Coolie trade

“ What advantage, we ask, can it be to a man who finds his profits disappearing, his trade reduced to stagnation, and his capability of giving employment absolutely annihilated, to know that, in consequence of some sudden impulse, twenty million additional yards of calico have been exported from Great Britain? ”

“ A draper's shop selling everything! Why not call it a bazaar at once? And the employees! a nice set they were too—a lot of puppies, who did their work like porters at a railway station, treating goods and customers like so many parcels; leaving the shop or getting the sack at a moment's notice. No affection, no manners, no taste! And all at once he quoted Colomban as an example of a good tradesman, brought up in the old school, knowing how long it took to learn all the cunning and tricks of the trade. The art was not to sell a large quantity, but to sell dear. ”

“ The commercial prospects of this country are, in my opinion, gloomy; our present commerce is enormous: that it must diminish after a peace is certain, and should any accident injure the West India trade, and give to France a paramountship in the American affections, that diminution would be vast indeed, and, of course, great would be the number of clerks, etc., wholly out of employment. ”

“ The foreign drives it out of the market and its maker into bankruptcy; and now our farmers, in purchasing their cloths, “buy where they can buy cheapest,” which is the first commandment of free trade, and get their cloth of England at three dollars a yard. I maintain that this would not last a year after the American factories had been silenced—that then the British operator would begin to think of profits as well as bare cost for his cloth, and to adjust his prices so as to recover what it had cost him to put down the dangerous competition. ”

“ With every year there must be an increasing tendency in the same direction, as the manufacturers of India are more and more compelled to depend on England for yarn, and as the nations of Europe become more and more enabled to shut out cloth and limit their imports to yarn. From producer, England has become, or is rapidly becoming, a mere trader, and trade has not grown to such an extent as was required to make amends for the change. She is therefore in the position of the man who has substituted a trade of a thousand dollars a year for a production of five hundred. ”

“ The triangular trade between Europe, Africa, and the New World, was one of the most lucrative aspects of the mercantile economy. Mercantilism sought to keep each country economically self-sufficient. Within this framework the role of the colony was to provide the mother country with raw materials which it could not produce for itself and to be a market for the consumption of many of the manufactured goods produced within the mother country. ”

“ It is the heritage of the American people, of their children, and of their children’s children. It gives an absolutely free trade over a territory nearly as large as all Europe, and the profit is all our own. The genuine Free-trader appears unable to see or comprehend that this continental trade—not our exchanges with Europe—is the great source of our prosperity. President Cleveland now plainly proposes a policy that will admit Europe to a share of this trade. ”

“ The history of all the companies formed during these years for trade in New France is the same. First a monopoly is granted under circumstances ostensibly most favourable to the Government and to the privileged merchants; then follow the howls of the excluded traders, the lack of good voluntary colonists, the transportation to the colony of a few beggars, criminals, or unpromising labourers; a drain on the company's funds in maintaining these during the long winter ”

“ Unfortunately, when we are dealing with the total trade of a country, a comparison of values is the only comparison possible, for there is no other common denominator by means of which varied articles—say, steam ploughs, cotton piece-goods, and patent medicines—can be brought into our table.
OUR IMPORTS OF GOLD AND SILVER.
To return to our diagram—it may be asked, “How does it happen that there is such a large and growing excess of imports over exports? Surely that is a bad sign.” ”

“ There is one other important point to be dealt with in considering the movement of our trade as a whole. It is this—that part of the enormous quantity of goods we import is not consumed by ourselves, but is re-exported to foreign countries or to our Colonies. For many reasons it is interesting to distinguish these re-exports from the exports of goods produced within the United Kingdom. The separate figures for the last fifteen years are given in the following table:—
Our Entrepôt Trade and our Home Trade. In Millions Sterling. ”

“ Assuming that Europe would have more money if it sold us larger amounts of merchandise, it is not certain it would consume more food, or, if it did, that its purchases would be made in this country. Undoubtedly it would resort to the cheapest market, which is by no means ours. The largest and best and most profitable market for the farmer in the world is our own domestic market. ”

“ No nation keeps to silver because it is used in other countries, it is because they can find nothing so safe and convenient. trade betwixt nations [Pg 196] is carried on by exchange of goods, and if one merchant sends out goods of a less value, than he brings home; he has money furnish’d him abroad by another who brings home for a less value than he sent out: if there is no money due abroad, then the merchant who designed to import for a greater value than he exported, is restricted; and can only import equal to his export, which is all the many laws to regulate trade have been endeavouring. ”

“ The goods belonging to the tope lay in an open boat-house, which was daily visited by numbers of the natives, without the owner having the least fear of losing a single article, the mutual confidence with which the trade is carried on being so great, that the trader allows a native to take away what goods he pleases, merely mentioning the amount of produce that is expected in return, and although the former may have no personal knowledge of the native to whom he has delivered the goods, he never fears that the contract will not be fulfilled. ”

“ It is believed that they represent in each instance the best that can be done and the wisest settlement that can be secured. One very important result is the stabilization of foreign currency, making exchange assist rather than embarrass our trade. ”

