective duties.

Congress is, however, empowered to provide for the common defence and general welfare, and has authority to regulate commerce. On these two grounds protection has been upheld. Presidents of all parties have favored it, Congresses have deemed it necessary. It has been fought in the Supreme Court and has held its own. Perhaps the strongest testimony to its constitutionality was the marked alteration made by the insurgents of 1861, who in express terms forbade in their highest law any duties for the safeguarding of home industry.

Among those who have in writing testified to a belief that protection is constitutional is Woodrow Wilson. He could easily name well-known Southern Democrats who take the other view, and yet insist on prohibition. How will they argue?

Are we to be told that war requires grains; that alcohol is needed for munitions; that the soldiers must be kept sober, and that all this can be done because Congress can look after the common defence and general welfare? Then will we be informed that Congress has power to regulate commerce, and that in consequence all that is necessary to enforce the war policy can be done? Beyond doubt, if prohibition shows itself to be effective; if the army is better disciplined and the grain saving plan works, there will be a heavy pressure on both parties to support it in 1920. It is not easy for a Democrat to vote for a policy which strikes down a long established industry; which forbids the manufacture and sale of an article made and sold long before

Columbus saw the New World; which forbids railroads to carry intoxicants or newspapers to send liquor advertisements into dry States, and then say that Congress has no power to build up new industries. This is still more difficult when we consider that limited protection to dyestuffs has been voted by the very party which has declared all protection to be unconstitutional.

All the tariffs ever passed from the first bill brought forward by James Madison to the measure framed by Oscar W. Underwood have done less to interfere with the established order of things than our present system of war prohibition.

No doubt it will be said that prohibition is urged on moral grounds. So has protection been advocated on moral grounds. The early establishment of the policy was favored on the ground that it would give work to persons semi-destitute and in

clined to vagrancy. Prohibition has been demanded on the ground that without it we could not attain military efficiency. On the same ground, Andrew Jackson called for legislation that would enable us to meet our war needs. The advocates of prohibition can hardly present an argument without conceding the force of the arguments for protection that have come down to us from the days of Hamilton.

Is Congress all-powerful to destroy industry and has it no power to start industries? Can it throttle, but not foster? Suppose that prohibition does all the good its advocates claim it will achieve, the Southern Democrat

will be reminded of the benefits won for us by protection. It appears that the Southern prohibitionists are confronted by the horns of a dilemma. They must own that protection is constitutional, or else take the ground that the government can drive an industry out of existence but not call one into being.

Once, it is true, in the history of the Republican party, has a great interest, older than the Constitution and the Republic, going back to early colonial days, been stricken down and mortally wounded by legislation. Although war destroyed slavery, the interests of the Southland have been helped, not hurt by protection.

Tariff duties built up the mining enterprises; they sheltered the rice

swamps and encouraged the lumberman and the orange grower. Under Republican administrations the freelabor South grew richer, far richer than the South before the war. The most irreconcilable of the unreconstructed could see this, and the ablest Southern leader of today comes from Birmingham, a town that could not have been developed had it not been for tariff legislation. Whatever destruction was necessarily caused by war, the policy of the protectionists was designed to develop an active industry from ocean to ocean, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf.

Are we to fight next year's congressional battle on the ground that Congress has power to destroy industries but no power to protect them?

FAMOUS PEPPER SHIPS OF SALEM.

Incidents of a Trade which Thrived when Yankee Vessels Made Voyages to all Parts of the World.

By Thomas O. Marvin.

Few American cities were more keenly aware of the decay of American shipping than quaint old Salem. Its citizens appreciate the statement, true for so many years previous to the outbreak of the war and its imperative demand for shipping, that "only 10 per cent of our vast seaborne commerce is carried by American ships." In 1810 the American proportion was 91 per cent.

