Less Foreign Demand Intensifies Home Competition, 51 



principle apply to agricultural products! Senator Bev- 

 eridge, at Cincinnati, in October, 1902, is reported to 

 have said: ''And so you see that the little puff of agita- 

 tion for unconditional tariff reduction is born of unrea- 

 son and nurtured by a thoughtless disregard of the sale 

 of our surplus upon ivhicli our whole prosperity de- 

 pends.'' 



Here we have an expression from Senator Hoar of 

 Massachusetts, taken from the Boston Journal: "We 

 are sending our products abroad. We expect to send our 

 products abroad in larger degree. A prosperous manu- 

 facturing country that sends its products abroad ivill 

 alivays, if it is to remain prosperous, get higher prices 

 for its product at home than it does abroad. In other 

 words, it dumps its surplus in foreign markets. Lord 

 Brougham stated that very powerfully more than fifty 

 years ago. He declared in his speech that the English 

 manufacturers held their foreign markets by their power 

 of breaking down foreign competition by underselling 

 them with their own surplus, which they could not sell 

 at home."' 



The effect of disposing of a surplus in the home mar- 

 ket is indicated in these words of D. A. Wells: "If pro- 

 duction exceeds, by even a very small percentage, what 

 is required to meet every current demand for con- 

 sumption, the price which the surplus will command in 

 the open market will govern and control the price of the 

 whole ; and if it cannot be sold at all, or with difficulty, an 

 intense competition on the part of the owners of accumu- 

 lated stocks to sell will be engendered, with a great reduc- 

 tion or annihilation of all profit."^ 



The agricultural situation after 1880, the time already 



1 <( 



Recent Economic Changes," page 78. 



