Single-track plantationism vs. multi-track industrialism [microform]

97-84024-22 Benedict, Roswell Alphonzo Single-track plantationism vs. multi-track Boston 1919 MASTER NEGATIVE # COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DIVISION BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET ORIGINAL MATERIAL AS FILMED - EXISTING BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD V. nediotf Rosvell Alphonso^ 1855- Singl«*^ack plaiititioiiiam Ts* mlti-traok industrialisin, by Roswell A. Benedict; Dallas and Marshall^ by Roland Ringwalt. Boston^ The Hone aarket club> 1919; covBr-title^ 8 p« I RESTRICTIONS ON USE: Reproductions may not be made without pennission from Columt)ia University Ulxahes. TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA FILM SIZE: 3S/?7/n REDUCTION RATIO: //V IMAGE PLACEMENT : lA DATE FILMED: INITIALS: TRACKING # : FILMED BY PRESERVATION RESOURCES, BETHLEHEM, PA. 2>o Single-Track Plantationism vs. Multi-Track Industrialism By \ . \ Roswell A. Benedict Dallas and Marshall X By RoUnd Ringwalt jeubiiabed by THE HOME MARKET CLUB ThtHKULB O. Manria, 8e&j 77 dammar Street, - Boston June, 1919 SINGLE-TRACK PLANTATIONISM vs. MULTI-TRACK INDUSTRIALISM By Roswell A. Benedict. This is the issue now being fought cmt in the United States Senate, with the plantationists rep- resenting Mr. Wilson on the one side and the industrialists, repre- senting all organized industiy. North, South, East and West, throughout our whole blessed coun- try, on the other. It is merely the question of either returning to bar- onial, plantation feudalism or pressing forward further still on the road to perfect democracy, under a constitutional government, guaran- teeing equal rights and equal pro- tection for all men, without refer- ence to color or previous condition of servitude. Happily the last elec- tion changed the complexion of our Senate from that of the plantation- ist to that of the universal industri- alists; and that is all which now stands between us and plantation peonage. Because, in the League of Na- tions Covenant, Article XXIII, subdivision "E," is this language: Provision shall be made through the league to secure and maintain freedom of transit and equitable treatment for the commerce of all member States,* with special ar- rangements in regard to the neces- sities of regions devastated in the present war. If this stands unmodified and Mr. Wilson is our member of the Coun- cil, he will use it as he did the Underwood-Simmons law to open our ports to these other countries to whatever extent may be demandr ed by the plantationist program. It wotdd mean f<M: the time being the destruction of organized industiy in this country and such a subversion of public order by rampant bolshc- vism as would justify Mr. Wilson in proclaiming himself dictator m the manner of the plantationist Dru^ the hero in the revolutionary book^ the authorship of which his friend^ Colonel House, has never denied and in which appear many of his own now notorious policies. In the provision quoted, the words, ''with special arrangements with r^;ard to the necessities of re- gions devastated in ^e present war," leave a very wide field for the discretion of the Council, which could <Mrdain that this country alone, as being the wealthiestr should open her ports for a series of years for the free admission not only oi the products <^ Belgium^ France and Italy, but of Germany, Austria and Hungary also. Our open market here could thus be made the channel by which the Huns could liquidate mto cash their industrial products, in order to make cash payments to B^giunir France and Italy. There is no \ limit to the latitude of the Council in this respect; and from his his- tory, is there any doubt that Mr. Wilson would approve such an ar- rangement? Mr. Wilson has said that he had a single-track mind. Those who know his career, know that it is the mind of the single-track plantation* ist; and they are able satisfactorily to account for every puzzling act of his administration on that ground, not excepting his otherwise inexplicable attitude towards the Huns during the first years of the war. Single-track plantationism has had a definite statesmanship behind it almost ever since the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney. Up to that period, the raising of cotton by slave labor in America did not pay. Mr. Wilson himself tells tis that the Whitney gin "enabled even an unskilful slave to cleanse a thou- sand pounds of cotton of its tena- cious seed in a single day. Without it, he bad been able to cleanse but five or six pourds." (History of the American People, VoL 3, p. 252.) Upon this invention, a vision of boundless wealth arose to the plan- tationist's imagination. The South contained some 448,000^000 of cot- ton-producing acres (Encyc. Brit.)? which was land enough to supply the whole world with, cotton for centuries to come. And the world should be his market. He would monopolize it ; keep back every rival and then get such prices for cotton as he pleased. Furthermore, cotton could be supplemented with rice, tobacco and sugar; perhaps other things ; and all together here would be a field for riches beyond the dreams of avarice. But there was one thing necessary from the start: A producing cost as low as or a trifle lower than that of any other cotton country ; and there were thirty-five of these countries. To be sure, the other countries were not so well located as to world- transportation facilities as our own Southern cotton fields, traversed as they were by rivers, indented by bayous opening into rivers and fringed by the great ocean itself. Nevertheless, once they were well started in the raising of cotton , these other countries, helped by their coolie or peon labor, would be dangerous rivals. Therefore, in the plantationist