3oTH SIDES OF THE_: TARIFF QUESTION v^ BY THE WORLD'S LEADING MEN F. X L I B R I S \ K A R D K \ K L O O D THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. I BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION BY THE WORLD'S LEADING MEN WITH PORTRAITS AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES SOLD BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY NEW YORK ALONZO PENISTON, PUBLISHER 338 BROADWAY Copyright, 1889, 1890, by LLOYD BRYCK. Copyright, 1890, by A. PENISTON. All rights reserved. 1755 TABLE OF CONTENTS. Page FREE THADK By The Rt. Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE, 19 PROTECTION. By The Hon. JAMES G. ELAINE, - 45 Biographical Sketch of Rt. Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE, - 15 Biographical Sketch of JAS. G. BLAINE, .... 17 THE GLADSTONE-ELAINE CONTROVERSY. By The Hon. R. Q. MILLS, 77 Biographical Sketch of Mr. MILLS , - - 75 FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. By Senator JUSTIN S. MORRILL, 113 Biographical Sketch of Senator MORRILL, Ill FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. By The Hon. W. C. P. BRECK- INRIDGE, 137 Biographical Sketch of Mr. BRECKIXRIDGE, - - 135 THE TARIFF ON TRIAL. By Sir RICHARD J. CARTWRIGHT and Mr. THOS. B. SHEARMAN, - 163 Biographical Sketch of Sir RICHARD J. CARTWRIGHT, - - 161 THE VALUE OF PROTECTION. By The Hon. W. McKiNLEY, Jr., 181 Biographical Sketch of Mr. McKiNLEY, - 179 SUMMING UP THE TARIFF DISCUSSION. By ANDREW CARNE- GIE, - 195 Biographical Sketch of Mr. CARNEGIE, - 193 THE McKiNLEY BILL IN EUROPE. By GUSTAVE DE MOLINARI, 225 THE QUESTIONS CLUBS AND THE TARIFF. By SAML. MEN- DUM, - - 239 FREE TRADE AGAINST SLAVE TRADE. By The Hon. ROGER Q. MILLS, - 251 APPENDIX. THE PRESIDENT'S PANACEA, - - 267 EDITORIAL NOTE ALLEN THORNDIKE RICE, 266 IRON AND STEEL. By B. F. JONES, - - 268 IRON ORE. By GEORGE H. ELY, - 270 IRON AND STEEL WAGES, PRICES AND PHOFITS. By JOHN JAR- RETT, - .... ... - 273 550521 10 APPENDIX. Pa#e THE PRESIDENT'S PANACEA.-(Continued.) AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY. By A. L. CONGER, 274 TEXTILE MACHINERY. By STOCKTON BATKS, - - 276 WOOL GROWING. By W. S. SHALLENBERGER, - - 278 COTTON MANUFACTURES. By JONATHAN CHACE, - - 279 FLAX, HEMP AND JUTE MANUFACTURES. By E. A. HARTSHORN, 281 MANUFACTURES OF SILK. By WM. C. WYCKOFF, ... 283 WOOLLENS AND WORSTEDS. By WALTER H. MCDANIELS, - - 285 COAL. By WM. P. DE ARMIT, - 286 PAPER. By WM. A. RUSSELL, - 289 PLATE GLASS. By N. T. DE PAUW, - 290 SUGAR CULTURE. By Louis BUSH, - 292 SOUTHERN INTERESTS. By JNO. P. VARNUM, 293 THE LABOR MARKET. By H. K. THURBER, - 295 AGRICULTURE. By THOS. H. DUDLEY, - 296 LIST OF PORTRAITS. W. E. GLADSTONE, - - - Frontispiece JAMES G. ELAINE, Facing page 17 R. Q. MILLS, - 75 JUSTIN S. MORRILL, - ' HI W. McKiNLEY, JR., 179 ANDREW CARNEGIE, - "193 A DUEL. FREE TRADE : By the Rt. Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE. PROTECTION : By the Hon. J. G. ELAINE. Trie RIGHT HON. WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE. THE mere mention of a figure so conspicuous in English national life for the past sixty years as the Rt. Hon. William Ewart Gladstone serves to recall the memory of events and personages inextricably blended with the most important movements in politics, religion, science and art that have wrought their lasting impress upon the nineteenth century. Born in the city of Liverpool, December 29, 1809, the son of Sir John Gladstone, descended from a family within whose veins flowed, in ancient days, the blood of Scotia's kings, possessed of large wealth and vast influence, Wm. E. Gladstone entered upon life's stage seemingly equipped with all the attributes needed to command success in any pro- fession he should see fit to engage in. Graduating in 1831 with the highest honors from Christ Church Col- lege, Oxford, after a brief tour in Italy, he was elected to Parliament as the representative of the borough of Newark, through the influence of the Duke of Newcastle. Once fairly within the arena his prowess and energy were so fully dis- played that in 1834 he was advanced by the recommendation of Peel to the rank of a Junior Lord of the Treasury. Again in 1841 the Tory party having in the meantime retired and returned in renewed strength to power he was made Vice-President of the Board of Trade, soon after succeeding Lord Ripon to the office of President. An ardent and stanch supporter of Peel, whose progress toward Liberalism and Free Trade was most pronounced near the close of his career, Mr. Gladstone, in 1852, as the acknowledged leader of the Whig party, opposed himself so strongly against the Budget championed by Mr. Disraeli as to cause it to be overwhelmingly rejected, upon which followed the resignation of the Tories led by Lord Derby. In the new ministry Mr. Gladstone became Chancellor of the Exchequer. The details of his schemes for reducing the national debt and lighten- ing the burden of taxation resting so heavily upon the people cannot be more than touched upon here. His acceptance of office under Lord Palmerston, upon the downfall of the Aberdeen ministry, his resignation and subsequent reentry into the Palmerston cabinet in 1859, are matters ably treated by all historians. His attitude during the fateful period of 16 THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. the Crimean war, his oft-repeated conflicts with Mr. Disraeli, his acces- sion to the office of Prime Minister in 1868, again in 1880, and yet again in 1886, involve the narration of a series of events to which it would be impossible to do justice in this limited space. Looking backward over the wonderful lif e of Mr. Gladstone, one cannot fail being forcibly struck by bis devotion and single-heartedness to the principles he so strenuously advocates. Mistaken he may have been at times, yet the whole tenor of his course is so in consonance with the cause of truth and equity, so unselfishly directed to the amelioration of the ills of humanity, that even his political enemies ungrudingly do honor to his sterling, personal worth. Numberless are the bills passed through his influence whose aim and operation have been a blessing and a benefit to the English people. As an orator, Mr. Gladstone takes rank with the highest. His speeches arouse an enthusiasm seldom accorded to any human being, while his utterances form the theme of discussion for the' press of the whole world. In the enjoyment of a vigorous, robust old age, crowned thick with the honors bestowed upon him by a grateful nation, he stands to-day as the synonyme of all that is manliest and best for the coming generation to revere and imitate. HON. JAMES G. ELAINE. JAMES GILLESPIE ELAINE was born in West Brownsville, Washing- ton Co., Pennsylvania, January 31, 1830, being the second son of Ephraim L. Elaine and Maria Gillespie. From his ancestors he inherited the sturdy qualities of the Scotch-Irish blood, chief among them being a love of learning which in his case was most sedulously cultivated, and which enabled him at an early age to impress his personality upon the public mind. In the dawn of manhood he was most happily united in marriage with Miss Harriet Stanwood, a lady belonging to one of the most cele- brated families of Maine, and after devoting some little time to teaching in the Western Military Institute of Blue Lack Springs, Kentucky, and in the Pennsylvania Institute for the Blind at Philadelphia, he removed in 1854 to Augusta, Me. , where he has since resided. Naturally endowed with journalistic instincts, he purchased a half in- terest in the Kennebcc Journal, and by his aggressive and facile pen soon obtained for the paper recognition as a power second to none. In 1858 he became a member of the Maine Legislature, and from that tune his name has been associated with party leadership. Soon after the beginning of the Civil War he wa elected to Congress. Reelected to the Thirty-ninth, Fortieth and Forty-first Congresses, he displayed such wondrous aptitude in parliamentary affairs that he was chosen by the last-named Congress as its Speaker. This office he retained by successive reflections for six years. Toward the conclusion of President Grant's second term, in 1876, Mr. Blaine became a foremost candidate for the Presidency. Failing, how- ever, to obtain the nomination by only a few votes the convention set- tling upon Gov. Hayes, of Ohio he on the election of that gentleman was selected to fill the place in the Senate made vacant by Senator Morrill, of Maine, who was appointed Secretary of the Treasury under the Hayes administration. In the Senate Mr. Elaine's attitude was pronounced on several very im- portant questions. Of these the most noted were the currency bill , the subsi- dizing of American mail steamers, the army appropriation bills and the restriction of Chinese immigration. He was appointed in 1881 by Presi- 18 BON. JAMES O. PLAINS. Garfield administration to an end. At the Republican National Convention which met in Chicago in 1884 Mr. Blaine was nominated for President, but after a hard-fought fumnaign was defeated by Hon. Grover Cleveland, the candidate of the 1 K'inocratic party. Shortly afterward he went abroad, and was greeted everywhere with a respect and attention shown only to the most distin- guished personages. In 1888, being urged by the Republican party to allow his name to be again used as a candidate for the Presidency, he de- clined the honor, but on the inauguration of President Harrison, he ac- cepted a^ain the office of Secretary of State. Mr. Elaine's display of diplomatic statesmanship in the Samoan diffi- culty, his firm stand upon the question of the Bering Sea fisheries, and liis important services in connection with the Pan-American Congress are still fresh in the public mind. Few political leaders have given the sub- ject of protection so exhaustive attention as he, and he deservedly ranks as one of the most conspicuous men of this generation. A DUEL FREE TRADE THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE. PROTECTION THE HON. JAMES G. ELAINE. MR. GLADSTONE: I. APOLOGY FOB THIS ARTICLE. THE existing difference of practice between America and Brit- ain with respect to free trade and protection of necessity gives rise to a kind of international controversy on their respective merits. To interfere from across the water in such a controversy is an act which may wear the appearance of impertinence. It is primd facie an intrusion by a citizen of one country into the domestic affairs of another, which as a rule must be better judged of by denizens than by foreigners. Nay, it may even seem a rather violent intrusion; for the sincere advocate of one of the two systems cannot speak of what he deems to be the demerits of the other otherwise than in broad and trenchant terms. In this case, however, it may be said that something of reciprocal reproach is implied in the glaring contrast between the legislation of the two countries, apart from any argumentative exposition of its nature. And where should an Englishman look for weapons to be used against protection, or an American for weapons to be wielded in its favor, except in America and England respectively ? This sentiment received, during the late Presidential struggle, a lively illustration in practice. An American gentleman, Mr. 2 20 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. N. McKay, of New York, took, according to the proverb, the hull by the horns. He visited Great Britain, made what he con- sidered to be an inspection of the employments, wages, and con- dition of the people, and reported the result to his countrymen, while they were warm with the animation of the national contest, under the doleful titles of " Free-Trade Toilers" and " Starvation Wages for Men and Women." He was good enough to forward to me a copy of his most interesting tract, and he did me the further honor to address to me a letter covering the pamphlet. He challenged an expression of my opinion on the results of free trade in England and on " the relative value of free trade and protection to the English-speaking people." There was an evident title thus to call upon me, because I had, many years since, given utterance to an opinion then and now sincerely entertained. I thought, and each of the rolling years teaches me more and more fixedly to think, that in international transactions the British nation for the present enjoys a commer- cial primacy; that no country in the world shows any capacity to wrest it from us, except it be America ; that, if America shall frankly adopt and steadily maintain a system of free trade, she will by degrees, perhaps not slow degrees, outstrip us in the race, and will probably take the place which at present belongs to us ; but that she will not injure us by the operation. On the con- trary, she will do us good. Her freedom of trade will add to our present commerce and our present wealth, so that we shall be better than we now are. But while we obtain this increment, she will obtain another increment, so much larger than ours that it will both cover the minus quantity which, as compared with us, she at present exhibits in international transactions, and also establish a positive excess, possibly a large excess, in her own favor. It would have been impertinent in me, and on other grounds impolitic, to accept the invitation of Mr. McKay while the Presi- dential contest was yet pending. But all the agencies in that great election have now done their work, and protection has obtained her victory. Be she the loveliest and most fruitful mother of the wealth of nations, or be she an impostor and a swindler, distin- guished from other swindlers mainly by the vast scale of her operations, she no longer stands within the august shadow of the election, and she must take her chance in the arena of discussion FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 21 as a common combatant, entitled to free speech and to fair treat- ment, but to nothing more. So that the citizens of two coun- tries long friendly, and evidently destined to yet closer friend- liness, may now calmly and safely pursue an argument which, from either of the opposing points of view, has the most direct bearing on the wealth, comfort, and well-being of the people on both sides of the water. II. AN OLD FRIEND WITH A NEW FACE. The appeal of the champion whose call has brought me into the field is very properly made ' ( to the wage-earners of the United States." He exhibits the deplorable condition of the British workingman, and asks whether our commercial supremacy is not upheld at his expense. The constant tenor of the argument is this : high wages by protection, low wages by free trade. It is even as the recurring burden of a song. Now, it sometimes happens that, while we listen to a melody presented to us as new, the idea gradually arises in the mind, " I have heard this before." And I can state with truth that I have heard this very same melody before ; nay, that I am familiar with it. It comes to us now with a pleasant novelty ; but once upon a time we British folk were surfeited, nay, almost bored to death, with it. It is simply the old song of our squires, which they sang with perfect assurance to defend the Corn Laws, first from within the fortress of an unreformed Parliament, and then for a good many years more, with their defences fatally and fast crumbling before their eyes, after Parliament had been reformed. Mr. McKay and Protection, now made vocal in him, terrify the American work- man by threatening him with the wages of his British comrade, precisely as the English landlord coaxed our rural laborers, when we used to get our best wheats from Dantzig, by exhibiting the starvation wages of the Polish peasant. But there is also a variation in the musical phrase. Our low wages, it is said, form the basis of our cheap production. So it is desired, as Mr. McKay apprises me, to " get some relief from the American government"; by which I understand that he calls for more protection. For example : I have learned that turfs are occasionally sent from Ireland to America to supply the Irish immigrant with a rude memorial of the country he was forced to leave, but has not ceased to love ; and that these turfs are dear to 22 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. his affectionate patriotism, and have been bought by him at prices relatively high. But they are charged (I am told) as unenu- merated articles, at fifteen per cent, on the value. I hope there is no strong turbary interest in America, for I gather that, to secure high wages to the diggers, you would readily, and quite con- sistently, raise this, say, to five-and-twenty. The protective argument, however, at this stage rather is, How can the capitalist engaged in manufacture compete with his British rival, who ob- tains labor at half the price ? But this also is to us neither more nor less than the repetition of an old and familiar strain. The argument is so plausible that, in the early days of our well- known Corn-Law controversy, it commended itself even to some of the first champions of Repeal. They pointed out that during the great French war the trade of our manufacturers was secured by our possession of the sea ; but that, when, by the establishment of peace, that became an open highway, it was impossible for our manufacturers, who had to pay their workmen wages based upon protection prices for bread as the first necessary of life, any longer to compete with the cheap bread and cheap labor of the continent. And, in truth, they could show that their trade was at the time, to a great extent, either stationary or even receding These argu- ments were made among us, in the alleged interest of labor and of capital, just as they are now employed by you; for America may at present be said to diet on the cast-off reasonings of English protec- tionism. They were so specious that they held the field until the genius of Cobden recalled us from conventional phrases to natural laws, and until a series of bad harvests (about 1838-41) had shown the British workman that what enhanced the price of his bread had no corresponding power to raise the rate of his wages, but distinctly tended to depress them. Let me now mark the exact point to which we have advanced. Like a phonograph of Mr. Edison, the American Protectionist simply repeats on his side of the Atlantic what has been first and often, and long ago, said on ours. Under protection our wages were, on the whole, higher than those of the Continent. Under protection American wages are higher than those of Great Britain. We then argued, post hoc, ergo propter hoc. He now argues (just listen to his phonograph), post hoc, ergo propter hoc. But our experience has proceeded a stage further than that of the American people. Despite the low wages of the Continent, FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 23 we broke down every protective wall and flooded the country (so the phrase then ran) with the corn and the commodities of the whole world ; with the corn of America first and foremost. But did our rates of wages thereupon sink to the level of the Con- tinent ? Or did it rise steadily and rapidly to a point higher than had been ever known before ? That the American rate of wages is higher than ours I con- cede. Some, at least, of the causes of this most gratifying fact I shall endeavor to acknowledge. My enumeration may be sufficient or may be otherwise. Whether it be exhaustive or not, the facts will of themselves tend to lay upon protectionism the burden of establishing, by something more than mere concomitancy, a causal relation between commercial restraint and wages relatively high. But what if, besides doing this, I show (and it is easy) that wages which may have been partially and relatively high under protection, have become both generally and absolutely higher, and greatly higher, under free trade ? That protection may coexist with high wages, that it may not of itself neutralize all the gifts and favors of nature, that it does not as a matter of course make a rich country into a poor one all this may be true, but is nothing to the point. The true ques- tion is whether protection offers us the way to the maximum of attainable wage. This can only be done by raising to the ut- most attainable height the fund out of which wages and profits alike are drawn. If its tendency is not to increase, but to dimin- ish, that fund, then protection is a bar to high wages, not their cause ; and is, therefore, the enemy, not the friend, of the classes on whose wages their livelihood depends. This is a first outline of the propositions which I shall endeavor to unfold and to bring home. III. BRITISH WAGES. Mr. McKay greatly relied upon a representation which he has given as to the rate of wages in England. It is only incidental to the main discussion, for the subject of this paper is not England, but America. Yet it evidently requires to be dealt with; and I shall deal. with it broadly, though briefly, asking leave to contest alike the inferences and the facts which he presents. My con- tention on this head will be two-fold. First, he has been misled as to the actual rate of wages in England. Secondly, the question is not whether that rate is lower than the rate in America, nor even 24 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. whether the American workman (and this is a very different mat- ter) is always better off than the workman in England. It is, What are English wages now under free trade, compared with what they formerly were under protection ? And first, as to the actual rates in particular cases to which he has referred, I must draw a line between the case of the English chain-makers, on which he has dwelt, and the case of the great coal industry, of which he has taken the town of Wigan as a sample. In an old society like this, with an indefinite variety of occu- pations, there are usually some which lie, as it were, out of the stream, and which represent the traditions of a former time, or peculiarities of circumstance, not yet touched by that quickening breath of freedom in trade and labor under which I shall show it to be unquestionable that an overwhelming proportion of our population have found their way to a great and, indeed, extraor- dinary improvement. In particular, we may expect to find a lamentable picture in those cases where hand labor is destined to be supplanted by machinery, but where the transition, though at hand, has not yet taken effect. These chain-makers are repre- sented as earning, man and wife together, four dollars per week. Small as is this amount, it would not have drawn on that account the least notice in the days when humanity took its standards from the facts supplied by protection. Under the present circumstances, it happens to have attracted marked atten- tion in Parliament, and, elsewhere, and I believe that it is at this very time the subject of public inquiry. But the true answer to the argument from isolated cases is that there is no relation whatever between the condition of this or that small, antiquated, and solitary employment, and the general condition of our wage-earning population. It is otherwise, however, with reference to "Wigan. Em- ployment at this important centre is subject to the economical currents of the time, and undoubtedly the facts it may exhibit must be held to bear upon the general question of the condition of the people. But it so happens that I have the best means of obtaining information about Wigan, and I had better state at once that I am at issue with Mr. McKay's report upon the facts. The statements made by him have doubtless done their work ; but it is still a matter of interest to clear up the truth. FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 25 The steeple, of which he declares that the parish church has been denuded, never, as I am assured, had any existence. The tempera- ture in Rosebridge mine, which he states at ninety-three degrees, does not exceed seventy degrees. The wages of men are not three shillings a day, but vary from a minimum of three shillings and threepence up to the sum of four shillings and sixpence. The minimum for women on the bank is not one shilling, but one shilling and sixpence, and the maximum not one shilling and ninepence, but two shillings. Yards such as he estimates at forty-five inches wide are forbidden by by-laws of the Local Board issued in 1883, and similar laws issued in 1-860 require that cottages shall have an open space, at the rear or side, of not less than one hundred and fifty square feet. Barrows are not in use for wheeling coal underground. In a word, so far as the only place I have been able to make the subject of examination is concerned, the accuracy of the supposed statements of fact is contested all along the line by persons on the spot, whom I know to be of the highest trustworthiness and authority. We are, however, happily in a condition to bring upon the arena evidence of far higher moment than assertions or denials founded upon a few rapid glances of a traveller, even had he not been laden with a foregone conclusion, or than denials offered against those assertions. So far as Great Britain is concerned, it is obvious enough to what point we should address our inquiries, if they are to be of any serious force in determining by results the con- troversy upon the respective merits of protection and free trade. We must endeavor to ascertain the general rate of wages now, in comparison with what it was under the protective system, and with constant regard to the cost of living as exhibited by the prices of commodities. And, in order to try the question for this country at large, whether free trade has been a curse or a blessing to the people who inhabit it, I shall repair at once to our highest authority, Mr. Giffen, of the Board of Trade, whose careful and comprehensive disquisitions are before the world, and are known to command, in a very high degree, the public confidence. He supplies us with tables* which compare the wages of 1833 with those of 1883 in such a way as to speak for the principal branches of * Proprresa of the Working (lasses During the Last Half Century: in " Essays on Finance." London. 1886. P. 372. 26 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. industry, with the exception of agricultural labor. The wages of miners, we learn, have increased in Staffordshire (which almost cer- tainly is the mining district of lowest increment) by 50 per cent. In the great exportable manufactures of Bradford and Huddersfield, the lowest augmentations are 20 and 30 per cent., and in other branches they rise to 50, 83, 100, and even to 150 and 160 per cent. The quasi-domestic trades of carpenters, bricklayers, and masons, in the great marts of Glasgow and Manchester, show a mean increase of 63 per cent, for the first, 65 per cent, for the second, and 47 per cent, for the third. The lowest weekly wage named for an adult is twenty-two shillings (as against seventeen shillings in 1833), and the highest thirty-six shillings. But it is the relative rate with which we have to do ; and, as the American writer appears to contemplate with a pe- culiar dread the effect of free trade upon shipping, I further quote Mr. Giffen on the monthly wages of seamen* in 1833 and 1883 in Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, and London. The percentage of increase, since we have passed from the protective system of the Navigation Law into free trade, is in Bristol 66 per cent., in Glasgow 55 per cent., in Liverpool (for different classes) from 25 per cent, to 70 per cent., and in London from 45 per cent, to 69 per cent. Mr. Giffen has given the figures in all the cases where he could be sufficiently certain of exactitude. No such return, at once exact and comprehensive, can be sup- plied in the case of the rural workman. But here the facts are notorious. We are assured that there has been an universal rise (somewhat checked, I fear, by the recent agricultural distress), which Caird and other authorities place at 60 per cent, f Mr. Giffen apparently concurs; and, so far as my own personal sphere of observation reaches, I can with confidence confirm the estimate and declare it to be moderate. Together with this in- crease of pay there has been a general diminution of the hours of work, which Mr. Giffen places at one-fifth. J If we make this correction upon the comparative table, we shall find that the cases are very few in which the increment does not range as high as from 50 and towards 100 per cent. In a later essay, of January, 1886, Mr. Giffen touches the case of the unskilled laborer. He observes that the aggregate proportion of unskilled to skilled labor has diminished a fact P. 373. * P 575. t Ibid. Pp. 424, 425. FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 27 which of itself forcibly exhibits the advance of the laboring population as a whole. I will not enter upon details ; but his general conclusion is this : the improvement is from 70 to 90 per cent, in the wages of unskilled non-agricultural labor. And again, comparing the laborer with the capitalist between 1843 and 1883, he estimates that, while the income from capital has risen in this country from 190 to 400 millions, or by 210 per cent., the working-class income, below the standard which en- tails liability to income-tax, has risen from 235 millions to 620, or at the rate of 160 per cent. Within the same period the prices of the main articles of popular consumption have not in- creased, but have certainly declined.* The laborer's charges, except for his abode, have actually diminished as a whole. For his larger house-rent he has a better house. To the government he pays much less than he did, and from the government he gets much more; and "the increase of his money wages corresponds to a real gain."f Such, then, have been the economical results of free trade as com- pared with protection. Of its political, moral, and social results, at least so far as they regard the masses of the people, an account in no way less satisfactory could be given, were this the proper occasion for entering on the subject. If it be said that the tale I have told is insufficient, and that wages ought still to rise, this may be so ; and rise I hope they will ; but protection had no such tale to tell at all. For the working population at large it meant stagnation, depression, in many cases actual and daily hunger and thirst, in some unquestionable and even gross degradation. I will venture to say that, taking the case as a whole, it would be difficult to match in history the picture which Great Britain now presents of progress, achieved mainly through wise laws, from stinted means and positive want towards comfort and abundance for the people. IV. PROTECTION VIEWED IN ITS FIRST ASPECTS. With a view to presenting the argument for leaving trade to the operation of natural laws in the simplest manner, I shall be- gin with some postulates which I suppose to be incapable of dis- pute. International commerce is based, not upon arbitrary or fanci- ful considerations, but upon the unequal distribution among men P. 405. t Pp. 3S2. 333. 28 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIfF QUESTION. and regions of aptitudes to produce the several commodities which are necessary or useful for the sustenance, comfort, and advantage of human life. If every country produced all commodities with exactly the same degree of facility or cheapness, it would be contrary to com- mon-sense to incur the charge of sending them from one country to another. But the inequalities are so great that (for example) region A can supply region B with many articles of food, and region B can in return supply region A with many articles of clothing, at such rates that, although in each case the charge of transmission has of necessity been added to the first cost, the respective articles can be sold after importation at a lower rate than if they were home-grown or home-manufactured in the one or the other country respectively. The relative cost, in each case, of production and transmission, as compared with domestic production, supplies, while all remain untrammelled by state law, a rule, motive, or mainspring of dis- tribution which may be termed natural. The argument of the Free-Trader is that the legislator ought never to interfere, or only to interfere so far as imperative fiscal necessity may require it, with this natural law of distribution. All interference with it by a government in order to encourage some dearer method of production at home, in preference to a cheaper method of production abroad, may fairly be termed artificial. And every such interference means simply a diminu- tion of the national wealth. If region A grows corn at home for fifty shillings with which region B can supply it at forty, and region B manufactures cloth at twenty shillings with which region A can supply it at fifteen, the national wealth of each is diminished by the ten and the five shillings respectively. And the capitalists and laborers in each of these countries have so much the less to divide into their respective shares, in that com- petition between capital and labor which determines the distribu- tion between them of the price brought in the market by com- modities. In my view, and I may say for my countrymen in our view, protection, however dignified by the source from which it pro- ceeds, is essentially an invitation to waste, promulgated with the authority of law. It may be more violent and prohibitory, or it ma/ FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 29 be less; but, up to the point to which it goes, it is a promise given to dear production to shield it against the competition of cheap pro- duction, or given to dearer production to hold it harmless against cheaper; to secure for it a market it could not otherwise hold, and to enable it to exact from the consumer a price which he would not otherwise pay. Protection says to a producer, Grow this or manufacture that at a greater necessary outlay, though we might obtain it more cheaply from abroad, where it can be produced at a smaller neces- sary outlay. This is saying, in other words, waste a certain amount of labor and of capital; and do not be afraid, for the cost of your waste shall be laid on the shoulders of a nation which is well able to bear it. So much for the waste unavoidably attach- ing to dearness of production. But there are other and yet worse descriptions of waste, as to which I know not whether America suffers greatly from them, but I know that in this country we suffered from them grievously under the sway of protection. When the barrier erected by a protective duty is so high that no foreigner can overleap it, that duty enables the home manufact- urer not only to charge a high price, but to force on the con- sumer a bad article. Thus, with an extravagant duty on foreign corks, we had for our own use the worst corks in Europe. And yet again, protection causes waste of another kind in a large class of cases. Suppose the natural disadvantages of the home pro- ducer to equal 15 per cent., but the protective duty to be 30. But cheapness requires minute care, economy, and de- spatch at all the stages through which production has to pass. This minute care and thrift depend mainly on the pressure of com- petition. There were among us, and there may be elsewhere, many producers whom indolence tempts to neglect; who are not sufficiently drawn to resist this inertia by the attraction of raising profit to a maximum; for whom the prospect of advan- tage is not enough without the sense of necessity, and whom nothing can spur to a due nimbleness of movement except the fear of not being able to sell their articles. In the case I have supposed, the second 15 per cent, is a free margin whereupon this indolence may disport itself : the home producer is not only covered for what he wastes through necessity, but for what he wastes from negligence or choice; and his fellow-countrymen, the public, have to pay alike for both. We suffered grievously from this 30 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. in England, for oftentimes the rule of the producer is, or was, to produce not as well as he can, but us badly as he can, and as well only as he must. And happy are you if, through keener energy or more troublesome conscience in production, you have no sim- ilar suffering in America. If protection could be equably distributed all round, then it would be fair as between class and class. But it cannot possibly be thus distributed in any country until we have discovered a country which will not find its interest in exporting some com- modity or other. For the price of that commodity at home must be determined by its price in foreign or unprotected markets, and therefore, even if protective duties are inscribed on the statute- book at home, their effect must remain absolutely null, so far as this particular article is concerned. It is beyond human wit and power to secure to the cotton-grower, or to the grower of wheat or maize in the United States, the tenth part of a cent per bale or per bushel beyond what the price in the markets of export will allow to him. If, under these circumstances, he is required to pay to the iron-master of Pennsylvania, or to the manufacturer at Lowell, an extra price on his implements or on his clothing, for which he can receive no compensation whatever, such extra price is at first sight much like robbery perpetrated by law. If such be the ugly physiognomy presented, at the present stage of our inquiry, by this ancient and hoary-headed wizard in relation to the claim for equal dealing between class and class, the pre- sumptive case is not a whit better in regard to the aggregate wealth of the nation. Wealth is accumulation ; and the aggre- gate of that accumulation depends upon the net surplus left by the prices of industrial products after defraying out of them the costs of production. To make this surplus large is to raise national wealth to its maximum. It is largest when we produce what we can produce cheapest. It is diminished, and the nation is so far impoverished, whenever and wherever and to whatevei extent, under the cover of protective laws, men are induced to produce articles leaving a smaller surplus instead of articles leaving a larger one. But such is the essence of protection. In England (speaking roughly) it made us produce more wheat at high prices instead of more tissues at low prices. In America it makes you produce more cloth and more iron at high prices FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 31 instead of more cereals and more cotton at low prices. And your contention is that by making production thus costly you make wages high. To this question let us pass onwards ; yet not without leaving behind us certain results which I think you will find it hard to attack, unless it be in flank and rear. Such as these : First, that extra price imposed on class A for the benefit of class B, without compensation, is robbery, and robbery not rendered (in the abstract) more respectable because the state is the culprit. Secondly, that protection means dear production, and dear production means, pro tanto, national impoverishment. But the view of the genuine Protectionist is the direct opposite of all this. I understand his contention to be that protection is (as I should say freedom is) a mine of wealth ; that a greater ag- gregate profit results from what you would call keeping labor and capital at home than from letting them seek employment wherever in the whole world they can find it most economically. But if this really is so, if there be this inborn fertility in the principle itself, why are the several States of the Union pre- cluded from applying it within their own respective borders ? If the aggregate would be made richer by this internal applica- tion of protection to the parts, why is it not so applied? On the other hand, if the country as a whole would by this device be made not richer, but poorer, through the interference with the natural laws of production, then how is it that by similar inter- ference the aggregate of the States, the great commonweath of America, can be made, in its general balance-sheet, not poorer, but richer ? What is the value of this argument about keeping capital at home, by means of protection, which, but for protection, would find its way abroad ? The contention seems to be this : capital which could be most profitably employed abroad ought by legal inducement to be inveigled into remaining here, in order that it may be less profitably employed at home. Our object ought to be, not to pursue those industries in which the return is the largest when compared with the outlay, but to detain in this country the largest quantity of capital that we can. Now, here I really must pursue the argument into its hiding-places by testing it in extremes. If the proper object for the legislator is to keep and employ in his country the greatest possible amount of capital, then the British Parliament (exempli gratid] ought to protect not only wheat but 32 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. pineapples. A pineapple is now sold in London for eight shilling* sixpence, which, before we imported that majestic fruit from tha tropics, would have sold for two pounds. Why not protect tho grower of pineapples at two pounds by a duty of 400 per cent. ? Do not tell me that this is ridiculous. It is ridiculous upon my principles ; but upon your principles it is allowable, it is wise, it is obligatory as wise, shall I say? as it is to protect cotton fabrics by a duty of 50 per cent. No ; not as wise only, but even more wise, and therefore even more obligatory. Because according to this argument we ought to aim at the production within our own limits of those commodities which require the largest expenditure of capital and labor to rear them, in proportion to the quantity pro- duced ; and no commodity could more amply fulfil this condition. If protection be, as its champions (or victims) hold, in itself an economical good, then it holds in the sphere of production the same place as belongs to truth in the sphere of philosophy, or to virtue in the sphere of morals. In this case, you cannot have too much of it ; so that, while mere protection is economical good in embryo, such good finds its full development only in the prohibition of foreign trade. I do not think the argument would be unfair. It really '? the logical corollary of all your utterances on the high wages wnicn (w you believe) protection gives in America, and on the T uw wages . nich (as you believe) our free trade, now impartially apj lied all round, inflicts upon England. But I refrain from pr --fcing the point, because I do not wish to be responsible for urging 1 an argument which tends to drive the sincera Protection- ist deeper and deeper into, not the mud, but (what we should call) the mire. But now I suppose the answer might be that the case which I have put is an extreme case ; and that arguments are not well judged by their extremes. In some matters, for instance in mor?J matters, where virtue often resides in a mean, this may be so. But the laws of economy, which we are now handling, approach much more to the laws of arithmetic ; and if your reasoning is that we ought to prefer, among the fields for the investment of capital, what is domestic to what is profitable, it is at least for the Protectionist to show and he never has shown why it is worth a nation's while on this account to lose five shillings in the pound, but not to lose (say) ten or fifteen. I will, however, instead of relying on an unanswered chal- FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 33 lenge, push the war into the enemy's country. I shall boldly con- tend that the whole of this doctrine that capital should be tempted 1 into an area of dear production for the sake or under the notion of keeping it at home is a delusion from top to bottom. It says to the capitalist, Invest (say) a million dollars in mills or factories to produce yarn and cloth which we could obtain more cheaply from abroad that is, be it remembered, which could be produced abroad and sent here at a smaller cost of production, or, in other words, with less waste ; for all expenditure in production beyond the measure of necessity call it what we may is simple waste. To induce him to do this, you promise that he shall receive an artificial instead of a natural price ; and, in order that the foreigner may not drive him from the market, this artificial price shall be saddled, through the operation of an import duty, upon the competing foreign commodity ; not in order to meet the wants of the state, which is the sole justifying purpose of an import duty, but in order to cover the loss on wasteful domestic production, and to make it yield a profit. And all this in order, as is said, that the capitalist may be induced to keep his capital at home. But, in America, besides the jealously- palisaded field of dear pro- duction, there is a vast open expanse of cheap production, namely, in the whole mass (to speak roughly) of the agricultural products of the country, not to mention such gifts of the earth as its mineral oils. In raising these, the American capitalist will find the demand of the world unexhausted, however he may in- crease the supply. Why, then, is he to carry his capital abroad when there is profitable employment for it at home? If protection is necessary to keep American capital at home, why is not the vast capital now sustaining your domestic agriculture, and raising commodities for sale at free-trade prices, exported to other coun- tries ? Or, conversely, since vast capitals find an unlimited field for employment in cheap domestic production without protection, it is demonstrated that protection is not required in order to keep your capital at home. No adversary will, I think, venture upon answering this by saying that the profits are larger in protected than in unprotected industries. First, because the best opinions seem to testify that in your protected trades profits are hard pressed by wages a state of things very likely to occur, because protection, resting upon arti- ficial stimulants, tends to disturb and banish all natural adjust- 34 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. ment. But, secondly, there can hardly be any votary of protec- tion sufficiently Quixotic to contend that waste ought to be en- couraged in economical processes, and the entire community taxed without fiscal necessity, in order to secure to a particular order of capitalists profits higher than those reaped by another order the public claim (such you hold it) of both resting upon exactly the same basis ; namely, this that they keep their capitals at home. There is yet another point which I cannot pass without notice. I have not admitted that protection keeps at home any capital which would otherwise go abroad. But I now for the moment accept and reason upon the assumption that this is effected. And I ask indeed, by the force of argument I may almost require you to make an admission to me which is of the most serious character; namely, this : that there is a great deal of capital undoubtedly kept at home by protection, not for the purpose of dear production, which i* partial waste, but for another kind of waste, which is sheer and absolute and totally uncompensated. This is the waste incurred in the great work of distributing commodities. If the price of iron or of cotton cloth is increased 50 per cent, by protection, then the capital required by every wholesale and every retail dis- tributor must be increased in the same proportion. The distrib- utor is not and cannot be, in his auxiliary and essentially domestic work, protected by an import duty, any more than can the scavenger or the chimney-sweep. The import duty adds to the price he pays, and consequently to the circulating capital which he requires in order to carry on his traffic; but it adds nothing to the rate of profit which he receives, and nothing whatever to the em- ployment which he gives. This forced increment of capital sets in motion no labor, and is compelled to work in the uncovered field of open trade. It has not the primd-facie apology (such as that apology may be) which the iron-maker or the mill-owner may make, that he is employing American labor which would not otherwise be employed. If the waste under a protective duty of 50 per cent, be a waste of 50 per cent., the waste of the extra capital required in distribution is a waste of 100 per cent, on the cost of the operation ; for it accomplishes absolutely nothing on behalf of the