inequitable and unjust. Their objections may be thus summarized: 1. That it would so stimulate home production as to depress the price of these staples until, even with the bounty added, it would be less than now. 2. That the government does not possess income sufficient to make such an annual outlay as this proposition would necessitate. 3. That diversification of production is the solution, the scientific accomplishment of which would prevent the production of a surplus and give agricultural staples protection by tariff. 4. That the proposition means the protection of these products in foreign markets. 5. The advocates of free silver coinage declare that the prices of these staples are fixed in gold standard countries where they are consumed, and the gold payments for which act as an enormous bounty to the producers of competing agricultural staples in silver standard countries, which the free and unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 would put an end to. 6. Even the grangers themselves do not heartily support the proposition; that is to say, in a national organization which represents a million or more of our farmers, this proposition has annually been hotly debated, strongly advocated, and in the end lukewarm and expressionless or guarded resolutions forced upon the friends of the proposition. On the other hand, a large number of State and local granges have heartly indorsed it, as have boards of trade, chambers of commerce, and other associations, notably a gathering of shipbuilders in Philadelphia, in August, 1895.

The advocates of the export bounty proposition meet the opposing arguments in about the following answers: 1. The world's prices of agricultural staples are based upon the world's available surplus, and any increased production in the United States would depreciate the price which the foreign competitors of our producers received equally with the depreciation in the price to our people, while the latter would always be fortified with an advantage over their competitors to the amount of the bounty. Moreover, it is obvious that if the bounty did reduce the cost of these staples to such an extent as to make prices lower than at present, with the bounty added, the American consumers of such staples would be to no loss or disadvantage that they do not experience now. 2. The tariff of 1883 produced a surplus more than sufficient to provide for such an annual expenditure as the adoption of this proposition would involve, and there

would be no difficulty in obtaining the money if the proposition were generally approved. 3. Diversification has the effect of lowering the prices of all products now protected of which there is not a surplus. If diversification should succeed in preventing the production of a surplus, then there would be a falling off of about 70 per cent. of our exports, and, the balance being insufficient to pay for our imports, would drain the country of its gold, or involve it in a rapidly accumulating indebtedness, which would mean final bankruptcy. 4. The advocates of

this proposition deny that it would afford any protection to our agricultural staples in foreign markets, and assert that it would have no effect whatever except in the home market. 5. If the contention of the free-silverites is correct, the adoption of their remedy would merely place our agricultural producers on an equality with their foreign competitors, when it is protection against that equality which they seek, involving, as that equality would, a levelling of American social conditions in agricultural pursuits to the plane of their competitors. 6. The discussions in the National Grange meetings have been more political than economic. Diversification has been tried, as suggested, they assert, with the result that it so affected the opponents of the proposition as to make them ready for its adoption.

The cardinal basis of the demand for an export bounty on agricultural staples has always been its equity-that it would equalize protection, and that in justice protection should be extended to all our citizens whose labor comes in competition with foreign labor, so long as any portion of our labor is protected against such competition. When it was pointed out to Mr. Lubin, and afterward to the National Grange, Patrons of Husbandry, that American ships in the foreign trade were in unprotected competition with foreign ships, the fact was conceded, and they agreed that in order that protection should be equitable, it must also cover our shipping in the foreign trade. In the bill (House No. 2626) introduced in the Fifty-fourth Congress as drafted by Mr. Lubin, protection was given to our shipping in the foreign trade by increasing the amount of the bounty ten per cent. when the exports were shipped in American vessels; and the great bulk of the petitions sent to Congress to which Senator Cannon referred in his speech were in behalf of protection to both agricultural staples and our shipping in the foreign.

trade. But these advocates of equitable protection have abandoned our shipping in the foreign trade, and it forms no part of their present demands nor of Senator Cannon's amendment. Their reason for this abandonment is the unsubstantiated claim that their shipping supporters have deserted them. But they assert, too, that they are working for the good of the Republic, not for the farmers as a class. This is especially true of the claim of the clergymen who have become pulpit advocates of this proposition-its equity is their defence for such advocacy, the righteousness of the proposition that all benefits must be shared equally—when they know, or ought to know, that, having admitted the injustice of leaving our shipping unprotected, they are now advocating a proposition that, until shipping is also protected, is inequitable and unjust. But, whether the farmers support them or not, these people advocate the export bounty proposition, they say, because of its equity. Basing their claim upon equity, neither the support nor the opposition of the farmers should influence them. If shipping, in equity, should be protected the attitude of the people affected ought to be unworthy of the consideration of these advocates. Having taken their stand upon the postulate of equity, they must accept the logic of it, uninfluenced by any considerations of support or opposition.

