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HOLD THE FORT!

A COLLECTION OF FRESH FACTS AND ARGUMENTS
IN SUPPORT OF THE POLICY OF

Protection to Home Industry.

Published by The American Iron and Steel Association, at No. £65 South Fourth
Street, Philadelphia, ai which place copies of this tract may be had on appli-
cation by letter.

THE PROTECTIVE POLICY.

Protection is a principle and not an expedient. If it is right,
the reasons for believing in it ancl maintaining it should be so
clear and so conclusive that its friends will never be tempted to
apologize for it, nor its enemies be abk to delude the unthinking
with stories of 'its oppressive burdens. There is nothing compli-
cated, nothing metaphysical, nothing hard to understand in the
protective policy, and it should be discussed with that simplicity
of statement and directness of application which it so eminently
admits and so fully Invites. It is a plain question of the duty of a
nation to encourage the industry of its own people, in preference to
the industry of an alien people. It is a question of the duty and
interest of a nation to develop all its resources, rather than allow

THE PROTECTIVE POIICY.

le of

8ome ot the most important of them to remain undeveloped. It is
a question of diversified employments and unbounded possibilities
for a nation capable of great achievements, rather than a limitation
of its powers to such occupations as will prevent it from becoming
independent and its people from going forward. This is the pro-
tective policy. It is not the instrument by which monopolies are
to be established, but it is the foe of all monopolies, domestic and
foreign, for it encourages the widest competition in productive in-
dustry. It is not the instrument by which one class of the com-
munity is to be benefited at the expense of another class, for it seeks
the common weal by affording employment to all classes. It is not
a tax upon one industry for the benefit of another industry, for its
design is to impose taxes upon foreign producers that domestic con-
sumers may obtain cheaper commodities, and this is its effect. It is
not a hindrance to commerce, but a help to it, for it stimulates
internal commerce when it stimulates the development of resources
which could have no value if not exchanged for other products, and
it aids foreign commerce when it enables a country, through the
competition and increased skill of its people, to produce commodi-
ties so cheaply that other countries will be induced to purchase
them. It is the policy of patriotism, of progress, of civilization — a
policy that defends the weak against the strong, and stands reso-
lutely for one's own against all assailants.

The protective policy' of the United States has always aimed to
advance the welfare of its working people. Protection has benefited
them because it has diversified their employments, increased the
rewards of their labor, cheapened the cost of the necessaries of life,
-Stimulated enterprise, developed the national resources, expanded
commerce between the States and with other countries, prevented the
evil of direct taxation, and elevated the whole tone of our natioc
life. The industrial policy of Great Britain, whether controlled h;^
protective or free-trade influences, has always aimed to advance the
interests of her ruling classes, and has never sought the elevation of
her working people. It is the glory of the United States that she
has not adopted an industrial policy that would degrade all labor,
and it is the shame of Great Britain thai her labor has been syste-
matically degraded that her aristocracy might prosper. — From The
American Iron Trade in 1876.

Among the most sacred rights is that of the labor of a country
to its own markets. — M. Thiers.

THERE 18 NO INTERNATIONAL FREE TRADE.

THERE 18 NO INTERNATIONAL FREE TRADE. .

The opinion has been industriously disseminated that the policy
of protecting home industries by means of duties on imports of
foreign commodities is almost exclusively confined to the United
States. This is an error. Protection is the policy of many nations;
free trade the policy of very few. Of all the leading nations of
the world, Great Britain is the only one which professes to practice
absolute free trade in the exchange of commercial products ; and
even Great Britain, as we shall presently show, does this only in a
qualified sense. France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, Bel-
gium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland have protective
tariffs. Even unhappy Spain is not without its tariff on imported
goods, and impoverished Turkey now admits that to the absence
of protection is her present condition largely due. The empire of
Brazil, the leading nation of South Amerfca, imposes duties on
imports which average over forty per cent, of their value. All the
South American republics impose similar duties. Many of the
colonies of Great Britain refuse to follow the example of th^
mother country, for th^y impose protective duties ; the colonies of
New South Wales and Victoria being especially devoted to the
protective policy. In India and Canada there are strong parties
favorable to the development of home industry by protective duties,
and their views have found expression in local legislation. A
careful survey of the whole field leads to the conclusion that the
protective policy is everywhere stronger to-day than it has been.
Only in Germany do we see manifested any disposition to surrender
it, and there the effort to establish partial free trade is being most
strenuously resisted.

It may be said that, with the exception of France, no other
country is so strongly protective as the United States; but this
criticism does not affect the proposition that protection is the rule
and free trade the exception among all leading nations. The
measure of this protection each country must decide for itself.

To show conclusively that Great Britain alone among leading
nations professes devotion to free trade, it is only necessary to refer
to the tables of import duties levied by the different European
countries on foreign products* published by our government in the
Monthly Reports for July, August, and September, 1869, of the
Deputy Special Commissioner of the Revenue, Mr. Francis A
Walker. It appears from these tables, which are too long to be
transferred to these pages, that every Continental European country

THERE 18 NO INTERNATIONAL FREE TRADE.

levies an import duty upon the manufactured goods and other
products of other countries, and that iron and steel products are
especially subjected to these duties. The tariff on iron rails in the
leading Continental countries of Europe was as follows in 1869:
France, $11.91 per ton of 2,240 pounds; Germany, S12.19; Austria,
$24.38; Kussia, $9.74.

If it be argued that these duties are not levied for protection, but
for revenue, we answer that all or nearly all of the duty-paying
articles compete with articles which are produced by the countri(}8
which impose the duties, and that the policy of free trade means
the free exchange of commodities between nations. If neither the
principle nc: the practice of free trade is adopted by the countries
of Continental Europe, then they can not in any sense be properly
claimed as its converts, even in part. Protection and revenue are
not incompatible elements in the formation of a customs tariff; but
free trade and revenue from customs are absolutely incompatible
when one country exchanges with another products that are common
to both. There may be revenue, but there is no free trade. The
tariffs of Continelital Europe embody the principles of protection
and revenue in a majority of cases where duties are levied on com-
modities which compete with home productions; but where these
duties are so high as to preclude the presumption that they are
intended to encourage even moderate imports, the principle of
protection only is preserved. France, Russia, and some of the
other countries named in Mr. Walker's tables are examples of the
imposition of such high duties. But France, which has been re-
markably consistent in her devotion to the protective policy since
the days of the first Napoleon, has gone further than this— gone
further than the United States has ever gone. France has posi-
tively prohibited, and does now prohibit, in her general tariff the
importation of many articles which her own people can produce.
The United States can not export to France to-day, upon any con-
ditions whatever, refiped sugars, tobacco for private account, certain
kinds of cast and forged iron, cutlery, copper in certain forms, cer-
tain chemical products, common soaps, fine stoneware and earthen-
ware, glass bottles, goblets, etc. The revenue which France derives
from these prohibitory duties is not apparent, but the protection
which her manufacturers derive from some of them is plain. Her
tariff is eminently a protective one, as is her whole fiscal system.
A bounty to the exporters of Frencn sugar encourages its produc-
tion by facilitating its introduction into foreign markets.

But Great Britain herself is not the consistent and zealous devotee

THERE 18 NO INTERNATIONAL FREE TRADE.

of free trade that she affects to be. Putting aside for the moment
the fact that she did not announce her conversion to free trade
until within the memory of the present generation, and until it suited
the interests of her trading classes to do so, we proceed to inquire
whether she now practices the whole of the creed she is so ready to
preach to othei-s. We have before us an English reprint of the
British tariff that was in force in 1875, with accompanying state-
ments, and from this publication we learn that the government of
Great Britain derived an income of £20,637,855 (about $100,000,000)
as revenue from customs in the fiscal year 1873-4. Examining the
items of which this aggregate is composed, we learn that the duty
on tobacco realized £7,399,074 r on tea, £3.251,203; on brandy,
£2,248,546; on wine, £1,793,112; and on dried fruits, £457,513.
Many other articles paid duty in that year, including beer, coffee,
rum, whisky, pickles, vinegar, gold and silver plate, and a long list
of suoh chemical products as alcohol, chloroform, and varnish. In
the nine years from 1866 to 1874 the income of the British govern-
ment from customs amounted to £193,658,436 (about $968,000,000).
The receipts of the United States from customs during the same nine
years amounted to $1,668,349,914. Thus Great Britain, nominally
a free-trade country, derived from duties on customs in nine years
an income equal to fifty-eight per cent, of that derived from the same
source by the United States, a country which has a confessedly pro-
tective tariff.