community which would not be accomplished equally if the commodity were 50 per cent, less in price ; just as the postman distributing letters at a shilling performs no FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 35 better or other service than the postman distributing letters at a penny. But of distributors the name is legion : they constitute the vast army of the wholesale and retail tradesmen of a country, with all the wants appertaining to them. As consumers, they are taxed on all protected commodities ; as the allies of producers in the business of distributing, they are forced to d with more capital what could be done as well with less. V. RELATION BETWEEN PROTECTION AND HIGH WAGES. Admitting that we see in the United States a coexistence of high wages with protection, but denying the relation of cause and effect between them, I may be asked whether I am prepared to broaden that denial into an universal proposition and contend that in no case can wages be raised by a system of protection. My answer is this : A country cannot possibly raise its aggre- gate wage fund by protection, but must inevitably reduce it. It is a contrivance for producing dear and for selling dear, under cover of a wall or fence which shuts out the cheaper foreign article, or handicaps it on admission by the imposition of a heavy fine. Yet I may for the moment allow it to be possible that, in some particu- lar trade or trades, wages may be raised (at the expense of the community) in consequence of protection. There was a time when America built ships for Great Britain ; namely, before the American Revolution. She now imposes heavy duties to prevent our building ships for her. Even my own recollection goes back to the period, between sixty and seventy years ago, when by far the most, and also the best, part of the trade between us was carried in American bottoms. Mr. McKay refers in his letter to a period before the War when she could compete with British labor, but when, as he informs us, your shipwright was paid six shillings a day, whereas now he has fourteen; which means thafrv as the profits of capital are not supposed to have declined, the community pays for ships more than twice as much as it used to pay, and your ship-builders do a small trade with a large capital instead of doing (as before) a large trade with a (relatively) small capital. I will not now stop to dilate on my admiration for the resources of a community which can bear to indulge in these impoverishing processes; nor even to ask whether the shipwright in the small trade has the same constancy of wage as he had in. 3 36 BOTH- SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. the large one, or whether his largo receipt is countervailed by his large outlay on the necessaries and comforts of life. But I will look simply to the question whether protection in this case raises wages. I do not undertake to say it is, in a limited way, impossible. If it be true, the steps in the process are, I con- ceive, as follows : America absolutely requires for her own use a certain number and tonnage of vessels. Congress lays such duties upon foreign ships and materials that they shall not be obtained from abroad at less than double the price at which they are sold in the open market. Therefore the American ship-builder can force his countrymen to pay him any sum, not exceeding two prices, for his commodity. The remaining point is the division of the amount between the capitalist and the workman. That is governed by the general state of the labor market in the country. If the labor market, although open to the world, is insufficiently supplied, then the wage-earner may possibly, in a given case, come in for a share of the monopoly price of ships. If the hand- work be one requiring a long apprenticeship (so to call it), and thereby impeding the access of domestic competitors, this will augment his share. Then why not the like, some one will ask, in all cases? Because the community in the given case pays the price of the monopoly that is to say, throws the price to waste, and because, while a trader in a multitude of commodities may lose upon one of them, and yet may have a good balance-sheet upon the whole, he must not and cannot lose upon them all without ceasing to be a trader; and a nation, with respect to its aggregate of production, is as a single trader. Without, then, absolutely denying it to be possible that in some isolated and exceptional cases there may be a relation between protection (and all protection, so far as it goes, is monop- oly) and high wages, I contend that to refer generally the high rate of wages in the United States to this cause would be nothing less than preposterous. And on this part of the case I desire to propound what appears to me to be in the nature of a dilemma, with some curiosity to know how the champions of protection would be disposed to meet it. Let me assume, for the purpose of try- ing the issue, that one-half of the salable products of the United States are agricultural and one-half manufactured, and that the manufactured moiety are covered by protection, while the agricult- ural half, since they are articles of large export, bear only such FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 37 a price as is assigned to them by foreign competition in the markets where they are sold. I take this rough estimate for the sake of simplicity, and in the same view I overlook the fact that the sugar which you grow is still covered, as it used to be covered, by an operative protection. One-half,, then, of American labor enjoys protective wages ; the other half of the products of the United States is furnished by mere il free-trade toilers/' Now, I want to ask whether the wages of the agricultural half are raised by the existence of protective laws which cover the arti- san half. This you cannot possibly affirm, because it is an ele- mentary fact that (given the quantity of labor in the market) they are governed by the prices of the commodities they produce, and that those prices are free-trade prices. You have "free-trade toilers" all over your country, and by their side you have protected artisans. I ask, then, next, this question : Is the remuneration of the "free-trade toilers," all things taken into account, equiva- lent to that of the protected artisans ? If it is not, why do not the agricultural men pass over into the provinces of demand for manufacturing and mining labor, and, by augmenting the sup- ply, reduce and equalize the rate ? Which is like asking, How comes it that a man is content with one loaf when two are offered him ? The answer would be, He is not content : whenever he can, he takes the two and leaves the one. It follows that in this case there exists no excess of wage for him to appropriate. The loaf, meaning by the loaf not a mere money rate, but that money rate together with all its incidents of all kinds, is equal as be- tween the protected and the unprotected laborer. The propor- tions of the two kinds of labor are governed in the long run (and perhaps in America more certainly and rapidly than anywhere else) by the advantages attaching to each respectively. In other words, the free-trade wages are as good as the protected wages; and (apart from small and exceptional cases) the idea that pro- tection raises the rate of wages on any large scale or in any open field is an illusion. But I proceed to consider the vast exceptional advantages which as a country the United States enjoy ; which enable them to bear the process of depletion that, through the system of pro- tection, it is their pleasure to undergo, and which for them cause the question to be one not of absolute retrogression, but only of hampered and retarded progress. 38 BOTH STDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. VI. ON THE REASON'S WHY PROTECTION ONLY INJURES, AND DOES NOT RUIN, THE UNITED STATES. I hold that dear production, even if compensated to the pro- ducer by high price, is a wasteful and exhausting process. I may still be asked for a detailed answerto the question, " How, thon, is it that America, which, as you say, makes enormous waste by protection, nevertheless outstrips all other countries in the rapid accumulation of her wealth?" To which my general answer is that the case is like that of an individual who, with wasteful expenditure, has a vast fortune, such as to leave him a large ex- cess of receipts. But for his waste that excess would be larger still. I will, then, proceed to set forth some of the causes which, by giving exceptional energy and exceptional opportunity to the work of production in America, seem to allow (in homely phrase) of her making ducks and drakes of a large portion of what ought to be her accumulations, and yet, by virtue of the remainder of them, to astonish the world. 1. Let me observe, first, that America produces an enormous mass of cotton, cereals, meat, oils, and other commodities, which are sold in the unsheltered market of the world at such prices as it will yield. The producers are fined for the benefit of the pro- tected interests, and receive nothing in return ; but they obtain for their country, as well as for the world, the whole advantage of a vast natural trade that is to say, a trade in which production is carried on at a minimum cost in capital and labor as compared with what the rest of the world can do. 2. America invites and obtains in a remarkable degree from all the world one of the great elements of production, without tax of any kind namely, capital. 3. While securing to the capitalist producer a monopoly in the protected trades, she allows all the world to do its best, by a free immigration, to prevent or qualify any corresponding monopoly in the class of workmen. 4. She draws upon a bank of natural resources so vast that it easily bears those deductions of improvidence which simply pre- vent the results from being vaster still. Let me now mention some at least among those elements of the unrivalled national strength of America which explain to us why she is not ruined by the huge waste of the protective system. FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. &J And first of these I place the immense extent and vastness of her territory, which make her not so much a country as in her- self a world, and not a very little world. She carries on the business of domestic exchanges on a scale such as mankind has never seen. Of all the staple products of human industry and care, how few are there which, in one or another of her countless regions, the soil of America would refuse to yield. No other country has the same diversity, the same free choice of industrial pursuit, the same option to lay hold not on the good merely, but on the best. Historically, all international trade has had its broadest basis in the interchange between tropical or southern commodi- ties and those of the temperate or northern zone. And even this kind of exchange America possesses on a considerable scale within her own ample borders. Apart from this wide variety, I suppose there is no other coun- try of the whole earth in which, if we combine together the sur- face and that which is below the surface, Nature has been so bountiful to man. The mineral resources of our own Britannic Isle have, without question, principally contributed to its commercial preeminence. But when we match them with those of America, it is Lilliput against Brobdingnag. I believe that your coal-field, for example, is to ours nearly in the proportion of thirty-six to one. Now, this vast aggregate superiority of purely natural wealth is simply equivalent to the gift, say, of a queen in a game of chess, or to a start allowed in a race by one boy to another ; with this difference : that America could hold her own against all comers without the queen, and that, like her little Lord Fauntle- roy, she can, if she likes, run the race, and perhaps win it, upon equal terms. By protection she makes a bad move, which helps us to make fight, and ties a heavy clog upon her feet, so that the most timid among us need not now to greatly dread her com- petition in the international trade of the world. Again, the international position of America may, in a cer- tain light, be illustrated by comparing together the economical conditions under which coal has been produced in the different districts of this island. The royalty upon coal represents that surplus over and above estimated trading profit from a mine which the lessee can afford to pay the landlord. In England, generally, royalties have varied from about sixpence a ton to nine- pence in a few cases ; scarcely ever higher. But in Staffordshire, 40 IIOTTT SJDES OF TTTK TARIFF QUKSTIOX. ewing to the existence of a remarkable coal-measure, called the ten- yard coal, and to the presence of ironstone abundantly interstrati- fied with the coal, the royalty has often amounted to no less than three shillings. This excess has a real analogy to the surplus bounty of Mother Earth in America. And when I see her abat- ing somewhat of her vast advantages through the trick of pro- tection, I am reminded of the curious fact that (as it happens) this unusual abundance of the mineral made the getting of it in Staffordshire singularly wasteful, and that fractions, and no small fractions, of the ten-yard coal are now irrecoverably buried in the earth, like the tribute which America has, and has, as it seems, contentedly, been paying to her protected interests. In most of the elements of cheapness, America wholly sur- passes us ; as, for example, in the natural, indefeasible advantages she enjoys through the vastness not only of the soils which pro- duce, but of the markets which consume, her productions. I have lately seen a penny periodical, published by Messrs. Harper, of New York, which far surpasses all that the enterprise and skill of our publishers have been able to produce. But all these plus quan- tities she works hard to convert into minuses through the devour- ing agency of protection. There are two other particulars which I have to notice before quitting this portion of the subject. Each of them involves a compliment the one to us, the other to yourselves. As there is an invidious element in all self-praise, I will get rid first of what touches us. It is this : Trade is, in one respect at least, like mercy. It cannot be carried on without conferring a double benefit. Again, trade cannot be increased without increasing this benefit, and increasing it (in the long run) on both sides alike. Freedom has enormously extended our trade with the countries of the world, and, above all others, with the United States. It follows that they have derived immense benefit, that their waste has been greatly repaired, their accumulations largely augmented, through British legislation. We have not on this ground any merit or any claims whatever. We legislated for our own advantage, and are sat- isfied with the benefit we have received. But it is a fact, and a fact of no small dimensions, which, in estimating the material develop- ment of America, cannot be lost sight of. My second point touches the circumstances of the national infancy and growth. It would be alike futile and unjust, in FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 41 pointing out the singular advantages over the outer world which nature has given to America, not to take notice of those ad- vantages which her people have earned or created for themselves. In no country, I suppose, has there been so careful a cultivation of the inventive faculty. And if America has surpassed in indus- trial discoveries the race from which her people sprang, we do not grudge her the honor or the gain. Americans are econo- mists in inventions and do not let them slip. For example, the reaping-machine of modern times, I believe, was invented in Forfarshire, but did not pass into any general use. Still-born there, it disappeared; but it was appreciated and established in America, and then came back among us as an importation from thence, and was at last appreciated and established here. The scarcity of labor has, in truth, supplied the great Republic with an essential element of severe and salutary discipline. The youth of America was, especially in New England, a youth not of luxury, but of difficulty. Nature dealt somewhat sternly with your ancestors ; and to their great advantage. They were reared in a mold of masculine character, and were made fit to encounter, and turn to account, all vicissitudes. As the coun- try opened, they were confronted everywhere with one great and crying want, the scarcity of labor. So they were put upon the applisation of their mental powers to labor-saving contrivances, and this want grew as fast as, or faster than, it was supplied. Thus it has come about that a race endued with consummate ability for labor has also become the richest of all races in instru- ments for dispensing with labor. The provision of such instru- ments has become with you a standing tradition, and this to such a degree that you have taken your place as (probably) the most invent- ive nation in the world. It is thus obvious enough that a remarkable faculty and habit of invention, which goes direct to cheapness, helps to fill up that gap in your productive results which is created by the wastefulness of protection. The leakage in the national cistern is more than compensated by the efficiency of the pumps that supply it. America makes no scruple, then, to cheapen everything in which labor is concerned, and she gives the capitalist the com- mand of all inventions on the best terms she can contrive. Why ? Only because this is the road to national wealth. Therefore, she has no mercy upon labor, but displaces it right and left. Yet 42 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. when we come to the case where capital is most in question, she enables her ship-builders, her iron-masters, and her mill-owners to charge double or semi-double prices ; which, if her practice as to labor-saving be right, must be the road to national poverty. E converse, if she be right in shutting out foreign ships and goods to raise the receipts of the American capitalist, why does she not tax the reaping-machine and the American " devil"* to raise the receipts of the American laborer ? Not that I recommend such consistency. I rejoice in the anomalies and contradictions by virtue of which the applications of science everywhere abound through the States for the benefit of their populations, and with- out doubt, though more circuitously, of ours also, and of the world at large. I have still to notice one remaining point. It is this : I do not doubt that production is much cheapened in America by the absence of all kinds of class legislation except that which is termed protection ; an instance alike vicious and gigantic, but still an in- stance only. In our British legislation, the interest of the indi- vidual or the class still rather largely prevails against that of the public. In America, as I understand the matter, the public ob- tains full and equal justice. I take for example the case of the railroads ; that vast creation, one of almost universal good to man- kind, now approaching to one-tenth or one-twelfth of our entire national possessions. It is believed that in unnecessary Parlia- mentary expenditure, and in abnormal prices paid for land, the railways of this country were taxed to between fifty and a hundred millions sterling beyond the natural cost of their creation. Thus does the spirit of protection, only shifting its form, still go raven- ing about amongst us. Nothing is so common here as to receive compensation ; and we get it not only for injuries, but for benefits. But while the great nation of the Union rightly rejoices in her freedom from our superstitions, why should she desire, create and worship new superstitions of her own ? VII. THE MORAL ASPECT OF THE SUBJECT. I am sorry to say that, although I have closed the economical argument, I have not yet done with the counts of my indictment against protection. I have, indeed, had to ask myself whether I * So called here on its first introduction. I rather believe it has recently acquired some more euphonious name. FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 43 should be within my right in saying hard things, outside the do- main of political economy, about a system which has commended itself to the great American state and people, although those hard things are, in part at least, strictly consequent upon what has been said before. Indeed, the moral is so closely allied to the economical argument as to be intertwined with it rather than consequent upon it. Further, I believe the people of the United States to be a people who, like that race from which they are sprung, love plain speaking ; and I do not believe that to suppress opinions deliberately and conscientiously held would be the way to win your respect. I urge, then, that all protection is morally as well as econom- ically bad. This is a very different thing from saying that all Protectionists are bad. Many of them, without doubt, are good, nay, excellent, as were in this country many of the supporters of the Corn Law. It is of the tendencies of a system that I speak, which operate variously, upon most men unconsciously, upon some men not at all ; and surely that system cannot be good which makes an individual, or a set of individuals, live on the resources of the community and causes him relatively to diminish that store, which duty to his fellow-citizens and to their equal rights should teach him by his contributions to augment. The habit of mind thus engendered is not such as altogether befits a free country or harmonizes with an independent character. And the more the system of protection is discussed and contested, the more those whom it favors are driven to struggle for its maintenance, the farther they must insensibly deviate from the law of equal rights, and, perhaps, even from the tone of genuine personal independence. In speaking thus, we speak greatly from our own experience. I have personally lived through the varied phases of that experience, since we began that battle between monopoly and freedom which cost us about a quarter of a century of the nation's life. I have seen and known, and had the opportunity of comparing, the temper and frame of mind engendered first by our protectionism, which we now look back upon as servitude, and then by the com- mercial freedom and equality which we have enjoyed for the last thirty or forty years. The one tended to harden into positive selfishness ; the other has done much to foster a more liberal tone of mind. 44 ROTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. The economical question which I have been endeavoring to discuss is a very large one. Nevertheless, it dwindles, in my view, when it is compared with the paramount question of the American future viewed at large. There opens before the thinking mind when this supreme question is propounded a vista so transcending all ordinary limitation as requires an almost preterhuman force and expansion of the mental eye in order to embrace it. Some things, and some weighty things, are clear so far as the future admits of clear- ness. There is a vision of territory, population, power, passing beyond all experience. The exhibition to mankind, for the first time in history, of free institutions on a gigantic scale, is momen- tous, and I have enough faith in freedom, enough distrust of all that is alien from freedom, to believe that it will work powerfully for good. But together with and behind these vast developments there will come a corresponding opportunity of social and moral in- fluence to be exercised over the rest of the world. And the question of questions for us, as trustees for our posterity, is, What will be the nature of this influence ? Will it make us, the children of the senior races, who will have to come under its action, better or worse ? Not what manner of producer, but what manner of man, is the American of the future to be ? I am, I trust, a lover of human advancement; but I know of no true progress except upon the old lines. Our race has not lived for nothing. Their pilgrimage through this deeply shadowed valley of life and death has not been all in vain. They have made accumulations on our behalf. I resent, and to the best of my power I would resist, every attempt to deprive us either in whole or in part of the benefit of those accumulations. The American love of freedom will, beyond all doubt, be to seme ex- tent qualified, perhaps in some cases impaired, by the subtle in- fluence of gold, aggregated by many hands in vaster masses than have yet been known. Anrum per medios ire satellites, Et perrumpere amat saxa, potentius Ictu f ulmineo. But, to rise higher still, how will the majestic figure, about to become the largest and most powerful on the stage of the world's history, make use of his power ? Will it be instinct with moral life in proportion to its material strength ! Will he uphold and propagate the Christian tradition with that surpassing energy FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 45 which marks him in all the ordinary pursuits of life ? Will he maintain with a high hand an unfaltering reverence for that law of nature which is anterior to the Gospel, and supplies the standard to which it appeals, the very foundation on which it is built up ? Will he fully know, and fully act upon the knowledge, that both reverence and strictness are essential conditions of all high and desirable well-being ? And will he be a leader and teacher to us of the old world in rejecting and denouncing all the miserable degrading sophistries by which the arch-enemy, ever devising more and more subtle schemes against us, seeks at one stroke perhaps to lower us beneath the brutes, assuredly to cut us off from the hope and from the source of the final good ? One thing is certain : his temptations will multiply with his power; his responsibilities with his opportunities. Will the seed be sown among the thorns ? Will worldliness overrun the ground and blight its flowers and its fruit ? On the answers to these questions, and to such as these, it will depend whether this new revelation of power upon the earth is also to be a revelation of virtue ; whether it shall prove a blessing or a curse. May Heaven avert every darker omen, and grant that the latest and largest growth of the great Christian civilization shall also be the brightest and the best ! W. E. GLADSTONE. MR. ELAINE: THERE can be no doubt that Mr. Gladstone is the most dis- tinguished representative of the free-trade school of political economists. His addresses in Parliament on his celebrated ^ ud- get, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, in 1853, were declared by Lord John Russell "to contain the ablest exposition of the true principles of finance ever delivered by an English states- man." His illustrious character, his great ability, and his finan- cial experience point to him as 'he leading defender of free trade applied to the industrial system of Great Britain. Mr. Gladstone apologizes for his 'apparent interference with our affairs. He may be assured that apology is superfluous. Americans of all classes hold him in honor : Free-Traders will re- joice in so eminent an advocate, and Protectionists, always the representative., of liberality and progress, will be glad to learn his opinions upon a question of such transcendent importance to the past, the present, and the future of the Republic. 46 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. Perhaps the most remarkable feature in the argument of Mr. Gladstone, as indeed of every English Free-Trader except John Stuart Mill, is the universality of application which he demands for his theory. In urging its adoption he makes no distinction between countries; he takes no account of geographical position whether a nation be in the eastern or the western hemisphere, whether it be north or south of the equator ; he pays no heed to climate, or product, or degree of advancement ; none to topo- graphy whether the country be as level as the delta of the Nile, or as mountainous as the Republic of Bolivia; none to pursuits and employments, whether in the agricultural, manufacturing, or commercial field ; none to the wealth or poverty of a people; none to population, whether it be crowded or sparse; none to area, whether it be as limited as a German principality or as extended as a continental Empire. Free trade he believes advan- tageous for England : therefore, without the allowance of any modifying condition, great or small, the English economist de- clares it to be advantageous for the United States, for Brazil, for Australia ; in short, for all countries with which England can establish trade relations. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for Mr. Gladstone to find any pVinciple of administration or any measure of finance so exactly litted to the varying needs of all countries as he assumes the policy of free trade to be. Surely it is not unfair to maintain that, deducing his results from observ- ation and experience in his own country, he may fall into error and fail to appreciate the financial workings of other countries geographically remote and of vastly greater area. The American Protecti nist, let t not be discourteous to urge, is broader in his views than the Euglish Free-Trader. No in- telligent Protectionist in the United States pretends that every country would alike realize advantage from the adoption of the protective system. Human government is not a machine, and even machines cannot be so perfectl" adjusted as to work with equal effectiveness at all times and under all conditions. Great Britain and the United States certainly resemble one another in more ways than either can be said to resemble any other nation in the world ; yet, when we compare the two on the question at issue, the differences are oO marked that we almost lose eight of the resemblance. One is an insular monarchy with class govern- ment ; the other u continental republic vith popular govern' FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 47 merit. One has a large population to the square mile ; the other a small population to the square mile. One was old in a rich and complex civilization before the establishment of the other was even foreseen. One had become the wealthiest nation of the world while the other was yet in the toils and doubts of a frontier life and a primitive civilization. One had extensive manufactures for almost every field of human need, with the civilized world for its market, while the population of the other was still forced to divide its energies between the hard calling of the sea and the still harder calling of a rude and scantily-remunerative agriculture. The physical differences between the two countries are far more striking than the political and social differences. They are, indeed, almost incalculable. Great Britain is an island less than ninety thousand square miles in extent. It lies in the far north. Its southernmost point is nearly thirty degrees of latitude above the tropics. Its northernmost point is but nine degrees below the arctic circle. Within its area the exchange of natural products is necessarily limited. Its life depends upon its connection with other countries. Its prosperity rests upon its commerce with the world. On the other hand, a single State of the Union is nearly three times as large as Great Britain. Several other States are each quite equal to it in area. The whole Union is well-nigh forty times as large. Alaska excepted, the northern- most point of the Union is sixty miles south of the southernmost point of Great Britain, and the southernmost point of the Union is but little more than a hundred miles from the tropics. Its natural products are more varied, more numerous, and of more valuable character than those of all Europe. To quote one of Mr. Gladstone's phrases, we constitute " not so much a country in ourselves, as a world." He tells us that we carry on " the business of domestic exchanges on a scale such as mankind has never seen." Our foreign commerce, very large in itself, is only as one to twenty-five compared to our internal trade. And yet Mr. Gladstone thinks that a policy which is essential to an island in the northern ocean should be adopted as the policy of a coun- try which even to his own vision is " a world within itself." With these fundamental points of difference between the two countries, I assume that varied financial and industrial sys- tems, wrought by the experience of each, would be the nat- 48 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. ural and logical result. Hence I do not join issue with Mr. Gladstone on both of his propositions. He defends free trade in Great Britain. He assails protection in the United States. The first proposition I neither deny nor affirm. Were I to assume that protection is in all countries and under all circumstances the wisest policy, I should be guilty of an error similar to that which I think Mr. Gladstone commits. It might be difficult to prove that free trade is not the wisest financial policy for Great Britain. So far from guarding herself against material imported from other countries, her industrial system would wither and die if foreign products were withheld for even a brief period. She is in an especial degree dependent upon the products of other nations. Moreover, she does not feel bound to pay heed to the rate of wages which her labor may receive. That, like the fabrics which her labor creates, must take its chance in the markets of the world. On many points and in many respects it was far different with Great Britian a hundred years ago. She did not then feel as- sured that she could bear the competition of Continental nations. She was, therefore, aggressively, even cruelly, protective. She manufactured for herself and for her net- work of colonies reaching around the globe. Into those colonies no other nation could carry anything. There was no scale of duty upon which other nations could enter a colonial port. What the colonies needed outside of British products could be furnished to them only in British ships. This was not protection ! It was prohibition, absolute and re, morseless, and it was continued even to the day when Mr. Glad stone entered upon his long and splendiu career in Parliament. I. was not broken, though in some respects it was relaxed, until in the fulness of time British energy had carried the wealth and the skill of the kingdom to the point where no competition could be feared. During the last thirty years of her protective system, and especially during the twenty years from 1826 to 1846, Great Britain increased her material wealth beyond all precedent in the commercial history of the world. Her development of steam power gave to every British workman the arms of Briareus, and the in- ventive power of her mechanicians increased the amount, the variety, and the value of her fabrics beyond all anticipation. Every year of that period witnessed the addition of millions upon raiUions of FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 49 sterling to the reserve capital of the kingdom ; every year wit- nessed a great addition to the effective machinery whose aggregate power was already the wonder of the world. The onward march of her manufacturing industries, the steady and rapid develop- ment of her mercantile marine, absorbed the matchless enterprise and energy of the kingdom. Finally, with a vast capital accu- mulated, with a low rate of interest established, and with a manufacturing power unequalled, the British merchants were ready to underbid all rivals in seeking for the trade of the world. At that moment Great Britain had reason to feel supremely content. She found under her own flag, on the shores of every ocean, a host of consumers whom no man might number. She had Canada, Australia, and India with open ports and free mar- kets for all her fabrics ; and, more than all these combined, she found the United States suddenly and seriously lowering her tariff and effectively abolishing protection at the very moment Eng- land was declaring for free trade. The traffic of the world seemed prospectively in her control. Could this condition of trade have continued, no estimate of the growth of England's wealth would be possible. Practically it would have had no limit. Could she have retained her control of the markets of the United States as she held it for the four years preceding the outbreak of the Civil War, the American people would have grown commer- cially dependent upon her in a greater degree than is Canada or Australia to-day. But England was dealing with an intelligence equal to her own. The American people had, by repeated experience, learned that the periods of depression in home manufactures were those in which England most prospered in her commercial relations with the United States, and that these periods of depression had, with a single exception, easily explained, followed the enactment by Congress of a free-trade tariff,* as certainly as effect follows cause. One of the most suggestive experiments of that kind had its origin in the tariff to which I have just referred, passed in 1846 in apparent harmony with England's newly-declared finan- cial policy. At that moment a Southern President (Mr, Polk) and a Southern Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. Robert J. Walker) were * The phrase "free-trade tariff" Involves a contradiction of terms. It Is used to designate that form of duty which is levied with no intention to protect domestic manufactures. 50 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. far more interested in expanding the area of slave territory than in advancing home manufactures, and were especially eager to make commercial exchanges with Europe on the somewhat dif- ficult basis of cotton at high prices and returning fabrics at low prices. Under ordinary circumstances the free trade tariff of 1846 would have promptly fallen under popular reprobation and been doomed to speedy repeal. But it had a singular history and for a time was generally acquiesced in, even attaining in many sec- tions a certain degree of popularity. Never did any other tariff meet with so many and so great aids of an adventitious char- acter to sustain it as did this enactment of 1846. Our war with Mexico began just as the duties were lowered, and the consequence was the disbursement of more than one hundred millions of dol- lars in a way that reached all localities and favorably affected all interests. This was a great sum of money for that period, and for the years 1846, 1847, and 1848 it considerably more than doubled the ordinary outlay of the government. In the middle of this period the Irish famine occurred and called for an immense ex- port of breadstuffs at high prices. The discovery of gold in Cali- fornia, the succeeding year, flushed the channels of business as never before, by rapidly enlarging the circulation of coin in all parts of the country. Before this outpouring of gold had ceased, the three great nations of Europe, as precedence was reckoned at that time, England, France, and Russia, entered upon the Crimean War. .The export of manufactures from England and France was checked ; the breadstuffs of Russia were blockaded and could not reach the markets of the world. An extraordinary stimulus was thus given to all forms of trade in the United States. For ten years 1846 to 1856 these adventitious aids came in regular succession and exerted their powerful influence upon the prosperity of the country. The withdrawal or termination of these influences, by a treaty of peace in Europe and by the surcease of gold from California, placed the tariff of 1846 where a real test of its merits or its de- merits could be made. It was everywhere asked with apprehen- sion and anxiety, Will this free-trade tariff now develop and sus- tain the business of the country as firmly and securely as it has been developed and sustained by protection ? The answer was made in the ensuing year by a widespread financial panic, which FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 51 involved the ruin of thousands, including proportionately as many in the South as in the North, leaving the country dis- ordered and distressed in all the avenues of trade. The disas- trous results of this tariff upon the permanent industries of the country are described in President Buchanan's well-remembered message, communicated to Congress after the panic : '' With un- surpassed plenty in all the elements of national wealth, our manufacturers have suspended, our public works are retarded, our private enterprises of different kinds are abandoned, and thou- sands of useful laborers are thrown out of employment and reduced to want." This testimony as to the result of a free-trade tariff is all the more forcible from the fact that Mr. Buchanan, as a member of President Polk's Cabinet, had consented to the abandonment of protection, which in his earlier career he had earnestly supported. If these disasters of 1857, flowing from the free-trade tariff, could have been regarded as exceptional, if they had been without parallel or precedent, they might not have had so deadly a signifi- cance. But the American people had twice before passed through a similar experience. On the eve of the War of 1812, Congress guarded the national strength by enacting a highly protective tariff. By its own terms this tariff must end with the war. When the new tariff was to be formed, a popular cry arose against " war duties," though the country had prospered under them despite the exhausting effect of the struggle with Great Britain. But the prayer of the people was answered, and the war duties were dropped from the tariff of 1816. The business of the country was speedily prostrated. The people were soon reduced to as great distress as in that melancholy period between the close of the Revolutionary War and the organization of the National Govern- ment 1783 to 1789. Colonel Benton's vivid description of the period of depression following the reduction of duties comprises in a few lines a whole chapter of the history of free trade in the United States : " No price for property; no sales except those of the sheriff and the marshal; no pur- chasers at execution-sales except the creditor or some hoarder of money; no employ- ment for industry ; no demand for labor; no sale for the products of the farm; no sound of the hammer except that of the auctioneer knocking down property. Dis- tress was the universal cry of the people; relief the universal demand." Relief came at last with the enactment of the protective tariff of 1824, to the support of which leading men of both parties pa- 4 52 BOTH SIDES OF T1IH TARIFF QUESTION. triotically united for the common good. That act, supplemented by the act of 1828, brought genuine prosperity to the country. The credit of passing the two protective acts was not due to one party alone. It was the work of the great men of both parties. Mr. Clay and General Jackson, Mr. Webster and .Mr. Van Buren, General William Henry Harrison and Kichard M. Johnson, Silas Wright and Louis McLane, voted for one or the other of these acts, and several of them voted for both. The cooperation of these eminent men is a great historic tribute to the nacessity and value of protection. Plenty and prosperity followed, a- if by magic, the legislation to which they gave their support. \Ve have their concurrent testimony that the seven years pre- ceding the enactment of the protective tariff of 1824 were the most discouraging which the young Republic in its brief life had encountered, and that the seven years which followed its enact- ment were beyond precedent the most prosperous and happy. Sectional jealousy and partisan zeal could not endure the great development of manufactures in the North and East which followed the apparently firm establishment of the protective pol- icy. The free-trade leaders of the South believed at least they persuaded 'others to believe that the manufacturing States were prospering at the expense of the planting States. Under the lead of Calhouu, South Carolina rebelled, and Presi- dent Jackson, who had so strikingly shown his faith in the policy of protection, was not able to resist the excitement and resentment which the Free-Traders had created in the Cotton States. He stood between hostile policies, represented by his two bitterest personal enemies Clay for protection ; Calhoun for free trade. To support Clay would ruin Jackson politically in the South. He could not sustain Calhoun, for, aside from his opposition to free trade, lie had cause for hating him personally. He believed, moreover, that Calhoun was at heart untrue to the Union, and to the Union Jackson was as devoted as Clay. Out ' of this strange complication came, not unnaturally, the sacrifice of the protective tariff of 1824-28 and the substitution of the com- promise tariff of 1833, which established an ad-valorem duty of 20 per cent, on all imports, and reduced the excess over that by a 10 per cent, annual sliding scale for the ensuing ten years. Like all compromises, it gave complete satisfaction to neither party, but it was received with general acquiescence from the belief that FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 53 it was the best practicable solution of the impending difficulties. The impending difficulties were two. One was the portentous movement which involved the possibility of dissolving the Union. The other was the demand for a free trade tariff as the only meas- ure that could appease the Southern Nullifiers. Disunion and free trade from that time became associated in the public mind a source of apprehension in the North, a source of political power in the South. Calhoun was the master-spirit who had given the original impulse both to disunion and free trade. Each in turn strengthened the other in the South and both perished together in the War of the Rebellion. For a time satisfaction was felt with the tariff adjustment of 1833, because it was regarded as at least a temporary reconcilia- tion between two sections of the Union. Before the sliding scale was ruinously advanced, there was great stimulus to manufact- uring and to trade, which finally assumed the form of dangerous speculation. The years 1834, 1835, and 1836 were distinguished for all manner of business hazard, and before the fourth year opened, the 30-per cent, reduction (three years of 10 per cent, each) on the scale of duties was beginning to influence trade un- favorably. The apprehension of evil soon became general, public confidence was shaken, the panic of 1837 ensued, and business reversals were rapid, general, and devastating. The trouble increased through 1838, 1839, and 1840, and the party in power, held responsible for the financial disasters, fell under popular condemnation. Mr. Van Bitren was defeated, and the elder General Harrison was elevated to the Presidency by an exceptionally large majority of the electoral votes. There was no relief to the people until the protective tariff of 1842 was enacted; and then the beneficent experience of 1824 was repeated on even a more extensive scale. Prosperity, wide and general, was at once restored. But the reinstatement of the Democratic party to power, t wo years later, by the election of Mr. Polk to the Presidency, fol- lowed by a perverse violation of public pledges on the part of men in important places of administration, led to the repeal of the protective act and the substitution of the tariff of 1846, to which I have already adverted, and whose effects upon the country I have briefly outlined. Measuring, therefore, from 1812, when a protective tariff was enacted to give strength and stability to the government in 64 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. the approaching war with Great Britain, to 1861, when a protect- ive tariff was enacted to give strength and stability to the govern- ment in the impend ing revolt of the Southern States, we have fifty years of suggestive experience in the history of the Republic. During this long period free-trade tariffs were thrice followed by industrial stagnation, by financial embarrassment, by distress among all classes dependent for subsistence upon their own labor. Thrice were these burdens removed by the enactment of a protective tariff. Thrice the protective tariff promptly led to industrial activity, to financial ease, to prosperity among the people. And this happy condition lasted in each case, with no diminution of its beneficent influence, until illegitimate political