cable, professional economists without any real experience in business or manufacture. Notwithstanding the sense of security felt by the industrial leaders of Great Britain, the industries of the United States continued to improve and expand, but it was not until 1894 had passed, that a professor of textiles in an English industrial university warned his countrymen that in the textile industry, in which Great Britain's supremacy was freely acknowledged and competition was most difficult, "America is progressing rapidly in the industrial arts, and particularly in woven manufactures," because as he declared after an examination of her exhibits at the World's Fair in 1893, "her exhibits in woven fabrics and weaving machinery demonstrated this fact."

"As might be anticipated," he wrote, "there were many exhibits of mediocre work, and there was, moreover, a fair display of styles, fashionable one, two and three decades ago, but apart from the drawbacks the States gave evidence in their woven productions of the remarkable, if not phenomenal, progress they have made in the weaving arts during the past few years. With energy and the unique capacity for labor the American possesses, combined with his enterprise and intelligence, it may be taken for granted that it is only a matter of time and the manufacturers of the New World will run neck and neck with English, German and French producers. The American exhibits in woolen, worsted, and silk fabrics indicated the strenuous endeavor being made by the textile pro

ducers in the States to improve their manufactures." "It is not a question of any material suggestions for future lines of work which British producers may glean by considering the textiles displayed by the United States at Chicago," he continued, "for these exhibits prove the American manufacturers to be painstaking copyists of English, Scotch and French patterns. Their works confirm the character they have previously earned as reproducers of the inventions in textural design and materials originated by the craftsmen of the Old World."

Though novelty was a rare element in the fabrics, Professor Beaumont saw that "the paramount utility of these productions to the British manufacturer is apparent in the definite and instructive manner in which they display the standard of textile manufacturing which has been attained in the States because as British-made textures have to carry an almost prohibitive tariff in America and hitherto our exports to the United States in woven goods of wool, cotton and linen have been so extensive as to find employment for a vast number of hands in Great Britain and the North of Ireland, it is surely important for us to know what the Americans are capable of accomplishing on the loom. It may be taken for granted, he said, "that when they are competent of producing fabrics of similar qualities to those made in this country our exports will not simply decline, but be practically suspended," and he warned his readers that it would be nothing "less than a suicidal policy for us to close our eyes to the progress which

has been made in every species of textile work by the American craftsmen."

In like manner the Japanese, "that remarkable people," have decided these many years to become an industrial and maritime nation, in fact, the industrial and maritime leader of the Asiatic Continent, exercising both political and industrial hegemony in that part of the world, a supremacy they do not intend shall be shaken or questioned. They, too, are an imitative people, long noted for their artistic tastes and wonderfully skillful workmanship in handicraft products, who have studied, copied and produced modern machinery and modern machine products.

In 1880 the domestic exports of the United States were $823,946,353 and our imports were $667,954,746, or a total of $1,491,901,099. Ten years later our domestic exports were valued at $845,293,828, and the imports at $789,310,409, or a total of $1,634,604,237. It will surprise many and should convince even free traders of the reality of the rising industrial strength of Japan and the certainty of keen competition from her expanding industries in the coming years, to learn that the exports and imports of Japan for 1917 were valued at $1,300,000,000, or only $191,000,000 less than those of the United States in 1880 and but $334,000,000 less than our total in 1890. If the United States have forged ahead rapidly in the past 27 years, is it unlikely that the Japanese, of whose aims we are fully aware and whose military and industrial skill we respect, will likewise push steadily and rapidly their industrial advance? Is

not their surprising progress in the past a sure omen of their still greater advance in the years just ahead?

The Japanese have organized machine industry in many branches. which are constantly expanding. They have built up a textile industry capable of supplying in large part their domestic wants and of driving competition from the Chinese and Manchurian markets. They have constructed their own merchant marine which now commands the trade of the Pacific Ocean and built up a navy which in 1905 was capable of destroying the Russian fleet, a navy which in these days of vast armaments stands high among the great navies of the world. Just as surely as the United States, whose skill and latent industrial power were little suspected or feared a generation or two ago, expanded territorially and industrially, until today the belligerent Allies depend upon us for supplies, varied in number and illimitable in quantity, just so surely, it seems to us, will the Japanese, if their past accomplishments point to anything, prove how foolish it is to doubt their ability to become what they plan to be, an industrial nation whose powers must be acknowledged by all and whose ability to manufacture for, and compete in, the world's markets will be felt by other nations less fortunately situated, though more industrially advanced at the present time. They will prove themselves a people as remarkable in peace as they have proven themselves consistently triumphant in

war.

liquor interests. To maintain this argument, to convince young hearers of the truth of what he says, he may safely exclude all that protectionists have said and written and confine himself wholly to the avowals of antagonists of our domestic industries. He can prove his case, though all the protectionists from Alexander Hamilton to Joseph G. Cannon be kept out of the controversy.

