,* Q i^^« ■ - ) N7j r.-- yi . iix tl>e fx^.teilf s enjoyed by the mass of the people, or additional favors upon a portion or a distinct class ; and as such additional favors cannot be given by the government directly, except by way of sub- sidy out of the United States Treasury, it must be done indirectly through the insidious way of special legislation ; that is, by creating a system of unequal taxation. If it were generally understood, if the majority of the American people were convinced of the fact, that this protective system necessarily implied unjust and un- equal taxation, they would not tolerate it for an instant. Well aware of this state of public sentiment, some of the advocates of this system evince a disposition to beg the question of taxation, and to bluntly assert "that a duty on import laid for the purpose of protection is not a tax." When it is considered that the importer who pays the tax at the custom house charges the extra amount upon the goods, and the American consumer eventually pays this extra charge, this assertion that protection is not a tax shows the implicit confidence the protectionists have in the stupendous credulity of their victims. Of course, the laying of tariff taxes is perfectly legal and proper as long as they are laid for the purpose of raising revenue for the government. The government of Great Britain raises nearly one hundred million of dollars of her revenue from four articles, to-wit : Tobacco, wine, spirits and tea, which are in the main not produced in the kingdom, and when produced the import tax is as nearly as possible equal to the internal revenue tax paid upon simi- lar articles by the home producer. Thus, a tax upon im- port does not necessarily imply a tax for protection. The moment, however, the purpose of raising revenue for the government is lust sight of, and import taxes are adjusted INTRODUCTION V and laid with the expressed or implied purpose of giving private enterprises special advantages, or protection against competition, that moment the government lends its taxing power to private concerns. It stands guard, as it were, with its army and navy, if necessary, over these special interests, and commands the consumers of the country to buy there, no matter what the quality and price may be, and, therefore, every dollar exacted from the consumer for home commodities, enhanced in price on ac- . count of such special protection, is a tax — a tax more un- just, more oppressive and tyrannical than an ordinary tax unequally levied, because, in the case of a tax for protection the money does not go to the government treasury but into the pockets of a preferred class. This last point should be well kept in mind, and the people should thoroughly understand that protection can be nothing else than a tax — an indirect tax, but a tax. They all know what taxes are; they pay their taxes upon real estate and personal property direct to the collector, who hands them a receipt containing in dollars and cents the exact amount of their tax. But everybody does not seem to know, and a great many do not care to know, what tariff taxes are, while others imagine that the money collected by the government upon imported goods is all the taxes paid in that way, and that these taxes are paid by those only who buy imported goods. If the consumers generally understood that commodi- ties manufactured in this country are, for the greater part, enhanced in price nearly equal to the amount of the duty paid upon similar commodities imported, or forty per cent in the average, they would not hesitate in de- manding that this unjust and unequal s} r stem of taxation be either promptly reformed, or, that a revenue method 10 INTRODUCTION. •which could be perverted into an instrument for the gratification of individual rapacity be eradicated, root and branch. The assertion that protection ultimately leads to cheapness has been answered, " that it were best to begin with cheapness." But. the trouble is that everybody does not know these facts, and the deceptive word " protection " does its stu- pefying work. It is this torpid state of public opinion which causes Mr. Blaine, the foremost advocate of protection in this country, in his " Twenty Years in Congress," exultingly to remark: "Mr. Hamilton was the foremost financier in this country who understood that it is easier to collect ten dollars by an indirect tax than to collect one dollar by direct levy." Mr. Blaine's conclusions are correct. It is easier to collect money through this insidious way, but will he contend that it is easier to pay f It is always easier to take surreptitiously that which is not due. The attempted collection of ten dollars direct taxes, where only one dollar is due, would probably meet with difficulty, and, as the ten dollars can be secured easier by an indirect way, Mr. Blaine recommends that way as the acme of financiering-statesmanship. [It is not in a partisan sense that we now or shall here- after mention the name of Mr. Blaine. Principles are immutable, but governmental theories originate with and are shaped by public men. The open declarations and statements of these leading men are accepted by millions of voters as their political dogma, and, therefore, their names cannot be disassociated from their policies. It will not be denied that to-day Mr. Blaine is the foremost representative of the protection theory in the United INTRODUCTION. 11 States, and that his statements upon this theory are of a more authoritative character than those of any other liv- ing man.] " Such a system of taxation," said Mr. Kasson, the able representative to Congress from Iowa, as early as 1800, and before he had changed his views upon that question, "is a simple system of robbery; taking from one home industry and paying it to another. If we go on in the present plan of adding to the cost of everything we produce, there is not another country on the face of the earth that will contribute one cent to enrich the peo- ple of the United States, or to buy a single article of our production. It is an attempt against the law of Provi- dence, to force the people of this country to pay more for what they need than the laws of Providence would other- wise require." Again the late Emory Storrs, the great Republican orator of the "West, thus tersely describes this insidious tax : " Finally, what is tariff? It is a tax. It is nothing less than and nothing but a tax. It is a tax which we do not pay to the government, but to the manufacturer for his private enrichment ; for where protection begins revenue ceases. The consumer is impoverished, the gov- ernment is not aided. Shall this system be continued? This question we must answer. We may dodge it and evade it for a time, but the millions of men who pro- tected the Nation in the hour of sore peril with their lives demand that this question shall be answered. I am for myself prepared to answer it. My answer is : Our soil is free, our men are free, our thought is free, our speech is free, our trade shall be free ! " As to the meaning and purport of the word tax there can be no misunderstanding. It is a burden laid by 12 INTRODUCTION. the government for public purposes. Webster defines it as "a charge, especially a pecuniary burden, which is imposed by authority. A levy of any kind made upon the property for the support of a government." The authority of Congress to levy taxes is defined in Section 8, Article VII, of the Constitution of the United States, as follows : " The Congress shall have power to levy and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises ; to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States." It will not successfully be maintained that the public debt is being paid, or the common defense and general Avelfare of the United States promoted, by confiscat- ing the property of one citizen under the tariff power and giving it as a bounty or gratuity to another citizen, under the pretense that it is necessary to protect him in carrying on his private business. Legal authorities and judicial decisions are uniform in their opinion that no tax can be legally levied except for public purposes. Judge Thomas Cooley, former] 7 cf the Supreme Court of the State of Michigan, and Professor of Law of the University of that State, in his work on " Principles of Constitutional Law," thus defines the limits of taxation under the Constitution of the United States : " Constitutionally, a tax can have no other basis than the raising of revenue for public purposes, and whatever governmental exaction has not this basis is .tyrannical and unlawful. A tax on imports, therefore, the purpose of which is not to raise revenue but to discourage and indirectly prohibit some particular import for the bene- fit of some home manufacturer, may well be questioned as being merely colorable and therefore not warranted by constitutional principles." INTRODUCTION. 