combinations, having their origin in personal and sectional aims, precipitated another era of free trade. A perfectly impartial man, unswerved by the excitement which this question engenders in pop- ular discussion, might safely be asked if the half -century's experi- ence, with its three trials of both systems, did not establish the wisdom of protection in the United States. If the inductive method of reasoning may be trusted, we certainly have a logical basis of conclusion in the facts here detailed. And by what other mode of reasoning can we safely proceed in this field of controversy? The great method of Bacon was by " rigid and pure observation, aided by experiment and fructified by induction." Let us investigate " from effects to causes, and not from causes to effects." Surely it is by a long series of experi- ments, and by that test only, that any country can establish an industrial system that will best aid in developing its hidden wealth and establishing its permanent prosperity. And each country must act intelligently for itself. Questions of trade can no more be regulated by an exact science than crops can be produced with accurate forecast The unknown quantities are so many that a problem in trade or agriculture can never have an absolute answer in advance. But Mr. Gladstone, with an apparent confidence in results as unshaken as though he were dealing with the science of numbers, proceeds to demonstrate the advantage of free trade. He is positively certain in advance of the answer which experi- ment will give, and the inference is that nothing is to be gained by awaiting the experiment. Mr. Gladstone may argue for Great Britain as he will, but for the United States we must insist on being guided by facts, and not by theories ; we must insist on ad- FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 55 hering to the teachings of experiments which " hare been car- ried forward by careful generalization to well-grounded conclu- sions." As an offset to the charge that free-trade tariffs have always ended in panics and long periods of financial distress, the advocates of free trade point to the fact that a financial panic of great severity fell upon the country in 1873, when the protective tariff of 1861 was in full force, and that, therefore, panic and distress follow periods of protection as well as periods of free trade. It is true that a financial panic occurred in 1873, and its existence would blunt the force of my argument if there were not an imperatively truthful way of accounting for it as a distinct result from entirely distinct causes. The panic of 1873 was widely different in its true origin from those which I have been exposing. The Civil "War, which closed in 1865, had sacrificed on both sides a vast amount of property. Reckoning the money directly expended, the value of property destroyed, and the production arrested and prevented, the total is estimated to be nine thousand millions of dollars. The producers of the coun- try had been seriously diminished in number. A half-million men had been killed. A million more had been disabled in various degrees. Help was needed in the honorable form of pensions, and the aggregate required for this purpose exceeded all anticipation and has annually absorbed an immense proportion of the national income. The public debt that must be funded reached nearly three thousand millions, demanding at the beginning more than one hundred and fifty millions of dollars for annual interest. A great proportion of the debt, when funding was complete, was held in Europe, calling for an enormous export of gold, or its equiv- alent, to meet the interest. Beside these burdens upon the people, the country was on a basis of paper money, and all gold payments added a heavy premium to the weight of the obligation. The situation was without parallel. The speculative mania which always accom- panies war had swollen private obligations to a perilous extent, and the important question arose of restoring coin payment. On the one hand, it was contended that to enforce the measure would create a panic by the shrinkage of prices which would follow ; and on the other hand, it was urged with equal zeal that to postpone it longer would increase the general distrust among f>(> BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIEF QUESTION. the people us to the real condition of the country, ami thus add to the si-verity of the panic if one should be precipitated. Notwithstanding the evil prophecies on both sides, the panic did not come until eight and a half years after the firing of the last gun in the Civil War. Nor did it coaie until after two great calamities in the years immediately preceding had caused the ex- penditure of more than two hundred millions of dollars, suddenly withdrawn from the ordinary channels of business. The rapid and extensive rebuilding in Chicago and Boston after the destruct- ive fires of 1871 and 1872 had a closer connection with the panic of 1873 than is commonly thought. Still further, the six-years' depression, from 1873 to 1879, involved individual suffering rather than general distress. The country as a whole never advanced in wealth more rapidly than during that period. The entire ex- perience strengthened the belief that the war for the Union 3onld not have been maintained upon a free-trade basis, and that the panic of 1873 only proved the strength of the safeguard wnicii protection supplies to a people surrounded by such multiform embarrassments as were the people of the United States during the few years immediately following the war. And, strongest of all points, the financial distress was relieved and prosperity re- stored under protection, whereas the ruinous effects of panics under free trade have never been removed except by a resort to protection. Does Mr. Gladstone maintain that I am confusing post hoc with propter hoc in these statements ? He must show, then, that the United States during the war could have collected & great internal revenue on domestic manufactures and products, when under the system of free trade similar fabrics would daily have reached New York from Europe to be sold at pi ices far below what the American manufacturer, with the heavy excise then levied, could afford to set upon his goods. And if the government could collect little from the customs under free trade, and nothing from internal products, whence could have been derived the taxes to provide for the payment of interest on public loans, and what would have become of the public credit ? Moreover, with free trade, which Mr. Gladstone holds to be always and under all circumstances wiser than protection, we should have been com- pelled to pay gold coin for European fabrics, while at home and during the tremendous strain of the war legal-tender paper was FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 57 the universal currency. In other words, when the life of the country depended upon the government's ability to make its own notes perform the function o. money, the Free-Traders' policy would have demanded daily gold for daily bread. The Free-Trader cannot offset the force of the argument by claiming that the laws regulating revenue and trade are, like municipal laws, silent during the shock of arms ; because the five closing years indeed almost six years of the decade in which the Kebellion occurred were passed in peace, and during those years the ravages of war were in large degree repaired and new wealth rapidly acquired. But I shall not give to Mr. Glad- stone or to the American Free- Trader the advantage of seeming to rest the defence of protection upon its marvellous value during the exhaustive period of war. Viewing the country from 1861 to 1889, full twenty-eight years -'the longest undisturbed period in which either protection or free trade has been tried in this country, I ask Mr. Gladstone if a parallel can be found to the material advancement of the United States. Mr. Gladstone admits the wonderful increase of wealth ac- quired under a protective tariff, but he avers that the results would have been larger under free trade. That, of course, is a speculative opinion, and is entitled to respect according to the knowledge and experience of the man who utters it. Every statement of Mr. Gladstone carries weight, but in this case his opinion runs directly counter to the fifty years of financial experi- ence through which this country has passed with alternate trials of the two systems. Moreover, it is fair to say that Mr. Glad- stone does not in this utterance represent European judgment. He speaks only for the free trade party of Great Britain and their followers on this side of the ocean. The most eminent statesman on the continent of Europe holds opinions on this sub- ject directly the reverse of those held by the most eminent states- man of Great Britain. We feel assured in America that so far as the question of protection may be affected, either favorably or adversely, by the weight of individual judgment, we may safely leave Mr. Gladstone to be answered by Prince Bismarck. But better than the opinion of Mr. Gladstone, better than the opinion of Prince Bismarck, are the simple facts of the case, of open record in both countries A brief rehearsal of these facts, with the pertinent comparison which they suggest, will 58 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. give the best answer to Mr. Gladstone's assumption that the United States would have made more rapid progress under a sys- tem of free trade. I take the official figures of the census in the United States, and for the United Kingdom I quote from Mr. Giffen, who is commended by Mr. Gladstone as the best authority in England : In 1860 the population of the United States was in round numbers 31,000,000. At the same time the population of the United Kingdom was in round numbers 29,000,000. The wealth of the United States at that time was fourteen thousand millions of dollars ; the wealth of the United Kingdom was twenty-nine thousand millions of dollars. The United Kingdom had, therefore, nearly the same population, but more than double the wealth of the United States, with machinery for manufacturing four-fold greater than that of the United States. At the end of twenty years (1880), it ap- peared that the United States had added nearly thirty thou- sand millions of dollars to her wealth, while the United Kingdom had added nearly fifteen thousand millions, or about one-half. During this period of twenty years the United States had incurred the enormous loss of nine thousand millions of dol- lars by internal war, while the United Kingdom was at peace, enjoyed exceptional prosperity, and made a far greater gain than in any other twenty years of her history a gain which during four years was in large part due to the calamity that had fallen upon the United States. The United King- dom had added six millions to her population during the period of twenty years, while the addition to the United States exceeded eighteen millions. By the compound ratio of population and wealth in each country, even without making allowance for the great loss incurred by the Civil War, it is plainly shown by the statistics here presented that the degree of progress in the United States under protection far exceeded that of the United Kingdom under free trade for the period named. In 1860 the average wealth, per capita, of the United Kingdom was $1,000, while in the United States it was but $450. In 1880 the United Kingdom had increased her per-capita wealth to $1,230, while the United States had increased her per-capita FREE! TRADE OR PROTECTION. 69 wealth to $870. The United Kingdom had in twenty years increased her per-capita wealth 23 per cent., while the United States had increased her per-capita wealth more than 93 per cent. If allowance should be made for war losses, the ratio of gain in the United States would far exceed 100 per cent. Upon these results, what ground has Mr. Gladstone for his assertion ? With great confidence, Mr. Gladstone proposes to carry the war for free trade into the enemy's country. Perhaps the enemy, who are only modest Protectionists, may embarrass the march of his logic with a few pertinent questions, or at least abate the rate of speed which he proposes for his triumphant movement. I shall not give counter-theories. I shall only cite established facts, and allow the facts to establish their own theories : 1. John Edgar Thompson, late president of the Pennsylvania Kailroad Company, purchased one hundred tons of steel rails in 1862 at a price (freight paid to New York; duty of 45 per cent, unpaid) of $103.44 gold coin. (By way of illustrating Mr. Gladstone's claim to superior quality of manufactures under free trade, the railroad company states that many of the rails broke during the first winter's trial. ) In 1864 English rails had fallen to $88 per ton in New York, the freight paid and the duty unpaid. English manufacturers held the market for the ensuing six years, though the sales at the high prices were limited. In 1870 Congress laid a spe- cific duty of $28 per ton on steel rails. From that time the home market has been held by our own manufacturers, with a steady annual fall in price, as the facilities of production in- creased, until the past summer and autumn, when steel rails were selling in Pittsburg, Chicago, and London at sub- stantially the same prices. Does any Free-Trader on either side of the ocean honestly believe that American rails could ever have been furnished as cheaply as English rails, except by the sturdy compel ition which the highly protective duty of 1870 enabled the American manufacturers to maintain against the foreign manufacturers in the first place, and among American manufacturers themselves in the second place ? It is not asserted that during the nineteen years since the heavy duty was first established (except during the past few months) American rails have been as cheap in America as English rails have boon in England, but it is asserted with 60 BOTH SWE8 OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. perfect confidence that, steadily and invariably, American railroad companies have bought cheaper rails at home than they would have been able to buy in England if the protec- tive duty had not stimulated the manufacture of steel rails in tli United States, and if the resulting competition had not directly operated upon the English market.* 2. English steel for locomotive tires imported in 1865, duty paid, was thirty-four cents per pound in gold. The American com- petition, under a heavy protective duty, had by 1872 reduced the price to thirteen cents per pound, duty paid. At the present time (1889) American steel for locomotive tires, of as good quality as the English steel formerly imported, is furnished at four and three-quarter cents per pound and delivered free of cost at the point where the locomotives arc manufactured. The lowering of price was not a voluntary act on the part of the English manufacturer. It was the direct result of American competition under a protective duty a competition that could not have been successfully inaug- urated under free trade. 3. In the year 1860, the last under a free-trade policy, the population of thirty-one millions in the United States bought carpets to the amount of twelve millions of dollars. Nearly half of the total amount was imported. In 1888, with a population estimated at sixty-three millions, the aggregate amount paid for carpets was nearly sixty millions of dollars, and of this large sum less than one million was paid for *In 1870 only 30,000 tons of steel rail were manufactured in the United States. But the product under the increased duty of that year rapidly increased. The rela- tive number of tons produced in England and the United States for a period of twelve years is shown as follows :" England. United States. 1877 508,400 385,865 1878 622,390 491.427 1879 :.. 520,231 610,682 1880 732,910 852,196 1881 1,023,740 1,187,770 1882 1.235.785 1,284,067 1883 1,097.174 1,148,709 1884 784,968 996,983 1885 706,583 959,471 1886 730,343 1,574,703 18S7 1,021.847 2,101,904 1888 979,083 1,386,277 Total in 12 years. 9,963,454 12,980,054 Under the protective duty of 1870 the United States soon manufactured annually a much larger quantity of steel than Great Britain, and reduced the price from $100 per ton iu gold t o ] ess than |35 per ton in gold. For the same period, 1877-1 the following table will shov of tons of steel ingots produc countries respectively : England. L 1877 , 750.006 588 inclusive, f the number ed in the two r nited States. 500,524 6f 3,773 829,439 1,074,262 1,374,247 1,514,687 1,477,345 1,875,531 1,519,430 2,269,190 2,936,033 2,511,161 1878 807,527 1879. 1880 .. . 834,511 1,044,382 1881 1,441,719 1882 1.673,649 1883 1,553,380 1884 1,299,676 1885 1,304,127 1886 1,570,520 1S87 2.089,403 1888 2,032,794 Tnhnl in 19 rfiars. 1fi.401.fi88 IS. OSS R22 FREE TRADE OR PROTECHOtf. 61 foreign carpets and about half a million for Oriental rugs. Does any Free-Trader in England believe that the United States, without a protective tariff, could have attained such control of its own carpet manufacture and trade ? It will not be unnoticed, in this connection, that under a protective tariff, the population, by reason of better wages, was enabled to buy a far greater proportion of carpets than under free trade. Nor must it escape observation that carpets are now furnished to the American buyer under a protective tariff much cheaper than when a non-protective tariff allowed Europe to send so large a proportion of the total amount used in the United States. These illustrations might be indefinitely multiplied. In wool- lens, in cottons, in leather fabrics ; in glass, in products of lead, of brass, of copper; indeed, in the whole round of manufactures, it will be found that protection has brought down the price from the rate charged by the importers before protection had built up the competing manufacture in America. For many articles we pay less than is paid in Europe. If we pay higher for other things than is paid across the sea to-day, figures plainly indicate that we pay less than we should have been compelled to pay if the protect- ive system had not been adopted; and I beg Mr. Gladstone's atten- tion to the fact that the American people have much more where- with to pay than they ever had or could have under free trade. * * In spite of these facts. President Cleveland made the following statements, which I quote from his free-trade message to Congress in December, 1887: "Our present tariff laws, as their primary and plain effect, raise the price to con- sumers of all articles imported and subject to duty, by precisely the sum paid for such duties. Thus the amount of the duty measures the tax paid by those who pur- chase for use these imported articles. Many of these things, however, are raised or manufactured in our own country, and the duties now levied upon foreign goods and products are called protection to these home manufactures, because they ren- der it possible for those of our people who are manufacturers to make these taxed articles and sell them for a price equal to that demanded for the imported goods that have paid customs duty. So it happens that, while comparatively a few use the imported articles, millions of our people, who never use and never saw any of the foreign products, purchase and use things of the same kind made in this country, and pay therefor nearly or quite the same enhanced price which the duty adds to the imported articles." I recall this quotation primarily for two reasons : First, Mr. Cleveland stands without a rival at the head of the free-trade party in the United States, and it is in- structive to see how exactly he adopts the line of argument used by the English Free- Trader. Second, It is a valuable admission from the head of the free-trade party when he affirms that " comparatively a few of our people use imported articles,'' and that there are " millions of our people who never use and never saw any of the foreign products." In what words could the complete success of the protective policy in the United States be more flt.ly expressed 1 But when Mr. Cleveland asserted that our people pay for our domestic fabrics nearly or quite the same enhanced price which the duty adds to the imported 62 BOTH SIDES OF T&E TARIFF QUESTION. Mr. Gladstone boldly contends that " keeping capital at home by protection is dear production, and is a delusion from top to bottom/' I take direct issue with him on that proposition. Be- tween 1870 and the present time considerably more than one hun- dred thousand miles of railroad have been built in the United States. The steel rail and other metal connected therewith in- volved so vast a sum of money that it could not have been raised to send out of the country in gold coin. The total cost could not have been less than five hundred millions of dollars. We had a large interest to pay abroad on the public debt, and for nine years after 1870 gold was at a premium in the United States. During those years nearly forty thousand miles of railway were constructed, and to import English rail and pay for it with gold bought at a large premium would have been impossible. A very large propor- tion of the railway enterprises would of necessity have been abandoned if the export of gold to pay for the rails had been the articles," he evidently spoke without investigating facts, and accepted as true one of those fallacious statements which have been used in the interest of foreign import- ers to deceive the people. Mr. Cleveland's argument would have been strengthened if he had given a few examples nay, if he had given one example to sustain his charge. As he omitted all illustrations of hia position, I venture to select a few which apparently establish the exact reverse of Mr. Cleveland's statement: India rubber goods are protected by a duty of 25 per cent. ; but, instead of those goods being 25 per cent, higher in price than the foreign goods, they are, in fact, cheaper. They undersell the English article in Canada and successfully com- pete with Canada's goods, which are protected by a duty of 20 per cent. Patent leather is subject to a duty of 20 per cent. ; but patent leather is not, there, fore, 20 per cent, higher in the United States than elsewhere. On the contrary, it is cheaper. Five years ago the city government of London advertised for bids for a large amount of patent leather to be used in connection with the uniforms of the police. Thero were bids from several countries, but the lowest bid was offered by a manufacturer of Newark, N. J. He secured the contract, and fur- nished the goods at a fair profit. Steel rails are selling in London for seven pounds sterling per ton. The duty is $15 per ton. The price, therefore, in the United States ought to be, according to Mr. Cleveland's doctrine, $50 per ton. But in fact the price is but $35 per ton, and during the last summer and autumn was as low as $25 per ton, and large sales were made at $30 per ton. Boots and shoes are subject to 30 per cent. duty. According to Mr. Cleveland, they should be 30 per cent, higher than the foreign article. As a matter of fact, they are cheaper. American boots and shoes hold the Canadian market against the European manufacture. Examples of this kind could be shown on almost the whole tariff list where an American manufacture is firmly established. In fact, the whole history of protec- tion has vindicated what Alexander Hamilton said of it when he was at the head of the Treasury : " The internal competition which takes place soon does away with everything like monopoly, and by degrees reduces the price of the article to the minimum of a reasonable profit on the capital employed. This accords with the reason of the thing and with experience." Mr. Hamilton thus effectually answers both Mr. Gladstone and Mr Cleveland. FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 63 condition precedent to their construction. But the manufacture of steel rails at home gave an immense stimulus to business. Tens of thousands of men were paid good wages, and great investments and great enrichments followed the line of the new road and opened to the American people large fields for enterprise not theretofore accessible. I might ask Mr. Gladstone what he would have done with the labor of the thousands of men engaged in manufacturing rail, if it had been judged practicable to buy the rail in England ? Fortunately he has given his answer in advance of the question, for he tells us that " in America we produce more cloth and more iron at high prices, instead of more cereals and more cotton at low prices/' The grain-growers of the West and the cotton- growers of the South will observe that Mr. Gladstone holds out to them a cheerful prespect ! They "should produce more cereals and more cotton at low prices " I Mr. Gladstone sees that the protective system steadily tends to keep up the price of " cereals and cotton," and he asks that manufactures of "cloth and iron " be abandoned, so that we may raise " more cereals and more cotton at low prices." Mr. Gladstone evidently considers the present prices of cereals and cotton as " high prices." Protectionists owe many thanks to Mr. Gladstone for his out- spoken mode of dealing with this question of free trade. He gives us his conclusions without qualification and without dis- guise. The American Free-Trader is not so sincere. He is ever presenting half-truths and holding back the other half, thus creating false impressions and leading to false conclusions. But Mr. Gladstone is entirely frank. He tells the laborers on pro- tected articles that they would be better engaged in " raising more cereals and more cotton at low prices/' Where does Mr. Gladstone suggest a market for the additional grain and cotton to be raised by American mechanics becoming farmers and increasing the production of those great staples ? The foreign market is filled with a competing grain-supply to such a degree that already the price of wheat is unduly lowered to the Western farmer. The farmer needs a still larger home consumption of his grain, while Mr. Gladstone thinks he needs a still larger home production. The legitimate involvement of Mr. Gladstone's argument is that all mechanical and manufacturing enterprises in America producing articles of higher price than the same produced in Europe should 64 BOTH SIflEN OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. be abandoned, and the laborers so engaged should be turned to the production of "more cereals and more cotton at low prices" ! The Western farmer's instinct is wiser than Mr. Gladstone's phil- osophy. The fanner knows that the larger the home market the better are his prices, and that as the home market is narrowed his prices fall. Mr. Gladstone's pregnant suggestion really exhibits the thought that lies deep in the British mind : that the mechanic arts and the manufacturing processes should be left 10 Great Britain and the production of raw material should be left to America. It is the old colonial idea of the last century, when the establishment of manufactures on this side of the ocean was regarded with great jealousy by British statesmen and British merchants. Some years before the Revolutionary struggle began, Parliament had declared that " the erecting of manufactories in the colonies tends to lessen their dependence on Great Britain." A few years later the British Board of Trade reported to Parliament that " manufactures in the American colonies interfere with profits made by British merchants." The same body petitioned Parlia- ment that " some measures should be provided to prevent the manufacturing of woollen and linen goods in the colonies." Finally Parliament declared that " colonial manufacturing was prejudicial to the trade and manufactures of Great Britain." These outrageous sentiments (the colonists characterized them much more severely) were cherished in the time of the glorious Georges, in the era of Walpole and the elder Pitt. I do not mean to imply that Mr. Gladstone's words carry with them an approval, even retrospectively, of this course toward the colonies, but there is a remarkable similarity to the old policy in the fundamental idea that causes him in 1889 to suggest that Ameri- cans produce " too much cloth and too much iron," and should turn their labor to " low-priced cereals and low-priced cotton." Are we not justified in concluding that Mr. Gladstone's theory of free trade, in all its generalizations and specifications, is fitted exactly to the condition of Great Britain, and that British hos- tility to American protection finds its deep foundation in the fact to quote the old phrases that "it is prejudicial to the trade and manufactures of Great Britain," that " it lessens our depend- ence upon Great Britain," and that " it interferes with profits made by British merchants" ? FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. (55 Mr. Gladstone makes another statement of great frankness and of great value. Comparing the pursuits in the United States which require no protection with those that are protected, he says : "No adversary will, I think, venture upon saying that the profits are larger in protected than in unprotected industries/' This is very true, and Mr. Gladstone may be surprised to hear that the constant objection made by American Free-Traders against the " protected industries," as he terms them, is that the profits derived from them are illegitimately large. Mr. Gladstone sees clearly that as a rule this is not true, and he at once discerns the reason. He says " the best opinions seem to testify that in your protected trades profits are hard pressed by wages." The Free-Traders of America try by every cunning device to hide this fact. Its admission is fatal to their cause. Not one free-trade organ or leader among them all dares to take his position beside Mr. Gladstone and plainly tell the truth to the American laborer. Not one free-trade organ or leader dares frankly to say to the great body of American work- men that the destruction of protection inevitably and largely re- duces their daily wages. I thank Mr. Gladstone for this testi- mony, at once accurate and acute. It is fair to presume that he intends it to be applied to the unprotected manufacturer in Eng- land and to the protected manufacturer in America, both produc- ing the same article. His logic gives, and I have no doubt truly, as large profit to the manufacturer of England, selling at a low price, as to the manufacturer of America, selling at a high price the difference consisting wholly in the superior wages paid to the American mechanic. There is another important effect of protective duties which Mr. Gladstone does not include in his frank admission. He sees that the laborers in what he calls the "protected industries" se- cure high pay, especially as compared with the European school of wages. He perhaps does not see that the effect is to raise the wages of all persons in the United States engaged in what Mr. Gladstone calls the "unprotected industries." Printers, brick- layers, carpenters, and all others of that class are paid as high wages as those of any other trade or calling, but if the wages of all those in the protected classes were suddenly struck down to che English standard, the others must follow. A million men cannot be kept at work for half the pay that another million men f>6 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. are receiving in the same country. Both classes must go up or must go down together. Mr. Gladstone makes another contention, in which, from the American point of view, he leaves out of sight a controlling factor, and hence refers an effect to the wrong cause. Regard- ing the advance of wages in England, he says : " Wages which have been partially and relatively higher under protection have become both generally and absolutely higher, and greatly higher, under free trade." I do not doubt the fact, but I venture to suggest that such advance in wages as there has been in England is referable to another and a palpable cause namely, the higher wages in the United States, which have constantly tempted British mechanics to emigrate, and which would have tempted many more if the inducement of an advance in wages at home had not been interposed. Especially have wages been high and tempting in the United States since 1861, when the country became firmly pro- tective by the enactment of the Morrill tariff. It will be found, I think, that the advance of wages in England corresponds precisely in time, though not in degree, with the advance in the United States, and the advance in both cases was directly due to the firm establishment of protection in this country as a national policy. But it must not be forgotten that American wages are still from 70 per cent, to 100 per cent, higher than British wages. If a policy of free trade should be adopted in the United States, the reduction of wages which would follow here would promptly lead to a reduction in England. The operatives of Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield recognize this fact as clearly as do the proprietors who pay the advanced wages, and more clearly than do certain political economists who think the world of com- merce and manufactures can be unerringly directed by a theory evolved in a closet without sufficient data, and applied to an in- exact science. The zeal of Mr. Gladstone for free trade reaches its highest point in the declaration that " all protection is morally as well as economically bad/' He is right in making this his strongest ground of opposition, if protection is a question of morals. But his assertion leaves him In an attitude of personal inconsistency. There is protection on sea as well as on land. Indeed, the most palpable and effective form of protection is in the direct pay- ment of public money to a line of steamers that could not b FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 67 maintained without that form of aid. I do not say that such aid is unwise protection ; least of all do I say it is immoral. On the contrary, I think it has often proved the highest commercial wisdom, without in the least infringing upon the domain of morals. Mr. Gladstone, however, commits himself to the prin- ciple that "all protection is morally bad." If this has been his belief ever since he became an advocate of free trade, his con- science must have received many and severe wounds as session after session, while Chancellor of the Exchequer, he carried through Parliament a bounty may I not say a direct protection ? of one hundred and eighty thousand pounds sterling to a line of steamers running between England and the United States, a protection that began six years before free trade was proclaimed in English manufactures, and continued nearly twenty years after. In the whole period of twenty-five years an aggregate of many millions of dollars was paid out to protect the English line against all competition. It may be urged that this sum was paid for carrying the Anglo-American mails, but that argument will not avail a Free- Trader, because steamers of other nationalities stood ready to carry the mails at a far cheaper rate. . Nay, a few years ago, possibly when Mr. Gladstone was Premier of England, public bids were asked to carry the Anglo-Indian mails. A French line offered a lower bid than any English line, but the English Gov- ernment disregarded the French bid and gave the contract to the Peninsular and Oriental line, owned by a well-known English company. Still later, the German Lloyd Company contracted to carry the Anglo-American mails cheaper than any English line offered, and the German company actually began to perform the duty. But Englishmen did not want that kind of free trade, and they broke the contract with the German line and again gave protection to the English ships. Does not this justify the opin- ion that the English policy of free trade is urged where England can hold the field against rivals, and that when competition leaves her behind she repudiates free trade and substitutes the most pronounced form of protection ? Does Mr. Gladstone's estimate of the immorality of protection apply only to protection on land, or is supremacy on the sea so important to British interests that it is better to throw morals to the wind and resort to whatever degree of protection may be nee- 68 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. essary to secure the load to English ships ? The doctrine of im- proving harbors in the United States by the National Government was for many years severely contested, the strict construction party maintaining that it must be confined to harbors on the sea- coast at points where foreign commerce reaches the country. Dur- ing one of the many discussions over this narrow construction, an Ohio member of Congress declared that he " could not think much of a Constitution that would not stand being dipped in fresh water as well as salt." I fear that Mr. Gladstone's code of morals on this question of protection will not secure much respect in other countries so long as it spoils in salt water. It will not escape Mr. Gladstone's keen observation that British interests in navigation flourish with less rivalry and have increased in greater proportion than any other of the great interests of the United Kingdom. I ask his candid admission that it is the one interest which England has protected steadily and determinedly, regardless of consistency and regard- less of expense. Nor will Mr. Gladstone fail to note that navigation is the weakest of the great interests in the United States, because it is the one which the National Government has constantly refused to protect. If since the Civil War the United States had spent in protecting her shipping merely the annual in- terest on the great sum which England has expended to protect her ocean traffic, American fleets would now be rivalling the fleets of England, as they rivalled them before the war, on every sea where the prospect of commercial gain invites the American The failure of the United States to encourage and establish commercial lines of American ships is in strange contrast with the zealous efforts made to extend lines of railway inside the country, even to the point of anticipating the real needs of many sections. If all the advances to railway companies, together with the outright gifts by towns, cities, counties, States and Na- tion be added together, the money value would not fall short of a thousand millions of dollars. No effort seems too great for our people when the interior of the country is to be connected with the seaboard. But when the suggestion is made to connect our seaboard with commercial cities of other countries by lines of steamships, the public mind is at once disturbed by the cry of " subsidy." We really feel as much afraid of protection at sea FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 69 as Mr. Gladstone is of protection on land. The positions of the American Congress and the English Parliament on this subject are precisely reversed. England has never been affrighted by the word subsidy, and, while we have stood still in impotent fear, she has taken possession of the seas by the judicious, and even the lavish, interposition of pecuniary aid. I have already said that the interest on the amount which England has paid for this object since she began it with great energy, fifty years ago, would give all the stimulus needed for the rapid expansion of our commerce. Let it be added that if the government of the United States will for twenty years to .come give merely the interest upon the interest, at the rate of 5 per cent., on the amount which has been a free gift to railroads, every steam line needed on the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf will spring into existence within two years from the passage of the act. It is but a few years since Congress twice refused to give even $125,000 per annum to secure an admirable line of steamers from New York to the four largest ports of Brazil. And the sum of $125,000 is but the interest upon the interest of the interest, at 5 per cent., of the gross amount freely given to the construction of railroads within the Union. Is it any wonder that we have lost all prestige on the sea ? The opposition to the policy of extending our foreign com- merce by aiding steamship lines with a small sum, just as we have aided internal commerce on railroads with a vast sum, originates with the American Free-Trader. Mr. Gladstone cannot fail to see how advantageous the success of this free- trade effort in the United States must prove to Great Britain. The steady argument of the Free-Trader is that, if the steamship lines were established, we could not increase our trade because we produce under our protective tariff nothing that can compete in neutral markets with articles of the like kind from England. How then can the Free- Trader explain the fact that a long list of articles manufactured in the United States find ready and large sale in Canada ? The Canadian tariff is the same upon English and American goods. Transportation from England to Quebec or Montreal is cheaper than from the manufacturing centres of the United States to the same points. The difference is not great, but it is in favor of the English shipper across the seas, and not of the American shipper by railway. It is for the Free-Trader to explain why, if the cost 70 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. 4 of transportation be made the same, the United States cannot compete with England in every country in South America in all the articles of which we sell a larger amount in Canada than England does. I append a note naming the American articles Bold in Canada, and the Free-Trader, if candid, will admit that the list is one which is constantly and rapidly increasing.* Giving heed to the cry of the professional Free-Trader in America, Mr. Gladstone feels sure that, though the protected manufacturers in the United States may flourish and prosper, they do BO at the expense of the farmer, who is in every conceivable form, according to the free-trade dictum, the helpless victim of protection. Both Mr. Gladstone and the American Free -Trader have, then, the duty of explaining why the agricultural States of the West have grown in wealth during the long period of protec- tion at a more rapid rate than the manufacturing States of the East. The statement of the Free-Trader can be conclusively answered by referring to the census of the United States for the year 1860, and also for the year 1880 : In 1860, eight manufacturing States of the East (the six of New England, together with New York and Pennsylvania) returned an aggregate wealth of $5,123,000,000. Twenty years afterwards, by the census of 1880, the same States re- turned an aggregate wealth of $16,228,000,000. The rate of increase for the twenty years was slightly more than 216 per cent. Let us see how the agricultural States fared during this period. By the census of 1860, eight agricultural States of the West (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Min- nesota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin) returned an aggregate wealth of $2,271,000,000. Twenty years afterwards, by the census of 1880 (protection all the while in full force), these same States returned an aggregate wealth of $11,268,000,000. The rate of increase for the twenty years was 396 percent., The following articles of American manufacture are sold In Canada more largely than like articles of English manufacture: Brass goods, copper goods, cordage, ginghams, bottles, flasks, india-rubber goods, printing-ink, ingrain carpets, wood manufactures, twines, tinware, ship-rigging, wall-paper, writing-paper, envelopes, blank books, strawboard paper, boots and shoes, leather and skins, sole leather, leather goods, patent leather, figured oil-clothe, grain drills harrows, harvesters, hoes, forks, mowing-machines, scythes, spadc.i, shovels, builders' and cabinet-makers' hardware, house-furnishing hardware, nails, fire-arms, sewing-machines, screws, stoves, axes, jewelry (sterling and plated), silver-ware, lamps, locomotives, hatchets, hammer?, saws, mechanics' tools, organs, pianos, "notions," plain house-furniture, especially hotel furniture. FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. ft or 180 per cent, greater than the increase in the eight manu- facturing States of the East. The case will be equally striking if we take the fifteen South- ern States that were siaveholding in 1860. By the census of that year, the aggregate return of their property was $6,792,- 000,000. But $2,000,000,000 was slave property. Deducting that, the total property amounted to $4,792,000,000. Their aggregate return of wealth by the census of 1880 was $8, 633,- 000,000. The rate of increase for the twenty years was 80 per cent. Consider that during this period eleven States of the South were impoverished by civfl war to an extent far greater than any country has been despoiled in the wars of modern Europe. Consider that the labor system on which previous wealth had been acquired in the South was entirely broken up. And yet, at the end of twenty years, the South- ern States had repaired all their enormous losses and pos- sessed nearly double the wealth they had ever known before. Do not these figures incontestably show that the agricultural sections of the country, West and South, have prospered even beyond the manufacturing sections, East and North ? And all this not merely with protection, but because of protec- tion ! As Mr. Gladstone considers protection immoral, he defines its specific offence as " robbery." To have been fully equal to the American standard of free-trade vituperation, Mr. Gladstone should have denounced our manufacturers as "Robber Barons." This is the current phrase with a class who are perhaps more noisy than numerous. The intention of the phrase is to create popular prejudice against American manufacturers as growing rich at the expense of the people. This accusation is so per- sistently repeated that its authors evidently regard it as important to their cause. It may perhaps surprise Mr. Gladstone to be told that out of the fifty largest fortunes in the United States those that have arrested public attention within the last ten years cer- tainly not more than one has been derived from protected manu- facturing ; and this was amassed by a gentleman of the same Scotch blood with Mr. Gladstone himself. The forty-nine other fortunes were acquired from railway and telegraph investments, from real- estate investments, from the import and sale of foreign goods, from banking, from speculations in the stock market, from fort' fe BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. unate mining investments, from patented inventions, and more than one from proprietary medicines. It is safe to go even farther and state that, in the one hundred largest fortunes that have been viewed as such in the past ten years, not five have been derived from the profits of protected manufactures. Their origin will be found in the fields of invest- ment already referred to. Moreover, the fear of the evil effect of large fortunes is exaggerated. Fortunes rapidly change. With us wealth seldom lasts beyond two generations. There is but one family in the United States recognized as possessing large wealth for four consecutive generations. When Mr. Jeffer- son struck the blow that broke down the right of primogeniture and destroyed the privilege of entail, he swept away the only ground upon which wealth can be secured to one family for a long period. The increase in the number of heirs in successive generations, the rightful assertion of equality among children of the same parents, the ready destruction of wills that depart too far from this principle of right, and, above all, the uncertainty and the accidents of investment, scatter fortunes to the wind and give to them all the uncertainty that betides human existence. In no event can the growth of large fortunes be laid to the charge of the protective policy. Protection has proved a distrib- utor of great sums of money; not an agency for amassing it in the hands of a few. The records of our savings-banks and building associations can be appealed to in support of this strtement. The benefit of protection goes first and last to the men who earn their bread in the sweat of their faces. The auspicious and momentous result is that never before in the history of the world has comfort been enjoyed, education acquired, and independence secured by so large a proportion of the total population as in the United States of America. JAMES G. ELAINE. THE GLADSTONE-ELAINE CONTROVERSY. By the Hon. ROGER Q. MILLS. HON. ROGER . MILLS. " WHEN the government interferes and requires the producer to pay a tax for the privilege of selling in its markets, it necessarily raises the price which its citizens must pay. If the object of the tax is to restrict or prohibit the importation of the article in order to give the market to the home producer, which he could not hold without it on account of the greater cost required to produce the competing article, it imposes a double tax on the conbumers of both the domestic and foreign articles. No peo- ple ever have increased or ever will increase in wealth by the help of taxa- tion. No people can increase in wealth by being kept out of market with their products. Taking one dollar out of a man's pocket does not put two in." So says the subject of our sketch, denning in vigorous lan- guage his position on the world-famed tariff question. Roger Quarles Mills is by birth a Kentuckian, having been born in Todd Co. in that State in 1833. The family came originally from Vir- ginia. Of a restless, ambitious disposition, he set his face still further southward while still in his teens, and began the study of law in the little town of Palestine, Tex. Three years of assiduous toil over Black- stone and other authorities, together with much burning of midnight oil, and the aspirant for legal honors was deemed qualified to practice. Not being of age, however, a special enactment of the Legislature was passed whereby he was fully and formally admitted to the bar and began his career at the town of Corsicana, which place he has ever since made his permanent abode. At the outbreak of the Civil War Mr. Mills was swift to respond to the call of the Confederate States for volunteers. Throughout the bitter struggle he did active service, ofttimes wounded and running some hair- breadth escapes, but managing through all to survive. When peace was declared he retired with the rank of colonel. In 1872 he was sent to (Congress as Representative-at-Large for the State of Texas. He had become one of the most popular men in his community. Above all he had attained a reputation for honesty and truthfulness which went far to justify the confidence reposed in him by his constituents. Later on he was chosen as the representative of the Fourth District, and then that of the Ninth, till from the Forty -second to 76 HON. ROGER Q. MILLS. the present Fifty-first Congress he has occupied a seat in the House a record equaled by few. In the interest of tariff reduction he has labored long and earnestly. A stanch Democrat, an ardent free-trader, he has grown gray in the service of his party. Closely allied during the Cleveland administration with what was known as " the President's Party," his efforts during the spring of 1888 to obtain a reduction of the Treasury surplus revenues are still fresh in the minds of the people. In debate Mr. Mills is dignified and pronouncedly deliberate, while at the same time his manner of presenting a measure is done so logically and clearly as to leave little room for adverse criticism. An announcement that he will speak on a certain day is sufficient to fill the galleries of the House to their full capacity. His personal appearance challenges respectful admiration. Tall and commanding in figure, he is conspicuous among his colleagues. In conversation he is extremely pleasant, liberal in his opinions, candid, yet modest in stating his views of men and measures, and always ready to listen patiently to the views of his opponents. THE GLADSTONE-ELAINE CONTROVERSY. BY THE HON. ROGER Q. MILLS, REPRESENTATIVE IN" CONGRESS FROM TEXAS. THE " duel " between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Elaine was foi commercial freedom on one side and commercial restriction on the other. Each side was represented by its best man, and the sub- ject was discussed with great ability. Mr. Gladstone opens the discussion and goes straight to the heart of the controversy. He shows what commerce is, what it does, and what it has accom- plished for Great Britain since its emancipation. He shows that it has increased the aggregate wealth of the nation, given better employment and higher wages to workmen, and supplied them with more, cheaper, and better food than they had ever had before. The question is not, as he says, whether the rate of wages is lower in Great Britain than in America, or whether the American workman is better off than the workman in England. It is not a question between countries, but between systems. If the rate of wages alone is to be taken as the test of the wisdom of oemmercial restriction, the jury will be hung and there can be no verdict, be- cause the United States has restriction and a higher rate of wages NOTE. The purpose of Mr. Mills in this contribution i to controvert the argu- ments in favor of protection advanced by Mr. Blainc in his reply to Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Mills's views are further elaborated and enforced in a later chapter of this volume'entitled " Free Trade and Slave Trade " (see page 251) hore published for the first time in which he answers the plea for protection made by Mr. Andrew C -r- negie in the chapter entitled ' Summing up the T.iriff Discus? ion " (see page 195). 