The commodities from which Great Britain derives the large
customs revenue to which we have alluded are the products of
fortign countries, and the duties imposed are a tax upon the indus-
tries of those countries for the benefit of the British treasury. Thus,
China is made to pay a tax upon her tea sold to the British Islands |
Brazil upon her coffee ; Germany upon her beer and spirits ; the
South of Europe upon its currants, raisins, and figs; and the United
States upon her tobacco and distilled grain, her alcohol, etc. These
taxes are a restriction upon the free exchange of commodities, and
their existence confutes most completely the pretense that Great
Britain is a free-trade country. This pretense appears all the more
daring when it is considered that the British government and
British manufacturers demand of the countries we have named,
and of other countries, that the products of British industry shall not
be subjected to the payment of any tax whatever when they enter
foreign ports and foreign markets. China is taxed upon her tea, but
China must not tax English cottons ; Brazil is taxed upon her coffee,
but Brazil must not tax English iron and steel ; the South of Europe

THE FARMERS AND PROTECTION.

is taxed upon its fniits, but the South of Europe must not tax Eng-
lish machinery and cutlery ; the United States is taxed upon her
tobacco, whisky, alcohol, varnish, etc., but the United States must
not tax English hardware, salt, woolen goods, linen, etc. All the
world must be taxed to support the British government, but all the
world must maintain its own police regulations and pay its debts
as best it can. It is all right, for instance, for the tobacco-growers
of the United States to be taxed to help pay the interest on the
British national debt ; but it is all wrong for British manufacturers,
when they enter our markets, to be taxed to help pay the interest on

our debt.

British theoretical free trade means the free exchange of com-
modities between nations. It nowhere exists : it is a myth. The
only real free trade known to civilized nations is that which governs
the exchanges between the people of the same country. It is the
only kind of free trade that, in the nature of things, ever can exist ;
for each nation must care for its own interests, and these interests
are never identical with the interests of other nations. Between the
different sections of the United States, for instance, all trade is
absolutely free ; while all the sections are alike protected against
foreign industrial assailants, come they in what guise they may.
Great Britain imposes duties upon those commodities entering her
ports which it suits her to tax, and upon those which it suits her to
admit free of duty she imposes no duty. Yet she asks other nations
not to impose duties upon such of her products as seek their
markets. This is not free trade, nor the shadow of it. It is not
fair trade. It is the policy that gives a glass bead in exchange for
a nugget of gold, or an iron hoop for a handful of precious gems.—
From The American Iron Trade in 1876.

THE FARMERS AND PROTECTION.

We would not ignore the fact that the farmer's home market is
always his best market ; but, as he annually relies upon foreign
markets to take a portion of his surplus crops, he should know
that protection opposes no obstacles to his wishes. It should be
remembered, too, that the wheat and corn and other farm products
which are sold at home or shipped abroad have cost the farmer less
labor in their production and transportation during the last fifteen
years of protection than in preceding years, for he has had the use
of improved machinery and of a wide-reaching railway system,
both of which have been largely created by the protective policy.

OUR PR08PEKOU8 FARMERS.

Protection stimulates labor-saving inventions, and, by building up
manufactures and developing the resources of the country, it
encourages the construction of railways, and cheapens (he cost of
railway material, and consequently of railway transportation. Not
only is less labor required to px'oduce and market a given crop in
late years than was formerly required, but the money cost of produ-
cing and marketing that crop is reduced by the use of improved
machinery and by the extension of railway facilities, so that the
ability of the American farmer to compete iu foreign markets with
foreign farmers is greatly increased. And this is the real secret of
the increased exportation of American breadstufTs and provisions in
late years.

It is frequently alleged that foreign countries will not buy our
agricultural products if we do not buy their manufactured goods.
But this is a serious mistake, as has been amply demonstrated by
experience. To illustrate : In the fiscal year 1872 we imported
iron and steel and manufactures thereof aggregating $56,540,188
in value, and we exported 26,423,080 bushels of wheat, valued at
038,915,060, or 81.47 per bushel. In the fiscal year 1874 we im-
ported iron and steel and manufactures thereof aggregating $33,-
793,546 in value, and we exported 71,039,928 bushels of wheat,
valued at 0101,421,459, or 01.42 per bushel. In 1872 the value
of our imports of iron and steel was almost seventeen millions of
dollars in excess of the value of our exports of wheat ; whereas, in
1874 the value of our exports of wheat more than trebled the value
of our imports of iron and steel. The reader will see at a glance
that our agricultural exports do not depend at all upon our willing-
ness to take foreign manufactures in exchange for them. Foreign
countries will buy our breadstuff's and provisions because they must
have them or because they are cheap. When the harvest is good In
England, for instance, our exports of food products to that country
will always decrease ; when the harvest is poor, will England, in her
extremity, higgle about the quantity of iron and steel we are willing
to take from her ? She never has done this. — From The American
Iron Trade in 1876.

OUR PROSPEROUS FARMERS.

Under this caption the Chicago Inter- Ocean, an ever- vigilant and
sagacious guardian of the interests of Western farmers, publishes
some statistics to show that the West has been fairly prosperous

OUR PROflPKROUH FARMERS.

notwithsUuKling the panic, and that this prosperity has been due
to the prosperity of the farmers. It says:

Taken as a class, our farmers have been favored, during the last
three years, with an extraordinary demand for their breadstufls and
provisions, for which they have received steadily remunerative
prices. It has been a matter of common comment that while the
values of manufactures, of real estate, and, indeed, of nearly all
kinds of fixed investments, have been progressively declining, the
values of staple articles of food, and even of vegetables, have been
well sustained. The purchasing power of farm products, as
measured in other articles, has never been so great as now, within
the memory of the oldest inhabitant. An unprecedented foreign
demand for our agricultural staples, in recent years, by withdraw-
ing the superabui: dance of our domestic market, has prevented a
glut, maintained good prices, and kept our farmers prosperous,
despite the derangement and depression, almost amounting to
paralysis, in many other branches of industry.

The writer proceeds to adduce Government statistics to show how
fully the above statements are sustained by the facts. The exports
of wheat, since June 30, 1869, have been as follows, a calculation
of average price per bushel each year and for the whole period
being added :

Years ending June 30.

1870..
1871..
1872.,
1873..
1874.,
1875.
1876.

Bushels.

86,584,115
34,304,000
26,423,080
39,204,28.5
71,039,928
53,047,177
66,073,122

Total

Average.,

816,676,013

45,096,639

Values.

847,171,229
45,143,424
88,915,060
61,452,254

101,421,459
59,007,863
68,382,889

Average price
per bushel.

$412,094,178

858,870,597

$1.28.939
1.31.505
1.47.277
1.31.241
1.42.767
1.12.368
1.24.167

$1.30.648

These are significant totals, even standing alone, but a compara-
tive view will place them in a still more signal light. An annual
statement in detail of our foreig.i trade was first ordered by Congress
to begin 'September 1, 1820. From that date to July 1, 1870, em-
bracing forty-nine fiscal years, our aggregate exports of American
wheat footed up 254,573,057 bushels, valued at $342,233,361. In
other words, within the last seven years, or during just one-seventh
of the previous period, we exported 61,103,556 bushels more, and
069,860,817 more in value. Exports of wheat flour for the same
term offer an exhibit of similar significance :

OUR PROflPEROUS FARMERS.

Yean ending June 80.

Btrrtla.

8,463,Ra»
8,60a,H41

4,(HI4,094
8,97!J,IM
S,93a,Sl'i

'i4,lM,029

3,4fi6,047

Valuu.

Aventee prio*
per barrel.

•3t,l09,A93
24,0U8,I84
17,9Sn,eHI
19,.'l«l,604
29,2«H,0M
23,712, i4U
24,408,470

tl«0,004,12»

922,807,798

t6. 11.249
6.09.893
7.14.076
7.06.4«O
7.14.641
0.U6.H20
6.20.H40

M.81.M0

Here, as before, we see the totals of both quantity and value
augmenting since the panic. These are evidences of thrift, not of
industrial depression, throughout the agricultural community.
From August 31, 1820, to June 30, 1870 — about forty-nine years —
the aggregate exports of wheat flour were 93,674,714 barrels, valued
at $590,456,860. Thus, within seven years, we exported 25.83 per
cent, of the quantity, and 27.1 per cent, of the value, of the aggre-
gate exported during the previous period seven times as long.

