QUESTIONS OF THE DA'Y. II. III. IV The Independent Movement in New York, as an Element in the next Elections and a I'loblem in Party Government. By Junius. Octavo, clotli $i oo Free Land and Free Trade. The Lessons of the English Corn- Laws Applied to the United States. By Samuel S. Cox. Octavo, cloth . . •■ . . . . . . 75 Our Merchant Marine. How it rose, increased, became great, declined, and decayed ; with an inquiry into the conditions essential to its resuscitation and prosperity. By Daa'id A. We The Mc; T ( VI. T VII. s VIII, T IX. T X. Of "W Bo\ XI. Prote Sta Oct; XII. Stora By XIII. Publi Lo\ XIV. " Th< Ilei XV. Prote paper THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES !vD. age OO C. GO 3N» 1), 75 •ns on ro- lic 75 he 75 of 25 re $y R. R. 75 United AUSSIG. 75 r York. 25 E Shaw 40 ise, and . I 00 Octavo, 25 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, Publishers, New York and London. QUESTIONS OF THE DAY. :^vi. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXI. XXII, XXIII XXIV. XXV. XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII. XXIX. « XXX. XXXI. XXXII. XXXIII. XXXIV. XXXV. The True Issue. By E. J. Donnell. Octavo, paper . 25 Heavy Ordnance for National Defence. By Wm. H. Jaques, Lieut. U. S. Navy. Octavo, paper . .' . . 25 The Spanish Treaty Opposed to Tariff Reform. By D. H. Chamberlain, Jno. Dewitt Warner, Graham McAdam, and T. SCHOENHOF. Octavo, paper .... 25 The History of the Present Tariff. By F. W. Taussig. Octavo, cloth ........ 75 The Progress of the Working Classes in the Last Half Century. By Robt. Giffen. Octavo, paper . . 25 The Solution of the Mormon Problem. By Capt. John CoDMAN. Octavo, paper 25 Defective and Corrupt Legislation ; the Cause and the Remedy. By Simon Stkrne. Octavo, paper . . 25 Social Economy. By J. E. Thorold Rogers. Octavo, cloth 75 The History of the Surplus Revenue of 1837. By Edward G. Bourne. Octavo, cloth . . ... . . i 25 The American Caucus System. By George W. Lawton. Octavo, cloth, $1.00; paper ...... 50 The Science of Business. By Roderick H. Smith. Octavo, cloth I 25 The Evolution of Revelation. By James Morris Whiton, Ph.D. Octavo, paper ....... 25 The Postulates of English Political Economy, By Wal- ter Bagehot. Octavo, cloth i 00 Lincoln and Stanton. By Hon. W. D. Kelley. Octavo, cloth, 50 cents ; paper ....... 25 The Industrial Situation. By J. Schoenhof. Octavo, cloth I 00 Ericsson's Destroyer. By Wm. H. Jaques, Lieut. U. S. Navy. Octavo, |)n]-)er, illustrated ..... 50 Modern Armor for National Defence. By Wm. H. Jaques, Lieut. U. S. Navy. Octavo, paper, illustrated . . 50 The Physics and Metaphysics of Money. By Rodmond GlHlifjNS. Octavo, paper ...... 25 Torpedoes for National Defence. By Wm. II. Jaques, Lieut. U. S. Navy. Octavo, paper, illustrated . . 50 Unwise Laws. By Lewis II. Blair. Octavo,. paper, 50 cents ; cloth . . . . . . . . . I 00 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, Publishers, New York and London. UNWISE LAWS A CONSIDERATION OF THE OPERATIONS OF A PROTECTIVE TARIFF UPON INDUSTRY, COMMERCE, AND SOCIETY BY / e LEWIS H. BLAIR NEW YORK & LONDON P. PUTNAM'S SONS %\z J^nithcrbothcr |1nss 1886 3. y- 337. B57 COPYRIGHT BY LEWIS H. BLAIR 1886 Press of G. P. Putnam's Sons New York -Ot)'], AL^ PREFACE. WHY IS THIS BOOK WRITTEN, AND WHAT CLAIMS HAS THE AUTHOR TO SET UP FOR TEACHER ? As an answer to the first question : It is written because every writer or speaker appears to have handled this subject from the standpoint of some particular interest to be benefited, and few have attempted to treat the subject of a protective tariff in a comprehensive manner. Some attack our tariff because they think it affects some industry or interest in which they are interested, and when that particular interest is relieved, then their hostility to the tariff ceases. Some object to our tariff because it hinders the free importation of so-called raw mate- rials, and when they are admitted free their opposition is silenced. Some again are vehement opponents of our tariff because under it we cannot import ships without paying duties on them, but give them free ships and they have nothing more to say against the tariff. But few, if any, attack the principle of protection, and rctnain true to their preinises. In this volume I march to the attack of the very citadel of protection. I aim my shafts at its very heart, and if I fail in my object it is ;/(?/ because my position is unsound, but because my pen is feeble. As will be seen, I am opposed to preferences and jjrivileges of every kind, and demand that every citizen shall be as untrammelled (recognizing of course the necessity and the right of the government to raise all the revenue it re- quires for the economical administration of its affairs,) in his commercial and industrial relations as he is in his political relations. iii IV UNWISE LAWS. In reply to the second question : The writer lays no claim to learning or wisdom of any description. His book is not addressed to the learned, for they are not only familiar with all of his views, but with a great deal more besides, but it is in- tended for plain, sensible people who have no time nor taste for elaborate disquisitions on the tariff, but who, nevertheless, would be glad to know something about the subject, provided it is presented in a manner congenial to their methods of thought, and this the writer believes he has done. The author is a merchant whose calling leads him to look on both sides of his business, on the side both of the buyer and of the seller, and he flatters himself that this necessity of his occupation has enabled him to look impartially on all sides of the question of a protective tariff, and having done this, he hopes that his effort, while not equal to an incandescent lamp, is yet clear enough and strong enough to penetrate and scatter the mists that have been purposely thrown by designing men around the subject of protection, and to lead his readers to his own conclusion — that all taxes levied shall be exclusively for the benefit of the government and none for the benefit of indus- tries whether infant or ancient. Richmond, Va., August, 1S85. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE What are these Unwise Laws ...,....! CHAPTER II. How these Unwise Laws have Originated, and how they have been Imposed upon the Country, although Contrary to its Interests . 3 CHAPTER III. How these Unwise Laws at first Stimulate Material Prosperity, and how they End in Material Collapse . . . . . .14 CHAPTER IV. Protection the Cause of Instability and the Parent of Panics and Com- mercial and Industrial Depression ...... 2i CHAPTER V. How Protection Stimulates and finally Demoralizes the Whole Com- munity ........... 28 CHAPTER VI. How Protection Ruins the Mercantile Business ..... 35 CHAPTER VII. How Protection Causes National Impoverishment by Artificially Af- fecting the Distribution of Population ..... 40 CHAPTER VIII. Showing how Non-interference Operates lo the Welfare of the People, 51 CHAPTER IX. How Protection (so-called) or Partial Laws Produce Extremes of Wealth and Poverty ......... 63 V vi CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. PAGE How so-called Protection Laws Cause Poverty, Stagnation, and Isola- tion or Revolution .......•• 75 CHAPTER XI. How so-called Protection Laws Cause Poverty, Stagnation, and Isola- tion or Revolution — \^Continzied\ . , ... . . -83 CHAPTER XII. Protection Opposed to Improvement ....... 93 CHAPTER XIII. Does Protection Insure Permanent High Wages ? .... 94 CHAPTER XIV. Why these Unwise Laws have not sooner Exerted their Injurious Ef- fects, and why they must Exert them in the Future with In- creasing Force .......... 105 CHAPTER XV. Under a Protective System, Reciprocity Treaties, Free Raw Materials, and Free Ships are only other Forms of Protection . . • 115 CHAPTER XVI. How these Unwise Laws Shut us out of the Markets of the World and Confine us to the Home Market 122 CHAPTER XVII. Division of Labor .......... 131 CHAPTER XVIII. Do Manufacturers Desire High Wages ? . . . . . -139 CHAPTER XIX. The Remedy I45 CHAPTER XX. The Remedy — {^Continued^ 157 CHAPTER XXI. The Silver Question 167 UNWISE LAWS. CHAPTER I. WHAT ARE THESE UNWISE LAWS These unwise laws are of two kinds, written and un- written — that is to say, those that are enacted by some central authority generally acknowledged as competent to enact them and with the power to have them executed, and which are specifically known as " Laws," and those great unwritten laws which reside, without question, in the bosoms of untold mil- lions, and which are executed with a certainty and a severity unknown to any written code, to wit, the law of " Caste," which binds in its adamantine chains the countless myriads of India and of many other portions of the globe. Although caste commands, perhaps, the obedience of more souls than written law, and although caste affects our interests to a considerable extent by debasing the condition of multitudes with whom we hold commercial intercourse, therefore render- ing them less efficient as producers and less valuable as con- sumers, and thus rendering them less profitable subjects for trading with, we will not dwell upon or consider caste, but will confine ourselves solely to Written Laws, which change and vary with the changing and varying sentiments and interests of mankind. Now what are these Unwise Laws ? They are such laws as encourage and establish monopoly. They are such laws as interfere with the natural right of man to pursue callings and I 2 UNWISE LAWS. employments that are innocent in themselves or that are not almost universally condemned as injurious to the community. They are such laws as make sins of buying and selling cer- tain goods, wares, or merchandise, and attempt to prevent the dealing therein. Prohibition and local option come under this head. They are such laws as pronounce such and such things luxuries and endeavor to regulate their use and diminish their consumption, and to that end load them with unequal burdens. Sumptuary laws of all kinds come under this head. They are such laws as grant bounties of any kind. They are such laws as allow the free importation of so-called " raw materials " for the benefit of a special class, which necessarily heaps heavier burdens on all other classes. In general, they are all such laws as make distinctions between man and man, between interest and interest, and between section and section. But specially, so far as the welfare of this country is concerned, is the whole body of laws known as the Protective System responsible, more than all other unwise laws combined, for the industrial and commercial ills that confront us on every hand. All these laws, however various their name, and however various their intent, whether based upon the hypocritical plea of the manufacturer that the workman may obtain higher wages, or whether disguised under the cry of national vanity that we should produce at home what we consume at home, — all these laws have one strong family likeness, and that likeness is inequality. Strike from them their inequality, strike from them that feature whereby one or more are benefited, or in- tended to be benefited, at the expense of the many, and while they are thereby rendered harmless, they are at the same time rendered indifferent to their former most ardent advocates. As what is unequal is unjust, all these special laws are un- just because they are unequal. Therefore they are all founded on injustice. And as whatever is unjust is in reality injurious, it follows that all these special laws — and they are all found in our statute-books, either State or national — must in the aggre* UNWISE LAWS: gate inflict a vast amount of injury upon the country. And to show how these unwise or special laws are responsible for the present depressed condition of our industrial and commercial affairs is the object of the following pages. CHAPTER II. HOW THESE UNWISE LAWS HAVE ORIGINATED AND HOW THEY HAVE BEEN IMPOSED UPON THE COUNTRY, i^LTHOUGH CONTRARY TO ITS INTERESTS. The laws of any country are in general merely the expres- sion of the sentiments and interests of the ruling classes in that country. We need not go back to the warlike Scythians, who spent their life in war and whose ruling ideas were embodied in a naked sword for their deity, nor to ancient' Egypt, where the priesthood ruled and controlled the legislation of the day in the sole interest of sacredotalism, nor to less ancient Rome, (modern in comparison with Egypt,) where war and warriors were the only objects held in esteem, all other than military honors and employments being looked upon with the utmost disdain, in order to see that this statement is literally true, but coming down to recent times and to our own day and to our own country we see the same truth abundantly illustrated. Passing over Feudalism and over the Papacy, where, in the one case the sword gave color to legislation, while in the other where the crozier reigned supreme and the bodies of mankind were tortured and burned and slaughtered by millions so that their souls might be saved, let us come to the present day. Take Germany, and what do we find .'* We find an em- pire built up by the sword and founded on conquest. We find further that such a thing as personal liberty is almost unknown when it comes in competition with the imperious will of Bis- marck, that every able-bodied man belongs to the state and is 4 UNWISE LAWS. a soldier from early manhood to sedate maturity. We find that all affairs are looked upon in a military light, and that such and such things are done only as they have a favorable bearing upon the army. The citizen, the civilian, is nothing ; the army, the soldier, is every thing. Take England, a country separated from Germany by only a narrow sea. Here we find a country devoted to commerce and manufactures. And here we find not the soldier but wealth held in highest esteem. Here we find the ablest man put in charge, not of the War Department, but of the Ex- chequer. Here we find a Gladstone poring over schemes, not for the destruction of man and of the wealth man has created, but spending his days and nights in perfecting plans for in- creasing and cheapening manufactures and for extending the commerce of the empire into the most distant countries. If he can reduce the income tax but a penny on the pound, if he can reduce the duty on sugar by the small sum of only five percent., or if he can make the slightest abatement in the excise, he deems himself more happy than if the royal arms had gained a victory, and his people will award him greater honors for these victories of peace than for the most successful campaigns gained at the expense of noble warriors and the tears and lamentations of wives and children left desolate by the sacrifice. And now coming home before seeing how this prevailing sentiment is expressed here, let us go to the outskirts of civilization and ob- serve the action of the ruling sentiment there. But here we leave written law and enter into the domain of unwritten law. Take the Western plains, including Texas, and what do we find there ? We find stock-raising the chief employment and the ruling interest, and we find at the same time that cattle are more sacred than men, and that it is very much safer to murder a man than it is to steal an ox, for the murder generally ends with acquittal, and in many instances it is not thought neces- sary to have even a trial, Avhile the theft generally ends with enough bullets or rope to dispose forever of the culprit. And UNWISE LAWS. 5 the same state of affairs is found to exist in the lower pen- insula of Florida, though widely removed from any of the in- fluences prevailing in the West. We will now trace how this prevailing sentiment, although it was not the voice of the people, either numerically or geograph- ically, succeeded in fashioning the unwise commercial laws which are finally bearing such pernicious fruit. Upon this principle we might expect to see agriculture en- couraged and the husbandman honored. We might expect to see annual celebrations in honor of agriculture as in China, where the Emperor, though believed to be the veritable Son of Heaven, goes forth attended by his court, and turns the sod with a plough, so that agriculture, the " nursing mother of the arts," may be encouraged. So we might expect to see here, on every ist of INIay, joyful celebrations all over the land, when the President, attended by his Cabinet and by the mem- bers of both Houses of Congress, would march to some selected spot, and there, with his own hands, turn a furrow ; and when the Governor of each State, attended by its Legislature, would perform the same ceremony, to the end that all might honor and esteem agriculture — the great and the sole maintainer of human existence. We might expect to see the plough chosen as the national emblem and emblazoned on the national standard with the crowning motto: /// hoc signo vinces ; and on our coins we might expect to see, on one side, Washington guiding the plough ; and, on the other, an altar upon which are piled golden sheaves encircled with ruddy fruits and homely vegetables, encompassed by bleating flocks and lowing herds, and surrounded by a joyous people paying grateful homage to the source of all their prosperity. But what do we see instead, and contrary to all experience .' We see manufactures fostered and the manufacturer honored. We see practically emblazed upon our banner and engraven upon our escutcheon a pig — an iron pig — pig-iron, and on our 6 UNWISE LAWS. coins we behold Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Ohio linked hand in hand, like the Liberie, Egalite, Fraternite of the French, with the motto : Z' Etat cest inoi, on one side ; and, on the reverse, around the altar upon which the loom and the anvil alone sit enthroned, are no happy, joyous crowds welcom- ing the return of spring, but a silent, sullen throng laboring under the weight of burdens forged from the bowels of their own hard and heartless patron saint. And whence comes this anomaly ? This chapter proposes to show. And to do this let us go back somewhat. In the settlement of this country the immigrants landed upon shores that were very various in fertility of soil and in geniality of climate. There was New England, cold and barren, and its rocky shores lashed by tempestuous seas. There were the Middle States, enjoying a warmer sun and calmer sea, with broad and deep rivers penetrating a rich country, producing, when cleared of its mighty forests, generous crops of grain of every description, and nutritious grasses on which stock fed and fattened. There were the States of Maryland and Virginia, whose shores are washed not only by the Atlantic, but also by the majestic Chesapeake Bay, whose waters, through means of its many tributary streams extended up to and beyond the lovely Blue Ridge Mountains, and whose soil, besides the grain and fruits of the Middle States, produced in abundance the fragrant weed which cheers the heart of man, whether prince or peasant, from frozen Zembla to Araby the blest ; and there were the Southern States, which poured into the channels of commerce their rich tribute of naval stores, rice and cotton. In this faint picture of the natural conditions of the various sections of the country, we see the germ of the unwise laws of which we are treating. But before proceeding further we must bear in mind that there were no facilities for transport and no means of communication except through means of sail- ing vessels along the coast, so that practically where people were landed there they had to stay, and be the locality barren UNWISE LA IV S. 7 or fertile, cold or warm, they had to accommodate themselves to their situation. Hence if a man was landed in New Eng- land there he had to stay. At first, and for many years, as the population of New Eng- land was small, the valleys of the streams and the few other fertile spots to be. found here and there sufficed for the support of the population, and as the seas along the shores afforded them abun- dance of excellent fish, it was many years before the subject of subsistence pressed upon the attention of the people. But in those days it was not considered the correct thing to have only about two children, as is said to be the style in modern New England, but families were large. Consequently in time the population became redundant, and as there was no ready outlet to the fertile West the population had to devise other means than those of agriculture to procure subsistence. The most ready means that presented themselves were fishing, whaling, and commerce, and these they cultivated with assiduity and suc- cess. Their sails whitened every sea, their keels visited every port, and wealth flowed in apace. They caught cod on the banks of New Foundland, they harpooned whales in the far distant Pacific, and they brought slaves from Africa. They transported to Europe the produce of the rest of the country, and they brought back the foreign goods consumed at home. One would suppose that these hardy sons of New England would have been satisfied with the abundant wealth their in- dustry and enterprise brought them. But no ; avarice is never satisfied. So as soon as the Federal Constitution was adopted we find them demanding from Congress a bounty for catching fish, and they obtained it, and thus was started the first of those unwise laws from which we are now suffering. They also demanded that foreign shipping should be absolutely excluded from the coastwise trade, and this boon they also obtained, and by degrees they demanded that this and that interest should be burdened for the benefit of their industries, and they first and last demanded and obtained so many special advantages that 8 UNWISE LAWS. they at last became the mariners, the traders, and the manu- facturers of the other sections of the country. This is the first stage of the partial laws we are writing of ; the second stage we will write of a little further on. But how was New England enabled to fasten upon the other portions of the country laws so inimical to their interests ? As we saw above, New England occupied a barren soil, either frozen or covered with deep snow nearly six months in the year ; it was therefore under the necessity of supplementing niggardly nature by arti- ficial means. It was impelled by necessity. Locomotion was too difficult for emigration, and they had either to suffer hun- ger or to devise means for living at the expense of other sec- tions. As New England was cold and barren, so the Middle States were mild and fertile. Subsistence was abundant with them, and as the Napoleonic wars afforded them large profits for their flour and their meat, they were happy and content and cared little how New England shaped legislation. And the Southern States, enjoying a warm climate, which of itself was in great measure house and raiment, and reaping a rich reward from their monopoly of their peculiar products, were likewise happy and content, , and consequently cared little how New England moulded commercial legislation ; and as, moreover, its statesmen were engrossed with constitutions and their interpre- tation, they paid no attention to the encroachments of New England upon their interests ; — every thing combined, necessity on the part of New England and indifference on the part of the other sections of the country, to fasten upon the country the system of unwise and partial legislation which began with the foundation of the Federal Union, and which has flourished for the past twenty-five years with unchecked sway. New England is now the Benjamin at the public board — its portion is fivefold that of the others. The other brethren club in, and not only pay their New England relatives a bounty for catching fish, which is a highly profitable employment with- out any bounty, but they also allow them to draw from the UNWISE LAWS. 9 public treasury the duties they have paid on the salt that cured that portion of their fish they exported abroad. And the other brethren are more liberal still to their New England relatives. They agree not only not to use any foreign shipping in trading between domestic ports, but they also agree, lest some selfish people should consult their own interest and employ foreign bottoms, that nobody shall use them, thus giving their New England brethren a monopoly of this import- ant branch of business. And the other brethren go still further in their unselfishness. They agree to allow their New England relatives to arrest at the seaports all goods brought from abroad, and not to permit them to land unless they pay a fine, euphe- mistically termed duties, of from thirty to one hundred per cent., in order that their New England brethren may be enabled to make and sell them at the enhanced price. Verily New England is the favored child of the Union. We thus see how New England, in the earlier stages of the Union, while the population was confined to the Atlantic sea- board, and before it had overspread the virgin West, had, by studying diligently the methods of making the natural abundance of the other sections of the country administer to the natural poverty and sterility of their section, created in the halls of legislation an apparent public sentiment, by virtue of which they were enabled not only to place heavy re- strictions on the country at large for their especial benefit, but they had also induced their fellow-countrymen to pay them for following an occupation which, without any bounty, was im- mensely profitable. Although these burdens and restrictions were necessarily injurious to the other sections of the Union, and inimical to their interests, it was not surprising that New England succeeded in fastening them upon the country, for the reason that, as we have seen, the other sections were prospering largely by virtue of their exceedingly favorable natural condi- tions, and it is a trait of human nature io be indifferent to the profits the opposite party is making, provided the party of the first part is also making a good profit. 10 UNWISE LAWS. But, how comes it that, after the population had burst its swathing bands, had crossed the Appalachian chain, then spread beyond the Ohio, surnamed by its discoverers La Belle Riviere, an account of its limpid waters flowing gently between beauti- ful hills, wooded to their tops with the oak, the hickory, the walnut, and other beautiful forms of vegetable life, and finally encircled the mighty West in its loving grasp, — how comes it that, after the country had become more agricultural than ever, if this were possible, New England was still enabled to impose its policy of bounties, restrictions, and prohibitions ? Strange, is it not, that the country, which now reckoned its boundaries in degrees of latitude and longitude rather than in miles, should still hug the chains with which New England had shackled all its interests ? It looks strange, it seems almost incomprehensible. But a simple explanation will relieve this fact of its miraculous character, and place it in the light of simple cause and effect. There are two classes of causes. One class is that different parts of the country were engrossed, in interests peculiar to themselves, and had neither time nor inclination to extend their views beyond their own narrow horizon. For instance. New York was engrossed in its great canal to the lakes, and the Southern States in slavery, in its extension and protection, and neither paid much attention to the selfish schemes of New England. The other and greater cause was that the grand States of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa were settled by the enterprising sons of New England, and when these States sent representa- tives to Congress, they sent, of course, as veritable New Eng- land men as if they had resided in Boston or New Haven. The effect of this was that New England ideas virtually pre- vailed not only in their native seat, but also over the whole extent of the States already mentioned. New England had found an open sesame into Aladdin's Cave. That open sesame was the talismanic words, " Be it enacted." They had found that this magic phrase, "Be it UNWISE LAWS. II enacted," opened to them the coffers of the general treasury, whereby bounties were poured into the laps of her fishermen, thereby enriching that portion of her population ; they had found that these magic words, " Be it enacted," shut our domes- tic ports to all foreign shipping to the extent that foreign shipping was absolutely prohibited from engaging in the coast- wise trade, thereby compelling the whole country to employ New England shipping, and that thus her shipbuilders and mariners were greatly enriched ; they had found that this same formula of " Be it enacted " completely shut out foreign goods, or their cost was so greatly enhanced that her children of the loom, the mill, and the workshop were enabled to make these tabooed goods at a large profit, and that this portion of her population was also greatly enriched ; when, upon casting their eyes around the limits of their inhospitable section, they found every creature greatly enriched by " Be it enacted," what wonder that they imbibed the idea, and that the idea became ingrained in their very nature, that the best and easiest road to wealth was to go to Congress and get such and such laws enacted ! As we have seen, the West was largely settled by men who had been raised amid these ideas. It was not, therefore, surprising that, after they had exterminated or driven off the red man, and converted the pastures of the buffalo into ploughed fields that smiled under the weight of luxuriant harvests, they should still, although all their interests were now opposed to the restric- tive policy of their former homes, uphold the old system which had before their own eyes transformed the poorest portion of the country into the most wealthy. In fact, they became the most ardent advocates of all the restrictive and illiberal measures of New England, and thus New England, aided by her sons, who moulded opinion in the great West, was enabled, to bind and did bind the country in the industrial chains of which we are now treating. But before bestowing upon Massachusetts, and I say Massa- 12 UMWISE LAWS. chusetts because New England was virtually Massachusetts, all the odium for the unwise and illiberal industrial legislation now resting so heavily upon the country, let us mention a few other causes that greatly assisted Massachusetts in riveting what is falsely called " protection " upon the statute books. The principal of these minor causes was national vanity. This sentiment manifested itself in a restless, almost insane, ambition for national growth. It was not satisfied with the rapid increase of population and wealth naturally occurring, but it demanded that the increase of a decade should be encom- passed within a twelvemonth. It was not satisfied to see a vast increase of attractive farm-houses, increased crops of grain and other agricultural productions, increased numbers of cattle, sheep, and swine, feeding peacefully in the fields, but it also demanded that every cross-road should have its village, that the village should speedily grow into the town, and the town into the vast city, with all its attendant circumstances of privation and vice. Every State watched the census, and its citizens gloried in increase of its population, and mourned and hung their heads for shame if they found their State was relatively falling behind ; and this same feeling descended to the inhabitants of the smallest hamlet of the country. When one found his State or his city had greatly outstripped others in the race he felt the pride of an ancient Roman when he proudly exclaimed, Civis Romamis sum. This sentiment is forcibly illustrated in the boasting demeanor of the citizen of Chicago, who derives fancied importance from the fact that he lives in the fastest-growing city in the United States. Another form of this national vanity was, that it was in some measure discreditable to buy foreign goods, but that we ought to manufacture at home all we use at home. And the writer well remembers this form of national vanity when, as a boy of twelve or fourteen years of age, he deliberately chose the dark, dingy, and rough paper made at home to the smooth white sheets made abroad. Well, Massachusetts played upon this UNWISE LAWS. 13 sentiment of national vanity, and turned it all to her own advantage. She applauded the idea, and praised the national patriotism thus displayed. She anticipated the action of the popular lecturer, who resolved that his lectures should be for the benefit of the poor — and that he was the poor. She pro- claimed that manufactures were the means of satisfying this national craving for rapid growth. She cheered loudly for the old flag and — an appropriation. But the appropriation must enure to her benefit. Manufactures must be excluded, so that she might produce them. And such was the insidious nature of this desire for rapid growth, that Henry Clay, to whom the manufacturers of New England should erect a monument as noble and as lasting as the Pantheon, succeeded in building up a party of de- voted followers in the Southern States, all whose interests were utterly averse to restraining the entry of foreign goods, who at all times blindly assisted Massachusetts in her efforts to place every legal impediment possible in the way of their fellow-citizens obtaining any manufactured goods from any- where but Massachusetts. Henry Clay and his Southern ad- herents were at all times strenuous supporters of the Massa- chusetts idea, and in the clash of parties over the subject of industrial legislation they were almost always able to turn the scale in favor of Massachusetts and against the other por- tions of the Union. The Massachusetts idea of restriction re- ceived also powerful reinforcement from Pennsylvania, which State, not content with the great natural advantages for manu- facturing which she possessed by reason of juxtaposition of iron ores and coal, and which would have enabled her to defy competition, joined hands with Massachusetts, and by virtue of the magic " Be it enacted," attempted, and succeeded in the effort, to prevent the consumption of all iron and its various manufactures, except such as slie herself should produce. Thus it is that a distinctively agricultural community con- sented to have its natural liberty of buying where it chose 14 UNWISE LAWS. abridged for the benefit, primarily of New England, and second- arily of Pennsylvania. There is an aphorism that " necessity knows no law." This may be true, but it is certain that the necessity of New England knew enough law to fasten upon our statute books the whole body of laws relating to bounties, to prohibition, and to restriction of the natural right of the citi- zen to buy and sell in markets most conducive to his interest or most agreeable to his feelings. CHAPTER III. HOW THESE UNWISE LAWS AT FIRST STIMULATE MATERIAL PROSPERITY, AND HOW THEY END IN MATERIAL COLLAPSE. Having seen how Massachusetts and Pennsylvania fastened upon the country what is popularly denominated the Protective System, let us now examine the effect of such laws upon the country at large. In reading recently about beavers, it was learned that this sagacious animal, in building its dwelling, constructed it with a shelf running all around its interior, just above the water-line, and that when the beaver went to bed or spent his days at home, he perched upon this shelf, with his head facing the wall and his tail hanging down in the water. And why? (We presume the soul of this writer must at some time in the misty past have spent its probation, in its transmigration from amphibian to ter- restrial life, in the body of a beaver, to have acquired so intimate a knowledge of a beaver's mind.) And why ? In order thereby to be at all times warned of danger, whether near or remote. For, says this writer, the tail of the beaver is so extremely sensitive to vibration, that even if so much as a dog, at the distance of a mile, cross the stream that supplies its dam, the tremor of the water thereby set agoing is immediately conveyed to the said tail. Now, whether this is a fish story or not, and, as by courtesy, or, at all events, by poetic licence, every thing UNWISE LAWS. 15 that swims may be classed as a fish, so this story about beavers may be placed under this head. Now, whether the above be so or not, it is at all events certain that matters in the universe around us are so nicely adjusted that any alteration of their natural conditions sends tremors and disturbances to the utmost limits of their environment. The natural order of affairs between men is when they want to exchange objects between themselves is to do it with the least impediment possible ; the idea invariably being not to put difficulties in the way of obtaining what they desire, but to re- move all difficulties that may naturally be in the way of pro- curing the gratification of their wishes : as, for instance, making a road between points where only a path existed before, and finally substituting a railroad for the earth road ; or, bridging a stream where it was formerly crossed by a boat, and after- wards replacing the sailboat by a steamboat. Well, duties, or taxes, whether protective or fiscal, upon the interchange of products between individuals or nations, are interferences with the natural order of affairs, and they produce disturbances of greater or less intensity, according as the duties are low or high. The effect of the imposition of low duties is gently to stim- ulate commercial affairs, something like the stimulating effect of some spirituous liquor upon the human frame, sending an agreeable glow from the stomach to the utmost verge of the nervous system, and as long as moderation is practised little or no harm can come either from protection or from drinking. But when the barriers between peoples are builded high, and made difficult of transgression, then the effects become intense, and may be compared to the tide rolling from the mighty Atlantic into the narrow British channels, which even the majesty of Canute was not able to stay in its irresistible rise. But while a moderate impediment to intercourse sometimes ap- pears to be stimulative and beneficial, and while an almost im- passable barrier appears to many to be the acme of political 1 6 UNWISE LAWS. wisdom, and to be the parent of all the wonderful prosperity of this highly-favored land, yet they are both injurious. But if in- jurious, why are such laws looked upon in so favorable a light by many wise, sensible, and unselfish people ? The explana- tion is simple, and lies in that trait of human nature which makes one esteem the trivial occurrences if near of more im- portance than the mighty event if remote. Thus a violent death in one's city, and especially if it occurred before his very eyes, makes a deeper impression upon an individual than did the death last summer of tens of thousands in Spain who were swept off by cholera. And especially if the event is remote in time as well as in distance is the effect faint compared to a recent occurrence. Thus the slaughter of thousands of Rome's noblest sons at the battle of Cannae makes so little im- pression upon the modern reader that he is more interested in the bushel of golden rings gathered from the fingers of the slain than in the human suffering entailed by this disastrous combat. And to ascend to a nobler comparison — the moon, because nearer, appears larger than the greatest planet, and the smallest planet in its turn seems larger than the distant star whose paral- lax the wisest astronomer is unable to determine. Thus one sees the sudden growth of a city, caused by an additional impediment, it matters not whether this impedi- ment be for the purpose of raising revenue or for protection, raised up in the path of entry of some species of merchandise in which that city is interested. Or more striking still, he sees some uninhabited locality in a few years converted into a pros- perous town, with every sign of wealth and happiness — sweet homes, attractive school-houses, and beautiful churches on every hand, caused by the fact that that spot contained in close proximity most of the elements essential to the cheap produc- tion of the article in question. This individual, seeing all these evidences of thrift, of wealth, and of happiness, and seeing that they are the immediate result of the impediment referred to, jumps at once to the conclusion that what produces such UNWISE LAWS. 17 good results must necessarily be good itself. And then he argues further with himself, that if such an impediment is good in one case it must be good in all ; and therefore he favors the plan of obstructing every thing, and thus arises the Protective System, which is a euphemism for obstructions placed in the path of commercial intercourse. Well, these things are near, and are therefore striking, and the observer forms his favorable impression from them, but he never thinks, or if he does, he loses sight of the fact, that in consequence of this impediment placed in the way of the importation of, say iron, every farmer has to pay an additional price for his hoe, his plough, his reaper, and all the numberless farm and household imple- ments he is obliged to buy ; every mechanic has to pay an en- hanced price for his saw, his plane, and his chisel ; every housekeeper, for his stoves, his furnaces, and his gas fixtures ; and even every little child, when he goes to buy his first knife, has to buy a meaner one for his twenty-five cents. In consequence of this impediment every railroad has to pay more for its iron, and every telegraph and telephone has to pay more for its wire ; and there is not an interest and not a crea- ture in the broad land but what is affected thereby. Every person's net income is also reduced thereby, for having to pay more for his articles in which iron enters, either directly or indi- rectly, he of course has less left at the end of the year. In consequence of this impediment every person has to pay more when he travels and when he uses the telegraph, and more when he transports his merchandise, and thus it is that every creature and every employment and every calling has to con- tribute, some of their abundance and some of their poverty, to build up the town, or to increase the size of the city or the population of the State. The plus of the town, city, or State is secured at the expense of the minus of every individual in the country. Those who say impediments created by law are beneficial, look only at what is near and obvious, but were they to take a wide view of the subject, in which they saw the very 1 8 UNWISE LAWS. many laboring for the very few, they could not help but see that obstructions raised by statute, it matters not whether they are imposed to supply the necessities of government, or are self-imposed as protective duties, are in their very nature prejudicial to the community. Let us now trace the operation of the high protective duties we have been living under for the past twenty-five years. A high protective tariff is an artificial barrier erected by virtue of " Be it enacted," for the purpose of enabling manufacturers to obtain from their fellow-citizens higher prices for their wares. If this were not its object it would not have been passed. The effect of such a tariff is twofold : first, it produces artificial scarcity by shutting out foreign goods and thereby has the effect of all scarcity, to wit, to enhance their price ; and secondly, it increases the cost of those foreign wares that do enter the country to the extent of foreign cost, plus transpor- tation to our shores, and plus the importer's profit or commis- sion, for, as a rule, no manufacturer will ship goods to another country unless he obtains home price and cost of laying them down in a foreign port. The law has now placed the manu- facturers in relation to the consumers pretty much in that of a rat terrier in a pit to a lot of rats, for it has surrounded the country with a rampart of protection, and has given them au- thority to worry and devour the people, just as the terrier does the rats. As card-players say after ace, king, and queen have been played that "jack is a gentleman," so the same may now be said of the manufacturers, for protection has fixed matters to their exact liking. They find they are not only called upon to supply the vacuum created by the law, but they are also en- abled by the same law to obtain a much higher price for all they produce. The result is they are overrun with work, and as the price always rises when the demand exceeds the supply, they are enabled to get much higher prices for their enlarged production. They consequently make money rapidly and ac- cumulate large fortunes. But it is soon discovered that the UNWISE LAWS. 19 original manufacturers with their original plant cannot supply the demand. Hence it follows that old firms increase their capacity, and new concerns are daily established. The neces- sity for increased mills and factories necessitates increased facilities for erecting them ; hence an increase of saw-mills, brick-yards, and stone quarries ; hence more glass factories, nail factories, and shops of different kinds for the various small wares required about a building. All these schemes succeed, and all their projectors become wealthy, but yet the vacuum is not filled. There is still a scarcity of goods and still a demand in excess of the supply. Goods, therefore, rise rapidly in value, and in spite of the wall protecting the manufacturers, many foreign goods come in, for the people must have them. But as long as foreign goods come in in spite of the high duties, the profits of manufacture continue large, and the old manu- facturers still continue to add mill to mill and factory to factory, and new men in addition are constantly joining the ranks of the manufacturers. But still there is a vacuum, and still there is a demand for more goods. More factories are re- quired and more factories are built, and in a short time there arises a Lowell, a Lawrence, a Lynn, a Providence, a Bridge- port, a Waterbury, and numberless other manufacturing towns, some noted for cotton, some for wool, some for shoes, some for metal goods, and all for manufactures built up by virtue of the magic "Be it enacted." This process continues for years, till at last whole States become covered with immense manufactur- ing establishments, and cotton lords, woollen lords, iron lords, and all sorts of manufacturing lords, who count their wealth by millions and their workmen by thousands, abound on every hand. Their magnificent dwellings filling every town and city, their splendid equipages, their beautiful yachts, and their ele- gant surroundings are constant but eloquent though silent proclamations to the world that manufactures made them what they are. The world admires and envies and determines to become manufacturers too, for it appears as if there could not be too much manufacturing. 