Page:Carl Schurz- 1902-03-09 Foreign Commerce.pdf/10

 mental conditions without the fulfilment of which all those contrivances that are devised for the benefit of commerce and merchant marine will miss the main object. Even commercial reciprocity which, in its true sense, is a good thing, and the more of it the better—even that will not open new markets for those of our goods which cannot compete with foreign articles of the same quality in point of price—unless reciprocity treaties give us exclusive markets for them, which foreign nations will hardly grant, for they are not fools.

I know what the trouble is as to the practical recognition of those fundamental conditions. It is the anxiety of the beneficiaries and the political advocates of our high tariff policy not to have any part of that system touched. When I hear them discuss means for the development of our foreign commerce and the revival of our ocean marine, and talk around and around and around the subject, careful not to touch the vital point, it reminds me vividly of an experience of old times. When slavery still existed in our land, many Southern men felt painfullly the industrial and commercial backwardness of the South. Time and again they held great Southern commercial conventions, in which they gravely attributed their ailment to all sorts of causes except the true one, and set forth in flaming speeches all sorts of ambitious schemes for the establishment of manufacturing industries and of Southern ocean lines and the like. Convention followed convention, always with the same speeches, the same resolutions, and then nothing more. What was it then that aided them? Of course, it was slavery. But whenever anybody told them so, they raised their hands in horror, crying with one voice: “For Heaven’s sake, do not touch that. It is the very foundation of our well being. Touch that, and all goes to ruin!” Well, slavery was touched at last—and what then? The prosperity of the South, agricultural, industrial, commercial, has been fairly bounding up beyond the most sanguine dreams of her people. Is there not a lesson in this history?

I would be the last man to advise violent and precipitate measures having no regard to existing interests. I favor gradual and circumspect reform. But I am deeply convinced, if we wish to spread our commerce over the world and revive our merchant fleet, we must at last touch the vital point. As the South needed the abolition of slavery to disclose to her all her possibilities of prosperity and greatness, so our industries and our commerce, in order to enter upon a new and boundless career of progressive development, need only the breaking of the chains which hamper them. Ah, gentlemen, it is, after all, in the air of freedom that the genius of America most grandly unfolds its powers. I am a profound believer in the great destiny of this Republic. Only let us have an agriculture relieved of the artificial burdens put upon it; a manufacturing industry liberated of the taxes which make production. costly; a commerce free to get ships, and carrying merchandise challenging the competition of the world; let us have a free field and a fair chance for