OUR FOREIGN TRADE. Again, during the fiscal year, 1906, both our exports and imports exceeded all previous records. The total amount of our foreign trade aggregated $2,970,378,991. This is $334,000,000 in value more than our total exports and imports of 1905. It is a most marvelous showing, particularly as regards exports for a country whose foreign trade is an incidental feature of its industrial life. With the highest-priced labor on earth, with dearer raw materials than are used by any other manufacturing nation, yet we to-day sell more of our wares abreed than any other country on earth. It is true that these foreign, sales are largely made up of agricultural products, and yet our exports of manufactures are increasing at a relatively greater rate than your agricultural products. On the import side, in spite of the high prices of commodities which rule not only at home but abroad we are increasing our imports at such a rate that we are buying more of foreign goods than any other nation, with the exception of two. The volume of our imports testify most emphatically to the prosperity of our people, and prove most conclusively that our Tariff wall is none too high if we would shut out millions of dollars worth of foreign wares which should be made by our own workmen. During the past three years our excess exports of silver has amounted each year to between $21,000,000 and $22,000,000, augmenting our exports of commodities by that amount. On the other hand, while the excess of gold imports of 1904 amounted to $17,600,000, and in 1906 to $57,600,000, yet this must be offset by an excess of exports in gold in 1905 amounting to $39,000,000, leaving a net balance of imports of gold amounting to some $35,000,000 for the three years. This shows that our favorable balance of trade which has averaged some $500,000,000 for the past six or seven years is almost all needed to meet the invisible obligations abroad which accrue year after year on account of freight bills, interest payments, tourists' expenditures and money sent abroad by those who have come from foreign shores and who return to those left behind a portion of their earnings. Our annual foreign freight obligations are variously estimated at from $100,000,000 to $200,00 000. It is thought that our tourists spend abroad annually fully $75,000,000, and it may be twice that amount. Perhaps from $25,000,000 to $50,000,000 are sent abroad every year by relatives and friends here to those at home. This would leave some $200,000,000, then, as dividends and interests upon foreign investments placed in this country. It may be that in addition to the liquidation of these annual obligations that some considerable foreign credits may be accumulating abroad, but it is not likely that these are of very vast amounts. The situation is certainly a most satisfactory one. Without striving particularly for foreign trade, we possess more of the world's markets than any other nation. With what is considcred very adequate protection for all industries, we yet import over $1,200,000,000 worth of merchandise, about one-half of which bears a duty averaging somewhat less than 50 per cent., and giving us a revenue of nearly a quarter billion of dollars towards paying the expenses of the Government. We never before had a law on our statute books under the operation of which we even approached such satisfactory results. Our so-called Tariffs for revenue have resulted in a lack of revenue of a deficit. On following pages will be shown comparative figures or exports and imports since the foundation of the Government, with accompanying columns showing the excess of imports and exports and our annual balance of trade. It will be noticed that since the foundation of the Government we have sold abroad more than we have purchased to the amount of $5,000,000,000, and yet up to 1875, with but few exceptions, we imported every year more than we exported. Thi remarkable advance in our exports of late years, which have increased faster than our imports, is due, in the first place, to the fact that American goods have come to be known as the best goods made throughout the world. With but very small exception, American goods in foreign markets are higher than the goods with which they come into competition, and yet Europeans in particular have learned to know that American wares at any price are cheaper than any other goods made by any other nation, for the reason that they are better, more durable, more serviceable in every way. The high standard of living possessed by the American workingman, the opportunity and ambition which always lies before him, the possibilities which are in store for the inventive and diligent and the ingenious, results in better workmanship and better make of almost every article produced from its very crudest form to its most finished shape. American locomotives are stronger and make better time than those made in any other country. The American pin and needle cannot be equalled throughout the world, and so it is that in the mechanism of every article, whether it be a great bridge built to span a foreign chasm, a locomotive to climb foreign mountains or a needle to sew with on foreign fabrics, every machine, every implement, every article made in America means that it is the best made to be found anywhere on earth. An American mower or reaper, which will last twice as long or will do twice as much work in a given time, is worth more even if it does cost 50 per cent. to 75 per cent. more than the European machine. This, then, is why even at our higher prices we have passed every other nation in our total exports, and why we are fast gaining upon Germany and England in the sales of manufactured products. This is why we are not only competing with these manufacturing nations in neutral markets, but are competing with them right in their home markets. It is possible that some of these markets have been gained in the first place through a resort to lower prices, that is, a selling of an article at a lower price abroad than at home, a practice resorted to by every other manufacturing nation with whom we must come into competition. If this has been done, it is to the glory and honor of every American manufacturer who has done it that he has increased the sales of his wares abroad, thereby increasing the volume of his output, the employ of labor, and the wages of his men, for be it understood that American workingmen get precisely the same wages for any goods that may be sold abroad at a lower price as they do for those sold in the home market. We must approach a matter of such prime economic importance as the tariff from the standpoint of our business needs.-President Roosevelt at Minneapolis, April 4, 1903. |