From 1688 until the beginning of the present century, Great Britain gave a bounty to exporters of grain, conditioned on its shipment in British vessels, the master and three-fourths of the mariners of which were required to be British subjects. Thus, for more than a hundred years, the producers of agricultural staples and the owners of vessels carrying the exports thereof, were simultaneously protected under the English export bounty act. It is worthy of mention that, at the same time the British. bounty act was in force, the discriminating duty policy, also protective of British shipowners in the foreign trade, was in force the modification of which policy is being advocated by Senator S. B. Elkins, of West Virginia, and the friends of American shipping who believe in protection. It is only since. the introduction of the Elkins discriminating duty bill for the protection of shipping in the foreign trade that the advocates of the export bounty proposition have ceased to include in their demands for equitable protection, equal protection for our ship

ping. Should it ever occur that the export bounty proposition became acceptable to the American people, it is quite likely that a stipulation will be embodied in the bill providing for the payment of the bounty only when such exports are made in American vessels, just as the British act always provided for the employment of British ships for the carriage of exports of grain on which the bounty was paid.

If our producers of agricultural staples-that is to say, of wheat, and corn, and cotton, and tobacco-and our manufacturers and our shipowners should ever be equitably protected under one general bill, then protection would be enjoyed by all of our citizens whose labor is subject to foreign competition, and protection is neither asked nor required by any other of our industrial classes. If ultimately, say in a revenue tariff bill, there should be some such provision as the Cannon agricultural amendment, and another such as the Elkins bill in behalf of shipping in the foreign trade, then there would be no longer any reason to fear the quadrennial spectre of either tariff agitation or tariff change-but protection would have become permanent and have ceased to be either partisan or sectional. It would, in short, become as fixed an American economic principle as it was for centuries in Great Britain, until the days of Richard Cobden and John Bright, or as free trade long has been in Great Britain, whether the Liberals or the Conservatives are in control.

If the export bounty proposition shall satisfy the agriculturalists, and the discriminating duty policy shall satisfy the shipowners, and the manufacturers are satisfied with the protection they receive, such concessions, after all, would be a very small price to pay for the cessation of partisan tariff agitation and the permanency of an American economic policy.

If we shall but remember that we are one nation and one people, with infinitely diverse interests, and endeavor by patriotic concession and conciliation, instead of hide-bound partisanship, to adjust our legislation so that it shall deal fairly by all, we shall possibly arrive at something akin to unanimity in legislating where even the most stupendous and intricate economic problems are involved.

ALEX. R. SMITH.

SPEAKER REED AND

AND THE HOUSE OF

REPRESENTATIVES.

BY MAYO W. HAZELTINE.

THE leading article in the June number of this REVIEW was contributed by the Hon. Thomas B. Reed, now for the third time Speaker of the House of Representatives, an office which he has held longer than any other of his countrymen, with the exception of Nathaniel Macon, Henry Clay, Andrew Stevenson, and Samuel J. Randall. The article aimed to give an explanation of "How the House Does Business," and from many points of view the author's purpose was admirably fulfilled. Certainly no one is better qualified than is the Speaker to expound the subject, but as there are several questions touching which he chose to be silent, his paper could hardly be regarded as entirely satisfactory. It may be well to enumerate those questions for the sake of persons who might be tempted at first sight to assume Mr. Reed's exposition to be exhaustive.

It is undisputed by the Speaker that not only the members of what for the moment is the minority in the House of Representatives, but also the members of the majority, are more thoroughly gagged and shackled than are the members of any other parliamentary body in the world. What is the reason for such a state of things? The reason put forward by the Speaker is that so huge is the volume of business brought before the house that only by the existing method of muzzling and effacing individuals can any business at all be done. That this asserted reason is less well-founded than it might be will at once appear when we point out that far greater liberty of speech is enjoyed by the members of the French Chamber of Deputies and of the British House of Commons, although those are both larger bodies than is our