13 Iii a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, concerning the legality of a tax levied by the city of Topeka upon the authority of the Legislature of the State of Kansas, for the purpose of paying the bonds given to a bridge company, as an inducement to locate their shops in that city, Judge Miller says: "Of all the powers conferred on the government that of taxation is the most liable to abuse. Given a purpose or object for which taxation may be lawfully used, and the extent of its exercise is in its very nature unlimited." And further : " This power can as readily be employed against one class of individuals and in favor of another, so as to ruin the one class and give unlimited wealth and prosperity to the other, if there are no implied limitations of the use for which the power may be exercised." "To lay with one hand the power of the government on the property of the citizen and with the other bestow it upon favored individ- uals to aid private enterprises and build up private fort- unes, is none the less robbery because it is done under the form of law and is called taxation. This is not legislation. It is a decree under legislative forms. JSTor is it taxation. Beyond a cavil, there can be no lawful taxation which is not laid for public purpose." And again, in an opinion of the Supreme Court of the State of Maine, the following occurs : "No public exigency can require private spoliation for the private benefit of favored individuals. If the citizen is protected in his property by the state against the public, much more is he against private rapacity. It is the taking that constitutes the wrong, no matter how taken." And again, the Supreme Court of the State of Iowa, in Hanson mYernon, held : " ISTo authority or even dictum can be found which asserts that there can be any legiti- 14 INTRODUCTION. mate taxation when the money to be raised does not go into the public treasury. If there is any proposition about which there is an entire and uniform weight of judicial authority, it is that taxes are to be imposed for the use of the people and not for the special benefit of individuals. While the state is bound to protect all, it ceases to give that just protection when it affords undue advantage or special and exclusive privileges to particular individuals at the cost and charge of the rest of the community." Just as soon as the people become conscious of these fundamental truths, there will no doubt be a sudden end made to special privileges to a preferred class. " It is a curiosity of despotism that the people are too often unconscious of their slavery, as they are also unconscious of bad laws. A wise and just government measures its duties not by what the people will bear without a murmur, but by what is most for their wel- fare." HISTORICAL SKETCH. "To comprehend the present we must know the past. To conceive the future, we must understand the present.'' OX examining this great question of industrial and commercial liberty irom an historical standpoint, it will be found that its suppression, or the uncalled-for interference in its natural course, has caused many wars, and that, indeed, the main cause of our own revolutionary war and consequent independence was the result of such interference. The foremost American historian, Bancroft, says upon this subject: '"American independence, like the great rivers of the country, had many sources ; but the head- spring that colored all the stream was the Navigation Act." England's unparalleled prosperity and greatness date not from the time when her ministers and lawmakers deemed it their province to attend to the private business of her merchants and manufacturers, but from the period when her statesmen had made the discovery that the " commercial let-alone policy " was the best. In our case, it is questionable whether the American colonies would ever have deemed it necessary, or even desirable, to sever their allegiance from the mother country had that dis- covery been made a century and a half ago. The truth of the old proverb, "it is an ill wind that blows no- body any good," is strikingly illustrated in the case of British rule in the American colonies ; and it may well be said, that the people of these United States owe their 15 16 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. commanding position among the nations of the world to the short-sightedness and avarice of their English rulers. From the very commencement of the colonies the mother country watched the development of her offspring with a jealous, unmotherly eye, and, instead of encour- aging the spirit of enterprise which was the natural out- growth of prevailing conditions, the British Parliament enacted one law after another with the avowed object of crippling the efforts of the colonists in the fields of com- merce and industry, in order to keep them in safe sub- jection to her own merchants and manufacturers. The colonies were not permitted to trade with any other country, and their cotton, their iron, their wool could not be manufactured into commodities here, but had to be shipped to England in English ships for that purpose. No American colony could purchase its silk from France, its tea from China, or its cloth from Germany, but had to buy in England, although at higher prices. In 1632 an act was passed prohibiting the "exportation of hats from the colonies, and to restrain the number of apprentices taken by hatmakers." An act of 1750 pro- hibited, on penalty of £200 sterling, "the erection of any mill for slitting or rolling iron, or any plating forge to work with a tilt hammer, or any furnace for making- steel in any of the colonies." At the same time encour- agement was given to export pig and bar iron to England for her manufactures. The exportation of all wool or woolen goods of American product from one province to another by water or by land, on horseback or in cart was strictly prohibited. By the Statute of 1763, nothing was allowed " to be imported into a British colony except in English-built ships, whereof the master and three- fourths of the crew were English." HISTORICAL SKETCH. IT But all these restrictions notwithstanding, commerce and trade gradually and steadily increased. To England the colonies exported lumber of all sorts, hemp, flax, pitch, tar, oil, rosin, copper ore, pig and bar iron, whale fins, tobacco, rice, fish, indigo, flax seed, bee's wax, raw silk ; and they also built many ships w T hich found a ready market in the mother country. But the importation of British goods, in consequence of the course pursued by the English government, was still much greater than the amount of the export to Eng- land, and this balance against the colonies had to be paid in gold, realized from the trade with the West India Islands. The difficulties to be overcome, however, seemed rather to stimulate than discourage the early settlers in the manufacture of their own commodities ; as, for instance, the coarser kinds of cutlery, coarse cloth, both linen and woolen, hats, paper, shoes, household furniture, etc., were manufactured, to a considerable extent, as early as 1738 ; of course, the establishments were small and their pro- ducts insufficient to supply the demand. During the war of the revolution the commerce of the United States was interrupted, not only with Great Britain, but in a great measure with the rest of the world. The greater part of the shipping belonging to the colonies was destroyed by the enemy, or perished by the natural process of decay. Under these circumstances the people of this country were thrown upon their own resources for the production of all kinds of commodities. The zeal, ingenuity and industry of the people fur- nished the country with articles of prime necessity and, in a measure, supplied the place of a foreign market. Such was the progress in arts under this inherent stimulus, 18 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. after the return of peace, that when uninterrupted inter- course with England was again opened, some articles which before were imported altogether were found so well and so abundantly manufactured at home that their importa- tion was stopped. But with the disappearance of the common danger the commonness of interests also ceased. The States grew, to a great extent, commercially independent of each other and the old jealousies were revived. Massachusetts had a navigation act and levied import duties, and other States followed her example. The restrictions and prohibitions imposed on American commerce were vexatious and destructive, and while Congress had power to enter into treaties of reciprocity it could retaliate in any way where its offer of trade was refused. From 1783 until the adoption of the Federal constitu- tion, it was generally recognized that Congress should have power to regulate commercial relations between the States and foreign powers ; but the supposed interests of the different States presented an effectual bar against ac- tion. These obstacles were removed by the adoption of the constitution. No sooner had the first Federal Con- gress met than a resolution for taxing imports was introduced by Mr. Madison, for the purpose of giving some resources to the almost empty treasury. It was during the debate which followed that Mr. Hartley, a rep resentative from Pennsylvania, said : " I think it is both politic and just that the fostering hand of the na- tional government should be extended to all such manu- factories as will tend to national utility." This was the key-note of our protection system. This firsiJ-adfLbill, which, after a lengthy discussion, was adopted with the significant specification in its pre- HISTORICAL SKETCH. 19 amble that one of its objects was "the encouragement and protection of manufacture," and on the 4th of July- following received the signature of President Washington. The signing of this bill is frequently cited by the ad- vocates of the protective system in support of their asser- tions that Washington had repeatedly recommended the exercise of the "constitutional right" to lay taxes for purposes of protection. They fail to mention that he said, in reference to this subject in his first message to Congress, " the safety and interest of the people require that they should protect such manufactures as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particu- larly for military, supplies." Mark this language, used nearly a century ago. The main object of this first tariff bill was to fill an empty treasury for the liquidation of public debts in- curred during the war for independence. The principle which governed its final adjustment was to impose the highest per centum on articles of luxury, and to fix the lowest on goods and products of ordinary consumption among all classes of the people, which is just the reverse of the principle which governs the protectionists in their legislation of to-day. This spirit of fairness was well illustrated by the fact that the duty on Bohea tea was placed at six cents a pound, while for the finer Hyson tea a duty of twenty cents was laid. The then luxurious ar- ticle of loaf-sugar was taxed with three cents a pound, while the brown sugar, used by the poorer classes, paid but one cent. French and German wines were taxed eight cents a gallon, while the expensive Madeira paid a tax of eighteen cents; and so on through the list. An average duty of fifteen per cent ad valorem — that is, upon the value of the article — was placed upon the different 20 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. kinds of manufactures ; revenue was in those days the ob- ject, protection only the incident. The first authoritative imprint of national policy, how- ever, was sought to be given to the protective system by Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury under "Washington and the recognized leader of the Federalist party. It has been questioned whether that astute states- man ever earnestly Avas in favor of a republican form of government for this country ; at all events, "he accepted it more from necessity than from choice." As a writer of note happily expresses it, " he repre- sented the force of national law, as Jefferson represented that of individual freedom. To Hamilton, Jefferson's idea of liberty was that of a bear broken loose from his chain ; and to Jefferson, Hamilton's idea of law was only that of British law, then administered by the few and for the few, with little regard for the happiness or rights of the many." In other words, Jefferson represented the popular and Hamilton the aristocratic idea of govern- ment. In characterizing Jefferson's idea of liberty, Mr. Hamilton exhibits his contempt for the great mass of common laboring people by comparing them to the bear, which it is unsafe to release from its chain. In perfect unison with these views, the situation of the two parties in this tariff controversy is described by Mr. Elaine on page 180, vol. I of his work : " The tariff question," he says, "has, in fact, been more "frequently and elaborately debated than any other issue since the foundation of the government. The present generation is more familiar with the question relating to slavery, to war, to reconstruction ; but as these disappear by per- manent adjustment, the tariff question returns and is eagerly seized upon by both sides to the controversy. HISTORICAL SKETCH. 21 More than any other issue, it represents the enduring and persistent line of division between the two parties which, in a general sense, have always existed in the United States; th. party of strict construction and the party of liberal construction; the party of State rightsdnd the party of national supremacy, the party of stinted n venu< and re- stricted expenditun to 1824, Thomas Ben- ton, in his memorable work, "Thirty Years in the United States Senate," said: "The protection of domestic indus- try not being among the granted powers was looked for in the incidental, and denied by the strict constructionists to be a substantial power to be exercised for the direct purpose of protection ; but admitted by all at that time and ever since the first tariff act of 1T89 to be an inci- dent to the revenue-raising power. Revenue the object, protection the incident, had been the rule of earlier tariffs." In 1828 the duties were still further increased. " The tariff for 1828," says Benton, "is an era in our legislation, being the event from which the doctrine of ' nullification ' takes its origin, and from which a serious division dates between the North and South. It was the work of poli- ticians and manufacturers, and was commenced for the benefit of the woolen interest ; but like all other bills of this kind, it required help from other interests to get HISTORICAL SKETCH. 25 itself along, ana that help was only to be obtained by admitting other interests into the benefit of the bill 1 ' — or, what since that time is known by the name of " pool- ing." During the debates upon this bill, Mr. Rowan, a rep- resentative from the State of Kentucky, said : " He was not opposed to the tariff as a system of revenue honestly devoted to the objects of revenue ; on the contrary, he was friendly to a tariff of that character ; but, when per- verted by the ambition of political aspirants and the secret influence of inordinate cupidity to purposes of sec- tional ascendency, he would not be seduced by the capti- vation of names or terms, however attractive, to lend it his undivided support. It is in vain to contend that it is called the American system — names do not alter things. There is but one American system, and that is delineated in the State and Federal constitutions. It is the system of equal rights and privileges, secured by the representa- tive principle — a system which, instead of subjugating the proceeds of the labor of some to taxation with the view to enrich others, secures to all the proceeds of their labor, and exempts all from taxation, except for the support of the protecting power of the government. As a sup- port necessary to the maintenance of the government he would support it, call it what you please; as a tax for any other purpose, and especially for the purposes to which he had alluded, it had his undivided reprobation, under whatever name it might assume." From the adoption of this tariff also dates the remark- able change of polic} 7 of the New England States — that is, from free trade to that of protection ; and from that epoch also dates Mr. Webster's singular conversion to the protective system. From a commercial community JSTew 26 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. England had become one of manufacturing enterprises, and, consequently, selfishness dictated a change of policy. The debates upon this bill of 1828 were very bitter; the representatives of the manufacturing States and of the agricultural States being arrayed against each other, the controversy partook much of a sectional character. Members of the Southern States were extremely dissatis- fied with the bill which was passed by the small majority of 107 against 102 in the House, and with but twenty-three to twent}^-two votes in the Senate. The new burden upon imports, they very properly maintained, fell upon the producer of the agricultural exports, and tended to enrich one section of the Union at the expense of the other — a proposition which has been realized to the letter, as will be shown further on by official statistics. It was during this memorable debate that Mr. VanBuren ad- dressed the sagacious remark to the manufacturers, "if they suffered their interests to become identified with a political party they would share the fate of that party." In 1832 South Carolina passed the famous Nullifica- tion Act, and it was not so much the threat of Gen. Jack- son that he would hang Calhoun higher than Hainan as the Clay Compromise Act that subdued the rebellious spirit. This compromise tariff contained the stipulated surrender of the protective principle; the clause which provided that after the 30th of September, 1842, duties should only be laid for raising such revenue as might be necessary for an economical administration of the gov- ernment, left the question at rest for ten years. In 1837 the financial panic, the result of wild speculation, raged all over the land. The "Whig party successfully charged the tariff reduction with the prevailing distress, and thus elected Harrison and Tyler in 1840, and two years after- HISTORICAL SKETCH. 27 ward the Whig tariff bill, which substantial])' restored the high duties of 1824, was approved. In 1844 Polk was elected President, and his adminis- tration constitutes the most remarkable period of tariff reform in the history of this country. Mr. Polk's Secre- tary of the Treasury, Mr. Walker, was a man of extraor- dinary force and ability, and withal a sincere adherent of the Jefferson ian school of commercial freedom. In his whole intellectual make-up he was the exact antipode of Hamilton. He firmly believed not only in the right but in the capacity of the people to rule. He believed also that the interests of the few should always be subservient to the interests of the many. In his first an- nual report, Mr. Walker laid down the following princi- ples upon which his great economical act was to rest : "1. That no more money should be collected than is necessary for the wants of the government honestly administered. " 2. That no duty be imposed on any article above the lowest rate which will yield the largest amount of revenue. "3. That below such a rate discrimination be made descending in the scale of duties or, f< >r imperative reasons, the articles may be placed on the free list. u 4. That the maximum of revenue duties should be imposed on luxuries. " 5. That all minimum and all specific duties should be abolished and ad valorem duties substituted in their place, care being taken against fraudulent invoices and under- valuation, and to assess the d n ty upon the actual market value. "6. That the duty should be so imposed as to operate as equally as possible throughout the Union, discriminat- ing neither for nor against any class or section." 28 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. In his remarkable report, Mr. Walker said : " The constitutional power of Congress to collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises does not authorize the laying of pro- hibitory duty, or a duty in which revenue is sacrificed to the object of protecting the manufacture of the commodity taxed. Taxation, whether direct or indirect, should be as nearly as practicable in proportion to the property. If the whole revenue were raised by a tax upon property, the'poor would pay a very small portion of such tax; where- as, by the consumption of imports or of commodities en- hanced i/n price under the tariff, thepoor are made to pay a much larger shai^e than if they were collected by an assess- ment in proportion to property. The duties upon luxuries should be lixed at the highest revenue standard. This would not be discriminating in favor of the poor but would mitigate that discrimination. A protective tariff is a question regarding the enhancement of the profits of capital, and not the augmentation of the wages of labor. It is a question of percentage and is to decide whether money invested in our manufactories shall, by special legislation, yield a profit of ten to twenty or thirty per cent, or whether it shall remain satisfied with a dividend equal to that accruing from the same capital invested in agricult- ure, commerce or navigation. It seems strange that while the profits of agriculture vary from one to eight per cent, that of manufacture is more than double. The reason is that, while high duties secure nearly a 'monopoly of the home market for the manufacturer, farmers are, to a great extent, forbidden to buy in foreign markets and confined to the home market with prices enhanced by the duties. The tariff is thus a double benefit to the manu- facturer and a double loss to the farmer. Industry will best thrive when let alone ; let all international exchanges HISTOKICAL SKETCH. 