78 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. than England, and England has freedom and a higher rate of wages than France, Germany, Austria, or any other country in Europe that has restriction. It is evident from this that some other factor is exercising a potent influence either in depressing or raising wages. Freedom of commercial exchange may be one of the forces, but there are others cooperating with it. Mr. Glad- stone shows that since England adopted the policy of commercial freedom the wages of her working people have increased from 50 to 100 per cent., and that from 1843 to 1883 the income from capital increased 210 per cent., while the income of the working classes increased 160 per cent. The wealth of both capitalist and workmen might increase in either country and under either sys- tem. And that is what has occurred in both countries, and in all countries where there are civilization and stable government. In a country like ours, blessed with the richest soils, the best of climates, good government, mountains filled with coal and ores of every kind, with ample means of cheap and rapid transporta- tion, with the forces of production constant! j increasing through the invention of labor-saving machinery, both wealth and wages would increase under either system. And it is no test of the wisdom of either to show that wealth and wages have increased under it. It must be shown that wealth and wages would increase faster under one system than under the other, and to do that we must see what it is that creates wealth and wages. All wealth is created by labor, and the greatest wealth is created when the greatest sum of products is produced in a given time ; and that is done when the laborer works in harmony with the forces of nature and the auxiliaries which the inventive genius of man has supplied. If a laborer who is digging coal at $1 per ton, and who turns out one ton per day, should invent a machine by which in the same time he turns out five tons of coal, his daily wages would rise, whether the tariff was high or low, or no tariff at all ; and if throughout the whole industrial system such an increase should occur by labor-saving methods, then wages would rise throughout the whole, regardless of the tariff. But the question is, "Would they not rise higher without than with the tariff ? If the workman, when he turns out his coal, is prohibited from selling any part of it to anybody, his sur- plus will be worthless. After supplying his own wants, the remainder will be without value to him. But if the law THE GLADSTONE-ELAINE CONTROVERSY. 79 should permit him to sell to persons living within the same county, his market, though limited, would give some value to his surplus. Then if the law should be changed and he should be permitted to sell to all persons within the same State, his coal would increase in value. It then he was permitted to sell to all persons in the United States, it would take additional value just as the number of consumers increased, which would increase the demand and consequently the price. If he is permitted to sell to any one anywhere in the world, his product would find its highest value. Thus we see that just in proportion as the numbers of those who consume his coal increase does its value increase. Wealth, therefore, and wages are in- creased by the removal of all impediments between producers and consumers ; and the converse of the proposition is equally true, that wealth and wages are decreased by every impediment inter- posed between the producer and consumer. A farmer in Brazil will make more at labor expended in raising coffee than in manufacturing cloth, because the soil and climate are equivalent to so much capital gratuitously supplied to him. But coffee does not supply all his wants. He must have clothing, and he can obtain it more cheaply by raising coffee than by manufacturing cloth ; but to enjoy that advantage he must have an open way through which to send his coffee and bring his cloth. Here is where commerce becomes a necessity. If the Brazilian cannot have his surplus coffee transported to the manu- facturer, he must sell in the home market, where every one has a surplus as well as he, and where there is no demand and the value of his labor is greatly reduced. The same is the case with the manufacturer. If he is not permitted to send his cloth to those who want it, and is compelled to sell it at home, where the market is oversupplied, he will find its value greatly reduced. Yet this is the policy of commercial restriction which Mr. Gladstone assails and Mr. Blaine defends, and this is the policy that the latter says increases national wealth and the wages of labor. As Mr. Gladstone says, commerce is based " upon the unequal distribution among men and regions of aptitudes to produce" the things that satisfy human want. The desire for gain is the motive that actuates the distribution. Men only send away their surplus to sell when they can profit by the sale in the distant market. That profit is obtained when the price is higher 80 BOTH SIDES OF 77/7-7 T \U1FF QUESTION. away from home than it is at home, and it is higher in the dis- tant market than it is in the home market because it could be produced, if at all, only at a higher cost. In the market from which a thing is exported it is produced at the lowest cost, and it will be produced at the highest profit if the way of transporta- tion is open to those who want it and can either not produce it at all or at a higher cost. And the profit of the producer will be much or little in proportion to the freedom or obstruction in the way from the producer to the consumer. Every producer has to pay the cost incurred in reaching market, and then has to sell at the market price. If the market price of wheat is one dollar per bushel at Liver- pool, and it costs the Russian farmer fifty cents per bushel to produce his wheat and the American forty cents, the American will have ten cents per bushel advantage in the competition. Then if it costs the Russian twenty cents per bushel to reach the market and the American ten, the American has the advantage of twenty cents per bushel in the contest, and would make that much more profit, and, if he had wheat enough to supply the whole demand, would soon drive his rival out ; and if wheat- growing was a considerable part of Russian industry, the loss of a market for it would be a great disturbance in its material progress. Hence it is necessary that the way from producer to consumer should be free from obstructions and capable of being passed with the least delay and the smallest expense. And ' ' the legislator ought never to interfere, or only to interfere so far as imperative fiscal necessity may require it, with this natural law of distribu- tion." When the government interferes and requires the pro- ducer to pay a tax for the privilege of selling in its markets, it necessarily raises the price which its citizens must pay. If the object of the tax is to restrict or prohibit the importation of the article in order to give the market to the home producer which he could not hold without it, on account of the greater cost re- quired to produce the competing article, it imposes a double tax on the consumers of both the domestic and foreign articles. One tax is paid to the government on the imported article ; another is paid to the owner of the domestic product. But this is not all the injury done by the tax; perhaps it is not the greatest. AVhen a purchaser is required by law to pay more for a domestic product than he would otherwise have to THE GLADSTONE-BLAINE CONTROVERSY. 81 pay, one of two things must occur : either that amount of wealth is annihilated, or it is transferred from the pockets of the man who earned it to the pockets of the man who did not. If it is annihilated, it ceases to be a fund for the purchase of material, for the payment of wages, or for the procurement of the things that satisfy our wants. If it is transferred, it is taken without compensation from one citizen and given to another, and the dis- tributed wealth of millions is concentrated in the pockets of hundreds, where it is less able to purchase materials, pay wages, or satisfy wants. How, then, can import taxes increase wealth and wages ? How can any law foster, encourage, or stimulate the production of wealth or wages, when it requires the laborer to work two days to procure that which he could without it obtain in one day ? One day's labor under such a law is lost, and that which it would have earned is lost. Accumulated wealth is the fund which must employ and pay labor, and when it is increasing demand for employment is increasing, and when that is increas- ing the rate of wages is increasing ; but if the ratio of increase of wealth is retarded, the ratio of increase in the demand for employment is retarded, and the rate of increase of wages is retarded also. So that taxation decreases, instead of increases, wealth and wages. The law that governs the production of wealth and wages is not affected by either latitude or longitude, and it is just the same in a large country as in a small one, and applies with equal force to a continent or an island, a crowded city or a rural district. Mr. Elaine thinks that it might be wise statesmanship to per- mit the people of Great Britain to buy their bread at the lowest cost, but very unwise to permit the citizens of the United States to buy their sugar or their shoes on the same principle. He says the island of Great Britain lies far to the north; that its southern- most point is thirty degrees above the tropics, and its northernmost point nine degrees below the arctic circle; that the United States is forty times as large as Great Britain; that its natural products are more varied, more numerous, and of more valuable character than those of all Europe. Admit all that to be true; it only proves that in the immense extent of our country, with its variety of soils, its diversity of climate, and its greatly increased capacity to produce the things that human wants require, we are more self- sustaining and less dependent upon others. But, after all, it pro- 82 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. duces neither coffee, tea, nor spices. There are some things for which we must look to other countries and climes. But, what is more important still, this immense country, prolific in the production of so many things, will produce a surplus that will increase in proportion to the increase of its population. What does Mr. Blaine propose to do with its accumulating surplus? We must find markets for it somewhere. Admit that England has a "complex civilization," that she lies far to the north, and is only one-fortieth of the size of the Union; what has all that to do with the export of cotton, wheat, and provisions ? If we can produce these cheaper than she can, and she can produce pig-iron and railroad bars cheaper than we can, why should we not make the exchange which is beneficial to both ? In commercial intercourse the question to be determined is one of profit, and neither size, civilization, nor geographical position has anything to do with it. Great Britain carries on her immense traffic with foreign countries because she thereby gives employment to her people, increases their wealth, and adds to their comfort and happiness. It is a source of great profit, and she is extracting every dollar from it she can. She is sending the products of her labor all over and around the world, and distributing them among all con- ditions of people, from the highest civilization in America to the darkest barbarism in the jungles of Africa ; and by her enormous commerce she is filling the pockets of her people with wealth. Why should we not do it ? Mr. Blaine favors subsidizing steam- ship lines to run between our home and foreign ports ; but why should we hunt commerce with other people when we refuse to take it when we find it ? Does our continental position forbid us to send our products to foreign countries and to receive theirs in exchange ? If our civilization or geographical position demands that our exchanges shall be confined among ourselves, and that we shall neither import from nor export to foreign countries, what good is to be accomplished by subsidizing steamship lines ? That Mr. Gladstone might favor liberal appropriations to steamship lines is quite natural. English statesmen having first removed all legislative hindrances, having negotiated treaties with other coun- tries by which tariff obstructions have been removed or greatly lessened, having sent out consuls and commercial agents to hunt for and protect English commerce, it was in line with established English policy to hunt new markets and make a way to reach THE OLADSTONE-BLAINE CONTROVERSY. 83 them with English products. But upon \vhat ground can Ameri- can statesmen favor granting subsidies to steamships to hunt for commerce which our continental position forbids us to receive ? It is claimed foy Mr. Elaine that between 1826 and 1846 Great Britain increased her material wealth beyond all precedent in the commercial history of the world. But does it follow that her wealth came from her tax on bread that she swept away in 1846 ? The invention of labor-saving machinery and the utilization of coal and steam in production greatly increased her prosperity, but neither of them was the product of her tax on wheat. Her rapid development during that period was caused by multiplying her power of production, not by decreasing it, as her tariff did. Her growth in wealth for the period between 1860 and 1890, or any twenty years of that time, under free trade, far outstrips the growth of the former period. Since she cast off the last of her shackles in 1860, which we picked up and riveted upon the arms of our people, she has left us sadly in the lurch. Having reduced the cost of ship-building and of the products of her labor, she has swept our vessels from the seas, and is now carrying her own products to market, and a large share of those of other countries. Having reversed our policy of commercial freedom, and loaded the materials of our manufacture with additional costs, we re- tired within our own boundaries, and left her the unchallenged mistress of the seas. Then, having all her raw material free of tax, and labor cheaper than any other country on earth except ours (and we were out of the contest), she took the world's mar- kets, and holds them to-day against all comers, and will continue to do so until we unload our burden of taxation on materials, when we can and will produce cheaper than she can, and she must take a secondary place in the contest. There can be no surer test of the prosperity of a country than the increase of its foreign trade, and no surer test of the retarda- tion of that prosperity than the decrease of that trade. By going back to 1816, when the obstructive system may be said to have begun its career, we see that our total foreign trade amounted to $229,000,000. (See Stat. Abs. U. S. for 1888.) From 1800 to 1816 our foreign trade increased 41 per cent. During the next sixteen years, under the encouraging aud fostering care of high tariffs, it decreased 23 per cent. ; and from 1820 to 1830 it was not so great as it was in the first ten vears of the century, during 6 S4 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. which " the highway of nations was almost without a flag float- ing on its surface except the flag of commercial marauders." Yet during that period, when all the earth seemed to be in arms on land and sea, our foreign commerce was greater than under the restricting tariffs in existe^je from 1816 to 1832. Our foreign trade began to decline after 1816, and had fallen to $109,000,000 in 1821. From that time it began slowly to recover. It increased 30 per cent, from 1821 to 1824. The tariff of 1824 checked it again, and it had increased at less than 4 per cent, in 1828 ; and from 1828 to 1832 it increased 21 per cent. After the enactment of the compromise tariff of 1833, which required a reduction of the existing tariff 10 per cent, every two years (not every year, as stated by Mr. Elaine), our foreign trade began to increase more rapidly, and by 1836 it amounted to $292,000,000, which was an increase in four years of 65 per cent. In 1841 it was $227,000,000, which it had reached under the constantly-falling tariff of 1833. In 1842 the restrictive system was again restored and our trade again fell off, but slowly recovered till 1846, when it was $227,000,000 again just what it had been in 1841, and $2,000,000 less than it had been in 1816. In 1846 a revenue tariff with low duties took the place of the high tariff of 1842. The tariff of 1846 was further reduced in 1857, and from 1846 to 1860, under non-pro- tective tariffs, our foreign trade increased over 200 per cent. After 1860 we returned again to restrictive tariffs M r ith higher duties than ever, and for the next fourteen years (from 1860 to 1874) our foreign trade increased only 65 per cent., instead of 200 ; and for the fourteen years of high tariffs (from 1874 to 1888) it increased 23 per cent, instead of 200 per cent. It will be seen that whenever our foreign trade increases our agricultural products increase in price; that distributes wealth through the great hive of agricultural labor; that again demands the products of manufacture, and that gives better employment and higher wages to labor, and that brings prosperity to the whole land. It was so under the falling tariff of 1833, and it was so under the low-revenue tariffs from 1846 to 1860. Mr. Blaine charges that the depression and panic of 1837 were the product of the falling tariff of 1833. It is a strange argument that reducing taxation produces depression, distress, and bank- ruptcy, and that imposing high taxes produces wealth and THE GLADSTONE-ELAINE CONTROVERSY. 85 prosperity, and the higher the tax the greater the prosperity. But such is the logic of the advocate of commercial restriction. John Quincy Adams said in 1832 "that the remission of taxes must, in its nature, be a measure always acceptable to the people. " He said of the committee for which he spoke : "They feel the delight with which any one permitted to enjoy the luxury of assenting to such a remission may indulge the benevolence of his disposition." Mr. Adams, if alive to-day, would bo branded by Pennsylvania iron-masters as an agent of the Cobdeu Club. Henry C. Carey, the advocate of high taxes as a potent instru- ment in the increase of wealth, started that argument about the panic of 1837 and that of 1857. It has often been exploded, but it comes up smiling every time any one proposes " to enjoy the luxury " of reducing taxes. In 1842 the same charge was made in the Senate, and Mr. Clay, who was the author of the Com- promise Bill, said that " it was not correct that the Compromise Act had occasioned the embarrassments of the country," and that 11 it was a great mistake to say that any portion of the embarrass- ments of the country had resulted from it." This "great mis- take " Mr. Elaine has made. Mr. Clay said it was speculation in lands and the expansion of the currency that produced that panic, and that the reduction of the tariff had nothing to do with it. The circulation of the country had increased from $121,000,000 in 1833 to $222,000,000 in 1837. The increased circulation, two- thirds of which was paper, caused an upward tendency in prices. People who had money invested it in lands that were constantly rising in value, and not only invested all they had, but borrowed all they could and invested both money and credit. The paper balloon collapsed, and speculation and credits fell to the ground. Even if reducing taxes could bring on a panic, there had not been enough reduction at that time to affect anything. Eighty per cent, of the rates of the tariff of 1832 were still in force. Ten per cent, was reduced January 1, 1834, and 10 per cent. January 1, 1836. The average rate of duty on dutiable goods from 1833 to 1837 was 36 per cent., and for the five years from 1842 to 1846 was 32 per cent. If tariff rates averaging 32 per cent, gave pros- perity to the country, as Mr. Blaine says they did, how could the higher rate of 36 per cent, bring panic and bankruptcy ? In 1857, Congress, finding a surplus in the treasury and the revenues increasing beyond all requirement for government ex- 86 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. penditure, again reduced the taxes, and Mr. Blaine says that reduction of taxation brought on the panic of that year. The panic of 1857 was produced by the same cause that produced the one of 1837. From 1850 prices continued to rise till 1857, when gold prices touched the highest point ever reached within the memory of men now living. Each year brought higher prices for all property. People plunged into speculation again, buying property, paying all the money they had and going in debt for more. Any one who will examine the list of annual prices in the report of the director of the mint for 1881 will see that that year shows the highest gold prices we have ever had before or since. And any person who will, without preconceived preju- dice, read the history of that period will be forced to the con- clusion that it was increase of circulation, and not decrease of taxation, that brought on the fever for speculation which ended in the bankruptcy of the speculators. The legitimate business of the country was scarcely touched. The country was full of metallic money. Agriculture, manufacture, and commerce had distributed it, and confidence was soon restored and business resumed its usual channels. The revenue tariff of 1846 was passed July 30, to go into effect December 1. Secretary Walker had predicted in his report that the passage of a revenue measure would increase imports and exports, and would enhance the price of our agricultural products that had to find a foreign market for their surplus. The results proved how well he had reckoned. Before the 1st of December came, the value of leading agricultural products rose in the New York markets 23 per cent.; cotton rose 18^ per cent., wheat 17^ per cent., rye 18 per cent., corn 24 per cent., oats 40^ per cent., and barley 24 T *j per cent. Seven of the principal crops, as reported by the Secretary, had increased in value $115,000,000, and he estimated that the increased value of the whole crop amounted to $350,000,000. If our present obstructive tariff were reduced to the average rate of that of 1846, it would add again at least 23 per cent, to the value of our crops, which is claimed by the statistician of the Agricultural Department to be four thousand millions of dollars ; and an increase of 23 per cent, would add to it more than $900,000,000. But it is constantly charged that, if we lower our taxes, we will let in foreign goods and ruin our manufacturers. If this is true, TffE &LADSfONE-BLAitfE CONTROVERSY. g? they would all have been ruined between 1846 and 1860, for our imports and exports were constantly increasing from year to year. But domestic production kept pace with the times, and our man- ufactures grew with the growth of our agriculture and commerce. During the decade from 1850 to 1860 our agricultural product increased 95 per cent, and our manufacturing product 85 per cent. Neither agriculture, commerce, nor manufactures have ever increased at an equal ratio during any decade through which we have passed either before or since. From 1860 to 1870 our manufacturing product only increased 80 per cent., and from 1870 to 1880 only 59 per cent. Under the revenue tariffs from 1850 to 1860 the production of cotton goods increased 76 per cent., woollen goods 42 per cent., carpetings 45 per cent., men's clothing 45 per cent., boots and shoes 70 per cent., paper 108 per cent., printing 168 per cent., musical instruments 153 per cent., coal-mining 182 per cent., iron-mining 79 per cent., steel 900 per cent., farming implements 156 per cent., bar, sheet, and railroad iron 100 per cent., and the cash value of farms 103 per cent. Certainly these industries were not injured by enlarging the market. Manufacturers of wool were weighted down by the tax of 30 per cent, on wool and the same on the finished product, until the act of 1857 put all wool costing less than twenty cents per' pound on the free list. Then the woollen manufactures sprang forward and made their chief increase in three years of the ten. Does that look as though the English had taken our home market ? We were not only holding our own market, but we were beginning to take the markets of the world. Our exports of all merchandise increased 120 per cent. , cotton manu- factures 130 per cent., iron and steel 190 per cent., hats 200 per cent., boots and shoes 600 per cent., wearing apparel 150 per cent., earthen and stone ware 300 per cent., glass 100 per cent., and tin 200 per cent. Does not this look as though we were taking the English markets, instead of their taking ours, as 'Mr. Blaine says they were doing ? We were not only taking her mar- kets, but the markets of all other rivals, because we were making better and cheaper goods. Does any advocate of commercial restriction assert that during any ten years of our history, either before or since that period, we ever increased our exports either of agricultural or manufacturing products at an equal ratio ? The same prosperous growth is shown in the enormous increase of the &8 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. national wealth, which from 1850 to 1860 was 126 per cent. It has never been approximated before or since. The marvellous growth of the country in all departments of national industry under the free-trade tariffs of 1846 and 1857 is not denied by Mr. Blaine, but he says it was due to the discovery of gold in California, to the Crimean War, the Mexican War, the Irish famine, and other adventitious circumstances. He forgets that the prosperity had come and was firmly established before an ounce of gold had found its way from the mines of California to the channels of circulation. The Crimean War, occurring long after the tariff of 1846 had torn down the barriers and let in the prosperity, had no effect upon the country prior to 1853, when it began. It probably increased the price of breadstuffs in 1854 and 1855, but it had no effect upon American manufactures. It is difficult to see how it stimulated the production of cotton goods, hats, boots, shoes, glass goods, paper, leather, iron, or steel. It is difficult to comprehend how a war in Europe could add to the national wealth, except in stimulating the export of food and army stores. England and France certainly supplied their own arms and ordnance and quartermaster stores. Prices touched their highest point in 1857, after the war had closed. But the assertion that our own war with Mexico, which began and terminated before 1850, was the cause of the increased na- tional wealth from 1850 to 1860, and the enormous increase in importation, exportation, and consumption, is beyond the bounds of conception. The total production of gold in the United States from 1850 to 1860 was $550,000,000, while from I860 to 1870 it was $576,- 000,000, and from 1870 to 1880 it was $700,000,000. AVhy did not the greater production of the two decades after 1860 give greater prosperity, if that gave the prosperity in the former decade? Instead of that, the growth of neither national wealth, agriculture, manufactures, nor commerce approximated it. Leav- ing out the decade of the war, and comparing that from 1870 to 1880, when there was the largest gold production, instead of enor- mous increase of prosperity, there never has been a period in the history of the country so black with disaster. For more than half the decade all the industries of the country were stretched upon their backs. The roads and highways were filled with tramps and beggars. Immigration was falling off year by year, and emi- THE GLADSTONE-ELAINE CONTROVERSY. 89 gration increasing year by year. State after State was tottering on its foundation and calling on the general government for aid to keep it on its feet. The central city of the iron and steel in- dustry was set on fire by starving workingmen who were out of employment, and there was not power enough in the State of Pennsylvania either to suppress the disorder or extinguish the flames. During a large part of that decade it was estimated that three millions of men were out of work. The gold product that Mr. Elaine thinks contributed so largely to the prosperity of the free-trade decade ought to have produced the same effect, and in a greater degree, from 1870 to 1880. The fact is that California gold had little to do with the material condition of the country at either period. The great body of it left the country as fast as it was taken from the mines. Our circulation in 1850 was $265,000,- 000, and in 1860 it was $487,000,000, but we had exported $400,- 000,000. The increase in our circulation had come from in- creased prices for our exports and decreased prices for our im- ports. The Irish famine cost us as much in the decline in cotton as it made up in the advance in provisions, but, like the Mexican War, it was over before the free-trade decade began. The Crimean "War came and went, and still the prosperity continued and at an increasing rate. The question still remains, What produced it if unshackled commerce did not? Mr. Elaine says that the periods of depression in our home manufactures were those in which England most prospered in her commercial relations with us. In this statement he is not accurate. When England is most prosperous, she has the most money to buy what we have to sell and what her wants require her to buy, and these are mainly agricultural products. When she is most prosperous, she makes an active demand on our farmers for cotton, breadstuffs, and provisions. This active demand pi ways raises the prices of all farm products all over the country, and distributes wealth among the masses of the people. Between 1879 and 1881 England's prosperity enabled her to demand of our farmers, and pay for, a large amount of their products. The value of the articles we sent her in 1881 amounted to $477,000,- 000, and that was more than half of our total exports to all countries. By her prosperity chiefly we increased our exports of agricultural products from $546,000,000 in 1879 to $730,000,000 in 18j31. This enormous increase was the result mostly of 00 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. England's ability to buy from us and pay us for our surplus. The increased demand very greatly increased the prices of these products, and distributed among our farmers a large amount of money. There was an average increase in the price of corn, wheat, rye, oats, barley, buckwheat, potatoes, hay, and cotton of 42 per cent, over the prices of 1879. Now, if England's prosperity enabled her to buy and consume 1200,000,000 more of our agricultural products this year than she did last year, the increased demand would again increase the prices of these products, and if it amounted to 42 per cent., as it did before, it would add $1,500,000,000 to the value of our crop, which, we have seen, is estimated at four billions. This large sum dis- tributed among our farmers would soon be distributed among all classes. Nine dollars out of every ten would be spent for articles to be consumed by the purchaser. How would the domestic manufacturer share in the result of this prosperity of England ? We produce annually about $7,000,000,000 of manufactured prod- ucts. "We exported last year $138,000,000, and we imported, including raw sugar, manufactures amounting to $422,000,000 ; so that our total home consumption reaches about $7,300,000,000, of which over 94 per cent, is home production, and less than 6 per cent, foreign production. Now, when this large increased wealth the result mainly of England's prosperity and what is left of our trade with her is to be expended in the purchase of manufactures, who is to reap the incalcuable benefits from its expenditure ? Ninety-four per cent, will go into the pockets of the home producers and home laborers, and 6 per cent, into those of the foreigner. This will create an active demand for home products, and an active demand for the raw materials and the labor to make them, and this again will increase the price of the materials and the wages of labor. So that, after all, not only is the prosperity of England communi- cated to our farmers, but through them it goes to the manu- facturers, to the laborers, and the producers of raw materials, and it does not stop yet. The consumer and the producer are not Bide by side, and never will be. The merchant and the middle- man have to supply the missing link, and when there is an in- creased product to be distributed there is an active demand made on them for their services, and they obtain constant employment and higher wages. THE GLADSTONE-ELAINE CONTROVERSY. 91 Mr. Elaine's mistake is the mistake of the system which he is attempting with his splendid ability to support, and nowhere in this or any other country could it have chosen an abler cham- pion. It is being assailed at every point, and it will require all of his tact and talent to cover its retreat and prevent it from degenerating into a rout as it leaves the field. The system falsely called protection maintains that commerce is a gambling device in which one party wins and the other loses. Therefore if England makes anything in a trade with us she is benefited and we are injured. But the truth is both parties are benefited. We can produce much that she wants better and cheaper than she can, and she can produce much that we want cheaper and better than we can; and the exchange is beneficial to both. Our vast system of manufactures stands upon the same solid and immovable foundation as our agriculture. There are but few things in either that we cannot produce cheaper than they can be produced elsewhere, and that article whose cost of production is the lowest holds the market against all competitors. Throughout our whole history we have been exporting a large part of our annual crops to others who could either not produce them at all or not as cheaply as they could obtain them by producing something else and exchanging their surplus for ours. No tariff levied upon agricultural products can help them. It can only hurt them, as it does by prohibiting the import of the things that would come to be exchanged for them. We have the soil and climate adapted to the cultivation of grain and cotton and to raising the stock which supplies the food for mankind. It yields a larger return for the labor expended than any other country. We have more intelligent, enterprising, and skilful farmers than are to be found in any other country. We use labor-saving machinery, and make our labor more productive than the labor of any other people. These advantages enable us to produce a greater quantity in a given time, and at a lower cost, and hence we can hold our own market against the world. But it is not in the home market that our agricultural interest is imperilled. It is in the foreign market, and the danger there does not come from rival products, for we can raise our prod- ucts and pay the costs of transportation to market and then undersell with profit all rivals. The danger is in foreign and do- mestic tariffs that prohibit our entrance into the market. Some 92 HOTS SIDES OF TBB TARIFF QUESTION. years ago we exported breadstuffs and provisions largely to European markets on the continent. That trade is now almost destroyed by hostile tariffs in retaliation for our prohibitions against their manufactures. Our productive capacity is greater than our capacity to consume, and the excess is growing greater year by year, and if we are to be shut out from our consumers, the surplus must be thrown upon the home market, already largely oversupplied, with the prices constantly low and constantly tend- ing to a lower level. The result is that agricultural production is discouraged, the output is decreased, and the farmers are kept straitened and with no prospects of bettering their condition. We have to-day twelve millions more people than we had in 1881, and yet our exports of agriculture are 230 millions less than they were that year, when they should be 250 millions more, and would be if the markets were not shut against us. If we would open our markets to the products of other countries, ours would be demanded and taken in exchange for theirs. But as long as we refuse to take their surplus they cannot take ours, be- cause they have nothing else with which to pay. The solution of the difficulty will be found in the removal of the barriers which we have interposed against the admission of their products, and that will permit them to come and exchange with us, to the mutual advantage of both. Our manufacturers, like our farmers, are standing sadly in need of more extended markets. With the capital, machinery, and manual labor now organized and embarked in manufactur- ing, we can turn out a third more product than our people can consume, and we must either have more markets and more con- sumers, or less product, less employment, less wages, and less profits to capital. Situated as we are to-day, we are shut out from the world's markets because the cost of our production is greater than that of our rivals. We only export a trifle of the vast product we manu- facture about 2 per cent, of the whole. With our productive machinery, with the inventive genius of our people constantly in advance of the world, with our cheap and skilled labor, we can produce, cheaper and better, more than half the products which the manufacturing people of Europe are distributing through the world, if we could obtain the materials at the same cost. Europe is exporting a thousand millions of textiles every year, most of THE GLADSTONE-ELAINE CONTROVERSY. 93 which we can make more cheaply than she can, and give better employment and better wages to our people ; but the flock- master says it is the duty of the government to give him a bounty on his wool, the hemp-grower on his hemp, the coal-owner on his coal, and the manufacturer on his machinery; and by the time all the bounties are paid the cost of the product is so high that it cannot be sold anywhere but at home, and there the home con- sumer is bound to buy, and pay all these costs, or go without. If Congress would remove the duty from all materials that enter into manufacture, then we could buy them on equal terms with the foreigner, and, having advantage of him in the cheapness of our labor, we could soon start all our machinery and operate it in full time, and give full employment and better wages to our workmen. There is no good reason why we should not make and export the largest part of the metal goods tiut are now made in and exported from European shops. With cost )f production brought to the lowest point by removal of all taxes o\ materials going into manufacture, we should soon recover our lost position as carrier of the world's commerce. We should soon see our commercial marine in all parts of the world, and, instead of paying 150 millions to foreigners to carry our commerce we should pay it to our own people, and give employment to thousands of Ameri- cans in our carrying trade. But before we begin the contest with other nations we must get rid of the Pennsylvania idea that it is better to hang a man than make a seaman of him. Mr. Elaine says that in 1860 the population of the United States and Great Britain was about the same, and that our wealth was then fourteen thousand millions and that of Great Britain was twenty-nine thousand millions, and that at the end of twenty years the United States had added nearly thirty thousand millions to her wealth and Great Britain nearly fifteen thousand millions to hers. With a small error in the statement of the wealth of the United States in 1860 he is correct. Our national wealth in 1860 was over sixteen thousand millions, instead of under fourteen, and the gain of the United States in twenty years was twenty- seven thousand millions, instead of thirty. But does that prove that because the United States has commercial restriction, and Great Britain has not, the former has surpassed her rival in the race for wealth ? Let us apply the same test to France. She has commercial restriction, just as we have, and if that is the cause of 94 BOTH STDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. our superior growth over England, it ought to produce the same e.ffect in France. Framv is an older country than Great Britain, is more populous, and has been for years. Great Britain got her artisans from France and the Low Countries during the religious persecutions of the Protestants on the continent, and that was the germ from which her manufactures sprang. And yet in 1882, while France had thirty-seven million people and Great Britain thirty-five million, the wealth of Great Britain was $44,800,000,- 000 and that of France was $40,300,000,000. Germany, another protection country, had forty-five million people and $31,615,- 000,000 of wealth. Both countries older than England and yet both behind her. There is no connection whatever between any of these facts and the issue joined. They are like the differ- ence in the rate of wa^es between the United States and Great Britain. It has bee c claimed by Protectionists that our rate of wages is higher tha? Great Britain's because we have high tariffs and she has not. ')n the other hand, Germany and France have lower rates of wages than Great Britain ; and they have high tariffs, and she has not. Protection seems to be a principle that can work both ways. Instead of claiming our marvellous growth as the logical result of commercial restriction because it has occurred subse- quent to the adoption of that policy, it would be more satis- factory to show how wealth is made and trace it back to that source, if it be the rightful one. How is the dollar, the unit of the vast pile, made ? The answer must be, By labor. That is the producing cause of all wealth. And the largest wealth will be made where labor produces the largest amount of products in a given time. These products will take their largest value where there is the largest demand for their consumption, and that is in the markets where the same articles cannot be produced, or cannot be produced as cheaply, or not in sufficient quantities to supply the demand. Hence the surplus must find its markets away from home, where it is wanted, and not at home, where it is not wanted. At home it has its lowest value, because it is not wanted ; away from home it finds its highest value, because it is wanted. But the person who wants must have the capacity to buy ; this he can only have by having the right to sell and have his surplus conveyed to his customer. This is commerce. Having the right to enter the market where his product is wanted, and to THE GLADSTONE-ELAINE CONTROVERSY. 