CHAPTER V. RECIPROCITY WITH THE BRITISH WEST INDIES. While the free trade English and American papers were making so much noise about "freedom of trade," the tariff laws of the British West Indies were framed to discriminate against the United States in favor of Canada and England. In the Leeward islands (consisting of the islands of Antigua, Montserrat, St. Christopher, Nevis and Dominica, with their respective dependencies, and the Virgin islands) a tax of 23 per cent was levied on American flour, and 8 per cent on English cotton goods. Canadian fish was taxed 7 per cent, and American pork 18 per cent, and American salt beef 20 per cent. In the Leeward islands the United States takes 79 and England 9 per cent of the total exports of that group. In return the United States supplies 33 and England 62 per cent of the imports. This result was produced by low duties on English manufactures and high duties on importation of American food products. The average rate of duties on American food was 35 in comparison with 8, the average rate on English imports. The free list favored English against American imports in the proportion of 10 to 1. The same principles applied to the entire group of the British West Indies, from which England buys 40 per cent, and sells in return 58 per cent, while the United States buys 58 per cent and sells 32 per cent. The tariffs of these islands are virtually devised by the British governors, sent out to rule over them and make them self-supporting. England's policy involves cheap food at home and dear food for her colonies. The British West Indies have been governed at the expense of American exports. The United States gives a large measure of free trade to the British West Indies. Under reciprocity treaties these islands will have cheap food. The British West Indies were forced to make reciprocity agreements with the United States, when the treaties with Brazil, Cuba and Porto Rico were proclaimed. Barbadoes took the lead. The colonies of British Guiana and Trinidad followed. Next followed the colonies of the Leeward and Windward islands. The Windward islands constitute St. Lucia, St. Vincent and their dependencies. Reciprocity with the colony of Jamaica shows that the duties have been reduced 25 and 50 per cent, or wholly removed from articles which comprised dutiable exports from the United States to that colony during the year ending March 31, 1891. Reciprocity with the British West Indies will cheapen food supplies to the population and cheapen sugar and coffee to the people of the United States. Feb. 5, 1892, President Harrison issued a proclamation announcing that reciprocal trade relations were established with the British West Indies. That the agreement went into effect on the first day of February, 1892, as far as it relates to Trinidad and Tobago, Barbadoes, the Leeward islands and the Windward islands. Schedule A-Articles to be admitted free of all custom duties, and any other national, colonial or municipal charges: Animals, alive, to include only asses, sheep, goats, hogs and poultry, and horses for breeding; beef, including tongues, smoked and dried; beef and pork preserved in cans; belting for machinery, or leather, canvas or india-rubber; boats and lighters; books bound, or unbound, pamphlets, newspapers, and printed matter in all languages; bones and horns; bottles of glass or stoneware; brans, middlings and shorts; bridges of iron or wood, or both combined; brooms, brushes and whisks of broom straw; candles, tallow; carts, wagons, cars and barrows, with or without springs, for ordinary roads and agricultural use, not including vehicles of pleasure; clocks, mantel or wall; copper, bronze, zinc and lead articles, plain and nickel plated, for industrial and domestic uses and for building; cottonseed and its products; crucibles and melting pots of all kinds; eggs; fertilizers of all kinds, natural and artificial; fish, fresh or in ice, and salmon and oysters in cans; fishing apparatus of all kinds; fruits and vegetables, fresh and dried, when not canned, tinned or bottled; gas fixtures and pipes; gold and silver coin of the United States and bullion; hay and straw for forage; houses of wood, complete; ice; india-rubber and gutta-percha goods, including waterproof clothing made wholly or in part thereof; implements, utensils and tools for agriculture, exclusive of cutlasses and forks; lamps and lanterns; lime of all kinds; locomotives, railway rolling stock, rails, railway ties, or all materials and appliances for railways and tramways; marble and alabaster, in the rough or squared for building purposes or monuments; medicinal extracts and preparations of all kinds, including proprietary or patent medicines, but exclusive of quinine or preparations of quinine, opium, gauge or bhang; paper of all