29 of product move as freely in their orbits as the heavenly bodies, and their order and harmony will be as perfect and their results as beneficial as in every movement under the laws of nature, when undisturbed by the errors and influences of man." The Walker tariff was adopted by the House by a large majority but barely passed the Senate ; that body, in our political system, then, as to-day, being antagonistic to all popular measures, not the representatives of sov- ereign States but of privileged classes. The low-revenue tariff, contrary to all the prophecies of protectionists, had the effect of increasing the revenue to $46,000,000 annually, or $20,000,000 more than under the protective tariff of 1842, and sufficient to meet all the exigencies of the Mexican War. Here is what Prof. Summer, of Yale College, a recog- nized authority in matters of political economy, says, in reference to the effect of that tariff : " The period from 1S46 to 1860 was our period of com- parative free trade. For an industrial history of the United States, no period presents a greater interest than this. It was a period of very great and very solid pros- perity. The tariff rates were low and their effect limited. It was called a revenue tariff with incidental protection. The manufacturers which, it had been said, would perish, did not perish and did not gain sudden and exorbitant profits. They made steady and genuine progress. The repeal of the English corn laws in 1846 opened a large market for American agricultural products. The effect on both countries was most happy. It seemed as if the old system had gone forever, and that these two great nations, with free industry and free trade, were to pour increased wealth upon each other. The fierce dogmatism 30 THE PROTECTIVE TxVEIFF. of protection and its deeply-rooted prejudices seemed to have received a fatal blow. Our shipping rapidly in- creased. Our cotton crops grew larger and larger. The States, indeed, repeated our old currency follies and the panic of 1857 resulted, but it Avas only a stumble in a career of headlong prosperity. We recovered from it in a twelvemonth. Incidentally, I will add also that, in the administration of the government, the period from the Mexican to the Civil War is our golden era, if we have any." In the following singularly corroborative language, in speaking of that period of simple revenue tariff, Mr. Blaine, in his " Twenty Years in Congress," says : " The tariff of 1S4G was yielding abundant revenue, and the business of the country was in a flourishing condition. Money became very abundant after the year 1849 ; large enterprises were undertaken, speculation was prevalent, and for a considerable period the prosperity of the coun- try was general and apparently genuine. After 1852 the Democrats had almost undisputed control of the govern- ment, and had gradually become a free-trade party. The principles involved in the tariff of 1816 seemed for the time to be so entirely vindicated and approved' that resist- ance to it ceased, not only among the people but among the protective economists and even among the manvfact- urers to a large extent. So general was this acquiescence that in 1856 a> protective tariff was not suggested or even Ji inted' at hi/ any one of the three parties which present r week in wages in 1882 and but $12.00 in 1880. The tariff on watches is twenty-five per cent. 116 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. UNPROTECTED OCCUPATIONS. Bricklayers and Stonemasons Electrotypers Hod-carriers Slate-roofers Press-feeders Stair-builders Steam-fitter helpers Stone-block pavers Stone-cutters Street-railway employes .... Wooden-block pavers Wood-turners Weekly Wages. 1880. $19 05 13 50 9 00 14 25 7 00 13 50 9 00 18 00 18 00 10 25 18 00 12 00 1880. $20 10 19 15 11 50 15 75 8 50 15 75 12 00 24 00 21 60 13 01 23 50 14 25 Per cent increase. 14 44 27 10 21 17 33 33 20 27 30 19 Thus it appears that the wages in the twelve pro- tected industries suffered a decrease of eighteen per cent on an average during those five years, while flic wages in the twelve unprotected industries received an average increase of twenty-one per cent. And again. Mr. Arrott, of Philadelphia, who was selected to collect statistics for the United States census of 1880, says : "While wages earned in protected industries in 1870 was, per hand employed, $446, for the year 1880 it was but $313.75, or a decrease of about twenty-nine per cent.*' And again: Mr. Wright, in his annual report of 1883, states that in 1875, the percentage of wages paid to the value of production in over two thousand establishments was 24.68, and that in 1880 it was only 20.23, a decrease erf one-sixth in five years. Now, it must be remembered that during all this time the high protective tariff of 1867, with very slight modi- fication, was in operation, and that every attempt at its reduction was met by the manufacturers with the claim LABOK IN. PROTECTED INDUSTRIES. 117 " that such a reduction would be ruinous to American labor." Is it not plain that the benefits of protection, if there are any, have not gone to labor, which, with the aid of organization even, has not succeeded in maintaining the former standard of wages, but that the benefits must have gone to the manufacturer ? Let us see what men of experience in the business have to say about this matter. Mr. Carroll D. "Wright, present Chief of the United States Labor Statistics Bureau, when chief of the Massa- chusetts Labor Bureau, testified before the United States Senate Committee in relation to wages and its propor- tionate share in the profits as follows : Being asked to state his ideas in regard to the equit- able distribution of the joint product of capital and labor as it exists at the present time in that state, Mr. Wright said : " Take $100 worth of product at the price the manufacturer sells it at his warehouse; 61.32 is raw material, 20.33 is labor and 12.88 is interest and expense, leaving 5.47 as net profit to capital." " What rate would that be on the investment? " "Well, according to my report (1883), it would be $34,000,000 in round numbers, on $303,000,000 capital invested, which would be about ten per cent on the capital invested but not on the product." " I understand you to say that the sum remaining to be distributed upon the capital invested in the State of Massachusetts, after paying interest on the capital, is ten per cent more? " " Ten per cent more on the capital." "What is the value of the product of a single mechanic? " "The average to each employe was $1,792; that is what each mechanic, man, women and child, produces. Now, to each man, woman and child employed in a mechanical industry the employer gets $98 net profit; that is giving him six per cent on his capital and five per cent on his product, etc. Each employe gets $364. That brings $98 to the employer as net profit on the product of each employe. It is the product of $364 yearly wages paid to each enploye that produces that $1,792. The balance is raw material and, expense." 118 THE POTECTIVE TARIFF. " Suppose there were but one employer in Massachusetts, and the present number of employes, how much would that employer get? " "He would get a net profit of $34,505,367." " What would the laborers receive? " " They would receive $128,315,362, divided among 352,255 of them or $364 each." " How much capital would one employer have in business, then?' "He would have $303,806,185." " What he has left after paying all expenses is $34,505,367?" " Yes; after all his expenses of labor, raw material, etc." ' ' That is to say that would be the profit after the payment of interest on his capital invested and all insurance and outgo of every description, and keeping up his plant, repairs and all that? " "Yes." On page 653 of the United States Senate Committee's report, we find the following testimony of Mr. Howard, of Fall River — a former member of the State Legislature and Secretary of the Spinners' Association. His evidence was in reference to the share of labor in the manufactured product. Senator Pugh. — " You are a man of intelligence and your knowl- edge, being founded on personal observation and experience, is, there* fore, very valuable. I understand you to state from your personal observation that the manufacturing classes in the New England States are overworked? " " Yes sir." " I want to get your knowledge or your views as to the value which the labor of the operative imparts to the articles that are manufactured in the cotton mills at Fall River where you work. How much of the value does the labor of the operative impart to the cotton fabrics made there?" " I think it is twenty or twenty-two per cent, but I am not certain." "What is your knowledge and information as to the share that the laborer gets of the product, when a division is made between him and the manufacturer ? What is your idea, also, as to whether that share is equitable, just and right, whether it is such a share of the product as the laborer should have in proportion to the amount of work that he does, and the amount of value that his labor imparts to the product?" " There is a wide difference between towns and cities. For LABOR IN PROTECTED INDUSTRIES. 