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Show A September editorial in the magazine read The long expected rise in wool prices has come. Prospects for further advances are so strong that dealers are scouring over the west for unsold clips and making offers that appear to be based on later expectations of still higher markets than upon current Boston Quotations.4 There was also an article in the same magazine that was of interest to sheepmen: U.S. TARIFF VS. FREE TRADE The theory of free trade is truly an attractive and academic dream. However, stern facts and practices must furnish the premises upon which such a structure can be built. Standard of living, which in turn is based upon the wage scale, must ever be the governing factor in this country. If such standards and wages were similar in all countries, then free trade and tariff for revenue only might be practical, or even desirable. During the past quarter century and for at least a century to come, our total exports and imports have not been and will not equal ten percent of our domestic trade. If the proposition is to reverse these figures, and buy where markets are cheapest, labor lowest, and living conditions unthinkable from the American standpoint, what is to become of our domestic farmer and industrialist who cannot and will not meet the necessary competitive conditions? With a tariff we can more or less retain our present standards; with free trade we must go to the foreign level. We may possibly trade, but on what level - American or foreign."5 212 |