kinds for printing; paper of wood or straw, for wrapping and packing, including surface coated or glazed; photographic apparatus and chemicals; printer's ink, all colors, printing presses, types, rules and shapes, and all accessories for printing; quicksilver; resin, tar, pitch and turpentine; salt; sewing machines and all parts and accessories thereof; ship building materials and accessories of all kinds, when used in the construction, equipment or repair of vessels or boats of any kind, except rope and cordage of all kinds, including wire rope; starch of Indian corn or maize; steam and power engines and machines, machinery and apparatus, whether stationary or portable, worked by power or by hand, for agriculture, irrigation, mining, the arts and industries of all kinds, and all necessary parts and appliances for the erection or repair thereof or the communication of motive power thereto; steam boilers and steam pipes; sulphur; tan bark of all kinds, whole or ground; telegraph wire, telegraphic, telephonic and electrical apparatus and appliances of all kinds for communication or illumination; trees, plants, vines and seed and grains of all kinds, for propagation or cultivation; varnish, not containing spirits; wall papers; watches, when not cased in gold and silver, and watch movements uncased; water pipes of all classes, materials and dimensions; wire for fences, with hooks, staples, nails and the like appliances for fastening the same; yeast cake and baking powders; zinc, tin and lead in sheets and tar paper for roofing. It is understood that the packages or covering in which the articles named in the foregoing schedule are imported shall be free of duty if they are usual and proper for the purpose. Schedule B-Articles to be admitted at fifty per cent reduction of the duty designated in the respective customs tariff now in force in each of said colonies: Bacon and bacon hams; boots and shoes made wholly or in part of leather; bread and biscuit; cheese, lard and its compounds; mules, oleomargarine, shooks and staves. Schedule C-Articles to be admitted at twenty-five per cent reduction of the duty designated in the respective customs tariff now in force in each of said colonies: Beef, salted or pickled; corn or maize, cornmeal, flour of wheat; lumber of pitch pine in rough or prepared for buildings; petroleum and its products, crude or refined; pork, salt or pickled; wheat. It is understood that No. 4 of this schedule shall not apply to the colony of Trinidad, but it is stipulated that the duty on flour in said colony shall not exceed seventy-five cents per barrel. Schedules applicable to Jamaica are different from the above in the following items: Schedule B excludes boots and shoes, mules, oleomargarine and shooks and staves, and includes butter. Lumber of pitch pine, in rough or prepared for buildings, to be reduced to nine shillings per 1,000 feet. Schedule C excludes flour of wheat and pine lumber. Jan. 2, 1892, the president issued his proclamation announcing reciprocity agreement between Salvador and the United States. Fifty articles which were subject to duty are admitted free. The agreement took effect Feb. 1, 1892. The following articles are admitted free of all customs, municipal and any other kind of duty: Animals for breeding purposes; corn, rice, barley and rye, beans; hay and straw for forage; fruits, fresh; preparations of flour in biscuit and crackers not sweetened; macaroni, etc.; roman cement, hydraulic lime, bricks, fire bricks, marble, dressed for furniture, statues, fountains, gravestones and for building purposes; plows and all other agricultural tools and implements; machinery of all kinds for the construction and equipment of railroads; materials of all kinds for the construction and operation of telegraphic and telephonic lines, material for lighting by electricity and gas; materials for the construction of warves; wood for building, for boxes, barrels; houses of wood or iron; wagons, carts, carriages, barrels, casks, tanks of iron for water supply; iron for building; kettles for making salt and sugar; boats, sails and all other articles for vessels; printing materials and presses; printed books, pamphlets, maps and newspapers, and several other articles. Dec. 31, 1891, a reciprocity agreement was signed between Costa Rica and the United States. It has to be ratified by the congress of Costa Rica. President Harrison, through Secretary Blaine, has notified Austria-Hungary, Colombia, Hayti, Nicaragua, Honduras, Spain (for the Philippine islands), and Venezuela that, after March 15, 1892, he will issue his proclamation placing duties, as provided in the tariff of 1890, on the articles therein enumerated, the products of the above countries. March 15, 1892, President Harrison issued his proclamation, in accordance