In the following discussion on free trade, William R. Hawkins and William Peterson present opposing points of view on a controversy that cuts across conventional ideological divisions. The advocates of increased tariffs appeal to conservative nationalist sentiments but enjoy the support of organized labor. This left-of-center constituency fears the effect of foreign competition on the wages and jobs of American workers. The free traders, by contrast, draw on the democratic radical rhetoric of the nineteenth century, popularized by John Bright and Richard Cobden, and emphasize the obsolescence of national divisions in a world of democratic peoples. At the same time, contemporary free traders stress the benefits to American commerce and American consumers that will result from the breakdown of tariff barriers. Though the present debate between protectionists and free traders has roots going back into the early nineteenth century and even before, it remains sufficiently timely to warrant the exchange presented
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