95 sell it at the highest price he can obtain, he is that much more able to buy and pay for the surplus of others ; and all parties having access to markets where these products are wanted obtain the high- est prices and accumulate the most wealth. Just in the propor- tion that the market is closed and the product driven back upon the producer, just so is the price decreased, and the ratio of accumulation of wealth retarded. This is what protection does. When protection puts taxes upon the goods of the foreigner that prohibit them from coming here, he is rendered less able to take in exchange the surplus which we are ready and anxious to give. He takes less of our wheat, flour, cotton, and provisions; a larger surplus is left in the home market; the demand is decreased; the price falls, and the growth of wealth is retarded. Protection, therefore, has lessened the height of the column, high as it is. Had it not been for restrictions and prohibitions on our trade, it would have been greater. Our enormous growth is due to our rich soil, to our splendid climate, and to the productive efficiency of our farmers; and in manufactures to the great multiplication of machinery and its productive power, and to the genius and skill of our workmen, as well as to the immense mineral wealth which we have, and which we are taking out of the earth and consuming at home and shipping to foreign countries. The superiority of our labor over that of Great Britain may be shown by one item. Mr. Hill, for- merly statistician of the State Department, in an argument before the Tariff Commission in 1882, said that in that year we, with 5,250,000 hands, produced double what Great Britain did with 5,140,000 hands. Gateley's " World's Progress " puts our prod- nct in 1882 at six thousand millions and Great Britain's at four thousand millions. Even that would show that the same number of laborers here produce 50 per cent, more than they do in Great Britain. This accounts for our superior wealth. No people ever have increased or ever will increase in wealth by the help of taxa- tion. No people can increase in wealth by being kept out of market with their products. Taking one dollar out of a man's pocket does not put two in. How can taking a man's money and giving it to another increase his wealth ? Without showing the least connection between his facts and his theory, Mr. Blaine continues to make statements about the growth of the United States and compare it with the growth of 96 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. England. It is somewhat strange that it has not occurred to him to compare his own country with any of those on the Continent whose foreign trade is under the same restrictions. He will find we have excelled them more than we have England. Coining to partic- ulars, he says that English steel rails were delivered in New York in 1862 at $103.44 in gold and in 1864 at $88 per ton, and that up to 1870 English manufacturers held the market ; but what re- duced the price from $103.44 to $88 he does not tell us. It was certainly not our competition, for during the three years prior to 1870 we produced less than tw,enty thousand tons. But in 1870, he says, under the specific duty of $28 per ton, we took the home market and held it until during the last summer the home and the foreign price were substantially the same. He might have made his statement still stronger and said that in 1875, 1876, 1877, and 1878 the prices in the United States were lower than in Great Britain. But does that prove that the high taxes put on the rails have been beneficial to the people of the United States ? For the years prior to 1870 the tax was 45 per cent, and the prices ranged from $106 to $166 per ton ; so that the duty at the lowest was $47. 70 per ton, and on the highest $74. 70 per ton. If it was high duties that developed this industry, why did it not, prior to 1870, reach the point claimed for it in 1889 ? The steel- rail industry is new, and it started in this country soon after it did in England. And as soon as our manufacturers could procure the patents and protect themselves against competition at home, and through the tariff be protected against competition from abroad, they went to work to amass a great fortune. The prices from 1875 to 1878 and the prices given by Mr. Blaine show that we can produce rails as cheaply as they can be produced in Eng- land, and when the demand is dull and prices fall so that Eng- lish rails cannot be imported and pay the heavy duty and be sold, then our manufacturers have the market all to themselves and fix the price according to the demand. When the demand is great and the prices go up, as they did in 1871, '72, and '73, then importation sets in, and the consumer pays the whole amount fixed by the tariff on both foreign and domestic product. Mr. Blaine challenges the statement made by Mr. Cleveland in his message that " while comparatively a few use the imported articles, millions of our people, who never use and never saw any of the foreign products, purchase and use things of the same THE GLADSTONE-ELAINE CONTROVERSY. 97 kind made in this country, and pay therefor nearly or quite the same enhanced price which the duty adds to the imported arti- cles." Mr. Elaine thinks "Mr. Cleveland's argument would have been strengthened if he had given a few examples nay, if he had given one example to sustain his charge." I will do myself the pleasure of strengthening Mr. Cleveland's argument, and will give him for Mr. Cleveland "a few examples" of the accuracy of that statement. I will take steel rails to start with. In 1870 we imported 44,000 tons of steel rails, for which we paid in the for- eign market $52 per ton, and duty at $28. The cost price in our market, duty paid, Avas $78, exclusive of costs of freight, in- surance, commissions, profits, etc. At the same time we produced 34,000 tons; price at home $102.50. In 1872 we imported 105,000 tons, for which we paid in the foreign market $58.17 per ton; duty, $28 per ton; together, $86.17 price laid down in New York, exclusive of freights and other charges. At the same time we produced 83,000 tons at $112 per ton. In 1873 we imported 139,000 tons ; price in foreign country, $64.43 per ton ; duty, $28 ; making $92.43 per ton. At the same time we produced at home 115,000 tons ; home price, $120.50 per ton. In 1880 we imported 612,000 tons of pig-iron, worth in foreign markets $18.84 per ton; duty, $7 per ton ; whole cost delivered in New York, without freight or other charges, $25.84. Eeferring to the price- list of the Iron and Steel Association, we find the average price for that year of pig-iron in Philadelphia was $28.50. In 1881 we imported 295,666 tons of pig iron, for which we paid in the foreign market $20.56 per ton ; $7 duty added made $27.56 delivered in New York. At the same time the average American price was $31.36 per ton. In 1882 we imported 118,062 tons, for which we paid in the foreign market $18.77 per ton ; $7 duty added made $25.77 delivered in New York. The American price for the same time was $31.36 per ton. In each one of these cases the domestic manufacturer sold his product for a price high enough to cover foreign price, tariff, and all other charges added. These "few examples" may be accepted as evidences of the cost to the home consumer of the articles which are dutiable and which are imported. It is no answer to this to say that for many articles chargeable with duty the price here is lower than in foreign countries. When it is, we do not import them. When- ever the price rises high enough to import and sell with duty 98 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. added, then the similar article produced at home gets " nearly or quite the same enhanced price." Tin- steel rails which Mr. Blaine says were worth $35 per ton in England and the same in the United States are not affected by the tariff. When the demand is small and prices are low, our manufacturers fall below the top of the tariff wall and supply them at such prices above cost of production as they can obtain ; but when the demand is great and prices rise, the domestic man- ufacturer uses the tariff to lift his prices $17 per ton higher than the foreign price. Then both the foreign and the domestic rails carry to the consumer the full tariff rates. Mr. Blaine asks if any one believes that steel rails could ever have been furnished as cheaply as English rails except by the steady competition of American producers with the English and among themselves. What competition was there among American manufactur- ers ? It was a monopoly. The manufacturers owned a patent, and there could be no competition. There was no competition against the English manufacturers, for the tariff prohibited them from competing except when prices were so high that the English- man could send his rails here, pay duty and charges, and make profits, though $28 on the ton less than the American manufact- urer was making. He cites another instance of the wisdom of the tariff in build- ing up the carpet trade. He says that in 1860 nearly one-half of the carpets used in the United States were imported, and now out of sixty millions paid annually for carpets less than a million is paid for foreign carpets. And he might truthfully have added, "There was no reason why we should buy any from abroad." The woollen industry ever since 1824 has had a dead body bound on its shoulders in the tax on wool, and it will never show what it is capable of doing until wool and all other materials used in its manufacture are relieved from tariff taxation, and a revenue duty placed upon the finished product. If wool, like cotton, had been free of duty from 1850 to 1860, it would have made the same growth as cotton manufactures; but the 30-per cent, duty on wool greatly restricted the domestic production, and it made but little progress till after the tariff of 1857, when all wool under twenty cents a pound was put on the free list. In the three years between that time and 1860 it made a very consid- erable growth. Mr. Blaine begs the question when he says that THE GLADSTONE-ELAINE CONTROVERSY. 99 carpets are cheaper now than they were thirty years ago. So is everything; but taxing people did not reduce the price, or give the carpet-workers better wages, as he contends. The price of carpets has been reduced by the improved methods of manufact- ure, and the wages of the workman by the increased amount of work he does in a day. Mr. Elaine wants to know what the thousands of laborers em- ployed in steel-rail manufacture would do if the tariff were removed from steel rails ? The answer is ready : they would make steel rails. He himself shows that we can, and, when we have to do so, do, produce steel rails as cheaply as they are produced in England. Now, if the duty were entirely removed, a ton of rails would be very much cheaper ; ther. would bo a much greater demand for them and for the labor that makes them; that increased demand would increase the wages of the men ; there would be more rails made, more railroads built, more men employed, and a reduction in transportation charge... The only change which would be made that would be damaging to anybody would be the reduction in the profits of the manufacturer. Mr. Elaine seems to be elated '- the statement of Mr. Gladstone that we produce cloth and iron iii.^h prices, instead of cereals and cotton at low prices, and he proceeds to thank him profusely in the name of all the friends of high taxes. But it seems to me that the farmer will not become hilarious at the proposition of Mr. Elaine to increase for him the cost of producing his cotton and his grains. The whole progress of our industrial system and its enormous growth have come through decreasing the cost of production by utilizing machinery and other agencies for increas- ing product. If the Western farmer could lower the present cost of producing a bushel of wheat, there would be a greater margin of profit between cost of production u... i market prices. If a Southern fa.-.uer could, by labor-saving machinery or otherwise, reduce the cost of making a bale of cotton one-half below what it is to-day, the South would advance with even greater strides than she is now making. As Mr. Gladstone says, our manufacturers are producing iron and cloth at high prices, and our farmers have to pay that increased cost when they buy and consume these products, and it is an unnecessarily burdensome and exhausting tax upon them. If the tax on coal and ores were taken off, iron could be produced 100 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. cheaper ; if the tax on wool and machinery and dyes were taken off, the cost of producing woollen goods would be reduced ; but, as it is, the price to the consumer is enhanced by these taxes, con- sumption is restricted, and many have to go without who would otherwise be enabled to buy. Mr. Elaine seems to believe in scarcity, and that it would be better for our farmers not to raise so much grain because the foreign market is so filled that the prices are unduly lowered. What else would he have them raise ? Would he have them stop work ? The interest on their debts does not stop running when they stop working. Would it not be better to let the farmers go on working and raise all the wheat they can and send it to foreign markets, where there are now, and always will be, consumers enough to take it all at good prices, if our government will only let us take what they have to give in exchange and what we want and need ? England needs our food products, and when she takes them to the extent that we take from her what she has to give, then she must look to India, Russia, and other countries to make out her supply and take from them products that cost them more to produce than ours cost us. If we examine the Report on For- eign Commerce for 1888, we will see in a table prepared by our Bureau of Statistics that the export price of our wheat for a series of years has been lower than the export price of any other country on the globe. What we want is not to limit the product or to increase the cost of production, as Mr. Elaine seems to think, but to increase the facilities of exchange. An increased recognition of the natural right of our farmers to buy and sell would be the true solution of the difficulty. Mr. Elaine does not controvert the fact, stated by Mr. Glad- stone, that wages have increased in England since the removal of all shackles from her foreign commerce. But he attributes the advance to the emigration of her workmen to the United States. Both causes contributed to it. It is not a little surprising to wit- ness the facility with which Protectionists shift their logic. He has been impressing us all through his very able article with the idea that it was protection that raised wages ; now he says it is demand and supply. Mr. Gladstone used the same argument for free trade which Mr. Elaine had used for protection : in order to parry the blow Mr. Elaine contends that it was not free trade that increased English wages, but scarcity of English labor. It is very THE GLADSTONE-ELAINE CONTROVERSY. 101 gratifying to find Mr. Blaine admitting that wages are regulated by demand and supply, and that when English workmen emi- grated to the United States, the labor supply was reduced, the demand for labor increased, and therefore the rate of wages was increased. Following it up, the immigration here increasing, the supply decreased correspondingly the demand for labor, and re- tarded the increase of the rate of wages. Our rate of wages, just as that in England, is fixed by the amount of demand for work, the number of laborers ready to respond to that demand, and the skill and capacity of the laborer to do the work required by his employer. He is not protected by any tariff imposed on the products of his labor, and cannot be. In common with the great body of the people, he is taxed to put money in the pockets of the man who owns the products, not the muscle or the brain. Protecting his product does not protect him against competition. There are no protective duties on foreign labor. It is on the free list. And so far as our labor is concerned, it has had to contend against free trade from the be- ginning of the government. The tariff protects the thing that labor makes, but that does not belong to him ; it belongs to his employer. There is a tax of seventy-five cents on a ton of bitu- minous coal, but it does not inure to the benefit of the miner ; he gets forty or fifty cents a ton for his work, which he would get without the tariff, just as the anthracite miner does, whose com- peting article comes in free of duty. The tariff benefit goes into the pocket of the owner of the coal, and he may manifest a great deal of zeal for the welfare of his workmen, but he never gives them the seventy-five cents which Congress has imposed on the ton of coal for his benefit. There is a tax on iron ore of seventy- five cents, but the miner only gets from fifty to seventy-five cents per ton for his work, and he never gets the tariff benefits ; they go to the owner of the ore. It is the ore that is protected, not the muscle that digs it. There is a duty of $6.72 on a ton of pig-iron, but the workmen only get from $1.25 to $1.50 per ton for their labor, and that they would get without the tariff, because no one is prohibited from competing with them. The prohibition against competition is only against the pig-iron, and that does not belong to them. The manufacturer gets it and keeps it. There is a duty of $17 on a ton of steel rails, but the laborer only gets from $3.50 to $5, and that he would get without 102 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. any tariff. The $17 goes to the owner of the steel rails, and lie keeps it, and if his workmen can keep their souls and bodies to- gether they will do well. Mr. Blame asks, How can the Free-Trader explain the fact that a great many articles manufactured in the United States find ready and large sale in Canada ? He says that we have to pay the same tariff duties and higher transportation charges to reach the Canadian market, and he appends a long list of manu- factured articles which we export to and sell in Canada in com- petition with English rivals. Before proceeding to answer hia question, I must thank him on behalf of all the tax-ridden people of the United States for admitting away his case. There is not a shred of the web of controversy left. He admits that we can manufacture our goods, pay higher freight charges to foreign markets, and then hold our own against our rivals. If we can do that in the foreign market, we can certainly do it at home, when the foreigner pays all the freight charges to reach us and we pay none. Then what is the use of protective duties on these goods ? No tariff can protect any article against competition at the place where it is produced at the lowest cost, because no arti- cle can compete with it. There can be no importation and, of course, no competition. This admission must have dropped from his pen in " the heat of debate/' His friends will find it in all the roads they travel in the near future. The answer to his question is that we do produce these articles, and many more, more cheaply than they can be produced in any other country or by any other people on the globe. We have got more skilful and more productive labor than any other people. It turns out more and better product in a day than any rival, and while it may receive double the wages of others it does treble the work, and in some cases ten times as much. These articles, it will be noticed, are of that class in which the labor is a large element in the cost, and just as any article becomes further removed from the raw-material condition, just so it becomes further removed from competition. It is our superior labor that gives us pre- cedence, and if we take the tax off the raw material we will add woollens, cottons, iron and steel, and many other kinds of manu- factures to our exports. The only item of woollen manufacture in this class is carpets. They are made of the cheapest wool, bearing the lowest duty. Now, if we can pay this low duty on THE GLADSTONE-ELAINE CONTROVERSY. 103 carpet wools and pay higher transportation charges, and still hold the foreign market, could we not sell more carpets if we could produce them still lower ? And, could we not produce them at a lower cost if the tax on carpet wool were taken off ? And then if the heavy tax were taken off combing and clothing wools, could we not largely increase our exports of woollen goods ? And if we could increase our exports to Canada and hold her markets against our foreign rivals, could we not hold our home markets, when the foreigner would have to pay the cost of reaching us before he could compete ? I hardly know how to express my gratification at having this admission from so distinguished an advocate and so able a de- fender of commercial restriction. With the facts as he states them and they are correct there can be no justification for keeping any taxes on these articles. There may be a reason for it, but it is a reason that cannot be defended. A duty on these goods can only serve the manufacturers in one way. When they form combinations and trusts, and make high rates to sell to our people and low rates to sell to foreigners, there is no way to interfere with them, and they can sell to us at combination prices and to foreigners at competition prices. Many articles are exported and sold to foreigners at lower prices than they are to citizens at home. The tariff is a powerful offender that watches at the gate and guards and protects the robber while he is in the house spoiling the goods of the husbandman. Mr. Elaine contends that protection not only increases the wealth of the protected manufacturer, into whose pocket the in- creased price goes, but the farmer also, out of whose pocket it goes ; and he very triumphantly refers to the census of 1860 and that of 1880 to show that national wealth has been growing all over the Union, in the agricultural States as well as in the manu- facturing States. If he had gone back ten years aud started at 1850, he could have proved the same facts under the free-trade tariffs in existence for the ten years between 1850 and 1860. So the fact of increase alone is not sufficient to determine the rela- tive merits of the two opposing policies. But let us compare the decade from 1850 to 1860 with that from 1860 to 1870 the first under revenue tariffs, the other under protective tariffs. In 1850 the national wealth was $7,136,000, 000; in 1860 it was $16, 160, 000- 000 ; which shows a gain of 126 per cent. a ratio of increase that 104 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. has never been approximated during any decade either before or since the war. In 1825 in the beginning of that period which Mr. Blaine characterizes as one of the most prosperous that the country has ever had the national wealth was $3,273,000,000. In 1832, at the end of that seven years of fatness, the national wealth reached $4,071,000,000. (I quote from the tables of the director of the mint for 1881.) This shows an increase of 25 per cent, in the seven years. Let us now compare the increase dur- ing the first seven years under the free-trade tariff of 1846. In 1846 the national wealth was $6,302,000,000, and in 1853 it was $9,708,000,000, uiiich was an increase of 54 per cent. At the end of the .icxt seven years under the free-trade tariffs of 1846 and 1857 the national wealth was $16,160,000,000, which was an increase ^>f 66 per cent. This was the last of the free- trade era in the United f'ates. Since then we have had thirty years of high tariffs, high taxes, and high obstructions to trade. Leaving 1860, we leave the national wealth accumulating at a rate exceeding 13 per cent, per annum. Now let us compare the growth of national wealth in periods of seven years since the adoption of the protective policy. I take periods of seven years in order to make comparisons with that remarkable period from 1825 to 1832, which Mr. Clay thought then, and Mr. Blaine thinks now, was the most prosperous the country has ever had. In 1867, under the stimulating effect of high duties and restricted trade, the national wealth was $22,- 958,000,000, which was an increase of only 42 per cent., instead of 66 per cent, under the last seven years of free trade. But it may be said that this period embraced the war, with its great destruction of values. Leaving this period out of consideration, let us take the next seven years. In 1874 the national wealth was $32,420,000,000, which was an increase of only 41 per cent, over 1867. In 1880 the national wealth was $43,300,000,000. For the three or four years preceding it was increasing at a ratio less than two billions a year. If we add two billions to the sum of $43,300,000,000, it will make $45,300,000,000 for 1881, the end of the last seven years for which we have any official report ; and that would show an increase of 30 per cent. From these comparisons it would seem that the great American system, like the great American crawfish, was advancing back- wards and carrying the country with it. If these comparisons THE GLADSTONE-BLAINE CONTROVERSY. 105 afford any comfort or encouragement to the advocates of high taxes, I certainly do not envy them while they grow hilarious with the pleasure which their contemplation affords. Mr. Elaine thinks he makes a strong point for protection when he shows that the New England States and,New York and Penn- sylvania (which he calls i -j eight manufacturing States) had in 1860 $5,123,000,000 ci aggregate wealth, and had increased it to $16,228,000,000 iri 1880, which he says is 216 percent. ; but let us go back to 1850 again, and see how they were prospering under free trade from 1850 to 1860. In 1850 these same States had aggre- gate wealth amounting to $2,930,000,000, and in 1860 they had $5,123,000,000, which was an increase of 75 percent. After 1860 they began their career under high protective war duties, and in 1870 had aggregate wealth amounting to $14,350,000,000, which was an increase of 180 per cent, over 1860, or 18 per cent, per annum ! I give it up. Protection did protect the manu- facturers while the government, as well as the people, was buying at high prices to supply the consumption and waste occasioned by a gigantic war. But let us see how they fared after the war was over. In 1880 they had aggregate wealth amounting to $18, 700, 000, 000, or an increase over 1870 of less than 30 per cent., or 3 per cent, per annum. Now that the war is over these manufacturing States would be glad to return to the ratio of increase they enjoyed during the free-trade decade, which was 7 per cent, per annum, instead of 3 per cent, per annum under protection. Next let us compare the growth of the agricultural States named by Mr. Elaine under free trade and protection. In 1850 the States named by him, except Minnesota, Kansas, and Nebraska (which were not States at that time), had aggregate wealth amounting to $990,000,000, and in 1860, under free trade, their wealth amounted to $3,370,000,000. This was an increase at the rate of 240 per cent. Now, from 1860 to 1870, under protection, their wealth had grown to $7,765,000,000, which was an increase of 130 per cent. ; but that is a long way behind 240 per cent., which they made in the free-trade decade. In 1880 the wealth of these same States was $11,650,000,000, which was an increase of 50 per cent. They increased at 24 per cent, per annum under free trade, and 5 per cent, per annum under protection. Let us compare Massachusetts and Illinois, one a manufactur- ing State and the other au agricultural State. Massachusetts 106 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. had in 1850 $88,000,000 invested in manufactures and Illinois had $6,000,000. Massachusetts had $573,000,000 of wealth ; Illinois had $150,000,000. Massachusetts had 994,000 people and Illinois had 851,000 people. In the contest for wealth Massachu- setts had the advantage in population of 143,000 people, of $417,- 000,000 more capital, and fourteen times as much manufactur- ing capacity. With such advantages she ought to have left Illinois out of sight in the race ; but at the end of the contest in 1860 Illinois had caught up with and passed her rival, having accumulated $871,000,000, while Massachusetts had gotten $815,- 000,000. Illinois farmers, unshackled by restrictions on their farm products, had increased her wealth at 457 per cent., and Massachusetts manufacturers had increased hers at 42 per cent. They now start a new race under the fostering care of a protective tariff. This time Illinois starts with the advantage of $56,000,- 000 more money and a half-million more people, but when the contest was ended in 1870, she had a million more people and ten millions less money. Illinois had increased her wealth 143 per cent, under protective tariffs and 457 per cent, under free-trade tariffs, while Massachusetts made 42-per cent, increase under low tariffs and 161-per cent, increase under high tariffs. It seems from this that the protective tariff increased the profits of the manufacturer, but decreased the profits of the farmer. That was its history at the time. Now, with few exceptions, it is decreas ing the profits of both. Mr. Blaine comforts the South by telling them that under protection they have since 1860 increased their wealth 80 per cent., or 4 per cent, per annum. If he will look back to the period between 1850 and 1860, he will see that they gained wealth at a rate exceeding 10 per cent, per annum, instead of 4 per cent, under protective tariffs since then. The taxpayers of the United States, recognizing in the practi- cal results of the protective tariffs the truth of Chief-Justice Marshall's utterance, that a power to tax is a power to destroy, are not very choice in selecting the words with which they char- acterize the few hundred beneficiaries whose arms arc in their pockets up to the shoulders. They have sometimes distinguished these large proprietors by the mediaeval designation of "Robber Barons." When they see the manufacturers of steel rails, by the aid of tariff taxes, taking out of their pockets in twelve years more than $150,000,000, and all the manufacturers of iron and THE GLADSTONE-ELAINE CONTROVERSY. 107 steel in the same time taking over $600,000,000, it is hardly to be supposed that they will use the most delicate terms to convey their ideas. One of these gentlemen, a native of the same country as Mr. Gladstone, has given to the public his opinions as to the best way to expend the large incomes which they enjoy. The idea of plain people is that the pocket of the taxpayer is the best place for them, and the place where they rightfully belong. Mr. Gladstone did not, in his discussion, use offensive words in speaking of the beneficiaries of protection, and Mr. Elaine shows the liveliest appreciation of his delicacy of feeling. Mr. Gladstone is three thousand miles away. He has not been familiar with the results of American protective tariffs for the last thirty years. He has not seen the farmers of England, as we have those of America, brought deeper and deeper in debt year by year and forced to borrow back at high interest the money that was extorted from them by "legislative decrees." He has not seen English manufacturers, as we have seen American manu- facturers, closing down and discharging their laborers because consumers are not able to buy their high-cost goods. In his essay he simply discussed a principle, without characterizing the wrongdoers. If Mr. Elaine could have heard " the Grand Old Man" fifty years ago, when, in the prime of his young manhood, he was supporting Villiers, Huskisson, Bright, Peel, and Cobden when they were assailing the avarice and greed of English land- lords who clamored for the retention of the tax on the bread that fed the mouths of the working men and women of England, he might have caught the sound of an occasional adjective as it fell from Mr. Gladstone's lips. Mr. Elaine must not think that strong language of the kind quoted by him is confined to the plain people of the United States. Sometimes it gets in the mouths of men in high stations. The Supreme Court of the United States, holding their places for life and uninfluenced by the prejudices that sometimes move the multitude, declared from the bench that " to lay with one hand the power of the government on the property of the citizen, and with the other to bestow it upon favored individuals to aid private enterprises, and build up private fortunes, is none the loss a robbery because it is done under the forms of law and is called taxation." Eighty summers have passed ever the head of the great English statesman who has spoken for the emancipation of our 108 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFI QUESTION. labor and our trade. A long life, pure and stainless as the snow that falls on his own highland hills, lies behind him a life that has been accompanied all along its lengthened way by a great in- tellect and a pure heart a life that has been conspicuous for its devotion to the best interests of his own countrymen and of man- kind. The closing years of his life are consecrated to the eman- cipation of Ireland. In this last, noblest, and best work of a long and useful career, let him feel assured that the people of America extend him their heart-felt sympathies, and indulge the fond hope that his days may be lengthened many years; not for the weal of Ireland alone, but for that of England and the world. ROGER Q. MILLS. FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. By the Hon. JUSTIN S. MORRILL. HON. JUSTIN S. MORRILL, HON. JUSTIN SMITH MORRILL is of New England ancestry, and was born April 14, 1810, in the village of Strafford, Orange county, Ver- mont. His earliest years were passed during that stormy period in the nation's history which succeeded the war of 1812, when the commerce and industries of the United States were slowly emerging from the sec- ond conflict with Great Britain. It was an era of intense patriotism and devotion to the principles of Federal government, the birth time of the sentiment, America for the Americans. Like the majority of boys of his day, he received a fair common school education. He was clever, apt to learn, and practical in his ideas and ways. On leaving school he engaged in mercantile pursuits till 1848, when his attention was diverted to agriculture. But he was not destined to remain in the peaceful seclusion which is the farmer's heritage. The attention of the community had been directed toward him as a clever logician, an incorruptible patriot, and he was nominated by the Republican party for Congress, elected to that body by a handsome majority, and served his constituents in that capacity from the third of December, 1855, till the third of March, 1867, having been re-elected no less than five times, a record which speaks eloquently for itself. Space will not admit of more than a casual glance at his work in the House of Representatives, covering as it does a continuous period of twelve years. Through the trying scenes of the Civil War he stood manfully at his post, serving the interests of his country and party with an unalterable devotion. He was the author of the celebrated " Morrill Tariff Bill" of 1861, whose far-reaching provisions and legal acumen were the subject then of as much discussion by the nation at large as is the present revision of the tariff by the Fifty-first Congress. In 1864-5 he acted as Chair- man of the Committee of Ways and Means. In 1866 he published a volume entitled, " Self-Consciousness of Noted Persons," which attracted wide and favorable criticism and secured the writer a place in the first rank of essayists. The people of Vermont, more than satisfied with their representative, sent him to the United States Senate in 1867. Since then he has served continuously in that august assembly, his present term expiring in 1891. 112 HON. JUSTIN S. MORRILL. In the Senate chamber Mr. Merrill is a conspicuous figure. Despite his advancing years his intellect is still as keen, his wit as trenchant, and his pmvrrs of debate as formidable as ever. A strong Protectionist, he never tires in the defence of his favorite theory. " Protection turns out not merely good work," he says, "but the best." To him Free Trade means the ruin of agriculture and manufacturers, the impoverishing of the American workingman, and the endangering of a home market for domestic products. FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION, A CONTINUATION OF THE GLADSTONE-ELAINE CONTROVERSY. BY THE HON. JUSTIN S. MORRILL, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM VERMONT. APOLOGY FOR THIS ARTICLE. ANY extended argument of the Right Honorable W. E. Glad- stone must always afford ample evidence of great ability, as well as wealth of learning, and it would have been presumption on my part to accept the invitation to reply to his recent article in THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW on " Free Trade or Protection," if it were not that "Protection," the easy side of the question, had been allotted to me. It was a further encouragement when I found, upon examining in detail Mr. Gladstone's free-trade argu- mentation, that I could sincerely reciprocate some of his own words, and say, While we listen to a melody presented to us as new, the idea gradually arises in the mind, " I have heard this before," and it has been heard by me so often from our Democratic revenue- reform friends that the refrain, if not a bore, excites neither de- light nor alarm. Remembering, as I do, the masterly speech of Mr. Gladstone when, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he opened the debate on the budget of 1853, and also his later eloquent series of remark- able speeches for three days in the Midlothian eampaign, I can have no feeling but that of the highest respect for one who must be regarded as the foremost living statesman of our mother- country. For this discussion he appears to have formulated a 114 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIfF QUESTION. rule, after the manner of the Marquis of Qneensberry, which I cannot refuse to accept, that "in the aivna of discussion" one must tukr his chance as " a common combatant, entitled to free speech and to fair treatment, but to nothing more." It is my purpose to controvert some share of the free-trade assertions directly, but for the most part by the general scope of my reply, as to copy at length all of the statements to be refuted, and to follow each with a special reply, would cover too much space. Happily, Mr. Gladstone does not sweeten free trade by another name and conceal it by what, in America, has been styled its " varioloid," revenue reform. Mr. Gladstone appears to have had the subject of " Free Trade or Protection " on the anvil ever since he was challenged to its discussion by Mr. McKay pending the Presidential election of 1888. He admits the victory of protection in that election, but strives to convince Americans of their folly. His great ability as an instructor may be admitted, and his teachings in Great Britain, where he has had experience, are deservedly of the highest authority; but in America, where we all regret that he has never set his foot, they are as unworthy of practical application and as much out of place as British laws for the regulation of the gov- ernment of India would be if applied to the Dominion of Canada. THE LOGIC OF FACTS. It will be claimed by me that the logic of facts and results is more worthy of acceptance than any theory, however plausible it may seem to be, and that by this test American protection has long been triumphant ; not arguing that an excess of protection would be beneficial, but in favor of such moderate and healthful discrimination as will protect American industries, from their birth to maturity, against destruction by foreign competition. Protectionists deny that there is any possible scientific system of tariff upon foreign imports which merits and requires univer- sal application. It is a question of practical experience alone as to what may be best at the time for each and every independent nation, to be most intelligently determined by its own legislative authority. Mr. Gladstone assumes, in substance, as Free-Traders gen- erally assume, that free trade, or the let-alone revenue system, which was started in 1846 with the repeal of the Corn Laws, and practically adopted by Great Britain less than thirty FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 115 years ago, is based on scientific truth, natural law, and moral virtue, applicable to all nations and to all times alike, and that any other system is not only false, but wasteful and unchristian. This overlauded economical discovery appears to have been un- known to Bacon and Locke, Newton and Paley, unregarded by a great majority of enlightened Christian nations, and especially unregarded by the British colonies. And yet it seems almost a personal grief to Mr. Gladstone that the United States should be unwilling to accept the beatitudes of free trade, although British interests, as he claims, have prospered, and will prosper, in spite of American adherence to protection. Why not, then, let us alone ? If the whole world were one vast Utopia of communistic brethren, and swords were to be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks, free trade might be the accepted gos- pel of all international intercourse, and the glories of patriotism shunned as a reproach ; but the world is a conglomerate of differ- ent races of men, having discordant ambitions, higher and lower conditions of civilization and wealth, many religious creeds, un- equal physical and mental vigor, and aptitudes and habits as di- verse as color and climate. The idea that there is any econom- ical principle, whether of science, nature, or morals, which should be left to its own course, and that nothing should be done by any people through legislation to change or to elevate and increase their industrial power, is the fetich of British Free-Traders. As well might all social virtues be left unprotected and without leg- islation. As well leave all individuals without the help of educa- tion as to leave the nation without such help. It is nothing less than the old fallacy, " Shoot without taking aim, and you will be sure to hit the mark." Can any friend of Ireland, for instance, after years of close contact with a great free-trade kingdom, and with two-thirds of its productive area abandoned to permanent p;isture, believe that the free-trade policy has been best for Ire- land ? The sublime virtue of having no prejudices in favor of their own country does not seem to have taken root in that part of the United Kingdom. UNDERPAID BRITISH LABOR BENEFITED BY AMERICAN PRO- TECTION. Mr. Gladstone claims that other nations, and above all others the United States, have derived immense benefits through British free-trade legislation. If this should be admitted, as it need not 8 116 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. l>e. why, then, should the United States wish to revolutionize and change its position by a change of its revenue policy ? But, he guys, " We [Great Britain] have not on this ground any merits or any claims whatever. We legislated for our own benefit and are satisfied with the benefits we have received." Other nations are also satisfied that have legislated for their own benefit, though adversely to free trade, as, with the exception of the Britannic Isle, the whole of Europe and America now adheres to the doc- trine of protection. The people of every nation must be allowed to comprehend best what will be for their own benefit, notwith- standing the gracious efforts of British statesmen to promulgate their precepts and expound their virtuous example. Few out- side of Great Britain will care to dispute that free trade may now be her wisest policy, and perhaps a paramount necessity ; nor will any one doubt, were it otherwise, that the policy of free trade, in spite of the moral sublimity now claimed for it, would be swiftly changed, whether the Tory or the Liberal party were in power. British wealth, however, was founded upon the most stubborn measures of protection that the world has ever known, which were only discontinued after they had accomplished their chief and greatest work, the general perfection and supremacy of their manufactures, as protection, with an enterprising people, is de- signed to accomplish. Protection was no longer needed, but cheap bread and cheap wages were the British problem to be solved by free trade. Great Britain formerly not only exacted heavy protective duties from merchandise imported into her home territories, but she pitilessly monopolized both the export and import trade of her numerous colonies, drawing sustenance from the bosoms of her own daughters, from which the fortunes and titles of many great families were created and the mercantile power of the kingdom established. These colonies are now far more prosper- ous under their own protective policy, but the mother-country continues to be largely their creditor, and still profits by a large share of their trade. After nearly 400 years of the most unexampled protection, Great Britain acquired the command of capital, machinery, steam power, and of long-trained labor, including even that of children, by which to compete successfully in the chief markets for the trade of the world. Her labor during the long season of protec- FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 117 tion, though never sinking to the level of the Continent, had long been underpaid, by direct act of Parliament until 1813, and un- derpaid to this day by class domination. It may be true that the wages of British workmen have advanced in the progress of the age even under the system of free trade, not post hoc, ergopropter hoc, but because their best workmen have had a whip in their own hands, and for $20 have had the power in one week to transplant themselves to America, where they could be better fed, better clothed, better educated, and better housed, or where, with fewer hours of labor, they could add from 50 to 100 per cent, to their wages. American competition has thus compelled an increase of free-trade wages, which must be conceded, or their best men would desert the manufacturers, and the latter, it should be confessed, do not seem to be grateful to the American promoters of such good works. It follows that the British workmen have derived and still derive an immense benefit from the system of American protec- tion. We claim no merit for this because we also " have legislated for our own benefit and are satisfied with the benefits we have received. " The number of British im- migrants to the United States, for the year ending Decem- ber 31, 1888, was 171,141, more being from England than from any other part of the kingdom, and a large proportion being mechanics and skilled workmen. This does not include the many thousands arriving through the back door of Canada, of whom no account is made. This ceaseless flow of British immigrants supplies a multitude of potential reasons why wages in England "have become both generally and absolutely higher, and greatly higher, under free trade/' Mr. McKay may not have been entirely accurate as to the wages paid in Wigan, though there is unlimited proof on the general subject of the great disparity of British wages when compared with American ; but the living testimony of these thousands of British immi- grants is an incontestable support of the American contention of protection against all theories. Workmen in Great Britain, when out of employment, are said to have no resource but the workhouse, but American workmen generally own their own houses, take their own newspapers, and have money in savings-banks. The increase in wages under pro- tection enormously increases the power of consumption by wage- 118 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. earners and by their families, while free trade only increases th luxuries of the rich, and the common people find them beyoni their reach. Slavery in America, not caring for the wages of labor, lonj wedded many Southern States to free trade, but, having partei from slavery, they are uo\v fast finding reasons for a divorce fror free trade. Free trade does not even profess regard for the wages of arti sans, and is based wholly on the idea of supplying the demands o the consumer at the lowest cost. How the armies which delve i mines and work in mills and factories are fed and housed, edr cated and paid, does not concern the " dismal science " of Free Traders if only they can be cheaply paid. They start in the rac by challenging the competition of the lowest-paid laborers of a" the world. That wages under free trade, in such a race, can b equal to wages under protection is glaringly preposterous. Mr. Gladstone asserts that " in your protected trades profit are hard pressed by wages." The fair inference is reversing th proposition that profits of capital are not hard pressed by wage under free trade. In other words, wages must be hard pressed b free trade, and this is painfully exhibited by the present abound ing strikes of British workmen. Mr. Gladstone gives Mr. Giffen as authority on British wages and claims that from 1833 to 1883 the wages paid on exportabl manufactures of Bradford and Huddersfield have advanced 2 and 30 per cent. Why go back so far when the complete enjoj ment of free trade is only claimed for less than thirty years ? 