Next, if we reduce barrels of flour to equivalent bushels of w^.jat,
at the standard rate of five bushels to the barrel, we shall have a
sum total of 722,946,627 bushels for the forty-nine years, as the
aggregate of wheat flour and of wheat combined exported for that
term, and, in like manner, 436,669,258 bushels for the last seven
years. According to these figures we exported, within the short
period, 60.4 per cent, of the entire quantity, and 61,84 per cent,
of the entire value, exported within the long period. It is plain,
moreover, that higher export prices, on an average, were realized
in the seven than in the forty-nine years.

Now let us take up the exports of corn, as follows :

Years ending June 80.

1870

1871

1872

1873

1874

1875

1876

Total ....
Average

Bushels.

1,392,115
9,826,309
84,491,660
38,541,930
34,434,606
28,858,420
49,498,572

187,038,602

28,148,3/2

Values.

$1,287,575

$0.92.490

7,458,997

.75.908

23,984,365

.69.537

23,794,694

.61.737

24,769,961

.71.933

24,456,937

.84.748

33,265,280

.67.211

8139,017,799

$19,859,686

Average price
per bushel.

$0.70.564

Again we see a rapid gain, notwithstanding the panic. Even a
monetary revulsion seems to have been unable to visit any of its
crushing or prostrating effects upon the farming community as a
class. If we repeat the comparison previously made, we shall find

10 SOME OF THE EFjj'ECTS OF PKOTECTION ON PRICES.

that the exports of corn, for the forty-nine years specified, were
208,821,522 bushels, valued at 1^157,867,469. It thus appears that
during that long period we exported only 11,782,920 bushels more
t lan we did dining the last seven years, but with total value greater

by $18,849,670. .

The Inter- Ocean claims, and with great truth, that the continued
prosperity of Western farmers is owing to the policy of protection
to home industry. That policy gridironed the North with railroads,
and multiplied lines in the South ; cheapened the cost of crop cul-
ture by stimulating the inventive genius that has supplied such
varied additions of labor-saving machinery for agriculture; reduced
the expense of transportation by diminishing the outlay for railway
tracks and rolling stock, and by increasing competition for freights ;
and prospered our farmers by thus enabling them to undersell
Ruasia in the foreign grain markets.

SOrJE OF THE EFFECTS OF PROTECTION ON PRICES
IN THE UNITED STATES.

The following memorial to Congress, signed by more than ninety
officers and managers of leading railroads in all parts of the country,
was presented in 1870 :

Immediatelj'^ before the construction of the first steel-rail manufactory in
this country, *)re:gn ir akers charged $150 per ton (equal then to $225
currency) for steel rails. As American v/orks were built, foreign skilled
labor introduced, home ip.bor instructed, and domestic irons, clays, ganister,
and Spiegel (after many and expensive trials) found to produce excellent rails,
tb.e price of the foreign article wae gradually lowered, until it now stands at
less than $79 per ton in gold, or f 06.38 currency. Now that several millions
of dollars have been expended in machinery, furnaces, and experiments in
perfecting the process of manufacture in this country, and numbers of our own
citizens are dependent upon it for support, th^ buoinest is threatened with
annihilation by the pressure of English and Prussian makers. We, as users
of steel rails, and transporters of the food and material for American manu-
facturers and the>r numerous employes and skilled laborers, do not desire to
be dependent exclusively upon the foreign supply, and therefore join in asking
that, incteod of the present nd valorem duty, a specific duty of two cents per
pound be placed upon this article.

The duty was fixed at $28 per ton, gold, and to-day Bessemer
steel rails of best quality can be bought at American mills it 055
currency. Domestic competition, induced by protective duties, has
given to American railways cheaper steel rails than English manu-
facturers, '.vithcut this competition, would ever have given them.

SOME OP THE EFFECTS OF PROTECTION ON PRICES. 11

For more than a yenr foreign steel rails have almost ceased to come
into this country, yet in that time American rails' have fallen in
price $20 a ton, solely as the result of home competition.

The manufacture of cut nails is an American invention, origina-
ting near the beginning of the present century. When it was first
undertaken in this country, wrought nails, which then cost 25 cents
a pound, were largely imported ; hence the necessity for protection
to the new industry. By the tariff act of 1824 the duty on all nails
was made 5 cents per pound, at which it remained until 1833, since
which year it has been reduced. Prices of cut nails have ranged
as follows during the past fifty years : In 1828 the price was 7 to
8 cents per pound; in 1829 it fell to 6 and 7 cents fin 1830 to 6
and 6 cents; in 1833 to 4 and 6 cents; from 1835 to 1840 the price
was from 5 to 7 cents, falling in 1840 to 5 and 6 cents; in 1842 the
price fell to 8 and U cencs; in 1844 and 1846 it was 4 and 5 cents;
in 1855 it again fell to 3 cents ; in 1861 it was 3 cents. Like all
other products, the price advanced during the era of war prices, but
before the panic of 1873 it had again fallen to 3 cents, and on the
1st of January, 1876, the price was 2i cents. It will be noted that,
in 1830, six years after the duty was made 5 cents per pound, the
price was the 3ame as the duty ; that, in 1833, the price fell below
the duty; that, in 1842, it was 2 cents per pound below the duty;
and that, on the 1st of last January, it was just one-half the duty
of 1824, and about one-fourth the price charged for cut nails when
that duty was imposed. Political economists who receive their
inspiration from our industrial adversaries sometimes allege that
the duty is always added to the price. The history of the manu-
facture of cut nails is an illustration of the fallacy of their theory.
Protection and home competition brought down the price of cut
nails far below the duty, &ne. drove out of our markets the English
wrought nails with which they had for many years to compete, and
which in 1828 cost from 10 to 17 cents a pound. For a long time
we have exported nails to foreign countries, the value of the exports
of nails and spikes in the fiscal year 1875 amounting to half a
million of dollars.

The history of a celebrated American manufactory of saws
presents r striking example of the cheapening effects of protective
duties. Prior to the Revolution, and for many years after its
close, saws were not made here. All our saws came from abroad,
and we paid for them just what foreigners were pleased to charge us.
In 1840 an American mechanic, Henry Disston, commenced the
manufacture of saws in Philadelphia in a small way. At that time

SOME OP THE EFFECTS OF PROTECTION ON PRICES.

English saws, with the name of the maker marked upon them, sold
in our markets'at prices ranging from $15.75 to $19 a dozen. Mr.
Disston was obliged to sell his saws for less money, as his goods were
unknown, while the English saws had a reputation; but after the
Disston saw became known and its reputation was established the
English saws were gradually driven out of our markets and prices
were still further reduced to consumers. In 1876 Henry Disston &
Sons are sending saws to England, warranted equal to the best saws
made in that country, and selling them at $10.50 a dozen, fully
fifty per cent, less than the price Englishmen charged us in 1840.
When Mr. Disston commenced business, inferior saws of foreign
manufacture were sold m this country at $4.50 a dozen, and he
could not make saws for less than $7 a dozen, but now Henry Diss-
ton & Sons ship common saws to South America at $4.50. The
exports of their goods in 1875 amounted to fully $100,000. But
for protection, Henry Disston and his sons never would have been
in a position to compete successfully in this country with foreign
makers of saws; they never would have been able to find a market
in other lands in one year for $100,000 worth of their products;
this country never would have had as cheap saws as are now
supplied to it; and all the benefits resulting from the employment
of the labor of the country in the manufacture of saws never
would have had an existence. The Messrs. Disston make their

own steel.

Before axes were made in this country, except by country black-
smiths, English axes cost our farmers and others from $2 to $4
each. By the tariff of 1828 a protective duty of 35 per cent, was
levied upon imported axes. Under this protection the Collins
Company, of Hartford, introduced labor-saving machinery, much of
which was invented, patented, and constructed by themselves. In
1836 foreign and home-iiade axes were selling side by side, in the
American market, at $15 to $16 per dozen, at Which time foreign
producers withdrew their competition, abandoning the entire market
to American manufacturers. Then home rivalry and improved
methods continued the decline in prices. Axes were selling, in
1838, at $13 to $15.25 per dozen; in 1840, at $13 to $14; in 1843,
at $11 to $12; in 1845, at $10.50 to $11 ; in 1849, at $8 to $10.
In 1876 the price of the best American axes in the market is $9.50
per dozen in currency, and the country exports large quantities to
foreign markets. English wi'iters admit the superior cxcclLnee of
American axes. The Collins Company makes its own steel, and a
letter from the company now before us claims that it is " better

SOME OP THE EFFECTS OF PROTEC3TION ON PRICES.

than any English steel we can buy, and we have been steel con-
sumers for fifty years. We now only make for our own consump-
tion, and we have no disposition to cheat ourselves."