119 instance, here are the Pacific mills in Lawrence. Last year they reduced the wages of their help to about twenty-five per cent, and we could prove that, for nineteen years preceding, the corporation had declared dividends, averaging twenty and a half per cent. We could find evidence of that in our State records." " Are you telling us now what the capitalists — the manufacturers — got in that case?" " Yes, sir; that is the kind of dividends they get in good times, and then, when the first cloud of adversity comes, they never think of the large dividends they have been making for years, but they look around and say, ' The market is falling, and we must keep up these dividends in some way ! ' and then they try to do it by cutting down the wages of their workmen." " That is, they are not willing to lose any portion of these twenty- per-cent dividends when revulsions come in trade and panics take place — they are not willing to lose anything themselves, but they make labor bear the loss?" "That is the fact. And the Pacific mills that I have spoken of have not only made that dividend, but their capital stock has been increased from $2,500,000 to $5,000,000." " What about its being a fact, publicly known to the whole country, that protection through the imposition of tariff laws is claimed by members of Congress for the benefit of American labor? Is not the tariff adjusted, or said to be adjusted, so as to afford protection to the American laborer, by enabling the manufacturer to pay him the highest wages for his work? Is not that the general ground on which it is claimed that there should be protection? " " That is the ground upon which it is claimed, but that is not the prevalent opinion among the working-people." "Then while this protective law is claimed to be and is passed in order that it may be a benefit to the operatives in oxir manufactories, I want to know how much benefit they actually get from the increased prices which the protective tariff gives to the product. What share do the operatives receive when the product is sold and the proceeds are divided between them and capital? " "The benefit? Looking at the wages here, compared with the wages in England, I cannot see any benefit." " That is, the manufacturers take the whole benefit; is that it?" "Yes. They will go over to Canada and bring over hordes of French people here to work in our mills at fifty or seventy-five cents a day." 120 THE PEOTECTIVE TAEIFE. "Are not the operatives in New England intelligent enough to know that this protection that was intended for them in the passage of this tariff law does not reach them, and is not that one reason of their discontent?" "Yes, sir." " Do not operatives there understand that they do not get the benefit of the protective laws which have been passed by Congress for their benefit?" " Nine-tenths of the intelligent operatives think so." Mr. Edward King, a type-founder and a prominent representative of the Central Labor Union, testified before the same committee as follows : " Protection has been unjust in not protecting the working-man in his struggles with capital. I might refer, as an instance, to a statement made by Mr. Powderly, who represents a large labor organization. He was invited to address a large public meeting in the city of New York, which was supposed to be held under the auspices of the working-men of New York in aid of the protective policy. Mr. Powderly, to my own certain knowledge, excited a great deal of comment among the working- men, who owed allegiance to him as an officer of this organization, by the very fact of his taking any action on that question in association with certain capitalists, and in the supposed interest of a political party. The speech that he made on that occasion was freely commented on by the working-men, and the general opinion I found to be that while he advocated protection he still maintained that it was necessary for the working-men to be organized and to fight for their share of the profits. That proposition meant that, living on wages which barely supports him, having work during only a part of theyear, and being almost incapable of supporting a good organization, tbe working-man is still to keep up this struggle for protection, because it is necessary to Lave this ' protec- tion 'in tbe interest of both working-man and master; and thatwben protection is secured, then the working-man has got to turn around and fight his master or employer in order to get his share. So, as I have said, the general opinion of the working men on that occasion seemed to be that it was a kind of work of supererogation on the part of the working-man to take any hand in defending the tariff, when it was acknowledged that they themselves would still 'have to keep up this fight with their employers for their share of the profits, and to keep it up also a grent deal more bitterly than was found necessary in England under free trade. " LABOR m PROTECTED INDUSTRIES. 121 " I understood you to make the statement that it was a mistake to call the wage-receiving class producers; — that they were really customers. Now they are both, are they not?" " Exactly so." " Is it not a fact that in the cost of some products eighty or ninety per cent of the whole is labor? " " Yes, sir." ' ' Does the imposition of a tariff increase the price of the products of the wage-receiving class?" " To a very large extent." "To a very large extent the tariff increases the price that is paid for the products consumed by the wage-receiving class and by others; now, who gets the increased price that is thus put upon these products by the tariff ? Is it the laborer or is it the manufacturer? " " Well, they started a club in New York called ' The Somebody Club,' which ran for a year. It was based upon the idea of finding out who it was that got that surplus, who .was ' Somebody ' that got it; but I believe the club dispersed without discovering who he was." " Does the laborer believe that he gets any part of that increased price?" "No, sir; there is only one thing about it that the laborer is sure of, and that is, that he does not get it." "Do you think he could make any mistake about his getting it?" " If he got it don't you suppose he would know it?" " Well, he might, but he hasn't had a chance yet. When I empha- size the fact that the laborer is a consumer, and when I say, in answer to your question, that the commodities which labor produces are raised in price, the relation of that last statement to my former statement is that the working-man now places emphasis upon the fact that he is a con- sumer, — that this is the great point, and as a consumer he intends to regard himself." " As a public fact how is it; — where does the burden of taxation fall? It falls upon the consumer, does it not? " "Yes, ultimately; but still more ultimately it comes out of the pro- ducers." "Is it not a fact that the labor of a country bears more of the burden of taxation than is borne by the non-laboring class?" "Of course, ultimately. When I say ultimately, I mean very ultimately." "If a tariff is imposed on these products to increase the price, is it not imposed for the purpose of enabling the manufacturer to pay his 122 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. operatives higher wages? Is not that the reason assigned why the rate of duty is put so high? Is it not claimed that the duty ought to he high so as to enable the manufacturer to give the benefit of the increased prices so obtained to his employes?" *' Yes, that is the claim." "Then if the manufacturer gets protection from the government on that claim, is it not right and proper that the people, for whom the protection is claimed, should get the benefit of it?" "I should think so." "Now, do they get it?" " They do not think so." But the most irrefutable testimony in proof that it is not the worker but the manufacturer who is pocketing the profits secured by protection, is furnished by the well-known advocate of protection, Mr. John Jarrett, the ex-president of the Amalgamated Iron and Steel Workers of the United States, who, in 1S86, came to Illinois per- sonally to assist in defeating "Wm. R. Morrison's re-elec- tion to Congress. Questioned by the United States Senate Committee on Education and Labor as to whether the wages of the iron- workers increased with the advance in prices in iron, Mr. Jarrett says : " The wages of labor can only be maintained at a living standard by the working-men belonging to labor organizations. " I could name to you mills which during the boom of 1878 did not advance wages, although iron advanced from two and one-half to four per cent, and over four cents a pound. When iron sold at four cents in the market they did not advance wages one cent." " So the manufacturers took all the benefit of the advance?" " Tliey took it all." There" can be no misunderstanding about the state- ment of these intelligent working-men. No professor of political economy could state the case clearer nor more forcibly. These are not abstract reasonings of free-trade theorists : they are a simple, candid statement of facts, vol- LABOR IN PROTECTED INDUSTRIES 123 unteered by men who work in so-called protected indus- tries. Now, what further light is necessary for the laboring man to see that he is being outrageously deceived in this matter of protection ? Is not the sum and substance of these statements a candid acknowledgment that protection does not protect the working-man; that it has not the effect of increasing his wages, but that it is advocated for the sole purpose of imreasing the manufacturer's profits? If these statements are not sufficient, the following additional evidence, that the most outrageous acts of intimidation are resorted to in manufacturing districts, to crush out these annoying labor organizations, may, per- haps, open the eyes of the blindest. As this question of intimidation is a part of the pro- tective system a portion of the evidence taken by the ^Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, and embodied in the report of the United States Senate Committee, is here reproduced. One of the features of this inquisi- torial method is what is called the "black list," which is in the possession of the manufacturers' association. "This list," says the committee report, "contains the names of persons that it will not be safe to hire, owing to some participation in a strike or to membership in some trade organization." The existence of that list was denied by some manu- facturers before the Senate Committee but acknowledged to by others, one of them frankly stating, that " if we wanted to black-list a man we could undoubtedly do so. For our own protection we started a secret service, as it gave us the names and occupations of the most prominent agitators." 