THE WAR AND FOREIGN TRADE 361 



studied them. There can never be again any such uncertainty as for- 

 merly obtained in this schedule which represents a domestic consump- 

 tion of $500,000,000 per year. Much the same may be said of woolens, 

 though the work there was much less thorough. 



Incidentally, this tariff board was invaluable in the development 

 of costs of production. The cost of maintaining the board was 

 $250,000 per year. Its study of the cost of raising wool might be worth 

 to a single state annually one or two millions of dollars were all the 

 facts known. 



It is as necessary that a tariff be reasonably low as that it be pro- 

 tective. Kext to ours, the tariff of Germany is the highest of any great 

 nation, and yet her tariff averages about one fifth of the Dingley rates. 

 Her manufacturers are glad to have the tariff such as steadies their 

 trade and conditions their success upon their extreme industry and de- 

 velopment of progressive methods. Our nation can not afford to trifle 

 with tariff figures. It can only afford to develop them with utmost 

 judgment and study. 



Trade Training. — As no man would enter a race with an untrained 

 horse, so surely no nation can enter the international race for trade 

 supremacy with untrained industrial workers. We must rival the best 

 of European nations in the development of our working people. We 

 must cease to draw from Europe the majority of our most skilled work- 

 ers and foremen. We must share the profits and advantages of both 

 domestic and foreign trade with our working people, not in ways that 

 weaken the workers, for that end would only destroy itself ; but in those 

 respects which bring strength, initiative and the joy of superior ac- 

 complishment to the workers and to their employers. We must train 

 for the occupations and through the occupations. We must link edu- 

 cation with industry, with the day's work. We may well remember that 

 for generations in Europe, and in several countries even now, trades 

 are taught on Sunday as well as week days. For a trade — the day's 

 work — rightly considered is only religion applied, and no day is too 

 good for its right instruction. We gladly believe that our working 

 people are the best in the world in initiative, in natural ability and 

 energy. We are frightfully wasting all these virtues, however, by per- 

 mitting substantially all of our industrial workers to leave the public 

 and other schools by the end of the sixth grade with no connection 

 between their meager schooling and the life they are to lead as indus- 

 trial workers and citizens. We are all of us coming to see that the 

 supreme value of education is in its application and use day by day in 

 work and play. 



There are some twenty million children in our common schools. 

 More than half of them will get no further than the three E's when 

 school will be foreclosed upon them forever under the present custom. 



VOL. LXXXVI. — 25. 