We are aware that it is claimed by the advocates of the policy of
British trade domination that low prices in protective periods are
not produced by protection — that they are due to other causes. It
is to be remarked that this plea is made by the very same persons
who constantly insist that prices are always increased under protec-
tion — that the duty is always added to the price, and that the
consumer pays the duty. The two theories are not harmonious, but
conflicting, and may be permitted to destroy each other. If prices
are uniformly cheapened under protection, there must be a cause
for it, and if that cause is not protection, who has shown that it is/
anything else ? If prices are not cheapened under that policy, but
increased, then the prices of Collins's axes, Disston's saws, cut nails,
and Bessemer rails should have advanced after protection had en-
couraged the investment of capital which made their manufacture
possible. But did they? Did the purchaser of cut nails at three
cents a pound pay a duty of five cents a pound in addition to a fair
price for the nails ? Does the purchaser of American steel rails at
$55 a ton pay a higher price for them than when the English rail-
maker had entire control of our market ? The duty on steel rails is
now $28 a ton, equal to $32 currency. If this duty were wholly
repealed, is it within the bounds of probability that English rail-
makers would supply our railroads with steel rails at $23 a ton in
currency? The duty on silks averages fifty per cent, of their foreign
value. Instead of the price of silk goods having been increased by
the amount of the duty, it is a fact that they never were so cheap in
this country as they are to-day, and that their use was never so
general as now.

It is clearly the tendency of protection to decrease prices, and of
the denial of protection to increase them, as has been shown. But
if protection did not affect prices either way, exercising no influence
upon them whatever, it is certainly true of it that it fosters the de-
velopment of the national resources, and thus provides employment
for our own people. It supplies a market for the skilled labor of
our countrymen and a market for the farmer's produce. It gives
the home market to the home producer, preferring to foster his in-
dustry rather than that of the foreign producer. In accomplishing

tliPflA nnfrir^tio nrttl monlir 'niirno'«>° ■n»»r»fon+i/-wr> larrvAlTr o/l/la •*•/-» fV»/i

national wealth and increases the prosperity of all classes and their
ability to buy at any price. — From The American Iron Trade in 1876.

PROTECTION INCREASES OUR EXPORTS.

HOW PROTECTION TENDS TO INCREASE OUR EX-
PORTS OF MANUFACTURED GOODS.

The first effect of protection is to give diversified employment to
our people at good wages, and thus the first essential condition
necessary to the production of manufactured goods, either for
home or foreign consumption, is secured. Being thus employed,
the influence of the common school and of republican institutions
produces intelligent workmen ; the prospect of some day becoming
employers of others produces ambitious workmen ; and all these in-
fluences combined afford a constant incentive to achieve the best
possible mechanical results. The American mechanic is always
striving how to better his condition : the European mechanic, denied
the compensation and the opportunities of his Transatlantic brother,
is always considering how he can keep his position. He makes but
little effort to improve his mechanical methods. If we now add the
spirit of competition between employers which protection always ex-
cites, and which high wages always compel, we have all the elements
necessary to foster the naturally inventive genius of our people,
from which come labor-saving machinery, improvements in old
methods, novel designs, a simplification of means to ends, and excel-
lence of finish. Labor-saving mnchinery cheapens the cost of pro-
duction and usually improves the character of the product : joined
to the other mechanical accomplishments mentioned, both cheapness
and excellence are certainly secured. Possession of the home market
is the first result of these achievements, and afterwards the foreign
market is entered in competition with the products of mere hand
labor and antiquated machinery — this hand labor and antiquated
machin ;ry being direct consequences of low wages and a low state
of society. Thus do many of our manufactured products find a
market abroad. The London Times a few years ago comprehen-
sively stated in the following words the philosophy of the increase
in this class of American exports :

The Americans succeed in supplanting us by novelty of construction and
excellency of make. They do not attempt to undersell us in the mere matter of
price. Our goods may still be the cheapest, but they are no longer the best,
and in the country where an axe, for instance, is an indispensable instrument,
the best article is the cheapest, whatever it may cost. Settlers and emigrants
30on find this out, and they have found it out to the prejudice of Birmingham
. trade.

The American wants the best of everything; the European is
content with old styles, coarse materials, and often mith mere

> t

PROTECTION INCREASES OUR EXPORTS,

cheapness without regard to quality. The American mechanic,
alike with the American merchant and professional man, will not
weAr wooden shoes or coarse brogans, because he can afford good
leather shoes ; he will not wear corduroy pantaloons or check shirts,
because he can afford to wear pantaloons made of good woolen cloth
and white muslin or linen shirts ; he will not wear a coat made of
shoddy, or use a^tool that will not " carry an edge " or perform its
work well. He is above all these expedients and inventions of a
lower industrial plane than that upon which he moves. He will
not use these things, and he does not make them. American manu-
factured products sent abroad are therefore all that they are repre-
sented to be, and they are represented to be the best that can be
made. The people of China and Japan, South America, and other
countries have been so often deceived by British manufacturers,
who have studied cheapness rather than excellence, especially in
manufacturing for foreign markets, that American goods have
grown in their favor because they are honestly made and are of
superior quality.

But if we can export certain manufactured products, such as
hardware, machinery, leather, etc., in competition with all other
countries, why protect these articles by high duties ? We answer :
Why kill the goose that lays the golden egg? If protection has
wrought results so beneficial to our country, why abandon it in the
case stated ? But there is a better reason for maintaining the pro-
tective policy without yielding so much of it as a hair's breadth.
The assaults of free trade are always concealed and treacherous. If
one or two or half a dozen industries be surrendered to its sophis-
tries, even although for the time they could retain their vigor, an
attack upon the whole line of protected industries would be cer-
tain to follow. With the Trojan horse once inside the gates, the
whole city would be taken. With industries -destroyed which could
only exist with protection; with closed factories and workshops
standing as monuments of national folly; with the country robbed
of its general prosperity and the home market largely curtailed,
how could those other industries, which protection has benefited the
most, long remain prosperous? The home market is the most
valuable of all markets, and no industry, be it ever so favored, can
afford to lose it. Furthermore: protection for even our most firmly
established industries • Meded to prevent the possible unloading
upon our markets of the surplus products of other countries.
England, for instance, manufactures many articles which she sells
largely to her colonies and to other non-manufacturing countries at

THE "good old times."

profitable prices ; but a surplus of theee articles may be left on her
hands, which, rather than not sell at all, she can well afford to sell
to the people of this country, if permitted, at less than their actual
cost. Protection against such competition as this is wise and neces-
sary. No man in business — no workingman at his bench or anvil —
should be subjected to the risk of such an assault upon his capital
or labor. — From The A% \erican Iron Trade in 1876,

THE "GOOD OLD TIMES" WHEN THERE WERE NO

MANUFACTURES.

Before manufactures were fairly established in this country, suj)-
plying a home demand for agricultural products and surplus agri-
cultural labor, and furnishing manufactu::ed goods at low prices,
the condition of American farmers and of all other laborers was one
of great hardship and many privations. The following bit of per-
sonal history m the life of A. H. Wrenn, of Mount Gilead, Ohio,
shows some of the results which followed a general dependence on
foreign workshops less than fitly years ago, in a section of the
country where domestic manufactures had not been established.

In 1829 my father's family emigrated from Alexandria, Virginia, and
settled near Salem, Columbiana county, Ohio. A large portion of the
inhabitants were thrifty, hospitable Quakers. Let us take a vievr of the prices
of articles in those days. The farmer would sell, when he could, wheat at 31
cents ; corn and rye, 15 to 20 cents ; potatoes and cats, 10 cents per bushel ;
apples and peaches he would give away ; eggs, 3 cents per dozen ; butter, 5
cents per pound ; pork and beef, 2 cents per pound ; hay, $3 to $4 per ton ;
cows, $8 to $10; oxen, per yoke, $30 to $50; good horses, $30 to $50; sheep
averaged about $1 ; wool, 20 to 25 cents per pound. The above were the
usual prices for several years, except when the scarcity of some article caused
higher prices. Farm and other laboring hands $7 to $10 per month and
board ; in harvest a little higher. The writer cut many an acre of wheat
at 25 cents ; cut and split rails at 40 cents per hundred ; cut wood ai 20 to 25
cente per cord. If any of us youngsters happened to be qualified to teach
school in the little log-cabins, and put in our full time, we thought we w^ere
doing well to get $12 per month ; mechanics of different kinds got 50 cents to
$1 per day. We had generally to be on hand before sunrise. Money was a
very scarce article in tho&e days.