124 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. Here we have a set of manufacturers unblushingly admitting that in order to terrorize their working-men into submission to all of their exactions they have organized all through the State of Massachusetts an ignoble system of espionage. The report says : " Nearly all of the Fall River operatives, visited by the agent of the State, seemed to fear the possibility of the manufacturers discovering that they had given any information. One of them said, and his statement will cover what was said by several others : ' You will find that very few of the operatives will say anything unless you can assure them that their names will never be known. If it were known that I was giving you any information I should be discharged at once ; so you see I am reposing considerable confidence in you. My bread is at stake, and were I asked whether I had given you any information I should deny it from the beginning.' " " Under these circumstances," continues the report, " it was necessary to proceed with caution, but in the major- ity of cases the mere promise that no name would be mentioned was sufficient to gain the desired information. " All agreed that the " black list " w r as an abominable institution, one that embodied all that was pernicious in the system of spying. The universal statement was that the spinners as a body were the most eagerly punished by the black-listing, it being asserted that thirty members of the Spinners' Union were on the black list, and could not ob- tain work in any mill in the city. One operative stated that there were several causes that led to dissatisfaction and striking in Fall River, one of the most pronounced being the " black list." Of all the testimony given before the United States LABOR IN PROTECTED INDNSTRIES. 125 Senate Committe in reference to the condition of work- ing-men in protected industries, of the nature and object of their organizations, and of the methods resorted to by the protected bosses to break up these unions, the follow- ing by a simdle working-man is the most interesting, and for that reason we reprint it verbatim : Boston, Mass., October 19, 1883. Charles J. Chance Jr., examined by the chairman : " Where do you live? " " In Somerville, Mass." "What is your business? " " I am a currier; have worked some at tanning, but am a journey- man currier." " You have learned that trade, have you? " " Yes; I served my time at it and learned the trade thoroughly." "And you work at it now for a living?" " Yes, sir." " Are you connected with any labor union? " " Yes, sir." " What is it? " " The Tanners' Union of Massachusetts." " How many members are there in that organization? " " About twenty-three hundred; over two thousand I would say." " You have something to say to the committee; you may proceed to state it now." " Before I commence on anything for the committee I would state tuat I am in a position now; but having taken an active part in forming the curriers' union, I have been either blacklisted or something of that sort, so that it was almost impossible for me to obtain work until these last two weeks, when I managed to get into a place where they had either never heard my name or not known so much about the union matter." " Let us know more particularly about your connection with the union and in what way it has resulted in your failure to get work. AVlien did you commence these efforts and what did you do by way of organization? Where were vou when you began? " " Here in Boston." " Well, what did you do? " " I started in speaking for the men to join the organization." 12G THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. "Speaking to them in public meetings?" " Yes, some of them." "And calling meetings yourself, with others, I suppose?" " Yes, we called meetings." " Where did you call your first meeting? " " The fir>t one that I called myself was in Charlestown." " ITow many were present ? " " Twenty-eight." " All of your trade? " "Yes." " What did you do — What did you say to them? " " I didn't say a great deal. I gave them the rules of organization of the union, as it was found before I got into it, and encouraged them to form a branch of the organization in Charlestown, which they did." "What reason did you give them for forming such an organiza tion?" " The reason we gave was that we might get the men all together; that they would come to a fair understanding between themselves, and in time regulate the price of wages more evenly than at present." " How could you do that ? " "We could do it, and have done it since the organization has been started; done it in several places by a unanimous movement of the men, not in any hard manner, as by strikes or anything of that kind; there has been no severity used by any of us; it was done in a legal manner, by the men waiting on the firms and coming to an understanding with them before there was anj^ chance of a strike." " Have there been any strikes? " "There was one strike in Charlestown shortly after tlie organization was formed. The proprietors of the place, Hubbard, Buzzell & Blake, made an attempt at reduction of wages and a demand for more work. The men refused to agree to it, and appointed a committee to wait upon them." " They wanted the men to take less pay and do more work? " " Yes; so the committee waited on the firm, and they gave them a very independent, ' sassy ' answer; the consequence was that some of the men were discharged, and the rest, when they saw how matters stood, left." " You protested against either change — more work or less pay? " " Certainly. We didn't want to have any change, or to have the union brought in as the cause of it. We wanted to have the union first fairly started, and then to make any fair arrangements with them; but LABOR IN PROTECTED INDUSTRIES. 127 they undertook to break up the union on the start; that was their idea, and after they got beaten on that, they gave in to the strike, but since then they have discharged the eight men that -waited on them as a committee. " Were you on the committee?" " I was. They have since discharged, as I say, those eight men that waited on them as a committee, and the members of the firm that I have spoken of promised faithfully that after things had been settled there would be no hard feelings between our men and them." " You think, then, that the organization prevented the reduction of pay and the increase of work?" " Yes, sir; instead of getting the reduction they received a half- dollar advance, and did less work. The men working in these currier shops receive small wages, as a general thing, all through." "What is the pay?" " The average pay of a currier would be about six dollars per week." " A aollar a day ?" "Yes, sir." " Is that the pay of a first-class workman? " " That is an average of the men." ' ' Are you an ' agitator '? " "No, sir; but I have been encouraging unionism as much as pos- sible." " We have heard something about 'agitators.' You do not look like a very dangerous men in the community." You seem to be a peace- able man, who would mind his business and do his work; but you have delivered some addresses. Do you think that was right? " "Yes, sir; I do. Resistance to oppression is an American right." " You think it was right to call that meeting over in Charlestown and try to organize that society? Do you think that was consistent with your duty as an American citizen? " "Yes, sir." ' ' You do not feel condemned for it at all ? " "I do toot; no, sir. I think, where you see your trade is getting ruined and getting underneath, it is about time something should be done; and if one man don't do it, somebody will have to take hold and do it." "What business have you to meddle with your trade?" " Well, I don't know that I have any business to meddle with it any more than the bosses have to meddle with us. When they come 128 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. to cut us down and demand of us work that we will not or cannot do, it is time somebody did something." " Do you really think so? " " Yes, sir." " You have got that idea in regard to your relation to society and your right as a man? " " Yes, sir." "And you still insist that you had a right to do it, and are not to be condemned for doing it? Of what consequence is your trade to you?" " Of what consequence? I have to make a living by it." " Do you think you have a right to make a living?" " Well, according to the idea of some men a working-man has no right to make a living." " Then you were wrong in making that speech over in Charlestown, were you not?" " No, sir." " Is there any other point that you have on your mind which you wish to state? " " Out here in Roxbury there is a shop running some eighty men, and the proprietor of that concern has threatened to break up the union, or the ' clique,' as he calls it, and he has commenced already to dis- charge men that belong to the union." " That is simply because they do belong to the union? " " Yes." "Why do they want to break up the union? What reasons do they give? " " That the men will be wanting to get more pay when they become organized." " How do you know that they give that as a reason? " " They have told the men that." " They have themselves told the men? " " Yes, sir." " Do they claim that they are unable to give more pay? " "No. There are men that would be willing to come here and testify, but, like myself, they know that as soon as they get here they are done for. I have spoken to several of them, but they are all afraid. They are union men but are afraid to come out in public and give any voice to their wrongs. It is a general feeling that all working-men have, and I believe that I will be the only tanner and currier that you will find to come before you. There may be one or two more that LABOR IN PROTECTED INDUSTRIES. 