home demand brought large importations. At the present time a shrinkage in the home demand has led to increased exportation. The large importations in 1902, $41,468,826, show that the manufacturers in the United States do not control their home market. Foreigners sell their products here much below the prices they receive at home. German syndicates pay an export bounty to the members of their organizations, and their returns as published show large losses on their foreign trade. This, they explain, is necessary to keep their mills going and maintain prices at home. English newspapers complain that German iron and steel are sold in large quantities at lower prices in British markets than in Germany. The importation of such a large quantity of iron and steel in 1902 shows that the Dingley rates of tariff duties in this country are not too high, since if they were lowered these imports would be enormously increased.

The foreigners have a great advantage in shipping their products to the United States. What are termed tramp vessels call at our ports in large numbers for grain, petroleum, and coal as return cargoes. That these vessels may be properly ballasted on the inward voyage they gladly accept all such heavy products as iron and steel at merely nominal freight rates, frequently as low as $1.00 a ton, and sometimes as low as twenty-five cents a ton, the American manufacturers having to pay much higher rates on the railroads to reach important points of consumption on the coast are at a disadvantage. German iron and steel manufacturers make a regular practice of selling abroad much lower than at home, and Englishmen do the same to a smaller extent.

Canada pays a bounty of $3.00 a ton on pig iron produced in that country, and a bounty of $3.00 a ton on steel ingots. What the Industrial Commission Found as to Low Export Prices. The United States Industrial Commission, after an investigation, found that a very small percentage of the goods exported from the United States are sold cheaper abroad than at home. But this only happens in years of depression. When lower prices have been charged abroad than at home the inducement to do this has been to dispose of a surplus, or to secure entrance into a desirable foreign market, or to retain a foothold in a foreign market that had already yielded profitable returns. These reasons for the occasional cutting of prices require no defense. Even in years of prosperity it sometimes happens that a rolling mill or steel works, when running to its full capacity, produces a surplus of its products beyond the immediate wants of its production by stopping the mill or discharging a part of the employees. It is cheaper to keep the men employed and sell this surplus at cost if necessary than it would be to stop the works temporarily. The manufacturer can produce cheaper when his plant is running full than when it is partly stopped. Our tariff legislation has encouraged manufacturers to seek foreign markets by remitting nearly all of the duties levied on imported raw materials when these raw materials enter into the manufacture of exported finished product. Under the operation of this drawback system some products can be manufactured for sale abroad at a lower cost than they could be supplied to home customers. If this surplus can be sold abroad, even at prices below current quotations, it is better than to reduce customers.

Great Britain a Competitor in Low Export Prices.

Great Britain early pursued this course of selling abroad cheaper than at home. In 1816 Lord Brougham, in a speech in Parliament advocating the increased exportation of British goods to the United States, declared that "it was well worth while to incur a loss upon the first exportation, in order by the glut to stifle in the cradle those rising manufactures in the United States which the war had forced into existence." In 1854 a British parliamentary commission reported as follows: "The laboring classes generally in the manufacturing districts of this country and especially in the iron and coa! districts, are very little aware of the extent to which they are often indebted for their being employed at all to the immense losses which their employers voluntarily incur in bad times in order to destroy foreign competition and to gain and keep possession of foreign markets." That is the kind of competition our manufacturers have to meet.

Aaroduction, the inverted pyramid of prices, 2 the reduction in the duty.]

Advance in Prices of Iron Ore.

The following table, furnished by the editor of the Iron Trade Review, an accepted authority, shows the prices of iron ore from 1898 to 1903. It will be seen that the advances in the raw material have been very great and account in part at least for the advance in price of the finished article, which is also affected in price by the advance in wages during the same period.

[Furnished by Mr. A. I. Findley, editor of the Iron Trade Review.]

The base price for 1900 of "old range" Bessemer ores, those from the Marquette, Menominee, Gogebic, and Vermilion ranges, have been fixed at $5.50, against $2.95 in 1899.

Even supposing that a high tariff is all wrong, it would work infinitely better for the country than would a series of changes between high and low duties.-President Roosevelt, in his Life of Benton, p. 224.

The Republican party stands now, as it has always stood and always will stand, for sound money with which to measure the exchanges of the people; for a dollar that is not only good at home, but good in every market place of the world.-Major McKinley to Young Men's Republican Club, June 26, 1896.

The real evils connected with the trusts can not be remedied by any change in the tariff laws. The trusts can be damaged by depriving them of the benefits of a protective tariff only on condition of damaging all their smaller competitors and all the wageworkers employed in the industry.—President Roosevelt at Cincinnati, September 20, 1902.

I yield to no Senator, I yield to no Republican in my attachment to the doctrines of the Republican party. I believe that when the platform was adopted at St. Louis it was a warrant to be executed honestly, fearlessly, faithfully, and I am here, Mr. President, to execute it to the best of my humble ability.-Hon. C. W. Fairbanks, in U. S. Senate, May 20, 1897.