20 UNWISE LAWS. But at last the vacuum becomes filled, and the handwriting appears on the wall, but nobody can see it, and indeed who can suspect, much less see, any harm in what for years has been a source of great advantage. Evidences of manufacturing being overdone, may begin to appear in decreased demand for goods, and decreased rate of profit, but profits have been so large the manufacturers can sell for less and can still make money. So new establishments arise after the supply equals the demand, and promoters of new enterprises still get up new companies for all sorts of things. Presently, however, the supply exceeds the demand, and goods begin to accumulate. But in the meanwhile the impoverishing effect of having to pay too much for goods begins to manifest itself in inability of the people to buy the amount of goods they formerly did, so that while the supply is increasing the demand is decreasing. This double cause produces corresponding effects, and the manufacturers, who, only lately, were besought for goods, now find they have to beseech the buyers. The manufacturers then begin to compete with one another, and in a short time one manufacturer and then another fails. But they die hard, for having made fortunes when the -tide was flowing freely they struggle as hard when the ebb follows. But all in vain. Protection has so stimulated production, manufacturing power has increased vastly in excess of the capacity of the people to consume, and goods become a drug upon the market. But goods must be sold to meet notes or acceptances, so the auction houses are filled with consignments that must be sold. Goods are slaughtered, and the whole manufacturing system tumbles and falls. The magnates of the loom, the anvil, and the shops are lords no more. Their dwellings, rivalling in luxury and elegance the palaces of the Old World, are deserted or sold under the hammer. Their yachts, that but lately spread their snowy sails to the spanking breeze, are tied up to the wharf to rot. Their restive steeds, that excited the envy of the pedestrian, have perhaps gone to drag some omnibus UNWISE LAWS. 21 or coupe. Those factories and mills, that recently vibrated day and night with the ceaseless din of spindles and looms, and those rolling-mills and machine-shops that belched smoke by day and fire by night, are now as silent as the grave, and the busy multitude that wrung health, and happiness, and comfort from the constant throbs of all this machinery, are now idle and discontented, sighing in vain for the return of former times, and fortunate indeed if dire want stare them not in the face. Thus it is that protection first stimulates, then congests, and finally spreads ruin and desolation broadcast over the land. CHAPTER IV. PROTECTION THE CAUSE OF INSTABILITY AND THE PARENT OF PANICS AND COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION. One may ask, Why charge protection with the sin of insta- bility ? Is not instability, he may further ask, stamped upon every thing ? Is it not by virtue of the instability of the atoms contained in a grain of wheat that the said grain, when sub- jected to heat and moisture, develops into a tiny plant, which in turn develops into the golden sheaves of the harvest ? Is it not by virtue of instability that the molecules that make up the infant change from day to day, nay, from moment to mo- ment, so that in time this infant becomes the beautiful woman or the strong man ? He may say that instability is the very essence of life, and of all the blessings attending it, and that when instability ceases then death follows. If, then, one may say protection produces instability, we will hail protection as a beneficent principle, and cling to it forever. All this is true of the instability of nature untrammelled by man, but as soon as man attempts to improve on nature, then this instability which, when undisturbed, is the source of all the good we enjoy, be- 22 UNWISE LAWS. comes an engine of destruction which sweeps even nations off the face of the earth. Protection is the effort of man to improve upon the laws of nature, is, in fact, an interference with these laws, and, like most interferences with nature, which end in damage or death, its epi- taph may be written, like that of the man who was well but de- sired to be better : " I was well ; I wished to be better ; I took physic, and here I lie." It is of artificial instability we speak. Stability in instability is the order of nature. While instability stamps every thing in nature, this instability is of such a charac- ter that man can learn to foresee its operation, and act in such a manner as to secure benefits or to avoid evils. The insta- bility of nature leads to well-defined results — in other words, leads to stability. When things are stable and steady we can generally foresee the end, but when things are unstable no man can know what the end may be. A man, by keeping up a steady gait, may walk from ocean to ocean and arrive fresh at his journey's end, but if he pursues an unstable course, now walking, now lounging, and now running, he breaks down at the beginning. We are taught this lesson at an early age when we read how the unstable, unsteady hare was beaten by the steady tortoise. Therefore, stability in the affairs of men is the great- est blessing, and every thing that tends to stability should be encouraged. Therefore, too, instability is the greatest evil that can afflict man, and whatever produces instability is an evil to be eradicated. We will now show how protection produces instability. Protection, as we have seen, causes artificial scarcity by ex- cluding foreign goods, and scarcity, whether natural or artificial, is followed by high prices. Therefore manufacturers are called upon to supply not only the natural demand that existed, but also the artificial scarcity caused by the magic " Be it enacted." Under ordinary demand, or the demand existing before the law had created for the manufacturers a greatly enlarged extra demand, the manufacturers were necessarily enjoying good UNWISE LAWS. 23 profits, at the least the average profits of other employments or occupations, and most probably they were enjoying higher profits than the average because manufacturing requires capital and skill, and consequently the few persons that combined these two essential advantages would be subjected to less competition than others. But if they were not enjoying average profits, they would soon quit manufacturing till supplies were so re- duced that scarcity would again bring up the price. So we see that manufacturers were enjoying at least average profits under a normal state of affairs. This being so, what is the effect of the greatly increased demand thrown upon them by reason of special legislation ? When one man has something, and two men want it badly, competition is at once set up, and they bid against each other and raise the price, and if the relation be- tween supply and demand is kept up a permanent increase of price is established. Thus, when axes or other necessary im- plements of iron are shut out, the manufacturer of axes finds himself immediately besieged by men requiring axes for clear- ing their land, etc., and, as he cannot supply the demand, he at once puts up his price for axes to a moderate extent, and at once sets about enlarging his plant for the production of axes. At first there was a supply of foreign axes in the stores and in the hands of the consumers, and they for a time help to lessen the demand on the ax manufacturer, but as they give out, the de- mand becomes so large and so urgent that axes begin to be im- ported again, and the price of axes at once rises to the foreign cost, plus transportation, plus the heavy duty exacted upon entering our ports, plus an importer's profit upon foreign cost, transportation, and duties. This then becomes the market- price for axes, and the manufacturer fixes his price accordingly. The manufacturer now enjoys a very large profit, for, as we have seen, he must have been making a living before; if not, he would have ceased making axes, for in addition to his former profit he gains in profit at first the whole cost of transportation, the whole of the duties, and a portion of the importer's profit. He 24 UNWISE LAWS. thus increases rapidly in wealth, of which we saw an instance in the years 1879-81, when the manufacturers of engines were enabled to fix their own prices, their own terms of payment, and their own times of delivery. Many can remember vividly what humble suppliants they were to these highly-blessed manufacturers, and although they brought money in their hands, they were compelled in many instances to accept as a favor from these independent gentry a vague promise to furnish, at an indefinite future, an engine, at a price to be arbitrarily fixed by themselves. Under such circumstances wealth flows in rapidly upon the ax manufacturer, and what does he do ? He of course builds more ax factories and improves the facil- ities of his old ones. These evidences of his prosperity are so great others turn their attention to the making of axes, and, in addition to individual manufacturers, stock companies are formed also. By degrees these new factories begin to fill the vacuum created by law, and drive out the foreign article, but even after this is done, the margin of profit still remains very high, and there is still money in the manufacture of axes. Hence, not only are other enterprises for the manufacture of axes started, but the old concerns still continue to enlarge and to improve their plant. But the demand for axes is not infinite, so the supply begins to catch up with the demand, and profits begin to lessen. But now comes into operation a very simple principle, and that principle is, that the greater the quantity of an article turned out, the less is the comparative cost. Thus, if fifty thousand axes are made at the expense of ten or twenty per cent, for plant and management, an out-turn of one hundred thousand axes from the same establishment may be secured for very little extra cost. In the first case the cost of an ax, as re- gards these items, is, say twenty-five cents each, while in the other case it might be only fifteen cents. Here, then, we find a saving of, say ten thousand dollars, by reason of the increased output. As competition increases and profits decrease, manu- facturers are constantly turning out more axes from the same UNWISE LAWS. 25 plant. In time, then, by reason of increased plant and improved facilities of old plant, the supply of axes becomes very much greater than the demand, and, the market being glutted, stag- nation follows, and then collapse. The same thing applies to all the manufactures of iron. V\^- iron goes up to $40 a ton and in two years is down to $18. Locomotive engines go up to $15,000 to $25,000 and speedily fall to $8,000 or $10,000, or even less. Iron, in all its forms, shows the same fluctuations. Protected behind a lofty artificial barrier, the manufacturers are enabled to make such enormous fortunes when prices are high they vastly increase their manu- facturing facilities, and thousands of others rush in to share the golden harvests and add still other establishments, till finally the land is literally flooded with all kinds of iron goods and wares, when stagnation follows and prostration ensues. - The capacity of steam and machinery to produce far excels the capacity of man to consume, to waste, and to destroy. And why speak of wool and its manufactures ? for they re- peat the same story. Only it is interesting to compare the independent, nay insolent, manner of the woollen manufacturers and their agents in 1S79-81, when the high tariff behind which they were entrenched enabled them to command buyers, and their meek demeanor in 1884-5, when, in consequence of over-production, the buyers were enabled to pay them back in their own currency. On the woollen trade is stamped insta- bility in most legible characters. The same fact holds true of every protected article, and copper, cloths of all kinds, glass, crockery, etc., all proclaim through their extreme fluctuations that the extreme of exuberant prosperity begets its opposite ex- treme of excessive prostration ; all might exclaim — Protection, thou art the parent of Instability. Extremes are always in- jurious, for the extreme of prosperity begets extravagance, wastefulness, dissipation, and idleness, and the extreme of depression begets want, hunger, disease, and despair. The writer would fain depict the feverish state of affairs 26 UNWISE LAWS. leading to a crisis and the subsequent collapse, both insepara- ble from the protection system, but it requires a more facile pen than his to do the subject even faint justice. He would fain describe how manufacturers of every description stretched every nerve and bent all the powers of shrewd intellect to turn out goods ; how they availed themselves of every invention ; and how they extended, by means of electric lights, the day far into the night, so that they may turn more goods into the channels of trade ; how in order to build more factories to produce, and more v/arehouses to hold, they stimulated the mason, the car- penter, and the painter, the tinner, the plumber, and the gas- fitter ; how they taxed the capacity of the mine and the quarry, of the furnaces, the mills, and the machine-shops ; how they called into requisition more railroads and more rolling stock on the roads ; — how, in fine, all these vast manufacturing inter- ests united to form a rushing, headlong torrent ; he would fain depict the current of population setting from all sides and from foreign shores toward the manufacturing centres where work is plenty and wages high ; the centres filled with eager, stirring shopkeepers, and the numberless purveyors to the thousand wants of men, including lawyers, doctors, actors, etc., all hast- ing to be rich, and all spending lavishly and freely ; the osten- tation and display of the rich, and the emulation of those desiring to be thought rich. It is indeed vain to attempt any descrip- tion of the hurry, the excitement, the speculation, the extrav- agance of such a period, where all seems to be prosperous, and where all think they are rich and spend as if they were, but we all know what it is, for it has all passed before our eyes twice in the past twelve years. The crisis has arrived, the props are knocked away, but in- stead of the vessel gliding gently into smooth waters, it tumbles a wreck amidst the scaffold that upheld it. People are now called upon to settle, but instead of payment bankruptcy is found to overspread the land, for it is now dis- covered that they have spent in wasteful living, not only what UNWISE LA WS. 27 they possessed but what they hoped to possess, and as our hopes are always largely in excess of our realities, the obligations of every description, from those of a state to a village, and from a railroad to a peddler, are found to be beyond control. The reverse of the picture of this feverish speculative period will not even be attempted, for the stagnation of business, the failure of employment, and the universal suffering and anxiety that followed, are painfully familiar to every man. Stability, wherein profits both of manufacturers and merchants are moderate but uniform, wherein wages are low but steady, where people must practise sobriety and economy, and where consequently they get rich slowly, is surely greatly preferable to instability, wherein for some years manufacturers and mer- chants are crowded with business and overwhelmed with riches, and are therefore made wasteful, extravagant and spec- ulative, to be followed by a longer period of ruin and despond- ency ; wherein the mechanic, and laborer, and employe of every description obtain for a few years high wages and are also made wasteful and discontented, to be followed by large decrease of wages and by curtail of work, and in thousands of instances by entire loss of work. Protection necessarily and inevitably causes this instability and all its attendant train of evils, and although the community recovers from these de- pressions and mounts again to the lofty heights from which it was hurled, it only mounts to be again cast down. The high wall of protection which surrounds us offers, by shutting out for- eign competition, such enormous profits to manufacturers they rush in, as we have seen, to reap the harvest. They then over- do the matter, and ruin follows. But after years of suffering and enforced economy we gradually recover, only to be fol- lowed by the same whirl and hurry already spoken of. And so it goes, ad infinitum, no man and no interest knowing what a few years will bring forth, for although wealthy to-day, the instability produced by protection may make us paupers to- morrow. 28 UNWISE LAWS. CHAPTER V. HOW PROTECTION STIMULATES AND FINALLY DEMORALIZES THE WHOLE COMMUNITY. As we have already seen, the manufacturers, by reason of protection creating an artificial scarcity, have a vastly increased demand thrown upon them, and of course they raise their prices and grow wealthy with rapidity. It is not necessary to cite by name the enormous fortunes of many manufacturers of Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Boston, and other points, for this fact is patent to all. Their fast-growing wealth becomes apparent to the least discerning, and it is frequently observed that the rough ignorant workman of to-day becomes the wealthy manu- facturer of to-morrow. Hence, as we have also seen, others hasten to join the ranks of the manufacturers, and when it is found that new-comer after new-comer, and others after them too, lay up for themselves great treasures upon earth, a current, reaching even to foreign lands of employers and employed, is set up towards manufactures, draining thereby the quiet but necessary employment of agriculture, in which they had been happily engaged before. Well, in time, and not a very long time either, a large body of wealthy manufacturers overspreads certain sections of the country. Many, perhaps most of them, are workmen who have risen from the ranks, and have neither education nor taste for the refined enjoyments of cultivated society. In England there is some method of honoring great success in trade or manufactures and satisfying our natural feeling for distinction, and that is by creating barons and baronets, but in this country there is no general patent of nobility except wealth. But wealth concealed or wealth unspent brings no honor or consideration to its possessor. To excite the remark of the public or to draw attention to the owner wealth must be spent freely, lavishly, and ostentatiously. The men them- selves who have acquired the wealth do not, as a general thing. UNWISE LAWS. 29 desire to indulge in display, but as soon as daughters grow up the mothers desire them to surpass their neighbors, and for that purpose they buy them finer clothes and give them other advantages beyond the reach of their poorer neighbors, and the sons follow their sisters, though at a distance, for it takes them longer to outgrow the simple pleasures of boyish games and excursions to the streams and woods. But after a while this simple preeminence palls, and the female portion of the family must have finer houses than any of their neighbors, and they must be furnished in the finest style of the ui)holsterer's art ; they must have carriages to ride in, and for clothing they must have the finest fabrics of the most distant climes, and for ornaments the mines of Brazil and South Africa are ransacked for gems to adorn their necks, their ears, and their fingers. The male portion of the family has by this time fully caught up with the passion for disjjlay, and they must have their sad- dle-horses, their city-made clothing if they live in town, and their London-made clothes if they live in New York or Bos- ton. Fast women, actresses, race-courses, and faro-banks fol- low, and the whole family is thus indulging in wastefulness and extravagance, each after his kind. At first a trip to the city was considered a badge of superi- ority, and when one returned from such a trip he was an oracle among his more simple neighbors, and the tales he had to tell of the wonders and the pleasures of the city were listened to with undisguised admiration. But as facilities for transporta- tion increased, this simple means of superiority was shared in by others, and its charm departed. Then those seeking social distinction betook themselves to Europe, and when they re- turned they were received by their neighbors with still greater admiration, and for a time they were authority on all matters of taste and fashion. But the multiplication of steamships in time destroyed this mode of distinction also, and as a last re- sort of surpassing their neighbors, luxurious residences abroad as well as palatial residences at home were resorted to. As 30 UNWISE LAWS. for yachts and other effective modes of spending money, they became so common that I knew of one manufacturer, who makes only the small article of gentlemen's linen collars, who had a yacht of his own, as well as those most favored of all our citizens — the carpet and iron manufacturers. Of course the example of so large and wealthy a portion of society had its effect upon the rest of the community, for no woman, in however straitened circumstances, will rest quietly when she sees herself — but especially hef daughters — outshone by those who but a few years before were perhaps looked down upon because not in her set ; consequently all followed as best they could the example set before them, and each emulated his neighbor in expensive and ostentatious living. Fine houses began to make their appearance, and before long the example of Augustus in finding Rome a city of brick and leaving it a city of marble, seemed to be universally followed, and the plain, comfortable houses of the fathers were everywhere su- perseded by dwellings in the designing of which expensive architects had been employed. These fine dwellings were not confined to the rich, but those who desired to be thought rich followed their example, and not only spent all their money for the pleasure of living in a high-gabled house surmounted by a turret, but mortgaged the house in addition. Palaces alone would suit leading citizens in the chief cities, but to show on how little foundation many of these splendid residences were based, one has only to refer to a Villard, who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a dwelling, and then through bank- ruptcy had to leave it uncompleted, and the kindred example of a Seney who filled his home with paintings and objects of art to the value of half a million, only to have them dispersed under the hammer of the auctioneer. In time the example of the manufacturers overspread the whole land, and the whole land exhibited the spectacle of a whole people living beyond their means and spending more than their earnings. But an exception must be made in favor UNWISE LAWS. 31 of the South, for however inclined it might be to follow their brethren of the East or the West or the Middle States, it was kept so poor by reason of its compulsory contributions, under the guise of '* Be it enacted," to the manufacturing interests of Pennsylvania and the East, it had nothing to spend, and it was only by reason of its genial sun, which in great measure served it for shelter and clothing, that it was enabled to exist at all. The South was the Cinderella in her father's house, confined to the ashes and the sweat of the kitchen, while the other por- tions of the country rejoiced in the comforts of the parlor and the upper chambers and in the brilliancy of the ball-room. During this great increase of manufacturing, the growth of certain towns and cities, and even of whole States, was very great, for mills and factories could not rise like an exhalation, as did the Palace of Pandemonium, but had to be built brick by brick, and to do this great numbers of mechanics and laborers were drawn thereto, and the subsidiary army that is required to supply a community was also greatly increased. And all those who before had been leading quiet lives on the farm or in the villages, were soon found emulating their em- ployers and living in a style proportioned to their wishes rather than to their wages. For the moment we will leave the manu- facturers and their employes and dependents and their imita- tors, who were emulating Babylon or Great Alcairo in their wealth and luxury, and will proceed a step further in showing how protection demoralizes the community. In the course of time the accumulations of wealth became so large that their possessors must seek some method of employ- ing it profitably. In addition thereto, amidst the feverish extravagant crowd that thronged them on every side, there were many prudent operatives, who lived economically and who laid up immense sums in the aggregate in the savings banks. Here then was a grand total of many millions of dollars anx- iously seeking profitable employment, and here was an oppor- tunity of setting afoot schemes and speculations of all kinds. 32 UNWISE LAWS. Wherever there is a carcass there the vultures are sure to come. And so it was in this case. Promoters and projectors of all sorts of schemes, from a company to supply a patent churn to a company to build an Erie Railroad, sprung up on every side. While many of these companies were as unsubstantial as the baseless fabric of a dream, many of them were well founded, and made money for their projectors. The failures were of course hushed up and smothered, but the successes were heralded abroad and dwelt upon with so much skill that the public rushed into all sorts of schemes with an eagerness similar to insanity, so that by 1883 the people had invested, according to Poor's Railroad Afanualiox 1884, a total of $6,746,579,000 in railroads alone. This of course was a sum vastly in excess of the ability of the country to stand, and it was done only at the expense of a vast amount of debt, which represented a very doubtful value. Millions and hundreds of millions were held simply on a margin, and vast numbers of the population became nothing less than speculators, who daily watched stock quotations to learn whether they had made a fortune or had become bank- rupt. The people were now largely demoralized, but to com- plete their demoralization there sprung up swarms of brokers, who, at first confined to the large cities, finally infested every town and village in the land. They not only afforded the public every facility to speculate through means of telegraphs and telephones, with their hourly or less quotations, but they went abroad like drummers, and by fair representations induced not only merchants but their clerks to speculate ; and not only merchants, but also simple farmers ; and not only men, but wo- men too. But of all schemes of speculation the most dangerous and most demoralizing was the invention of buying and selling on margin, for that was like the hunter's trap which caught the coon when he was a-coming, or when he was a-going, or even when he was a-standing still. If they speculated in margins they were bound to lose if they sold or if they bought, but there was the broker getting his commissions whichever way the market went. UNWISE LAWS. 33 For years stocks and bonds held the preeminence, for other modes of speculating were unheard of. But presently the people demanded other methods of speculation and excite- ment, or rather other articles to gamble in, and so the margin business extended to cotton, petroleum, grain, meat, etc., etc., and so great became the mania for excitement that many were not satisfied with speculating in one article, but they must in turn take up other articles, and frequently all at the same time. The whole community seemed to be turned into gamblers, and six hours every day was too short a time to satisfy their crav- ings, but they must turn afternoon and evenings into arenas for continuing the absorbing game. Again, the transactions between man and man having greatly increased there was an increased need for more lawyers, and these worthy gentry responded quickly to the demand. While there was an increased demand for those who make it their busi- ness to set men by the ears as well as to compose their differences, to prevent frauds and at the same time to assist rogues of all degrees to consummate frauds, for the bigger the fraud the smarter the lawyer to be found at the bottom of it, there was at the same time an increased demand for those other profes- sions which administer to our pleasures, or which alleviate the pains of the body and the sorrows of the mind ; consequently actors, artists, and architects, clergymen, journalists, and phy- sicians, etc., increased in a ratio greatly in excess of the increase of population. The country was now honeycombed with specu- lation from head to foot, and even the clergy and women were not uninfected. There was one mad race for wealth without work. And what did all this mad excitement mean, but that people were neglecting labor to inspect the tickers and tele- graphic quotations that were strewed thickly over the land, what did it mean but that people were living fast and wasting money like spendthrifts, — in fme, it meant that people were rapidly consuming the accumulated wealth of the country and were rapidly reducing themselves to poverty. It meant that 34 UNWISE LAWS. people had left the country to come to the town, and that con- sequently less food was made from year to year, and that there were more mouths from year to year to eat the decreased amount produced. It meant national and individual poverty, and it meant the distress and stagnation we have been suffering from for years. And it means a continual occurrence of these sad and hard times after a short rally for as long a period as laws, erroneously termed protective, interfere with the liberty of the citizens to trade when it seems most to his ad- vantage. But the most demoralizing effect of protection is the lower- ing of the moral standard of the people. When people see that " Be it enacted " makes the fortune of thousands of manu- facturers of iron, of wood, of cotton, of glass, etc., they learn that one set of citizens has by virtue of legislation taken advantage of the majority of their fellow-citizens, and they think to themselves if it is right to do this it is not wrong to take advantage of each other for the purpose of making money. Hence they become more concerned to make money than they are for the methods they employ : therefore the lowering of commercial morals constantly witnessed, and the frauds daily perpetrated ; therefore the frequent failures in which preferences are made in favor of persons who are not bona-fide creditors, and the compromises forced by a false display of assets. Moreover, to obtain money to indulge in speculation which protection has promoted, the clerk robs his employer, the agent his principal, the treasurer his company, and the cashier or president his bank. And as discovery follows, the jails are filled with criminals, the graves with suicides, and Canada with refugees. Thus it is that protection first stimulates and then demoral- izes the whole community. UNWISE LAWS. 35 CHAPTER VI. HOW PROTECTION RUINS THE MERCANTILE BUSINESS. In the natural state of affairs, where people are left at liberty to follow their occupations in manner most profitable and agreeable to themselves, there cannot for any length of time be too many engaged in any particular calling. There cannot be too many farmers, too many mechanics, too many manufac- turers, or too many merchants. There cannot be too many living in the country, or too many living in the towns. For in this country, where people are free to change their residences and employments according as interest or inclination dictates, and where the facilities and cheapness of transportation make it as easy now to transfer one's home from the Atlantic to the Pacific seaboard as it was fifty years ago to move a distance of one hundred miles ; if persons find one employment or one lo- cality overcrowded, they will soon leave that employment or remove from that locality to some other point where labor is better paid or profits are better. We see this fact so con- stantly illustrated, that it is almost puerile to note the rapid transfer of population to the West, where land is cheap and fertile, and on the other hand the equally rapid drift to manu- facturing centres under the operation of the partial and re- strictive laws under which we live. Well, these influences of demand and supply affect the call- ing of the merchant and the trader, as well as of others. Under a natural order of affairs there will be no more mer- chants than are necessary for the economical distribution of merchandise, or if there should be too many merchants, the more indifferent of the class would soon be closed out by rea- son of the destructive competition of the abler and shrewder ; or if there should be too few merchants, their profits would be so large as to induce their clerks, or others, to set up for them- selves, and thus to restore the ecjuilibrium between demand and supply. But in the artificial state of affairs produced by 36 UNWISE LAWS. protection, we find that manufactures have been vastly stunu- lated, and that great cities have been created by the erection of new factories and mills, and by the assemblage of workmen and their families to operate them. Of course, then, more merchants are required for the distri- bution of the enormously increased product of these new manufacturing establishments, for the furnishing of the vast stores of building materials and machinery used in the erection of new factories, of warehouses for the storing of increased stocks of goods of all descriptions, and of dwellings for the in- creased population. More merchants are required for handling the supplies used in the building of the thousands and tens of thousands of miles of railroad, and for the hundreds of thou- sands of miles of telegraph ; and, finally, more merchants are re- quired for supplying the numberless personal and family needs of masters, employes, and dependants of the numberless throng of people crowding the manufacturing centres. The mercantile community thus feels at an early date the stimula- ting effects of protection, first felt, of course by the manufac- turers, and their numbers are greatly increased. The earlier merchants, like Clafiin, Stewart, and many others that might be mentioned, make enormous fortunes, and the body of merchants generally prosper. The merchants, therefore, increase largely, for profits are large, fortunes are rapidly made, and a current from less profitable employments sets steadily and strongly towards merchandizing. The sprightly farmer's boy, when he goes to the village and town, sees the apparently easy life the merchant is leading, how his work is done in a nice warm store, how well dressed he and his clerks are, and the pleasant social evenings they have after the day's work is done, and when he compares all this pleasant life with the hard life he is compelled to lead, being obliged to get up before day, on cold winter mornings, and go to the stable to feed horses, or milk cows, and to be constantly exposed to the driving rain, the blinding snow, or the fierce UNWISE LAWS. 37 blizzards from the northwest, or to follow the plow from morn- ing to night under a scorching summer's sun, and when night has come, and work is over, to have no pleasant place to resort to, and no cheerful company to associate with, — when he com- pares the two modes of life, no wonder he becomes dissatisfied with life on a farm and resolves to go to the city. He soon bids adieu to the plow and the hoe, and hastens to the cross- roads, the village, or the town, to exchange them for the yard- stick, and the quart and gallon measure. The mechanic, also, is attracted by the easy life the store- keeper leads, and he resolves to exchange the ten hours' steady labor with saw and plane, or with trowel, for the light work behind the counter, and the machinist likewise deter- mines to exchange the grime and the soot of the shop for the clean hands and clean face of the merchant. The professions also gravitate towards merchandise, the lawyer, the doctor, the clergyman, the artist, and others being dis- couraged by their slow progress in the earlier stages of their career, for while they are starving, waiting for business, they see the merchant growing wealthy by the simple process of buying to-day and selling to-morrow. The ranks of the mer- chants are thus greatly reinforced from every calling and every occupation, and in course of time they necessarily become greatly overcrowded, for when a current once sets strongly in any direction, it does not stop when the vacuum is filled, but continues to flow in consequence of the pressure of those behind. We have now arrived at a point where there is a super- abundance of merchants and traders. And what is the conse- quence ? There being more merchants than there are goods to distribute, there is less business for each to do, and as about this time the stimulating effects of protection have caused an overproduction of goods, there is a decline of prices, and con- sequently the moneyed value of each one's share is still further diminished. The business of many merchants now 38 UNWISE LAWS. begins to decline, but to maintain its volume they resort to the simple and obvious plan of reducing prices, but as reduction by one is speedily followed by others, this remedy soon fails. The next most obvious resource is to anticipate the trade, and instead of waiting for the trade to come to them, is for them to go to the trade. The most enterprising merchants begin to send out drummers, and as the first in this field are very suc- cessful, others soon follow, and thus is established the drum- ming system, the most expensive, extravagant, and wasteful method of doing business ever followed. For this system is not only followed by the large wholesale dealers in the large cities, but every town has its large corps of drummers in every line, and every village, too, aspires to do something in this way, so that the sleepers are monopolized by drummers, and the hotels and taverns over the whole land are supported by drummers, and livery teams at every railroad station are kept alive by drummers, and all at the expense of the profits of the mer- chant, for competition will not allow the cost to be added to the goods, but, on the other hand, the goods are sold cheaper by the drummer than by the proprietor at home. The drummer also is the dispenser of credit, and as he is substantially paid a commission, he grants credit freely, and as he is migratory and is not apt to remain long with one house, he grants credit reck- lessly, and the merchant has to bear a greater portion of bad debts than before the drumming system was established. And the retailers have imitated the wholesalers, for in every town or city one may see A's or B's wagon traversing the streets, not only delivering what has been sold, but stopping at private houses in order to sell more. Another serious evil introduced into the mercantile calling, due also to the competition born of the demoralizing influence of a protective tariff, is the practice erroneously termed " dating bills ahead." If bills were really dated ahead, that is to say, before the date of purchase, the practice would be highly beneficial, for it would have the effect of curtailing the u.virisE LA Ji's. 39 length of credit, short credit being always conducive to the soundness of trade, but as the bills are in many instances dated several months subsequent to the date of purchase, the phrase is altogether misleading. And the practice arose simply because there were too many engaged in distributing goods. For instance, a house would send out its drummers ahead of the season, but because it v/as ahead of the season nobody desired to buy, so the drummer must offer some inducement. There is no room for lower prices, because competition had already cut down profits to the lowest point, so he says, " If you will buy now " (say it is January^ " I will date your bill March ist," or, if it is May, " I will date August ist." This inducement operates, and many drummers, finding themselves by this device cut out of bills they expected to sell, determine not to be forestalled again, so the next season they offer to date March 15th or April ist, and the subsequent season other drummers date April 15th or May ist, and the practice of " dating bills ahead " becomes a regular feature of business. And not only are bills dated later, but the drummers start out earlier, so that many goods sold in De- cember date May ist, and goods sold in May date October ist, subject at these dates to a discount of seven per cent, for cash in ten days. Is it any surprise, then, that profits are small or m7, or that many become bankrupt actually before their bills begin to date ? Thus it is that merchandizing, at first stimulated to excess by protection, is finally wrecked by competition within its own bosom. And the mercantile career, instead of yielding a moderate profit to those who follow it, is beset by troubles and difficulties and dangers of so grave and harassing a character that tens of thousands are annually stranded on the shores of bankruptcy, with all of its attendant circumstances of want and woe, of crime and corruption. 