129 would come if they could possibly get together, but as a general thing they have all got this fear in them.. . John Morrison, machinist in New York city, testified before the United States Senate Committee as follows : " Where do you work? " " I would rather not have it in print. Perhaps I would have to go Monday morning if I did. We are so situated in the machinist's trade that we darn't let them know much about us. If they know that we open our mouths on the labor question and try to form organizations we are quietly told that ' business is slack,' and we have to go." " Do you know of anybody being discharged for making speeches on the labor question? " "Yes; I do know of several members of the organization that I belong to who were discharged because it was discovered they were members of the organization." "Do you say those men were members of the same organization that you belonged to? " " Yes, sir; but not working in the same place where I work. And, in fact, many of my trade have been on the ' black list ' and have had to leave town to find work." The well-known protectionist, John Jarrett, also testi- fied in reference to the intimidation of the working-men in the Pennsylvania rolling-mills . " We are unable to organize the men who are working in these mills, from the fact that they are completely demoralized and are afraid that they will be connected with our organization, knowing that they will be discharged if they are. I can give you instances that took place under my own observation not two years ago. I went into one of these rolling-mills to speak with a person there. It was the Pennsylvania Steel Works, at Steelton, near Harrisburg. I spoke to a person there in the mill about organization. Of course, if they knew who I was, it is not very likely that they would have allowed me in, but I was inside the mill and was talking with this man about organization, and one thing and another, and the very next day that man was discharged without being told anything about the reason, and, of course, he natu- rally drew the conclusion that he was discharged because he happened to be talking with me. Of course, I could not subject any of the other men in that mill to that risk; so you can see that when working-men are in this condition we have reached a very demoralized state of affairs," 130 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. The testimony of Robert Howard — whose evidence " on the share of labor in the profits of manufacture '' has been given already — in reference to the reported intimi- dation of the operatives of cotton and woolen mills in Massachusetts, is as follows : "Now there is one remarkable thing in Massachusetts, and that is that if ever a bill is brought before our legislature for the redress of some grievance which may exist, or if the working-men come to the legislature asking for some law which may be beneficial to their interests as working-men, such a law as that they shall be paid weekly, or a law providing for boards of arbitration, or a law to make the ten-hour rule more stringent — if there is a bill of any of these kinds brought before our legislature, you will always see the corporation detectives there, particularly from Lowell and from Lawrence. Lowell wishes itself to be looked upon as the working-man's paradise of Massachusetts, but it is the worst place in Massachusetts and pays the lowest prices to work- ing-men. The Lowell manufacturers always have a ring of men down at the State-house. It was that Merrimac corporation that got us reduced ten per cent in 1880. When the Board of Manufacturers met, the others said to us, ' You make that Merrimac Company pay the same as we are paying; they can undersell us as things are.' There are men there running fifteen hundred spindles for about $9.50 a week, while in the other New England mills they can pay $12 a week. They have a man named Moses Sargent who is there at the State-house every week, and when I was on the Legislative Committee I used to see him watch- ing every man that came in, so that a Lowell man that had to earn his bread in the mills dare not put his head into the committee room. The same is true in Lawrence. They had a detective named JFilbrook always watching to see if any Lawrence men came before the committee to give testimony. Then, after the meetings were over, they would say, ' There are those Fall River fellows; they are a turbulent set.' It is not that we in Fall River are turbulent; it is because we had manhood enough and nerve enough to go and ask and demand what was our right, that they say that about us. There are no Fall River detectives at the State- house. I went to a meeting of the mule-spinners at Lawrence some six or seven weeks ago. When the time came that was appointed for the meeting, there across the road stood Filbrook, the corporation detective, and Russell, the overseer, watching every man that came in. There was one man at that meeting who was looking out of the window at them and he said, ' I never belonged to a union in my life, Howard, but LABOR IN PROTECTED INDUSTRIES. 131 nothing'does so much as the presence of these men there to convince me that there must be some good for the working-men in unions, for unless there was they would not stand there spying us as we come in.' That is the condition of affairs. These manufacturers have their detectives employed permanently. I have been told that Filbrook gets a salary of $6,000 a year from the Pacific mills alone." Thus is the word protection — whicQ in its true signifi- cation conveys the idea that the weak, the humble and helpless are being shielded from oppression and injury — prostituted for the base purpose of oppressing and injuring a class of our people whose fate it is to labor and to suffer. The shallowness of the pretense, that the protective system is a necessity to maintain a respectable standard of wages for the American working-men, is further exposed in the £2 a thousand tariff on lumber. In order to bring this matter in its true light before the reader, it will be necessary to consider the claims made by the owners of pine lands in support of the pro- tective system. This can best be done by producing the testimony before the Tariff Commission of the representa- tive of a large association of lumbermen, and of indi- vidual business men engaged in the manufacture and trade of lumber. At the meeting of the commission m Chicago, Septem- ber 7, 1882, Mr. J. A. Whittier, President of the Saginaw (Mich.) Board of Trade, made a statement of which the following is a synopsis : "The total product of Michigan in 1881 was four billion feet of pine lumber. Capital invested in its manufacture, $40,000,000. Twenty- one thousand men were engaged in saw-mills at wages averaging $2 per day. Thirty-five thousand men were engaged in logging at $1,75 per day. The mill men are employed two hundred days, the logging men 150 days during the year. Total estimate of yearly wages paid, $17,585,500." In order to impress the Tariff Commission, and the 132 THE PEOTECTIVE TAKIFF. public through its report, with the necessity of laying a tax of $2 a thousand upon the millions of lumber con- sumers, this wealthy defender of the American wage- earner thus pathetically describes the magnitude of the interests involved : "If we take in the whole lumber industry of the United States we shall find 9,000 men working in mills, and 135,000 in forests, with yearly wages of $80,000,000, and a total product of $230. 000,000. The standing pine tree in the forest is the raw material, and for that ' a round sum is paid,' and the conversion of that raw material into lumber is done by the steady stroke of the ax and solid days' work by this army of men, and he estimated cost of producing lumber si $13.50 per thousand feet; the average price received is $14,57, leaving $1.07 profit." In this estimate of cost the item of stumpage, that is, the privilege of cutting the timber from the owner's land, or the value put upon it by the manufacturer owning the pine land himself, is put down at the nice " little sum " of $4.50 a thousand feet. Mr. Whittier informs the commission that $80,000,000 are paid yearly in wages to the operators in the lumber business of the United States, and that the value of the product is $230,000,000 ; but he fails to tell the commis- sion that in the $80,000,000 wages paid, the amount of the $2 a thousand tax, or $46,000,000 collected from the consumers, is included, and that consequenty all the money paid in wages by the operators out of their capital or profit on the products is $34,000,000. By deducting this amount from the value of the total product, we have $196,000,000, which goes for stumpage, machinery, repairs, interest on capital and profit to the lumber bosses. " There are millions in protection to American labor," they say, and it is on that account that the lumber lords of the Northwest are " laboring " so hard to maintain it. The item of " stumpage," an altogether fictitious value, LABOE IN PROTECTED INDUSTRIES. 133 is the worm in the meal-tub. It is, in railroad terms, the " watered stock " of the lumber operators, through which they have been amassing such immense fortunes. As stated by a prominent Chicago lumber merchant, and a thoroughly informed gentleman, before the same Tariff Commission : "The power of this association is getting to be a little dangerous, as it appears to rue, and as it would appear by the rapid advance in stumpage. I remember some fifteen years ago the stumpage was gener- ally estimated at fifty cents a thousand. His land cost him $1.25 to $2.50 an acre. He has a good profit at fifty cents. But if the stump- age of the Northwest is gradually gathered into a few hands, they have the power to form combinations that have the effect to bull up the price of lumber. The operations of these manufacturers, who all appear to run in one groove, have been advancing the price of lumber the last two or three years out of proportion to former years. ' ' I took occasion last evening to gather from my books some statistics of the cost of lumber for the last ten or fifteen years, and I have it accurately extended. I have been a lumber buyer in this market, and have probably bought, during that time, not less than 10,000,000 feet of lumber, and from that to 25,000,000. There are other dealershere who are similarly situated. You will understand that Chicago does a busi- ness exceeding 2,000,000,000 per year, making it by far the largest market on the globe for the sale of lumber, and over one-half of the gentlemen doing business here do not own a single acre of stumpage. They buy from the lumber operators and stump owners. I notice that for the year prior to the fire, up to October 9, 1871, lumber cost me (and my neighbors as well, for we buy side by side) $14.46 per thousand feet. I notice in the estimate of the Saginaw gentlemen that they figure the absolute cost of lumber at $13.50 to the manufacturer. As the transpor- tation from Saginaw here is sometimes $2 or $3 per thousand (I have paid as high as $4), you will see that they have been doing business at a tremendous loss, and that is the reason they are so wealthy now, I presume! " The great fire in Chicago necessarily had an effect upon the value of lumber. It had the more effect because lumber was not one of the items upon which a rebate was allowed. You will remember that when the world was weeping at Chicago's impoverished condition Congress passed a law giving the rebuilders of the city a rebate upon glass, iron 134 THE rKOTECTIVE