Let us look at what we had to pay for articles bought from the merchants.
Tea, and that not the best, $2 to $2.50 per pound. The writer once took three
bushels of wheat and traded it for a half-pound of not very good tea= Coffee,
35 to 50 cents ; pepper and spice, 60 cents ; satinets, at all suitable for a decent
suit of clothes, from $2 to $3 per yard ; and those that could afford the luxury

» •

SOME OP THE JIDVANTAQES OP MANUFACTURES.

■f

of broadcloth paid from $5 to $8 per yard for none of the best ; salt, $5 per
barrel ; shirting, 25 to 40 cents ; calico, 30 to 45 cents ; all dresq goods in the
same ratio.

The following is an extract from a speech delivered at Great
Falls, New Hampshire, February 21, 1872, by Henry Wilson, after-
wards Vice-President of the United States.

The first month I worked after I was twenty-one years of age, I went into
the woods, drove team, cut mill-logs, wood, rose in the morning before. day-
light and worked hard until after dark at night, and I received for it the
magnificent sum of six dollars. Each of those dollars looked as large to me
as the moon looked to-night.

On the farm on which I served an apprenticeship I have seen the best men
who ever put scythe in grass working for from fifty cents to four shillings a
day in the longest days of summer. Yesterday I visited that farm, i asked
the men who were there what they paid men in haying-time last summer, and
they said from two dollars to two and a half a day. This was paid on the
same ground where, men worked forty years ago for from fifty cents to four
shillings, and took their pay in farm products, not money. I have seen some
of thg brightest women go into the farm-houses and work for from fifty cents
to four shillings a week, milking the cows, making butter and cheese, washing,
spinning, and weaving — doing all kinds of hard work. I was told yesterday
that many young women were earning in the shops a dollar a day, and that
those who worked in houses were getting from two dollars and a half a week
to three dollars and a half. — From The American Iron Trade in 1876.

SOME OF THE ADVANTAGES WHICH MANUFAC-
TURES BRING TO A TOWN.

1. A considerable permanent addition is at once made to the pop-
ulation, in the shape of many skilled workmen, who prove auxiliary
to every other kind of business carried on in the neighborhood.

2. The values of real estate are enhanced by the erection of large
buildings in which to carry on the processes of the manufacture,
and by the appropriation of larger areas to accommodate the
dwellings built for the employes.

3. The sudden increase of numbers involves a correspondingly
larger consumption of articles of necessity, comfort, and taste, on
the spot, and thus enlarges the sphere and intensifies the activity of
the various classes of business previously carried on, besides opening
a demand for several new kinds which are generally attracted to a
community by any considerable increase of inhabitants.

4. The wages earned by the factory hands are spent on the spot,

THE BBGENF.KATION OP THE SOUTH.

and help to 8i:t;.gi7,c every material interest of the town, making
money plentier, trade brisker, prices cheaper, sales larger, commodi-
ties more various, and improvement more ambitious.

5 The tax-paying power of the community is much augmented,
leading to a bettered condition of roads, bridges, streets, pavements,
public buildings, and the like.

6. There being many more children and many more grown peo-
ple, a demand springs up for better school accommodations and for
larger churches, bringing not only a higher grade of talent in each
department of human needs, but a decided advance in architectural

excellence.

7. So many more letters are written and so many more news-
papers and magazines are received, that an increase of mail facilities
soon follows as an inevitable consequence.

8. One factory having been established, it becomes easier to
attract to the place other manufacturing enterprises which are

auxiliary to the first.

9. So far as the people are consumers of the articles consumed in
the factory, they become direct purchasers from the manufacturers,
thus dispensing altogether with the profits extorted by middlemen,
and making a gain by greater cheapness of price paid for the
articles, such always being the result of placing producer and con-
sumer side by side.

10. Farmers in the neighborhood are benefited by securing an
improved local market for the sale of their produce ; and sometimes,
as in the case of a woolen, flax, or paper mill established, are able
to sell their wool direct to the manufacturer, or to obtain a round
price per ton for the straw which they formerly burned as a useless
incumbrance, worth to them only as ashes for manure.— C^tmgro
Inter- Ocean.

THE REGENERATION OF THE SOUTH.

The building up of the South is to be accomplished only by the
use of many instrumentalities, of some of which it would not
become us to speak. But there is one which we may properly
mention, for it relates to the material prosperity of the South, with
which the making of iron is closely identified. We refer to domestic
manufactures. The South may educate its children, secure rest from
political strife, become a promised land to the sturdy immigrant,
receive additions to its banking capital, and be greatiy benefited by

THE BEGBNEBATION OP THE SOUTH.

all of these, yet it will not attain the degree of prosperity to
which it is adapted and which the remainder of the Union has long
enjoyed until it becomes the home of manufacturing enterprise —
becomes more industrially independent than it now is.

The great progress that has been made by some of the States of
the South in the manufacture of iron is an example of what the
South is capable, and of the benefits which she may derive from a
diversification of her pursuits. All of the iron establishments of the
South give employment to many thousands of miners, ironworkers,
and other workingiaen, and their products contribute to the supply
of the home demand for iron, thus keeping the money of the people
circulating vX home instead of sending it abroad. They do more
than this. They bring money into the South to pay for iron products
which other communities must have. Tennessee iron is sold in all
the markets of the West ; Alabama iron is used to make car-wheels
in Philadelphia, and Alabama iron ore is sold to Indiana furnaces.
The Vulcan Ironworks of Richmond ship largely of their products
to Cuba and South America, and make fish-bar bolts for the North-
western, Canada Southern, New York and Erie, Midland, Chicago,
Alton and St, Louis, and other railways. The famous Tredegar
Ironworks of the same city have found a new field for their enter-
prise in constructing engines and vacuum-pans for the sugar planta-
tions of Cuba, and railroad cars for Cuban railroads.

What the South has done in iron it should do in other industrial
directions. If it would manufacture one-third or even one-fourth
of the cotton which grows in its fields ; if it would make its own
boots and shoes ; if it would manufacture its own agricultural im-
plements, such as axes, hoes, plows, reapers, and mowers; if it would
make its own stoves, nails, horse-shoes, steam engines, gas pipe, and
water pipe; and, generally, if it would produce more and buy less,,
the day of it«« complete regeneration would be close at hand. An
influential Southern journal, the Rnral Svn, of Nashville, in an
article declaring that manufactures are wanted as " an aid to farm-
ing," shows at how low an ebb manufactures are in the compara-
tively progressive State of Tennessee. It states, among other facts,
that, in 1870, "of the agricultural implements used in the State^
valued at $8,199,487, not one-tenth were manufactured by our own
mechanics. Of the 2,500 reapers used in the State, not one wa»
manufactured here, and a very small percentage, probably not over
one per cent., of the 150,000 plows and hoes, 200,000 axes, 40,000
mattocks, etc. Not a single trace chain, of the 250,000 used, is made
in the State, and but few horse collars." The editor of a Georgia

THE BEQENERATION OF THE SOUTH.

paper recently stated the situation in his State in these words:
" A Georgia tarmer uses a Northern axe-helve and axe to cut up
the hickory growing within sight of his door, plows his fields with a
Northern plow, chops out his cotton with a New England hoe, gins
his cotton upon a Boston gin, hoops It with Pennsylvania iron, hauls
it to market in a Connecticut wagon, while the little grain that he
raises is cut and prepared for sale with Yankee implements. We
find the Georgia housewife cooking with an Albany stove, and even
the food, especially the luxuries, is imported from the North.
Georgia's fair daughters are clothed in Yankee muslins, and decked
in Massachusetts ribbons and Rhode Island jewelry." The people
who are so dependent upon others as the Tenneaseeans and Georgians
are here declared to be can never become prosperous. How much
better would it be for every Southern city if it would adopt the
policy of Louisville, a sister Southern city, which, on the 31st of
August, 1874, had in successful operation more than 600 manufac-
turing establishments, representing an investment of $20,000,000,
producing wares annually estimated at 056,000,000, employing con-
stantly 10,000 persons, and paying out annually for labor about
$8,000,000?

At Columbus, Georgia, the manufacture of cotton is successfully
and profitably prosecuted. There are several mills, running about
40,000 spindles, and the Boston C<mmeretal Bulletin significantly
says of them, in its issue of November 28, 1874, that "there is
nothing visionary about the handsome dividends that the mills of
Georgia, even in these trying times, are paying to their stock-
holders." At Atlanta, Georg'", an eflfort is being made to establish
a cotton factory, and in referring to it the Daily News of that city,
for November 26, 1874, makes the following argument in favor of
the policy of building cotton factories everywhere throughout the
cotton belt:

When cotton is shipped to Boston to be manuftictured, there is the freight
of transporting the raw material to be paid. After the staple is made up into
manufactured goods, then, before Georgians can use it, it must of course be
freighted back to the merchants. Here is a second expense. The manufac-
turer does not pay it all. His price is raised suJBSciently high to save him.
The Southern merchant does not even pay it all, for he prices his goods high
enough to cover all unavoidable expenditures. Now, who does actually have
to pay for all this shipping, freighting, etc.? Why, the old farmer himself,
and nobody else. He finds that he has spent all the money he reah?ed from
the sale of his raw cotton in the fall to buy it back in the spring in the shape
of cloth.