view, slavery became indispensable^ together with condi- tions which, so far as possible, would limit the demand for white labc^ to that from the plantation- ists themselves, purchasing products not embraced in the plantation cate- gory; since any increase in planta- tion cost would be a handicap against American and in favor of foreign-raised cotton. The hostility of the plantationist to multi-indus- trialism dates from the moment when this plan was formed in his mind. As long ago as 1820, or about a century, the planters of Charles- ton, South Carolina, memorialized Congress against the injustice of in- creasing the value of labor by multi- plying industries and therefore the labor demand, through encouraging tariffs, claiming that any increase in Northern wages above wages in England, for instance, because of the tariflf, was equivalent to wring- ing a bounty from the planters equal to the dift'erence in wages thus pro- moted (Annals of Congress, 1820. 1821, p. 1507.) ; because the planters were prevented by the tariff from purchasing English products at English costs. This was the posi- tion of later plantation statesmen, like Calhoun, Hayne, and McDuffie — splendid men, all* but victims of ^ the instinct of self-preservation. (Congressional Debates, Vol. 8, The plantationists were honest, and from their standpoint, reason- able, when they maintained that the right to buy plantation supplies in the cheapest markets was the prin- ciple upon which depended their success in monopolizing the world's market for cotton, tobacco, rice and sugar. They tolerated tariffs mere- ly for revenue purposes, strictly limited to government needs; rev- enue-only tariffs being recognized by them as free-trade tariffs ; earlier, on the authority of John C. Calhoun himself, the great South Cardiniaxi free trader, who had formerly been a protectionist (Curtiss, "Industrial Development <rf Nations," Vol. II, p. 310) ; and, later, on that of Pro- fessor William G. Sumner, of Yale, also a radical freetrader. (Protec- tionism, p. 17,). The free trade plantation tenet was supplemented by that for free seas; which was further both logi- cal and necessary, since a sea block- ade would handicap American cot- ton as eft'ectually as Northern pro- tection ; and both free trade and free seas are laid down as leading prin- ciples in the plantation presidential platform of 1856. It is easy to understand the pas- sionate devotion of the plantaticmist to these principles, once the under- lying fact is seen. It is simply be- cause of a strong reaction in beh^f " of self-preservation. The Union which so entangled him with the destinies of the multi-track indus- trialists became irksome to him. In South Carolina he started to secede in 1832 but was temporarily held back by the Clay Ccmipromise, which displaced in stages, by free trade, the protective tariff law of 1832. In 1844. he won with Foik by a campaign of deceit, crying Pro- tection in the North and Free Trade in the South ; and in 1846, by a coalition with the Cobden people in Great Britain, simultaneously put this country on a free trade footing, with the repealing of the Com Laws by Great Britain, thereby opening the ports here for British man^fac tures in exchange for the opening of the ports there to cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar and other Southern prod- ucts, incidentally, of course, also to N<^thera wheat and provisions. In t86o he seceded, no doubt by con- cert with Great Britain for her sup- port, inasmuch as Great Britain fitted ou^crusiers for the destruc- ti<m of Northern merchant ships; and thereupon adopted a constitu- tion insuring free trade and slavery forever* In 1892, for the first time since the Civil War, he came into 5 full power in the administration, by the same decepticm as that prac* tised in 1844, namely, pretending not to stand for free trade ; but upon getting power, immediately passing a free trade law, always true to hi* principle and the necessity, as he saw it, of a low cost for labor here. In 19 1 2, he succeeded once more and by the same deception, Mr. Wilson having given his audiences to understand in his speeches that he was a pretty good protectionist although of a peculiar sort of his own, since he proposed so to regu- late the protective tariff as to leave to the weak a better protection than ever, at the same time that he took away irom the strong the protec- tion under which they had had a too rank growth ("New Freedom," p. 157). Mr. Wilson thus earned the title of the truest Machievellian ever on the presidential stump in America. True to his plantation birth and rearing, and the planta- tion party that handed him 136 elec- toral college votes secured by Kju- Klux methods which he has never found any fault with, Mr. Wilson immediately took the course of ^1 his plantationist predecessors in a like situation, passed a flat free- trade law. to reduce the domestic competition for American produc- ing activity and did what he could in the direction of free seas by open- ing the Panama Canal, free of toll, to the world and admitting vessels of foreign register to our coasting and lake trade. Mr. Wilson was bom in Virginia and reared in Georgia, South Caro- lina and North Carolina, and edu- cated at Princeton, where he dis- tinguished himself as an advocate of free trade against protection. (See "President Wilson from an English Point of View"— a very sympathetic point of view— by H» Wilson Harris.) His book, "The New Freedom," a bound volume of his stump speeches in 191a, is a continuous tirade against multi- track industrialism which he calls by the hard names of "monopolies'* "special interests," and the like; and in general behaves exactly as what he is said to describe himself to be, "an unreconstructed rebel." There is nothing new in anjfthing