The Mccook Tribune

The Greatest
"Free Trade" Field Is
Furnished by Our Own States.

There is a ripple of pleasurable and surprised excitement at present among the lonely devotees of the markets of the world fetish concerning the "tremendous" increase in the export of American manufactured goods. It is estimated that these exports will reach this year the unparalleled total of $260,000,000. It was last year $228,489,893, as against $183,595,743 in 1895. The percentage of manufactured products in all exports rose from 21.14 to 26.47 per cent between the years 1894 and 1896. The fiscal year ending June 30 is, of course, contemplated in all these statements. These are large figures when printed by themselves. They always are printed by themselves in journals which see in them the long looked for opening of the markets of the world. But they shrink-they shrink piteously-when arrayed beside those of the value of the total manufactured products of the country in a prosperous year, thus:

Estimated manufactured exports, 1896.... $260,000,000
Actual manufactured products, 1896.. 9,000,000,000

Leaving as home market absorption.. $8,740,000,000

Our concern with the markets of the world is seen to be considerably less than 3 per cent of our concern with the markets of ourselves in this which was once well called by William McKinley the greatest free trade system extant, the internal commerce of forty-five States and five territories.