318 THE QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. 



this would immediately begin to take trade away from com- 

 peting exporting countries, which, in order to protect them- 

 selves, would surely begin to pay export bounties on the same 

 commodities. We know that this would happen because it 

 always has happened. Nations, no more than individuals, 

 will permit trade to slip out of their hands without a fight to 

 retain it. This would enable competing nations, to meet our 

 cut prices and perhaps go a little lower in the effort to quickly 

 recover lost trade, the result being a competition between all 

 exporting nations as to which should sell cheapest to the 

 importing nations. This would please the consuming classes 

 of those nations very much, but would excite great antagonism 

 among the farmers of the same nations, who would see their 

 home markets cut off by what they would consider unfair 

 competition, since it would not be competition between them- 

 selves and other farmers, but between them and otlier farmers 

 aided by the taxation of other classes. The consequence 

 would be that foreign governments, even of nations w^hich 

 profited most by the low prices, would be inclined to take 

 retaliatory measures on account of the injury done to a portion 

 of their own people. It is not necessary to further speculate 

 as to what would happen, because this is not really a "question 

 of the day " in this country, and never can become so. The 

 bounty which has been roughly proposed by the advocates of 

 this measure, as a fair offset to existing tariffs, is ten cents a 

 bushel on wheat, five cents on other grains, and one cent a 

 pound on cotton; to these, before a bounty law could be 

 enacted, it would be necessary to add bounties upon every 

 other article which we export or have any probability of 

 exporting, certainly including ships. The bounty on even 

 the articles above enumerated, for the quantities exported in 

 1897, would amount to more than $51,000,000, and with the 

 other articles which could certainly find a place in the law — 

 for it could not pass except by including every industry which 

 could possibly gain by it — and the ra])id increase of exports 

 to be expected under such a stimulus, an expenditure for this 

 purpose of not lees than $100,000,000 a year from the treasury 

 would have to be expected in the immediate future. It should 



