partial remedy. When the conference adjourned it declared that trusts were both good and bad and recommended that a constitutional amendment be submitted to the people which would make it possible to annul the certificates and licenses of doctors and druggists found guilty of belonging to bad trusts. What should have been the principal question discussed at that conference? More trust legislation or simply free water? What is the vital question before this conference? More complicated and dangerous restrictive legislation or simply free trade? JOHN F. SCANLAN. Western Industrial League. John F. Scanlan, of Illinois, spoke on "Trusts and Free Trade," and said: After the object-lesson of the last panic it requires, shall I call it courage, for any person to come before the American people and ask them to adopt free trade as a system of political economy for this nation. For seventy years the industries of this country have been bombarded from within and without, with an energy born of the most vicious and destructive spirit, and the leading hosts in that bombardment have been and are enemies of our welfare, aided by a few theoretical professors, free trade dreamers and political free lances. Experience has pushed aside the free trade shibboleths of "the tariff is a tax," "robber barons," "the duty is added to the cost," "the farmer is robbed," etc., all these falsehoods have now been boiled down to a legitimate successor, "The tariff is the mother of trusts." To charge the existence of trusts to protective tariff is as unfair, if not as ridiculous, as to charge them to the Declaration of Independence, which gave the opportunity, or to human life that gives us the energy. Were it not for protective tariffs, we now would be, not the leading farming, manufacturing and consuming nation, with the best credit and most gold of any in the world, on the contrary we would be down among the poor nations and would not be troubled with the problem of how to chain down to the best interest of the majority, this new development of American energy, the trusts. The collecting of revenue is not the sole object of protection, That is secondary. The most important is the creating centers of industrial activity within our country; bringing the consumers and producers close together; adding the labor profit of both to the nation's wealth, which gives the people an opportunity to develop their natural genius, sure to produce more freedom and a better civilization; increase wages, lower the price of commodities and increase the consuming powers of the home market. Experience proves we cannot have these conditions under free trade. All down through the ages man has lived under liberty or in slavery. There are two kinds of slavery, the slavery of purchase and the slavery of conditions. Man is a slave of conditions when he cannot use the forces of nature to help him to better results and higher civilization. The latter state is brought about by the absence of national industry or its destruction. We have been victims of the latter system of slavery six times since the Republic was established, resulting from the six free trade panics, each of which was but a repetition of the losses and suffering, in proportion to the inhabitants, which we experienced in the recent panic of 1893 to 1897. The dates of these panics are 1784, 1820, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893. During those panics a great proportion of the wealth of the nation passed away from us. During the intervening protection eras all the wealth and progress we made was achieved, and if free trade will be adopted it will turn our home market again over to the tender mercies of foreign trusts. If we must have trusts let them be American with a well employed and a well paid labor, a prosperous free citizen to bring the trusts within the law. I wish to call your attention to the remarkable fact that every one of those free trade panics brought the same character of commercial losses and physical suffering to the people, namely: 1st. Low duties brought larger importations, loss of confidence and suspension of industries. 2nd. Labor idle, moody and rebellious, reduction of wages, workingmen fed at public soup houses. 3rd. Great increase of commercial bankruptcy. 4th. Gold leaves the country in vast quantities. 5th. Government revenues less than expenditures. 6th. Consuming powers of the home market greatly reduced. Increase in the price of foreign goods, decrease in the price of home products, with a landslide progress of all the people towards the slavery of conditions, which always brought forth an agitation for the American system of tariff; when enacted it invariably stopped the panic and as regularly brought about the reverse of the above conditions, namely: 1st. American industry fully and profitably employed and increased. 2nd. Labor employed, good wage, progressive, saving money. 3rd. Great stability in commercial circles, decrease in bank ruptcy. 4th. 5th. Government revenues more than expenditures. 6th. Consuming powers of the people vastly increased, with great expansion of liberty, by reason of the wealth created through diversified industry, bringing prosperity and happy Saturday nights to the fireside of all the people. Permit me to mention a few incidents brought about by those panics to illustrate the condition of a people and government suffering from the slavery of conditions. During the panic of 1784 the woes of the people were so deplorable and our young government was in such danger that Washington, writing to Col. Humphrey on the calamity of that day, cried out: "For God's sake tell me what is the cause of these commotions? It is but the other day that we were shedding our blood to obtain the constitution under which we now live-a constitution of our own choice and making-and now we are unsheathing the sword to overturn it." Of the panic of 1820 Benton wrote it was "a period of gloom and agony." During the panic of 1837 labor was a lost art, corn was burned for fuel, the people were fed at public soup houses, the states could not pay interest on the public debt, and this now mighty nation could not then borrow $10,000,000 at any interest at home or abroad. During