been made to see the folly of not doing it, by the loss of her carrying trade.

The free trader claims that while some articles are cheaper by reason of our ability to manufacture them, the greater number are not, and cannot be. The protectionist says this is not absolutely desirable at present. That it ought to be a patriotic pride with an American to pay more for a home-made article than for a foreign one, the quality and utility being the same. That he will be more than repaid for the difference by the fact that he has thereby encouraged a home industry and contributed to a home market. That every cent which thus goes out of a man's pocket is a contribution to the comfort of his surroundings, to the happiness of his neighbors, to the erection of homes, to the welfare of labor, to the building up of a home market for cattle, wool, wheat, corn, butter, cheese, etc., for which there would not otherwise be a demand, or, if so, one so remote and foreign as to rob him of all profit by the cost of transportation, not to say the cost of intermediate agency.

A school of free traders who are really protectionists, and of protectionists who are really free traders, have pretty nearly agreed that the true measure of protection is found in the difference between the cost of an article at home and abroad. They say that this cost represents labor, and this difference the difference in the price of labor, and that when this difference is covered American labor has all the protection it can ask or ought to have. The straight-out protectionist says this is illusory. It leaves capital out of the question, which is even more timid than labor. It further compels an adjustment which is impracticable, for the reason that labor is differently paid in all older countries, and because the political and social institutions of those countries are different. Where caste prevails, the laborer has no inducement to rise above his station, and is content to take his stipulated wage, however low it may be. But here he is a man, a voter, has every encouragement to rise himself and see his children rise. He has, or may have, social caste, which he is in duty bound to sustain. That therefore labor conditions are not the same, and any argument based on simple differences of labor

prices is unfair. Our standards ought not to be based on those abroad, but should be subject to the laws of supply and demand at home. Hamilton's idea of protection was that it did not, and should not, invite competition of any kind from abroad, but that it depended for its equity and success on the competition it created at home. This was his answer to all argument that it favored monopoly, and it was equally an answer to the argument that either our labor or capital should be subject to foreign standards, or be gauged by foreign rules or conditions. The free trade argument that protection tends to overproduction in the United States, and to periods of depression and panic, is answered by square denial. England is as subject to periodic visitations of glut and depression as this or any other protective country. The facts are on the side of the protectionist. The year 1884 is a period of depression in the iron trade. With those who look no further, the cry of overproduction by reason of too much protection answers for argument. But every ironproducing country in the world is now subject to the same depression, let the reason for it be what it may. And the English iron trade is as much, if not more, depressed than all. The logic of the free trade situation requires that she should be exempt. And just here the protectionist uses with most vigor the historic arguments at hand. He points to the fact that the repeal of protective laws has inevitably resulted in depression and disaster, and that a return to them has eventuated in renewed prosperity and confidence. This is certainly true of the periods designated by 1819-24, 1837-42, 1857-61.

The panic of 1873 is the only historic exception, and this was due not to those legitimate, and sober relations between capital and labor which protective or free trade legislation is supposed to effect, but to speculative ramifications incident to a redundant currency, the direction of wild, unsettled, post-war energies into new and unknown channels, and the sudden recall, by the Chicago and Boston fires, of $250,000,000 of capital to other and imperative uses. How long protection postponed the panic, no free trader has agreed to tell. Nor has any one condescended to inform the world how much of the speedy and substantial re

covery from its ruinous effects was due to the presence of a liberal protective system.

But as to this panic, these things are purely local. The laws of economy do not permit simply a home search for causes which were pervasive of the commercial world. The panics of 1819, 1837 and 1857 were confined to this country. That of 1873 was general, and far more disastrous in Europe than here. Twelve hundred millions of our bonds were held abroad. Stringency there caused a refusal of further credit. The seeds of contagious panic were sown broadcast. It was a matter of credit and not of industry. Indeed, our mills did not stop at all, or as in other panics. Banks did not break so numerously. Internal commerce was sustained. All recuperative forces had play, and the rescue, was prompt. We even got rid of hampering foreign debt. Economy became a rule. We sold more than we bought because we did not, owing to high tariff rates, become a dumping ground for foreign manufactures, as after the Revolution and the war of 1812. Many have said the panic of 1873 was a blessing.

As to the American farmer, the free trader is content with the argument that he ought not to be made to pay high prices for the commodities he uses. The protectionist points to the fact that all manufactured commodities are on an average twenty-five per cent. cheaper than before 1860, and that then some eighty per cent. of them were made abroad and twenty per cent. at home, while now eighty per cent. are made at home and twenty per cent. abroad. Even if prices for these manufactures were the same, the farmer has gained by protection the advantage of a home market for his produce, that is, a saving to the extent at least of the cost of transporting it to markets three to five thousand miles away. Transportation is always dead loss. Our home market is the one the farmer should foster. It is certain, is at his door, is growing as fast as our own manufactures, is already large enough to consume eighty per cent. of our wheat and ninety-two per cent. of our corn, and even as to our surplus is being fast forestalled by the English design to get cheap food for her workmen through Australian and East Indian wheat.

It is impossible to follow the many minor arguments used by free traders and protectionists. Nor is it necessary. Many of them are individual, many shaded to suit party bent, many demagogic. It is equally impossible to go through the hard chapters of political economy, written to prove the absolute rectitude of either free trade or protection. Whatever may be said of them as abstract questions, nations are relative. They exist and prosper by their relations. Independence and prosperity are desirable. This country had to face the problem of political independence. Peace was beautiful and desirable, but peace meant humiliation, subserviency. The protective agency of horrid war had to be evoked. Political independence was the beginning of a grand commercial and industrial battle. We have learned to trust the agency of protection to win this victory also. It is the old question, in another form, of peace and subordinancy, or legal, industrial war and second independence. The weapons of Great Britain alone are countless millions of capital and machinery equal to the labor of seven hundred millions of men. We must meet this mighty menace, or suffer overthrow. To exist industrially we must earn the right to exist. Eternal vigilance is the price of our industrial liberty. If overcome in the struggle, let it not be said of us that we were too spiritless or too fond of dreams to try the arts of protection which have raised other nations to opulence and commercial independence.

N the fall of 1882 the Republican party of Pennsylvania introduced into its platform a proposition which read as follows: "That any surplus in the public treasury arising from a redundant revenue should, after paying the national debt as fast as its conditions permit, be distributed from time to time to the several States upon the basis of population, to relieve them from the burden of local taxation and provide means for the education of their people." It became known as the Barker plank, from the name of the gentleman who suggested it. At first it attracted but little attention, but as time passed it drew comment and discussion, and at last grew to be a matter of far-reaching and national moment.

HISTORY-It was not a new proposition or doctrine, as many supposed, but was nearly as old as the government, and had at various times engaged the attention of statesmen and parties. Jefferson, in one of his inaugurals, spoke of the necessity of providing a plan for the distribution of the proceeds of the sales of public lands among the States, it then being a doctrine that such proceeds belonged to the States which were the real owners of the lands.

Afterwards, in the second session of the Nineteenth Congress (1827), a bill was defeated which had for its object the distribution of a part of the national revenue among the States. In this Congress the National Republican and Democratic parties were very evenly divided, and this measure shared the fate of an amended tariff bill which was strongly urged by the National Republican (afterwards the Whig) party.

President Jackson, with greater reason than had previously existed, for the national debt was then growing small, proposed,