40 UNWISE LAWS. CHAPTER VII. HOW PROTECTION CAUSES NATIONAL IMPOVERISHMENT BY ARTI- FICIALLY AFFECTING THE DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. What is wealth ? There is no absolute definition of wealth, it being strictly a relative term like happiness or wretchedness, heat or cold, but in general terms wealth may be described as composing all those things, whether the free gift of nature like a warm sun or a salubrious atmosphere, or whether the work of men's hands, which administer to the health, comfort, hap- piness, or pleasure of mankind. But then what is wealth in one latitude is of no value in another. Thus coal, which for purposes of creating warmth is valueless in the South, is a large part of the wealth of the North, Avhere it is essential to the very existence of the population. Thus, again, rice, which is the principal food of hundreds of millions of human beings in Southern countries, and is therefore their principal source of wealth, is utterly valueless in the extreme north where the people require the grossest fats and oil in order to maintain life. Thus while the plough is wealth to the farmer, because it is his main implement for making his crops, it is utterly valueless to the fisherman, who avails himself of the hook and the net for procuring his subsistence. Thus, again, while one or two ploughs may be highly valuable to the farmer and indeed abso- lutely essential for him, a hundred ploughs, if he could not dispose of them, would be a burden to him, for he would be at the expense of taking care of them. We now see that wealth is an exceedingly relative term, and that for any thing to con- stitute wealth it must not only be suitable to the service of the person, but also must be in due proportion to his necessities or desires. Thus the warehouses may be burdened with tons of pig-iron, with bales of cloth, with casks of hardware, with crates of crockery, and with the numberless other produc- tions of the loom, the forge, and the lathe, and yet they may be almost valueless for want of a market, having been pro- UNWISE LAWS. 41 duced greatly in excess of the capacity of the population to consume. This fact is shown by the manufacturers of whiskey, who distilled far in excess of demand, and who in order to save themselves from embarrassment because they possessed so much whiskey, have for years been besieging Congress for relief ; in other words, to make the whole people bear the distillers' burden. Then we may define wealth as all those things that admin- ister to the welfare, happiness, and pleasure of mankind when they exist in due proportion to each other. When affairs go on in their usual order, uninterrupted by the wisdom which man in a legislative capacity is supposed to possess in a superior degree, there will never for any great length of time be a superabundance of any one article, nor on the other hand will there be a scarcity of any article. For when excess prevails, price falls and profits become so small, or are even changed into a loss, the production of any article is curtailed or ceases altogether, and the equilibrium between supply and demand becomes restored. And when there is scarcity of any article, price rises and profits become so great others engage in its production and the supply becomes increased and equilibrium is again reestablished. There is thus perpetual instability in supply and demand, but there are at the same time stable forces in operation which as perpetually restore the equilibrium. This is the case when nature prevails. The forces of nature assisted by the labor of man are eternally creating wealth in excess of his wants, and the intelligence of man is as eternally devising schemes by which the surplus of one latitude may be transported to supply the necessities of another latitude. Any interference, therefore, with the operations of the laws of nature must work injury and produce impoverishment of greater or less degree according to the extent of the interference. In the natural order population, especially since the great improve- ment in transportation, will be distributed in such a manner as 42 UNWISE LAWS. will conduce to the greatest results from the smallest efforts ; therefore, any interference with distribution of population will also produce impoverishment. Now let us see how protection interferes with the natural distribution of population, and what is the injury or impoverishment thereby caused. Nobody will deny that people, if left to themselves, will fol- low those employments that pay best, or that if all pay about equally well there will be but little change from one to another. Nobody will deny that in the long run all employments pay about equally well when competition has free play. Some kinds of business indeed pay larger gross profits than others, but in these cases expenses are always greater and the net profits are brought down to a level with those kinds of business that pay smaller gross profits but with smaller expenses. Hence, natu- rally, there is little change of employments for all give about the same returns. In this case everybody is doing best for himself and therefore best for the country. In any natural disturb- ance, such as a failure of an important crop, all the forces set to work to repair the damage ; price goes up, consumption is re- duced, and reduced consumption following decreased produc- tion the injury is speedily repaired. Or, if the injury be too great to be repaired by decreased consumption, then increased production comes into play, and the equilibrium is again re- stored, though after a longer time. And now let a law be enacted, which at one blow greatly reduces the supply of some article of prime importance, say a protective law that prevents this said article from being im- ported from abroad. What is the result ? For convenience of illustration let us call this article iron. The equilibrium which we have seen to exist before the operation of this law is im- mediately destroyed, and an economic disturbance is at once set up. The manufacturers of all kinds of iron, from the crude pig to the finest specimen of the cutler's art, have an increased demand precipitated upon them at once. They must have more workmen, and in order to attract them from other em- UNWISE LAWS. 43 ployments they must offer higher wages, for, as we have seen all employments prior to this law were about equally profitable. The higher wages soon attract attention, and a current begins towards the iron industry. The demand still increases, aided in part by an increase of population and by an influx of immi- gration, and the manufacturers of iron must have more work- men, and as they have by the first increase of wages attracted all the available labor in their neighborhood, they must offer still higher wages to attract those at a greater distance, and this goes on till towns are built up and large bodies of people are collected together. To build the increased number of furnaces mills, warehouses, and buildings for workmen a large force of mechanics and laborers is required, and to obtain them higher wages must be offered, and thus mechanics and laborers are drawn from the country at large. And then to supply them others still are required, and thus merchants, doctors, and law- yers, butchers, bakers, and green-grocers, etc., are drawn thither from localities where they had previously been profitably en- gaged. The country is deserted, the town is filled. Looking simply at the newly arisen town one may very naturally think it must be a very good law which produces such effects, and if what one saw was all, none could deny the virtue of the law. But this is- not all the law. To obtain this city the country has been drained of its cultivators, so that less food is produced, has been drained of its mechanics, its blacksmiths, its carpenters, its masons, its wheelwrights, etc., so that when the farmer needs his reaper to be repaired, his barn to be shingled, or his chim- ney to be restored, he finds difficulty in getting his work done, has to go an increased distance to obtain the mechanic re- quired, to lose more time in going and returning, and has in addition to pay more for the work. We thus see how population is drawn to some localities by depriving the remainder of the country of much of its popula- tion. If this was a natural demand the country would be benefited, for by this process articles and wares would be pro- 44 UNWISE LAWS. duced that the country was in need of, and as they were pro- duced in the face of free competition the people would be compelled to pay for them only a moderate if indeed any advance. But as this distribution is an artificial one, by reason of the law arbitrarily cutting off the supply of iron, it follows natu- rally that it must be accomplished at the expense of something or of somebody. Are the people going to leave the employ- ments already engaged in to follow manufacturing, with the attendant increase of the cost of living in a town or city, merely to obtain their present wages ? No, they will not ; and they only do so when they get an advance more than enough to cover all the increased cost of the change. If the goods they made were exported, the foreigner must pay the increase, but as they are not exported but are consumed at home, the country or the home consumers must bear the burden of the increased wages. And then when the manufacturers are besieged and be- sought for their goods (remember the law has arbitrarily shut out all foreign supplies), will they be content with the average profits of other employments ? Surely not. They will naturally demand and receive the highest profits the competition for their goods will justify. If, as we said, these goods were ex- ported, the " pauper labor " of other countries must pay the increased profits. But as they are not exported, who then pays their increased profits ? The country or the home consumers of course. Again, when competition is shut out and profits are consequently large, will manufacturers economize in their work and seek out and adopt inventions and appliances for turning out their productions at the least cost ? No, they will not, but they will, on the contrary, be negligent, wasteful and extravagant, for the reason that, though they might, by c'lose attention to business and strict economy, make a profit of one hundred per cent, and more (the present reduced duty on pig-iron, which is the basis of the whole iron industry, is, in- UNWISE LAWS. 45 eluding transportation to our shores, one hundred per cent.), they are perfectly content to make forty or fifty per cent., at which rate they make enormous fortunes, by the negligent slip- shod methods they employ. Here, then, through negligence, laziness, and indifference on the part of the manufacturers, is a loss in manufacture of nearly fifty per cent., or say twenty- five per cent., or even of ten per cent., — and who bears this loss ? The country of course, or the home consumers. So, then, to build up this town, specimens of which we see all over the Eastern and Middle States, the people all over the country are arbitrarily compelled to bear the cost of the increased wages of the operatives, the cost of the largely increased profits of the manufacturers, and the loss caused by wastefulness and negli- gence in manufacture. And all these additions of cost are represented by the greatly advanced prices consumers must pay for all iron goods. Where formerly, with free ccmpetition, they bought three axes, or three hoes, or three ploughs, they can now only buy two, and so on through the whole list from a nail to a steam-engine. If iron were the only itern singled out for favoritism, the in- jury, though great, would be bearable in the lusty state of health and prosperity the country has been in, but we all know it is not. There are other gods in this country besides the Creator of the Universe and iron. Wool is also a great deity, and in like manner draws upon the population, and artificially trans- fers people to the towns, and the people in turn have to bear the increased costs as we have seen in the case of iron. Cotton, not the raw but the manufactured, is another deity, though less sacred than iron and wool, and cotton also drains the country for the towns, and in turn the people have to bear the same increased costs as in the case of iron and wool. Silk is also another deity, but from the special favor shown her she may be classed as a goddess, say a Venus, or an Astarte, for she, in her unadorned condition, is let in free, but after she has been dressed up in the form of silk cloth, rivalling all the hues 46 UNWISE LAWS. not of the rainbow but of the whole realm of nature, she is guarded from foreign interruption by a wall of protection which formerly came up sixty per cent, of her height, and which now stands at fifty per cent. She too has been given power to draw on the rest of the country and to transfer the people from smiling skies and fertile fields to the dirt of the streets and the dust and glare of the factory. And the country in turn pays all her expenses and extravagances, as in the case of iron, wool, and cotton. And glass is another deity with his principal shrine at Pittsburg, and glass too draws on the country to build the town, and every dweller in habitations, be they hovels or palaces, lays heavy offerings upon her altar. There are other deities, — salt, sugar, rice, etc., — all drawing away people from other occupations to produce them at extra cost to the con- sumers. There are big gods and little gods roaming over and possessing the whole land. The big gods we are afraid of, but the little gods we sometimes catch and treat them as the little child said to his mother. '' Mama," he said, " if I was to meet the big devil I would be afraid of him, but if I was to meet a little devil I would knock the stuffing out of him." We — the people — sometimes knock the stuffing out of a little god, as when we struck the shackles off of quinine, but the big gods, like iron, we are afraid of, and allow them to burden us grievously in our every interest. Here, then, we see mighty forces operating in conjunction. Here we see iron, and wool, and cotton, and silk, and glass, all prime factors, and salt, and sugar, and rice, etc., the minor forces, all operating on the population to draw it in one direc- tion, and that direction towards the cities. We see these forces drawing men from the fields, where food, which under all circumstances is wealth, is produced, towards the cities, where food is consumed in the production of articles which at the best are wealth only when in due proportion to the capacity of the people to consume, — and which at other times, when much UNWISE LAWS. 47 in excess of demand, are absolute burdens to their posses- sors, because they have to be cared for at an expense of storage, of supervision, of taxes, of insurance, of deprecia- tion, which frequently consume all they Avill bring, and then too leave their owners in debt. That these combined forces exert a most powerful effect we see in the populations of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York, where the total increase of the population of these States from 1870 to 1880 is more than represented in the cities and towns of four thousand souls and upwards. And they are further shown by the increase during the same period of 27 1 per cent, in the country population against an increase of 39 per cent, in the urban population. In the case of the towns the population of the municipal limits merely is given, and if the increase of the suburbs was subtracted from the country and added to the towns the increase of the towns would show a still greater increase, and if the villages of less than four thousand inhabitants were taken into the calculation the in- crease of the towns would be greater still. It is perfectly plain, then, that the towns, or the consumers of food, have increased in a much greater ratio than the country, or the producers of food, and it is equally plain that this increase is artificial, or brought about by law. This law was enacted to exclude for- eign goods for the express purpose of increasing our manufac- tures. The manufactures could not be increased without additional hands, and these had to be drawn mainly from the country, though in considerable part from immigration, and they could not be attracted except through higher wages. Manufactures cannot be conducted on a large scale except in large cities, where the subsidiary manufactures are congregated. New York and Philadelphia, our largest cities, being our largest manufacturing centres. Hence we say this distribution of population is altogether artificial or unnatural. It is an axiom, that whatever is unnatural is injurious, for unnatural is of course opposed to natural, and the natural is the cooperation 48 UNWISE LAWS. of forces for the production of beneficial results. For the operations of nature must ever tend to preserve and to build up, otherwise mundane things would cease to exist. Hence impoverishment. Although on one hand we see a constant relative decrease of producers of food and a constant relative increase of con- sumers of food, which finally leads to impoverishment, it was a long time before the impoverishment began to be apparent. There had been a great vacuum created by act of legislation, and it took a long time to fill up this vacuum, for people must have the goods they were legally deprived of procuring except from home manufacturers, and until the vacuum was filled the towns must grow, built up by the increased poverty, or at all events by the decreased prosperity, of the agriculturists, and all else who were not manufacturers. This process carried to the point of equilibrium — that is, to a balancing of supply and demand would not have led to great impoverishment, for our virgin fields were so productive they could stand the drain and still yield their owners a good profit. But as soon as the sup- ply of manufactures began to exceed the demand, then impov- erishment really began, for people then began to consume food in the production of articles that were not readily exchange- able. But the attraction of these mighty combined forces already referred to, cannot, like a mustard plaster, be withdrawn in a moment, but, on the contrary, they must continue to draw like the same plaster when allowed to remain for hours on a patient till a painful blister is raised ; and the fostering of man- ufactures was therefore continued until long after the demand was satisfied. Here then was a continued consumption of wealth for the production of articles not needed, or of articles which could not be consumed in the production of greater \vealth. To do this is to impoverish, just as if a man with a hundred bushels of wheat which he could sell for an hundred dollars were to consume it in building a machine of which there was already an excess in the market. For the man would then have not UNWISE LA WS. A^i:^ wheat, but a machine for which there was no sale. In other words, he would be impoverished. Suppose the same thing holds true of hundreds and of thousands, does not the poverty of these hundreds and thousands tend to national poverty? But the factory and the workmen are in the city, and the proprietor must have his profit, and the workman must have his wages, for they must all live, so both factory and hands are kept at work, and wares are turned out, and to make up for the decreased profits which competition entails, each manufac- turer must increase the output of his plant. And to produce this extra amount means a still further draft upon the decreased supply of wealth, which is food, and so the poverty is still further increased. But as the current cannot stop at once, other manufacturers and other workmen, reinforced by a large portion of the 3,600,000 immigrants who have entered our ports since 1879, engage in manufactures, and the towns and the cities still continue to grow, and the mills and the factories continue to increase. Well, every brick laid in excess of natural demand, and every blow struck, is a destruction of wealth, and this, mul- tipled by the millions of millions of bricks laid, and the equally multitudinous blows struck, will produce an amount of impov- erishment utterly beyond computation. What does more than half of the furnaces lying idle for years at a time prove, but that all the idle furnaces are as absolute destruction of wealth as if the amount of food necessary for their construction had been burnt up. What do fifty per cent, of the woollen machinery lying constantly idle mean, but that wealth to the amount of the idle sets of machinery has been completely de- stroyed. The idle cotton mills, many of which have been sold for about their cost, as old materials and junk, tell the same story of destruction of wealth. The glass factories lying idle for twelve months through strikes, show an equally abso- lute destruction of wealth, for their unnecessary number is proved by the factories which do work being amply sufficient to supply the demand for glass. Let any man look around 50 UNWISE LAWS. him, and he will see not only these things, but he will see other factories, mills, and workshops, erected for the production of the numberless articles that civilization requires, lying idle and useless, broke because they have been erected when there was no demand for their productions, or perhaps they were origi- nal establishments, wrecked by the competition of younger and abler rivals. All these mean total destruction of wealth, as total as if swept away by a conflagration ; or if one does not see them, he may read almost daily such items as this ; " SALE OF A VILLAGE. " The Metropolitan National Bank has become the owner, by Sheriff's sale, of the Wortendyke (N. J.) Manufacturing Company's property, in- cluding mills, tenements, vacant lots, etc. More than one hundred cottages, occupied by operatives in the mills were included in the sale. More than two thousand persons depended for their daily bread upon tlieir work in the mills. In August, 18S3, the property passed into the hands of a receiver. An inventory showed the total liabilities to be $800,000, with $318,000 assets. The Metropolitan Bank paid $80,000 for the property." Here is ocular demonstration of a loss of $720,000 in one single enterprise, and as the soldiers used to say during the war, " The woods are just full of them." In addition, the loss of wealth, caused by the constant idle- ness of operatives, either from strikes or from shut-downs, or from failures, is, in the aggregate enormous, and must be added to the national impoverishment. Is it any wonder, then, that with all these immense drains upon the wealth of the country that bankruptcy ensued ? Is it any wonder that the wheels of commerce were stopped, being clogged by the wrecks on every hand ? No wonder that banks broke, that millionaires failed, and that universal apprehension of universal ruin was felt by every man. No wonder that goods were unsalable, and that all eyes were anxiously turned to the harvest, well knowing that a failure of crops meant actual want of bread to millions of wives and children, and even of strong men. The country was full of every thing but UNWISE LAWS. 51 food ; but food wanting, every thing else was wanting. Thus it is that the superior wisdom of man, in his legislative capacity, has plunged the land into bankruptcy, by causing the people to forsake the country and fly to the towns, in order to engage in producing articles that are useful only when in due propor- tion to subsistence. CHAPTER VIII. SHOWING HOW NON-INTERFERENCE OPERATES TO THE WEL- FARE OF THE PEOPLE. In the last chapter we showed in a feeble way, though to the best of our ability, the evil effects of legal interference with the natural order of affairs. We showed among other things that legal interference artificially transposed the population by offering direct inducements to congregate in excess in certain localities, which could only be done by depriving other locali- ties of their due proportion of population ; that it induced this population to engage in the production of merchandise in ex- cess of demand, and to produce it where it was not wanted ; that at the same time through draining the country of people it caused the raising of less subsistence ; and that consequently it in turn produced such national impoverishment that the farmers had no money to buy wares, and the mechanics and laborers had no money to buy food, and that consequently in- dustrial and commercial collapse overspread the country. Having seen that this interference led to general disaster, let us now trace the natural effects of non-interference. In a former chapter we have seen that the Atlantic sea- board was settled in three distinct latitudes, to wit : the frozen and sterile New England, the fertile and temperate Middle States, and the Southern States, which enjoyed in addition to the advantages of the Middle States a fervent sun, which brought to j)crfection the more valuable products of tobacco, rice, 52 UNWISE LAWS. cotton, and naval stores. And although all these States were so variously situated, their chief employment was agriculture, and they followed agriculture because it was the most profit- able employment. Possessed of a virgin and, (with the excep- tion of New England,) of a fertile soil they found it more to their advantage to raise food for others and to let others furnish them with cloth and iron. As long as land was abun- dant it was to be had for little more than the cost of felling the trees, so that the poorest became proprietors of the soil and en- gaged in agriculture. Requiring no capital and the ground yielding her increase readily, all found profit in agriculture, for they had a ready demand for all their surplus grain and meat. As long as these conditions prevailed, and they have substan- tially prevailed to the present day, agriculture continued very profitable and it would have been pursued as the main occupa- tion of tho people till now, but for the influence of New Eng- land interests as set forth in the second chapter. Owing to the sterility of the soil and the harshness of the climate of New England, its people soon found it necessary to diversify their employments, and what did they do ? If they had followed the example of their shrewd descendants of later days, they would have gone to their provincial assemblies and demanded legal assistance in making the change, and they would have bound many that a few might prosper. But the New Englander of those days was made of too sturdy stuff to rely upon any thing but upon his Maker and himself, and he naturally cast his eyes around to see how scanty agriculture might be eased out. He finds that the seas that wash his in- hospitable shores, though rough and tempestuous, abounded with rich stores of cod and mackerel, and further out at sea there was abundance of whales, so he launches his boat and lays the waters under tribute, and thus he supplements agri- culture. And experience on the sea accustoms him to the handling of vessels, and he soon becomes maritime, and he builds vessels, and he goes sailing over rolling billows in UNWISE LAWS. z^-\ search of cargoes for his bottoms, and of trade in exchange for his fish and whale oil. He prospers ,and is thus enabled to live in comfort in his sterile land. In the earlier period of his existence, the New Englander exemplified the state of affairs that naturally arises under legal non-interfer- ence. If one employment slackens or fails he promptly re- sorts to others. When agriculture fails to yield a fair reward he turns to fishing and seafaring, and when they in turn are overdone he turns again to agriculture, and therefore he pros- pered steadily and continuously. There were no panics and no dreadful periods of collapse in those days. But, as we have seen in a previous chapter, the sons have been wiser than their sires and have changed all this. Let us follow the development of business under non-inter- ference. As we have seen, agriculture was the principal em- ployment, and with few exceptions the people were farmers. As soil was fertile and land abundant, they found their occupation was very profitable, and they soon found themselves possessed of a surplus. Their first employment was to build a cabin for pro- tection, and to clear or deaden a few acres for corn and potatoes ; and as they prospered they cleared more land, and built a stable and a barn. A little later they added fences and built larger dwellings, and increased their stock by a horse or two, a few cows, and a few sheep. They go on adding to their lands, clearing more forests, and increasing the comforts and conveniences of the homestead. Instead of going a long dis- tance to the spring they dig a well in the yard ; instead of having the fowls roosting in the trees, they build a hen-house convenient for the wife, a shed for the wood, and numberless other things. But after doing all this they still have a suri)lus, and wishing to employ it, one man builds a grist-mill, and as this saves the neighbors from the long horseback ride they formerly had to take in order to reach a mill in some other township, he gets the custom of the neighborhood and prospers. Another sets up a blacksmith's or a wheelwright's shop, and 54 UNWISE LAWS. another turns tailor or shoemaker ; and by degrees the industry of the community becomes diversified and all prosper, for the various accessories of farming arise only as there is a natural demand for them. If these simple folk had been as wise as their polished descendants, they would have said to themselves : " See, our rivals a few miles away have a mill, and we ought to have one too ; and besides it is mortifying that we have to send to them to have our corn ground." So by exciting their envy, they commit the community to building a mill. But it is found that the population is not sufficient to support a mill by paying one-eighth toll which their neighbors charge, so no one volun- teers to start a mill. Consequently the matter dies out till a clique suggests : True, one-eighth toll will not support a mill ; so let us pass a local law that every man shall pay one-fourth toll, and shall not have his corn ground anywhere else except at our mill. By this means they would get a mill, but it would be at the expense of every man paying two bushels' toll, while he could still get his work done elsewhere for one bushel. Our artless forefathers believed that the chief end of man was, according to the catechism, to glorify God and not, accor- ding to the modern school of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, to manufacture goods, so they preferred to wait a while till the natural demand would support a mill at customary toll, and when that time came they got their mill, and also got their work done at the right price. Population increasing by the rise of large families, and partly also through immigration, the demand for manufactures increases, and by degrees it is found that it is inconvenient and expensive too for every farmer to be his own blacksmith, wheelwright, and mechanic generally. Therefore a greater demand falls upon the local mechanic, so that the blacksmith adds other branches of iron work to horse-shoeing, and the wheelwright adds the manufacture of vehicles to simple repairs. Then the housewife finds it cheaper to have her wool carded for her than to do it herself, and a local carding machine is set up, UNWISE LAWS. 55 and various other branches of manufactures are started in the same way. Thus a nucleus of machine-shops, woollen factories, etc., is started, to grow and prosper as the community prospers. By and by, too, every woman will cease to her own family physi- cian, and doctors will make their appearance, and will substi- tute jalap and salts for fennel and herb tea. As population increases business transactions increase also, and lawyers are needed to make laws and to compose differences, and lawyers make their appearance. And as needs for different occupa- tions become apparent, so people to follow them make their appearance as fast as the remuneration is sufficient to attract them from agriculture or other employments. In the mean- time stores have made their appearance, for the daughter, tiring of plain homespun, adorned at times, perhaps, with only a black stripe or check which the mother's art has extracted from the walnut bark and has rendered fast by a little copperas, sighs for the bright calico and brilliant worsted from the city ; and the son gets ashamed of his coon-skin cap for his Sunday's best, and must have a real beaver or felt hat. The father, too. finds he has an increasing surplus of grain and meat, wool peltries, etc., and he desires to exchange these things for an axe, a scythe, or a plough, for powder and ball, and other things, to add to his convenience and comfort ; and thence arises the petty shop, to be developed in time into the large store, where the community can supply all their ordinary wants by means of barter, for as yet there is no money in circulation, and what does make its appearance is stored away and watched with a miser's care in the deep receptacle of a stocking. In connection with country stores, I will now make a brief digression. The proprietors of some of these stores in Vir- ginia amassed large fortunes, for, located far from navigable streams, the methods of transj)ortation were so expensive few had the means of competing with them, and they consequently monopolized the trade of large sections. They became the founders of influential families, who displayed a pride in ad- 56 UNWISE LAWS. verse ratio to the plainness and unpretention of their ancestors. Of three families the writer is cognizant of, two had interesting incidents connected with them, but of the third nothing but pride and arrogance was ever conspicuous. One of these wealthy merchants had three attractive daughters, one of whom was a noted beauty. At the same time there were three young Virginians in Edinburgh studying medicine. The youngsters knew of the daughters, perhaps knew them personally ; but at all events the three entered into an agreement to return home and marry the three girls, and strange to say, they succeeded in carrying out their agreement. The other merchant be- friended a youth who was reputed to be a waif, but sup- posed by some to be still more nearly related to the merchant. In course of time the youth, now become a young man, emi- grated to a far Southern State, where he lived a bachelor and died, leaving an estate of ten millions of dollars, all of which he bequeathed to the son of his early friend. So far the country is supplied with the coarser manufactures, but the people still prefer to exchange with others their labor in the shape of agricultural products for the labor of others in the shape of the finer manufactured goods. But gradually, as the people grow wealthy from agriculture, they set up here and there finer branches of manufacture. The carding machine developed into a factory for making woollen cloth, the black- smith shop into a foundry for castings or into a mill for making tools, the wheelwright shop into a manufactory of wagons and carriages. The shoemaker took on apprentices and journey- men, and started a shoe manufactory, and the weaver of cotton cloth developed into a cotton mill. But all these would come only as there was a demand for them, and as they could them- selves supply the capital to start them. The people were little accustomed to laws of any kind, but they had discovered by experience that each man knew more about his own business than others did. They knew practically the truth, that some land produced wheat best, some corn, some oats or rye ; and they UNWISE LAWS. 57 knew likewise that if they sowed wheat on oat land they would reap a failure. They knew also that there were some things they could do to advantage and some things they could not do ; they were therefore content to let alone those things they could not do, and to devote themselves to those things they could do. They saw no advantage in making at home what they could buy elsewhere at a lower price ; and if they found that, with the proceeds of ten days' labor they could buy a plough or other implement that required the labor of eleven days to make, they preferred to buy rather than to make. They practically said, if ray neighbor charges eleven dollars for an article that I can buy elsewhere for ten, I prefer to buy at ten and make him a present of the other dollar. In this case I will get some credit for liberality or benevolence ; in the other case I will get none. He also said to himself, if my neighbor expects me to pay him a higher price because he is my neighbor, have I not the same right to expect him to sell to me at a lower price because / am his neighbor? He thinks the boot ought to fit both legs, or if it does not it ought not to be used at all — so he got his goods where he found them cheapest. In other words he got the highest wages he could for his labor. By this process everybody gets the most for his labor, and therefore the community prospers most by it. By this process the community does not spend its substance in paying people to do certain things, for if these things were profitable somebody would be found doing them. By this pro- cess there are not for any length of time too many engaged in any calling ; consequently there is little waste of labor, which is but another name for wealth. If there are too many raising grain, then grain becomes superabundant, the price drops, and those who are in the least favorable position for raising it, either because they are poor farmers or have poor land, are forced to go at something else. And even with grain, if too much corn is planted the price of corn is lower than wheat or oats, and 58 UNWISE LAWS. farmers switch off to the most profitable grain, and corn re- sumes in a short time its normal price. So the excess of ploughs, wagons, cloth, etc., is corrected in the same way, for when the price falls below a profitable point production is speedily curtailed. And deficiency of any article is corrected in an opposite way ; the price rises, it becomes profitable beyond the average, and the manufacturers thereof increase their pro- duction till the vacuum is filled. By this process profits never remain high for a long-enough period to induce an extra amount of capital to flow in any direction and become locked up in undertakings which prosper for a time and then fail. Take a man, for example, with a capital of ten thousand dol- lars. He is tempted by the high price of some article to engage in its manufacture, and to build a factory and stock it with ma- chinery. Before he gets fairly to work an abundant supply of the article is thrown on the market and the price falls, so that he can work only at a loss, and consequently the factory is worthless to him. He has thus lost his ten thousand dollars ; but if the article in question was made artificially dear by shutting off its supply, the price would be kept up so long that a great many would rush into its manufacture and a great deal of money would be invested in buildings and machinery, with an inevitable great final loss ; so that, instead of a loss of. ten thousand dollars in the natural order, there would probably be a loss of one hundred thousand dollars under the artificial order of affairs. But in the natural order, where competition both at home and abroad is brought to bear, the price is rarely or never kept at a high level long enough to induce any large ex- tra flow of capital in its direction. The country is spared the loss of a great deal of its capital. It is very true that under this process a few people do not make immense fortunes, for profits in all directions are pretty nearly uniform. But while some do not become immensely wealthy what is made is shared more uniformly among all. Under this system we shall probably never see a Gould or a Vanderbilt, but on the UNWISE LA I VS. 59 Other hand we shall probably never see the land filled with eleemosynary institutions of every description. Under the present system more people are made poor by Gould and Vanderbilt and Huntingdon and the whole race of plutocrats getting the shares that rightfully belong to others, than by the indolence or worthlessness of those who are thrown on the public charity. Under the system of non-interference competition both from home and foreign sources is the balance-wheel of society. Competition is not only the life of trade but it is the life of the body politic also. Competition puts everybody on his best behavior, develops his greatest energies and sharpens his in- tellectual faculties to the utmost. Competition makes one active, intelligent, and enterprising. Competition makes one ex- plore the depths of the sea, ransack the bowels of the earth, and investigate the mysteries of the sky, in order that he may benefit his fellow-man. Competition builds mighty ships, lays rail- roads, and suspends telegraph wires in air above and sinks them in depths of ocean below, so that men of most distant climes may speedily intermingle or communicate their ideas and, thereby ob- literate the prejudices which from the dawn of human existence have made them enemies of each other. • Competition is the current of rich blood that flows rapidly through the veins giv- ing lustre to the eye, bloom to the check, strength to the arm, and warmth to the heart. Competition is buoyant life, is budding spring, growing summer and ripening autumn ; non-competi- tion is stagnant death and lifeless winter. Under the system of non-interference the community enjoys the whole benefit of the advantages of competition. It makes the farmer use the most improved implements and the best stock, so that if possi- ble he may raise his crops cheaper than his neighbor. It makes the manufacturer study his business with the utmost attention and minuteness, so that he may not only correct waste of every kind but also discover improvements to be adopted. It makes the workman assiduous in his duties and skilful in his manipu- 6o UNWISE LAWS. latfons, so that he may get higher wages or secure promotion. It makes the merchant lessen his profits, so that he may extend his business or at least hold his own. It makes the clerk po- lite and attentive to his customers, so that they may follow him when he changes employers. It improves and brightens all it touches, and the public gains the whole benefit. But what does legal interference do ? It immediately shuts the door in the face of this beneficent agent, and says Begone ! It says : We want none of the natural or acquired advantages of England, or of France, or of Germany, or of any part of the whole earth, except of the small portion embraced within our bounds. England says : I have coal and iron so close together, and I have been engaged in manufacturing so long, and have so much capital invested in it for which I am satisfied with half the interest you pay at home, I can furnish you a great deal cheaper than you can supply yourself, so let me supply your wants in this line. And she adds : While I can furnish you cheaper iron, you can, owing to your cheap land, supply me with bread cheaper than I can raise it in my little island. By doing this you can get more iron, and I can get more bread, so we will both be benefited. To any sane man this seems very reason- able, but no, says Legal Interference : I don't care if it does cost me more to make iron at home, I won't let my people have a single pound of your iron if I can help it. So, in order to have iron, the country taxes or impoverishes itself in order to reimburse the iron men for the loss they sustain, because they are not as favorably situated as England is, and have not her experience in making iron. Germany says : I have superior advantages for supplying you with hosiery, woollen cloths, cutlery, glassware, etc., let me furnish you with them, and you furnish me with food, for you have not only more and cheaper land, but better also than I have. The same answer, No, is given, and the people are made to pay the few manufacturers of these articles for the loss they would otherwise sustain in making them, because they are UNWISE LAWS. 6 1 not as favorably situated as Germany is. England pities us, and says to herself : Because you refuse your people the benefit of my advantages, I will not be foolish enough to deprive my people of your advantages, so send me all you can that you can raise cheaper than I can. But Germany is not so wise. She, as is to be borne in mind, is military intus ct in cute, and is, therefore, arbitrary, and as to be arbitrary is to be foolish, she replies : Well, you injure my people by preventing them from furnishing you with goods cheaper than you can make them. I will injure them further by preventing them from buying your cheap food ; so here goes a prohibition of your pork and bacon crossing our borders ; and if you don't like that, here is another : on all the grain you send us you must pay us roundly for allowing it to enter our ports. This is frying Jonathan in his own grease, so he bellows lustily and threatens Hans with all sorts of things, and goes to Congress and demands this and that retali- tion. But Hans laughs, for he knows that Jonathan has al- ready excluded himself from most of the advantages Germany can offer, and that notwithstanding all his bluster, he can do no more. When Jonathan was doing all the knocking it seemed fine fun, but as soon as he gets hit back he bellows, and says : Ma, make Hans behave himself. France how steps forward, and says, with her characteristic politeness : I occupy a fair and fruitful land. It is the home of the grape and the silkworm, and my children, from cen- turies of experience, have acquired such skill in making wines and brandies, and such taste in blending designs and color- ings in the manufacture of silk goods, and objects of art gen- erally, I can supply you with these things with much greater advantage than you can produce them ; indeed, you cannot ap- proach the flavor and the richness of my wines, nor the beauty of my silks, etc. The same gruff answer, No, is given, and we proceed to tax our people fifty per cent, of the value of all silk goods, for the benefit of two or three towns and villages ; and because France is foolish enough to deny herself the benefit of the many advantages we have to offer, we almost absolutely 62 UNWISE LAWS. prohibit her from sending us her wines, her olive-oil, her dried fruits, and the many objects of taste and beauty that issue from her factories. By this process of non-interference extremes are in great measure prevented, and affairs move along in the golden mean. It is true that panics will sometimes come, for nothing short of a complete change of nature will prevent the Anglo-Saxon, but especially the American, from speculating, but they will not be as lasting, though perhaps as acute, as under the present order of affairs, for competition will constantly exert a restraining in- fluence, and prevent excess reaching the extremes we now fre- quently witness, and as excess of speculation is prevented, so excess of depression, for action and reaction are correlative, is avoided. By this process labor obtains steady employment, instead of the fluctuation from high to low wages, to be fol- lowed in thousands of instances by total lack of employment, which we have all witnessed. By this process the laborer is taught to practise economy, and we are told, and told truly, that economy is wealth, by which means he avoids the evil ef- fects of the extravagance which so-called flush times begets, but which he cannot shake off when the evil day of hard times follows. And not only is the laborer, but all classes are taught economy, which we call one of the prime virtues, for economy is truly the foundation of all the virtues which adorn and dignify home. By this process people are taught that the road to happiness and wealth is along the pathway of honest toil, so to their economy they add the virtue of industry ; and as honesty is invariably associated with economy and industry, we thus have a people adorned with all the virtues which en- rich a country mentally, morally, and physically. Interference in the guise of so-called protection, has engulfed us in failures, bankruptcies, and dreadful depressions, which have lasted almost uninterruptedly since 1873. Now let us try non-inter- ference, which is sure to bring gladness in the place of sor- row, smiles in the place of tears, and permanent prosperity in place cf constantly recurring adversity. UNWISE LAWS. 63 CHAPTER IX. HOW PROTECTION (sO-CALLEd) OR PARTIAL LAWS PRODUCE EXTREMES OF WEALTH AND POVERTY. Government, by reason of the great sums necessary to carry it on in these modern times, is a vast edifice, resting heavily upon the shoulders of the people. In the savage or nomadic state, this structure is of so slight a character as not to be felt by the people. But in the civilized state this structure, in consequence of the military requirements of the present and inherited military burdens of the past, and also by the supposed necessity of gov- ernment acting in a paternal spirit towards all the employments of its citizens, has grown to be a burden of such immense magnitude and weight, that it falls with crushing force upon those who have to bear more than their proportionate share of the burden. As yet we have experienced this fact to a small extent, for we have been able to draw ad libitum upon the re- sources of a virgin continent, and our burden has been lightened because it has rested upon an ever-expanding basis ; but in old countries, the home of the " pauper labor," at the mere mention of which we tremble as children do at the name of Blue Beard or some other ogre, this truth is exemplified by the extremes of wealth and woe which we observe on every side. In a condition of impartial laws, every citizen may be imagined as going about carrying an invisible but real weight in proportion to his person and means combined. As every man's life is equally as valuable to himself as another's is to himself, so each man would bear an equal burden on account of personal security assured him by government, and, in addition thereto, he would bear a burden in proportion to the value of his prop- erty also protected by the government. The weight being thus borne equally by all, all would have the same opportunity, as far as law Avas concerned, of making progress in the course they had marked out for themselves. For example, here are two men, with no possessions but 64 UNWISE LAWS. health, strength, and honesty, starting off in life. They are bearing an equal share of the burden of the government which protects them, and being thus in all respects equally matched, they make equal progress, and acquire equal possessions. But presently, for some reason, no matter what, whether from accident or design, or whether from benevolent or evil mo- tives, or from patriotic or unpatriotic views, one has his burden lifted from him. What will be the effect ? Will not the one made free make greater progress than the other, and in the race for wealth will he not accumulate more than the other ? Certainly he will. And suppose, further, that the burden lifted from the one is transferred to the other, will not the progress of the one be in much greater ratio still ? The reply certainly will be the same. But suppose, further, that the unburdened man was further relieved by this same law of the burden rest- ing upon the property which he had gained, and that his prop- erty burden was transferred, like his other burdens, to the shoulders of his companion, would not the proportion between the progress of the two be greater still ? There can be no doubt as to the reply. But suppose, further, that there are several persons starting out instead of two, and suppose that the bur- dens are shifted from all to the shoulders of one, will not the progress of the one be slower still, granting he made any progress at all ? Certainly. And when this progress is con- tinued for any length of time, what is the inevitable result ? There are two extremes, one gets rich and the other gets poor. Unequal laws produce all these various effects. No one questions that government is a burden ; no one questions that the burden must rest upon the citizens, and no one questions that if any of the citizens are relieved of their burdens, the said burdens must be borne by the remainder of the citizens in addition to their own share of their burdens. For instance, if ten men are upholding equally a weight of one thousand pounds, they sustain one hundred pounds each ; but suppose one is relieved, do not the nine men have then to bear UNWISE LAWS. 65 the whole one thousand pounds, or one hundred and eleven pounds each ? We can see by this simple illustration how the weight of government affects the citizen. No one questions