First, he can find proof that British manufacturers in the days of our first President decided to crush American industry by selling goods here below cost. It is true that the wars of the French Revolution, the embargo and the War of 1812 largely offset this tendency, but after the peace of 1815 the process began again with redoubled vigor.

How mercilessly the importers did. their work and how it resulted have been told by a statesman who saw the process, and a scholar who long after read the record. Lord Brougham and Woodrow Wilson are capable wit

nesses.

For thirty years before the war for the Union there were few attacks on the protective system because it raised the price of free labor. Nothing could be more frank than the declaration of Calhounites that they wanted to see Northern wages brought down to the English level. The camouflage we heard in 1892 and 1912 about a low tariff benefiting the wage earner would have been scorned as a great humbug by the old-time planters. They made no secret of their purpose. In 1860 appeared "Cotton Is King," a book thus stating the desires of the pro

slavery champions: "If they could establish free trade, it would insure the American market to foreign manufacturers; secure the foreign markets for their leading staple; repress home manufactures; force a large number of the Northern men into agriculture, multiply the growth and diminish the price of provisions, feed and clothe their slaves at lower rates; produce their cotton for a third or fourth of former prices; rival all other countries in its cultivation; monopolize the trade in the article throughout the whole of Europe, and build up a commerce and navy that would make us ruler of the seas."

With these objects and ideals it is not strange that the South, to again quote "Cotton Is King," displayed "hostility to the employment of foreign capital in developing the mineral, agricultural and manufacturing resources of the country," or that it showed "sleepless vigilance" in "resisting all systems of internal improvements by the general government." Years after the war, Richard Taylor of Louisiana declared that had the tariff of 1857 cut deeper still it would have paralyzed Northern industry and that secession would have triumphed. We can see the case in the words quoted, and may for this time omit whatever Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate or Henry C. Carey may have said.

Our great Civil War demanded revenue beyond all precedents, and for a few years there was little chance of undermining the tariff wall. But Andrew Johnson was hostile to protection, and aggressive movements soon

began. They were not, on the whole, as candid as the old plantation school had been, but occasionally an importer or an Englishman would plainly say what he meant. Practically the case was put in a nutshell by Thomas Bayley Potter, who came over here to plead the cause of free trade. "Englishmen," he said, "don't object to your having a tariff for revenue only." If we were willing to yield the market the Cobden Club was willing that we should raise enough revenue to keep the government out of bankruptcy. There is no misunderstanding Mr. Potter's views of political economy. Nor did William E. Gladstone hesitate to advise us to raise raw material and leave developed manufactures to England. It is an illustration of the vague or spineless protection of many Republicans that James A. Garfield did not indignantly refuse membership in the Cobden Club.

With audacious candor George G. Vest said that President Cleveland had challenged the protected interests. to a fight for extermination. Timid Democrats lamented Vest's boldness, still he merely avowed what they secretly desired. In 1894 the best proof of the real desires of the Southern Democrats is their anger at Gorman and Smith and the other conservatives who blocked the way to more extreme action. Let no man say that Republicans merely pretended that American wage earners were imperiled. William L. Wilson was guest at a British banquet given in his honor because he favored foreign industry rather than that of his own country. It pained

him to see contracts go to home industrial plants, as it pained another Wilson to buy socks that were made on this side of the ocean. The Wilson banquet warrants all that Republicans have said about the real object of the low tariff movement.

By 1912 the Philadelphia Record was bold enough, even during the campaign to exult in the importation of Chinese pig iron into our ports. The next year brought us a tariff passed to increase importations, and signed by a President who declared that he had wanted to sign a similar document ever since he was a boy. Since 1913 there have been dodgings and equivocations on many important issues because wage earners have votes, but wherever and whenever the free trader dares speak his mind the old motive will again be avowed. Words may change; underlying tendencies do not.

No one in 1920 will plead for a low tariff in the interests of slavery, because slavery has long been dead. Few will argue that it means cheaper living for the wage earner because every man knows the contrary. We may look for elaborate articles showing that we must take foreign goods in payment for our loans. These will be mildly phrased, but underneath them lies the old hostility to American industry that existed in Hamilton's day. The free trader is as hostile to American manufactures as the prohibitionist is to the liquor traffic, though he often shrinks from the prohibitionist's blunt avowal of what he wants to do.