“ By the same law, a duty of eighteen pence the pound was imposed upon the exportation of beaver wool or woumbs, without making any alteration in the duty upon the importation of that commodity, which, when imported by British, and in British shipping, amounted at that time to between fourpence and fivepence the piece.
Coals may be considered both as a material of manufacture, and as an instrument of trade. ”

“ But the monopoly of the colony trade, so far as it has operated upon the employment of the capital of Great Britain, has, in all cases, forced some part of it from a foreign trade of consumption carried on with a neighbouring, to one carried on with a more distant country, and in many cases from a direct foreign trade of consumption to a round-about one. ”

“ It is axiomatic that no agricultural and industrial country can get the full benefit of its own advantages without a merchant marine. We have been proceeding under the act of Congress that contemplates the establishment of trade routes to be ultimately transferred to private ownership and operation. Due to temporary conditions abroad and at home we have a large demand just now for certain types of freight vessels. ”

“ Nor does it seem possible to put an end to this condition of things so long as our system of production and distribution is competitive; for gold and silver have proved to be altogether the best mediums of exchange, and some medium of exchange we must have in order to carry on trade so long as that trade is left to individual initiative as at present. ”

“ The trade of England is to a great extent based on the property of foreigners, in the form of wool, silk, cotton, tobacco, sugar, and other commodities, sent there for sale, and these furnish much of the capital of her merchants. While holding this vast amount of foreign capital, they supply iron and cloth, for which they take the bonds of the people of other nations; and whenever the amount of these bonds becomes too large, there comes a pressure in the money market, and the prices of all foreign commodities are forced down, to the ruin of their distant owners. ”

“ To reduced export rates the objections are few. They are generally admitted to be useful; and at a time when on all hands it is urged to be necessary to extend our trade abroad, they could not be abolished without causing serious loss and loud complaints. It is important to enable a colliery owner to export coal, or a manufacturer without a port in the vicinity of his works, to export his wares on such terms that he will not be at a heavy disadvantage or be driven out of the field. ”

“ There is a strong feeling amongst the merchants and shopkeepers with regard to the Arabs, who are all traders and not workers; but as they are mostly British subjects and do not go to the Colony under any form of agreement, it is recognized that they cannot be interfered with.
The Coolie does not come into competition to any considerable extent with the European. Field work for Europeans is impossible on the coast, where all the plantations are situated, and the number of servants other than Coolies and Natives has always been very small. ”

“ At the same time, while England laid her veto on the use of that very article which has since made her, or helped to make her, the most famous commercial nation of the world, France sent her ships laden with corn to Newcastle, carrying back coal in return, her merchants being the first to supply this new great article of commerce to foreign countries. In the reign of Henry V. the trade had become of such importance that a special Act was passed providing for the admeasurement of ships and barges employed in the coal trade. ”

“ The coalheavers in London exercise a trade which in hardship, dirtiness, and disagreeableness, almost equals that of colliers; and from the unavoidable irregularity in the arrival of coal-ships, the employment of the greater part of them is necessarily very inconstant. If colliers, therefore, commonly earn double and triple the wages of common labor, it ought not to seem unreasonable that coalheavers should sometimes earn four and five times those wages. ”

“ Would not the export of Coolies cease if man could be rendered more, valuable in India than in Jamaica or Guiana? Would not the destruction of cottages, the eviction of their inhabitants, and the waste of life throughout Ireland, at once be terminated, could man be made as valuable there as he is here? Would not the export of the men, women, and children of Great Britain cease, if labour there could be brought to a level with that of Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania? Assuredly it would; for men do not voluntarily leave home, kindred, and friends. ”

“ The whole tendency of modern commercial policy is to the substitution of the distant market for the near one. England exports her people to Australia that they may there grow the wool that might be grown at home more cheaply; and we export to California, by hundreds of thousands, men who enjoy themselves in hunting gold, leaving behind them untouched the real gold-mines—those of coal and iron—in which their labour would be thrice more productive. ”

“ They give other nations the means and opportunity to trade so much per cent cheaper than we can; which must certainly carry away from us many valuable trades: They enhance the value of all foreign materials which we use in our manufactures, that are bought with bullion or money, as many of them are; which must in consequence raise the price of these manufactures, and hinder their sail; and above all, make the materials of navigation dear to us, upon which all trade in a great measure depends, and the carriage-trade wholly. ”

“ And the settlers, we knew, needed the Indian commodities.
So to the newspaper, the post office, the store, the mail route, the heavy hauling, we added an Indian trading post, trading groceries for fence posts; subscriptions to The Wand for berries—very few of them could read it, but they didn't mind that—it was a trade. Joe Two-Hawk became a mediator and interpreter until Ida Mary and I learned enough of the Sioux language to carry on. We tried to figure out a way, in this trading, to make back our loss on the menagerie we had collected at Ammons. Those bare store shelves worried us. ”

“ If the common people are to come into their own, trade in every necessity and luxury must be more highly integrated. The difference of the new era as regards foreign commerce will chiefly be that nations as a whole by their governments will conduct it instead of private traders. ”

“ Another event which has arisen, in one trade at least, from the employment of large capital, is, that a class of middle-men, formerly interposed between the maker and the merchant, now no longer exist. When calico was woven in the cottages of the workmen, there existed a class of persons who travelled about and purchased the pieces so made, in large numbers, for the purpose of selling them to the exporting merchant. ”