Judge, 1888-10-20 · page 16 of 16
Judge — October 20, 1888 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Judge magazine cartoon satirizes free trade's devastating effects on Ireland. The upper panel shows Britannia (England, personified as a woman) offering Ireland a poisoned "free trade cup," while the lower depicts Ireland as a coffin-maker—suggesting the policy killed Irish manufacturing. The text argues that protective tariffs once sustained Ireland's 8 million people through textile industries (linen, silk, wool, cotton). Under British-imposed free trade, Ireland's population halved to 5 million, industries collapsed (Dublin's cotton trade lost 14,000 jobs), and the country became impoverished, reduced to exporting raw materials. The caption warns America (Columbia) against adopting similar free-trade policies, predicting worker degradation and economic ruin. This reflects late-19th-century American protectionist debate: opponents of free trade used Ireland as a cautionary example of how unrestricted British trade destroyed local manufacturing and reduced nations to colonial suppliers.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
uae: FREE TRADE,IRELAND'S DOOM. Ireland once supported in reasonable comfort 8,000,000 of people. Her manufacture in linen, silk, wool, and cotton, protected tariffs, and encouraged by subsidies, absorbed her capital, em- ployed her laborers, promoted a diversity of industries,'and insured prosperity. To-day, with only 5,000,000 of people, she is the poorest, most distracted and harassed country on earth. She drank the free- trade cup which England pressed to her lips to the very dregs. The cotton manufacture of Dublin, which employed 14,000 operatives, has ve been destroyed; the stufl destroyed; bankruptey, © © THAT FAVORED AND PRIVILEGED AND PATRONIZED BUSINES 18 ‘THE IRISH COPFIN- MAKERS, WHAT FREE TRADE HAS DONE FOR IRELAND. En (to Columbia )—“ If you would degrade your workingmen to the condition of paupers—if you would be poor, wretched, and but a producer of raw materials for rich English Manufacturers, then adopt Free Trade, and be as I am!” comicbooks.com