that unequal laws must affect people une- qually, and no one will question that so-called protective laws are enacted for the express purpose of acting unequally. If they were not intended to operate unequally they would never have seen the light. A protective law relating to iron is enacted expressly that John Smith may be enabled to make iron, not cheaper than it had heretofore been, but that he may sell it at a higher price, and it says, in effect to him : John, I hereby authorize you to sell one hundred dollars' worth of iron for one hundred and thirty-five dollars, and I will do it in this way : If your customer. Brown, attempts to buy iron else- where, or from some other person situated as you are, when he attempts to land it I will employ a man at my own expense — you need not spend any time, or attention, or money in doing this — and I will say to him. Stop, Brown, you can't get that iron unless you pay me thirty-five dollars in addition. So you see, John, Brown won't attempt to evade buying of you in the future, for he will find it cheaper to pay you one hundred and thirty-five dollars than to pay a foreigner one hundred dollars for the iron, then pay me thirty-five dollars, and pay all the freight besides. So, then, a protective law as intended, acts unequally, and affects people and their interests unequally. In other words, it lifts, to a great extent, the burden from John Smith, and transfers it to the people at large. This transfer may be made from the purest or from the basest motives. Patriotism of the^ most burning character may swell the bosom of the legislator, or greed of the most selfish character, as when the Senator of a great State successfully defeated the efforts of the press of the whole country to obtain cheaper paper, because he was engaged in a business that would profit by their failure, may secure the passage of such a law, but the effect is the same — to lift bur- (^ UNWISE LAWS. dens from some and shift them upon others. Those, then, living under the shadow of protective laws, are living under a system which lifts burdens from some and transfers them to others ; under a system which heavily handicaps at least some of the community at the same time that it relieves others ; un- der a system which produces a state of affairs where some must inevitably progress faster than others ; under a system where extremes must exist, and where, in course of time, the unburdened must progress with accelerated speed, and where the burdened must sink faster and faster under their bur- dens, and where the extremes of wealth and poverty must exist. But before proceeding further, let us glance at a few countries where partial and unequal laws prevail, and see the condition of the people in consequence of these laws. Let us take India, a country the prey of unequal laws from time immemorial, and there we will see the extremes of wealth and poverty, for of every million of souls the worldly posses- sions of at least nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand con- sist of a girdle of cloth around the loins, a handful of rice, and a miserable hut, and a few of the remaining thousand possess- ing the wealth of a Stewart or a Vanderbilt. The multitude is but one remove from starvation, and famine not unfrequently sweeps off millions in a few months, while the few are scarcely touched by the wretchedness around them. Take China. Here is a country not so much the prey of insecurity as India, but it should be the beau ideal of Massa- chusetts and Pennsylvania, for China carries out logically the theory of protection to home and, we suspect, to infant indus- tries, for it not only, until recently, refused admittance to for- eign goods of any description, but it also jealously excluded not only immigration, but even residence within its bounds, in this respect surpassing our most extreme protectionists who have never yet ventured to propose, much less to attempt, to exclude foreign immigration, which is the worst form of com- petition home labor can be exposed to. China says if a little UNWISE LAWS. S-J protection is good then complete protection or prohibition is better ; she therefore forthwith proceeds to prohibit not only manufactured goods but machinery of all kinds, so that her people may continue to enjoy the privilege of doing every thing in the slowest, most cumbersome, and most expensive manner, and she also excludes persons so that there will be none to compete with them and so that they may not have before their eyes the temptations of the example of improved methods. She says : In order that my people may have abundance of labor there shall not be a road or a wheeled vehicle in my empire. My people have been accustomed from the time our celestial em- peror deigned to honor earth with his presence to make of themselves both horses and wagons, and in order that they may continue to transport their tea and other crops suspended from the two ends of a stick swung across their shoulders there shall be no innovation in the shape of roads where animals and carts might be employed to lighten their toil, much less shall there be a railroad of any kind. And as for steamboats, none of them ! for my people prefer to pole or drag their way toil- somely against wind and current. Labor must be encouraged, and to that end every thing must be made as tedious and as expensive as possible. In all this China is perfectly logical, for she carries the sys- tem of exclusion, which is only another name for protection, to its legitimate conclusion, and what is the result ? The result is, that the people are so poor they have little more than a change of blue cotton garments, and they are so poor they are reduced to eating all kinds of vermin, dealers in rats, cats, and puppies abounding everywhere. They pursue the most exhausting and degrading labors for a few cents a day, and their poverty is so great that they are little removed from the condition of the people of India, and like them they are not un- frequently swept off by famine. And while the multitude are thus wretched and degraded, the few are the most polished and cultivated of mankind, and enjoy, without restraint, all the 68 UNWISE LAWS. blessings that lavish wealth can bestow. China excludes her- self from all the advantages of the rest of the world, and the natural consequence is that extremes of wealth and poverty are the normal condition of China. One may say : Oh yes ! far off cows have long horns. These things may be all true, but these people are not like us, and what applies to them does not apply to us. Well, then, let us take a railroad train and travel southwest for a few days. We will soon be in the land of the protean cactus and of the Monte- zumas, where we can find large bunches of bananas for ten cents, and the vanilla bean growing almost wild among the branches of trees. Here, that every prospect pleases except man, for during the winter the man, enveloped in his poncho, on which, in his pride, he bestows a goodly portion of his means, will be found idly spending his days lolling in the sun, and during the summer he will be found eating melons in the shade, spending the nights of both seasons in gambling or dancing, while the woman will be found from January to De- cember, and from morn to noon, and from noon to dewy eve, engaged in the endless task of grinding, with her own hands, corn for tortillas, varied by the equally laborious work of wash- ing clothes by the side of a running stream or an irrigating ditch. In this land so highly favored by nature we find, on one hand, the people possessed of almost nothing save the few gifts of Providence, while on the other hand we see hidalgos, whose possessions are of such vast extent that one upon a good horse will not ride across the length or breadth of his hacienda during a long summer's day. Extremes of the most astonishing character will be met with. And Mexico is a country which deliberately prevents her people from sharing thro' means of trade the advantages that other portions of the world have to offer her in exchange for her advantages. Mexico has been an apt pupil of the United States, or rather both peoples have been apt pupils of the selfish spirit the dog exhibited, when he lost the substance by snapping at the shadow. Un- UNWISE LAWS. 69 wise laws undoubtedly produce extremes of wealth and poverty in Mexico. Let us take now a civilized country — Spain. A few hun- dred years ago she was the most enterprising and powerful nation in Europe. Her flag floated over more territory than does that of Great Britain at the present day. Her navigators brought new worlds to light, and her soldiers conquered new and strange empires. In literature and in art she was as cele- brated as in discovery and in war. Nothing was too great, nothing was too daring, for her restless sons. In small barks they braved the terrors and the mysteries of unknown seas, and her Pizarros and Cortezes shrank not from the equal mysteries and terrors of unknown continents. They dared every thing they ventured every thing, and they gained every thing, and Spain, as said above, became the greatest empire of modern times. But to be powerful is not necessarily to be wise, and Spain, in her pride and arrogance and ignorance, became ex- clusive, and wished and endeavored to keep to herself all the advantages of the new order of things. She shut herself and her possessions out from the world and endeavored to live within herself. She, like the United States, wished to get all and to keep all. She said to the other nations, as the United States does now, be off, you sha'n't come near me. I don't want any of your advantages, and you sha'n't have any of mine. Spain was wealthy and strong and this unwise course did not appear to affect her greatly at first, but after a while she began to weaken and to lose first one thing and then another, till at last, after the lapse of a couple of centuries, she had fallen so low that none did her reverence. In the meantime the people began to sink into poverty, till finally, they became, perhaps, the poorest people in Europe. But while the people be- came poorer and poorer, the great lords and grandees continued to increase in wealth and power, so that at the present day the population is divided into the many, with neither strength nor intelligence enough to protect themselves from the sweeping 70 UNWISE LAWS. ravages of cholera, and into a few nobles, whose landed estates are equal in extent to counties, and whose wealth is fabulous. Extremes of wealth and poverty abound in Spain, and Spain is a country where protection runs riot. The most enlightened nation in the world, to wit, Great Britain, also exhibits the extremes of colossal wealth and abject poverty, and yet she is a free-trade country where no restric- tions are placed on commercial intercourse except for fiscal reasons. How is this ? it may be asked. It is true that Great Britain now utterly repudiates protection, but it was not always so, for up to about 1846 she practised protection in its most rigid form, and only abandoned it in order to avoid a revolu- tion that would have swept away queen, lords, and privileges of every description, and these extremes are in great measure the legacies left from centuries of protection of the most op- pressive character. It is not pretended in the above instances, and many others that might be cited, that protection is the sole parent of the numberless ills which have afflicted and which still afflict man- kind; but protection is the chief cause of these extremes of wealth and poverty, for protection not only deprives or attem^Dts to deprive the people of the advantages of other portions of the world, but by preventing commercial intercourse, it lessens the industry and the productions of the people, for the reason that they cannot find a market for what they make in excess of their own wants, and they therefore do not produce in excess of their wants. The people are thus impoverished at both ends : first, by not producing in excess of their own wants ; and second, by having to pay higher prices when they consume the produc- tions of others, because others' productions are small, like their own. For instance, the Indians from whom we derive Indian corn, scarcely produced enough of this prolific grain to supply their own scanty wants, because there was no demand for it, while we, their successors, produce annually about 1,750,000,000 bushels of the same grain, because there is a demand for it. And if UNWISE LAWS. 71 we could not sell or profitably consume more than a tenth part of this vast quantity, how soon would the production of corn shrink ninety per cent.? Only a few years, two or three at the utmost. So protection by destroying demand at once lessens production and thus causes poverty. Although protection has been the general policy of the United States, from its birth in 17SS, it is only within the last twenty- five years that protection, in its most destructive form, has overshadowed the land, but in this short time we see pregnant signs of its unfailing operation in the production of extremes of wealth and poverty. While the people are not suffering aytual hunger, we think, no merchant who is familiar with their condition will deny that they are poor. Whether we confine ourselves to the thrifty East, where manufactures are the chief interest, or to the Mid- dle States, where combinations of agriculture, mining, and man- ufactures absorb their energies, or to the West, which is princi- pally agricultural, or to the South, which also draws its support mainly from the soil, we think there can be but one intelli- gent answer, and that answer will be, the people are not only poor but they are in debt besides. It is freely admitted that there are thousands of thrifty people everywhere with money in bank and who own their own dwellings, but the many will be found to be leading a scuffling existence, dependent upon credit at the retail stores, and their dwellings, when they hap- pen to own them, shingled with mortgages. And if this be doubted, the truth would soon be evident if the shop-keepers were to do business on a cash plan, as they should do, for how- ever much credit should be made use of in the wholesale trans- action of trade, no consumer should supply his individual wants on credit, for if they should do so, stores that daily were found crowded by customers buying on credit, would he found as deserted as the path to heaven, which the hymnist repre- sents as frequented by "here and there a traveller." If retail dealings on credit were abolished, the current of commerce 72 UNWISE LAWS. would be as suddenly stopped as are the rivulets and smaller streams when seized by a biting northwest wind. This, of itself, shows the poverty of the people, for if they were not poor they would soon learn to pay cash, and the change, from cre'dit to cash, would produce only slight inconvenience, but as things are at present, not only would buying and selling cease all over the land, but the merchants would lose perhaps three fourths of the debts already on their books, for the consumer pays one bill and immediately makes another, leaving him perpetually in the debt of the merchant. In France, and in Germany, and on the continent of Europe, credit in retail dealings is hardly known, and it should be equally unknown here. Then when employment fails or when sick- ness comes, the consumer is at least out of debt, however little he may have laid up, but here, when the evil day comes, the consumer is not only deeply in debt to the retailer, but he de- pends upon the retailer carrying him till he gets to work again. We think no intelligent merchant will deny that these facts generally prevail throughout the country, and if they do pre- vail they are indisputable evidence of the fact that the people generally are poor — indeed very poor. The writer can speak for one very large section of the country, for one that supplies the great media of the foreign exchanges, and he knows that the people are very poor. He knows that beyond the free gift of nature in the form of a warm sun, which supplies them in great part with house and raiment, the people have little be- yond the plainest food, and as for the ordinary comforts of carpets , neat table-ware, and genteel furniture, they are almost as unknown as if they had no existence at all. He knows further that they are almost universally in debt to the extent of their ability to gain credit, notwithstanding their meagre style of living, and that their crops are generally mortgaged by the time the first furrow is turned or the first seed planted. In the larger villages and towns the people make a better appearance, although it is mostly on credit, but the towns are so small a UNWISE LAWS. 73 portion of the community, the exception is immaterial. For instance, the town population in 1880 of Virginia was (in towns of 4,000 and upwards) 12 per cent., of North Carolina 3I per cent., of South Carolina 7 per cent., of Georgia S |)er cent., and of Mississippi 2\ per cent. But for the extremes of wealth and wretchedness let us turn our eyes to the anthracite regions of Pennsylvania, where the lordly proprietors of collieries seek to increase their already co- lossal possessions by restricting the number of days of labor of the miserable miner so that the price of coal may be main- tained at a high figure. The Molly Maguires are as direct a result of the oppressions of these large colliery proprietors as is steam the direct result of this coal suitably applied to water. And yet these same proprietors, Mr. Gowen at their head, take great credit for having ])ut down this monstrous evil, the work of their own hands. When people are well used they are happy, and a happy people have never been known to instigate and to practise assassination and midnight murders. But on the other extreme what do we observe ? We see on every hand monstrous fortunes, utterly beyond the accumula- tions of healthy growth, acquired in a short time. In a natural and healthy state of affairs, the wealth of a country does not grow with a rapidity great enough to justify these fortunes, and they can be acquired only by investing certain persons with a portion of the sovereignty of government, by enabling them practically to lay tribute on the whole body of citizens, without any of the responsibilities of government ; governments never growing rich because they have to disburse at least as much as they receive, but these individuals having nothing to spend for public purposes, they thereby become enormously wealthy, just as governments would if they could keep what they collect. Or they are acquired by speculating, which a few crafty indi- viduals are enabled to do by taking advantage of the speculat- ing spirit which protection engenders, and who, by false repre- sentations of every kind, succeed in emptying the purses of 74 UNWISE LAWS. sanguine and covetous persons into their own capacious pockets. For this reason we see certain portions of the country sprinkled over with milHonaires many times over, and with hundreds following whose wealth would have been esteemed fabulous thirty years ago. Vanderbilt, with his two hundred millions, stands out prominent, and figuratively sits « High on a throne of royal state which far Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous east, with richest hand, Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold. And after him come Gould, Huntingdon, Field, Sage, and many others, speculators all, who, by means of misrepresenta- tions and deceptions, have not only fleeced thousands who were quite as eager for wealth without earning it as were they but who were not as shrewd, but have also robbed thousands of innocent investors who placed reliance on their statements. And here, too, are the bonanza kings, who not only reaped immense fortunes by the actual production of the precious metals, but who reaped still larger fortunes by unload- ing on the public when they knew their mines were exhausted. But why attempt to enumerate, for a book the size of Webster's Dictionary would not be large enough to enumerate the names of the immensely wealthy, together with a history of the methods by which these fortunes had been obtained at the expense of the people. Boston has its millionaires, so has Philadelphia, and Pittsburg, and Cincinnati, and Chicago, and generally wherever there are extensive manufactures there will be found opulent manufacturers who tower above their workmen and neighbors like the giant red-wood trees of California, or like the still more colossal gum-trees of Australia, which are said to lift their majestic crowns five hundred feet above the earth, tower above the more humble but still lofty vegetation around them. The extremes of wealth and poverty having now begun with UNWISE LAWS. 75 US, they will proceed with accelerating rapidity, for as the poor become poorer they will be less able to bear the exactions re- quired by the laws, and as the wealthy become wealthier they will be stronger not only to insist upon the discriminations the laws now make, but also to enact still more oppressive laws, till, within the lifetime of those now approaching their maturity, we will be converted from a democracy into a plutocracy, the most odious form of government the people have ever seen, and the people will be made use of as the implements of their own degradation. The only escape from this condition is the enactment and the execution of impartial laws, and that happy state cannot arise until protection is utterly swept off of our statute books. Our laws cannot be part free and part pro- tective, which means restrictive and obstructive ; they must be free or prohibitive. We must choose to be China or England The people must Awake, arise, or be forever fallen. CHAPTER X. HOW SO-CALLED PROTECTIVE LAWS CAUSE POVERTY, STAGNA- TION, AND ISOLATION, OR REVOLUTION. Protection is a beautiful or an odious idea according to the connection in which it is used. When one walks around the borders of a pond with shallows about the margin he may at certain seasons of the year observe, suspended in the water, a fish as motionless and as solemn as a sphinx, and although ordinarily timid at the approach of man, it is now fearless and regardless of his presence. But suddenly, upon the approach of another fish, see how (juickly and savagely it darts upon the intruder. And why this sudden change ? Look closer and you will see a school of small fry, which the mother is carefully guarding, and it was to protect them it drove the marauder off. ^6 UNWISE LAWS. This is protection, and the idea is pleasing. So when we speak of protecting one's family, or one's friend, or one's country, the ideas, associated with protection, are altogether gratifying. But suppose we speak of protecting or shielding a man by means of public authority in his peculations, as when the political power of New York City was made use of to protect Tweed and his confederates in the wholesale plunder of the city, or when we speak of social influence being employed to shield one from the effects of some capital crime, or when of a government protecting a traitor who has betrayed his country, as Great Britain protected Arnold ; then the idea of protection becomes odious and repulsive. Now the advocates of protec- tion have seized hold of the agreeable and beneficial side of protection, and have thereby so imposed upon the better side of man that people, when protection is made use of, immedi- ately associate the word with the idea of a father protecting a helpless family of little children from cold and hunger and nakedness, from sickness, suffering, and death. Hence the great strength of the so-called protective system among fair- minded, sensible, but unthinking people. But let us see what protection in a political sense really is. Protection must be something good, or something where the good overbalances the evil, for there is nothing altogether good or altogether bad, or it must be something where the evil over- balances the good, or it must be something where the good and the bad neutralize each other. It must necessarily be one or the other. But as we are not interested in any thing that is neutral, we will consider only the good or the bad of pro- tection. If protection is good it must be something that increases the happiness and the well-being of mankind. It must, for in- stance, improve the facilities for intercourse between man and man, so that peoples may become better acquainted with each other, and thereby learn that they are not necessarily enemies because they live under different flags. It must, too, facilitate UNWISE LAWS. yj the interchange of productions between different peoples, so that those who raise grain, potatoes, and meat may obtain without difficulty tea, coffee, and sugar, and vice versa. If any natural barriers exist it must see that they are overcome — that a mountain is tunnelled, a river bridged, and a sea crossed by fast steamers. If protection is bad it must be something that puts stumbling blocks or barriers in the way of peoples otherwise friendly. It must make people say to each other : We do not desire to have any thing to do with you. We prefer to eat our corn bread and fat meat unrelieved by any of the good things you raise. And those in turn who raise the so-called luxuries of life — the condiments, the spices, the sweets, and the delicacies — say to the men of the colder countries : Keep your meat and your bread — so each party suffers. If protection is bad it seals the ports or opens them so small it is with difficulty they can be entered, and it surrounds the borders of the land with paid men to keep out what the neighboring people would find profitable to exchange. Now does protection offer any inducement to peoples getting acquainted with each other, and thereby rubbing off prejudice ? Does protection offer any facilities for peoples interchanging the various advantages that each country possesses ? Does it render it easy for a farmer who has one hundred bushels of wheat to dispose of to exchange it for the many articles he "daily needs, or does it offer any facilities to the manufacturer who has one hundred bales of cloth to exchange it for what he wants ? Does protection say to men across the border : Come over and be friendly, and bring along any thing you have to sell .'' All of these things are beneficial, but does protection invite any one of them > Not a single one, but, on the con- trary, it builds a fence around the country, and if protection had its way it would build the fence so high that only a bird could get over it. And it destroys all good feeling between peoples, for to all friendly advances it returns a surly answer 78 UNWISE LAWS. and says : No ! no ! I 'II have nothing to do with your " pauper labor," or I don't want any of your wormy meat. And so matters progress till bitterness fills the heart ; they are ready to take offence on the slightest or on no occasion, and large armies and fleets are kept ready to carry on the wars that frequently follow such a course. Well then, be protection good or bad, if it is good for the United States is it not good for other countries ? Further, if protection or moderate impediments are desirable, why is not prohibition or unsurmountable impediments better ? Or if pro- hibition is not better than moderate protection, at what limit would you place those impediments ! Suppose we say let ten per cent, represent the impediment. Why ten ? Well, then, twenty. Why twenty ? Well, then, one hundred. Why one hundred ? If an impediment is to be placed why not make it total ? Or if not total why make it at all ? It is hardly possible to conceive a stop- ping-place between zero and infinity, or in a more colloquial phrase between " neck or nothing." As in the case of a woman's virtue, there can be no middle ground between purity and vice. The essence of protection is prohibition. Let us, there- fore, follow prohibition a little distance. The United States takes a stand and proclaims the idea that home industry must be protected, and to that end enacts that not a pound of iron or of wool, or of any thing else that our people make, shall come into the country. Not a pound of rice or sugar, not an orange, or a banana, or a pineapple, or an ounce of indigo, because the South can produce all these things. Not a blanket, nor a shawl, nor a yard of silk, not a bushel of salt, or of coal, for the Middle and Eastern States can produce them. Thus we shut out all foreign competition, for unless you shut out all competition you do not protect. As we have seen in previous chapters, this works admirably at first, for we give new work to people, and at the same time ex- port agricultural productions in which we are strong, for in them consist mainly our natural advantages. But protection being UNWISE LAWS. 79 good for us it must needs be good for others, for if not, why not ? so other nations adopt the protective policy, and seeing their people import food and raw materials, like cotton, tobacco, lum- ber, petroleum, etc., etc., they say these things must be produced at home, and therefore we will prohibit their entry into our ports. So presently every country is shut up in its own borders, and there is no trade of any kind, for if protection protects one it should and will protect all. Well, what follows ? The first effect is, of course, to render valueless all ships that had been engaged in foreign commerce, and to destroy all the industries that built, equipped, and maintained these vast fleets. Of course all personal intercourse ceases also, for as there are no ships to transport them, and no inducements in the way of profits to travel, travellers cease to move to and fro. Then comes along cessation of industry in these great occupations that serve to swell the channels of foreign exchanges. The crop of cotton at once sinks from a supply ample enough for the world to merely enough for the home demand, and the same applies to tobacco, to grain, to meat, to petroleum, etc., and millions are reduced from active and industrious pro- ducers to hopeless idlers, because there is no demand for the fruits of their labor. Next the millions of spindles and looms, the thousands of furnaces and shops, and the multitudes of factories of every kind that supplied the millions producing the exportable products of the country, find their usefulness gone, because the demand for what they made has been de- stroyed by the enforced idleness of the toilers of the fields. And then the enormous system of railroads shrinks and shHvels because there is little or nothing to transport. The banks soon follow, for there is little to exchange, and the two hundred millions of Vanderbilt, and the one hundred millions of Gould, and the scores of millions of thousands of others, vanish as the morning mists before the sun. Poverty becomes general because there is no inducement to labor, there being no demand, and isolation prevails over the face of the globe. 80 UNWISE LAWS. Instead of one China there are as many Chinas as there were formerly flags, and the desolation of utter stagnation broods upon the face of all mundane affairs. This is the logical result of protection. This may be so, some may reply, but we will never see protection carried to its logical result. It is to be hoped we never will, and it is most probably we never shall, for intelligence is a death blow to all such barbarous expedients, and as intelligence is spreading we may rather hope to see the day when the shackles of protection shall be stricken off the limbs of nations and of individuals too ; but to see protection carried to its logical result we have only to look at China, which, from time immemorial, has vigorously forbidden all intercourse with foreign nations, and with what results ? Although the Chinese Empire occupies a territory as large as the United States, and occupies some of the fairest regions on earth, its people have been reduced to such a state of poverty they are only one degree removed from starvation, and the government is so weak the second-rate powers of Europe are able to compel it to submit to treaties utterly re- pugnant to all their most cherished social and political ideas. And China is so stagnant and dormant that their manners and customs do not materially change during the course of centu- ries, and they still pursue agriculture and the arts — science they have none — in the same manner their ancestors did five hun- dred years ago. Japan, though on a smaller scale, was a sim- ilar example of protection carried to its logical conclusion, and when its ports were opened at the mouth of the cannon, there was found a stagnant and degraded multitude, lorded over by a rapacious nobility, who knew no law but their own unbridled will. If protection is good for nations, those nations that practise protection should be the most advanced and most prosperous, and those that practise free trade ought to be the most back- ward and the most wretched. What says experience ? Which are the states that have placed the most impediments in the UNWISE LAWS. 8l way of commercial intercourse, or, in other words, have carried the idea of protection to its farthest extreme ? They are Spain and Portugal in Europe, and Mexico in the New World. All these nations are situated in the most fruitful portions of the globe, where nature abundantly supplements the labors of man, and they all produce the most valuable articles of commerce. If they had not found the open sesame of protection, but had simply followed the dictates of common sense, and allowed tfieir people to buy and sell where they chose, they ought, with their superior natural advantages, to surpass in wealth all other nations, but having discovered a box, the opposite of Pan- dora's, which lets loose upon these countries all the countless blessings of protection, their advance over free-trading coun- tries ought to be immeasurable. But is this the case ? On the contrary, the people of all these countries are the poorest, the least intelligent, and the least progressive of the whole brother- hood of nations. They are enveloped in the chains of ignor- ance, sloth, and superstition, and what is worse they have no desire to throw them off. It may be said that Spain, Portugal and Mexico are Catholic countries, and for that reason they are steeped in poverty and indolence. But this can hardly be, for Spain and Portugal were Catholic countries when the Pope divided between them all the new worlds, both eastern and west- ern, which their enterprise had discovered and their valor had conquered. And Belgium is also a Catholic country, but she is highly prosperous. No, it is not religion that makes them what they are, but it is so-called protection which blindly and obstinately cuts them off from all the advantages the world at large has to offer them. France is also a country which carries protection to extremes, but she is saved from feeling the full effects of the evils protec- tion brings in its train, because her people carry the virtue of economy to the extreme of parsimony, and they display an in- dustry unparalleled among men ; but notwithstanding these two cardinal virtues, the people of France are really poor, and their 82 UNWISE LAWS. system of protection has so weakened them they fell an easy prey to the prowess of Germany. If France availed herself of the advantages that other nations have to offer and devoted herself exclusively to the cultivation of the many things in which Frenchmen undoubtedly excel, she would soon regain the proud position from which she seems irrevocably to have fallen. On the other hand, there is free-trade Great Britain, and what do we find here ? We find the most industrious, the most intelligent, the most enterprising, and the richest people on the face of the earth. Their little island is not only the workshop of the world but it is the banking house also. Its influence ex- tends to every quarter of the world. It clothes the people, it builds their railroads, and it furnishes their ships. All eyes are turned to England, and when any people desires works beyond their ability to be done, the appeal is made at once to England, and she as quickly responds. Though the smallest of nations, she is at the same time the most powerful and most beneficent. And why ? Simply because she is wise and has cast aside the shackles she so late as 1848 gloried in. She now stands erect and invites the whole world to bring her, freely and with- out stint all the advantages they have to offer, and that she will as freely buy, paying in cash, or in goods, as the sellers may desire. By this means she buys at the cheapest rate whatever the world has to offer, and getting her goods cheap she is enabled to sell them unaltered, or changed into fabrics or wares, cheaper than others, and she thus secures the trade of the world at large. She places no impediments in the way of exchange or of commercial intercourse, and when she has to raise revenue she does it by laying taxes with a view to revenue only, discarding even the subterfuge, which our re- formers avail themselves of, to wit : laying taxes with a view to incidental protection. Now look upon the two pictures. On one hand, indolence, poverty, stagnation and — protection. On the other, life, enter- UNWISE LAWS. 83 prise, wealth and — free trade. As Elijah said to the people on one occasion : Choose ye whom ye will serve, God or Baal. So fellow countrymen, make your choice between protection and ultimate poverty, or free trade and unbounded prosperity. Having now traced protection in its relations or effects be- tween nations, let us now follow it in some of its domestic aspects. CHAPTER XI. HOW SO-CALLED PROTECTION LAWS CAUSE POVERTY, STAGNA- TION, AND ISOLATION, OR REVOLUTION — CONTINUED. Granting that protection against the trade of foreign nations is beneficial, granting that if it is good for the United States to shut out the manufactured goods of Great Britain, it must be equally good for Great Britain to shut out our cotton, our grain, our meats, our tobacco, our petroleum, etc., which would have the effect, if applied generally between nations ; and if good between two nations, the same should apply to all nations, — to destroy the foreign commerce of the world, and therefore to relegate to a state of idleness all those engaged in producing the great staples of commerce — granting, I say, that protection is good between nations, it must be good when ap- plied between the States composing the United States. For if not good, why is it not ? We are not regarding this matter in a legal light, for we well know any impediment placed in the way of domestic intercourse is unlawful. Something may be perfectly legal, and that something may at the same time be very injurious. So we examine this system in the light of good and bad, and inquire again, if it is good between nations why is it not good between States ? Here we have a country extending almost from arctic to tropical regions, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the variations between the emi)loy- ments and the interests of Maine and of Florida, or of Massa- chusetts and California, are certainly as great as between the 84 UNWISE LAWS. United States and any foreign country whatever, and the mere fact of being comprised within the boundaries of the same country does not alter in the least the beneficial or injurious effects of protection. Here are Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, on the one hand, manufacturing all kinds of textile and metal and other goods, and raising not enough food to support their people one month out of the twelve ; and there, on the other hand, are Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, produc- ing grain, tobacco, cotton, and naval stores, far in excess of their needs, and not enough manufactures to supply one tenth of their necessities. If variation of employments and interests, if diversities of climates, and if differences of character are grounds for protective legislation, here, surely, is a field for the most ample application of this beneficent principle ; and if this principle is good anywhere it ought to apply with greatest force between these two groups of States. As we have said, there is nothing in the fact of being under the same government to affect the operation of this principle. If it is beneficial to the whole country — and in considering this matter we must not fix our attention on one small spot, and ignore all the rest of the country — for the first group of States to shut out the manufac- tured goods which England can furnish cheaper than they can, why is it not equally beneficial for the second group of States to exclude the manufactures which the first group can furnish cheaper than the second group ? Or take a larger illustration : Say the maritime States against the inland, and vice versa, or the Atlantic slope versus the Pacific. All these divisions have interests and sentiments diverge enough to constitute them separate countries. Thus, protection being good between na- tions, must be good between the different portions of this coun- try, and custom-houses being beneficent institutions along our sea-coast and inland boundaries, it must be equally benefi- cial to have them between North and South, and between East and West. As in Europe, whenever one passes from one UNWISE LAWS. 85 country to another, luggage and merchandise must be exam- ined to see whether they shall he allowed to enter, so when one goes from New York to San Francisco, when he reaches the watershed between the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico he should be met and examined by a custom ofificer ; and again, when he reaches the Mississippi, the true dividing line between East and West, he should be examined by another set ; and again, when he crosses the Rocky Mountains, he should be met by another set still, all with the same object in view, to find out whether the traveller has any thing that should not be allowed to cross the boundary. And the same with goods and merchandise, in trains or in vessels. All these impediments are beneficial, for protection is beneficial, and they are protec- tive, and when the impediments are totally obstructive, so much the better. Now the manufacturers of Massachusetts say the products of the looms and factories of Great Britain interfere with us and curtail our profits. Shut them out. Why ? Because it benefits the country. We grant it, say. Then the manufacturers of Virginia, finding that the manufacturers of New England break them down as fast as they start, make the same demand against Massachusetts that Massachusetts made against Great Britain. And why ? On the same plea, because it benefits the country. Is not the plea as valid and as weighty in the case of Virginia as in the case of Massachusetts ? If the country is benefited by Massachusetts making goods, is it not equally benefited by Virginia making them ? The plea may be offered that Massa- chusetts can make them cheaper than Virginia, therefore the country is benefited by Massachusetts making them. Granting this, but cannot Great Britain make them cheaper than either ? and if the country is benefited by Massachusetts making them rather than Virginia, is not the country more benefited by having Great Britain make them than either ? But this is slightly anticipating. Protection being good between foreign nations it must, of 86 UNWISE LAWS. course, be good at home. So, then, let us now show the operation of protection at home. Under the shadow of the glorious stars and stripes there dwell, in peace and happiness, thirty-eight distinct communities, all differing, more or less, in climate, soil, and natural advantages, and some so diverse from others as to be almost antagonistic. Some of these States are manufacturing, some mining, some mixed, but most agricul- tural, and they are all pursuing the callings they find most profitable. Under the teachings of the New England and Pennsylvania school of protectionists, the duty, and the beauty, and the utility of manufactures have been so insisted upon, a large portion of the public devoutly believe, and one of the great political parties dividing the country has crys- tallized the idea, though in different language in their platform, that the great duty of man is not to "glorify God and enjoy him forever," but to manufacture goods. New England is al- most exclusively manufacturing, but having inculcated the idea of the duty of man being to manufacture goods, we will say that the people of a number of States, fully agreeing with Massachusetts, determine to do their whole duty in this re- spect, and they therefore set up manufactures of various kinds. But after a short trial of performing their sacred duty, they find they are broken down by the competition of New England. But having learnt from New England not only the sacred duty of manufacturing, but also the equally sacred duty of protection, they put in practice protection of their own industries, and they vigorously exclude the manufactures of New England. Of course. New England sets up a howl as vigorous as that of Satan, when all the hollow deep resounded, but the people re- ply : If it benefits the country for New England to be protected against Old England, it must equally benefit the country for Ohio, or Illinois, or Nebraska to protect itself against New England. And there can be no reply to this. So they exclude New England manufactures, and as example is contagious, all the States follow, and New England is left to supply only UNWISE LAWS. 87 her own market. Of course bitterness fills the heart of New England when she sees her factories idle, her shops shut, and her people out of employment. And then, too, the same principle that makes the States jealous of New England, makes them jealous of each other. And thus we have Ohio hating Indi- ana, Illinois hating Wisconsin, and finally the whole thirty- eight States in a condition of chronic irritation and isolation, just as prior to 186 1 there was constant irritation and hostility along the border between the free and the slave States. But then in each State there are a great many counties and cities, and each county and city has the same natural rights that the country at large and the States have. The central government protects the whole country, the State protects its inhabitants, and the cities and counties protect their citizens — the country having no right to oppress the State, the State no right to oppress its cities and counties, and the cities and counties no right to oppress its citizens. Now, then, here are two cities interfering with each other, and one, say Rochester, goes to its city council and says protect me against Syracuse. But we can't do it, says the city council. Oh yes you can, says Rochester, for have we not been taught for years that protection is beneficial, and does not the country at large practise protection. So, using the arguments of New England and the practice of the government, Rochester gets protected from Syracuse. While New York was protecting its citizens against the competition of New England it seemed all right, and