To show what this deplorable falling off in the deep sea carrying trade meant, the experience of Salem affords a notable illustration. Salem never was a large city. In 1850 it had a population of only twenty thousand. Yet in 1807 it could boast of

252 vessels engaged in the deep sea trade, probably the largest fleet owned by a community of its size in the world. But in the year 1900 this city, which had for nearly a century been better known in the ports of the Orient than Boston or New York, had not a single vessel registered for deep-sea commerce. The last arrival at Salem from a South American port was on March 21, 1877. The last entry of a vessel from beyond the Cape of Good Hope was on May 1, 1870, when the bark "Glide" came home from Zanzibar. The year 1861 saw the end of Salem's once great trade in Para rubber. The "Australia," in 1860, was the last Salem ship

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THE LAST AND THE FIRST OF THE SALEM PEPPER SHIPS.

Ship Australia, owned by Stone, Silsbee and Pickman, 1860.

for the fabulous Isla d'Oura, where it was supposed cargoes of gold bars. and nuggets could be picked up along the beach. By the close of the sixteenth century the Dutch and English joined in the quest, and in 1621 the French, carried away by glowing accounts of the importance of the trade, sent a fleet to Sumatra with magnificent presents for the Sultan of Acheen.

Prig of the Type of the Rajah owned by Jonathan Peele, 1795.

in Bencoolen, a port on the coast of Sumatra, he heard of the pepper trade, at that time confined principally to Padang. He sailed for this point without knowledge of the course and through waters dangerous for navigation He found that little pepper was actually raised at Padang, but that it was brought there in small quantities from points farther north by the natives in their "proas." He

succeeded in obtaining a cargo and sailed for home, but was wrecked in the West Indies and lost vessel and cargo. But he found his way back to Salem and told the owners what he had discovered. A brig of 120 tons, the "Rajah," was built secretly and in 1795 Carnes started again for Sumatra with the first vessel that sailed from this country for Sumatra pepper.

On this trip Captain Carnes visited the northerly ports of the island and without charts or guide of any kind made his way through coral reefs which are the dread of navigators to this day. But this time he brought his cargo safely into Salem. There was lively excitement in town when the character of the cargo was known and the ingenious Yankee intellect wrestled with the problem of how many years it would take the inhabitants of the country to exhaust such a vast supply of pepper. The owners of the "Rajah," however, were busy figuring the profits, for this cargo which cost $18,000 was sold for $144,000, or a profit of 700 per cent. Where the cargo was found was kept a secret. But in time vessels were fitted out at Salem and Beverly for Bencoolen where it was understood Carnes first heard about Sumatra pepper. These efforts were without avail, for the jealousy of the European colonists had been awakened and they had begun to fear the rivalry of these venturesome, pushing Yankees. No charts. or sailing directions of the coast north of Padang could be found. Lurid accounts of the dangers of

the voyage were spread abroad to frighten new adventurers. But by the first of the nineteenth century many ships turned their prows toward Sumatra for a share in this lucrative trade.

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In November, 1802, Captain Joseph Ropes, in the ship "Recovery" located Padang and obtained cargo of pepper. Two years later the "Putnam" sailed from Salem for the same port and met with success. And during that year at least thirty American vessels made voyages to Sumatra for pepper. "Boom towns" sprang up along the Sumatra coast, bearing such picturesque names as Analaboo, Soo-soo, Tanger and North Tally Pow.

A ship from Salem, the "Recovery," Captain Joseph Ropes, was the first American vessel to enter the harbor of Mocha, on the coast of Arabia, just inside the Red Sea, and opened the commerce in that pungent berry which forms so valuable a part of the beverage of the American breakfast table. From Salem also sailed the first American ship to open commerce with Hindostan, Java and Japan. Its vessels were the first from this continent in the Figi Islands, Madagascar, New Holland and New Zealand. They were among the first on the west coast of Africa and in South America. From Salem, too, sailed the first American vessel to round the Cape of Good Hope, and the first ship to carry our flag through the Straits of Magellan. A Salem ship, the "Atlantic," in command of Captain Elias Hasket Derby, Jr., was the first to display the

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