1 would possibly be more fair to assume that much of the ad vane claimed may have occurred long before the era of free trade. I America we go back no further than 1860 to claim an advance c more than double the amount specified in the wages of laborers both in factories and on farms. But, as Mr. Gladstone does nc insist that wages are not higher in America under protection tha in Great Britain under free trade, it would seem superfluous t offer statistical proofs of the wide difference known to exist, an with which the public on both sides of the Atlantic are not altc gether unfamiliar. One fresh illustration of the difference, ho\i ever, may not be inopportune. The late great wage-strike of th London dockmen was made to obtain an increase of one penn per hour, 6d. (12 cents), instead of 5d. (10 cents), per hour,- FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 119 and the increase of one penny per hour has been reckoned as a crowning victory. But the 'longshoremen, employed in the same kind of work on the docks of New York, are paid 30 cents an hour for day, and 40 cents an hour for night, work. Twelve cents an hour was stoutly resisted in free-trade London, while 250-per cent, higher wages still prevail under protection in New York. PROTECTION PUTS THE CHIEF BURDEN ON THE FOREIGNER. Protectionists claim, as Bismarck claims, that protection puts the chief burden upon the foreigner, who is compelled to pay the duty or give an equivalent by reducing the price of his products. They also claim that, in the long run, the consumers supply their wants at less cost than would be possible without protected home competition. For example, years ago moquette carpets brought $5 to $6 per yard, but under protection, and owing to a loom invented by an American, they are now sold at $1.50 per yard and sometimes for less. Bessemer steel rails in 1867 brought $166 per ton, but with a protective duty the price in 1885 was only $28.50 per ton, and $27.50 in 1888. From 1867 to 1888 there were made in tho United States 15,803,011 tons of steel rails, and 1,256,857 tons were imported. This new industry gives employment to many thousands of people, and presents only a single example of many showing the creation, as well as the increase, of the wage fund by protection. American railroads unquestionably obtained their steel rails in the aggregate at far less cost than would have been possible even with free rails and dependence upon foreign supply and foreign prices. When the American demand in 1872 exceeded the home supply, the British price at once was advanced from 230 shillings per ton to 350 shillings, and again in 1880 the British price was for the same reason advanced from 170 shillings per ton to 200. This shows how merciless would be the greed of foreigners were our manufactures suspended for lack of protection. HOME MANUFACTURES SAVE MUCH OF THE COST OF TRANSPORTA- TION AND DISTRIBUTION. Home manufactures planted in every State alongside of the farmer largely save in distribution the heavy cost and waste of long transportation. Foreign merchandise landed at some sea- port must be distributed at great expense across the whole coun- try, and exports of grain must be freighted from the remotest interior States to seaports and then across the Atlantic. Both of 120 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. these outlays are either wholly avoided or greatly reduced by tne presence of home manufactures, which are sold (their value being well known) by the wholesale, as well as the retail, dealer for a much smaller commission than are foreign goods, of the cost and merit of which the public are ignorant. The immediate proximity to farmers of manufactures is an ad- vantage so great that the holdings of farmers, in every locality of America where such proximity exists, can readily be sold for more than 50 per cent, above the price of land where manufactures have not been established, and annually yield a much larger income. Americans prefer to make a home market for all of their agricultural products, and not to depend upon uncertain and elusive foreign markets. Every ship-load of wheat or corn ex- ported not only impoverishes the fertility of the land whence it was taken, but tends to reduce both the price abroad and at home. Free trade in America would cripple, perhaps ruin, both agricult- ure and manufactures, and protection is accorded to both ; for here it is applied to both, and tends not only to shield them from harm, but has operated to increase the wages of agricultural labor equally with the wages of employees in manufactures, which shows that any pretence about unprotected labor is wholly false and intended by American Free-Traders only to deceive. We have no class legislation, and protection protects one-half of the population no more than the other; wool as well as cloth. All of our people are now free to labor where they choose, where they can earn the most and receive the highest reward; and the man who to-day works on the farm may to-morrow, if he pleases, find employment in the mine, mill, or factory, and obtain the customary wages awarded to like skill and service. PROTECTION PRODUCES THE BEST WORK. Protection turns out not merely good work, but the best. Local competition always pushes the best to the front. American locomotives are received in Australia, New Zealand, South Amer- ica, and elsewhere, as equal to any in the world, and as cheap. Some British manufacturers and traders stamp their cotton goods with American trade-marks because similar American goods, wherever known, fetch the highest price. House-furnishing and saddlery hardware, locks, joiners' tools, watches, silverware, jew- elry, paper of all kinds, and many other articles of American FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 121 manufacture are often both superior to and cheaper than similar articles produced abroad. Our agricultural implements are recog- nized everywhere as the best inventions of the age. American sewing-machines and carriages easily take the lead of foreign fashions and foreign makes. When Mr. Gladstone presented to his forester an axe, he did not seek for one of English make, but found the best and prese-nted one of American make. Mr. Gladstone declares that under high duties they had the " worst corks in Europe." This was deplorable, but if they had only adopted the American remedy of the Maine law, they would not even have had " To stop for one bad cork the butler's pay," as the demand for corks would suddenly have been estopped. On our part, it is remembered that, prior to the development of home manufactures, America was forced to accept such sorry foreign goods as were offered, and here was the great dumping-place for inferior and Brummagem articles, which, like Pindar's razors, were " made only to sell." Protection has brought relief from such imposition Mr. Gladstone would be humorous, and endeavors to plunge the advocates of protection into the mire of a reductio ad absur- dum by saying : "If the proper object for the legislator is to keep and employ in his country the greatest possible amount of capital, then the British Parliament (exempli gratia) ought to protect not only wheat, but pineapples." This tropical illustration, though dimmed by age and long service, shows that Free-Traders claim not only a monopoly of trade, but of common-sense. The pineapple argument may be dismissed as too far-fetched. But Mr. Gladstone appears fond of extremes aud pursues the subject by adding the following : "If protection be, as its champions (or victims) hold, in itself an economical good, then it holds in the sphere of production the same place as belongs to truth in the sphere of philosophy, or to virtue in the sphere of morals. In this case, you can not have too much of it; so that, while mere protection is economical good In em- bryo, such good finds its full development only in the prohibition of foreign trade " It may be observed, " in the sphere of philosophy," that in the case of fire, water, and air, though all are useful servants, no one would say of either, "Yon cannot have too much of it." The supporters of American protection, on their guard against all 122 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. suicidal extremes, propose to reduce, as they have reduced pro- tective legislation, wherever and whenever the prosperity of their countrymen requires it, and are in no danger of being burned or drowned by protection, though they cannot escape an occasional gust of free trade from the trade-winds across the Atlantic. Evidently Mr. Gladstone would enforce the reverse of his proposition, or that "you cannot have too much of" free trade ; doubtless feeling that other nations cannot have too much of it to suit Great Britain. If free trade is one of the moral virtues, however, as seems to be claimed, is it not rather reckless, " in the sphere of morals," to disregard the wisdom of classic ages handed down by the axiom, In medio tutissimus ibis ? In their hard- pressed corn, iron, cotton, and silk industries, are there not many Englishmen ready to say of free trade, " Good Lord, deliver us !"? FREE TRADE AMONG THE STATES. Certainly Mr. Gladstone has a fondness for the logic of ex- treme cases, and he asks, in relation to the greater profit in keep- ing labor and capital at home, this question : " But if this really is so, if there be this inborn fertility in the principle itself, why are the several States of the Union precluded from applying it within their own re- spective borders I " If this were asked with the expectation of serious consideration, it might be answered that local tariffs between the States would not only be inexpedient, but impossible to enforce, and they are properly superseded by the far better protection afforded by the general government. As a nation, we are one great family, or, as he calls us, " a world, and not a very little world," where each one of the members contributes to the general welfare, where free trade has a special and exceptional domain for its proper develop- ment, and where its results are beneficent. As dependencies of Great Britain, we were annually robbed and had no protection, and therefore declared our independence. It was a great point through the union then established to escape local State tariffs, and national protection was secured in our very earliest legislative acts. It may not be impertinent now to offer aKoland for an Oliver, and to inquire, if there be inborn fertility in the principle of free trade, why it is not beneficently applied to the several large nd populous colonies of Great Britain by the omnipotence of the FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 123 British Parliament. Surely a measure of this transcendent im- portance, which keeps her legislators constantly awake looking with anxious pity after the fiscal and moral interests of the United States, should not permit them to sleep when it equally concerns (to borrow Mr. Gladstone's phrases) the ivaste, robbery, and imposition that are so rampant in British colonies and de- pendencies embracing one-seventh of the land surface of the globe and nearly one-fourth of its population. ' ' Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" Is it possible that Mr. Gladstone should have been unmindful of these great possessions virgin fields for the planting of unadulterated free trade when he penned the following eloquent sentence? "Ther opens before the thinking mind when this supreme question is propounded a vista so transcending all ordinary limitation as requires an almost preterhuman force and expansion of the mental eye in order to embrace it." America won the battle for the colonists in 1776, when they were not suffered by Great Britain to work in the more refined manufactures even for their own consumption. The erection of steel furnaces and slitmills in any of her American plantations was prohibited. The exportation from one province to another by water, or even the carriage by land upon horseback or in a cart, of hats, wool, and woollen goods of the produce of America, was also wholly prohibited. "We have changed all that. PRIMACY. Mr. Gladstone is pleased to say " that in international transactions the British nation for the present enjoys a com- mercial primacy; that no country in the world shows any capacity to wrest it from us, except it be America; that, if America shall frankly adopt and steadily maintain a system of free trade, she will by degrees, perhaps not slow degrees, outstrip us in the race, and will probably take the place which at present belongs to us; but that she will not injure us by the operation." When all the great markets of the world are drying up as to im- ports of manufactures, and are being supplied by their own home products, how is it possible that the United States would not, as a rival, injure British trade by coming to the front and taking the place and primacy which at present belong to Great Britain ? Their government is making ambitious efforts in every quarter of the globe to obtain an increase of its foreign trade, and, if that is now diminishing, or insufficient for one, how can it be enough for two, or for both England and America ? 124 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. Of course Mr. Gladstone is sincere. He is among the first, if not the foremost, of loyal Englishmen, and could not be induced to advocate any measure that would not benefit his own country. He sees that free trade with America would offer a prodigious market for British manufactures, and that absorbing advantage hides everything beyond. But it will not be forgotten that the leaders of Great Britain, he proudly eminent among them,* not very long since were quite willing that such primacy as we then alone enjoyed on the American continent should be nullified and overthrown, and for their unlawful aid in that direction made an atonement of $15,000,000. But Mr. Gladstone plainly and bluntly builds all of his castles- in-the-air relating to our primacy upon our producing more wheat, corn, cotton, and mineral oils for foreign export, and says that we should not invest " in mills or factories to produce yarn or cloth which we could obtain more cheaply from abroad." It follows that he would have the primacy wholly restricted to agricultural exports, and is oblivious of the fact while his own country fur- nishes a very limited and about the only foreign market that our present exports of these products operate adversely upon our agricultural interests, and that the policy of American protection is vigorously maintained in order to create a larger body of con- sumers at home and to give to agriculture higher rewards. Why should not America have its own home market ? Surely nature is not against it, morality is not against it, and if free-trade science is against it, so much the worse for the science. We must make the market we do not and cannot elsewhere find. We have found that often less has been obtained for a very large export of cotton than for a medium or smaller one, showing that an excess- ive crop pays the least profit. Some of our Western States have also found the largest crop of corn most valuable as their cheapest fuel, and the wheat crop in some of our territories, like that of the apple elsewhere, when very large, pays little more than for the harvesting. Beyond this, Russia, Egypt, India, and other countries leave us to supply only a pitiful share of any deficiency of European * Mr. Gladstone was a Southern sympathizer, and in the Roebuck dehate on the recognition rf the Southern Confederacy said : "It is not, therefore, from indiffer- enceit ia not any adequate or worthy object on the part of the North that I would venture to deprecate in the strongest terms the adoption of the motion of the honor- able and learned gentleman." FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 125 food crops, and that at the minimum prices. South America, and our great American desert, improved by irrigation, may also soon prove the marvels of che age in the production of food crops. An increase of the supply from any quarter would instantly de- press foreign prices, leaving for American exports losses instead of profits ; and our farming interests, with increased crops and without an increase of consumers, would sink to the level of those now so greatly depressed in Great Britain. Again, if, as sug- gested, we were no longer to protect and support home manu- factures, or investments in "mills and factories," but put our home market of 95 per cent, in limbo, or the paradise of fools, in order to increase the 5 per cent, (not including cotton) which we occasionally have of such exports, how long would it be before the prices of the products of foreign " mills and factories " would mount far above the present current rates in America ? Our manufactures, outside of household industries, amounted in 1880 to $5,369,579,191, and it is estimated will reach $7,000,000,000 in 1890. Were we to surrender this unmatched field to free trade, the immense capital invested must be largely sacrificed, and thou- sands of laborers turned adrift, "the world all before them where to choose." Europeans, with their "discontent Made glorious summer," would rush to fill the void with their products, upon their own terms, and for them a new world would have been discovered by free trade. Purchasers of home products are sure to retain capital for the wage fund of laborers in their own country and keep it in circu- lation; but when purchases are made abroad, the capital goes to a bourn whence it never returns. The increment of capital employed in British manufactures is apparently becoming unsatisfactory and doubtful. If this were not so, why are there so many millions of British capital at the present moment fleeing from their free-trade home and running to and fro in America as supplicants for any random employment? Evidently the wage fund for English workmen would appear to be unstable and on the wing. As to the charge of waste in practical protection, it would be equally just to charge the blessings of the falling rain and the heat of the summer sun with undue waste. It will be sufficient 126 BOTH SIDES OF TltE TARIFF QUESTION for an American to point to the fact that the United States shice 1860, notwithstanding the boundless losses of both North and South in the late war, has much more than doubled its wealth and population, and since 1865 has reduced its public debt by the large sum of $1,693,426,676, so that our yearly interest charge per capita was in 1888 only 63 cents, while that of Great Britain was $3.75 per capita, or nearly six times as much. When any equal prosperity shall be visible among the people of Great Britain, it may be proper to meditate on the felicities of free trade. In this debt-paying race for the primacy, the British are just now only in sight, and Americans are not hard pressed by any rivals. Free trade miserably fails to offer remunerative employment or any vitality to the forces of the great mass of the people, and the waste of latent power is enormous. The division of the British population according to occupation, as set forth in their own statistical publications of 1889, was : Agricultural and industrial 10,818,206 Indefinite, unoccupied, and non-productive 19,703,745 Is not free trade responsible for this extraordinary excess of the non-productive population? These plethoric millions of mere drones surely cannot all be justly charged to the aristocracy. THE HINDER PARTS OF BRITISH FREE TRADE. It will be proper to inquire, What is the practical system of British free trade, which Americans are so urgently pressed by British statesmen, and by others who are not statesmen, to adopt? It may have worked well or ill for Great Britain ; but what is there about it that should lead Americans to renounce the legis- lative precedents and the wisdom of their fathers, and to abandon the highway of their past and present matchless prosperity in order to follow a later-born experiment of our foremost rival in commerce and manufactures? " I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts." To answer the question, we are limited to a survey of the sol- itary British example, for n-- other nation treats free trade as any- thing better than a delusion and a snare. Free trade opens in Great Britain by levying a tariff duty on imported manufactured tobacco of 84 cents to 92 cents per pound ; on unmanufactured tobacco, 104 to 116 cents per pound ; on cigars, $1.32 per pound; FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 127 on tea, 12 cents per pound ; on coffee, 3 cents per pound if ground or prepared, 4 cents per pound ; on cocoa, raw, 2 cents per pound if manufactured, 4 cents per pound. Among other items subject to duty are currants, figs, raisins, plums, prunes, soap, pickles, varnish, wine, gin, and all other spirits. These duties, it will be observed, bear heavily upon laboring people, who consume not less than 90 per cent, of the articles from which the largest part of British tariff revenue is obtained. The so-called revenue duty on tobacco, supplied from America, amounts to at least 1,500 per cent. The duty on tea and coffee is the same upon the lowest grade as upon the highest and choicest varieties. The free-trade idea is to place duties on articles not produced at home, instead of on such as are or ought to be produced there, and is the reverse of the American idea. But this model free-trade tariff failed to yield (in 1888) more than $98,150,000 of revenue, being only a little more than one- quarter part of the sum ($378,300,000) required for the ordinary support of the British Government, and our British friends are compelled annually to exhaust all the resources of extreme taxa- tion to cover the enormous deficiency of thrice as much more. This dismal but inexorable sequence of the free-trade system has been in America studiously kept out of sight, where it forever should be, except in the emergency of a great war, and it will be enough now to catalogue its many sore titles. Supplemental to British free trade, and inseparable from it, will be found the fol- lowing : A land and house tax, paid by occupiers as well as by owners ; a tax on legacies and successions ; a stamp tax on bills of exchange, receipts, and patents ; a tax on carriages, horses, man-servants, guns, and dogs ; an excise on gin and all other spirits; and a tax on incomes. The woes of our rebellion gave us all the experience in this sad line of taxation we shall ever covet. Only a nation struggling to preserve its existence, or to protect its people from famine and sudden death, would be willing to toler- ate so many Briarean arms clutching at the pockets of the people. This onerous system of taxation is made necessary by free trade, and by the ponderous British public debt. The public debt of the United States, less cash in the treasury, is $1,063,- 004.894, while in 1888 the debt of Great Britain, with about half as much population, was 705,575,073, or $3,527,875,365 almost three and a half times that of the United States. BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. Revenue for the support of government must be had, but the British system presents its revolutionary odium, and Americans have lost nothing of their ancient repugnance for stamp and ex- cise taxes. The United States, however, is paying off its public debt upon the canter, and raises its revenue by duties on imports, scarcely felt by taxpayers, but which are a great encouragement to home industries, and so levied that the foreign producer must pay for his entrance to our market. Pedlers are made to pay a license to sell their " truck" by each and every State ; and why should not the foreigner, exempt from all local taxes, who seeks to sell his products not merely in one State, but throughout the whole Union, be required to pay for the privilege ? Great Britain has an annual deficiency of food products, and it seems necessary to obtain a foreign supply for more than one- half of her people. Without the command of the sea for trans- portation this supply might be cut off ; and, to obtain means of purchasing it, it is also necessary to export manufactures and undersell all competitors in foreign markets, or her people must go without their daily food. Free trade appeared to nourish until it encountered too many protective tariffs of other nations, now universal, and unlikely to be abolished. They are Gibraltars that everywhere frown upon those who are plotting to supersede and destroy the home indus- tries of other people. British Free-Traders have found it hard to kick against such pricks, and now beg the help of America. "No other country," Mr. Gladstone says of America, "has the same free choice of industrial pursuits, the same option to lay hold not on the good merely, but on the best." And yet this free choice, which gives to our people the control of all their natural forces, he would now limit, and give no option of mills and factories. America does not thrust its industrial theories upon Great Britain, and will be happy whether protection or free trade shall prevail there. The large subsidies that are paid to British ships for carrying foreign mails far transcend what that service might be obtained for if free trade were allowed with foreign competitors, and the annual sums also paid to large and fast-going steamers, to be utilized first for trade and second for war purposes when needed, furnish examples in the highest fields of protection ; and we only lament and criticise our own short- comings in the same service. FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 129 MORE CHAPTERS OF GLORY THAN OF SHAME. Notwithstanding our ancient family difficulties, Great Britain must be credited with more chapters of glory than of shame, and America is now more firmly and tenderly attached to her people than to those of any other nation, and should be claimed as their best and most powerful friend, more especially since Great Britain seems to be step by step Americanized by the extension of the right of suffrage. Still we are now asked, in substance, to plod contentedly with hand labor, to raise corn and pasture herds, to dismiss our artisans, and forego machinery and all the forces of steam-engines, without which no nation, either in peace or war, can hope to be great or even independent. The selfishness of those who merely seek an extension of British trade may ask for this, but not those who more prize American power and American fraternity. In Europe, Great Britain, if not misrepresented, has no-allies, and, among all first-class powers, not one earnest friend. Would it not be a blunder for even British Free-Traders to pro- mote our acceptance of a policy that would be sure to reduce the United States to the rank of a second-rate power ? Mr. Gladstone bestows lofty praise upon the unrivalled strength of our country by an eloquent recital of the American advan- tages over all nations, of our immense territory where there is nothing that the soil would refuse to yield, the rare excellence of the climate, the vast extent of coal and other mineral resources, the inventive faculty of the people surpassing all the world, and sums up as follows : " I suppose there Is no other country of the whole earth In which, if we combine to- gether th surface and that which is below the surface, Nature has been so bountiful to man. The mineral resources of our Britannic Isle have, without question, prinoi pally contributed to its commercial preeminence. But when we match them wit) those of America, it is Lilliput against Brobdingnag." Yet in the face of all this, with a continent instead of an island, with twice the population of Great Britain, and with more of the natural aptitudes for the widest fields of manufactures than car be claimed even for the people from whom we sprang, Mr. Glad- stone would place " the most inventive nation in the world" in subservience to British free trade, and confine the American peo- ple to the production of cotton, corn, meats, and mineral oils, and have them abandon more millions of manufactures than are annually produced by Great Britain herself, and sink all ambition* 130 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. for the protection of any products "we could obtain more cheaply from abroad." The anti-climax of the argument is rather conspicuous, and the American people will be in no mood to trail with a "broken wing" their ambition in the dust, and will sur- render neither their manhood nor the bountiful gifts of nature. MORAL ASPECTS OF FREE TRADE. After all the economical arguments against protection appear to have been concluded, but not without some misgivings as to their efficiency, Mr. Gladstone summons to his aid for the final assault all the terrors of denunciation. He cannot finish what he calls his " indictment against protection" until he has anathe- matized it as " morally as well as economically bad" not that all Protectionists are bad, but that the system tends to harden all " into positive selfishness." This is an indictment with which all nations are graciously covered except the British, and the British may stand up and thank God that they " are not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publi- can." The world, however, will be slow to believe that free trade was adopted, or is now upheld, for any other reason than its supposed advantages, not to moral, but to British material and trading, interests. If any nation has exhibited more of purely financial selfishness than embroiders the history of some British administrations, it has not been recorded. This part of the indictment against protection is as gratuitous as it would be to say that not all Free-Traders are liars, but the system tends to harden all into positive falsification. Though we might highly appreciate the good opinion of Mr. Gladstone, he leaves us in no doubt that it cannot be won unless we "frankly adopt and stead- ily maintain a system of free trade." We must, however, frankly and steadily maintain that the terms are too exorbitant. In his pathetic exhortation to Americans on the selfishness and moral aspects of the question, urging Protectionists to be good as well as great, Mr. Gladstone forgets that he and his countrymen are not entirely without sin, and may not, therefore, cast the first stone across the Atlantic even to hit Americans. But others have not forgotten that free trade was begotten by greed for the trade of the world, that it was the British war power which forced, and continues to force, the opium trade upon China, by which the Indian government obtains an annual income of near forty million FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. 131 dollars; that the religion of Great Britain, politically established, may have something too much of perfunctory support through the union of church and state; that its laws of primogeniture were ordained to make the first-born rich and all the re?t of the family poor; and that the soil of the United Kingdom is in fewer hands than that of any other country in Europe. To refute the charge against protection of a tendency to selfish- ness and lack of morality, American Protectionists may, with more pleasure than is afforded by showing that Free-Traders occupy a glass house, turn the light on all their past history, and offer the evidence of the equality of their laws and citizenship, the uprooting of the inherited laws of primogeniture, the uni- versal education through common schools, the liberal and spon- taneous support of Christian churches, the extinction of human slavery originally planted by the mother-country, the free home- steads to the landless, the disbandment of our vast armies at the close of the late war, and their prompt return to the peaceful pur- suits of life, the national magnanimity exhibited after victory over rebellion, the payment of our public debt even before it is due, the liberal pensions to those who have suffered in patriotic service (perhaps annually exceeding for like services all British appropriations for the last century), the higher dignity and respect accorded to women, the paternal care of the poor, as well as of the insane, the blind, and deaf-mutes, and the general absence of all beggars. We appeal finally from Mr. Gladstone to Mr. James Bryce, the author of " The American Commonwealth/' whose work has already placed him in the rank of Gibbon, Motley, and de Tocque- ville. Unlike Mr. Gladstone, except that he is also a member of the British Parliament, he is not a partisan, and has devoted years to the study of the United States and its people, visiting every State of the Union for the sole purpose of impartiality and historic veracity. That Mr. Bryce is competent authority on ques- tions of the morals and selfishness of Americans, none will dis- pute. Setting forth American characteristics, he says : "They are a moral and well-conducted people." "The average of temperance, chastity, truthfulness, and general probity is some- what higher than in any of the great nations of Europe." "Nowhere are so many philanthropic and reformatory agencies at work." (Volume II., parses 247 and 248.) " In works of active beneficence no country has surpassed, perhaps none has equalled, tho Inited Statc%" 132 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. Mr. Bryce concludes his great work in the following pregnant words : " America has still a long rista of years stretching before her in which she will enjoy conditions more auspicious than England can count upon. And that America marks the highest level, not only of material woll-being, but of intelligence and happiness, which the race has yet attained, will bo the judgment of those who look not at the favored few for whose benefit the world seems hitherto to have framed it institutions, tut it the whole body of the people." JUSTIN S. MORRILL. FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION. By the Hon. W. C. P. BRECKINRIDGE. HON. W. C. P. BRECKINRIDGE. FEW names rank higher in the history of Kentucky than that of Breckinridge. Whether administering justice from the bench of a court of law, engaged in the discussion of some knotty religious problem from the rostrum of a churcM, wielding the sword on the battlefield, or the pen that mightier weapon in an editor's chair, the family.shine as illustri- ous examples in all walks of life, and are justly entitled to the honors that have been heaped upon them by their native State. "William Campbell Preston Breckinridge, one of this noted race, although his life lias been almost wholly passed in the Blue Grass sec- tion, was born on August 28, 1837, in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. He was the son of the Rev. Robert Jefferson Breckinridge, a divine of most excellent attainments, deeply read in the science of law and theology, an eminent author, and a patriotic citizen. An ardent student, young Breckinridge applied himself to his books with such zeal that at the age of eighteen he graduated from Centre Col- lege, Danville, Kentucky. Intensely Southern in feeling, a firm believer in the doctrine of State rights, at the outbreak of the Civil War he espoused, most naturally, the Confederate cause. Entering the army in 1861 as a captain, he passed through the various hardships of a soldier's life, becoming, later on, the colonel of the Ninth Kentucky Cavalry, a corps of men whose skill and daring were known alike to friend and foe. As their leader Colonel Breckinridge attained an enviable prestige, and when, succumbing to an overwhelming superiority of numbers, the band surrendered to the Union army and so passed out of existence, its officers and men left a brilliant record of valor an.\. rut upon foreign supplies for articles essential to its preservation. This is a fast country, and we expect much to be accomplished in thirty years ; and we ask if this long period is not quite sufficient to develop manufactures to their utmost possible efficiency. Is it an easy matter, then, to introduce and establish in a new country :m important branch of industry ? What has been our experi- ence ? We will take the vital article of steel. When the duty upon steel was raised to a point which tempted capital to engage in the experiment of making crucible steel in this country, Mr. James Park, of Pittsburg, became the pioneer in the experi- ment. His repeated trips to Europe to secure skilled workmen, the enormous prices which he had to pay to induce them to leave their homes, and the grave financial arid other difficulties which he encountered and surmounted, render the life of this man memorable. Even after he had succeeded in making good steel, it was years before he could induce consumers to fairly try the home-made article. The effort to introduce Bessemer steel in the United States is nothing but a record of disaster for many years. The first attempt at Milwaukee ruined the pioneers. The works at Troy were sold for not many more hundreds of thousands of dollars than millions had been spent upon them. The Freedom Iron Company, of Pennsylvania, bankrupted itself in trying to in- troduce the process. The Vulcan steel rail mills, at St. Louis, were twice sold by the sheriff. The steel -rail works at Joliet were also sold by the same official. The Pennsylvania Steel Com- pany became embarrassed, but fortunately received aid to the extent of $600,000 from the Pennsylvania Eailroad Company. Even the great Bethlehem Steel Company had to mortgage its plant. These efforts began in 1860, and all took place previous to the year 1873. It was not until that year that there was made as much as one hundred thousand tons of steel in all this country. Up to 1881 there never was a year during which the United States made a million tons. In that year the industry can be said to have taken firm root. The Bessemer-steel manufacture was, therefore, successfully introduced only after many years of effort and after millions of dollars had been lost. Now, this was only nine years ago. How has the rate of duty kept pace with this development ? By successive reductions 40 per cent, of that upon rails has already been taken off, and the bill now pending SUMMING UP THE TARIFF DISCUSSION. 207 in Congress fixes the future duty at something less than one-half of the original duty imposed. Thus do we march through temporary shielding and protective care to such development as enables duties to be lessened from time to time. Let us take another instance, a very important one, that of plate glass, in which the nation has made its most triumphant industrial success in recent years. It is twenty-one years since its manufacture was begun upon a small scale in this country. In New Albany, Ind., several hundreds of thousands of dollars were sunk in the experiment, which failed. A second attempt at Crystal City, Mo., ended in a final sale of the plant to St. Louis capitalists. AVorks were built in Louisville, Ky., in 1872, and in Jefferson, Ind., in 1875, but both proved failures financially. During all these years, from 1869 to 1875, there was nothing but failure for the pioneers, although glass then sold as high as $2.50 per square foot. A reduction of the tariff upon plate glass at this point must have indefinitely postponed future attempts. Fortunately, the tariff was not disturbed. The price still seemed tempting, and in 1882, ten years after the first trial, the Pittsburg Plate-Glass Works were erected. Success came at last. It is only through such struggles as these that a new branch of manufacturing is successfully established in a new country. To-day there are eight companies making plate glass in the United States, and the total production of last year amounted to something over nine millions of square feet. The importations were nearly six millions of square feet in 1888. Thus protection in America means some- thing quite different from protection in Britain. So far from the manufactures of plate-glass being a monopoly, as the growing of cereals was under English protection, overproduction is threat- ened here, as in every branch of manufacturing. Seven new works are being built with great rapidity. When finished, America will be able to supply fifteen millions of square feet of glass per annum. The price last year fell in extreme cases to fifty-nine cents per foot. This was an article which, as has been seen, cost $2.50 before the United States entered the field. Protection has about done its work as far as large plates are concerned, the duty upon which could already be safely reduced. Our friends who cry out that the manufacturing system of America has been fostered long enough should never forget that the struggle which, the American manufacturer has in compet;- 208 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. tion with Europe is severe. His labor-cost is more than double that of his competitor. Mr. Clark and Mr. Coats, manufact- urers of thread, have factories of similar character in the old land and in the new. They have both testified that their labor-cost in Newark and in Rhode Island is slightly more than double what it is abroad. The following statement was laid before Congress recently by the United States Commissioner of Labor, and as it gives the wages in a branch which has not yet been quoted, and which is in nowise affected by the tariff, it is well worthy of reproduction here. It " presents a table giving the average daily rates of pay and the yearly earnings for such railroad employees in Great Britain and the United States as are amenable to comparison," as follows : Class of Employees. Great Britain. United States. Engineers, per day $1.46 $3.22 Firemen " " 0.91 1.79MS Conductors " " ... . 0.97 2.63 Switchmen " " ... 0.85 1.50VS Flagmen " " 0.81 1.13 Engineers* yeat ly earnings 457.00 1,007.00 Firemen's yearly earnings 285.00 562.00 Conductors' yearly earnings 304.00 824.00 266.00 471 00 Flagmen's yearly earnings. . . 254.00 354.00 It is probable, and greatly to be hoped, that this great differ- ence will be equalized by an advance in the wages of labor in Europe, and not by a reduction in the wages here. But the manu- facturing system of America may be considered as not having fully outrun the necessity for protection so long as it is handicapped in the race with double labor-cost. Notwithstanding this, it is marching slowly but surely to a condition in which it will, with only incidental protection, have nothing to fear, even in competi- tion with its most formidable rival. "We have seen that the introduction of a new manufacturing industry is no child's play. It means ten to fifteen years of strug- gle and loss. It may be estimated, therefore, that one-half the period since the protective duties were imposed at the beginning of the war has been consumed in establishing the new industries. During the remaining half some industries have reached a posi- tion in which less protection is now necessary; some will soon be able to stand exposure to the competition of older countries. SUMMING UP THE TARIFF DISCUSSION. Other branches still require fostering care, and the only question for the legislator is, after examination and proof adduced, to deter- mine how much, if at all, in each industry the import duties may he lessened, and whether, owing to errors in laws or in the construc- tion thereof, changes in the other direction may be necessary. Mr. Mills realizes that, if Mr. Elaine be correct in his claim that the steady competition of American manufacturers has re- duced the price of manufactured articles, his case is des- perate ; therefore, in regard to steel rails, which were cited to prove this, he boldly says : " What competition was there among American manufacturers ? It was a monopoly. The manufacturers owned a patent, and there could be no com- petition." Unfortunately for Mr. Mills, this is not correct. American Bessemer-steel manufacturers never owned the Bessemer patents. The courts of the United States adjudged Mr. Kelley, an American citizen, to have valid claims, even against Bessemer. And the persons interested in the Kelley claims settled with their English friends, and thus obtained control of the Bessemer process for the United States. They threw open the use of the patents to every individual in the United States, charging all alike one dollar per ton, and this all manufacturers paid. There always has been, and there is to day, the most active competition between the manufacturers of steel. In seasons of great depres- sion an inexperienced individual here and there has thought it possible that ruinous competition could be prevented ; but it has been found impossible, and it always will be impossible until human nature changes. The American consumer has no cause to fear that any combinations among manufacturers can endure, for such never have endured either in Britain or elseM'here. Four pounds of steel in the form of a rail for five cents is con- clusive proof that the severest home competition exists. The statement is often made that, if we did not buy from for- eign nations, we could not sell to them, and that the prosperity of our country greatly depends upon its exchanging products with other nations. I desire to meet this contention. Mr. Breckin- ridge says: " A nation, like a man, can only grow rich by producing more than it nses, and accumulating year by year the value of that yearly surplus. If, also, there had been subtracted from the wealth of America all imports which were purchased by the agricultural surplus sent abroad, our industrial interests would be destroyed. There 210 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. can be no (Creator delusion than that of a possible ' home market ' In which every thing produced in America is sold and in which everything needed for America is produced here and sold here. The very existence of our industries depends upon commerce that is, upon the power to import what we need and to pay for it by what we export; what we export being that surplus of our product which remains after our wants are supplied. He who buys must first have something to sell, and sell it; and his capacity to buy is precisely measured by what he obtains for that which he sells." Mr. Mills says : " There can be no surer test of the prosperity of a country than the increase of its foreign trade, and no surer test of the retardation of that prosperity than the decrease of that trade." The first lines of Mr. Breckinridge's statement are true. A nation, like a man, can only grow rich by producing more than it uses, and accumulating year by year the value of that surplus. But when Messrs. Breckinridge and Mills go on to assume that the yearly surplus made in the United States depends upon or is measured by the amount of foreign commerce, they run foul of figures. The estimated yearly increase of the wealth of the United States, in 1880, was $1,050,000,000 ; it is now not less than $1,400,000,000. The total value of all articles imported and exported averages only this sum, $1,400,000,000, per year. If we estimate the profit of the business at 10 per cent, upon the total value of the articles exchanged, we have $140,000,000 profit from foreign commerce ; and as the foreigner takes his half of the profit, the United States are left with an estimated profit yearly of $70,000,- 000 properly to be credited to this exchange. It is clear that, if the United States buy abroad to provide for their wants to the full value of what they sell abroad, no surplus remains to be added to the national wealth beyond the usual pro- fit, for the articles imported are substantially articles for consump- tion, and are all consumed, with the exception of a trifling amount invested in works of art and other permanent treasures. It is only the surplus of our sales over our purchases abroad that augments the national wealth beyond the $70,000,000 annual profit from the business, and this has only amounted to an average of $63,- 000,000 during the last six years, the period embraced in Colonel Breckinridge's statement. In 1888 the balance was only twenty- seven millions of dollars. Nevertheless, no country has ever added so rapidly to its national wealth as the United States during those years, but the " surplus" is not to be found in what this country sells and buys abroad, but in every mile of railroad, every house built, every animal added to our flocks and herds, and every .acre SUMMING UP THE TARIFF DISCUSSION. 