If there is any one quality that is not admirable, whether in a nation or in an individual, it is hysterics, either in religon or in anything else. The man or woman who makes up for ten days' indifference to duty by an eleventh-day morbid repentance about that duty is of scant use in the world.-President Roosevelt at Boston, Mass., August 25, 1902.

All the prosperity enjoyed by the American people—absolutely all the prosperity, without any reservation whatever-from the foundation of the United States Government down to the present time, has been under the reign of protective principles; and all the hard times suffered by the American people in the same period have been preceded either by a heavy reduction of duties on imports or by insufficient protection, thus refuting all free-trade theories on the subject. As I desire my native land to be on the apex of prosperity, rather than under the heel of hard times, I am a protectionist.—David H. Mason, in the American Economist.

Prominent Englishmen Voice Republican Sentiments.

Premier Balfour, of the English Cabinet, declared in a speech last October that the developments of the last half century "had made free trade an empty name and a vain farce." He said: "I confess that when I hear criticism upon the American and German policies which caused these great industrial nations to accompany their marvelous commercial expansion with protective duties which must have thrown a most heavy burden upon the consumer, I feel that they have a retort to which I at least have no reply. Free trade is indeed an empty name and a vain farce." The London "Statist" in an article referred to the fact that under protection the United States "has made more remarkable progress than perhaps any other country in the world." It then refers to England and India under free trade and states that "India has remained poor and famine stricken." In England more than 2,000,000 acres of wheat land have gone out of cultivation in half a century and 1,000,000 fewer men are employed on the land. In the production of manufactured products, taking in the producing nations of the world, Great Britain has fallen from forty-five per cent to less than thirty per cent in the last quarter of a century, while the United States has enormously increased in the same time. General Booth, head of the Salvation Army in London, stated after an examination in 1890 that there were 2,000,000 paupers in Great Britain and 1,000,000 more persons who were nearly paupers. Former Secretary Chamberlain of the British Cabinet has placed the number of paupers in Great Britain at 4,000,000.

Production and Prices of Bessmer Steel Rails in the United States.

The following table gives the annual production in gross tons of Bessemer steel rails in the United States from 1867 to 1903, together with their average annual price at the works in Pennsylvania and the rates of duty imposed by our Government at various periods on foreign steel rails. Prices are given in cur

rency.

[Note the pyramid of production, the inverted pyramid of prices, and the reduction in the duty.]

Advance in Prices of Iron Ore.

The following table, furnished by the editor of the Iron Trade Review, an accepted authority, shows the prices of iron ore from 1898 to 1903. It will be seen that the advances in the raw material have been very great and account in part at least for the advance in price of the finished article, which is also affected in price by the advance in wages during the same period.

[Furnished by Mr. A. I. Findley, editor of the Iron Trade Review.]

The base price for 1900 of "old range" Bessemer ores, those from the Marquette, Menominee, Gogebic, and Vermilion ranges, have been fixed at $5.50, against $2.95 in 1899.

Even supposing that a high tariff is all wrong, it would work infinitely better for the country than would a series of changes between high and low duties.-President Roosevelt, in his Life of Benton, p. 224.

The Republican party stands now, as it has always stood and always will stand, for sound money with which to measure the exchanges of the people; for a dollar that is not only good at home, but good in every market place of the world.-Major McKinley to Young Men's Republican Club, June 26, 1896.

The real evils connected with the trusts can not be remedied by any change in the tariff laws. The trusts can be damaged by depriving them of the benefits of a protective tariff only on condition of damaging all their smaller competitors and all the wageworkers employed in the industry.-President Roosevelt at Cincinnati, September 20, 1902.

I yield to no Senator, I yield to no Republican in my attachment to the doctrines of the Republican party. I believe that when the platform was adopted at St. Louis it was a warrant to be executed honestly, fearlessly, faithfully, and I am here, Mr. President, to execute it to the best of my humble ability.-Hon. C. W. Fairbanks, in U. S. Senate, May 20, 1897.

If there is any one quality that is not admirable, whether in a nation or in an individual, it is hysterics, either in religon or in anything else. The man or woman who makes up for ten days' indifference to duty by an eleventh-day morbid repentance about that duty is of scant use in the world.-President Roosevelt at Boston, Mass., August 25, 1902.

All the prosperity enjoyed by the American people-absolutely all the prosperity, without any reservation whatever-from the foundation of the United States Government down to the present time, has been under the reign of protective principles; and all the hard times suffered by the American people in the same period have been preceded either by a heavy reduction of duties on imports or by insufficient protection, thus refuting all free-trade theories on the subject. As I desire my native land to be on the apex of prosperity, rather than under the heel of hard times, I am a protectionist.-David H. Mason, in the American Economist.