year ending June 30, 1908, we exported wheat 
and wheat flour to the value, in round numbers, of 
$164,000,000. That will be cut off. So we shall 
have to find nearly $700,000,000 in all to pay our 
food bill. That is one-third of the value of our 
entire exports in the year 1908. 
We cannot raise this vast amount annually by 
increasing exports. Already the products of the 
soil, the minerals and oils taken from the earth 
and such raw materials as leather and lumber, 
drawn immediately from earth’s products, con- 
stitute two-thirds of our entire export trade. The 
whole of our exports of manufactured goods oth- 
er than products of the farm amounted to £480,- 
700,000 in 1907. There is no fiction more firmly 
fixed in the American mind than that we are cap- 
turing foreign markets for our manufactured ar- 
ticles. For the most part we are only artificial 
competitors, and would have to withdraw from 
the foreign field if we were obliged to depend up- 
on our own industrial merits. Our factories could 
not exist and pay the current scale of wages if they 
received for their total product the prices now 
charged the foreign purchaser. The American 
manufacturer markets his surplus abroad for what 
he can get, and recoups himself by the large pro- 
fit which a high tariff permits him to charge the 
home consumer. I do not intend to touch here 
at all upon the merits or demerits of the tariff as 
an economic proposition. But I state a mere busi- 
7 