211 reclaimed here at home. In the development of her own territory and its contents, the United States invests her yearly surplus of fourteen hundred millions of dollars. I say only fourteen be- cause I wish always to understate, though quite aware that the experts expect the forthcoming census to show that in the decade "from 1880 to 1890 not less than $1,900,000,000 was added yearly to the national wealth, and that now its augmentation is at the rate of two thousand millions per annum. What becomes of for eign commerce in the face of figures like these ? If it were all profit, if every article we sent abroad cost nothing and every article ob- tained abroad were presented to us gratis, the total value would not be as great as the annual increase of the nation's wealth. Thus if we neither imported nor exported a dollar's worth, losing thereby a market for 4 per cent, of our products, this loss would only equal one year's gain. I take issue with Colonel Breckinridge when he says that there " can be no greater delusion than that of a possible home market in which everything produced in America is sold, and in which every- thing needed for America is purchased here and sold here." I think that, instead of this being a delusion, it is sober truth; and, as far as the production of articles goes, we seem to have the gallant Colonel with us, for he says, quoting from Senator Mer- rill's able essay, that " the Senator admits " that we are able "to make an article ' superior to and cheaper than similar articles pro- duced abroad.' . . . We agree with the Senator that we are ca- pable of accomplishing this result. We have no doubt that, by re- moving the trammels upon the introduction of the foreign ma- terial needed, giving at once to the American workman equal advantages with his foreign competitor, this could be said of all American manufacturers." We ask the Colonel, If this be true, what would become of our sacred foreign commerce as far as the purchase of manufactures abroad is concerned ? And if the for- eigner cannot buy our products unless we buy his manufactures, what would become of the other half of this foreign business which is said to be vital to our prosperity ? Our free-trade economists would naturally predict that the Republic in that case must go to ruin ; but no it would simply make up the small percentage lost in one year's increase of its enormous domestic operations. Will Colonel Breckinridge kindly look over the list of articles imported, and specify what cannot ultimately be made here ? J 212 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. have done so, ami with the exception of a very few trifling ar- ticles, which fancy and sentiment will always induce rich people to select, even if similar articles could be obtained at home, I know of nothing important. Can any one name one necessary of life, for instance, which the United States is not producing ? We have seen that the amount that the country buys and sells from abroad is lessening every year in proportion to the amount sup- plied at home. As the Colonel says (page 526), only 5 per cent, of our products went abroad (census of 1880); now less than 4 per cent. What point in the descending scale would the Colonel fix as that where the descent should stop ? If at 3 percent., 1900 would surely show him to be wrong. If at 2 per cent., 1910 would disprove his claims to the gift of prophecy. Then again, the population of the United States is increas- ing at the rate of nearly two millions per annum. If it con- tinues to increase with even a little less rapidity than its normal rate, there are persons now living who will see the population under the Stars and Stripes more than 500 millions. The country will then probably require its food supply for its own people. If not then, it is at least certain that the population will increase here until it requires all the product of the soil. Colonel Breckinridge, in my opinion, does not realize the unique position of his country. It is, indeed, as Mr. Gladstone says, a world within itself ; and nothing is surer than that in the near future it will play the part of a world, consume its own products, and supply its own manufactured articles. Even if every port of the United States were blockaded to-day, and remained so for ten years, the people of the" United States would suffer only some inconveniences and disturbance of values. The products of the joil would be cheaper for a time, until the population increased enough to absorb the paltry 4 per cent, of them taken by the foreigner. The entire manufacturing interests of the country, on the other hand, would be increased. There would be abundance of food, clothing, and shelter. Sugar, tea, and coffee would be scarce and dear, but a good deal would evade any possible block- ade. Many new and important sources of national wealth would be discovered, and substitutes provided for such things as we now import, to an extent which would surprise the world. And the country would emerge at the end of the embargo more self-con- tained, more powerful, richer, and more independent of other SUMMING UP THE TARIFF DISCUSSION. 213 nations than she is to-day. So far have our manufacturing indus- tries developed; so far have we travelled upon the path which is making the United States in reality a world within itself. No one desires the closing of our ports : the country is prosper- ing too well to welcome any change; but it is well for us to know, and for other nations to understand, that it would only be disturb- ing and inconvenient, not serious, nor in any way dangerous to the life and prosperity of this world within itself. The outside world will do well to note that the assailant who blockades the ports of the United States will suffer ten-fold more by the operation than the Republic. It may be doubted if a more erroneous statement was ever made than that for which Mr. Mills makes himself responsible when he says that there can be no surer test of the retardation of national prosperity than the decrease of foreign trade. Let us consider the situation. Foreign commerce is decreasing. The United States are more and more supplying their own wants, and importing relatively less from other countries. They are also consuming a larger portion of their own products, and exporting relatively less to other countries. Foreign commerce reached the highest mark in 1880, 1881, 1882, and 1883, averaging for those years $1,500,000,000 per annum. It has not reached that figure since, the average per annum since then being about $100,000,000 less. In 1888 it was $1,418,000,000.* If the gauge of the country's prosperity be the condition of its foreign commerce, as Mr. Mills asserts, one trembles for the forthcoming census when Mr. Mills next ventures to lift his powerful pen in support of his theory, for the census is to assert that during the ten years under consideration, when foreign commerce actually declined, no nation ever made wealth so fast. One wonders how Mr. Mills will reconcile this fact with his theory. Great Britain is usually cited, and very justly so, by our Tariff- Reformers as wondrously prosperous. Next to the United States she is gaining fastest in wealth. How does Mr. Mills's theory work when applied to her ? The foreign commerce of that great little giant for the decade 1878 to 1887, inclusive, did not in- crease, but it has actually decreased since 1880. The total was in that year 697,000,000 ; in 1881, 694,000,000 ; in 1882 it reached 719,000,000, and in 1883, 732,000,000, which is the * Americar Almanac, 1889, page 73. 214 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. highest mark. In every year since, the foreign commerce of Britain has fallen, until in 1887, the last year given, 642,000,- 000* was the total. Thus the foreign commerce of both the great English-speaking lands has declined during years when the population and wealth of both have increased apace. The fact is that even in the case of Great Britain, the country which exports and imports most, and to which foreign commerce, therefore, is far more important than to any other country, it is not the chief cause of prosperity or of the increase of national wealth. It is high time that this little braggart, foreign commerce, should be exposed and dethroned. Our exports only amount to 4 per cent, of our products, and yet make more noise than the 96 per cent, which does its far more valuable work quietly at home. If, therefore, the United States produced next year only what they produce this year, the year after next, according to the census, would find the total loss of foreign sales fully made up by increased consumption at home. Allowing for the temporary dis- turbance that would arise, it is safe to say that a very few years would restore the loss, so rapidly is our country increasing. Mr. Mills represents a cotton-growing State. By taking cot- ton as an illustration, I can, perhaps, best enable him to under- stand why the reverse of his proposition is true ; why the genuine prosperity of the United States requires that its foreign commerce shall year by year fall away, as compared with its home commerce, until it fades into insignificance. Even the puny 4 per cent, of the country's total commerce which our exports now represent leaving, as Colonel Breckinridge says (page 526), un- hampered 96 per cent, of our products for consumption at home will be considered enormous when the census of 1890 is taken. Here is the reason : In 1830 the United States con- sumed only 52,000,000 pounds of cotton grown here. In 1880 they consumed 962,000,000 pounds. In 1830 the great crop of the South went to the foreigner, to swell the records of foreign commerce. Now, when we manufacture at home more .of the cot- ton we grow, the credit is transferred from foreign commerce to domestic commerce. One gains ; the other loses. It is precisely the same with all exports of grain, provisions, petroleum, and other articles, and with all imports of iron, woollen goods, plate glass, and manufactures in general. The true test of the pros- Statesman's Year-Book, 1888, page 269. &UMMIXG UP THE TARIFF DISCUSSION. perity of this country is to be found in the increase of its domes- tic commerce, and the relative decline of its foreign commerce. Now let me point out the difference between the two. All exchange is a matter of profit between the two parties thereto. If the manufacturer of New England send his product to Texas, and receive in return the product of Texas, what happens ? The Texan is benefited, and the New-Englander is benefited like- wise. They share all the profits of the transaction between them. If the Texan send his product to Britain, and receive in return the product of Britain, what happens ? The Texan and the Briton are benefited. In the former case all the profit goes to ourselves Americans ; and in the latter case our people and our country receive only half the profit. The one transaction is as clearly commerce as the other : commodities are exchanged. When Mr. Mills would measure the wealth and prosperity of his country, he must seek causes much more potent than its foreign commerce. The manufacturing development of the South, for instance, is a much greater factor in the creation of national wealth, which now reaches about $2,000,000,000 per annum. The exchange of commodities with the foreigner, which we dignify by the name of foreign commerce, and which does not to-day amount to 4 per cent, of our total products, is much too small a tail to wag so big a dog. Figures are such strange things ! When Colonel Breckinridge says (page 521, NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW) that ''from January 1, 1884, to January 1, 1890, we exported of domestic products the enormous sum of $4,304,086,830," it no doubt seemed to him he had said something most impressive. Seven hundred millions per year ! But when one whispers to him that the value of our home manufactures every year is more than $7,000,000,000, how foreign commerce shrivels ! The best way to. measure a pigmy is to put a real giant alongside. Exports are one foot high and home manufactures ten. It is urged that, unless we buy the products of Britain, she cannot buy ours. Let us consider this contention, and see whether nations buy and sell with each other to an equal extent, or if what one buys influences what the other sells. Britain buys every year about $100,000,000 more from us than we from her, while we buy every year about $100,000,000 more from South American countries than we sell them. British North America sends to Britain 30 per 216 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. cent, more than slu buys from her, the figures for 1886 being: ex- ports, 10,000,415 ; purchases, 7,000,880. Ceylon has never bought from Britain much more than a quarter of what she sells her, the figures for 1886 being : exports, 2,083,636; purchases, 582,800. The Argentine Republic, being, like the United States, a growing country, only sells to Britain 1,646,000 per year; she buys from her 5,190,000 more than three times as much as she sells. British Guiana is in the same condition. She always sends to Britain nearly three times what she buys from her, the figures for 1886 being 1,383,379 exports, and 582,880 im- ports. What is to prevent Britain from paying us every year if we did not take one dollar's worth of her products in return ? or the United States, out of their enormous accumulation of wealth every year, from buying more from South America than they sell to it? It is said that, if one country imports more from another, it must sell more than it imports to some other. This is not necessarily true, because it can draw upon its annual increase of wealth to make good its greater purchases, just as Britain does, which has a balance against her every year of about five hundred millions of dollars; but even if it were true, what bearing would it have upon the question whether Great Britain and other countries would not con- tinue to buy the petroleum, cotton, grain, and provisions of the United States as long as the United States could furnish these articles to the advantage of the buyer, as she does now? The merchants who buy cotton or provisions upon the Liverpool ex- change are not the same merchants who sell the woollens and iron and steel of Britain. They scarcely know each other, and are totally ignorant of each others' transactions. The one does not care where or from whom the other buys. It is a simple question where they can buy or where they can sell to the best advantage. The merchant in Liverpool buying our products does not care whether the manufacturer of Manchester sells a pound of goods to the United States or not. As Major McKinley well says (NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW for June, page 747), free trade would not increase the sale of our products abroad. Other coun- tries buy of us what they need no more, no less. Britain sends to the United States only from 150 to 180 millions of dollars' worth of goods per annum. Suppose she did not send one dollar's worth. The world grows so rapidly that the void would soon be SUMMING UP THE TARIFF DISCUSSION. 217 filled. She has only to cease expanding for a short season and her other customers would absorb her present production. Her Amer- ican trade only amounts to about 10 per cent, of her total exports, and tins-could be easily made up. As for Britain not being able to pay for what she buys unless we take her products in return, what becomes of that contention when Mr. Giffen has just proved* that the annual increase of Britain's wealth exceeds $900,000,000? A nation with a net income like that is able to buy largely and is good for all she will buy. It is said that, if free trade were adopted, so enormous would be the demands thrown by the United States upon European manufacturers that prices would advance to such a point as to enable American manufacturers to continue operating their works. If this be correct, let me ask what benefit would ensue to the American consumer? If the only result of a change of policy be that matters shall remain as they are as to prices, I sub- mit that change in itself in our fiscal policy is a serious obstacle to prosperity. To justify change we should have decided advan- tages in view. It is, of course, a matter of opinion how far in- creased demand upon European resources would enhance prices. It would do so temporarily without question ; but Europe hitherto has been able to respond to all demands made upon it by the world, and I believe such will be the case in the future. We are probably soon to see iron and steel in Britain as low as they ever have been. I know of no reason why the textile manu- factures of Europe cannot be doubled or trebled. The belief referred to is, in my opinion, without foundation ; but, assum- ing that it proved true, the foreign manufacturers would then run to their fullest capacity, and the American only be called upon furtively to make what his British competitor could not. He would cease to be the principal factor in supplying his own market, and be relegated to the position of humbly taking the crumbs which fell from the table of the foreigner, while the con- sumer would receive no advantage whatever. So that, if the theory be true that free trade here would cause prices to rise in Europe, this country would gain nothing ; and if it proved un- sound, the whole manufacturing system of America would be de- moralized. Is it worth while for the United States to play with the foreigner the game of " heads you win and tails we lose " ? * Speech of Robert Giffen, British Board of Trade, at Leeds, February, 1890. 218 BO/'./ SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. We have not yet noticed the charge that protection is artifi- cial. Mr. Gladstone holds that all interference by the govern- ment in order to encourage a dearer method at home, in prefer- ence to a cheaper production abroad, may naturally be termed artificial. Those in favor of establishing new manufactures in a new country believe that eventually the price of articles produced will not only be less than the consumer would have to pay if his country did not produce these articles and he were dependent upon a foreign power for his supply, but that he will have a surer source of supply; that there are great incidental advantages in bringing the manufacturer and the consumer in close proximity. Freight can be saved, which augments profits ; delivery can be hastened, mistakes corrected, and important consultations had between parties an impossibility if they were thousands of miles apart. "We gladly admit the charge, however, that protection is entirely artificial not less so than the protection given by the market- gardener to his young plants, which he covers with a sunshade through the day, and over which he thoughtfully throws a straw mat at night ; as artificial as the frame in which the fond mother teaches her infant to walk, and not less so than the aid given by Mr. Gladstone to the young tree which he plants in Hawarden grounds, binding it to the artificial stake that he drives beside it, that the sapling may grow to a stately tree. What is there of man's triumphs in any branch of his activity that is not artifi- cial ? When applied as Mr. Gladstone applies it here, it seems to mean no more than cultivation when applied to the soil, and the United States have proved not only that the soil must be cultivated to produce agricultural products, but that a nation, as sagaciously understood by John Stuart Mill, can " cultivate " the production of many of the principal articles which are almost as essential to its rank, power, and prosperity as food itself. The Protectionist pleads guilty to the charge, and awaits sentence. There remains the charge of monopoly. As I have explained, the only protection known to Mr. Gladstone constituted a monop- oly. He has no experience of any other. He is to be excused. But what shall be said of Messrs. Mills and Breckinridge? What would Mr. Gladstone say to these gentlemen if they told him of a monopoly into which every dollar of the capital of the world is free to enter ? a monopoly in which many of the leading manufacturers of Mr. DP TtiE TARIFF DISCUSSION. 219 Gladstone's country are busily engaged the Clarks aud the Coatses, of Paisley ; the bairns, of Kirkcaldy ; the Salts, of Salt- aire ; the Sandersons, of Sheffield ; the Kerrs, of Glasgow ; the Barbours, of Belfast, and scores of others ; a monopoly free to all, without regard to citizenship or residence ; a monopoly to which there is no limit ; a monopoly in which one hundred and forty- seven new and important competing manufacturing establish- ments are under construction to-day in one section alone, that of the South, so ably represented by these writers ! My capital is wholly invested in manufacturing, and if there be any monopoly in the entire domain, I should like to discover it. If unusual profits are being made in any branch of manufact- uring, why do not Mr. Mills and those who think with him invest and share these grand returns, and by so doing strike down the "monopoly"? There is no branch of manufacturing into which they cannot put $100 or $100,000 ; the shares of silk and glass and wool and iron and steel concerns are freely bought and sold in the open market. Those who believe that any indus- try gives its owners great profits have only to select the industry and invest. Into the woollen industry, for instance, investors to-day can enter for much less than its present owners did. In that of glass splendid opportunities for investment are surely at hand. In the iron and steel branch, with which I am famil- iar, any citizen of the United States who has $100 can become part owner to-morrow; he can purchase the shares of almost all the steel concerns at much less than the capital actually invested. The shares of the Illinois Steel Company, the Bethlehem Company, Pennsylvania Steel Company, the Cambria Company, the Troy Company, as a rule, do not command in the market the actual number of dollars invested. But I must not be understood as advising any one to invest too largely upon the theory that the returns will meet his expectations. The charge that manufact- ures in America are monopolies is without foundation, although it may still pass current in a rural community when delivered from the stump in Texas. I should like to be present to see Mr. Gladstone's expressive face, and hear his response, if these gentle- men ever spoke to him of "a monopoly free to all." That word "monopoly" will do service no longer; our friends had better try Mrs. Malaprop's famous " allegory " at once. It would apply just as well, and have the advantage of being new. 220 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. Mr. Gladstone says that, when the United States get rid of the " barbarism " of protection, we shall get a copyright law. It is to be regretted that this most desirable result received such a blow at the moment when a copyright bill was pending. Mr. Gladstone will never get a copyright law in this country except through those who believe in protecting home industries. Strange as it may appear to him, the leaders of the Republican party are its strenuous advocates, and only that party can boast that a major- ity of its Representatives in Congress voted for the measure. The only protection of which Mr. Gladstone has had experience, however, was barbaric, just as it was monopolistic. But protec- tion as we have it is a "barbarism " indulged in by every nation, and to some extent, as we have seen, by the nation of the states- man who uses the word and by all the component parts of that great empire itself, except one trifling dependency. The " bar- barism" of France, the "barbarism" of Germany, the "barbar- ism" of the United States, the "barbarism" of Canada and Australia, the " barbarism" of all the civilized world, Britain alone excepted ! Ah, well ! I remember it was my fellow-countryman, as Mr. Gladstone is, who prayed, " Lord, gie us a gude conceit o' oorsel ! " While believing in the wisdom of the policy which has been pursued by the United States for the past thirty years as being the policy best for her, I do not assume that the other nations and colonies of the world which are following our example are wise in so doing. This is a matter to be determined each for itself by a very careful study of its latent powers and possibilities and by judicious experiment. No stranger can be sufficiently acquainted with these countries to venture an intelligent opinion. An im- pression I have, however, that some of them, unfortunately, can never be made great nations much less worlds within them- selves by any system of protection or by any effort. The pro- tection offered may not induce capital to enter the manufacturing field. Their experience as to manufactures in general may be ours regarding sugar, or what it would be if we attempted to supply ourselves, as Mr. Gladstone suggests, with pineapples. It takes a world within itself to become independent of the outside world as to those articles which are essential to give it rank as the fore- most power of the world. That free trade is not only one of the best policies, but the only policy possible for Britain, seems to me SUMMING UP THE TARIFF DISCUSSION. 221 indisputable. It may be, and probably is, the best policy for several of the new countries, for it is folly to protect unless the fruits of protection can be gathered. Now, I believe, every point brought forward by our free-trade friends has been considered : First, the policy of protection in itself ; second, that the infantile stage has passed ; third, that if we do not buy from abroad, foreign nations cannot purchase from us ; fourth, that our nation's prosperity and wealth are to be best gauged by the extent of its dealings with other countries ; fifth, that protection creates monopolies. There remains now only to point out what seems the course of wisdom in the present position of affairs. As stated by Colonel Breckinridge, it is not practicable to raise the necessary revenues for the general government without giving incidental protection to manufactures. If sugar be made free, as is probable, and the whiskey tax considered a fund from which pensions are to be paid, sufficient duties must be levied upon imports to give all the protection that is now necessary to maintain and develop our manufacturing industries. It is only a question how these duties can be most judiciously imposed; and here the legislator has a sure rule for his guidance. From it he need not be swayed, either to the right or to the left. Let me illustrate. The principal articles protected are woollens, cotton, silks, and iron and steel. In 1880 our imports of woollens amounted to $33,911,000 ; in 1888 to $63,612,000. The natural comment is that there is something wrong here. The foreigner is gaining too fast. He has nearly doubled his business with us during eight years. We have not far to seek for the reason. By making the law express clearly what was meant by its framers, the McKinley Bill just passed by the House will restore to the American manufacturer that of which it was never intended to deprive him. Our cotton imports in 1880 were $29,929,000 ; in 1888, $28,917,000. The comment here is that the American manu- facturer is holding his own, and obtaining the increase of busi- ness. Speaking generally, duties upon cotton should remain as they are, change in some details perhaps being required. The imports of silk in 1880 were $44,213,000 ; in 1888, $41,287,000. Here it is much as with cottons ; the American manufacturer is not being driven out of his market, but is holding his own. Of iron and steel in 1880 the imports were $53,714,000 j in 1888, $48,992,000. BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. These figures prove that the American manufacturer is gaining in some branches upon his foreign competitor, and upon the articles which show decreased imports duties may be safely reduced. The MfKinley Bill does this. There is noplace for partisanship in this question. It is simply a matter of figures. They tell their own story, and it would seem that only a very obtuse legislator could fail to read correctly the lesson they convey. In all cases of doubt he should err on the safe side. Much better continue protection, even if it be a shade higher than actually necessary, than run the risk of crippling any branch ; because, as we have seen, it is not easy to establish new industries in a country, and it would be much less easy to resuscitate one which, having made a fair start, had gone down in the struggle. Such are the wonderful resources of this Union of forty-two States, and such is the inventive genius of our people, that very few articles indeed will not eventually be produced within its borders and furnished to the consumer at prices substantially as low as they can be imported from Europe. Some leading articles are already as low, and others are fast approaching this standard. No branch of manufacturing can long reap more than the normal profit derivable from capital generally, for no power on earth can prevent the operation of the law of competition over a ter- ritory so extensive as the United States. We have only to be prudent, to avoid violent changes in our fiscal policy, for change, or threatened change, is in itself a serious impediment to business, to see that no promising branch of industry is permitted to die in the struggle with the foreigner, and to fight it out on the line we have hitherto followed with such success, even if it should take another decade or more to win the complete victory we have iu view the control of our own home market. The Kepublic may safely be trusted to do this, and thus prove the truth of one more of the many statements enunciated to the world by Mr. Glad- stone, that it is, indeed, " a world, and not a very little world," within itself. ANDREW CARNEGIE. THE McKINLEY BILL IN EUROPE. By GUSTAVE DE MOLINARI. THE McKDJlET BILL IN EUROPE. BY GUSTAVE DE MOLINARI, EDITOR OF THE "JOURNAL DES ECONOMISTES," PARIS. As MIGHT have been expected, the two McKinley bills that increasing the custom-house dues and that imposing even higher rates on various manufactured articles have, especially the former, caused a lively commotion in the industrial and trading world of Europe. In France several chambers of commerce, that of Lyons in particular, have called the attention of the govern- ment to the Draconian provisions of the new tariff, " which," says this chamber, " is in a way equivalent to a prohibition of silk stuffs." In a sitting of the Chamber of Deputies, which took place on the 21st of July last, the representative of a manufacturing dis- trict, M. Charles Dupuy, questioned the Minister of Foreign Affairs, asking him whether the government had entered into negotiations, either in concert with the European cabinets or sep- arately, with the object that the McKinley Tariff Bill should be corrected by the admission of the guarantees afforded by interna- tional law. M. Charles Dupuy's strictures were chiefly levelled at the provisions of the bill which, in li&u of commissions wherein the exporters were represented, substituted a jury of custom- house experts or functionaries, and by which fraud was presumed whenever the difference between the value declared and that esti- mated by the jury should happen to exceed 40 per cent., thus entailing a penalty that might reach $5,000 and two years' imprisonment. As stated by M. Dupuy, those provisions were wholly new. None of a like nature were to be found in the custom- house regulations of the most advanced of protectionist nations. In France, even the law of August 21, 1791, which is still in force, 226 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. expressly says that " the examination cannot be made except in the presence of the owners of the goods or of their mandatories." The Minister of Foreign Affairs, in his reply, hastened to assure M. Dupuy that the affair had awakened his entire solici tude, and that he had even applied to the cabinets of London, Berlin, and Home to see whether steps should not be taken in common and representations made to the American government respecting the unusual provisions of the bill ; but that he had everywhere found " an extreme coolness on their part to engage themselves in any degree whatever"; it had been pointed out to him, and he was of a like opinion, that any steps of the kind would be likely to produce in the American Congress an effect opposed to that which was desired ; that, as regards the Tariff Bill, Americans were the judges of the political course which best suited them ; that that course at present tended towards pro- tection ; and that the ideal of certain American statesmen would be to organize a custom-house union with the object of instituting a sort of continental blockade against the products of European markets ; that the question of retaliatory measures had been raised, whereby a grand Zollverein directed against America should be established in Europe, but that the project did not seem to him so soon feasible. While sharing on the latter point the opinion of the Minister, M. Dupuy concluded the debate by a threat of reprisals. " Now," said he, "our custom-house com- mission knows what remains for it to do." This short parliamentary incident gives a fairly correct idea of the impression which the ill-timed McKinley Tariff Bill has made in Europe. The impression is a general one, but it is character- istic and curious to note that the impression is most acute in the camp of the Protectionisms, despite the fact that these gentlemen have always had uppermost in their hearts a desire to introduce into Europe the commercial policy and custom-house schemes of Mr. McKinley. What else are we to expect ? They do not pride themselves on being logical. If we lent an ear to them, all the states of Europe would enter a league to make sweeping re- prisals, and interdict as far as possible the markets of Europe to all American products. But who will listen to them ? And is the McKinley Bill likely to exert any sort of influence on the custom-house legislation of Europe ? That it exerts a moral influence over our minds, and. THE McKINLEY BILL IN EUROPE. 227 contributes to cool the natural feelings of sympathy we entertain towards our old American friends, there can be no doubt, for sympathy is born of a community of interests, and a protection- ist policy tends to separate and isolate interests, instead of uniting them ; but will it exert a material influence ? In view of the fast- approaching time (1892) when the treaties of commerce concluded and renewed since 1860 between France and most other countries are to lapse, are the clauses of the new American bill likely to determine a general increase in custom-house rates ? Or, at least, is it likely, as foreshadowed by M. Dupuy, to provoke a rise in the rates levied on products of American origin ? To answer such a question it is, above all, necessary to examine the present state of opinion in Europe on the question of protec- tion or commercial liberty. We shall teach the Americans nothing new when we say that that opinion has perceptibly varied within the last fifteen years. Under the influence of the propaganda wrought by Cobden's Anti Corn-Law League, and the great reforms accomplished in England by such men as Robert Peel, Gladstone, and their emulators, a current of free-trade ideas had set in on the Con- tinent. In 1860 France was prevailed upon to relinquish her old-time protectionist regime, and to conclude a series of com- mercial treaties on a relatively liberal basis. But, it must be admitted, this current of free-trade ideas had only influenced the upper classes of society ; the whole mass of traders and working- men remained Protectionists. Such a reform, especially in France, could never have been accomplished under a constitu- tional and parliamentary form of government : it was necessary that Napoleon III, converted by Cobden and Michel Chevalier, should bring to bear his dictatorial power to impose it. Yet the results of the new commercial policy proved so favorable that, during the first years at least, its adversaries were reduced to silence. They had predicted that French iudustry and agricult- ure would be ruined : these branches, on the contrary, made extraordinary progress ; the foreign trade of France rose from $781,400,000 in 1859 to $1,245,600,000 in 1869; and in other countries Germany, Italy, and Belgium the policy of com- mercial treaties exerted an influence no less favorable. Unfortunately, this honeymoon of continental free trade was brutally interrupted in 1870 by the deep commotion which the 15 228 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. Franco Prussian war occasioned in trade and commerce, and the extra burden of military and fiscal charges which it imposed on the population. Even in Germany, where people flattered them- selves with the notion that victory and the war indemnity of a thousand millions of dollars would impart a decisive impetus to public prosperity, the deception was complete. To the years of excitement and great expectations that followed the war, a period of acute trouble and depression succeeded. Thereupon the pro- tectionist ideas which had remained dormant in the minds of the multitude reasserted themselves more strongly and more noisily than ever, and they were hailed as helpful auxiliaries by govern- ments the continued increase of whose military expenses com- pelled an unceasing augmentation of their receipts. Bismarck was the first, in 1879, to give the signal for the reaction, which soon spread from Germany to Italy, France, and the rest of the Continent, with the exception of Belgium and Holland, in which countries commerce and exports kept the interests of free trade uppermost. But the commercial treaties opposed a barrier to a change of the tariffs in a protectionist sense : it was necessary to wait until those treaties, concluded for'a period of ten years, should reach maturity, in order to increase the rates ; and, on the other hand, a large number of exporting traders, even among the Protectionists, were loath to renounce the system of commercial treaties, on account of the security it gave to their exports. This obstacle in part postponed the triumph of the reaction- ary party, but without diminishing its force. What, then, was to be done ? There were a certain number of articles, and among others most of the agricultural products, which were independent of the commercial treaties, and on which, therefore, the dues could be raised at any time. It was on this weak side that the Protectionists attacked the liberal regime, and they found a hearty support among the agriculturists and especially the landlords, whose incomes, after progressively increasing for half a century, had experienced a period of arrest and even of decrease, and who particularly attributed this state of things to American compe- tition. These fluctuations in the ground rent and, along with it, the value of the soil in central and western Europe, constitute an economical phenomenon of considerable importance. We will therefore briefly examine the question. Thanks to the natural THE McKTNLEY BILL IN EUROPE. 229 increase of the population, the development of trade, and the multiplication of railways, the mean value of a hectare* of soil, which was estimated in France, for instance, at $140 in 1815, reached in 1879, according to the computations of the Adminis- tration of Domains, $366, and the landed proprietors entertained the hope that this progressive rise would continue. It came to a dead stop, however ; and its upward flight was arrested by the influence of that same progress which brought about its rise, viz., the progress made in establishing ready means of commu- nication. Those means, from the outset, not only brought into closer relations the markets of consumption with the fields of production inside the country, but spread those relations beyond its boundaries. Within half a century steam navigation has di- minished by more than two-thirds the ocean highway, and your enormous net-work of railways has further contributed to break through the monopoly of providing food for your people, which was formerly well-nigh exclusively reserved to the landed proprie- tors of our agricultural domain. Hence the arrest and even the decrease in the income derived from the soil ; hence also, on the part of the landed proprietors, a furious reaction against the policy of free trade, which was looked upon by them as responsible for the diminution of their revenues. Yet free trade was not alone guilty ; it was merely an acces- sory to steam navigation and the railways. But, unable as they were to suppress the chief authors of the crime of reducing their incomes and the value of the soil, they laid the blame on the accomplice, and the " agricultural party" called for an increase in the tariff rates sufficient to compensate for the progress which, they alleged, exposed European agriculture to a complete submersion by reason of the constantly increasing inundation of American meats and cereals. These mournful complaints have been complacently heard by governments only too eager to seize an opportunity for increasing their own reve- nues ; the rates on alimentary produce were accordingly raised, and carried from 25 to 30 per cent, in France, Germany, and Italy, And when the custom-house rates were found insufficient to stay the threatening flood of incoming transatlantic food, recourse was had to hygienic excuses. Thus, because a wretched The hectare is a little over two English acres, 280 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION, pig happened to die of trichinosis in the little French commune of Cre'py-en-Valois, the authorities at once rendered the whole race of American pigs responsible for its sad fate, and American pork was prohibited without further ado, in spite of the protests raised by traders in our seaport towns, and the complaints of the consumers. Protection was thus easily set up again over articles which were outside the pale of commercial treaties. At the same time a way, certainly very ingenious, was discovered to get round the treaty difficulty and even to bring about an increase in the tariffs; I allude to the droits de combat, or " fighting rates." Prince Bismarck, we believe, if not the actual inventor, was the propa- gator of this novel scheme, and the example he set before Germany was promptly imitated by Italy in prevision of the re- newal of the Franco-Italian treaty of commerce. As the process is, no doubt, unknown to the American reader, we shall briefly set forth its main features. There are two treaty tariffs the general tariff, which is ap- plied to the products of nations with whom no treaty has been concluded ; and the conventional tariff, which stipulates reduc- tions more or less high on the general tariff rates, and which is applied, by virtue of the clause known as that of the most favored nation, to all countries with whom treaties have been made. Now, when it is desired to renew a treaty of commerce in a pro- tectionist spirit, viz., by according the weakest possible reduc- tions on the rates of the general tariff for imported articles, and by seeking to obtain in exchange the highest possible reductions on the rates payable for exported objects, what is the course adopted ? Why, the general tariff rates are simply raised. They are carried, for instance, from 25 to 50 per cent., and you say to your adversary : " I consent to renew the treaty, and I gene- rously grant you a reduction of 20 per cent, on my general tariff, subject to a like concession on your part." If your adversary has had recourse to the same process, that is, if he also has estab- tablished '' fighting rates," the two strategic mamieuvres neu- tralize each other, and the result is a renewal of the treaty, with a mere increase of 5 per cent, in the rates on either side ; but if he neglects such a precaution, he risks a negotiation which takes for its basis the general tariffs of both nations and is obliged to concede an effective reduction of 20 per cent., while his THE McZlNLEY BILL tN EVROPti. rival, wlio has previously raised his general tariff by 25 per cent., and who seemingly grants a like reduction, in reality raises his conventional tariff by 5 per cent. This is what took place when the Franco-Italian treaty was about to be renewed, and it brought about a rupture in the negotiations. The Italians, who are very sharp, had set up "fighting rates" which went so far as to increase ten times the former rates, and they wanted to negotiate on this new basis; while the French, who had neg- lected to take the same precaution, wished to negotiate on the old line. It was impossible to come to an understanding ; the treaty was not renewed, and a " war of tariffs " ensued, which, if it has not interrupted, has strongly impaired, the commercial re- lations of the two countries. These, then, are the results of the protectionist reaction : on the one hand, the rates on food products not included in the treaties have been raised by the principal Continental powers in Germany, France, and Italy ; on the other hand, " fighting rates" have been established, which have raised the level of general tariffs in view of the expected renewal of the treaties ; finally, a " war of tariffs" has followed the non-renewal of the treaties. It would seem, therefore, that the protectionist cause has to- day gained a complete victory in Europe, and that to a relatively liberal period of commercial policy, opened in 1860, must succeed a new period of protection, and even prohibition, during which the protectionist majorities will impose on existing governments the obligation of favoring national agriculture and industry in view of supplying our home markets, and consequently of ex- cluding as far as possible the agricultural produce of America, together with the industrial products of England. These fore- casts, however, which appeared pretty safe even two or three years ago, now begin to seem less certain of fulfilment. Dark spots at present dot the sky of protection and threaten to cloud it over ; in Germany the increasing misery of the population, brought about by the advance in price of provisions and the diminution of external trade ; and in Italy the results of the dis- astrous war of tariffs engaged in with France. To lend additional weight to the argument and further darken the picture, we have before our eyes the extraordinary development of England's trade, and the increase in the well-being of her people under the banner of free trade. BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. These are not purely theoretical speculations, but hard facts daily attested by more and more decisive proofs. German exports are decreasing : from 3,269,000 marks in 1883 they have fallen to 3,205,000 in 1888 and 3,166,000 in 1889 ; the rates on cereals have well-nigh destroyed the trade of Konigsberg, Dantzig, and Stettin. In the face of the calamitous results arising from Prince Bismarck's protectionist policy, the principal chambers of com- merce earnestly entreat the government to return to a more lib- eral regime. " The doctrine that the foreigner has to support the rates," says the Konigsberg chamber, POTH SIDES OF Till-: TMUFF QUESTION. families. How then could they purchase and own their own homes as so many of them now do ? Workingmen should be the stanchest supporters of protec- tion. While free trade would bring free wool and cheap clothing, it would lower wages fifty per cent, and raise the price of mutton forty per cent. ; and the old story of free trade countries would be repeated in our land " meat for the workingman once a week." The capital and the competition within our own country will regulate the prices of every commodity. Our government was created to bring the greatest good to the greatest number the working classes. The second law placed upon its statute-book was for protection. Patrick Henry wisely suggested that a good way to judge the future was by the past. Our country has always prospered under the laws of protection. Her greatest statesmen of both political parties in the past (as well as the present) have been on the side of protection : and while our present tariff laws might with safety be readjusted upon some minor points, yet the policy of free trade is founded upon false theories. The President allows the " surplus " to accumulate when un- der existing laws it should have been applied toward paying the national debt and then points to this "surplus" as an excuse for his free-trade message. A. L. COKGER. AKRON-, 0. TEXTILE MACHINERY. The probable effect of any measures passed pursuant to the line of President Cleveland's message on the industry I represent, * which is the building of machinery for use in manufacturing cotton, wool and worsted yarns and cloths, would be paralysis and ultimately death. The question is so serious that to answer it in a manner com- mensurate with its importance, involves determining the logical interpretation of the message, so far as it relates to the industries of this country ; for, strange as it may seem, there are those who maintain that the message does not favor the policy of free-trade. Those who hold this opinion are not found only among the THE PRESIDENTS PANACEA. 