he says against organized industry. His Southern forefathers started on the warpath against corporations which they called by the abhorrent name of "monopolies," nearly a hundred years ago; and he is merely following in their tracks, with same pur- pose now which they had then. All his public acts are easily explained upon that hypothesis. He courts labor by eight-hour laws and arbi- trarily higher wages, whenever it is within his jurisdiction; advocates laws against child-labor and over- taxing of women ; and makes people think he is soft-hearted towards "labtMr" in doing these things, when his very obvious purpose— obvious to those who have the true key to his conduct— is to handicap Ameri- can multi-track industrialism to its fall. For he opens the ports and exposes our industries to unmiti- gated fcweign competition, at the same time that he further hampo^ and handicaps production with these ap- parently philanthropic laws, the only result of which is to increase the cost of production here and dim- inish its output as against countries which have no such laws, but the products of which nevertheless come into this market in free com- petition with our own. This key of radical plantatiooism unlocks the mystery of Mr. Wil- son's pro-Germanism during the first years of the war and his later insistence that the "unconditional surrender" of the Huns should be conditioned upon their being pre- sented with a free market here un- der his Fourteen Points (Point Three), if they would be good enough to surrender. Had Gtrmmy won the war, as Mr. Wilson at first expected she would (See "The Real Colonel H<Mise," p. 177) "in a few months of swift fighting," is there any doubt that he would have made an alli- ance with the Kaiser to abrogate the Monroe Doctrine as to tiie whole of South America, and give Germany a free hand there, turning not only this market of ours but the Canadian as wdl over to Gmaeaay as a free gift, as is all done by Dru, the Colonel's hero? By the way, the CcAoaeL's book wbs written in the latter part of 191 1, when he was very intimate with Mr. Wilson. DALLAS AND By Roland Seventy-three years ago we had a Vice-President named George M. Dallas. He had made excellent speeches for protecti<»9 and was looked on as a man who wonld stand by his word. Nevertheless when the low tariff oi 1846 came belwe the Senate he gave the casting vote in its fav<»r. Old friends refused to speak to him; he was called a liar in print ; he was insulted in the street, and thoiq^ be knew that he deserved all ^is he was fool enough to invite more by pleading his case in a series of let- ters. No man in Pennsylvania politics ever came in for such vio- lent reproaches, and even beyond the seas he was not safe. MARSHALL Ringwalt Henry C Carey, in sieasmed terms btit not less cutting on that account, reminded him of what hfi had brought upon the State that once trusted him. All over Pennsyl- vania in 1844 the Democratic cam- paign cry had been, "Polk, Dallas and the Tariff of '42-'' Without that pledge Pennsylvania would have gone for Clay. Angry at trickery, the State voted in 1848 for Zachary Taylor. As May was passing out Vica^ President Marshall delivered a nota- ble speech at Atlantic City. In this address he aaid that he had been a low tariff man, practically a free trader, but that war had wrought many changes. He hoped that the manufacturers would prosper, be- cause on their well being the entire prosperity of the country depends. These are impressive words from <Mic who may have admired Henry Watterson's references to the robber barons. The Vice-President's words did not fall to the ground. They were caught up by the Republican papers, and given a good place in the columns of the Philadelphia Record. Query : If the Reccwrd has printed the speech of Vice-President Mar- shall will it print General Jackson's letter to Dr. Colman? ^ As George B. Curtiss in "The In- Jdustrial Development of Nations" reminds us, Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Monroe and Adams all recognized the importance of a pro- tective tariff to the farmer, and Andrew Jackson, in a letter to Dr. Colman, of North Carolina, dated April 26, 1824, said : I will ask what is the real situa- tion of the agriculturist? Where has the American farmer a market for his surplus produce ? Except for ~ cotton he has neither a foreign nor a home market. Does not this clearly prove, when there is no mar- ket at home or abroad, that there is too much labor employed in agri- culture? Common sense at once points out the remedy. Take from agriculture in the United States six hundred thousand men, women and children, and you will at once give a market for more breadstuffs than all Europe now furnishes us. In short, sir, we have been too long subject to the policy of British mer- chants ; it is time we should become a little more Americanized, and, in- stead of feeding the paupers and la- borers of England, feed our own; or else, in a short time, by continu- ing our present policy, we shall all be rendered paupers ourselves. This policy of Jackson's was pur- sued and has been continued ever since, with the exception of two free trade periods from 1833 to 1842, and from 1846 to i860. A home market of almost incalculable magnitude has been built up and maintained— a market greater by far than all the markets of the world combined, and in this market the American farmer has for a genera- tion and more sold over nine-tenths of his production. Let us hazard a supposition. If a tariff bill framed in the spirit of Dingley should come before the Senate; if a few members of that body were absent; if the ayes and nays were equal, would Vice-Presi- dent Marshall vote for it? That would be a strange reversal of his- tory, and the shade of Dallas might reflect— "Had I only done likewise 1"