although there was bitterness between New England and New York because New England was shut out, there was peace and contentment among the citizens of New York. But now comes an extension of the principle of protection, and Rochester protects herself against Syracuse, and as we know that example is catching, all the large cities avail themselves of the beneficent principle of protection, and hence there speedily sjjrings up bitterness and hostility between them, and as the smaller towns and villages adopt the same blessed principle, 88 UNWISE LAWS. the whole State itself is segregated into numberless little sections, all jealous and envious of each other, and all bitterly hostile. There is, of course, no intercourse between each other, for they have learnt that the highest duty of man is to manufacture goods, and they are all supplying their own wants among themselves, and, of course, there being no travelling and no excbange of merchandise, there is no use for railroads, so the immense armies required to run the railroads are thrown out of employment, and the railroads themselves speedily fall into decay, and poverty and isolation overspread the whole land. But this beneficent principle has not yet worked out all its legitimate results. We must come nearer to the unit. The cities having protected themselves, the different streets demand protection, for if protection is good in the aggregate it must necessarily be good in its smallest details, and the different streets having obtained protection, the separate merchants in the same line on the same streets also demand protection. And then again the different trades and callings demand pro- tection, the carpenters demanding that none shall be allowed to learn the trade but sons of carpenters, and the artificers and workmen of every branch demand the same thing. As nobody now can join any other calling but the one he is engaged in, every one must continue, from father to son and so on eternally, in the same occupation. And thus will be established caste, and thus have been established the castes of India, where every person is restricted, under the most extreme social penalties, to the occupation his ancestors have pursued from time immemorial. In considering nations or peoples we are almost sure to lose sight of the fact that they are made up of units, made up of in- dividual men, and we are almost equally certain, to invest the nation with a certain entity inherent within itself. We lose sight of the fact that the nation is only as the individual com- ponents are. If they are individually free or prosperous, then the country is a free country, like Great Britain and the UNWISE LAWS. 89 United States, and is prosperous. On the other hand, if the people individually are in a stagnant or decaying condition, then the nation will be likewise stagnant or in a state of deca- dence. Although these facts are universally acknowledged, we are altogether prone to overlook them. But they are mentioned to impress upon the reader the necessity of observing the bearing of laws or institutions on the units of society in order to per- ceive the benefits or the injuries resulting from these laws. So we show the bearing of protective laws by bringing them down to the individual, and if these effects are found to be good, then protection is beneficial and should be maintained ; but if these effects are found to be bad, then protection is injurious and should be uprooted. Well, then, let us now begin at protection in its international aspect, and bring it down to the unit. If protection by the United States against foreign nations is beneficial, then, of course, protection by foreign nations against the United States is also beneficial. In other words, as inter- national protection leads to obliteration of international inter- course, therefore destruction of general foreign commerce is beneficial. Again if international protection is beneficial, then inter-state protection must be beneficial also. And as inter-state protection cuts up all domestic intercouse, therefore destruc- tion of all the railroads, all the steamboats, all the telegraphs, which are mere instruments for facilitating commerce, is beneficial. Again if inter-state protection is beneficial, then inter-county, inter-village, inter-city protection must be also beneficial, therefore the destruction of all neighborly, all friendly intercourse and commerce must be beneficial likewise. And if inter-county and inter-town protection is beneficial, then inter-street, and further inter-individual protection must be beneficial also, and finally with what is left of the intercourse and commerce of mankind, it must be beneficial to restrict each man to one occupation, and that the occupation that his ancestors for centuries have followed. And therefore caste is 90 UNWISE LAWS. beneficial. And as all these things lead to Avars, through the enmities created by harassing regulations for the purpose of preventing intercourse between neighbors, and to stagnation, poverty, isolation, and death, it is beneficial for countries like the East, like Central and Western Asia, like Arabia, like Northern Africa, like the old Roman world, to be reduced from populous thriving and wealthy communities to the state of utter desolation and wretchedness, that has brooded upon them for many centuries past. We have descended from the top to the bottom. Now let us ascend from the bottom to the top. If caste is injurious, then inter-county and inter-town protec- tion is injurious, then inter-state protection is injurious, and finally international protection is injurious. If it is injurious to place obstacles in the path of intercourse between neighbors in the county and town, it is also injurious to place them in the way of intercourse between states, and it is, in like manner, in- jurious to place them in the path of intercourse between nations. For instance, Central New York is the great seat of the cheese industry of the United States. If it is injurious for the Western States, which also make cheese, or for the Southern States, which do not make cheese, to place impediments in the way of cheese entering these States ; if it is injurious for the Eastern States to place impediments in the way of the grain and meat of the Western States from entering their bounds and supply- ing the people with cheap food, then it is equally injurious for the United States to place impediments of any kind in the way of foreign nations selling us what they produce, for it is certain that our people will not buy their goods unless they find it to their advantage. The country is not a separate thing from the individual, and if the individual is benefited, then the country is benefited, and if whole classes of the community are bene- fitted by the use of foreign goods, then the country inevitably thrives. Leave the people free to buy what it is to their in- terest to buy, and we may be sure they will not buy foreign UNWISE LA IFS. 91 goods unless it is to their advantage to do so ; and surely one can hardly contend with" any fairness that the country is bene- fited by requiring the individual to buy inferior and dear articles, and the very fact that he does not buy them is proof that they are either inferior or high, because they are made at home. Having now clearly' proved that protection leads to stagna- tion, poverty, and isolation, we will add a few words on the subject of protection causing, in the efforts of mankind to rid itself of its destroying effects, revolution. Protection is not merely the shutting out of foreign goods because they are supposed to injure home people, but it is also an inequality of any kind produced by the operation of statute law. It is protection when one or more occupations are singled out for taxation, when other occupations are left untouched, or when they are taxed at a rate higher than others. It is also protection when certain classes, such as the nobility and clergy in France, prior to the Revolution, are relieved from taxation altogether, or when the rate imposed is less than the average. But generally whenever protection against foreign goods is found to prevail, then protection in all ics phases is found most to flourish. Protection in its essence being found to be inequality, for if we strip protection of the favors it grants to some but does not grant to all, it would die at once for want of interest of its for- mer advocates, the effect of it is, as we have seen in a former chapter, to produce extremes and to end in prostration and paralysis. Some nations yield with little or no resistance to the injurious effects of protection, and they gradually sink into a state of lethargy and impoverishment ; while others, on the contrary, finally struggle against these effects, with the result that they are gotten rid of by agitation carried to the point of revolution, but avoided by the yielding and surrender of the protected interests, or the injurious effects of protection cannot be gotten rid of by agitation, and then revolution^ 92 UNWISE LAWS. with all its horrors, overthrows the government, with violence and bloodshed. History is full of- revolutions caused by unequal laws protecting whole classes at the expense of the community at large, but it will be only necessary to mention two or three examples. The first shall be of a peace- ful revolution, but it would have been a violent and bloody one if the resistance of protected and privileged interests had con- tinued. It is the example of England, that great storehouse to us of history teaching by example. Under the influence of protection and privilege the population of England had, in the years between 1840 and '46, been reduced to such an extreme state of poverty and degradation that starvation actually stared the people in the face, and the distress was so great the people were prepared for revolution in its worst phase, for no change could be an aggravation of the distress then prevailing amongst them. The aristocracy, with the Iron Duke at its head, sat upon the safety-valve, obstinately opposing change, and the whole structure of government was on the point of being over- whelmed, when Sir Robert Peel, preferring country to party, forsook the standard of protection, joined practically the party of Cobden and the reformers, granted the demands of the peo- ple, and thus, through means of wisdom and patriotism, pre- served England from a bloody and violent revolution. In this instance, Avisdom was more powerful than the sword. France is a memorable example of resistance to reforms, of obstinately and blindly insisting upon the protection of the nobility — and in France all children of noble families were nobles — and the priesthood from taxes of any kind, for they paid not a dollar toward the wasteful expenditures of extrava- gant governments, besides enjoying many other special privi- leges, precipitating after a century or more of oppression the most dreadful revolution known in the annals of history. We will cite another example of protection leading to revolution, and that shall be at home, and familiar to all. It shall be the ex- ample of our own country. Slavery is but protection in its UNWISE LAWS. 93 most extreme form — it is prohibition. For it is an utter denial of all rights, except such as the master may choose to give to a fellow-man in the position of a slave. The South cherished slavery, for it was a system of inequality very pleasing to human nature. But the time had come when slavery had to cease, for the enlightened sentiment of the world had irrevocably con- demned it. The South, however, saw not the handwriting on the wall, heard not the knell of fate strike the hour, and it blindly went to war to preserve slavery, which, as said above, is but an aggravated form of protection, for, like protection, it seeks to relieve the few, at the expense of the many, and the result was one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest, revolution mankind has ever beheld. Protection, then, we ought to say Prohibition, for protection is not fully secured till prohibition is accomplished, leads to Poverty, Stagnation, and Isolation, or to Revolution. CHAPTER XII. PROTECTION OPPOSED TO IMPROVEMENT. This is a startling assertion, to use the mildest language. In the opinion of many it may be termed a very foolish asser- tion, and perhaps only a few may be inclined to allow that there is any truth at all in the assertion. But before deciding • this point, let us hear the matter through, and then we will be better enabled to form a correct opinion on the subject. At all events, the reader will not be detained as long on this point as he has been on others. In speaking of protection the writer speaks of the spirit of protection, for protection as prac- tised does frequently adopt improvements, but when it does, violence is done to its nature, and it then nourishes a foe that will eventually undermine and destroy it. We will assume the fact that protection after the pattern of the idea of the Iron and Steel Association of America, which is 94 UNWISE LAWS. prohibition, for the patriotic soul of this association views with the utmost horror the entry of a single pound of foreign iron in any of its multitudinous forms into our country, has been adopted as the national policy. By continued experience in stopping the holes through which foreign goods entered the country, the wall of protection has been raised just high'enough to keep out all foreign goods. Foreign goods are almost near enough to the top of the wall to flow over — indeed, are just at the top of the wall, but yet not able to overflow it. Manufac- turers on our side of the wall, having the home market all to themselves, have little or no inducement to make improve- ments, for when mankind are enjoying a good thing by pro- ceeding in the old ruts, they are not likely to put themselves out either to invent improvements or to discover methods by which cost of manufacture may be reduced, or better products may be turned out. Every man feels, when he is doing very well, little or no disposition to change matters in any respect ; he is satisfied with letting matters remain as they are. And so it is with men in the shape of protected manufacturers. When money is made easily they prefer to go on in the old way, so that not only may few improvements be expected from them, but they will also be opposed to improvements, for improve- ments by others may necessitate not only a complete change in their method of procedure, and we all know how irksome it is to change our settled ways, but it may also render entirely worthless, except as old material, their most costly machinery. Hence the home manufacturer frowns down and discounte- nances all improvements, as numberless inventors can testify who have experienced the utmost difficulty in introducing in- ventions of the most valuable character. Protection being fully established, and under the condition of affairs then prevailing, foreigners are shut out. Suppose now some important invention like the spinning-jenny is adopted in England. Before this invention cotton goods had been kept out, but as soon as the spinning-jenny is put into UNWISE LAWS. 95 operation the manufacture of cotton goods is so facilitated and cheapened they are enabled to overcome all impediments and to enter our borders. Can any one suppose that the manufac- turers of cotton goods would look upon this improvement with favorable eyes ? On the contrary, they would regard it with so much aversion they would either destroy the inven- tion, if they could, or they would buy it up with its privilege of sole manufacture, and then suppress it, or they would apply to Congress to build the wall higher so that our people might be totally deprived of all the advantages of the improvement. Other illustrations of the same character might be cited till a volume was written, but the reader can supply them for himself. Take another illustration. We may suppose that protection has accommodated itself to the new improvements, and has by the aid of Congress excluded our people from their benefits by raising the wall of protection. And now comes an improve- ment in the shape of improved transportation, whereby a route is shortened, or the speed increased, or the capacity of vessels augmented. Before the improvement was discovered or adopted, the wall, after being raised, was just high enough to keep out foreign goods. Now transportation, we all know, is a very important element of cost. Well, then, by the substitu- tion of a clipper-built ship for an old-fashioned lugger, three trips can be made where formerly only two were possible ; or, more especially, by the substitution of a steamer for a sailing- vessel, the cost of transportation is so reduced foreign goods can again come in ; how soon is the whole protected interest in arms to prevent the people from enjoying the fruits of cheap- ened transportation, and how soon they go to Congress to de- mand increased duties, so that as far as our people are con- cerned these improvements may be completely neutralized. Again, there may be a great improvement by the shortening of a route, as, for instance, when the Suez Canal shortened the distance to India and China by thousands of miles, and reduced 96 UNWISE LAWS. in the same ratio the dangers of navigation. This is a process whereby goods that formerly were shut out may now come in, for improvements of every kind are equivalent to a lowering of the wall of prohibition, but how soon do the advocates of protection again hasten to deprive the people of all the benefits of the decreased distance and decreased dangers, by besieging Congress once more to add to the height of the protecting wall. The spirit of protection is, we thus see, opposed to improve- ments of all kinds. But sometimes protection is inconsistent with itself, and sometimes avails itself of improvements, but every improvement that protection adopts is one nail driven into its coffin ; and protection Avill finally be destroyed from the necessity of adopting improvements, and these improve- ments will at last devour it, as Saturn devoured his own chil- dren at their birth. CHAPTER XIII. DOES PROTECTION INSURE PERMANENT HIGH WAGES ? In a strictly commercial country like the United States the price of every thing, with few exceptions, is regulated by com- petition. A large demand upon a small supply means high prices, but a large demand upon a large supply may make no alteration in prices. For example, in the grain year 1884-5, although the demand for our wheat (including flour) amounted to the immense quantity of about 150,000,000 bushels, the price declined because the supply was large. On the other hand, a small demand upon a large supply means low prices, but a small demand upon a small supply may, as in the case of a large demand upon a large supply, mean no alteration in prices, just as in the grain year 1885-6, although the crop of wheat is 150,000,000 bushels short of the previous year, a very moderate rise in price is maintained with utmost difficulty because the UNWISE LAWS. 97 demand is small. Thus prices depend not exactly upon sup- ply and demand, but upon the size of the demand upon the supply. Thus in the United States we have generally high wages, much above the rate in European countries, though not, I be- lieve, higher than in countries similarly situated, as, for in- stance, in Australia. But the fact of high wages in the United States proves that the demand for labor is generally in excess of the supply. If there was only one kind of demand for labor then high wages might logically be ascribed to that de- mand, but in case there were many kinds of demand could high wages be fairly ascribed to any one kind of demand, but should they not rather be ascribed to the united influence of all the various kinds of demand ? Thus we have various kinds of demand for labor. We have the manufacturing de- mand, the agricultural demand, the mining demand, the rail- road-building demand, the railroad-maintenance demand, and various other kinds of demand. All of these demands are large, but the agricultural demand required for the opening and development of the fertile and fruitful States from Ohio to the Mississippi River, and later the similar demand for the States west of the Mississippi and extending north to the line of British America, may fairly be claimed to be the most im- portant, and next in importance may be said to be the demand for the immense armies of men required first to build and equip the 125,000 miles of railroad that overspread the land like a huge net, and second, to maintain and run these roads, which are long enough to girdle the earth five times. After these two demands comes the demand from the protected in- dustries, and the various other demands for labor. One would naturally suppose that if any one demand was entitled to the honor of high wages it would be the agricultural demand, sim- ply because it was the largest demand. But no reasonable man, however he might be wedded to agriculture or railroads, would make such a claim for either, but would say, why of 98 UNWISE LAWS. course the combined demand would be entitled to the honor. , But not so the protectionist. He claims that protection alone is entitled to the honor, and he never wearies of glorifying protection on the ground that it gives the "laboring population high wages ; and he has dwelt upon this theme so persistently he has persuaded the majority of the people that they must thank protection alone for the fact that higher wages prevail in the United States than in Europe. The protectionist claims for protection the sole honor of the high wage's prevailing in the United States. This assertion is not only denied, but on the contrary it is asserted that protec- tion, instead of being the cause of high wages, is the cause of fluctuating wages ; that instead of causing steady wages it causes a state of affairs in which wages are at one time high, at another time low, and at another wages at any rate are almost impossible to be obtained owing to the panics and the prostra- tions that protection inevitably produces. It is further asserted that though a manufacturing or an agri- cultural or any other kind of demand may temporarily raise wages, no demand can cause for any length of time a higher level of wages in that particular branch than the average rate of wages prevailing in employments generally. First let us trace the manufacturing demand. As manufac- tures are stimulated by protection, or even by a natural de- mand, if it be large the demand for labor increases. As a rule people are employed in those occupations Avhich they find most profitable. But an extra demand coming upon the manufac- turers, they require a larger supply of laborers. People gener- ally being profitably engaged they will not respond to the manufacturers' demand unless they have some inducement. Hence to get them the manufacturer pays higher wages, and thus begins a higher plane of wages in the manufacturing world than outside. Manufacturing continuing profitable, the manu- facturer needs more laborers, but the first draft on the outside world having diminished the available supply of labor therein, UNWISE LAWS. 99 a slightly better demand has been created in the non-manufac- turing world. Therefore for the manufacturer to get more laborers out of this non-manufacturing world he must offer higher wages than he did at first, which he does because the demand for his goods will enable him to increase his prices sufficient to cover the cost of the increased wages, and thus the level of wages will be raised still higher in the manufac- turing world. By this means in a moderate length of time the rate of wages will be so high in the manufacturing world as to attract general attention, and laborers will begin to flow towards manufactures. Under the state of non-protection, when the manufacturer has to compete with all the world, competition will soon correct any abnormal variations from a reasonable level, so that the temptation of excessive wages will not last long enough to attract any very large accumulation of laborers towards manufactures, but under a state of protection when manufacturers are assured a margin of profit of from an aver- age of 40 ^ on cotton goods, of 35 ^ on iron goods, of 66 ffo on woollen goods, up to 124 ^, on plate-glass from 24x60 " and upwards, it requires so long a time to overstock the market the attraction of high wages continues long enough to attract a vast multitude of laborers, not only from home sources, but also from those living beyond the seas, as an influx of upwards of 8,000,000 of immigrants between 1863 and 1885 abundantly proves. Of course, as we can readily see, this long-extended artificial demand continues for a long time, but finally the supply must not only overtake the demand, but it must also overwhelm it, for when once a current sets steadily and strongly in one direc- tion it cannot be stopped at will, but it must continue till the latest additions to the column shall have presented themselves. In the rise of a river the flood does not stop with the ceasing of the rain, but it continues till the last drop of surplus water has passed along on its way to the sea. For a time, and if the arti- ficial obstructions to commercial intercourse are great, for a long time, high wages prevail. During this period of high lOO UNWISE LAWS. wages every thing apparently prospers. The manufacturers begin to catch up with the demand, and a little later to supply the demand fully, and then goods begin to accumulate. Dan- ger then commences, but the manufacturers do not perceive it, for the ease with which advances are obtained and the facility whereby goods are hypothecated blind them to the fact that goods are beginning to be in excessive supply. Having obtained advances from their commission merchants, they feel as if the goods had been sold, and they go to work and make more goods with the advances they have obtained. During all this time labor has been in demand and wages have continued high, but the inevitable time has come when iron and steam and water have turned out more goods than flesh and blood can consume. Demand, of course, now begins to slacken, and as the supply of labor still continues to flow towards manufactures, an excess of labor begins to be apparent. The manufacturer now too finds that his goods are in the warehouses of his consignee in- stead of in the hands of the consumer, and he can therefore get no more advances. Manufacturers generally are found to be in this condition, so they begin to curtail production and some stop altogether. Wages, of course, begin to fall, first be- cause more are seeking work than there is work to be done, and secondly, because manufacturers have already placed most of their means in goods which are still in the hands of their agents. But although curtailed, production still continues larger than demand, for it is well known that manufacturing power is fully double the power of home consumption. Goods continue to increase, notwithstanding labor begins to be thrown out of employment ; indeed, the very cheapness of labor causes more goods to be produced, for they can thereby be thrown on the market at a lower price. We have now arrived at the period when wages have fallen, and in conse- quence strikes everywhere abound, in the vain endeavor to restore the former wages. These strikes, of course, add to the distress of labor, and by the time lost from strikes the wages of UNWISE LAWS. lOI labor are still further reduced. Labor now feels sadly and keenly its altered condition, for, taking the reduced wages of the employed and the no-wages of the unemployed, labor in manufactures is earning less than in other employments. In the progress of affairs manufacturers find they must come to a settlement with their agents, and the agents find that to save themselves from bankruptcy they must sell their consignments at some price, and so they, in slang phrase, slaughter the goods of their principals first at private sale, and then, finding that that process is too slow, they resort to the auction rooms, and vast quantities of goods are forced on the public through this medium, with the final result that thousands of manufacturers find themselves ruined, their ruin bringing down others, till at last panic and general suspension of manufacturing follow. The mills and factories stopping, labor generally is thrown out, and we have a period of stagnation and distress such as prevails in many lines of trade at the present time (July, 1885). Then we see high wages followed by low wages and low wages followed by total lack of wages to hundreds of thousands. Wages under the protective system are never steady for any length of time. The stimulus of protection produces conges- tion. Thousands desert other employments and rush in to reap the high wages temporarily prevailing. They soon over- crowd the market and compete against themselves. A period of steadily decreasing wages follows. This is aggravated by continual strikes, and irritation of mind and heart is added to physical suffering, and finally the whole industrial system col- lapses and labor lies, like a defeated army, broken, demoralized, and bleeding. In course of time a rally follows and industrial affairs recover from their depressed condition, but the recovery lasts for but a short time, for the same process of stimulation, congestion, and collapse follows, to be gone through again and again as long as so-called protection hovers like an incubus over the land. How much better for the pocket, the mind, and the heart to have steady and constant, though nominally I02 UNWISE LAWS. low wages, than the fever of high wages and flush times, the anxieties and the strikes of the following period of decreasing wages, and the actual suffering of the final period when labor slackens and frequently ceases altogether. Legal non-inter- ference does not save labor from fluctuations, for variations of condition, of prosperity, and adversity are incident to the nature of man under all circumstances, but especially in com- mercial countries ; but the variations are kept within narrower limits both in time and intensity ; but legal interference or pro- tection raises barriers against natural forces, and as these natural forces constantly beat against these barriers a vast pressure is brought in time to bear against them, and when the barriers are broken then the destruction is proportioned to the resistance overcome. A rivulet, flowing between two neighboring hills, may sometimes overflow the meadows below and thus do some damage, but if, in the effort to prevent this damage of a small overflow, this stream is dammed where the hills approach each other, and if, as the water overflows, the dam is raised and raised again, the time will come when this dam, however high and however strong it may be built, must inevitably burst, and then this small rivulet which, if let alone, would at the worst but have overflowed a few acres, will now, in its irresistible rush, sweep whole villages off the face of the earth and spread devastation and death along the whole course of its current. Protection is this rivulet obstructed by a dam, and the industrial distress we are at present experiencing are the effects of the broken dam which natural forces have swept from its foundations. AVe will now come to the second part of our claim, that de- mand from no one source is able to maintain, for any length of time, higher wages in that employment than the average of wages prevailing in other employments. In this claim I do not include sundry small and special branches of labor, such as the cutting and polishing of precious stones, for the wages in these departments, for the reason that so few are capable of UNWISE LAWS. 103 following these employments, that those who are capable of engaging in them can almost always command their own prices. But why cannot wages be maintained permanently at a higher level in some employments than in others? For in- stance, if protection causes high wages in manufacturing em- ployments, why cannot protection secure permanency of high wages in these same employments ? To ask the question is to answer it, so simple is the proposition ; but simple as it is there are thousands and tens of thousands of people intelligent on other subjects who cannot understand why wages constantly tend to an average in all departments of labor ; hence the simple question is asked and must be answered. But before proceeding further let us bear in mind that wages are not only current money, but they are also other things that it costs current money to obtain. Thus the town laborer who receives $1.25 per day, but who has to purchase subsistence, lodging, fuel, and other things, imagines he receives much higher wages than the farm hand who receives $15 a month, or 50 cents a day, and in addition receives subsistence, lodging, fuel, and who is not docked for loss of time due to bad weather, while in reality the wages of the farm laborer are higher, for he will probably be able to save ten dollars out of every fifteen, while the town laborer generally ends the year as he began it, with little or nothing laid by, and in addition a score against him at as many stores as he can gain credit. Hence, in estimating wages we should not confine ourselves to the moneyed part, but should take into consideration the food and shelter and other things that frequently go along with money. Now why must wages in all employments tend to an equality ? We speak here of a commercial community where the individual is free to change his residence and his occupa- tion at will. For the very simple reason that when there is much variation in wages those who are earning small wages soon desert their occupations and flock to those em])loyments where wages are high. And this change of occupation produces two 104 UNWISE LAWS. effects : the first and most apparent is that labor in the highest paid lines soon becomes abundant and finally superabundant, and therefore wages fall ; and secondly those employments that are deserted soon feel the loss of the deserters, and labor in them becomes scarce and consequently higher, and thus a further drain of that employment is prevented. If wages re- mained for a long time on a much higher plane in agriculture than in all other employments, the time would finally come when the cities and. towns would in great measure be deserted^ the ships would be without sailors, and those ships already built would soon rot at the wharves and no new ones would be built, the railroads would be forsaken by the brakesman, the conductor, the engineer, and the president, and the locomotives would find few to run them, and the country would present the curious spectacle of nearly the whole population engaged in raising food, cotton, and tobacco, and all these things rotting on the farmer's hands because there were few to eat the food, to chew or smoke the tobacco, and to wear the cotton. No ! there are no permanent high wages in any em- ployment, but wages are constantly fluctuating in every occu- pation, and hence the claim of the protectionist that protection causes constant high wages is entirely groundless. For if they did we would have the reverse of the foregoing picture. Everybody, or at least the vast majority, would be engaged in making wares of every description, the fields would be de- serted, there would be little corn, wheat, and other grain, there would be few swine, cattle, and other animals, and the people would be brought into a state of absolute starvation. Protec- tion, indeed, swings the pendulum of high wages very far in one direction, but the inevitable rebound carries it as far in the opposite direction of low wages, causing, as we have seen, ex- treme fluctuations which are always productive of injury ; just as a wet season which fills all the fibres with copious sap is all the more fatal when followed by a season of scorching suns and parching winds. UNWISE LAWS. 105 Protection is only one of the factors of our high wages, but while with one hand it bestows at times on the laborer the blessings of high wages, it immediately with other hand robs him of all these advantages by causing such general high prices that he finds, after supplying the necessary wants of himself and family, he has little or nothing left at the end of a long life of arduous toil. CHAPTER XIV. WHY THESE UNWISE LAWS HAVE NOT SOONER EXERTED THEIR INJURIOUS EFFECTS, AND WHY THEY MUST EXERT THEM IN THE FUTURE WITH INCREASING FORCE. When expenditure, however large and extravagant, is equalled by income no catastrophe follows. A cistern may be leaking at every seam, but if it is fed by a bold spring it will never be empty, but Avill always be brimming over with spark- ling water. Vanderbilt may exhaust his coffers at the rate of millions annually, but they continue ever full because of the abundance of the income. Lake Ontario, though at every moment of time it fills the banks of the grand and rapid St. Lawrence, is never emptied, because the drainage of almost a continent supplies the hourly waste. But suppose the outlet of this lake be lowered but one hundred feet, thereby increas- ing the discharge of its waters and the supply remaining the same, and how soon will this beautiful sheet of water, though fed by the overflow of all the mighty lakes to the westward, shrink to a narrow stream not too wide to be crossed by a stately bridge ? Equality of income and expenditure means stability. Excess of income over expenditure means prosperity, and excess of expenditure over income means poverty. While all will agree to these truisms as applied to individuals, few realize that they apply equally also to nations, yet they are as unerring in their I06 UNWISE LAWS. application to nations, however wealthy and powerful they may be, as they are to the humblest individual that walks our streets. They apply to the glorious and free United States as they do to the " effete " monarchies of Europe. But while they apply equally to rich and poor nations, they are slower in showing their effects on the rich nation, for the rich nation, especially a growing nation, has more to draw upon, and it can stand for a long period every species of waste and ex- travagance. The rich and growing nation can stand the extravagance of its citizens and the wastefulness of bad laws, however great these two sources of impoverishment may be, as long as it con- tinues to grow, and while the period of growth lasts it is almost vain to counsel moderation or to point out the errors of vicious legislation, for no heed will be paid to the warnings of the most consummate wisdom, but, on the contrary, thousands, perhaps the majority of people, will point to the laws, which are in reality sapping the very foundations of prosperity, as the cause of the prosperity which has been observed on every hand. They reason post hoc propter hoc. That is to say, because prosperity prevails coincident with vicious laws, therefore the vicious laws are the cause of the prosperity. The protectionist reasons in this manner, and the great party which controlled this country from 1861 to 1885 reasoned in the same way. The protectionist sees protection prevailing more or less from the foundation of the government, and in its most extreme form since 1861, and he sees the country grown from a few millions stretched along the Atlantic seaboard to fifty millions, and an empire extending from ocean to ocean, and wealth of every description aboundmg on all sides, and he therefore argues, that protection is the cause of all this growth and all this pros- perity, while the fact is that all this prosperity and all this growth have come in spite of the destructive and injurious effects of protection. The country was a lusty giant rejoicing in his strength. Health and vigor was coursing through his UNWISE LAWS. 107 veins, and he laughed at all the burdens that might be piled upon his shoulders. As long as growth lasted he drew all kinds of drafts upon his constitution, and he minded no trials, no troubles, and no difificulties, for his growth and strength were more than sufficient for all. Now let us look at this giant, and we will begin at 1800. At this period the States had increased to sixteen by the ad- mission of Kentucky, Vermont, and Tennessee, and the popu- lation to 5,300,000. Although the people were almost unac- customed to the luxuries of the table and of fine raiment, they were exceedingly comfortable and prosperous. They had virgin soil to cultivate and virgin forests to despoil of their stately growth. Land was so cheap it was found more advan- tageous to clear fresh forests than to keep up the fertility of what was already clear, so when one field declined in produc- tiveness, they*took up another, and when, by this means, one neighborhood or one section became impoverished by wasteful cropping they soon loaded their household effects into wagons and moved beyond the mountains. What dift'erence did it make to people then if they wore out land in a few years — there was plenty more to be had for the asking, or at the most for $1.25 an acre. The country could stand the waste and did stand it, and prospered. But suppose the people had been confined to the limits of the sixteen States they then occupied would not such wasteful cultivation, and such apparently wanton destruction of forests, after the lapse of a few decades, begin to show their impoverishing effects ? After the farmers had worn out their fields and had no fresh land to cultivate, they would find that while formerly their labor had been re- warded with twenty or twenty-five bushels of wheat, and fifty or seventy-five bushels of corn to the acre, they would now reap only about ten of wheat and twenty of corn, which is about the present average for the whole country, and much above the average for the old States. Wealth, of course, under such decreased production, must increase much more slowly I08 UNWISE LAWS. than at first, and perhaps it would not increase at all. But, as said before, the country could stand the waste, for it had boundless resources to draw upon. It was, indeed, a spend- thrift, but it had wealthy and indulgent parents to draw upon, and it mattered little. It will be interesting to trace the de- velopment of the country as State after State was admitted to the Union, and poured its annual treasures into the common storehouse of wealth, not only to support the people in comfort and happiness, but also to supply the destruction of wealth, caused by the wastefulness and extravagance of the people in- dividually, and also by them collectively, in consequence of the operation of unwise laws which they, as Congress, had fastened upon their own shoulders. First in the column comes Ohio, which became a State in 1802. Whatever prejudices one may have, one cannot deny that Ohio is an empire in itself, and that it contains within its ample bounds, exceeding by five times the size of Massachusetts, at least as many of the elements of wealth and happiness as any equal portion of the surface of the earth. From the be- ginning of her existence, Ohio poured broad and deep streams of wealth into the common treasury, not only enough to sup- port her own children, but myriads besides. In one year Ohio raised 1 12,000,000 bushels of corn, 46,000,000 bushels of wheat, and the value of millions besides of things for which men desire and strive. Ten years later Louisiana was admitted to the Union, and although she has never been such a factor in the production of wealth as Ohio, she has yet been a most important element in the development of the whole West, for without Louisiana the greater part of the West would still be the undisturbed home of the buffalo and the wild Indian. In 1 816, Indiana makes her appearance as a State, and although smaller than Ohio, she is almost as important a factor in the production of national wealth, and a reservoir for the country to draw upon to supply the waste caused by unwise UNWISE LAWS. 109 legislation, for she, in 1879, produced 115,000,000 bushels of corn, and 47,000,000 bushels of wheat, besides other valuable products to the value of scores of millions. In 1818, Illinois becomes the twenty-first star. Language cannot describe the fertility of this State in less terms than by saying she is a natural garden from north to south, and from east to west. Such is the richness and depth of her alluvial soil, that after the hand of man had been engaged for 60 years in his efforts to exhaust it, she produced 326,000,000 bushels of corn, 51,000,000 bushels of wheat, and 63,000,000 bushels of oats, and her production of cattle and swine was on an equally colossal scale. Who can compute the wealth added to the country in a few decades by this fruitful State, and who can compute the value of this reservoir for supplying the drain on the country by the operation of unwise laws. To go over the whole list of new States, which every few years added their wealth to the general wealth, would be too tedious, so we will merely place them in a column so that one may see at a glance the wealth these States constantly added to the general store. Thus of the food-producing States we have : Admitted to Union. Wheat, 1879. Corn, 1879. Missouri .... 1821 25,000,000 202,500,000 Michigan 1837 32,500,000 35,500,000 Iowa 1845 31,000,000 275,000,000 W isconsin 1847 25,000,000 34,000,000 California 1850 29,000,000 Minnesota 1858 34,000,000 15,000,000 Oregon 1859 7,500,000 Kansas 1861 17,300,000 106,000,000 Nebraska 1867 14,000,000 65,500,000 Total 215,300,000 733,500,000 In addition to the above in the last five years the Northern Pacific R. R., has developed a new empire in the cold and re- mote northwest, and that our last resource of virgin fields to no UNWISE LAWS. supply the drains of an unsound legislation is now adding mil- lions of bushels annually into the general treasury of national wealth. What a bank is here presented to draw drafts upon at pleas- ure to supply the injuries inflicted by partial laws, laws espe- cially designed to foster manufacturing interests. No wonder the drafts were paid for many years without feeling them, but, as said at the beginning, a steady outflow if it exceeds inflow, will ultimately, though the time may be long, exhaust the largest reservoir, so these drafts must tell at last, and we are now feel- ing them with keenness, and will feel them with increasing severity if we do not reform the laws which are creating this steady drain. But we have not forgotten another and perhaps equally val- uable source of national wealth and a reservoir upon which to draw freely to repair national waste. We refer to cotton plant- ing, an industry which took its rise in the early part of the century and which has supplied a greater medium of foreign exchange than the grain and meat of all the Western and North- western States combined. The cotton States entered the Union hand in hand with the Western, but we will merely tabulate them for the greater con- venience of the reader, as follows : Louisiana Mississippi Alabama Arkansas Florida Texas Total Admitted to Cotton Raised, Union. 1879. l8l2 508,500 bales. 