the panic of 1857 the people were idle, wages dropped down to the European standard, government revenues fell short $90,000,000, and the government paid as high as 36 per cent for the use of money to keep the machinery in motion. You can place your ears to the ground and yet hear the dying wail of the groans and agony of the people's suffering from the panic of 1893. During each of those panics, as in the last one, it was utterly impossible to keep gold within the control of the nation. Between the dates of those free trade periods in the history of our country, protection controlled the destinies of our industries, during which years all was joy, ease and contentment; it may be said, in the Scripture phrase, of those protection periods, "The hills and the valleys sang with joy." During free trade we were the slaves of conditions, during protection we were the freemen of liberty. I ask as a pertinent question, if we are to fight the evils of trusts, whatever they may be, which of the above conditions shall govern our welfare while the fight is going on? That of the slavery of conditions, or that of well paid freemen, working beneath the canopy of universal national prosperity? The free traders are now attacking, with all their forces, the tin industry, that being the last industry, which in a most wonderful manner, through protection, was lifted bodily over into our country from England. The true inwardness of those attacks may be gleaned from the statement of Mr. Holt, of the New England Free Trade League. He said "that the tariff, by shielding our manufacturers from foreign competition makes it easy for them to combine." The fact that the foreigners have lost their hold on our market is where the shoe pinches, and explains why free traders have so suddenly become such violent opponents of trusts. Mr. Holt speaks correctly when he says that the protectionists point with pride to the victory of the American tin plate industry. Never in the history of nations was there such a peaceful industrial victory achieved as that of the transfer of the tin industry from England to the United States in the last nine years, and upon that victory and the reduction of the price of tin to the consumer the protectionists might, if needs be, rest all their laurels. The assertions of those modern Don Quixote tariff fighters that the tariff is the mother of trusts becomes a doubtful statement in the presence of the fact that the Standard Oil and sewing machine combinations, the two most powerful trusts in the country, have no interest in the tariff, and those industries are not in existence by reason of the influence of the tariff. The perpetual cry of the free traders, and repeated in all its moods and tenses on this platform by Mr. Holt, that the tariff is added to price paid by the consumer, that the tariff is a tax, that the tariff does not raise wages, and that the tariff is a mother of trusts, is answered fully by the results of protection upon the tin industry, now safely housed under the American flag. In 1873, when we had no tin factories in this country, the American people paid for coke grade tin $12 per box, charcoal grade tin $14.75. About 1875, some Welshmen who understood the tin business, under the stimulus of a tariff of 1.1 cents per pound, started small works at Wellsville, Ohio, Leachburgh and Demler, Pennsylvania. When those factories were ready to put their product on the market the British tin trust at once dropped their prices down to $5.18 and $6.25 per box, and, of course, wiped out, in short order, the capital of the much derided infant tin industries of the patriotic Welshmen, after which prices again went up, and from that period until the much abused McKinley tariff went into force, we did not manufacture a pound of tin in this country, during which time we had to pay such prices for tin as the foreigners deemed it wise to charge. During that period we paid to foreigners from twenty to thirty millions of dollars per year for our tin, but the McKinley tariff put a protective duty on foreign tin and by reason of that duty American capital invested in tin mills and commenced producing until we have grown to such dimensions that American factories now supply the entire consumption of the country. Let us compare the results: 1873, no American factories, price of foreign tin per box, $12 and $14.75. 1892, one half consumption supplied by home factories, price $5.35. 1898, entire consumption supplied by home factories, price $2.75. Amount of money paid by American people to foreign factories per year, when we had no tin industry, twenty to thirty million dollars. Amount paid now that the tin industry, through protection, is domesticated, practically none. In 1897 there were 200 tin mills in this country, with a capital of $33,836,782, employing 40,000 workmen and paying wages from 75 cents (boys) to $8.00 per day. Eighty per cent of the capital employed in the tin industry go into wages and we pay from two to three times higher wages than are paid in England for the same class of workmen. Were it not for protection, not a dollar of those wages would be paid to American workmen, not a dollar of American capital would be employed in the tin industry and the American consumer would in all probability be yet paying the old high prices for tin. The price of tin is now $4.65. I am informed it can be accounted for by the wave of prosperity that has increased the consuming powers of the home market, increased the price of raw material, and increase of wages and employment over that of the late panic years. Even wheat has risen fifty per cent in price since prosperity has again shed its happy rays on our country, and our free trade friends cannot charge the increased price of wheat to a trust. The fact that it is the foreign manufacturers who are always spending their money and sending agents into our country, agitating for the repeal of the tariff, should convince all thinking citizens who it is that pays the duty. If the American consumer pays it, why should the foreigner spend his money to relieve us? "Beware of the Greeks, even when they come with presents." The history of the transfer of the tin industry to this country |