277 adherents of the party with which the President is identified. All dispassionate thinkers, however, and the great majority of all political parties in the United States, the free-traders of England and the intelligent readers of all interested nations, agree that the message'is a bold, candid and distinct free-trade paper. Therefore, legislation on the line of Mr. Cleveland's message means the removal of the protective feature of our tariff laws, the enlargement of the free-list and the final opening of the markets of the United States to foreign competition. It can be clearly shown that, in all protected industries where labor is the chief element of cost, the entire duty paid by the im- porter of the foreign article goes to the American work-people and not to the proprietors and capitalists. The effect, therefore, on the wages of workmen would be at first to reduce the amount. But, as it would be an undoubted impossibility to re-adjust at once all values upon the basis of foreign labor, the secondary result would be to deprive the wage-earner of employment in the industry under consideration. If the duty of forty-five per cent, that nominally protects the American machine builder were removed, the machine user would be enabled to purchase mill-outfits at so large a reduction as utter- ly to defeat American competition. The hopelessness of the ma- chine builder's condition would compel the discharge of his work- men and the closing of his works. But, with the ability to buy mill machinery at a price as much less as foreign is less than American labor, would come cheap goods, so cheap, that he must be a bold man who would undertake to make them in competition with English and German operatives. Mills would stand idle, and those who now attend the spinning machine and the loom, as well as those who toil to build these use- ful machines, would be forced to seek other modes of gaining a livelihood, or, in default, to suffer in idleness. This is, without doubt, a gloomy picture, but, even without any legislation, the effect of the message has been to unsettle trade, reduce its volume and depress prices. The work of man's hands, measured by the medium of ex- change, fixes the measure of wealth. Consequently, such a re- duction of duties as would reduce the exchangeable value of labor to the standard of any foreign people must cause widespread dis- aster. 278 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. Perhaps, after the slow process of re-adjustment, new values would be established and, under new conditions, with a well-de- fined population of laborers and artisans, there might be a revival of industrial employments ; but, of course, upon a basis of wages as low as paid in any competing country. STOCKTON BATES. PHILADELPHIA, Pa. WOOL GROWING. I am asked what would be the probable effect of any measures based on the lines of President Cleveland's message on the indus- try of sheep husbandry and wool-growing, and on the workmen's wages. Very disastrous, I think. The slight reduction of duties on wool by the Act of 1883 has caused the slaughter of many sheep, and largely increased the importation of foreign wool. No one can have a reasonable doubt that the free admission of wool from countries so highly favored for its production, as regards soil and climate, as Australia and South America would destroy wool-grow- ing in the United States, and inflict a terrible blow on woollen manufacturers as well. The wages of workmen in every other industry would decline by reason of the increased competition resulting from a million or more flockmasters seeking other employments. True, clothing and woolens would for a time at least be cheaper in price, but would they cost us less ? Here is the delusion. The laborer, the merchant, the mechanic, the lawyer, doctor, preacher, buys his clothing by the labor or service that he sells. Destroy one great industry and its workers distribute them- selves among the several trades and professions remaining. Com- petition lowers prices. We may have less to pay for our clothing, but less to give in exchange for it, hence it will cost us more. Nor would free wool give our manufacturers control of foreign markets. Free cotton has not. We consume at home say ninety- five per cent, of cotton manufactures and export five per cent. The cost of labor is the principal factor in the cost of production. To compete in foreign markets we must reduce wages, transportation, interest, etc., to foreign schedules. This we cannot, will not, should not do. THE PRESIDENTS PANACEA. $79 The problem to solve in economic legislation is not how to cheapen prices, but rather how to diversify, encourage and pro- tect industrial occupations for our teeming population. Prices will take care of themselves in a country so large and with such varied climate and marvelous resources as ours. Consumers have abundant protection by reason of home competition. Monopoly cannot possibly exist beyond a brief period. But the destruction of sheep husbandry and wool growing im- perils the whole protective system, and should meet the united pro- test of all other industries. It is the chief protected industry of the farmer, common to every State and Territory. Agricultural constituencies are, or may be, supreme in legislation. Outside a few cities farmers constitute political majorities. They have a clear right to be heard. Domestic sheep husbandry has incidental public advantages. It makes us independent of foreign nations for our supply of clothing, all-important in time of war, as we do not command the sea. It enriches our soil. It affords the readiest means of supplying a growing deficiency in animal food. Meat is the chief item of necessary expense in a large proportion of families. The diminished cost of animal food by the protection of sheep husbandry, with adequate import duties on wool, would many times compensate for increased cost of woolen fabrics. W. S. SHALLENBERGER. ROCHESTER, Pa. COTTON MANUFACTURES. The people of the United States were surprised and startled at the dogmatic assertions in the President's message. Had he been better informed as to the probable effect of the measures proposed, he might have been more cautious. His party having a clear majority in the House the opposite majority in the Senate being very narrow with the open threats made by the Free Trade Press to coerce those Democrats who dif- fered from the President, are sufficient cause for solicitude on the part of manufacturers. Never before in the history of the Government has a President in his message gone out of his way to attack and impugn a purely 280 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. business class of the people, comprising men of both parties, pur- suing in a legitimate way honorable callings which it has up to this time been the general policy of the Government to encourage and upbuild. This, with the Speaker's manifesto, and the extraor- dinary composition of the Committee of Ways and Means, are a sufficient notice to the industries of the country that they are to be put upon their defense. What will be the effect upon the cotton industries of the country rf the President and the majority of his party in Con- gress succeed in carrying out their policy ? The demand for home consumption of the cheaper and coarser grades of cottons was long ago fully met by the American manu- facturer, and so close and sharp is the competition, that none but the very best mills under the ablest management have been able to work at a profit, some both North and South having gone into bankruptcy. Although labor is not so large an element of cost in these as in the finer goods, the higher wages in this country have prevented our spinners from taking any large share of the trade in China and the East. There is then no outlet at home or abroad for an increased production of coarse fabrics. In the medium grades the same conditions exist. We cannot compete in the foreign market, and our own is fully supplied. The American consumer is cheaply supplied with every grade of cotton goods. About one-fifth of the spindles of the country are making the finer grades of goods against which the foreigner maintains a sharp and quite successful competition in our own market. There were imported into this country last year $29,150,058.83 worth of cotton manufactures, almost entirely the finer grades of fabrics and yarns. Any material reduction in the duties upon these goods would enable the foreigner to drive the domestic manufacturer out of the market unless he could find some means of cheapening the cost of the goods. The President's " free raw material" cannot help, because cotton bears no duty. The plant is fixed. Taxes and interest cannot be reduced. If these fine mills should be turned upon the coarser fabrics the market would be glutted, and all would go to ruin together. There would be but two methods of meeting the emergency to stop a part of the machinery or reduce the wages of labor until the cost of the goods was at an equilibrium with those imported. THE PRESIDENTS PANACEA, 281 This is a very simple statement, and to those unfamiliar with such matters it might appear very easy of accomplishment. But in these industrial contests none of the forces retire from the field until they are vanquished. That means a financial crippling and final stoppage of many establishments, operatives thrown out of employment, failure of traders who supply the work people, and of merchants and bankers who deal with the manufacturers. The operatives would not submit to a reduction of their pay with- out a contest ; but in the end the inevitable result would be that labor must take its share of the reduction. Labor in cotton fac- tories in America is about sixty-five per cent, higher than in Great Britain, twice as much as in France, two and a quarter times that in Switzerland and nearly three times what it is in Italy. The three former send us large quantities of fine cottons, and a very small reduction of duties would enable them to increase the quantity thrown upon our market largely, stopping our mills, throwing labor out of employment, with resultant injury that would not stop with those directly interested. All kinds of business in a country are interdependent, and any material injury to one must sooner or later be felt by all, just as when you drop a pebble into the pond curling ripples reach the shore on every side and every drop of water becomes disturbed. The cotton spinners of America have fulfilled the predictions of the fathers of the Protective system. They furnish wares unex- celled in quality at prices at which the consumer cannot and does not complain. There are no trusts in the cotton business. This attempt to disturb and injure industries which have grown up un- der the system of Protection is a wanton attack upon labor and upon praiseworthy business enterprises which finds no justification in the condition of the country. JONATHAN CHACE. WASHINGTON, D. 0. FLAX, HEMP, AND JUTE MANUFACTURES. The cultivation and preparation of flax, hemp and jute, and the manufacture of these fibres into yarns, twines, threads and woven fabrics, necessitates a large expenditure of skilled labor. BOTH STDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. The wages paid in other countries where flax, hemp, and jute goods are manufactured, are upon a very low scale as compared with the wages paid in our mills for the same kind of work. There can be no reasonable doubt concerning the real mean- ing of President Cleveland's recent message to Congress. It has received the condemnation of no free foreign trader either in Europe or America. It has met with the approval of no real pro- tectionist. It is, therefore, in fact a revenue reform or a free foreign trade message. Its recommendations and its logic, if carried into practical operation, would produce a complete revo- lution in the linen industry of the United States. As will be seen from the following facts and figures, a tariff for revenue only will as effectually destroy the American linen industry as would absolute free foreign trade. For several years the cultivation of flax and hemp in the United States has steadily decreased, and the placing of these so-called raw materials on the free list will only hasten the time when the cultivation of these fibres will be numbered with the lost arts of our American in- dustry. In the manufacture of these fibres the real work is done by machinery, and Great Britain makes this machinery for all the world. The same spindle is capable of running as many revolu- tions per minute and turning off as much yarn per day in India, Russia or Germany as in the United States. A mere glance at the wages paid in different parts of the world will convince the most skeptical that our wages must go down if the tax upon foreign goods is reduced. Without this unhappy result the American mills cannot be operated in competition with foreign mills. It must be remembered that ocean freights are no barrier to the foreign mills, since the raw material has to be brought over the same ocean route. The unavoidable shrinkage of the raw material in the process of manufacture is, in fact, a large item of protection to the foreign mill, freight upon the dead waste being avoided. From this ugly item the American mill can find no escape. The following were the average weekly wages paid in the flax, hemp and jute spinning trade in different countries in 1886, as compiled by the Flax and Hemp Spinners' and Growers' Asso- ciation of America, from the most reliable sources of informa- tion : TFTE PRESIDENT'S PANACEA. 283 Spinner-!. Carders. United States (60 hours per week) $7.00 $6.00 Great Britain (56 hours per week) 2.82 2.19 France (72 hours per week) 2.02 2.20 Germany (72 hours per week) 1.98 1.65 Eastern Russia (81 hours per week) 1. 10 Western Russia (72 hours per week) 1.12 1.12 India 62 .60 It is impossible to reduce the tax upon the product of foreign goods without reducing American wages. The importation of yarns under the present tariff is forcing American mills into an unprofitable existence. Only a mere pittance of the woven fab- rics consumed in this country is made at home, and many of these never will be made here under President Cleveland's proposed in- dustrial policy until American working people are content to live on rice at a cent and a half a day, and clothe themselves with only a cloth about the loins. In a large area of our country this mode of life is impossible. If by law we attempt to starve the working people into such an existence, our climate would make it impossi- ble, and the attempt should never be made. E. A. HARTSHORN. TROY, N. Y. MANUFACTURES OF SILK. The silk industry in the United States has been built up with great difficulty. There are several distict branches of it, one or two of which are very much older than the rest, and have made greater progress ; most of them date their successes from very recent years ; some are even now barely beginning, and doubt- ful of results. But their separate histories, so far as they go, are alike in these essential features : (1) They begin with a long, arduous struggle : an endeavor to compete with the European goods in possession of the market. (2) In every instance our manufacturers have found it neces- sary to make better goods than those of Europe, as well as to sell at lower prices. This process has in each case to be continued until the American goods win a reputation superior to that of the European ; and until, also, the popular prejudice in favor of for- eign goods can be at least partially overcome. (3) In its early stages each branch of the manufacture is an 284 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. experiment often a very costly one, and subject to repeated fail- ures. Both employers and employes have to learn their trade by experience, and years must be spent in training operatives and systematizing business. In most branches we are still serving our apprenticeship. (4) Whenever any branch of the industry has achieved a measure of success against foreign competition, its attractions have caused many new concerns to start in the business, and a home competition harder to meet than even the foreign has been engendered, resulting in a notable lowering of prices and narrowing of margins of profit. In all discussions of this topic, the great changes in trade which have been brought about by the steamship and telegraph must be fairly considered. Silk goods are of small bulk compared with their value ; the present cost of bringing them from Europe to New York is scarcely greater than from a factory in an adjoin- ing State ; the difference in time of transit is barely a week ; the order for them can be given by cable, and the settlement through banker's credits can be effected with equal ease. The European manufacturer has cheaper capital, smaller expenses in many ways, an inherited experience, skilled operatives trained to the business, established reputation, a market in two hemispheres, and more than all else very low-priced *.~~*t. To counterbalance these advantages, the American manufact- urer has such protection as the tariff may afford. It is the bulwark of our industry. What would be the effect of a material reduction of the duty on silk goods ? Manifestly, a similar contraction of the industry in this country. Some hundreds of manufacturers, unable to wait until our Government could retrace its steps, would quit business except with lawyers and assignees. There would be a period of very hard times in the industry, both for employers and employed. Manufacturing here could be continued only by assimi- lating its conditions to those of Europe ; that is, by reducing wages, so as to pay 25 or 50 cents per day to operatives who now get $1.00 to $1.50. What would be gained by such reduction of duty ? Foreign manufacturers and their agents would gain the great- est advantage. The work that ceased here would be carried on in Europe. THE PRESIDENTS PANACEA. 285 Perhaps for a while foreign silk goods would be cheaper, though the absence of American competition would soon enable Europeans to advance their prices. This at the utmost seems rather a doubtful advantage for working-people, whose families, with re- duced wages, would be less able than they are now to buy the goods. Also, in some way that has never been clear to me, the American manufacturer who when the tariff if reduced can scarcely compete with the foreign goods in this country, will then be enabled to obtain an export trade i. e., to compete with such goods in some other country. England has made the experiment of reducing and finally abolishing the tariff on silk goods. We do not need to repeat that blunder. The results are well known : the home manufacture fell off enormously ; an increased importation of French goods took the vacant place and has kept it ever since. Poverty de- scended on the chief sites of the industry ; in Macclesfield there were for years thousands of. houses untenanted, and from that " doomed town " there went forth a goodly number of emigrants who are now prosperous citizens of Paterson, N. J. WM. C. WYCKOFF, Secretary Silk Association of America. NEW YORK, March 10. WOOLENS AND WORSTEDS. It chances that I need only point to the actual present condi- tion oj. i,ne industry in which I am engaged to illustrate the effect of tariff reductions, based upon the lines of the President's mes- sage. By a misapprehension of the value of the term "worsted," the tariff of 1883 lowered the duties upon this branch of woolen manufacture below the protecting point. The results have been vast importations of foreign worsteds, a large increase of revenue (which will doubtless surprise Mr. Cleveland), and an almost com- plete paralysis of the worsted industry in this country which will certainly please and benefit foreign manufacturers. Fully one- lialf of the worsted machinery of the country is now idle and the remainder is kept running unprofitably, only to furnish employ- ment to skilled operatives, in the hope that the discrimination against this industry is accidental and temporary, rather than the evidence of a settled purpose to destroy it. BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. Avoiding abstract argument upon the benefits or the evils of the protective tariffs of the past twenty years, we may all admit that owing to their stimulation we have built up in this country, dur- ing that period, a vast and intricate industrial system whose foun- dations rest upon the protective idea, whose growth has absorbed such a proportion of the investments and the labor of the coun- try, and has entwined itself so inextricably with its economic and social conditions that any legislation which is inimical to that system is equally so to the country at large. To lower the duties upon the products of any industry below the protecting point is to destroy that industry in this country, to make a gift of its pur- suit and the benefits and employment derived therefrom to other peoples, and to increase the revenue receipts of the Government instead of diminishing them. The present condition of our worsted manufactures will sufficiently prove this. It is obvious therefore that the tariff should be kept at a point which permits the continuance of domestic manufactures. To do this ought not to be a difficult problem. Indeed the only difficulty seems to arise from a curious morbid mental attitude which the heat of argument appears to have developed in the minds of free trade advocates ; many of these seem to regard manufacturers as a class who recklessly ply their pursuits and prey upon the community, and whose testimony with regard to the effect of laws, having to do with those pursuits, if of no more value than that of a robber touching some criminal enactment. This frame of mind is well illustrated by the action of the majority of the present Ways and Means Committee, who, while formulating a new tariff, have persistently refused to hear the testimony of manufacturers and merchants as to its effect upon the business prosperity of the country. It is as if, in devising a law to regulate the jurisdiction of a court, the testimony of legal experts were excluded on the ground that it was ex parte and untrustworthy. WALTER H. MCDAKIELS. LOWELL, Mass. COAL. I am asked: "What would be the probable effect on the industry you represent, and on your workmen's wages, of any measures passed in the line of President Cleveland's message ? " THE PRESIDENTS PANACEA. 287 This country's coal industry, as a whole, needs no direct pro- tection fron foreign coal, even be that coal free -freighted, as bal- last, to our shores. In my opinion a revised tariff may safely omit any duty on coal, provided the duty on American coal exported to Canada shall soon thereafter be abolished. In this we should gain much more than we should lose. Can- ada, in many places, is burning wood, which American coal would displace but for the Canadian duty on our coal. Freed from this duty, our coal will penetrate further down the Eiver St. Lawrence, in competition with coal from Nova Scotia, than it is now able to do. But, coal is the mainspring which drives the wheels of manu- facture and of commerce. Our manufactures were built up under the shelter of a tariff, not for revenue only, but also for protec- tion. Any unfriendly or unwise tampering with that tariff, resulting in reducing that protection below the point necessary in order that American capital and American labor may stand against competition from the starvation labor of Europe, cannot but react hurtf ully on our coal industry, reducing both the wages of our workmen and the output of our coal. Let the tariff be revised, but let it be done only by hands known to be friendly to protection of American industries. Com- mon i rarest so demands. The President's recent proposition touching this revision has already produced widespread distrust, and has exerted a baneful influence on our industries : not because the people are unwilling that revision be made, but because they fear that revision if made by unfriendly hands. They are willing that all excessive protection, which results in only unusual and unfair profits to capital, and which thus unnec- essarily taxes productive labor, shall be pruned away. They want only such protection left as shall prevent our citizen workmen from being forced to the wage level of Europe. The condition of our industries to-day renders unwise any un- necessary experiment. To illustrate, let two circles, the larger enclosing the smaller, represent the case, the larger circle repre- senting the total number of our workmen, the smaller circle repre- senting the number of those workmen employed, and the space between the lines of the two circles representing the unemployed. 288 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. The employed are the producers, and upon them is the whole burden of the community. The unemployed are a tax upon those producers. Anything which tends to ~3duce the circumference of the smaller circle will increase the apace between the circles. Unwise tampering with the laws under which our industries have grown and thrived will decrease the size of the inner circle, and thus increase the burden upon the producing labor. Again, let two similar circles represent the respective ratio of total workmen and total employed workmen in Europe, changing only the rela- tive sizes of these circles so that the space between their lines shall be much larger than that between those representing the Ameri- can situation. Then unwise reductions in our tariff will extend the circle of European employed workmen just in proportion as it reduces the circle of the employed in America, thus transferring part of the burden from the employed in Europe to the employed in America, and the logical conclusion of this line of action must be either to force our wage level down to that of Europe, or to bring about a situation represented by an exchange of the circles repre- senting the relative situation in the two countries, giving to us the two circles showing the greatest space between their lines. When these exchanged circles shall represent the then true situa- tion of affairs, a necessity will have arisen for American statecraft, following European practice, to form a standing army, from the unemployed, taxing the disproportionate ranks of the producers for its support, as a lesser evil than to subject those producers to the viciousness consequent from the largely excessive numbers of the unemployed. Europe is in this Condition to-day. Is it wis- dom on our part to exp^rnent toward that condition ? Patriot- ism seems to demand that our citizens should cheerfully bear so light an individual tax as that resultant from our present tariff laws, when of that aggregate tax so large a portion is distributed to our citizen workmen, enabling them to rear and educate their sons to the level demanded by American citizenship, and to fit their daughters for wifehood and motherhood, instead of, as in Europe, sending them immature to do manual labor in the mines and fields. Let us, as citizens of a great country, instinct with patriotic feelings, give competition free play among ourselves, and thus, while cheapening productive cost, retain the yearly increment of wealth, but let not our lawgivers force us into competition with THE PRESIDENTS PANACEA. 2S.J the foreign laborer within whose breast long continued want and squalor have doubtless left but little room for feelings patriotic. WM. P. DE ARMIT. PITTSBURGH, Pa. PAPER. It is asked how the paper industry would be affected if Presi- dent Cleveland's tariff views became the policy of the Govern- ment. The consumption of paper in this country exceeds, per capita, that of any other nation : indisputable evidence of the superior condition and general prosperity of the American people ; and forcibly illustrating the effects of the present protective tariff policy of the country. Although the average rate of duty on all manufactured goods exceeds 40 per cent., the present duty on unsized printing paper, which is much the larger part of the paper product of the coun- try, has been reduced to 15 per cent. Several dutiable articles caustic soda, soda ash, alum, ultramarine, aniline dyes, woolen felts, brass wire, and wood pulp are, in a sense, the raw material for paper making. Most of these articles pay a much higher rate of duty than is levied on paper, yet, they being distinctive manu- factures, American as well as foreign, the paper manufacturers ask no change in duties, believing that such change would check, if not annihilate, the American manufacture and consequently destroy the competition now going on between the manufactures of all countries. All these manufactures are of recent establish- ment in this country, and they have wrought a wonderful change in the cost of their respective productions, and could not survive free trade and maintain the present standard of wages paid by them. Further, paper makers, as a class, recognize that there is in this system a principle as well as a policy, and honor it by according to other industries that protection which they ask for themselves. The wages paid in any branch of the paper industry in America are more than double those paid in any other country. The price of common " newspaper" in 18GO was fully 9 cents per pound ; it rose during the war to 28 cents, and is now sold at 4^ to 4J4 cents per pound. The consumer of paper has certainly 290 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. no occasion to complain. In what other industry has there been such a marked reduction in price ? A general depression in other industries would directly and quickly affect the paper trade. The very general use of paper in newspapers and books could, and would, be curtailed by the les- sening of the purchasing power of labor, or by the non-employment of men, a condition certain to follow the throwing wider open our markets to the products of other nations, wrought with cheap labor. The cry for free trade, or the demand that all the protective features shall be eliminated from the tariff, is the voice of thefeiv, with whom I have not time to deal in this brief article. Laws, both human and divine, are instituted and maintained for the purpose of affording the greatest good to the greatest number. The present American tariff system, so well grounded and so thoroughly tested, and so beneficent in its results to the many, should not, and, I predict, will not, be overthrown, though tangled in American politics and vigorously assaulted from abroad. LAWRENCE, Mass. WM. A. RUSSELL. PLA.TE GLASS. Our industry, the manufacture of plate glass, is a peculiar one. The capital required is large, the process of manufacture excep- tionally hazardous and the skill demanded very great. Every attempt to manufacture plate glass in America was a failure, resulting in financial disaster and ruin to the undertakers, until we took hold of it at this place. In fact every dollar (aggregating millions) invested in it before 1879 was lost. My father was a retired banker, worth several millions. Persuaded by friends, he invested $200,000 in this business. The company borrowed freely from his banks, until in 1872, finding $500,000 of his money involved, he left his retirement and took personal charge of the works, putting in nearly a million dollars more. In 1879, when the business first reached a paying basis, his actual losses were $619,790.40. Since then we have not made up this loss, without counting interest. If the money put into this business had been invested in Government bonds, and the interest re-invested, his estate would have been half a million dollars THE PRESIDENTS PANACEA. 291 larger, and his life probably prolonged for years for he died from overwork. It is therefore patent that the profits cannot meet the reduc- tion. If it comes, we must either stop our works or our labor must stand it. Seventy-five per cent, of the cost of production is labor. Our skilled workmen average $17.04 per week, against $7.05 in England, $6.34 in France and $6.60 in Belgium. The only labor we have ever imported was skilled men, whose knowledge was necessary to start the new industry. In Europe, father, mother and children were barely able by their united earn- ings to keep body and soul together. Our men earn enough to support their families and educate their children. Before we made plate glass, the foreigner, having a monopoly, charged exorbitant prices. The records of the Treasury De- partment show that the average cost of large unsilvered plate glass imported in 1875 (our first year of active competition) was 97^ cents per square foot, while in 1887 the average was 32^ cents, a reduction of 66f per cent. Silvered plate glass averaged in 1875 $1.26 per square foot, in 1887 it averaged $1.09 T ^ per square foot, a reduction of 12-^- per cent. Why is the reduction in one five times larger than the other ? Solely because unsilvered plate is made in America, while silvered plate is not, and higher prices are exacted and will be forever, unless the present tariff is maintained until factories can be established. A plate of glass costing $105 when our works were established sells to-day for $31.50, and, bear in mind that no part of this great reduction is due either to improved methods or improved machinery, but solely to sharp competition of American manufacturers. Americans can do what any people can, but they cannot in fifteen years reach the same condition that France attained under an absolutely prohibitory tariff in two hundred years and England reached under a tariff eight to twelve times as large ae ours in one hundred and sixty years. I have faith to believe that, when we are old enough to have full crews of Americans, their " genius" will make improvements and discoveries that will revolutionize our business and enable us to compete on equal grounds with foreign makers and still pay liv- ing wages, but that day has not yet come. N. T. DE PAUW. NEW ALBANY, Ind. 19 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. SUGAR CULTURE. The abolition of the duty on sugar would mean the entire annihilation of the Louisiana sugar industry. The sugar fields would be abandoned to weeds and willows, and the machinery of the costly factories rendered valueless, except as scrap iron. A considerable reduction of the duty, say 50 per cent., would have about the same effect as its entire repeal, although the abandon- ment of sugar culture would be more gradual in the former than in the latter event. About one-half the capital and one-half the population of the State of Louisiana are employed in sugar culture. The extinction of this industry would result in the gradual forced emigration of the great majority of the laborers engaged in this branch of agri- culture. Were it possible, and it is not, to substitute any other crop for that of sugar, there is no other that will support so large a population on a given area of land. The sugar crop last year sold for more than $20,000,000, the most of which was distributed through the channels of interstate commerce. The destruction of capital consequent upon a repeal of the sugar duties would not only involve merchants, planters, and laborers in a common ruin, but the loss of the sugar industry would be a national calamity. If called upon to bear a share in any general sacrifice for the public welfare, the Louisiana planters might be willing, and pos- sibly able, to stand a reduction of ten per cent., if assured of future stability. While any reduction would have an injurious effect, the insta- bility of the present tariff is far more serious in its consequences than would be a slight reduction of duty. To keep up with the scientific development of the sugar in- dustry abroad, new and expensive machinery is required by the planters ; but it is considered unsafe to invest any large amounts of capital in this manner under the annual and the existing men- ace of unfavorable tariff legislation. Taking bad and good years together, the sugar industry has made steady, if not rapid, progress, the crop of last year having been exceeded by only six ante-bellum crops. The product for ten years, from 1865 to 1874, was 490,000 tons; for a like period, THE PRESIDENT'S PANACEA. 293 from 1875 to 1884, 1,030,000 tons, an increase of more than 100 per cent. Progress is now more marked than ever, and but for the agitation in Congress, the prospects of the sugar industry were never brighter. The question of wages depends of course upon whether the in- dustry advances or retrogrades. With adequate and stable protec- tion the production of sugar in Louisiana will largely increase from year to year, and the consequent demand for labor will in- sure even better wages than are now paid. On the other hand, if the duty be so reduced as to lead to the partial abandonment of cane culture, a reduction of wages would undoubtedly follow an excessive supply of labor and lower prices for sugar. With such wages as free American laborers command it is im- possible without tariff protection to compete with the beet sugar produced under bounties by the cheap labor of Europe, and with South American, West Indian, East Indian and Hawaiian cane sugars grown by coolie or other semi-slave labor. Louis BUSH. NEW ORLEANS, La. SOUTHERN INTERESTS. Radical changes in our national tariff laws would affect the people of Florida less directly, but not less sensibly, than they would the people of the Northern States. Florida has few pro- tected industries of present importance, orange-growing and lumber manufacture being chief ; but she is, nevertheless, much concerned in the maintenance of Protection. We are told by Southern revenue reformers that the tariff has made the North rich and prosperous, but has not benefitted the South. What is said of the North we believe to be true ; what is asserted of the South is nearly true of Florida, if we consider only the tariff's direct effects, but not otherwise. Florida, until of late, was always poor poor under revenue tariffs and under Protection and she might have remained forever poor except for that very prosperity at the North which, having developed the great West, turned its bounty upon us and gave to Florida, the earliest dis- covered and longest settled, her first start in the world. Florida's recent growth is due directly to that prosperity which Protection 294 BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. has built up in the North. Eight years ago a Pennsylvania manufacturer redeemed Florida's public domain from pawn, receiving for his million thus devoted a tract of overflowed land ; with other hundreds of thousands he drained a great area of it, planted a thousand acres of sugar-cane, bought improved machin- ery, and is, to-day, harvesting his first crop. The district, when drained, will contain several million acres of richest sugar lands, one-half of which will belong to the State. If the sugar tariff is spared, Florida will yet produce, as prophesied by ex-President Grant, in 1880, " the one hundred million pounds of sugar now imported." The release of our public domain gave us railways nearly fifteen hundred miles of new track since 1881 ; railways have brought immigration, developed new industries, established trade, given us splendid hotels and tens of thousands of winter tourists, all from the same prosperous North. And we have yet other undeveloped industries, one, at least, as great as all we may expect of sugar ; I refer to the possibilities of our native fibre plants. As Florida's start in life is due to Northern prosperity, so is her future dependent upon its continuance. Hard times at the North means for us scarcity of money, high rates of interest, railway and other building stopped, no market for fruits and winter vegetables, no tourists, and ten thousand tramps. We see no benefit to us in a transfer of prosperity from Northern manu- facturers to Northern importers; the manufacturer keeps the money at home where we can borrow of it ; the importer sends it abroad. We are not convinced by arguments about the tax on necessities; where the mean temperature of winter rarely falls below fifty degrees Fahrenheit the price of woollens is not a burning issue. We are not moved by the revival-of-foreign-commerce plea. It is paying best to develop our internal resources. If our country, like the British empire, were in pieces, separated by leagues of sea, we, too, should need ships, but we are in one piece, and in railways we have outstripped all the rest of the world. While New York harbor is ready for foreign commerce. Florida harbors are not. In New York's far-seeing economy appropriations for Southern harbors have been always " swindles" and "steals," reserved for New York press denunciations and the vetoes of tariff-reducing presidents. JOHN P. VAKKTJM. JACKSONVILLE, Fla. THE PRESIDENTS PANACEA. 295 THE LABOR MARKET. " What would be the effect on workmen's wages in this country, of any measures passed in accordance with the recom- mendations of President Cleveland's message, in regard to reduc- tion of revenue by taking the amount necessary off from our present tariff?" In answer to this question, I would say most unhesitatingly that it would do one of two things : either have the effect, in many branches of our manufactures, of forcing a reduction in the price of labor from ten to thirty per cent. ; or would force the wage earners employed in these occupations into other fields of labor not so immediately and directly affected by the operations of a protective tariff ; and as those fields of labor are now supplied to meet the demand for our present population, such transfer would not be made to any extent, and therefore it must of necessity take the course of reduction of wages in this country, approximately to the scale of wages paid the same kind of labor in Europe, and the reasons are very plain : Steam and electricity have in the past few years changed all the currents of trade with foreign countries. Quick, certain and cheap transportation on the ocean, has so changed the conditions of trade, that the slightest vibration in prices or of the conditions of the law of supply and demand, or of the cost of product, is at once felt all over this country as well as Europe. A difference of even 5 per cent, in the cost of production of any given article of manufacture, will either retain the orders for production in this country, or it will transfer them to European manufacturers. This feeing the fact (as every dealer knows) it will immediately bring the price of labor in this country in com- petition with the labor of Europe, and this state of things will not take, as in old times, a long time to accomplish, but will be immediate and complete, just so soon as the laws go into effect that create this state of affairs. Then what is the inevitable result ? The labor market in this country (and I am glad that it is so) resists reduction in the price of labor and the result must of necessity be, that the orders for many goods now manufactured in this country must and will go to foreign manufacturers ; our mills will reduce their output or stop entirely, and the raw products now manufactured in this BOTH SIDES OF THE TARIFF QUESTION. country will be transported in foreign ships (for we have none to speak of) and be returned to us in a manufactured state. ' Our labor market would be over-supplied ; discontent, murmurs and suffering would ensue, but finally the wage earner must accept a rate of ivages that is nearly on the plane of the European laborer. This result will come not alone to operatives in our manufact- uring industries, but also to the thousand and one industries wholly dependent upon increase of population and upon the rate of Wages received by the mass of operatives. Therefore, the inevitable and only result that can come to the wage earners of this country, if President Cleveland's recommendations go into effect, is a reduction of wages. NEW YORK. H. K. THURBER. AGRICULTURE. The President, if I understand him, proposes to reduce the tariff on manufactured commodities, under the pretence of ren- dering them more cheap to the consumers. In my judgment this would be a great injury to the agricultural industry of the country. A reduction of duties must result in one of two things: in reducing the wages of our laboring people, or else transferring a large por- tion of the manufacturing industry of this country to Europe. Either of these would result in injury to our people generally, to none more than the farmers. The agricultural products of the country, outside of tobacco and cotton, probably amount yearly to $3,500,000,000. Of this product about 92 per cent, is con- sumed by our own people, and only about eight per cent, exported. Our work people, taking one industry with another, are paid double the amount of wages that are paid to the work people of Europe for performing the same amount of labor there; and are therefore better fed, better clothed, better housed, and better educated than the work people of any country in the world; have not only the neces- saries, but many of the luxuries of life as well, and in consequence consume more of the manufactured commodities and eat more of the agricultural products, per capita, than any people elsewhere on the globe; for the purchasing capacity of a dollar here is as great as it is in Europe. Now, the power or ability of the workingman to buy, whether it be clothes for the body or food to eat, depends on the wages he receives. Take from him any part of the wages he now THE PRESIDENTS PANACEA. 297 earns, whether by a reduction or the transfer of the business to Europe, and you lessen his power to buy either agricultural prod- ucts or manufactured commodities to the extent of the wages he loses, and this will affect agriculture as well as all the other industries of the country. Anything that injures the home market injures the farmer, for the home market is his main dependence for the sale of his surplus products, and it is out of these that he lives ; it is from these that he clothes himself and family and provides the necessaries of life. No civilized nation has ever been prosperous or great without a diversity of human industries ; and the more numerous the in- dustries the more people will be employed and the larger the wages paid. When the people are employed they earn wages, and the more wages they earn the more goods and provisions they can buy. There is still another phase of this question : when you transfer any of the industries to Europe, either in whole or in part, to the extent that you do it, you throw our people out of employment, and it becomes necessary for them to seek some other occupation. Many of these from necessity would be driven into agriculture, and in this way they would become producers rather than consumers of agricultural products, thereby increasing our surplus of agricultu- ral products, and making it more difficult for the farmer to sell at remunerative prices. Therefore a reduction of the tariff as now proposed would be a source of great injury to the farmers as well as the working people of the country. THOMAS H. DUDLEY. CAMDEN, N. J. from which it was borrowed. 3 1158010233939 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. . DEC 7 igsr UEV/A< Co URL DEC 20 1976 IAN 41962! NAY 7 1962j MAY 2 91962 r t c-n 2 3 Form L9 15m-10,'48(B1039)444 EiNDET OP 6AUFOKNU L08ANGBU9B