1817 956,000 " 1819 700,000 " • 1836 608,000 " 1845 55,000 " 1845 803,600 " , , 3,631,100 bales. Adding the above to the productions of the grain States and these again to the productions of the sixteen States we started with, all, the whole thirty-eight, occupying virgin territory, UNWISE LAWS. Ill much of ^vhich, in the language of Western oratory, only re- quired to be tickled with a hoe to laugh a harvest, we have a bank to draw upon compared with which the combined banks of the Bank of England, the Bank of France, the Imperial Bank of Germany, and all the rest of the banks of the world are but the fledgling bank of a shifting Western mining town. Another but a different source of wealth was the mining in- dustry, first of California and afterwards of the mining States and territories. Beginning with 1849 and continuing for twenty years, California produced an average of $50,000,000 of gold an- nualh', and beginning with 1859, when the silver mines were discovered, up to and including 18S3, the silver States and ter- ritories have added $600,000,000 of silver to the national wealth, and since 1848 up to 1883 the combined production of gold and silver is computed at $2,230,000,000. It is now plain how all the evils attributed to unwise laws may exist, and how they may exert a much more baleful influ- ence than charged, and yet how their injurious effects may have been felt to a very small degree, and how they may be en- tirely invisible to the ordinary observer. To refer again to Mr. Vanderbilt ; he and his sons might indulge in every ex- travagance that man can conceive of. They might convert one of the most valuable blocks of Wall street into private flower gardens ; they might span the East River with a second bridge for the amusement of themselves and their intimate friends ; they might connect New Jersey and the depot of the New York Central Railroad at Forty-second Street with a tunnel broad enough for double tracks, for the sole purpose of trans- porting himself and family when they should deign to return from the West by the Pennsylvania Railroad, or they might emulate the luxury of the Sybarites and surpass the feasts of Lucullus. They might eat nothing less expensive than dishes made of the tongues of nightingales, and they might drink only wines in which costly pearls had been dissolved. They might dress in garments that only artists of the most distant 112 UNWISE LAWS. countries had fabricated, and they might even have costly ma- chinery set up for the" express purpose of supplying fabrics for a special occasion, as when they gave a grand feast or appeared at an imposing ceremony, and then have the machinery broken up so that it might never be employed in the service of meaner people, or they might even adopt this course for their daily ap- parel ; they might do all these things, and many more besides, and yet so vast is their wealth and so enormous is their annual income they could indulge in this course for years before they would begin to feel the want of money, and it would be longer still before bankruptcy would put a summary end to their follies. It is the same with the country as with the individual, for the country is only the aggregate of individuals. The country is a very much vaster reservoir than Mr. Vanderbilt's fortune, but nevertheless it can finally be exhausted, and so far it has only been saved from exhaustion on account of the vast streams of Avealth that have been poured into it from the fertile fields of the West, from the plantations of the South which have bur- dened the channels of commerce with its fleecy tribute, from the grassy plains, tramped by millions of cattle and sheep, of the centre of the continent, and from the golden sands of Cali- fornia and the silver hills of Nevada, Colorado, and the Ter- ritories. This is the reason, and this alone, why we have not sooner experienced the impoverishing effects of the Unwise Laws of which this little volume speaks. And we can now see plainly why these unwise laws must in the future exert their injurious effects with increasing force. The weight that a strong and healthy man can carry with ease is felt with crushing force by the man enfeebled with disease or exhausted with arduous labor. As long as the agriculturist could purchase for $1.25 or thereabouts per acre land that would readily produce twenty or twenty-five bushels of wheat and fifty bushels of corn, he UNWISE LAWS. 113 thought little or cared little if that return was diminished by any occult means ; as long as it was not actually stolen from him he cared not how otherwise it might be reduced ; he still had more than enough for himself ; and it is only when he be- gins to feel poverty pinch that he thinks of the matter at all. But when he finds that the easy process of shifting his abode when he has worn out his land and buying good land further West at $1.25 an acre is put a stop to, and that he must either continue to cultivate his impoverished farm or pay for one acre what would formerly buy ten or twenty acres, he finds himself confronted with a serious difficulty, and that difficulty is to make former expenditure match reduced income ; in other words, he finds himself, if not confronted with poverty, at least confronted with a cessation of the growth of wealth. If he does not get poor, he ceases to grow rich, and he must econo- mize. Now what applies to an agriculturist applies to the whole body of farmers. The virgin lands at government price are nearly all exhausted, and have now to be obtained at second hand, at from $5 "to %\o and $20 and upwards an acre. Hav- ing now to pay these prices for virgin lands of course requires much larger capital, and hence even with same crops less profit is made at farming, and the older lands being yearly impaired in fertility, they likewise yield less profit, and thus the whole agricultural population find their resources diminished and the country finds itself impoverished. Having now less to spend they cannot stand the drafts that were formerly made upon them, so that if the drafts continue to be drawn, coming as they do upon less capacity to stand them, the impoverishment must continue with accelerated speed. When one has a thousand dollars in bank he can easily pay drafts to that amount, but if after he has exhausted his deposit an additional draft of only ten dollars is presented a protest must follow. As long as the agriculturist had fresh land that would pro- duce twenty bushels of wheat at a cost of only $1.25 an acre, 114 UNWISE LAWS. he did not heed the fact that if he sent one thousand bushels of wheat to Liverpool, on which he paid freight and charges the whole way, to be returned to him in the shape of blankets, iron, salt, crockery, etc., when these goods were landed, say in New York or Chicago, on which goods he likewise paid freight and charges, thus paying all the expense of carriage and of pur- chase and sale both ways, the agent of the government would say to him : " I see you have twenty blankets, I must take ten of them ; here are one hundred yards of carpet, I must take forty of them ; or one hundred yards of flannel, I must take the same as of carpet. Here is a lot of metal goods, I must take one- fourth of all of them. Of crockery, I must take thirty-five pieces out of every hundred," and so on to salt, where of every hundred sacks he must take thirty ; when, I say, land was cheap and crops large he did not notice these heavy drains upon his income, for he could pay them and still have enough. But now that there are no new lands to take up ; now that there is no more Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois ; no more Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska to bury the plough deep in their un- touched bosom ; no more Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas, no more Texas, — an empire in itself equal to France and Eng- land combined, from which to gather the staple that clothes the world ; no more golden California and silver Nevada to pour their metallic showers into the national garner, — now that all these are coming to be things of the past, how can the people, how can the country stand the drain of the laws that require such sacrifices. As well expect the Mediterranean to maintain its level, if from some convulsion of nature, its waters flowed into the Atlantic, instead of as now the Atlantic flows into the Medi- terranean, as to expect continued prosperity in this country under the operation of our present (so called) protective sys- tem. In the competition now overspreading the world, it re- quires energy, skill, and intelligence to hold one's own, whether individual or nation, but when a tax, in addition to what all UNWISE LAWS. 115 bear, of at least from one fourth to one third is laid upon the products of agriculture, what can be the result but stagnation, poverty, and hardship. We must not only reform our financial and fiscal legislation, but we must cut up by the roots the principle of protection, for till that is done the germ will remain, and that will forever and eternally spring up, to vex and impoverish the land, and to occupy the time of Congress, by one side promoting partial legislation and the other opposing ; by one side striving to gain special advantages, and by the other endeavoring to prevent. In another chapter, I will submit a system of revenue that will do justice to all, and will therefore promote the highest wel- fare of the country and ensure for us a steady and assured prosperity. CHAPTER XV. UNDER A PROTECTIVE SYSTEM, RECIPROCITY TREATIES, FREE RAW MATERIALS, AND FREE SHIPS ARE ONLY OTHER FORMS OF PROTECTION. Are not reciprocity treaties, free raw materials, and free ships good things ? Yes, they are, considered in themselves alone and apart from other considerations. Then why oppose them ? For the simple reason, that we can have none of these good things, except at the expense of the greater evil of per- petrating in another form the evils charged in previous chapters against protection. For what is protection ? As said before, protection is the granting of privileges to some which all do not enjoy, the bestowing of advantages upon the few to the exclusion of the many. Take away the inequality, the par- tiality, the favoritism of protection, and it loses all its charm in the eyes of its ardent advocates, and it becomes a thing to be despised and to be derided. For instance, take a reciprocity treaty with Canada : al- Il6 UNWISE LAWS. though pertinent to the question, we will not dwell upon the point that, if such a treaty with Canada is beneficial, reci- procity treaties with other countries ought also to be beneficial, and if it is found advisable to enter into such a treaty with Canada, why will it not be equally advisable to reciprocate with every government ? If the barriers to intercourse are broken down on the side of Canada, why not break them down in all directions ? In a reciprocity treaty with Canada, the articles we should probably get free from her would be animals and fish, which now pay a duty of 20 per cent., wool which pays about 45 per cent., lumber which pays about 15 per cent., and barley which pays 10 cents a bushel. There would of course be other articles, but these would be the principal. Under such a state of affairs, those who lived adjacent or convenient to the Canadian border would obtain these things free of duty, while those who lived remote from Canada would have to pay full duties on them when imported from other countries. We should thus have the spectacle of A., who was convenient to Canada, buying a horse for $100, and bringing him across the border free, while B., who lived convenient to Mexico, in buying in Mexico a horse worth $100, would have to pay ^20 to the custom-house before he could get possession of his horse. A party importing $100 worth of wool, from Canada has nothing additional to pay in order to get it into his mill, while a party in Virginia, who is too remote from Canada, to avail himself of the advantage of the treaty, has to pay the government $45 on the same value of wool imported from some other country. Every one can make for himself the application regarding other articles embraced in such a treaty. On the other hand, suppose a reciprocity treaty with Mexico. In this case, the neighboring Southern States will reap almost the whole of the advantages, while the more re- mote States would derive no benefit whatever from the treaty. There is now in existence, or if not it has only lately expired, UNWISE LAWS. 117 a reciprocity treaty with the Sandwich Islands, and who is benefited ! California alone, for while she gets $100 worth of sugar for $100, all the balance of the country pays $154 for the same quantity of sugar, and while California obtains $100 worth of rice for $100, the country at large pays $204,60 for the same amount. We can thus see plainly that reciprocity treaties present the worst phases of protection, for they necessarily act unequally in different sections of the country. Every one can see the justice of all paying the same duties, however burdensome they may be, but no one can see the justice of one man paying $154, for what another pays only $100, or of one man paying $200, for what another pays $100, or even of one man paying $115, for lumber, which another obtains for $100. Away with special reciprocity treaties. AH hail to general reciprocity treaties. Now as to free ships ! As long as taxes, and onerous taxes, too, have to be paid, why should a man be exempted because he desires to buy a ship abroad ? The buyers of cloth have to pay duties ; the buyers of machinery have to pay duties ; even the buyers of books have to pay duties ; and why, in the name of reason, should not the buyers of ships ? Does the ownership of vessels bestow any special advantage ^n the way of promoting national wealth ? Or does the possession of ships increase the national virtues, or the national intelligence, or the national gallantry ? No one pretends that the ownership of vessels does any of these things. Then why the constant and persistent cry for free ships ? It arises partly from demagoguery, but mainly from national vanity and national jealousy. The demagogue cries out free ships, because he hears talk of free ships, and he is naturally in favor of every thing. National vanity cries out for free ships, for it remembers the time when the United States was second only to Great Britain on the seas, and it vainly imagines that a few ships bought abroad and imported free will restore our Il8 UNWISE LAWS. prestige, and national jealousy cries out for free ships, for it begrudges Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Norway the profits they honestly earn as carriers of our merchandise, and they too think that a few ships bought abroad and imported free will snatch these profits from their grasp. Vain de- lusions all, for the capital and the energies of the people have taken a different direction. They have turned their faces from the ocean towards the land, and they have preferred to see the continent girdled with rails from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the frozen dominions of the widowed queen to the warm waters of the Gulf, to seeing the ocean whitened with their sails or blackened with the smoke of their steamers. Two passions cannot occupy the soul at the same time ; so two ab- sorbing and separate interests cannot engross a nation at the same time. With our boundless and virgin continent before our eyes, we could not help embracing her with all our energies, and to embrace the continent means to forsake the sea. We had to choose one or the other, and having chosen the land, we must be content to leave the mastery of the w^aters to others. Free ships, therefore, are not only unsound in an economical point of view, but free ships are also utterly useless as a means of regaining our lost influence on the ocean, for that influence is gone for the present and perhaps forever. And let us now approach the subject of free raw materials. We will not stop here to discuss what are raw materials, but we will accept Mr. Abram S. Hewitt's definition of them, and say they are coal, iron ore, and perhaps pig-iron. Mr. Hewitt is the apostle of free raw materials ; but he is a large consumer of coal and iron ore, and he therefore occupies an unfortunate position, and one open to criticism. How^ever sound his posi- tion might be, he might reasonably be charged with interested views ; but when he occupies an entirely untenable position, the charge of interested views comes with such force that his advocacy of reform of the tariff when coupled witli the free admission of what he so largely consumes will be shorn of much of its influence. UNWISE LAWS. 119 Free raw materials, like reciprocity treaties, when they stand alone are good things, and if we were mainly dependent on manufacturers, as Great Britain is, it would be essential to allow the free entry of crude materials, which are the basis of all manufactures ; but when free raw materials are taken in connection with our onerous tariff system, which taxes heavily most things that are imported, there is no more reason for freeing raw materials from their ratio of taxation than there is for freeing salt, wool, hay, and other crude materials. Mr. Hewitt says, let my raw materials come in free, so that I may make my wire and my machinery cheaper. But when the Western Union comes along and says, let my raw material, wire, come in free, Mr. Hewitt interposes and says. Oh no, you must pay a duty of forty-five per cent., for / must be protected ; .and when the purchaser of Mr. Hewitt's iron bridges or of his machinery says the bridges are the raw materials of the rail- road, and the machines are the very basis or foundation of my manufactures ; without them I could not bring forth a single item, of my product, and they are therefore 7ny raw material, Mr. Hewitt interposes the same objection and says, I require protection, and you must pay the same duty of forty-five per cent. But granting Mr. Hewitt is right, and that coal and iron ore should come in free, how would the producers of these articles be affected thereby ? It will, I think, be admitted by all that our tariff raises the price of things generally — that it makes our houses cost more, our clothing cost more, our food cost more, every thing we purchase cost more ; it makes labor cost more. Now, then, our raiser of coal and our digger of iron ore finds himself under the necessity of paying more for the tools and machinery he necessarily requires, more for his mules, more for his labor than would otherwise be the case under no tariff. In other words, his coal and his iron ore cost him more by reason of the tariff. Of course if they cost him more he must get more for his goods, in order to make a living out of his business, and he is enabled to obtain this increased 120 UNWISE LAWS. price by reason of the tariff, which keeps out competition. At best he can make only an ordinary profit out of his business, for if he made extra profit the flow of capital into his business would be so large and so rapid the profits would soon be brought down again to the average. Now Mr. Hewitt and others require him, by virtue of the tariff under which they shield themselves, to raise his coal and iron ore at an increased cost, yet they come to him and say, we are going to take away your breastworks, and you must henceforth fight out in the open. What is the consequence ? The consequence is that, bearing all the burdens of an onerous tariff and receiving none of its benefits, he necessarily succumbs and fails in the unequal contest. It is the old story over again of the white man and the Indian. The white man said to the Indian, I '11 take the turkey and you take the buzzard, or you may take the buzzard and I '11 take the turkey. Free raw materials is protection in its most odious form, because it makes coal-mining and iron- ore digging, which are two of the hardest and most disagreea- ble employments, bear not only their own burdens but also the burdens of the more advanced employments, which are attended with the most ease and honor, and frequently with the most profit. Let us have free raw materials by all means, but let us also, at the same time, have those things free which are made of free raw materials. Let us not make flesh of one and fowl of another, but let us treat all alike, for all are necessary elements of the production of wealth and of the happiness that usually springs from wealth. Some may be cavalry, some artillery, and some infantry ; some generals, some captains, and some privates, but all are necessary for the completeness of the army. Treat all employments and all occupations alike, and, like an army in which all branches are equally fostered, the community will progress in all the elements that go to make a nation prosperous, happy, and great. A few words as to what are raw materials, and we will UNWISE LAWS. 121 close the chapter. What are raw materials ? Raw materials are in reality that thing or those things that are at the founda- tion of, and are essential to, any product or material. Thus iron ore and coal or fuel are the raw materials of pig-iron, for they are essential to the production of pig-iron, and without their joint use there could be no pig-iron. But pig-iron after it is made, unless intended as the raw material of some higher product, is as useless as the boulders that cover the moraines of an Alpine glacier. So pig-iron in turn becomes the raw material of refined bar-iron, and bar-iron is itself useless until made the raw material of something higher. By degrees this bar-iron, either as iron or as steel, becomes a delicate and complicated machine, or a watch spring, or a keen and highly tempered surgical instrument. But this intricate machine, this delicate spring, this polished blade are by themselves no more than the crude coal and ore, and they only become available when the machine is made one of the essential elements, and therefore in part the raw material, in the production of some beautiful fabric, when the spring in the hands of the watch- maker becomes one of the raw materials of a watch, and when the instrument in the hands of the skilful surgeon becomes the essential means, and therefore the raw material in his hands, of cutting off the arm or the leg of some victim of a railroad accident. Sand and alkali are the raw materials of glass, and so in turn the largest object-glass, turned out from the shop of Mr. Alvin Clark at an expense of thousands of dollars, is in itself as useless and valueless as its original elements, until it becomes one of the raw materials of a magnificent telescope to descry new worlds. The finest cloths of England, the most beautiful silks of France, and the most gossamer-like lawns of India are useless until the cloth in the hands of the tailor be- comes one of the raw materials of the modern dude, and the silks and the lawns in the hands of a Worth become, in part, the raw material of the belles that glide through the mazes of the german at city balls, and who enliven the drives of New- port during the summer. 122 UNWISE LAWS. Raw material is a convenient term which means every thing and which means nothing, and Mr. Hewitt has no more right to restrict it to those things that he finds it profitable to use, than a tailor has to restrict it to cloths and cassimeres, a dressmaker to silks, satins, and worsteds, or a shoemaker to leather, and say that they must be free and every thing else be taxed. The cry of free raw materials is equally a fraud and a de- lusion as is the cry of free ships or a reciprocity treaty. They are all good, but good only when they are part of a system which is itself all free, or all bearing the same burden. Note. — It has been suggested by a judicious friend of reform that I am defeating my own object, which is a thorough reform of our financial system, in opposing free ships, free raw materials, and reciprocity treaties. If such ■will be the effect, it will be a cause of great regret, for I believe in the homely adage that half a loaf is better than no bread ; so a reform in part, even though it fall far short of the necessities of our situation, is much preferable to no reform at all. But the difficulty I fear in piece-meal reform is, that when those who are specially benefited by any reform procure what they desire, they will then, having nothing specially to contend for, falter in the course of further reform and will desert the cause altogether. If the vantage- ground gained by one reform be made use of as a standpoint for further progress, I will join heartily in securing even the smallest reforms ; but if the gaining of one reform is to be availed of, as is my fear, for the purposes of sloth and indifference on the part of those who are benefited, it will then, in my opinion, be preferable to compel all to wait until a complete victory can be gained, in the fruits of which all may impartially share. CHAPTER XVI. HOW THESE UNWISE LAWS SHUT US OUT OF THE MARKETS OF THE WORLD AND CONFINE US TO THE HOME MARKET. In the progress of industrial development we have reached a point where enlarged outlets for production are essential in order to prevent disaster. We have reached a point, through the persistent fostering of manufactures at the expense of all UNWISE LAWS. 123 Other interests, where manufacturing power is vastly in excess of the power of consumption by the home market. We have reached a point where, if manufacturing power should be em- ployed at its full capacity for twelve months, the supply of manufactures would be so great that the country would re- semble the land of Egypt during the prevalence of the plague of frogs. Frogs were then in so great supply that the delicacy of frog's legs was entirely at a discount, and frogs themselves invaded every spot so recklessly and so regardless of the wishes of the people that they became a perfect nuisance. So in the case of manufactures, they would then be so abun- dant we would not be able to procure the customary amount of food ; they would be so abundant the dwelling-houses would have to be resorted to in order to protect them from the ele- ments, and the vacant lots in cities would have to be made use of to pile up pig-iron, coal, lumber, and other articles that could stand the weather. Manufactures would be in every- body's way. Instead of talking about the weather everybody would talk manufactured goods, and instead of the constant inquiry " how is business " the staple inquiry would be how are manufactures. The whole end and aim of existence would be to dispose of manufactures. Instead of science and art, music and painting, singing and acting, prohibition and temperance, morals and religion, the conversation would be of nails and spikes, rails and locomotives, brass and iron, glass and crockery, dry goods and wet goods, and the whole list of manufactures that mankind use in any way. People would have to dream manu- factures, to think manufactures, and they would have to talk manufactures. When they looked at the sun they would not regard it as the great and only source of life and beauty, of health and happiness, but they would regard it simply as the source of so much power to be used in running machinery. When they considered the atmosphere, whether in its more pleasing aspect of grateful zephyrs fanning fevered cheeks, or in its more awful manifestation of the blizzard on land or the 124 UNWISE LAWS. cyclone on water, they would only regard it as so much power to be applied to windmills for the purpose of increasing the stores of manufactured goods, and when they gazed on Niagara, instead of being inspired and elevated by the sublime spectacle, they would rather concern themselves solely with calculating the number of horse-power that the torrent could be converted into. But instead of employing all this manufacturing power at its full capacity, it is either voluntarily run on short time, or bank- ruptcy frequently compels its stoppage altogether, or a com- bination of manufacturers may buy off competitors by paying them annually their estimated profits, and having them close their factories. For instance, the wall-paper manufacturers work under a combination. After they had gotten their com- bination at work, and were, under the tariff, making large profits, several rivals sprang up. But what did the combina- tion do ? They went to these smaller manufacturers, and asked them how much they expected to make annually, and when they were told $5,000, they said : Come, shut up your factories altogether, and we will pay you that sum every year to do noth- ing. This was four or five years ago, and ever since then this combination of wall-paper manufacturers has been paying these four rivals twenty thousand dollars a year to remain idle. It needs no argument to prove that manufacturing power is vastly in excess of the demand for its products, and that therefore much of this machinery must remain idle for much of the time, for the fact is apparent to every one. Well, what is the effect of this idleness ? The effect is, of course, to raise the cost of the goods manufactured by this machinery. For in- stance, we will represent the annual cost of a plant including interest, management, and depreciation, at ten per cent, of its capacity at full time. But if this plant runs only half-time and turns out only half the goods, the cost of manufacture will evidently be twenty per cent., instead of ten per cent. As the capacity to manufacture is fully double the capacity of the UNWISE LAWS. 125 market to consume, this fact of extra cost of goods on account of idleness of machinery, applies to manufactured goods gen- erally, and therefore, in this respect, our manufactures cost us fully ten per cent, too much. We have here one of the reasons why we are shut out of the markets of the world, because our manufactured goods cost us too much. And they cost us too much because the unwise laws, principally "protective," of which we are writing are directly responsible for this increase of manufacturing power to double the extent of our require- ments. Another reason for too high cost of our goods, and there- fore another reason for their exclusion from foreign markets, is this : Whenever one has a large margin of profit, he is not solici- tous about means or devices for enlarging that profit, and as long as that profit continues considerable, even though much reduced, he will not take steps, provided they cost much thought, to repair the depreciation of profit. It will be easier for him to go on without much care, than to investigate the decrease of his profits, and to find out where the cause lies and to apply the remedy. To most people a good income without labor or anxiety is preferable to riches, if these have to be acquired by constant watchfulness, and by the continual exercise of mind and body. Thus when the protective tariff places, for the benefit of the manufacturer, impediments in the path of consumers of from fifteen to one hundred per cent., in their efforts to procure goods made abroad, averaging for the whole list of imported merchandise, excluding free goods such as coffee and tea, at least 42 percent., the home manufacturer is granted such an advantage that he has, at the outset, a very large margin of profit to go upon. Thus for the fiscal year, ending June 30, 1884, the manufacturer of woollen goods enjoyed on his class of goods actually imported, a protection or a margin of profit of 66 per cent., and when one remembers that the duty on some woollen goods is prohibitive, the margin is even larger 126 UNWISE LAWS. {.han dd per cent. The manufacturer of iron in its various forms enjoyed a margin of 45 per cent., of glass and earthen- ware 55 per cent., of silk 50 per cent., of cotton goods 40 per cent., and so on. Now here is an enormous margin to draw upon to alloAV for carelessness, for wastefulness, for ignorance of the manufacturer. Some manufacturers by their great skill reap almost the whole of this margin of profit : hence we see great numbers of enormously wealthy manufacturers ; some are careless, or wasteful, or ignorant, and they reap only a portion of this margin, while some who are careless, wasteful, and ig- norant fail altogether. As we said before, when one has such a large margin to go upon, although he might reap the whole advantage of it if he worked to full advantage, yet if he cannot make the full margm of 40, 50, or 65 per cent., he is very well content to make the half of it ; hence he may naturally neglect to give very close supervision to the process of manufacture and to the con- duct of his superintendents and laborers. He is not on the constant look-out for defects in his methods in order to im- prove them, and he shuns, except under the spur of absolute necessity, inventions and improvements, for they necessitate the annoyance and the expense of changes of machinery. He neglects small economies and he proceeds in an easy, careless, happy-go-lucky manner, and thus turns out his products at an expense entirely desproportioned to what is necessary. All this extra cost makes to the manufacturer only the difference between a very large profit, and a large profit, for the law has given him the market, and his fellow-citizens must bear the loss His fellow-citizen has to bear not only the immense profit of the manufacturer who is the perfect master of his busi- ness, and the extra cost of the goods of the careless manufac- turer, but also the total losses of the careless, wasteful and ig- norant manufacturer. All these — the large profits, the moder- ate profits, and the losses, partial and total, add to the cost of goods, and although the home consumer must buy them, the UNWISE LAWS. 127 foreign consumer is under no necessity to do so, and he will not buy them because they are too high, and they are therefore excluded from foreign markets. Here then is a second grand reason why we are shut out of the markets of the world : Our so-called protective tariff assures such large margin of profits to the manufacturer, he becomes wasteful and extravagant, and ignorant men en- gage in manufactures, and therefore the goods cost so much foreigners will not buy them. There is another great cause why we cannot secure the for- eign markets for our manufactures. It is an accepted axiom that taxes add to the cost of goods, in proportion to the magni- tude of the tax. Our duties on imported goods are taxes on them, and therefore they add very largely to their cost, for the duties are very high. ' They not only add to the cost of the imported article, but they add in an almost equal degree to the cost of the similar goods made at home, for the manufacturer of such goods, except in a period of glut or of crisis, sells his goods only sufficiently below the foreign article plus the duties and transportation to exclude them from the market. For ex- ample, the cost of a foreign article laid down in New York will be $1.00 say, and the duty is 50 per cent. The cost of this article will be $1.50, and it cannot be sold for less except at a loss. Now here is a home manufacturer of the same arti- cle, but he can exclude it effectually, by selling his product for $1.45. Hence not a yard or a pound of some article may now be imported, and yet the consumer will pay almost the whole of the duty to the home manufacturer. These high duties will finally diffuse themselves over the whole country, and a general level of high cost will be es- tablished on every thing. If one builds a house he will feel the effect of these high duties in the extra cost of his house, from the moment he sticks a i)ick in the ground to excavate the foundation, to the moment the painter or the decorator adds the final touches. The excavator charges more for his work, 128 UNWISE LAWS. because the tariff obliges him to pay more for his picks and shovels to dig the ground and more for his carts and mules to haul it away, and more for labor, for his laborers, owing to the tariff, must pay more for all they consume, and conse- quently must have higher wages. Next the bricklayer comes and he must have more for his bricks and his cement, and more for his tools and labor. The carpenter must have more, for the tariff compels him to pay more for his lumber, his glass, and his nails, and his tools and labor likewise cost more. The plumber now has to be considered and no wonder he is an object of popular dread and popular ridicule, for the tariff riddles him from top to toe. His gas-pipe and his lead pipe cost him 45 per cent, duty, and his soil-pipe 55 per cent. ; his zinc and his copper for his sinks and bath-tubs cost him 45 per cent, duty, and his spelter to put his work together costs him the same, and his marble for his wash-basins costs him about 50 per cent. However much we may dread the plumber, we ought not to abuse his prices, for the protec- tionists are mainly responsible for his heavy bills. His righteous soul is satisfied with a profit of 100 per cent., and although the protectionist actually adds only 50 per cent, to every dollar of the plumber's bill, he is in reality responsible for one dollar out of every three, for the plumber cannot exist without his 100 per cent, profit, and 100 on 50 cents makes a dol- lar. For the extra costs of the painter and the other me- chanics, any one can make the calculation for himself, so we will drop them. The final outcome is, every house costs its owner more on account of the tariff, and not only every house, but every single thing in the land costs more from the same cause. Here then is a greater cause than either of the two preceding why we cannot export manufactures, because the tariff makes every thing cost too much. Moreover, the tariff having caused manufacturing power to increase to double the requirements of the country, a vast UNWISE LAWS. 129 amount of capital has been totally sunk and lost. Now manu- factures must bear this loss, and this loss must be added to the cost of goods ; and here again we have another cause why the markets of the world are closed to us — our goods cost too much. We will not weary the reader with other causes, for surely we have given enough reasons why we are shut out of foreign markets, and all of them spring from the same root — so-called protection. Another pregnant reason why we are excluded from the foreign markets is not on account of high cost of goods merely, but because the tariff, by affording the large margin of profit it does, has turned the attention of manufacturers almost ex- clusively towards the home market, because the profits to be gained in the home market have been so great, and they have neglected to study the foreign markets not only as regards quality and style of goods, but also, which is an exceedingly important matter, as regards the manner of packing and putting up the goods. The old maxim, that there is no disputing about tastes, holds good respecting foreign tastes. However superior our tastes may be, both regarding quality and style of goods, and as regards packing, when judged by an unprejudiced indi- vidual, yet if it does not please the taste of the people who we wish to buy our goods, they will not touch them. For example, the people of Mexico and of our other tropical countries near us, prefer their prints, not only of gaudy patterns, but also of a particular pattern of gaudiness, and when we like them twenty-seven inches in width they prefer them thirty or thirty- six inches in width. The beauty of our prints may be much superior to theirs in an artistic point of view, and our width may cut to more advantage than their width, but these facts will not impress them ; they have become accustomed to their styles, and they will not have ours even as a gift. The Brazil market formerly, and we presume does at present, required a coarse brown cotton of a particular style and put up in a par- ticular way and of a particular length, and it was as vain to 130 UNWISE LAWS. offer them the brown cottons we are accustomed to as it is to offer a dog hay to eat. We are accustomed to pack our dry goods in cases, or in bales of large size, and without any interior protection such as waterproof paper or cloth to preserve the goods from dampness. Our way of packing may be the best, but to offer cases to Mexicans and South Americans, who have in great measure to transport their merchandise on pack mules, and therefore need the goods to be put up in bales of special size and weight, to enable the goods to be transported, would be as vain as to throw down a lion's ration to a horse or an elephant. The tastes of the foreigners, especially of our tropical neighbors, have to be suited to an exact nicety, or all the goods we send them will be a dead loss to us. And their tastes in other things besides dry goods have to be closely consulted, or we cannot gain an entrance into their markets, we cannot obtain an outlet for a thousand dollars' worth of our goods. These people are strictly the children of habit and custom, and the phrase, ^^ es costtimbre,'' or " no cs costumbre " — that is to say, it is the custom, or it is not the custom — takes the place of reason and argument both. As said previously, our protective tariff, by the large profits it for a time assured, fixed the attention of the manufacturer solely upon the home market, and while we were altogether ignoring the wants and the tastes of the foreign customer, the English and the German and the French were sedulously cultivating them. The result is that they have the markets and we are shut out. Now what is the combined effect of the too high prices caused by our protective policy and of our total neglect of the tastes of the foreign markets ? The effect is as we said : we have no standing except for agricultural products, (in which we include provisions and petroleum,) in foreign markets at all, so that when we have a surplus of goods at home we cannot re- lieve our markets by sending them abroad. It might even be good policy to relieve the home market by selling the surplus at a considerable loss ; but it cannot be done at a total loss, UNWISE LAWS. 131 for, being entirely unsuited to the foreign market, the foreigner won't have them as a gift. So here is the situation in a nut- shell. We have surrounded ourselves with a hiaih wall in order to shut foreigners out, but while this wall shuts the foreigners out it shuts ourselves in. And within this high Avail we have fostered manufactures so unduly that we have a manufacturing power largely in excess of our wants. And this manufacturing power, finding the home market almost exclusively in its power and therefore a profitable field for cultivation, sets vigorously to work, and pours manufactured goods upon the market day and night for several years. In the course of time the market necessarily becomes glutted with goods, and having shut our- selves out of foreign markets we can gain no relief from the burden. We bear the burden for a time, struggle against the impending catastrophe for a little longer, and the crisis finally overwhelms us and we find ourselves prostrated in bankruptcy. In our short-sighted selfishness we have sought to possess the world, and we find we do not even possess our own land in peace. To use a homely illustration, we have attempted to kick our bed-fellow out of the bed, and in our effort to do so we find ourselves flat on the floor. The only permanent relief for our alternately excited, glut- ted, and prostrated markets, is to turn our backs upon protec- tion, which is the parent of all our industrial vicissitudes, and to plant ourselves firmly upon the foundation of equality of taxation and equality of burden and of privilege, which is the parent of steadiness and stability, the essential qualities of the welfare of the physical, moral, and intellectual world in which we live. CHAPTER XVII. DIVISION OF LABOR. This is an old theme, the benefits of which, when applied to the ordinary manipulations of manufactures, are denied by no 132 UNWISE LAWS. one. Years ago the writer recalls the fact that on every plan- tation in Virginia there were women to spin the cotton and the wool, and other women to weave it into cloth. There was a blacksmith to shoe the horses, etc., a wheelwright to make and mend the wagons and carts, a shoemaker to make and cobble shoes, a carpenter to build the barns and cabins — all in addi- tion to the force making grain and tobacco. In those days every neighborhood did its own manufacturing, consequently there was little or no division of labor, and every thing made was of a coarse but substantial character. Since those days, not fifty years ago, division of labor has been completely introduced into other sections of the country, and all these various do- mestic manufactures have as completely disappeared as have the knights-errant of the feudal times. And why have they dis- appeared ? Simply because division of labor has so improved and cheapened manufactures it costs scarcely more money to buy a new pair of shoes than to have an old pair mended ; a whole suit of store-clothes cost less than would the necessary quan- tity of plain homespun, and new hoes, axes, and other imple- ments can be obtained cheaper than the cost of repairing them when old, even though the workmen could be found to do the work, for the old ones have died out and younger ones have not found it profitable to take their places. Nobody, then, has any thing to say against division of labor when confined to domestic manufactures, nor to the greater divisions of labor, meaning thereby that some sections should cultivate tobacco, some wheat, some cotton, some sugar, be- cause those sections are best adapted to these products, but when division of labor as regards nations is spoken of there are then thousands who are blind as bats and deaf as adders. Ask them if it is not better to raise cotton in the Southern States rather than force it in Indiana and Illinois ; or if it is not better to let the West, where grass and corn grow exuberantly, raise meat than to force it in the South where neither corn nor grass flourish ; or if it is not better to get copper from the UNWISE LAWS. 133 Lake Superior region, where it is found in almost a virgin state, rather than force it to be made from the low-grade ores of Vir- ginia and North Carolina ; or whether it is not better to procure our cotton and woollen cloths and other manufactures in which she excels, from Massachusetts, rather than to force them in a strictly agricultural state ; — ask them these or thousands of other similar questions, and they will reply at once : Yes, each sec- tion of the country is particularly fitted for some one or more things, and it is better for the South to devote itself to cotton, the West to meat and grain, and the East to manufactures, and to buy from other sections those things they can produce to most advantage. We go outside of our boundaries and ask the same questions, inquiring whether Great Britain is not in the best position to produce some things, or France some other things, or Germany some other things, or South America some other things, or India some other things, or China some other things, or the United States some other