THE REOEMEBATION OF THE HOUTH.

The News proceeds to ahow the saving in freight and commissions
which would result to the Southern farmer were he able to secure
his supply of cotton goods from a factory established in his own
neighborhood, and then adds :

So }u8t Hee what a broad difference ! But thin i» not all yet. Every fac-
tory etjtablished thus forms a little community within itself. The members of
this community are, moreover, made able, by the wages paid them, to become
consumers, and just see what an enormous sum they expend for all kinds of
country produce alone. Here again the planter is materially benefited. Sir
John Byles, Sir Edward Sullivan, and Mr. Carey have, in their valuable
works, demonstrated the fact that a home market is worth more than a foreign
one. Mr. Adam Smith was the great apostle of the English free traders, and
yet even he concedes this point, and is perhaps more explicit thereupon than
many othePs who are open advocates of a protective system. So, if all this
be true, why should not the South become a great manufacturing country ?
She has the water-power ; she can obtain steam-power ; and, above all, she has
the pure staple growing in wasteful abundance on her fertile plains.

The Rural Sun, of Nashville, already quoted above, in its issue
for November 26, 1874, makes an equally sensible appeal in behalf
of diversified home industry for Tennessee, especially for Tennessee
farmers. It says :

Tennessee, and the Southwest generally, must have greater diversity of
production, if we would conquer the hard times. In no State of this Union
are there better opportunities to diversify our productions than in this noble
State of Tennessee. This diversity is one of the principal benefits which
immigration will bring us. Is it not strange that, in a State so well adapted
by its diversity of soil and climate, we are still dependent upon other States
for many farm products that we could produce not only as well as but better
and cheaper than those who supply us? Amidst ail the cry of hard times,
it is positively painful to take a walk round amongst our commission houses
here in Nashville (and it is the same in every Southern city), and find
Northern apples already in the market. Northern potatoes, Northern hay, ,
Northern grass seed, Northern butter and cheese, and reflect what a drain
upon our currency is constantly going on. Is it any wonder we are poor?
It is bad enough that we import nearly all our manufactured goods, which
with proper energy and combination we could produce at home, but surely in
a State like ours we ought to produce our own food.

The South needs many things, but she needs greatly to encourage
home manufactures and next to them a diversified agriculture.
Through these combined influences she can prosper abundantly:
without manufactures she will stand still indefinitely.— JProm the
Annual Report of the Secretary of The American Irm and Steel
Association for 1874-

THE RESULTS OP PROTKCTION.

The Results or Protection.— The revolt of our ancestors
against Great Britain a century ago having been ';au«ed in part by
their determination not to submit to free-trade plunder and the
suppression of their infant manufactures, and the policy of this
country having been ever since protective of our manufacturers the
general result of our hundred years of independence is fairly to be
brought into court to testify whether degradation or advancement
18 the fruit of such a policy. Let those who prate of the prosperity
arising from free trade produce a free-trade country showing attain-
ments comparable to ours, or hold their peace for shame. That our
progress might have been yet greater is most true, for our policy
has vacillated in the degree of protection established at different
periods, and in a similar degree has our growth been accelerated or
retarded, as has been sufficiently demonstrated by Henry C. Carey
The depressed condition of many of our industries at this moment
under a sufficiently high tariff does not invalidate this argument
since the depression is world-wide and is quite as marked in free-'
trade England as in protected America, having in fact produced
more distress and bankruptcies there than here.—Joaeph Wharton

A correspondent of the Chicago Inter- Ocean, writing from
Princeton, Illinois, compares the prices of 1860 with those of 1876
as follows: "I sold dressed pork for $2.49 per hundred: now in these
hard times it is more than double on foot. Then corn was 15 to 20
cents: now 26 to 40. Wheat 60, now 90; and everything else in
proportion. Then carpenters got $1.25 to $1.50 per day now
double. Bricklayers $2.00 now to $1.50 then." The Inter- Ocean
remarks that its correspondent might have added that farmers and
mechanics get their pay now in money that will keep, and not in
red-dog, wild-cat, and other kinds of currency that used often to
break before the recipient reached home. We have often expressed
the opinion that hard as are the times now in this* country, thev
have more than once been much harder— particularly in the f ee-
trade periods of 1837 to 1842 and 1857 to 1860.

Mi^

Question for F;',K3^-Tn^DERs.-If the duty is always added
to the price, and if tl.e < .^hsxim^x pays the duty, why is it that the

foreign manufacture.^ u fi t^- imTicti"" T«/.r'-u«„* — -i_

- *- ^ " - " — xiii^i,- j,..,g^ ixi:r\.tiau.i, »ic always so

solicitous to have the duty removed ?

tmmitKsemgmrm

THE PEUJL OF FREE-TRADE ENOLAND.

THE PERIL OF FREE-TRADE ENGLAND.-ENGLI8H
TRIBUTES TO OUR PROTECTIVE POLICY.

The lesson which our Interntitional Exhibition has taught to free-
trade England, namely, that protection has built up formidable
rivals to her industrial supremacy, our own nation being the princi-
pal rival, is being reely commented on in English journals. We
publish below liberal extracts from several letters to the London
Times, most of which express well-grounded alarm at the rapid
growth of American manufactures, which they rightly attribute to
the protective policy. We take the liberty to italicize several sen-,
ttjnces in all of these letters which possess especial significance,
some of which should bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of
American free-traders :

Sir:— I am glad to see that the danger to our manufacturers
from the competition of our American rivals is receiving some dis-
cussion in your columns. No subject of more vital interest can
engage the attention of mercantile men. I have had opportunity
during a good many years to watch the progress of American
manufactures, and I am satisfied that America is soon to become by
very much the most formidable competitor we have ever known. It
is probable that the Philadelphia Exhibition will haaten this con-
summation, and will be found hereafter to mark the opening of a
njw era for both English and American manufacturers. * *

The Americans have lately made surprising progress in the per- '
fecting of their manufactures. There is still among them a love of
foreign goods, but it consists with my observation that that prefer-
ence weakens year by year as American products improve. All
well-to-do men are still clothed in foreign woolens, the dye of which
is reputedly more reliable than that of the native article. Ladies
still assert, truly, that American silks want the lustre and attrac-
tiveness of European. Rich men still cover their flocrs with
carpets woven in England or on the Continent. But the American
manufacturers will never rest till their cloths compare favorably vdth
those of Europe; and during the present year there have been
started in New York silk and carpet factories, the products of
which threaten to supplant even the finest grades of foreign goods
in the favor of consumers. The European producer holds the
American market by a tenure which grows every year more precarious.
Competition has compelled attention to the reduction of cost, and
the results gained are highly important. As one illustration of

THE PERIL OF FREE-TRADE ENGLAND.

what has beou done — perhaps as yet rather an extreme one — I
may mention an article which some years ago cost the manufacturer
80c. per yard, and now costs him only 40. The same article im-
ported from England costs 45c., without duty. The necessity of
reduced cost by increased skill and economy is now thoroughly
appreciated by the American manufacturers. * *

America is year by year depending less upon foreign countries for
the goods which her people consupie. Her protective policy has
been costly beyond all calculation, but it has made her a great
manufacturing nation, soon to be independent of foreign supplies ;
and not merely that. With a producing power largely in excess of
her own requirements, with abundant capital, (jxperience, and
energy, with an ample supply of labor, disciplined and intelligent,
wioh legislative disabilities soon to be removed, and the cost of
production reduced to the lowest point, America enters the arena
as a competitor of England in all the foreign markets of which
England has hitherto enjoyed a virtual monopoly. America has
already ceased to take our iron. She will gradually cease to take
our cottons, our carpets, our woolen cloths, our silks; and in a few
years more we must be prepared to encounter in all the marts of
our foreign commerce the irons, the cottons, the woolens, the silks
of our enterprising kinsmen.

