Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/354

 332 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL foreign policy. But how long will it be before this stage is reached ? It may come within five years: it may not come for twenty years. The beginnings of the permanent movement may be appearing now, and some reductions from the general high range of duties, especially upon raw materials, may come in the immediate future; but how soon a general change, affecting the whole of the customs duties, will be reached, it is impossible to say. Not a little will depend upon the degree of political skill which the two opposing parties--the Democrats and the Re- publicans will show in the campaigns of the ensuing years. After this lengthy introduction we may pass to the particular measure, the McKinley Act, which has been the occasion of the present agitation in the United States, and which has caused so much excitement in European countries. The central point of the protective system in the United States is in what is known as the wool schedule--the duties upon wool and upon woollen goods; and nothing indicates more clearly the attitude of the two parties than the mode in which they have dealt with these duties. In American politics wool is an article of prime importance. On the one hand it is grown in considerable quantities by the farmers of some central states, and particularly of Ohio, in which the parties are evenly divided, and in which the scale has turned sometimes in fayour of one party, sometimes in fayour of the other. The farmers in this region have been told for years that the duty upon wool enables them to get higher prices, and so gives them their share in the benefits of the protective system. On the other hand, wool is a raw material consumed in large quantities by the manu- facturing industries of the Eastern States, and particularly of New England; and the appeal for free raw material for the benefit of the woollen manufacturer is particularly effective in these states. It may surprise the foreign reader to be informed that never- theless most of the manufacturers of these states--even the woollen manufacturers themselves--are in fayour of the retention of duties upon wool. The explanation is simple enough: the duty upon wool is the price which they pay for the maintenance of the general protective system. The feeling both with the advocates and opponents of protection is that if the duty upon wool is removed, it will be impossible longer to persuade the farmers that the protective system is to their advantage. They will then vote for the abolition of the duties upon woollen goods and on manufactures in general; the whole fabric will come to the ground when once this fotmdation is destroyed. The tariff Act of 1883 made a slight reduction in the duty