things ; and whether therefore would it not be best for us and for all other countries to avail themselves of the advantages of each for the supply of what each can produce cheapest or with least labor, rather than to force the production at home of what foreigners can produce cheaper,— ^then the question of the advantage of division of labor assumes a different aspect altogether, and what before was a benefit now becomes a disadvantage. We are asked to believe that some of the States possess a climate similar to China ; why not therefore, _/6';r^ the production of tea in them rather than be dependent upon the contemptible celestials for the delightful beverage ? Simply because it is cheaper to employ our labor in making cotton and cheaper to let the Chinese make tea. Indigo grows wild in the Southern States, and it was pro- duced by them when colonies as an article of commerce. Why not now force the production of indigo there rather than to buy it of the naked Bengalese ? For the same reason that we 134 UNWISE LAWS. can do better with our labor in making something else in the place of indigo. We have a climate suitable to the growth of mulberry trees and for the rearing of silk-worms, then why not fo7-ce the pro- duction of raw silk at home ? for the same simple reason that it is cheaper to apply the labor necessary for the production of raw silk to the making of something in which we excel. By expensive artificial means we might raise coffee in some parts of Florida and Texas, just as we induce the manufacture of plate glass of 24 x 60 inches and above by a duty of 124 per cent., or as we encourage the production of silk goods by admitting raw silk free and charging the manufactured goods 50 per cent., and why do we not do it ? Simply because there would be a great waste of labor and capital, as there is in the case of plate glass and silk goods, in the effort to grow coffee in these States. And all these articles we admit free of duty. It is cheaper to buy them than to raise them. Now are these the only products other parts of the world produce cheaper than we do ? If they are, then we do well to stop at them ; but, on the other hand, if we produce all other things as cheap or cheaper than other countries, we will never be in danger of having them interfere with our manufacturers, for we may be sure they will not send us their goods, pay transpor- tation on them, and then find out they could get no more for them than at home. The very fact of there being protective duties is an evidence that other nations have advantages over us in some things, and the protective duties are the effort on our part to prevent ourselves from availing ourselves of those advantages. Owing to her favorable climate and the skill and taste of her people, acquired by the experience of more than a century, France is able to supply us with silks much cheaper than we can make them. Yet we attempt to drive them off by a duty of 50 per cent., lately reduced with great difficulty from 60 per cent., but the advantages of France and her neighbors in the production of silks are still so great that we imported $38,- UNWISE LAWS. 135 000,000 of silk goods in the fiscal year ending June 30, '84. Eng- land has coal and iron iia close proximity. She has capital in great profusion, low rate of interest, and the experience and the result- ing skill of many years in successful competition with the whole world, and for these many reasons is able to supply us with.? pig-iron, steel, rails, machinery, etc., cheaper than we can make them, but we repel her with onerous duties on all these things. And the same facts apply to woollen goods and many other kinds of manufactures. No ! we will make use of none of England's advantages ; we had rather employ the labor of one hundred men in making what she would send us in exchange for the labor of sixty or seventy men, and have the other thirty or forty men to do something else. We had rather employ a hundred men to do a thing than to do the same thing with seventy men and one machine, and have the other thirty men free to engage in other occupations. Other nations likewise have more or less peculiar advantages, but wherever we find this to be the case, we immediately shut our eyes, grind our teeth, and rush to place every impediment possible in the way of our sharing in any of these advantages. There is no doubt that we are an immense country and a great people. Take us and our advantages together and we cannot be approached by any people on this round globe, but for all that we do not possess all iho. advantages and all the smartness in the world. The Creator has showered on us innumerable advan- tages, but he has not forgotten other portions of the earth, and while he has granted us most he has not bestowed upon us all of his blessings. Then why should we shut our eyes to this fact and obstinately and childishly refuse to avail ourselves of the natural and acquired advantages of other peoples. Division of labor as regards nations is as beneficent as it is regarding individuals. By each nation devoting itself to what it excels in, it can produce the greatest quantity of its peculiar product and at the lowest price. When each nation docs this there will be a great deal more to be divided, and everybody 136 UNWISE LAWS. will have more than under the present system, where all are endeavoring to see how much they can do to prevent each from exchanging with the other. Many will say if we do not keep out foreign goods our man- ufacturers will be ruined. This is a most senseless cry, and is gotten up by the manufacturers on the same principle of the thief crying out as loudly as the most honest man in the throng, Stop thief ! By the high protective duties they have imposed upon the country, they have done the people a great wrong, and they want to perpetuate the wrong by making direful predictions of what will happen when the wrong shall be righted, and thousands of well-meaning people are thor- oughly alarmed by their vaticinations. The change from wrong to right would certainly injure some exotic manufac- turers, and perhaps destroy them, and would perhaps ruin many manufacturers who do not understand or who do not attend to their business, but who have hitherto been kept afloat by the life-preservers of an exorbitant tariff. In other words, it will injure and perhaps destroy some industries that should never have been galvanized into life, and will root out waste, negligence, and ignorance ; but this will be a good thing. When the sickly and diseased branches are cut out the healthy ones will have a better chance to thrive. It will be like clear- ing concerns which are insolvent, though still afloat, which injure the business of their community by borrowing all the money they can get, and thus not only put up the rate of interest to solvent firms, but also prevent others from borrowing at all, and which also destroy profits by the necessity they are under to sell goods, at no profit to themselves, for the purpose of raising money to meet maturing obligations. Every one of much experience in business knows the relief it is when such con- cerns can borrow no longer, and break. But what sound, well- managed business firms would suffer materially by the change ? They would not only not suffer, but they would be benefited by the change, for then they would have active competition, UNWISE LAWS. 137 and competition never yet injured a live intelligent concern. Then all would be placed on their best behavior, and knowing that they must now trust to themselves alone and not to a pro- tective tariff, they would make such improvements, institute economies, and invent new processes and improvements, and the country would start forward with a bound unheard of even in our unparalleled industrial march. But why should we fear competition with all the world, except when we attempt to do things which are clearly better suited to other countries ? In the first place, we have the natural protection that there is of a wide ocean to be crossed, and in addition, when the consumers reside at any distance from the coast, the further obstacle of land transportation. And transportation is uni- versally regarded as a considerable item of cost. Secondly, we have cheap food, at least as much cheaper as the cost of carrying it across the ocean, and then inland trans- portation both here and abroad ; which is another considerable point in our favor. Thirdly, we have cheaper rents and lower taxes. Fourthly, we have, as a rule, more intelligent and more self- respecting workmen, qualities in great measure arising from the active part they are enabled to take and the influence they can exert in local and national affairs, and the opportunity they have of rising from obscurity into positions of the highest prominence. For these reasons our workmen are generally regarded as the most efficient in the world, and while they do not get " pauper " wages they are cheaper than pauper laborers, because the percentage of labor in what they produce is less than in those things produced by paupers. Why should not a workman who knows he will advance in proportion to his skill and industry exert himself to a greater degree and turn out much more product than another workman who is surrounded by so many obstacles to progress, as is the case generally in old countries, as to be discouraged from even making the 138 UNWISE LAWS. effort to improve his condition. He certainly will be a more efficient workman and he certainly is a more efficient one. For this reason our labor, while it nominally costs more than foreign labor, is in reality cheaper than foreign labor, for it produces more than foreign labor. So then we may truly say we have all the advantages for free competition in all kinds of business suitable to our climate, and our natural productions, to wit, advantage of transportation, of cheap food, of cheap rents, of low taxes, and of low wages ; and to proclaim that in the face of all these advantages we cannot compete with any or all nations is either because of cowardice, hypocrisy, or ignorance on the part of those who offer the humiliating complaint. As before said, a return to a sound system will necessi- tate a considerable transposition of labor and of capital, but of no loss of labor though necessarily a considerable loss of capital, for there is much capital put in things that never ought to have been started. But what of that ? Has any important improvement or invention ever been introduced that did not involve a transposition of labor and a loss of considerable capital. The invention of railroads took place, and how do railroads affect other interests ? They throw out of employ- ment all the men who drove the stages, all the stable men and all the employes of the inns along the stage routes ; all the men who were engaged in raising the horses and the food required for them ; all the men engaged in making the stages and the harness ; and all the men engaged in the selling of the horses and feed, of the stages and harness ; and they destroyed or nearly destroyed the large capital engaged in producing the stages and equipments, as well as all the taverns along the stage routes ; and all these varied interests no doubt made a loud outcry against railroads, and because railroads ruined them they predicted that railroads would ruin the country also. And how about steamships ? One steamship does the work UNWISE LAWS. 139 of perhaps twenty sail vessels, and consequently steamships for the time threw out of employment thousands of seamen and destroyed or impaired the value of thousands of sailing vessels. And every improvement or invention produces the same effect, some more and some less, but all cause labor to accommodate itself to the new conditions, and destroy capital invested in things that the improvement or the invention has superseded. But while these are their first effects the final effects cause such a multiplication of exchanges and interchanges that they very soon repair all the injuries they had caused, and convert what before was a waste or a barren into a fruitful field. And so will it be when we consent to avail ourselves of the advantages of a division of labor as regards nations. As the hymn says. The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower. CHAPTER XVIII. DO MANUFACTURERS DESIRE HIGH WAGES ? Manufacturers in this country, and in all similar countries where the principle of protection prevails, are, notwithstanding the immense diversity of the wares they produce, readily divis- ible into two grand classes. They illustrate the wager of the small boy who bet that he could go into the woods and select two sticks, and that they would resemble any other sticks that anybody or everybody might select out of the same or other woods. And he always won his bet, too, for however dif- ferent the various selections might be his sticks always filled the wager, for one stick was straight and the other crooked. So it is with manufacturers — they may make an insignificant pin or a splendid engine, or they may make a tub or an organ, but they may still be classed under two heads, to wit : protected or unprotected. They are like two armies, the one fighting be- hind entrenchments, the other fighting in the open. In other parts of this book, when speaking of manufacturers 140 UNWISE LAWS. we always mean protected manufacturers, but in this chapter we shall speak of manufacturers generally, for it is only reason- able to suppose that the same principle of self-interest affects them all equally. But this may be a violent assumption, be- cause we never hear the unprotected manufacturer claim that he desires high wages, but it is a general claim of the protected manufacturers that they advocate protection because protection enables the workman to obtain higher wages ; or, in other words, they favor protection because protection compels them to pay the workman higher wages. Although this claim, in which they boast, looks unreasonable, we will let it pass for the pres- ent, because, feeding as they do on the special food of govern- mental favoritism, these modern Caesars have not only grown great, but they may also have grown benevolent, and therefore more solicitous that their workmen may get high wages than that they themselves may get rich. We are inclined to believe, however, that special food may change one's nature, for apiarians tell us that at first there is no difference between the queen bee and the ordinary working bee. They tell us that although the queen bee, without whom the hive speedily goes to destruction, and which lays tens of thousands of eggs in the space of a few hours, is, up to a certain point, in no respect different from the ordinary bee, which is incapable of laying a single egg, but that the difference between the two arises solely from a difference of household accommodation and a difference of food, for the queen is given a much-enlarged cell and fed on the choicest food and in the most abundant quantity, and she thus becomes the sovereign of the hive or of future hives that are to spring from her loins. With this example of nature before our eyes, in which we see a difference of treatment resulting in an enormous difference of results, we may hardly be justified in disregarding the claim of the protected manufacturer, that he in reality does business for the benefit of those he employs, but as there may be some sceptics among our readers, we will examine the question whether manufacturers desire their UNWISE LAWS. 141 ■R'orkmen to obtain higher wages on the great principle of human nature, which is that every man loves himself more than he does his neighbor, and we will therefore consider the protected manufacturer, though fed like the queen bee, as also subject to this great law. The merchant does business on the simple principle of asking ten, fifteen, twenty-five, or fifty per cent, advance on the cost of his goods, according to the nature of his busi- ness, and this percentage is intended to cover all the cost of doing business and of bad debts likewise. But the manu- facturer has a much more difficult part to act. He must not only count wear and tear of his plant and interest, but he has to take into calculation so much material of one or more kinds according as his occupation is simple, like smelting ores, or complicated as in the making of cloth, and so much labor, and after his product is completed he adds so much for his profit, which varies from a small percentage where the manufacture is simple and the demand large, to a large per- centage where the manufacture is difficult and the demand small. The cost of goods is therefore made up of wear and tear, interest on capital, cost of materials, cost of labor, and the manufacturer's profit. If manufacturers had the control of a market it would matter little to them what they paid for any item or for all items of cost, for they would at once reimburse themselves out of the consumer for whatever advance they paid. But, except in rare instances, manufacturers do not control the market, and they are subject to more or less com- petition. We will cite an instance in our own knowledge. A manufacturer in the city of the writer had the monopoly of a certain article in the Australian market. Of course, while this monopoly lasted it made little difference to him whether he paid ten or twenty per cent, more for his labor and material, (though, as a matter of fact, he obtained both at the lowest rates, so that he might thereby add to his profits), for he could throw the advance on the customer in the antipodes. But 142 UNWISE LAWS. after a time competitors enter his territory and divide the market with him. Does he still remain indifferent to what he pays for material and labor ? Oh no, for in order even to maintain his footing in this market he must not only see that his machinery is in the most efficient condition, and that the processes of manufacture are conducted in the most eco- nomical manner, but he must make his purchases at the lowest price and obtain his labor also at the lowest rates. He will be sure to cut these items down before he will allow his profits to be curtailed. And so it is all through all branches of manufactures. Manufacturers are constantly cutting each other out of markets, and therefore manufacturers are ever on the the alert to cheapen the cost of stock and of labor too. And they will al- ways cut on these two items before they will allow their profits to be affected, and they will submit to a lessening of profit only after they are unable to cheapen further both labor and material. This is plain as A B C to the meanest understanding. The manufacturer loves himself and family more than he does the merchant he buys his stock from and the workman who is engaged in his service, and he will certainly squeeze them be- fore he will squeeze himself and his family. And even though his profits will permit of shrinking, he will not willingly allow it, for we all know how painful it is when we find our income for the year is smaller than it was the year before. And if the manufacturer will squeeze the merchant who furnishes him with the smaller, he will be all the more sure to squeeze the workman who furnishes him with the larger part of his finished product. The manufacturer of the present day, who must em- ploy his workmen in large numbers and most of whom he does not know by sight, and whom he cannot know not only be- cause the numbers are great but because they are constantly changing, cares no more for his workmen, except as instru- ments for making money for him, than he does for his machinery or his horses and mules. He keeps the machinery UNWISE LAWS. 143 and animals in efficient order at the least possible expense, and he pays his workmen the lowest wages the market will permit. And he does this not because he is worse than his fellow-men, but from absolute necessity. Let us suppose a benevolent manufacturer who, though he believes in squeezing the mer- chant, believes that he should pay his workmen what he con- considers a fair price, and, being benevolent, he thinks his workmen should live in a cottage and not in a tenement house ; that his wife should employ at least one servant, that his whole family should have meat three times a day and on Sunday a turkey and cranberry sauce. Now this is nothing extravagant nor extreme, but only living in very modest comfort, and gout would never result from it. Suppose further that this benevo- lent manufacturer should say that workmen ought to have time for intellectual improvement, and for that reason eight hours a day was enough to work ; and he therefore paid his workmen a day's wages for eight hours' labor. Now all this would be very worthy of commendation on the part of the manufacturer, and when he counted over his gains at the end of the year he might proudly say : I have shared my prosperity with my workmen, even with the humblest. But, sad to say, there is a "but" to this agreeable picture, and a fatal one it is. And that " but " is competition, for a competitor, perhaps one of his very work- men, who had saved money out of the benevolence of the manufacturer, springs up who knows not Joseph. This com- petitor cares not whether his workmen live in a neat cottage or a filthy garret, whether their wives are worn out by home drudgeries or not, whether their children see meat once a week, except it be hanging in a shop beyond their reach, and all the intellectual improvement he cares about is that his workman, has sense enough to do well and quickly what he is told, and he pays wages in proportion to this lowest scale of living. Now, in the competition between these two manufacturers, what is the inevitable result ? In a sliort time the benevolent manufacturer finds his business slipping away, then it is gone. 144 UNWISE LAWS. and he finds himself bankrupt ; while the other manufacturer has all the business, employs all the workmen, and keeps on in his course, but only by virtue of paying the lowest prices both for his materials and labor. Thus we see that benevolence in business not only soon prevents the benevolent from exercising benevolence, but also places himself and family in the ranks of the destitute. When, therefore, we see manufacturers advocating protection because protection gives higher wages, or, as we have before said, because protection forces them to pay higher wages, we should set them down as hypocrites or simpletons. When they advocate protection it is not because they desire or design to pay higher wages, for, as we have seen, competition constantly tends to necessitate lower wages, but that they may obtain higher prices for their goods. The necessity of self-preserva- tion impels them to reduce the price of labor, for it is mainly by a reduction of the cost of labor that they are enabled to hold their own in the face of competition, or to establish them- selves in the face of competition already established. If manu- facturers desire higher wages, why do strikes ever occur ? It is only because manufacturers either reduce wages or refuse to advance wages. The fact is wages are always high in a new and growing country. Wages being high, the protected manu- facturers claim they are high because of protection, and high wages necessarily prevailing, protection or no protection, they claim that they design and desire that they should be high. A more hypocritical or a more utterly unfounded claim never existed. Let human nature operate, and the manufacturers will reduce labor to the mere point of existence ; and, on the other hand, labor would insist upon such high wages that the manufacturers would be starved. Human nature can never practise benevolence in business, for however many might attempt to act on the principle, there would be enough acting on the principle of self-interest utterly to root out the first. So, workmen, so, laborers in every calling and every profession. UNWISE LAWS. 145 when you think manufacturers, whether protected or unpro- tected, desire to pay high wages, you deceive yourselves. So, manufacturers, when you advance this claim you mean to deceive, and unfortunately you do deceive. One moment's thought would teach you, w^orkmen, that not only do not manufacturers advocate protection because pro- tection aifords higher wages, but will also teach you that protection itself cannot give higher wages ; for if protection could give higher wages, then the highest wages must prevail in Spain, in Portugal, in Mexico, in which countries the principle reigns supreme, but where, on the contrary, labor is idle, ill- paid, and inefficient ; the countries themselves are sunk in ignorance, sloth, and impotence. Wages are high in spite of protection, and because the country is new and growing, and manufacturers no more desire to pay high for labor than to pay high for money, for material, or for any thing else. CHAPTER XIX. THE REMEDY. In the preceding chapters we have taken a comprehensive view of the effects of a protective tariff upon industrial and commercial affairs ; and we have found abundant reason for condemning the principle of protection, not only because of its injurious operation upon business, but also because of its demoralizing effects upon the citizens, who, in addition to other evil consequences, are converted from a nation of steady workers, gaining wealth by industry and economy, into a nation of restless, impetuous speculators, who hope to acquire wealth by gambling on the future. Having found these ill effects to proceed from protection, we have condemned protec- tion not only in its details but especially in its spirit ; we have therefore sought to pull down the faulty structure we live 146 UNWISE LAWS. in, and having sought to destroy it, it is incumbent now to show a better way, and to propose a system of financial and industrial legislation that shall operate in such a manner as to secure us release from our present difficulties and to place us beyond the danger of their constant recurrence. Our forefathers, when they laid the foundations of our gov- ernment, wisely built, upon the broad basis of equality, a theory of government entirely unknown in practice till then among civilized nations. As regards the individual, they thought that as long as all were treated alike,- there would be content- ment, for none could then complain of partiality ; but they did not fully realize the idea in practice, for the suffrage was very restricted, and it remained for modern days to carry the idea, as far as men are concerned — for the shackles still remain on women, — to perfection, by bestowing the suffrage upon all (with few exceptions on account of crime, pauperism, or imbecility) who have attained the age of twenty-one. There are very few who will dispute the wisdom of bestowing political equality upon all ; but when we come to industrial and financial and commercial equality, half the people appear to think that the seeds of ruin lurk in the idea. Equality at the ballot-box and before a criminal court seems wise ; but an extension of the idea to equality of taxation, equality of burden, and equality of privilege, appears to be the invention of the Evil One. On this account our legislation resembles the boy who carried on horseback corn to the mill. He put all the grain in one end of the sack, and finding the bag would not stay on the horse, he made it stay by filling the other end with stones. Now we have done the same in our legislation. We have filled one end of our sack with the sound grain of equality at the ballot-box and equality before a criminal court, but instead of balancing the sack with equality of taxation, equality of bur- dens, and equality of privileges, we have filled it with the stones of privilege, partiality, and inequality. A little thought would have told the boy to divide the corn and he would ac- UNWISE LAWS. 147 complish his end without the additional weight of the stones ; and a little thought, it seems, should have taught us that equality was not only good in part but that it was also good in whole. Equality, then, in all respects, will be our cure for the industrial and commercial evils that afflict us, and after these evils are remedied equality will be the principle that will keep us strong and prosperous, and how to secure this equality we will now proceed to show. There are several modes of taxation — namely, direct taxation, indirect taxation, and taxation by excise, or what we call in- ternal revenue. All methods are adopted by governments, and some governments employ all at the same time. But it is a maxim of good government that taxation shall be levied on those things and in such a manner as shall insure the great bulk of the tax reaching the treasury, and that the tax shall be col- lected at such times as will be least burdensome to the citizen. Direct taxation has this advantage : it makes the taxpayer personally acquainted with what taxation is, and it makes him know what he actually contributes to the support of the govern- ment. Perhaps the majority of the people have no personal sense whatever that government is a buiden to be paid for out of their own pockets, and on this account direct taxation would be a great benefit, for when people know they have to pay for any thing, they are the more particular in undertaking that thing, or after that thing is engaged in they will be all the more particular to see that it is managed in an economical business manner. It is because people have no personal sense that tax- ation comes out of their own pockets that they are so ready to enter into wars, and to uphold their legislators in the extrava- gances of enormous pension bills, of immense river and harbor bills, and of schemes for adorning every small town of the land with expensive public buildings Direct taxation would have this great advantage : it would make the people take more in- terest in expenses of the government, and would tend power- fully towards economy in the administration of government 148 UNWISE LAWS. But, on the other hand, direct taxation would require so many collectors that the expense of collection would be great and would divert a large part of the revenue from the treasury. Again, the taxes would have to be made payable at certain times, say quarterly, and at these periods so much money would be taken from circulation as to create stringency and other commercial disturbances, large sums would be required from many individual taxpayers, and the burden of paying these large sums would be very onerous. Under direct taxation many men would have to advance the taxes for thousands, to be reim- bursed gradually as they could by the sales of their goods, or by some other distribution of the tax upon the individual. Hence the great sums many taxpayers must advance, and hence the burden to them of advancing quarterly or semi-annually the taxes for thousands. Again, direct taxation would bring the collector in contact daily with at least half the popu- lation, and as he would be the visible agent for making them surrender a portion of what they possessed, they would begin to look upon the collector with aversion, and finally as an enemy, and in the end they would transfer their enmity from the agent to the principal, and they would at last regard their country rather as an enemy than as a protector. At the very least, the sentiment of patriotism would be greatly weakened. Balancing the good and the evil of direct taxation, it is generally discarded as far as possible by wise governments, and it has never obtained a foothold with us. Having, therefore, discarded one of the principal modes of taxation, we are now reduced to the other two modes — namely, indirect taxation, or taxation through customs, and the excise or internal revenue. An excise tax is always unpopular, for if not burdensome it is yet necessarily inquisitive. When the choice is between in- direct taxation and excise, the former will always be preferred, but when the amount of revenue to be raised is very large, the two forms of taxation are generally, perhaps always, combined. UNWISE LAWS. 149 With us excise for many years must necessarily be a part of our fiscal system, not so much on account of the onerous legacy left by the war, but because the demagogism of one political party and the cowardice of the other party, assisted by protec- tionism, which always favors any public expenditure, however vicious and extravagant, so that expenses of government may be maintained at such a height as to render unsafe any reduc- tion of customs duties, has saddled upon the country an enormous system of pensions. ^57,000,000 were required to pay pensions for the year ending June 30, 1S84, and this amount will be probably increased, for the reason that there were at the same date claims to the number of 411,340 awaiting adjudication. And there is another, though minor, reason why the system of internal revenue is destined to survive many years longer, and that is, the same demagogism of both parties, assisted by the same protectionism, whose object is to increase public ex- penses, that customs may not be touched ; this exhibits itself in zeal for immense appropriations for the improvements of rivers and harbors, and in appropriations almost as great for public buildings in every tovvn of a few thousand inhabitants. It is, therefore, principally on account of appropriations for these three items — pensions, rivers and harbors, and public buildings — that the system of internal revenue must be con- tinued, and until these three drains upon the treasury are dried up, it is vain, utterly vain, to clamor and to agitate for the abolishing of the entire system. With regard to improving rivers and harbors the writer goes so far as to admit that the general government might undertake to improve at certain points, say at the mouth of the Mississ- ippi or at some great harbor like New York, or in case there was no good harbor on the Pacific coast, it might even con- struct one or more harbors, for in these cases the magnitude of the work is too great for any one locality to undertake, and the work is of such a general nature vast portions of the coun- 150 UNWISE LAWS. try would share the benefit of the improvement. But as these important objects cannot be gained except by bribing congress- men, in whose district there are so-called rivers and harbors, the very names of which are unknown outside of their States, by voting supplies for their dry creeks or mountain streams or harbors without a vessel, it would seem the part of wisdom to forego the benefits of the first by avoiding the evils of the last. As we cannot rid the country of this trilogy of evils we must make up our minds to bear the incubus of the internal revenue for many years to come. At first sight it seems a hardship that the growers of tobacco, the distillers of whiskey, and the brewers of malt should be required to bear this extra burden, and they might with some show of reason say, here are the millers, they make annually between fifty and sixty millions of barrels of flour, why not place a storekeeper in every mill and not allow a barrel to leave until a dollar stamp had been affixed and can- celled ; or they might say, here are the pig-iron men, they make annually about five millions of tons, why not tax them five dollars a ton ; or they might say, here are the manufacturers of cotton and woollen cloth, make them contribute to the rev- enue from half a cent to two cents on every yard of cotton cloth made, and from ten to twenty-five cents on every yard of woollen cloth. And they might say the same Avith equal justice to all other manufacturers. But a little consideration will show that tobacco and Avhiskey are the most suitable arti- cles from a fiscal point of view to place under tribute. To tax them because tobacco is a luxury and because it is a sin to drink whiskey or beer, and that therefore the use of these arti- cles should be discouraged by high taxation, are motives too puerile for consideration. They should be taxed because they are certain to yield a large revenue at all times. As long as the tastes of people remain as they are, it is certain that they will use stimulants and narcotics in sufficient quantities to pro- duce large returns. To tax flour and the other articles men- UNWISE LAWS. 151 tioned, while they too would yield a large revenue, would be to tax those things that necessity compels to use. The tax would therefore be felt to be a burden by all, and it would bear with special severity on the poorest. But the tax on tobacco and whiskey is not felt as a burden, for few use in any one day or week in large enough quantities to feel the extra ex- pense that the tax entails. And in order to their full enjoy- ment one is not compelled to lay in a stock of them and therefore pay a large tax at any one time, but every moment that one takes a chew of tobacco or smokes a pipe or a cigar, or takes a drink of whiskey or beer, he pays an infinitesimal tax in the very act of enjoyment, when he neither feels nor cares for the burden. But suppose Congress should abolish internal revenue, what would be the result ? The result would be that the $125,000,000 now collected from this source would have to be raised from customs, and in order to do this the import duties already in- ordinately high would have to be largely increased. This would most likely so cut off importations as to produce less from the enhanced duties than from those already prevailing, and the country would have to discharge its ordinary obligations by resorting to loans. We now approach the subject of indirect taxation, which from the unwise method in which it is imposed is the cause of our present industrial woes, and the vital question is how shall it be laid. Under the present system every man and every in- terest is for itself, and Congress is the Mecca tov/ards which every selfish scheme turns its eyes. For example, certain men wish to engage in the manufacture of silk goods, and how do they act. They go to Congress and by various devices they lobby through a bill to allow the free importation of raw silk, but not satisfied with that concession they scheme further and secure the imposition of a tax of 60 per cent, on silk goods. They modestly placed the tax at 60 per cent, instead of 100 per cent., because they believed that 60 would prevent their 152 UNWISE LAWS. fellow-citizens from obtaining silk, except from them, as effec- tually as loo. Again, a party of men wished to make plate glass and they get Congress to allow the machinery for the production of the article to come in free. They made money, and when others proposed to engage in the same business, in order to prevent them they got Congress to repeal the law allowing the free importation of plate-glass machinery, and they thereby shut out competition. In other words, our present laws regu- lating indirect taxation have been the medium which selfish and grasping men have made use of for levying taxation, not for the benefit of the treasury but for the purpose of diverting the substance of the people into their own pockets. While a period has been placed to new plans for fleecing the public, yet the schemes matured and executed in the past are still in lively existence, and they can only be eradicated not by a reform but by a radical change in our system of indirect taxation. And how can this be done ? It can be done only by engraft- ing in our industrial and financial legislation the same equality that we boast of in our political and judicial legislation. What would be thought of a law, I do not say of its justice but of its wisdom, that refused a vote to a man in one calling, that gave one vote to a man in a different calling, and that gave two or three or twenty votes to a man in some other occupation ? Or of a law that said A should be imprisoned twelve months for a specified offence, that B should be imprisoned two years for the same offence, and that C should be imprisoned five years for the same offence ? Or of a law that should say that carpenters should pay one per cent, taxes, merchants should pay two per cent., and that professional men should pay five per cent? There could be but one answer, and that would be, such laws would be a disgrace, and there would be no rest till they were repealed. And yet our customs laws are in principle and operation not one iota different from them. For the law enacts that a dealer in tea, or coffee, or hides, or rubber, shall pay no tax on what UNWISE LAWS. 153 he trades in, but that his neighbor who deals in sugar or rice shall pay very heavy taxes. The dealer in tin walks erect through the custom-house, but his brother who imports iron creeps slowly along, bending under the weight of a heavy bur- den. And of those who bear burdens we find one frisking along under a weight of ten per cent., while another is almost as spry under a weight of fifteen per cent. Another we per- ceive showing signs of his weight, and on inspection we find his burden is twenty-five per cent. Following some distance in the rear, we note others plodding along wearily, and we find good cause for their sufferings, for their burden is forty and fifty per cent. ; and finally we see some utterly exhausted, for they have fallen along the wayside, prostrated by a burden of one hundred per cent, and more. In the vast throng we find no two treated alike, for some are flesh, some are fowl, and some are not even good red-herring. Can such a system, if any thing can be called system which is a mere patchwork of selfishness, where every man is for himself and where the Devil is to catch the hindmost, and, un- fortunately, the people are the hindmost and the Devil has them most securely, be any thing but most injurious in its operation and most destructive in its effects ? That it has borne its natural fruits all must agree when they behold the stagnation and the prostration prevailing all around them. Now why should there be all this inequality in our industrial and commercial relations ? If we had one hundredth part of it in our political relations there would be no rest and no peace until the inequality was corrected. We all agree that equality works well politically ; then why should it not work well com- mercially and industrially ? Or, if inequality works well in- dustrially and commercially, why would it not work well polit- ically ? Either equality should be universal or inequality should be universal. As Mr. Seward expressed the idea years ago, the country cannot remain part free and i)art slave ; it must be all one or all the other. Thus, when part of our 154 UNWISE LAWS. laws are thoroughly equal and part as thoroughly unequal, we are in the condition of the country prior to the abolition of slavery, and as there could be no peace until slavery was tri- umphant or destroyed, so there can be no rest until our financial legislation is as impartial as our political legislation. There is an irrepressible conflict between them. So, go hang the banner on the outer wall, and proclaim Equality of Taxation ! And does this mean that there are to be no free raw materials ? Yes, it means that, for why should coal and iron ore, which are raw materials for pig-iron, come in free, and not allow cloth and trimmings, which are as much the raw materials of the great clothing manufacturer, to come in free also ? Does it mean no free ships ? Yes, it means no free ships ; for if ships come in free, why not iron, and copper, and timber, and cordage, and sails, which are ships when properly put to- gether ? No reciprocity treaties ? Yes, no reciprocity treaties, or have a reciprocity treaty with every nation. And does equality of taxation mean not only that every thing imported is to be taxed, but that every thing is to be taxed at the same rate ? Yes, it means just that. What, you ask, tax guano, which doubles the produce of our fields, the same as silks, which administer mainly to the vanity of silly women ? Tax quinine, which mitigates the horrors of chills and fever which otherwise would render almost uninhabitable large por- tions of our land, the same as opium, which demoralizes and stupefies its victims ? Yes, tax them all and tax them equally. You may ask further : do you not consider guano much more beneficial to the country than are silks, and quinine than opium } I reply : Certainly, guano and quinine are more use- ful than silk and opium. Then why tax them alike I For the very simple and sufficient reason that if an exception is made in favor of one article, just as if the judge respects persons he at once brings the law into disrepute and destroys its author- UNWISE LAWS. 155 ity, the whole principle of equality is destroyed, and the door is again opened wide for the renewal of that system where the most persistent, the most brazen, and the most shameless gained their ends, which were always for their benefit at the expense of the people, while the honest and the worthy failed of theirs because they would not resort to bribery, chicanery, and fraud. Make one exception, and Congress is at once be- sieged by every interest to make an exception in its behalf ; make one exception, and the vestibule of Congress is at once filled with lobbyists, both male and female, promoting plans of every description for draining the treasury. Make an excep- tion in favor of one article, and every other article can plead : If that article was favored, mine surely ought to be favored too. And, if other articles should not be favored, they would then combine against the favored article and say: If we can't get what we want, then you sha'n't keep what you have. And so it ends by the favored few combining with the unfavored many, and by all getting within the charmed circle of favoritism. Give an inch and not only an ell is taken, but finally the whole piece of cloth disappears. Of course some injury and some hard- ship would ensue from the adoption of impartial taxation, for what law of general operation does not cause hardship in par- ticular instances ? for even the law of gravitation, which keeps sun, moon, and stars in their appropriate places, will cause the death of the darling child who, in his ignorance, leans far enough over the banister to lose its balance ; but the advan- tages, of impartiality so vastly overbalance its disadvantages that we should not hesitate a moment to adopt it, or to put it in shape for final adoption. But will not impartial taxation, such as is here proposed, in- jure and perhaps ruin many existing industries ? Undoubtedly it will. A vast number of readjustments will have to follow its adoption. But we are not free from losses and disturbances and readjustments under the present order of things, and do we not experience them every year, and some years to so great 156 UNWISE LAWS. an extent that almost universal bankruptcy stares us in the face ? Because one is sick or diseased, is that any reason why he should avoid a long and painful course of treatment in order to get well ? A few years ago the country was in a state of suspension of specie payments. Did we not go through a long and painful course of preparation for the time of resumption, and have we ever regretted the painful regimen Ave endured for the purpose of regaining a specie standard ? No ; the very fact of being in an unsound, diseased condition is the reason why we should take prompt and immediate steps for recovering. We are and we have been in a diseased condition for years, and the crisis has been upon us for several years, but we do not rally because we have taken no steps to provide the remedy. The last Congress made a feeble step in the right direction, but the effort was stifled in its birth. The next Congress, it is to be hoped, will be more successful, but if it attempts to cure the splotches in the face and the sores on the body, merely making clear the outside of the cup and the platter without going to the root of the evil, it will accomplish nothing permanent. Unless it sets in motion a plan whereby the principle of protection will be destroyed, trampling under foot the hypocrisy of incidental protection, and whereby taxa- tion will be strictly for revenue alone, it will leave the country a prey to all the vicissitudes which have beset us since 1873. Congress need not cut up protection at one fell sweep, but it must adopt a scheme, the end of which will be its destruc- tion within a few years. The end must be seen from the beginning. A half a loaf may be better than no bread, and it may therefore be better for the next House of Representatives to content itself if it cannot cure, at least to improve, and it may be wise to secure whatever improvement of the tariff that is possible, but let it only be accepted as a part of the scheme which must ultimately lead to the death of protection as a principle. Let not Congress shrink from its duty ; let it not only meet, but let it attack protection, and the day cannot be UNWISE LAWS. 157 far distant when if equality is good politically it must be seen to be good financially, and then equality of taxation will wear the honors and the country will reap the rewards of victory. ^ CHAPTER XX. THE REMEDY. — {Continued^ The only proper system of customs taxation is as follows : Take any year, say the fiscal year ending June 30, 1884. The expenditures of that year were in round numbers .... ^300,000,000 And the receipts from internal revenue were . 