Let not English manufacturers delude themselves by a supine
trust in the traditional supremacy of English manufacture. Beyond
the Atlantic are a people with energy and skill equal to ours ; with
every advantage which we possess, and with no disadvantage
excepting such as legislation has created and will shortly remove;
above all, with a passionate eagerness for improvement, which con-
trasts ominously with our conservative disposition to tread in the
steps of our fathers. These are our competitors in the future. I
look, not unhopefully, on the prospects of English industry ; but we
shall incur great sorrows if we remain blind to the fact that we are
about to entei' the era of a competition keener and more formidable
than it has ever before been our misfortune to encounter.

Your obedient servant,
August 28th. A Manufacturer.

Sir : — After spending more than three months at the Philadelphia
Exhibition I return home more deeply impressed than ever with
the change that has occurred in the prospects of England as a manu-
facturing country. I have attended all the great international

THE PERIL OF FREE-TRADE ENGLAND.

exhibitions since 1851, and have seen with concern the gradual loss
of position which England has suffered, until now she finds herself
closely chai.enged in every department of industry, and in some
according to the judgment of experts, she holds the first place no
longer, or holds it doubtfully.

I perfectly agree with the writer of the letter which appeared in
the Times of the 31st ult., over the signature of "A Manufacturer "
that the Americans are on the point of becoming our most dangerous
rivals,^ and I indorse every statement that he makes in support of
this view. I have watched closely during the last few years their
rapid progress as a manufacturing people. Their spirit and enter-
prise are boundless. They have imported the very newest and best
machinery of England, Belgium, Germany, and France; they have
tempted away, through agents sent over for the purpose, skilled work-
men from each of these countries, giving preference, however, to those of
Ji.ngland ; and they are rapidly training an army of skilled workmen
for themselves. I can say, from rfiy own knowledge as a practical
man and from the statements of friends upon whom I can rely that
in the departments of iron, wool, cotton, and a certain class of silk
they can produce work which, in quality, is fully equal to our own.
ihat the cost of production is greater than with us is very little to
the point. That is a difficulty that will right itself Th/great
matter for us to note is that they can produce the article required
We may depend upon it the rest will follow in due time. Out of
their present commercial chaos order will surely come, and, I fesr in a
form for which we are quite unprepared. I marvel that so few of
our leading manufacturers have as yet been over to Philadelphia
and I can not too strongly urge those who are interested in the
oranches of industry just named to go and judge whether the alarm
that is at last being sounded is a false one. No descriptions, however
graphic, no reports, official or otherwise, ought to be allowed to stand
lu place of a personal inspection. Nor is America, the only country
to be thus critically observed. France, Belgium, and Germany are
od rivals, and have long been formidable; but countries hitherto
almost unthought of as manufacturing centres are now taking a
very respectable position, and are producing work which if not
equal to our own, is, at any rate, of sufficient excellence to shut out
our goods from these markets. There are the woolens and porcelain
as well as the wrought iron of Sweden; the hosiery, cotton, and
woolens of Spain; the silks of Russia, the machinery and woolens
of Canada, and the porcelain and metal work of Japan all of
which are admirable, and make a formidable list of addenda to our

THE PERIL OF FREE-TRADE ENGLAND.

catalogue of difficulties. Only a very small number of English
manufacturers visited the exhibition at Vienna, and the mistake is
being repeated at Philadelphia. It will be a serious misfortune it
the two months which still remain are not better improved, ihe
situation is so new and strange that nothing but a personal inspec-
tion of what the world is producing will convince our manufacturers
of the true state of the case, and brace them up to make the extra-
ordinary efforts which have now become necessary if we are to retain
the position which still remains to us. I am, sir, etc.,

Liverpool, Sept. 1, 1876. A Practical Man.

Sir —I have read the letters of " A Manufacturer " and " A
Practical Man," in your columns, with a feeling of amusement at
the feverish alarm which the prospect of American competition has
produced in their minds. 1, too, am a textile manufacturer and a
practical man, employing a population of some thousands, working
with my own capital only, and managing my business m person.
I have declined to send any samples of my productions to Phila-
delphTa, as I am not disposed to give American manufacturers the
opportunity of a full inspection and comparison of them so long as
their government thinks proper to handicap me by import duties ot
fifty to sixty per cent. Under these circumstances, I also consider
it would be a perfect waste of my time to go to the Philadelphia 1.x-
hibition, as I find it all little enough to devote to the daily study of
the changing requirements of my home and foreign customers, ot
the fluctuations of prices, the constant perfecting of my machinery
and working organization, and, most important of all, the health,
education, and industrial training of my workpeople. As regards
quality of goods, I can only say that mine are at least honest and
unvarnished, and I will take care to keep them so. For many
years past the home trade and several foreign markets have con-
tinually required better and more sterling fabrics, while the raer-
chants who trade to high-tariflf markets, the American especially,
Juive been as regularly asking for some skillfully-contrived detenora-
Hon of qualUies to meet the exigencies of their podtion under high
protective duties. I find French competition severe; of American
I have not the slightest fear as regards any future which affects
living generations. If we are ever beaten, it will be only m con-
sequence of the undue shortening of our hours oj labor and the

THE PERIL OF FREE-TRADE ENGLAND.

deterioration of our working population through excessive drinking.
On these points I confess I am ^nxious ; but they are beyond my
control, except in so far as my personal influence and the main-
tenance of a strict, but kindly, discipline in the works may affect the
latter, and I fear that is, after all, very little.

I therefore feel, doubtless with many others, that the only wise
course, both at present and in view of any competition we may be
called to meet at a future day, is to do my own part calmly and
diligently, troubling myself as little as possible with matters beyond
my control. It may, however, be well to direct public attention to
the impolicy of an undue shortening of the hours of labor by legis-
lative enactment, which directly enhances the cost of production in
this country, and to the important question whether our government
has doiit in past years, or is at present doing, all in its power to keep
in hand and to increase its influence with our own colonies and
foreign states to prevent their adoption or maintenance of heavy pro-
tective duties on our manufactures. I am, sir, your obedient servant,

September 4. Deira.

The self-complacent letter of "Deira" induced "A Practical
Man " to write the editor of The Times a second letter, under date
of September 8, from which the following extracts are taken : —

Sir : — May I be allowed a few words in reply to the various com-
ments which have been made on my letter of 1st inst ? I am not
maintaining a thesis or entering into questions of political economy.
I am only pointing out as emphatically as I can the fact that other
nations, and notably the United States, are progressing more rapidly
than ourselves in certain branches of manufacture. * * *
I still hold that, although at present the cost of production in
America is greater than with us, yet that this is only a temporary
difficulty. Manufacturers have proved that they can produce the
article required by the market, and they are now bending all their
efforts to the reduction of cost. I can specify a class of English
goods which have latterly been wholly superseded in the United
States market by goods of native, or, as they have it, of "domestic"
manufacture, and to the excellence of which I have had to bear
unwilling testimony. I could mention another class which is
evidently oomed to the same fate, as they can be produced on the
other side of the water at a reduction of thirty-five per cent, as

THE PERIL OF FREE-TRADE ENGLAND.

compared with twelve months ago, and are now fractionally above
English rates. * * * j j^ave had the advantage of
several years' residence in the country and speak advisedly, and
I must therefore protest against having my statements pooh-pooh'd
by stay-at-home correspondents, one of whom says that he has "not
the slightest fear of competition," and considers that it would be "a
perfect waste of time" to go to Philadelphia. If "Deira" chooses
to wear rose-colored spectacles, well and good ; but he must allow
other people the use of their own eyesight. Ignoring a difficulty is
not surmounting it, and it is just this impassiveness, this self-
complacency of the English manufacturer, which is the worst symp-
tom of the whole case. A Practical Man. .

Sir : — The question of English manufactures and foreign compe-
tition is continually presenting itself; it comes to the front again
and again. There is doubtless considerable uneasiness about it;
some element not quite understood ; some difficulty in explaining
the position, or why should it be everlastingly occupying people's
attention? Your two correspondents, " A Manufacturer " and "A
Practical Man," as well as your leading article on Mc^day, prove
the existence of something wrong. English commerce is not run-
ning smooth, trade and finance are both out of joint, and there is
no sign of improvement.

