PRINCIPLES OF PROTECTION.

THE doctrine of protection starts without a doubt as to nomenclature. As a principle, it admits of no exception in the first chapters of the history of every commercial nation.

The commercial nation never existed that did not, at first, protect itself. So astute, refined and far-reaching has commerce become, that no nation which refuses to protect itself can ever hope to test its fitness for commercial supremacy, or independence, much less obtain it.

The same is true of industrial and manufacturing independence, both of which imply commercial independence, the moment transit is acknowledged as a subject of protection.

Nature supplemented by art made American transit supreme, or nearly so, when ships were of wood. Art combined with nature made English ships supreme, when ships came to be of iron. But nature is still on our side as to iron. Add the art of England to American nature, and transit will have its old supremacy. Art is protection and protection art.

A protective tariff provides revenue for the government in a better way than any other kind of a tariff. England levies duties for revenue only. They fall on two classes of articles; first, luxuries; second, on articles that cannot be raised or produced profitably at home and cannot come into competition with home productions. It so happens that the latter class of articles embraces tea, coffee and many things which rank as necessities among the common people. Protection omits duties, when not required for simple

revenue, from tea, sugar, coffee, and articles which rank as necessities, and which cannot be produced profitably at home or cannot come into competition with home productions, and in their stead levies discriminating duties upon articles that come in direct competition with home products.

The rate of such duties is adjusted, in theory, so that the foreign product cannot enter the home market at a price below what it can be produced for at home, with a fair profit included.

Some rates are prohibitory, as when there is desire.or determination to found a new industry; but as a rule they are simply discriminative, and in favor of industries which exist, but which would cease to exist unless protected.

Since labor constitutes a large per cent. of manufactured products—in some products as much as ninety per cent. of the cost-the most direct effect of protection is to maintain the price of that labor as it enters into the home product, and preserve it from competition with the cheaper labor that enters into the same product abroad.

The effect of protection on labor is direct and indirect. When the price of labor in protected industries is maintained, that in the unprotected industries is also maintained.

The application of protection to industries in this country reverses the doctrine of political economists that the price of an article is increased to the consumer by just the amount of duty imposed upon it.

Protection may increase the price of an article temporarily, and by some per cent. of the duty levied, but the price declines as the home manufacture of the article enlarges and home competition sets in.

Protection encourages capital and invites it into enter

woods, facilities and resources in general. If, in obedience to books and theories, it is wrong in doing this, no other nation is so white as to call it black. The consensus of nations in this respect is nature. The precise form of protection and development is immaterial. English free-trade is the highest, severest, most arbitrary form of protection of which she is capable. It is no more condemnátory of the American idea than was her duty of $250 on every $500 worth of iron, not otherwise enumerated, she imported from her colonies. It is no more acceptable to the American idea than was her stamped paper and tea-tax which brought on the Revolution.

The highest duty of a nation is to cultivate nature, for nature means its people, institutions and resources. In this respect America means far more than professors dream of, far more than books teach, far more than little, narrow men with sectional or foreign predilections prate of, far more than England, all Europe, or all the world can in their selfishness impress us with. As a nation we have escaped the thraldom of monarchies, the shackles of caste, the hindrances of mediæval institutions, the limitations of soil, climate and natural resource incident to a continent which last emerged from polar ice. As to people we are composite. Where and when the mentality and physique of civilization blend for the production of a type, that type will be what nature calls for, the survival of size, shape and qualities, fitted for, or rather shaped by, an environment such as has not hitherto existed. As to institution, we have inverted the pyramid of monarchy whose tip is on the throne and base in the air. Here the base is below, on the people, and the tip is in the air, a sublimation of popular will and not a matter of family or blood. As to areas and climate we blend orient and occident, tropic and arctic. It is Italy and Russia, London

SILVER AND GOLD-AN HISTORIC REVIEW.

THE use of metal as a medium of exchange and a measure of value has an old and interesting history. The province of money has ever been a conspicuous theme in political economy. Lately in our country all discussion of money has been given a new turn, and been rendered momentous and exciting by the fact that political parties have chosen to divide upon questions of coinage, quantities, kinds and values of our metallic circulating medium, and seek to make them issues in their campaigns.

This has given to what is popularly known as "The Silver Question," or "The Free Coinage Question," a prominence it never had before. It is within the bounds of truth to say that the "Silver Question" quite overshadowed the "Tariff Question" in the Fifty-second Congress, and bids fair to divide honors with that question for a considerable time. Next to, and perhaps equal with, the doctrines of Free-Trade and Protection, it concerns the business interests, the life and work, the labor and property, of every man in the country, from the humblest toiler to the largest capitalist. No man who works for daily bread, no man who has a dollar saved, no man who has a house or farm, no man who has his capital in factories, stocks, mortgages, or other securities, ought to be ignorant of a question which so intimately concerns his welfare. It is, perhaps, a matter of regret that a question so purely economic should fall into political channels, but such is the fate of all these great questions under our free system of government, and our

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iron. The African uses cloth, salt and cowrie-shells.

Cattle held the largest place as money among the ancients and many of our financial and commercial words are derived from old words indicating the early prominence of the flock and herd. The arms of Diomede were valued at nine oxen ; those of Glaucus at one hundred oxen. The Franks levied a tribute of oxen on the conquered Saxons. Our word "pecuniary" is the Latin pecus, "cattle." Qur "fee" is the Saxon feoh, cattle.

Metal money was first employed as representing value in cattle. The ox or sheep became its emblem and was stamped on the metal.

As civilization progressed and exchanges became more frequent, gold and silver took the place of all cruder metals and devices, as money.

This was because time and experience had proved their superiority as measurers of value and media of exchange. They do not deteriorate by keeping.

Their production is limited by scarcity of their ores. This gives great value in proportion to weight, and facilitates handling, transport and hoarding.

The annual losses of the precious metals by wear and tear and by absorption in the arts have so nearly equalled the annual production, as that the excess of production has seldom exceeded the ratio of increase in population and the growing demand for money. Thus the demand and supply being nearly equal, the value of gold and silver remains very stable, as compared with other metals, or other measures of value.

The accumulated stock of the precious metals, estimated in money and ornaments at $10,000,000,000 in the world, tends to lessen variations in value that might be occasioned by diminution or failure of the annual supply.