122,000,000 Leaving a balance to be otherwise provided for of $178,000,000 The total imports of merchandise for 1884 were 668,000,000 Now levy a duty of 27I per cent, or say of 30 per cent., on every thing imported, and we have a revenue sufficient to meet all expenses and for a sinking fund besides. The annual estimates for raising revenue might be as fol- lows : The Secretary of the Treasury in making his estimates for year ending June 30, 1887, might estimate thus : He finds that the revenue for the fiscal year 1885 was the same say as for 1884, and seeing no reasons why importations should be smaller for 1887, he estimates on the basis of that year, and if the per centum of that year was sufficient for the expenses and a surplus besides, he would recommend to Congress the same rate of duty as for 1884, provided the expenses of government were estimated at the same. Or if requirements for revenue were supposed to be greater, he would recommend a higher rate ; or if smaller, he would recommend a smaller rate. If any unforeseen circumstance should diminish the revenue or increase the expenses, the surplus of previous years could be drawn upon to supply the deficiency. And in his next annual 158 UNWISE LAWS. estimates the Secretary would recommend such an increase as would be sufficient for expenses and to restore the surplus that had been impaired or exhausted. It may be objected that merchants would have to accommo- date themselves to a shifting scale of duties, the rate of which they could never know for any long period in advance. But this objection does not amount to a great deal, for under ordi- nary circumstances the rate of duty would rarely vary as much as five per cent., and except in very rare cases the merchant would know, not in time to speculate, but in full time to adjust his purchases to the duties, even should they vary as much as five per cent. But in case of distant shipments, as from China and Japan, a proviso could be inserted which allowed entry of goods at the same rate that prevailed on the day of clearance. If exception could be made in favor of the lower qualities of raw materials, it would seem advisable to do so, but then if an exception was made in their favor, encroachments in favor of other things would be made, until finally all the abuses of the present system would be again restored. But as asked in the previous chapter. Why should the producers of raw materials be taxed while others were freed, for making them free would virtually be a taxation of them ? In the situation of a country like England, so dependent for her very existence upon manu- factures, the taxing of raw materials might greatly impede her progress, and it might eventuate in driving her out of many markets, but the same objection does not apply to us, because our prosperity depends, and will depend for many years to come, mainly on agriculture. But an exception might be made in favor of some articles by taxing them less than the average, and the difference might be made up by taxing other articles above the average. In these cases, however, if the duty was much above the average it should be modified by the imposition of an excise duty upon the article produced at home ; for if the profits of the manu- facturer were not modified by an excise duty, the profits at first UNWISE LAWS. 159 in that branch of manufacture would be so great as to attract an undue amount of capital thereto, and we would have therein a period of inflation, congestion, and collapse, to be repeated regularly every few years, just as under the present system. For instance if the average duty was twenty-five per cent., and the duty was reduced to ten per cent, on many items, and the fifteen per cent, was added to the twenty-five, making the duty forty per cent, on iron or on carpets, for example, then should there be placed an excise duty of fifteen per cent, on iron and carpets, for otherwise the business of iron and carpet making would have an undue advantage over other occupations, capi- tal would be attracted thereto in unusual amounts, the business would be overdone, and stagnation and finally prostration would ensue. And while in the meantime many manufacturers would make large fortunes, the country would be impoverished by the sinking of large amounts of capital in surplus factories and machinery. Objection will be made to this plan of raising revenue from customs on account of it being altogether ad valorem. Many will say we oppose ad valorem because it is the cause for so many frauds ; it is so easy to undervalue and so hard to detect undervaluation we object to the whole system ; give us specific duties. While no one denies that the ad-valorem system admits of frauds, is the system of specific duties free from frauds ? We shall see ; but before doing so let us consider a little the soundness and the propriety of the ad-valorem system. We presume no fair-minded person objects to the system in itself, for nothing can be fairer than to tax things according to their value, but the objector thinks there are too many frauds in connection with it. But is there any reason why there should be any unusual frauds inseparable from the system ? We think not, for while all fraud cannot be prevented, any unreasonable amount of fraud can easily be, provided honest and capable appraisers are employed at home, and honest and capable men, men who will take the trouble to learn their busi- l6o UNWISE LAWS. ness, and to attend to it, are appointed consuls abroad, and provided there are honest and capable men, men superior to party and who will see that their subordinates attend to their duties, are in charge of the Treasury Department. And it is certainly not impossible to find such men. And in addi- tion to this there are lynx-eyed inporters and manufacturers forever on the alert to discover frauds of undervaluations, for as soon as goods are found in the market at a lower price than they think right they immediately set the custom-house officers on the track of the suspected parties. We think it may be safely asserted that the frauds on the revenue caused by under- valuation do not exceed one per cent, of the sums collected, and that surely is a very small amount. But are frauds entirely prevented by specific duties ? Cer- tainly not ; for is it not as easy to bribe a weigher to report a less quantity of goods as it is to bribe an appraiser to overlook an undervaluation ; and it is no doubt easier, for a higher grade of man is needed for appraiser than for weigher. Honesty and capacity will prevent frauds in ad valorem as well as in specific duties, and dishonesty and incapacity will equally wink at frauds in both systems, so on the question of frauds the ad- valore?n system is no more open to objection than the specific system. Now let us examine the fairness of the specific system ; for unless the cheapest and the highest priced, the meanest and the best are taxed the same rate, the ad-valorem system is at once reestablished. For example, the price of tea in the New York market ranges from lo cents to 60 or 65 cents a pound, and suppose there is a specific duty of 10 cents a pound, which would be a very moderate rate, what is the effect ? The effect is that the poor who can only afford the cheapest tea have to pay a duty of from 50 to 100 per cent., while those who can afford to drmk good tea pay only from 15 to 25 per cent. Woollen cloths, in which class are included mixed goods in which wool is of chief value, vary from 30 cents a yard or less UNWISE LAWS. l6l to $2 a yard and upwards (single width), and suppose there is a specific tax of what would be equivalent to 30 per cent, on the $2.00 cloth, and it could hardly be less, this would be sixty cents a yard specific tax, and the result would be that the poor, who are vastly the majority, would pay from 100 to 200 per cent, duty, while those well off would pay from 30 to 50 per cent. And through the whole long list of goods used the same discrimination against those who are least able to stand it would be practised, and the end would be that the specific system of duties would oblige the great majority of the people to drink poorer tea and coffee, to eat meaner sugar and other foreign edibles, and to wear thinner clothing than under the ad-valorem system, so that their stomachs would suffer from inferior foods and drinks, and their limbs would shiver from the blasts of winter blowing through their scanty garments. To the great majority of the people ad valorem as here pro- prosed means 30 per cent. ; specific duties mean from 100 to 200 per cent. To the minority ad valorem means the same 30 per cent., but specific duties mean from 10 to 15 to 25 per cent, at the outside. Seeing then that the specific system of customs revenue is as obnoxious to the charge of fraud as the ad-valorem system, and that fraud is as easy to practise in the one system as in the other, and as easy to be prevented, whence arises the objection to the ad-valorem system and the preference for the specific system. There are two reasons for the preference, where it exists, for the specific system. The prime and prin- cipal reason is the selfishness of the manufacturers, and the second and inferior reason is, in addition, the influence of the sophistries of the manufacturers ; many think it so easy to count yards and to weigh pounds there is no chance for fraud. But they overlook the fact that while it is easy to weigh pounds and to count yards, it is just as easy, for a consideration, to report for duties less quantities of both, and it is just as certain that this will be done when the superior officers neglect their duty. 1 62 UNWISE LAWS. But the main reason is the selfishness of the manufacturers. And why are specific duties for their interest ? As we have just seen, specific duties would impose a much higher rate of taxation upon the commoner and medium goods than upon the better and best goods The amount of common and medium goods consumed is greatly larger than of the better and best goods. The higher and best qualities of goods are not as readily produced here as abroad. So then here comes in the interest of the manufacturers Being unable to compete in the highest-priced goods with the foreign manufacturers, the comparative low rate of duties on them would not affect them materially, but on the common and medium goods the tax im- posed by specific duties would be so excessive they would be shut out completely, and the home manufacturers would there- fore have the market all to themselves. This is already seen in the matter of woollens, where specific duties prevail to a great extent. Thus for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1884, the importa- tions of cheap and medium woollen and mixed woollen cloths was of the value of only $249,975, while of better and best goods, valued at over 80 cents a pound, the importation was of the value of $12,973,683. Flannels to the value of only $305,- 825, and they of the best grades, were imported, and no cheap blankets or cheap carpets While specific duties already bear most heavily upon woollen goods, an inspection of customs receipts will show a similar though less extreme state of facts with regard to other goods. Hence it is that the manufacturers demand specific duties, for it is through means of specific duties they would secure the home market at the expense of the great body of the citizens who are the less able to bear the burden. Those who profit by abuses always utter lamentations and predict general ruin, when they are bereft of the unjust privi- leges they have enjoyed, and it will, therefore, only be natural for those who have profited by the unjust discriminations of our present tariff, to proclaim that the country is ruined if they are UNWISE LAWS. 163 forced, by the adoption of such a measure of taxation, to sit at the public table not as spoilt and pampered children, but as the common children of a common country. The emigres plotted against their country when the revolution deprived them of the privilege they had enjoyed for generations, of living in luxury and idleness at the expense of the people. The Algirene Corsairs thought the world was turned topsy-turvy, when they were deprived of their privilege, consecrated by long enjoyment, of roving the seas, and reducing to dreadful captivity the un- fortunate Christians who fell into their power ; and so the pro- tectionists, who are neither exiles nor pirates, but who have taught themselves to believe that the sole object of govern- ment is to stimulate manufactures, utterly regardless of every other interest, will imagine that the country is plunging into ruin, because they would then be compelled to make their living, like other people, by the sweat of their brow. What ! take them out of a hot-house, and force them to live in the open air, where the rain would fall and the sun shine upon them like ordinary people, and where they must endure the summer's sun and face the winter's blast. No ! the thing is impossible. The country must be ruined if it is done. We can picture to ourselves Mr. Swank, who is the Secretary of the Iron and Steel Association of America, the strongest and most arbitary trades union in the land, going through the country like the olden prophet, who went about the streets proclaiming that in three days Nineveh should be destroyed, crying in lugubrious accents, " Boo, boo, boo, in six months the country is ruined," and we see him joined by the Scretary of the Silk Association of America, uttering the same mournful "boo, boo, boo," and by the blanket-makers, and the carpet- makers, and by all the other manufacturers of that sacred thing — wool, all crying in concert, the country is ruined. We can imagme this sad procession marching through the land, rival- ling Cassandra in the dreadful character of their predictions. As Mr. Swank is high authority on the subject of the ruin 164 UNWISE LAWS. of countries, fear soon begins to overspread the land, and as the end of the fatal six months approaches, the United States resembles Europe at the close of the year 1000. The theolo- gians had indubitably demonstrated from Sacred Writ, that the world would be distroyed at the expiration of the year 1000 and when the last day came, dire consternation filled the heart of every man, and despair was written on the face of every human being. As the sun arose above the sky every creature beheld it as for the last time. People refused to cook, they refused to eat. Those who could crowded the churches and smote heaven with their supplications, while the crowds who could not find entrance besieged the doors, so that they might at least be within their shadow when the last trump was sounded. As 12 midnight approached, the very frenzy of despair took universal possession of mankind, but when the very hour struck and no trump of angels was heard, and no lurid conflagrations were seen to approach to consume them, man recovered hope and went about his business as before. And so it will be with us. Before the expira- tion of the appointed six months, the rich and the well-to-do will have collected their most precious valuables, and fled away — some to Canada, some to Mexico, but the great majority to Europe, while some in their dreadful perplexity will have gone anywhere, to escape the ruin Mr. Swank has foretold. The steamship owners will not then lament the small quantity of wheat we are shipping, and the utter dearth of manufactured goods shipped to the benighted of other countries, for their vessels will be loaded down to the gunwales with the fleeing fugitives, and they will only lament that Mr. Swank did not allow twelve instead of six months for the ruin of the country, for in that event their harvest would have lasted long enough to recover all past losses. Of course, however, the vast majority of the people, including to be sure all the workmen for whom Mr. Swank has for years shown such tender solicitude, must remain at home and endure UNWISE LAWS. 165 the ruin of their country. But before the last day, for the reason that their tender souls cannot endure the sight of the impending ruin, Mr. Swank, together with the members of his association, will have chartered a special steamer and sailed to France, where they can behold in full bloom the system which they for years successfully advocated here. With Mr. Swank's awful predictions ringing in their ears, people's energies will begin to relax long before the end of the six months. If his pre- dictions were made in the fall of the year, there would be no more wheat sowed, so that the supply of wheat would be nearly exhausted before all use for it had ceased, and we should be spared the awful sight of the destruction of more than a hun- dred millions of bushels of wheat. But if his predictions were made in the spring, then there would be no more corn-plant- ing, and the stock of corn would be so much reduced that we should be spared the equally awful sight of the destruction of perhaps three or four hundred millions of bushels of corn. And there would be no more cotton planted, and cotton would become scarce, and we should be spared the distressing sight of mid- dling cotton bringing only about 9^ cents in the New York market. Mr. Eads would then weaken on the subject of his ship railroad, for if the country is ruined what is the use of it, and he will then cease to vex the public with his perennial schemes for building it at the expense of the U. S. Treasury. The equally presistent and equally boring advocates of Henne- pin Canals will retire from public view, as well as those modest gentlemen who advocate the appropriations of millions an- nually of the public money for converting the headstrong, un- ruly Mississippi into a quiet stream, which would not erode its alluvial banks for love or money. Mr. Swank would at least be entitled to thanks for these minor blessings. People will now begin to throng the churches, and there will now be some use made of the millions upon millions wasted in the building of superfluous houses of worship. Sen- sible strong men like Moody will lose their popularity, and 1 66 UNWISE LAWS. legions of ranters like Sam Jones will overspread the land, like Peter the Hermit and other mad monks who preached up the crusades. Even railroad speculators and brokers will seek re- ligion as the six months approaches its end, and Mr. Armour will resign his seat on the Stock Exchange and search for a vacant one on the mourners' bench. Business of every kind will be neglected, and nobody can be gotten to do any thing, and even Mr. Vanderbilt will have to do his own washing or wear dirty clothes, will have to do his own cooking or live on hard tack, for he is a far-seeing man, and he will have provided him- self with a barrel of ship biscuit, and will have to wear his old clothes, for nobody will make them for even one of his Meissoniers. Everybody will be seeking to make their peace with his Maker, and even Mr. Ingersoll, and the socialists who believe that the way to rectify society is to destroy it, just as the best plan to cut off a dog's tail is just back of his ears, will not be able totally to escape the force of the example. By the end of the six months the fervor of piety will have become so intense and so universal that the people will be on the verge of starvation, so that in any event the country will be ruined, either starved to death or shattered into smithereens because the tariff is touched. The six months will run its course, and the people will find that though nearly starved and much poorer by the neglect of their busmess, they are yet spared, and they will begin to ask themselves what has been the trouble. And when told that all this turning of the world upside down is because Mr. Swank and his associates and all his allies in silk, wool, etc., etc., are compelled to live under a tariff of twenty-five or thirty per cent., no worse but no better than others have to live under, they will laugh at their own folly in allowing themselves to be imposed upon by such nonsense, and they will utter the uni- versal shout, that twenty-five to thirty per cent, is enough pro- tection for anybody, and that if any business cannot prosper with the advantage of such a bonus, it ought to die, and must die. UNWISE LAWS. 167 No, the country will not be ruined by a uniform tariff equally applicable to all interests and to all kinds of merchandise. Readjustments will certainly have to be made, and many losses must necessarily be incurred, but after the readjustments are made and the losses incurred, the country will then be in a sound condition, and in a condition when the advantages and the rewards of labor will not be distributed in such a manner that the rich will be made richer and the poor poorer with every revolving sum. The country will do, as a whole, as a manufacturer within my observation did for himself. Sixteen years ago he had a very large factory, filled with valuable machinery, devoted ex- clusively to the manufacture of hoop-skirts, which were then so popular that even misses of five or six years wore them. In a short time the demand for hoop-skirts entirely ceased, and what was now to be done with this large establishment ? Should the manufacturer whine and anathematize fashion because it had taken away his employment and destroyed the value of his factory ? To listen to Mr. Swank one would suppose that was the only course left to him. But no, this manufacturer viewed the situation in a sensible manner, so he either sells his machinery for junk, or changes it into machinery suitable for something else, and becomes a manufacturer of corsets, and to-day he is one of the largest and apparently most prosperous manufacturer of corsets to be found. The country cannot be ruined by a modification of the tariff in such a manner as to affect all alike. CHAPTER XXI. THE SILVER QUESTION. Since this volume was written the silver question has se- cured such a lodgement in the public mind, and as the difficulty 1 68 UNWISE LAWS, arises primarily from the fact that protection has been invoked for the purpose of bolstering up silver, this question is natu- rally germane to the subject of this book, and the author, while not laying claim to any special wisdom or to any origi- nality of views, deems it not inappropriate or impertinent to devote one chapter to the silver question. The question of silver as regards its function as a circulat- ing medium is by no means a simple one, but the difficulties that surround it are more artificial — that is, more the work of men's fears, hopes, and interests, than inherent in the subject. If one approaches the subject as a mine owner he will natur- ally be of the opinion of the tanner who thought leather was the best thing for fortifications, and will believe that silver is the one and only talisman that will restore prosperity, and that therefore all sound principles of business should be sacrificed and the government be compelled to force silver into circula- tion. If one thinks because silver has always been used as a cir- culating medium therefore it should always continue to be so used, he will also insist that government shall avail itself of its sovereignty for the purpose of compelling its continued use as legal tender, or if one thinks hard times are the result of a scarcity of circulation he will not only attempt to compel the use of silver as a metallic currency, but will also insist that all the silver capable of being mined shall be lodged in the govern- ment vaults and a paper currency issued on the basis thereof. All these various men will approach the subject obliquely, and will of course not obtain a correct view of the question, conse- quently their various views will be unsound because incom- plete, and as each faction insists upon its particular views there will be warring and discord such as we now see. But if one will divest himself of personal interest, or of prejudice, or because a thing has been therefore it must con- tinue to be, the question will be divested of most of its obscurity, and therefore of most of its difficulty. The beginning of the difficulty arose when the rich mines of UNWISE LAWS. 169 Nevada began to pour their abundant streams of silver into the channels of the world's commerce. Some may say it was owing to the demonetization of silver by Germany, but this may be doubted, for if this demonetization had acted alone, India would, in a short time, have absorbed the silver thus set free, but when the floods of silver which the mines had poured out began to fill the reservoirs of commerce, and when it was realized that this current was likely to continue for years (the production of silver from 1 861-1883 is reported by the director of the U. S. Mint as $596,000,000), silver necessarily sunk steadily and largely in value. When the depreciation of silver began to be seriously felt, the mine owners saw that if something was not done to sustain the value of silver the depreciation thereof, in view of the im- mense quantity already produced and the still larger quantity threatening the market, would be so great, the profits from their mines would be so much decreased, that the mines, in spite of their great metallic Avealth, would become unprofitable. They saw that a market must be made for their product, or they would, at the least, be seriously injured. What did they do ? Many of these mine owners were from the far East, and there they had imbibed the notion that it was the right thing for the government to protect them — in other words, that if they could not manage their own affairs in a profitable man- ner or in a manner to satisfy extreme greed, it was the right thing for the government to make them wealthy by virtue of " Be it enacted," hence they go to Congress and demand protec- tion. But there are more ways of killing a dog than by hang- ing him. So the silver kings do not demand protection by the enactment of laws to hinder or to prevent the importation of foreign silver, for such laws would have been utterly futile, for no country was threatening to interfere with our silver men. But instead of resorting to this stereotyped method of protec- tion, they demanded that the United States should make a mar- ket for their silver, and should, therefore, purchase from them 170 UNWISE LAWS. annually not less than $24,000,000 of silver. We thus see that protection is protean in its form, but in whatever shape it pre- sents itself, it is for the benefit of the few, or it is designed to be so, at the expense of the many. It is also, in its nature, something like the bed of Procustes. It cuts some off, but it stretches some out to enable all to fit the bed exactly. Thus in ordinary protection the market is stinted and starved, but in silver protection the market is glutted. But never mind either, so that the fev\f are benefited, or sought to be benefited. This is the first step, and it is the first step that costs. But in order to render the step more easy to be taken, cupidity was addressed and arrant dishonesty was invoked. The silver men say to Congress, make a market for our silver and we will help you to enrich the Treasury of the United States by making a coin worth about eighty-seven cents, the present value being about eighty cents, and calling it one dollar, compelling our people to take it for a dollar, the government will thereby make thirteen dollars out of every hundred coined. The bait took, and the combination of rapacity and fraud gave us our present silver dollar, which bears a lie on its very face. This is the gist of the present silver discussion. The men who own the mines fight hard to retain the advantage the law gives them, for if the United States refuses to buy their silver the price still further declines, and when this happens the poorer mines must suspend and the richest scarcely can be profitable. And unfortunately the silver men have so im- pressed their sophistries upon the whole West and most of the South, that there are few or no public men in those large por- tions of the country who dare raise their voice against the fallacy of government providing, by means of legislation, a market for the productions of its citizens. On the other side of the question are the Eastern and Middle States, who are clamorous for the repeal of the law compelling the government to buy more than half of the product of the silver mines. Protection, as applied by them to the remainder of the country, is all right, for pro- UNWISE LAWS. 171 tection appears to benefit them, but when the few silver kings apply this same protection for their benefit, then the Eastern and Middle States cry aloud, down with the silver kings. The Eastern and Middle States are undoubtedly correct in their demand, but until they are consistent and renounce the protec- tion which they enjoy, there will be no chance for their voice being heeded, and as long as they say take your hand off of me while they insist upon bearing upon others with the weight of their whole body, they are as likely to be heard as if they were addressing statues of bronze and marble. It is the same old game that has been played since man first appeared — every man for himself and the Devil take the hindmost. For years the East has tyrannically held the rod of protection over the country and said, Buy of me or go without, and now the West, vainly imagining it at last has something that can be protected, stretches forth the same rod just as tyrannically, and why ? merely for the benefit of a handful of silver-mine owners. And in the meanwhile the country labors and groans under the double infliction, and hence the general unrest and dis- satisfaction we see prevailing from Maine to California. What hope is there of any permanent recovery when we see every section vieing with each other in heaping burdens upon the country and the leaders of the people, instead of instructing them, encouraging them in silver and all other illusions, lest if they speak the truth they lose their popularity. The country has suffered much since 1873, but alas ! it must suffer more before it learns wisdom. The secondary aspect of silver is in respect to it as a circu- lating medium. That this is a secondary one is readily appar- ent upon a little reflection ; for who doubts that this phase of the question has arisen principally as a side issue since silver began to depreciate, in order to deter Congress from repealing the law of compulsory coinage ; and who doubts that all the heated discussion about the advantages of a silver currency and the ruin that would follow its demonetization would cease 1/2 UNWISE LAWS. in a month if silver were to appreciate twenty per cent, in value. The whole question hinges on making a market for silver by virtue of the majesty of the law. To befog, to bewilder, to mislead is the sole object of the silver-mine men, and they have succeeded to perfection. They aim to appreciate the value of silver, but in order to accomplish their aim they act as wisely as one who, upon being told to extinguish a dangerous fire, should heap on more fuel. The only way to do this is to let silver alone, and let it find a market, and consequently its natural level. When this is done the production of silver will be curtailed, and then there will be some chance for the world accommodating itself to the im- mense load that has been thrust upon it of late years. But instead of this they encourage the production of silver ; they stimulate it in every way possible, so that the weight of silver, already much too heavy for the commercial world to carry, is to be added to year by year with no hope of a diminution of the supply ; and finally silver will actually become such an encumbrance — not to say nuisance — that its value must inevita- bly decline much below its present price. And they have com- mitted the majority of the people to their view. For a time the support of the United States Government has partially maintained the value of silver, and for a short time longer it may prevent it from sinking much lower, but if the production of silver continues at near its present rate, a further serious decline is as inevitable as that water when unconfined will seek the lowest depths. Why there should be a divinity hedged around silver is incomprehensible on the basis of sound reason, and why the government should endeavor to uphold it in spite of the disinclination of the civilized world to use it to the ex- tent it formerly did, is equally incomprehensible on the same grounds ; and it can only be explained on the grounds of the folly of protection, which for the past quarter of a century has ruled this country with a rod of iron. The East may, if it pleases, see the folly of what it has done in the folly of the West in its efforts to protect silver. UNWISE LAWS. 173 Three years ago Congress might as well have interfered to prevent the depreciation of copper, which declined from about twenty cents to eleven and a half cents a pound, by providing receptacles for its deposit and issuing currency on the basis of its market value as do the same thing for silver. Copper was the metallic currency of the old Romans. The depreciation of copper would have been delayed, but ultimately the price must have been reduced below eleven and a half cents for the reason that the owners of the copper mines would by this means have been encouraged to an uncurtailed production of copper, and the accumulation of copper would finally have been so large that the price would have been carried much below its natural figure of ten and a half cents. By allowing copper to accommodate itself to the demand, its production was curtailed and a great catastrophe in the copper business was averted. So it will be with silver. Fostering it and bolstering it up will inevitably lead to such an excessive production of silver that its very abundance must produce a catastrophe. Now as regards silver as a circulating legal tender. Very little need be said on this head, for the reason that this aspect of silver has been fully discussed by the world for years, and I cannot hope to add any new light to the subject. But I will add a few lines for the benefit of those who may desire to glance at the subject in a manner congenial to their methods of thought. There are a few obvious truisms that can hardly be disputed. And the first is, that if it is pretended to coin a dollar and make it legal tender, it should at least equal a dollar in that metal which no one denies to be a perfect legal tender. If from design the silver dollar varies materially from the gold dollar, then the silver dollar virtually becomes fiat money, and it had as well contain five cents as eighty, for it circulates at par only by the fiat of the government. This process is as virtual a debasement of the currency as the most shameless 174 UNWISE LAWS. government has ever perpetrated. But suppose the silver dol- lar is made, say on July ist, equal to the value of a gold dollar, what is likely to follow ? In the abstract world things that are equal to each other always remain so. But in the concrete or actual world no two things remain equal to each other for any length of time. Even wheat, and the flour that is made of the wheat, scarcely ever equal each other, for now the grain is more valuable than the flour, and again the . flour is of more value than the wheat, although, of course, the difference is never great. If, therefore, two such nearly equal things as wheat and the flour made of the wheat are not always equal to each other, much less can any permanent equality be expected between two such dissimilar things as gold and silver. So, then, in the course of time the gold and silver dollar will begin to diverge, and v/hen this divergence becomes as much as one per cent, or less, the more valuable metal at once begins to disappear, and if this divergence becomes permanent, then the more valuable metal practically becomes demonetized, for it disappears from circulation. Sometimes gold is practically demonetized and sometimes it is silver, — that is to say, unless a forced currency is given to either metal, and when this is done the value of either dollar might as well be nominal. Many doubtless can remember when silver was so scarce that Congress had to debase the fractional coins in order to retain any silver in circulation at all, and when the coinage of standard sil- ver dollars was, for many years, almost entirely suspended. At present it is probable that after an equitable ratio between gold and silver had been established silver would continue to de- preciate, owing to the still immense production of silver. As a practical measure, therefore, it would seem impossible to have two standards, and that the only way in which the two metals can be used for circulation is to have one for a standard and the other for a token or subsidiary coin, and as gold is too valuable to be capable of convenient subdivision into quarters and halves, it would seem that silver must be the subsidiary UNWISE LAWS. 175 coin, and it seems that it should be a token coin, or, in other words, that it should contain less than its nominal weight of metal, for the reason that in course of time silver may again become the more valuable metal, when the fractional coins, if of standard weight and fineness, would disappear, and the public would be entirely deprived of metallic small change. A legal-tender quality to the amount of $10 should be given to these token coins. Gold and silver are used as currency not because it is virtuous to do so and because it would be a sin not to use them, but solely because it has been found conven- ient to do so ; therefore there is no reason why either metal should be fostered or encouraged, and there is no reason why either of them should not be left to take its chances for being used, for in the long run either metal will be used by the civil- ized world only as found convenient, and any legal constraint of this convenience is sure to result in injury to the nation at- tempting it. The United States has plunged into difficulties in its efforts to protect the interests of a few silver men, and the way to get out of it or to lessen these difficulties is surely not to encourage either the production of that which the world appears already to have too much of, or to encourage its use by the fraudulent practice of stamping eighty cents, more or less, with the mark of a dollar and forcing it into circulation as one hundred cents. While we are not in a position now to demonetize silver, we are certainly in that condition where we should call a halt and see the effect of what we have already done. Or, if we must have silver coinage, find out what the average ratio between gold and silver has been, say for six months prior to any given date, fix upon that average as the standard ratio, and then let there be free coinage of silver, charging, perhaps, the cost of coinage to the owner of both gold and silver bullion, and then let the two metals take their chances together. But let not the government be a buyer of either gold or silver. The government should of course re- call all its short-weight dollars and recoin them into standard 176 UNWISE LAWS. dollars of the new ratio. To retrace one's steps is not always easy or agreeable, but no one of sense ever refuses to do so when he finds he has gone astray ; so we shall not find it either easy or agreeable to retrace our steps on the silver question, but it is necessary to do so if we desire to avoid the future evils inseparably attendant upon that course. Many will contend that the enforced coinage of short-weight dollars has done no harm and will do none, because a silver dollar will buy as much as a gold dollar. It is true it will, at this date, buy as much at home, but let a traveller attempt to spend it in Europe, even in France, where silver is legal tender, and he will speedily discover that this silver dollar will not exchange for as much as a gold dollar. And why will it do so at home ? Simply because being legal tender one can discharge a debt with it as well as with a gold dollar, for as long as people can pay their debts with any thing, even though they be cowries, they will receive that thing as readily as they would gold. In 1865-6 counterfeit fractional currency was knowingly received because it could be knowingly passed. But let silver continue to increase, and the time is not far distant when it will depre- ciate to its value in the markets of the world, for though credi- tors may be compelled to receive pay for what they have already sold in short-weight dollars, people cannot be made to make new sales with no proviso as to the kind of coin in which payment may be made, and then they will only sell for gold or its equivalent, and all transactions will be made on a gold basis, just as during the war all transactions in greenbacks, whether in foreign or domestic trade, were based upon gold. And so it will necessarily be with us in a few years if the coin- age of silver be persisted in regardless of the wishes of the commercial world. But for legal tender, and but for the co- ercion the national banks are under, this depreciation would be apparent now, but this depreciation will in a short time reveal itself in spite of legal tender and coercion. Superabundance inevitably begets depreciation, and deified silver can no more UNWISE LAWS. lyy escape this consequence than can coal, or cotton, or even gold itself. Porters and teamsters, and express companies, and makers of iron safes are no doubt greatly in favor of a silver currency, for a silver currency must bring much business to all of these callings. Thus if one desired to make a deposit in bank of one thousand dollars, he would have to call into requisition the services of a porter, if to deposit two thousand dollars he must call in a dray, or if ten thousand and upwards a two-horse wagon would probably be required. To carry money from place to place the express companies would find their utmost capacity taxed, and all over the land there would spring up manufactories of burglar-proof safes, and as at present the most eligible sites and the most expensive buildings are occu- pied by life-insurance companies, so in that happy time when silver has been fully restored to its own, the life-insurance companies will be replaced by the offices and ivarerooms of the safe manufacturers, who will then have become the most conspicuous factors of the mercantile world. For then an iron safe will be as necessary a part of the furniture of a private dwelling as is a clock at the present day. The country will then present the interesting spectacle of everybody and every thing lugging around bags and boxes of this precious metal, or they will be engaged in counting it or in storing it away in huge iron safes, or in transporting their safes dragged by splendid teams from factory to warehouse and from warehouse to office or dwelling. Hurrah for silver ! for it will open an entirely new branch of employment to thousands of idle hands which our beneficent system of protection has first enticed from agriculture and then thrown out of employment. As to the policy of issuing silver certificates on the deposit of silver dollars or silver bullion, there would be no objection probably to this course, if an equal quantity of greenbacks were permanently cancelled, but to add silver certificates to greenbacks ahd national-bank notes would seem to be as 1/8 UNWISE LAWS. advisable as to attempt to improve milk by pouring water into it. To thrust silver certificates upon the market can, it would seem, do no good, but on the other hand it may do no harm, for they would either not circulate largely themselves, or, if they did, they would replace so many greenbacks or national- bank notes. There appears, however, to be no demand for silver certificates, for the banks are already filled with green- backs, for which at present the demand is not large. The silver question is only resolvable in one way, and that is for the government to dissolve its partnership with the silver kings and to let silver take care of itself. THE END. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles ^ This book is DUE on tiielast date stamped below. 2 7 19^5 OiPH^Pl 0819)7 iihfAi^i torn bESK DEC le 1364 A i,: 7 '8 9 10 ll!l2^ 1 ; a CZ ^ V PM. A Form L9-42m-8,'49(B5573)444 lactunng, wuh instructions lor proot-reaaing, ana specimens ox lypograpny, the text of the United States Copyright Law and information concerning International Copyrights, together with general hints for authors. Octavo, cloth extra $I oo " Full of valuable information for authors and writers. * * * A most instructive ♦ * * and excellent manual." — Harpe>-'s Monthly (.Easy Chair). • G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK AND LONDON. THE tIBRARY IJIi^VlltaiTY OF CAUFORNU I^OS ANGELES THE LITERARY Of Calitoniui, Los Angeles 1 Uuew '^heCb ^oncer 'he R Literal '.iterat Vc 'hcmas > •.( ieorge E.Iici olin Ruskij ohn Henr j VlfredT- I italph W William < ong^ello liiC SOUTHERN Rf GfOPJAL AA 000 529 049 VOL. ITT