I trust you will permit me to show how seriously the commercial
policy of our modern statesmen is influencing the general trade
of the country. It is now universally acknowledged that there
is very great depression in all the staple trades of the country —
indeed, every day's experience is confirmatory of this sad fact.
The circumstance of cash being only worth one per cent, is a
proof that trade is not what it ought to be. Many reasons are
given for this state of things ; but I hold that your correspondent,
"A Practical Man," in your impression of Saturday last, indirectly
explains the position; although he only refers to American compe-
tition, he might pay a visit to the South Kensington collection, and
he would see the excellence of the workmanship of other countries
as well. The point I wish to direct serious attention to is this, that
English products are virtually excluded from all foreign countries
by high fiscal duties, especially so in America, and those who go to
the exhibition in Philadelphia ought to remember that England
admits all the manufactures of America absolutely free, but that
America refuses to receive the productions of England only at

THE PERIL OF FREE-TRADE ENGLAND.

duties almost prohibitory; and so Joug as this one-sided system of
commerce exists England and English interests must continue to
suffer. It appears tc^ me to be very absurd to suppose that, in these
days of individual competition, English statesmen can really expect
Joreign governments to expose their people to the competition of
Enghshmen; they never will do it. Why, sir, if America admitted
the free importation of British goods, that country would he imme-
diately inundated with such a vast quantity of all classes of manufac-
tures that its own people would stand no chance, and hence it is it
imposes such heavy duties.

That there should be found in England a class of statesmen,
\«hether Liberals or Tories, %oho still persist in compelling their
countrymen to submit to such a one-sided commercial system is a
marvel. Can it be possible that English statesmen are altogether
Ignorant o^the sure and rapid destruction of British trade under the
adverse foreign fiscal duties imposed upon it? Can it be possible
that they are blind to the coming struggle among the producing
class ? Can it be possible that they will look with indifference upon
the suffering hosts of people are now enduring, and will have to
endure, by the loss of their occupation ? Sir, you, as the ackuowl
edged leader of the press, ought at least to permit the free discussion
of this one-sided commercial policy, even if you do not help it by
your own powerful influence. Can the President of the Board of
Trade really understand the vast national importance of the trade
he is supposed to preside over ? Does he know chat the products of
England are shut out of America by impossible duties? There is
at present a great effort being made to introduce American watches
mto England. How are we treated by America in this particular
article ? If an English watch, made in London at a cost of £10, is
sent to America, a duty of 25 per cent.— that is in cash £2 10s.'--
would be charged upon it, but England receives American watches
free, and hence it is they advertise and push this particular trade,
and thus injure the business formerly done by the watch-making
industry of England? Can the Right Hon. President be alive to
this great abuse? Can he, as President of the Board of Trade,
understand the vast importance of this national sacrifice, not in one
article, but in everything we make ? Our manufacturers and ivork-
men are thrust out by the importation of foreign goods dutyfree, and
are shut out of all foreign markets by the imposition of prohibitory
import duties, a position too ridiculous to last with a generally
dtclining commerce, and too ruinous to endiir&hy those who live by
the labor of their hands. Hyde

30 THE LOSS IN TRANSPORTATION — THE FRENCH TARIFF.

The Loss in Transportation. — As an individnal instance of
the wasteful sort of transportation may be mentioned the case of a
Wisconsin farmer who, in the year 1865, bought in Philadelphia a
fine overcoat of French cloth for $100, and on paying for it remarked
that this coat cost him just 1,000 bushels of corn, since he had lately
sold that quantity at home for ten cents per bushel. Now the ex-
penditure of natural forces and of human labor in producing the
1,000 bushels of corn doubtless exceeded that of producing the over-
coat ten or twenty fold, and, if the two articles had been produced
side by side, 50 or 100 bushels of corn would have paid for the coat;
but as it was, excepting some profit of middlemen, all the remaining
900 or 950 bushels of corn were lost in the mere transportation df
corn from Wisconsin to France, and of a coat from France to Phil-
adelphia, and were lost by the firmer ; for he who seeks a market
must bear all the cost of carriage thither, and he who wants goods
must pay for their carriage also.

Of this unreasonable and unstable nature is a large part of Eng-
land's great traflSc. She holds producer and consumer artificially
asunder, inserting between them her credits and her factories, and
imposes upon the nations who deal with her the cost of maintaining
her enormous fleets of merchantmen and war vessels, her swarms of
merchants, bankers, middlemen, and agents, and her multitudes of
luxurious idlers. — Joseph Wharton.

The French Tariff — How it Works. — Those who believe the
invectives which represent our tariff as uuequaled in its enormity
may be instructed by the following incident: — Late in the year
1873, I sent to Paris a small invoice of Nickel-Ammonia Sulphate.
Shortly after, I heard that my customer had died, that the goods had
been seized by the French government for violation of the customs
laws, and that a fine of six hundred francs was levied upon the
consignee, simply because that substance was not named in the
French law ; it was therefore not only prohibited but was confis-
cated. My application to be allowed to take back the goods was
refused except on condition of first paying a duty of thirty-six per
cent. Finally, as a favor, the goods were surrendered to me for
sale in France on my paying, in addition to thirty-six per cent,
duty, a fine of four hundred francs. France thus prohibits the
entry of goods, no matter how innocent and useful, which her laws
do not explicitly name as admissible, and punishes by confiscation
the shipper and by fine the receiver of such goods. — Joseph Wharton.

WHAT FREE TRADE WOULD PRODUCE.

What Free Trade would Produce.— Free trade has but one
sole object, and that is to allow foreign manufacturers to compete
on equal terms with American manufacturers in American markets.
This involves the raising by direct taxation of flie national revenue
that is now raised by duties on imports, and an equalization of the
price of labor in this country and Europe. Even with the ap-
parently reliable start our iron, cotton, and woolen industries have
at the present time, it is doubtful whether, under a reign of free
trade, they would contest the field with the foreign manufacturers.
The two items of labor and capital, that constitute the great pro-
portion of cost in manufactures, will not come down to the European
standard. There is that difference between an old, thickly-settled,
and circumscribed State, and a new, sparsely inhabited, and broadly
extended country, where every man may become a landholder and
tiller of the soil whenever he chooses or necessity compels. In
Europe capital is worth one to two j)er cent, per annum ; in this
country it is worth ten to twelve per cent, per annum. The British
manufacturer, if he found it necessary to flood the American market
for one, two, or three years without profit, for the purpose of crip-,
piing the American manufacturers and compelling them to suspend
operations, could do it at half or one-third the expense the latter
could carry their stock even one year. With the American indus-
tries shut up and destroyed, the foreign manufacturer could do
again, as he has frequently done before, charge such a price as
would fully indemnify him for previous concessions. All this would
involve the bankruptcy and ruin ul thousands of mechanics, arti-
sans, and others who have invested their all in these industries,
under the implied guarantee that the policy of 'the government
would not be changed for some years to come, at least.— Chicago
Western Manufacturer.

In April last the price of quinine in England was seven shillings
and two pence an ounce. At that time the American manufac-
turers of this article were able to supply the home demand. To-day,
however, the home supply scarcely equals the home demand, and
orders for English quinine are going abroad. The result is that the
Englishman has raised his price from seven shillings and two pence
an ounce to eight shillings and six pence and nine shillings and
three pence. If there were a scarcity of home-made iron in this
country, how soon would the prices of English iron advance!

THE QUESTION OF PATRIOTISM.

The Question op Patriotism.— The old-fashioned way of
gaining population from a neighboring country by invading it and
carrying off its inhabitants as slaves is no longer practiced by civi-
lized nations, and the acquisition of territory by similar means is
perhaps not so frequent as it once was, but the newer style of
aggrandizement by winning the wealth of a neighbor through iu-
duetrial assaults and trade invasions is now in the fullest activity.

In this modern and highly civilized style of warfare, improved
machinery takes the place of improved artillery ; the enemy's forces
— his industrial population— are driven from their guns by missiles
of textiles and metal wares, and are destroyed in their homes by
starvation rather than by bullets in the field.

It is clear that the patriotism which can sleep through this indus-
trial warfare and suffer this trade spoliation, and can only be roused
into activity by the danger and passion of flagrant war ; which can
vote the public money to maintain rarely used armies, navies, and
forts, but can not give the slightest aid or comfort to the real and
constant defenders of its country's independence— its industrial
soldiers— is a patriotism belonging to periods long gone by, and is
of little more present use than a bow and arrow. The spirit of
loyalty is forever the same, but it must now learn to promote its
country's welfare by the arts of peace, pursuing its ancient and
honorable aim by the new methods. — Joseph Wharton.

What a German Commissioner to our International
Exhibition says.— Professor iteuleaux, the head of the German
Commission at ihe Phiiad " "^ hibition, has published a state-
ment in which he declares ti -ccellence and the cheapness of
American manufactured goodt . > to the protective policy.
He says : " Let not Germans wol ..v..' at this ; for we also in former
days utilized the system of protection with the greatest success."
And he adds statistical evidence to prove that the United States is
prospering under protection, notwithstanding the panic, while Ger-
man^ industries are suffering because of the partial withdrawal of
protection. No stronger tribute to the value of our protective policv
has yet appeared than the elaborate statement of this eminent Ger-
man protectionist.