The Great Coal Tariff Debate

One of the measures at the late session of the Forty-fourth Congress was the removal of the existing tariff of seventy-five cents per ton on coal. This trade is, though but in theory, adapted to make political capital with those whose interest in the coal trade does not extend beyond the supply necessary to be purchased for their year's fuel, or for running the machinery of their factories. But we only have to look at the matter from a national standpoint to see its impolicy. The saving to consumers would be rather in anticipation than reality. The increased gain would lie on the side of the foreign collieries, whose cheap labor would give them too great a preponderance over the American coal interest to be overcome. The damage that it would inflict upon the coal interest of the Middle West and the Pacific Coast would be by so much a national calamity. In truth, there is a change needed in the tariff, but it is of the opposite kind to the one proposed. It should at least be equal to the difference in the rates of wages between Puget Sound and England. It is not just to American citizens that the home markets should be promiscuously thrown open on terms of equality to countries where labor is degraded and that pay tribute to a foreign sovereignty. The protective tariff is the only fence by which a new government can protect its fields from the inroads of the full-grown herds of foreign neighbors until its own stocks grow strong enough to hold their own.