with the provisions of section 3 of the tariff act of 1890, known as the reciprocity section. A commercial arrangement with Nicaragua has already been accomplished. It is expected that Honduras will follow Nicaragua; also, Austria-Hungary and Spain (for the Philippine islands). This leaves only Colombia, Hayti and Venezuela subject to the action under the tariff law, and as to these countries the president, on the fifteenth of March, 1892, issued his proclamation, declaring the duties set forth in section 3 in force as to sugar, molasses, coffee and hides, the products of or imported from them. (See section 3 of the tariff act of 1890.) Germany and France have also made reciprocity treaties in accordance with the tariff act of 1890. The party opposed to Mr. Blaine's reciprocity policy should learn how European nations are protecting their manufactures and commerce by reciprocal treaties. On the continent of Europe, under German influence, has been formed a zollverein. Germany, like England, lowers its duties on breadstuffs, meat, swine, butter, malt and wine on the general theory that its food product does not suffice for an increasing population. Austria-Hungary, whose agricultural products will have a large market. Germany furnishes equivalents in the reductions of duties on manufactures of iron, steel, paper, silk and other fabrics, in which German exports will be admitted on preferential terms. The same principles are embodied in the commercial treaties with Belgium and Italy. This zollverein corresponds in essential features with what has been attempted on this continent in the reciprocity policy of the Pan-American Congress. The Pan-American Congress, while declaring that a continental custom union on the broad basis was impracticable, strongly advised negotiation of reciprocity treaties between states. The United States acting upon this recommendation has arranged a scheme of partial reciprocity. The general effect is similar to that produced in Europe by the zollverein. Food products are cheapened in Brazil and the Spanish West Indies and also sugar and coffee in the United States, and at the same time American exports and manufactures are admitted into Southern markets on preferential terms. The effects of the zollverein upon American export trade cannot be immediately forecast. Europe is largely dependent upon American food supplies that these special provisions for facilitating exchanges on the continent will not be likely to diminish exports from this side. Russia and France are the chief granaries in Europe and these are excluded from the zollverein, which is hostile to them as the armaments of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. Reciprocity with Germany on the basis of free sugar is a substantial gain for American export trade. Preferential trade treaties are the order of the day. Free trade is falling into disfavor. Soon England will stand alone as the advocate of free trade. France has also made a reciprocity treaty with the United States. Austria-Hungary and Guatemala have recently made reciprocity treaties with the United States. CHAPTER VI. IRELAND AND FREE TRADE. IRISH VOTERS OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE TRADE RUINED IRELAND'S MANUFACTURES. TH HE American free trade papers as well as the Democratic "tariff reform” papers endeavor to make the Irish voters of the United States believe that the present Cobden Club free trade measures are the same as the free trade advocated by Henry Grattan and his copatriots. It will be seen from the Irish statutes at large, that Ireland had to pay both import and export duties. That Henry Grattan and his copatriots wanted the Irish parliament to be free to regulate import and export duties, so as to promote and protect the manufactures, trade and commerce of Ireland. They wanted freedom of trade with the world, in their own way, for the interest of Ireland - free from England's dictation; while England wanted such legislation as would ruin the trade, manufactures and commerce of Ireland. The following is from the Irish statutes at large: Export duties on Irish merchandise, beef, the barrel...... Cheese, the hundred weight.. Barley, quarter, 8 bushels........ Salmon, the tun....... Herrings, full fish barrel.. ......... .................... ..................... ..................................................... £. S. D. 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 10 0 0 10 0 0 10 0 0 10 0 0 6 8 Horses, into England, Scotland, or English plantation, the piece...... 2 0 1 12 20 0 0 0 13 4 010 Iron, wrought, axes, adzes, knives, scissors, carpenter tools, 112 bbs.. 0 10 0 Iron, the tun...... Lead ore, the tun.......... Linen shreds, the maund or fat.. Lead, cast or uncast, 20 hundred...................... 6 13 4 200 200 20 0 0 |