TARIFF. and everything else in the way of construction material. The lumher interest, however, would not submit to a rebate, and this was the effect: Lumber for 1872, following the fire, cost the people $16.80 per thousand feet. That was the average cost the whole year. So it will be seen that the lumber manufacturers and the stump owners were benefited to the extent of about $2.50 a thousand in consequence of the Chicago fire. If the duty had been off, or the rebate had been allowed, the lumber dealers would only have been benefited to the extent of fity cents; but, as it was, they made a great deal of money out of the Chicago fire. " For the year 1873, two years after the fire, the average cost of lum- ber was $12.72, a falling off, you see, of over $4 a thousand. Things were beginning to regulate themselves. "In 1875 it was $11.68, a falling off of another dollar a thousand. " Now we strike the proper medium of trade, I presume, without the disturbing element of the Chicago fire. In 1876 it was $9.67, Saginaw losing a tremendous sight of money you see. I don't know how they can exist at all ! " In 1877 it was $9.73. "In 1878 it was $9.66. " These figures I can verify by oath to any extent. But now, gentle- men, this is what I wanted to call your attention to cspecialty. In 1880 a little boom started, and the stumpaee being reduced to a small amount could be easily handled, and an advance was made to $11.63 on the average. " In 1881 it was still growing, and reached $13.92. "In 1882 my lumber cost me between $14 and $15 a thousand. " That is the direction it has taken. It is in consequence of the man- ipulation of the stumpage. I can see no earthly reason why the Amer- ican interest should have any protection. Only in one thing, from my standpoint, do I see that it applies. I believe that we can produce corn, pork and beans in Illinois, and those are the things that enter into the lumber business. I do not see why a Canadian should work for $10 a month when he could pass over an imaginary line into the United States and get $20 a month. I believe that the laborer upon the Cana- dian side is paid equal to our laborer here, and I see no sense in anything else, and I object to the proposition that he is not paid so well, unless it may be that provisions would cost less in Canada than (hey doherc; and, as I have before remarked, pork, corn and beans is the power that runs the lumber business. Now, I believe that the cost of pork, corn and beans in the states of Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin cannot far exceed the same article in Canada. They may be able to raise beans up there LABOR IN PROTECTED INDUSTRIES. 135 a little cheaper; I don't know how that is. But against that there exists this consideration: that the Canadian has to pay anywhere from $1 up, or more, for taking his lumber to market than the American does, and the freight, as I understand, from Georgian Bay to Buffalo at the present time is about $3 a thousand, while the freight from Saginaw is about $2. There is $1 against them, for Saginaw could not get lumber in this direction over these broad prairies, where so much lumber is used, for less than $2 a thousand. There must be a margin, at least of $2alhousand against them in the delivery of lumber to our section here. The manufacturer of lumber in Michigan has other advantages incident to his manufacture. He can utilize the offal, the worthless product, so to speak, of his logs. He utilizes his sawdust and sells his slabs for firewood. And I understand there has recently been discovered a process by which whisky is made from sawdust, and when that ulti- matum is reached the manufacturer of lumber will be solid, indeed. Having, then, the advantage of a revenue from his offal, and the advantage of from $1 to $3 in the delivery of lumber, I cannot for the life of me see why he should be further protected by the advantage of $2 duty. Taking for granted the estimate made by the Saginaw gentlemen that the expense of the manufacture of lumber is $13.50 per thousand (and, of course, I question his figures all the way through), you will see that he admits that after paying a stumpage tax of $4.50 he still has a profit of $1.07, with which he has acknowledged himself satisfied. Now let us throw off this $2 duty and give him only a stumpage of $2 . 50. According to late estimates, which are credited to the man- ufacturers, there stands now upon the peninsula, reckoning from Ludington east to the Saginaw Valley, an average of 5,000 feet of timber on each acre of ground. Giving him a stumpage tax of $2.50 would still pay him $12.50 an acre for every acre of that ground, even if it were pine barrens. Hence, he would receive $2.50 for each thou- sand of stumpage." It would thus appear that the cC round sum " of $4.50 for stumpage, as stated by the president of the Saginaw Board of Trade, is simply the "round sum" credited to themselves in figuring out the cost of lumber, and is thus swelled merely for the purpose of deceiving the public in regard to the actual amount of their profits, which, allow- ing the liberal sum of $2.50 for stumpage, as before stated, i36 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. would show the profit on the price of $14.57 per thou- sand feet to be $3.57 instead of $1.07, as stated by the president of the Saginaw association. But since 1881, owing to the rapid increase in the price of stumpage, the price of lumber has been steadily on the increase, so that on July 26, 1887, the market report of the Chicago Times shows the price of lumber by the cargo to be : Dimension, long, green $12 00 to $15 00 Dimension, short, green 10 50 Common boards and strips 13 00 to 14 00 Medium boards and strips 14 50 to 16 00 No. 1 boards and strips 16 50 to 20 00 How about the price of labor ? Has that kept pace with the stumpage of the land owners and the price of the product % Let us see. Alex. G. Burman, of Manistee, who is at the head of the organization of the Knights of Labor in Michigan, recently transmitted to the press of that State the resolutions unan- imously adopted by District Assembly 83 in favor of the abolition of the tariff on lumber, and at the same time pre- sented the facts as to the "protection given to the workers by the $2 a thousand tariff " in the following paragraphs : Average price five years ago : Wages paid to men employed in the logging camps per month and board, $30 ; wages paid to men in and about saw-mills per month without board, $40 ; custom-mills received from manufact- uring, from $3.50 up to $4.50 a thousand feet; pine stumpage, from $6 to $7 a thousand feet — the pine almost on the river banks. At the present time wages m logging camps per month, with board, $18 ; wages in and about saw-mills per month, without board, $30 ; custom-mills receive to- day $1.50 to $2.75 per thousand. Pine cannot be bought LABOE IN FEOTECTED INDUSTRIES. 137 to-day for less than $10 per thousand, and far off from the rivers." Ten dollars for stumpage, or $47.50 profit per acre of pine land for the lumber kings, and $18, with board per month for each of the "army of men, who, by the sturdy stroke of the axe, do the solid day's work," in wages. And all this lying about protection to American labor, in our lumber interests, is easily swallowed on account of the unfathomable stupidity of a portion of our working- men who actually believe that all, or a large portion of the $2 import tax ultimately enures to their benefit. Don't they see that it is the high-priced "stumpage" of the American owner of pine land which is protected against the low-priced "stumpage" of Canada, and not the cheaper Canadian labor, which, under the " free-trade in labor" plan, and without the slightest hindrance, crosses the American border in droves to compete with the wages of the American lumber worker % However, a goodly share of the "unfathomable stupidity" men- tioned above, if not downright rascality, is to be placed to the credit of those members of Congress who, with the above facts and figures before them, bv their votes are laying a senseless and useless embargo upon Canadian lumber. But the evil of this lumber tax consists not only in swindling the laborer and the consumer ; it is inflicting serious injury upon the whole country by the wanton destruction of our merchantable timber, which, it has been calculated, will, be completed before the close of this century. When this will have taken place, a clever statistician asserts, that the entire marine of the world cannot carry enough to supply the demand in the United States. OUR PAUPER LABOR. OF all the arguments used by protectionists to bolster up their ignoble system, that of " European pauper labor" is the most deceiving. Relying upon the gullibility of the unthinking, it is not of the slightest consequence to them that the terms " pauper labor," and " pauper wages " are meaningless in fact, since paupers do not work and, consequently, do not earn any wages, but as a rule are supported at the expense of the charitable public. It is clear that in using these terms, the impression sought to be conve} T ed is that European laborers are as miserably situated, as poorly clad and fed as the paupers in the public almshouses, and that the standard of their wages is just high enough to keep them and their families from starvation. It was found advisable to keep this picture of human wretchedness prevailing among the poorer classes of the old country constantly before the eyes of the American working-men, evidently to serve as a reminder that unless they assisted with their Azotes in maintaining the protective system, or if the tariff reformers were permitted to lower the taxes on imported goods, they would soon share the fate of the " pauper laborers of free-trade England." In order to give a semblance of fact to their claim, R. P. Porter, who was the proxy of Pig-iron Kelly on the Tariff Commission, was selected as a fit rep- resentative of the spoliation system and dispatched to England, in the guise of a philanthropist, with a view to 138 OUR PAUPER LABOR. 139 examine into the condition of the working classes in that free-trade country. Mr. Porter is an Englishman by birth, and, like the bird who befouls his own nest, has most faithfully performed the mandate of his protectionist task-masters, by sending exaggerated and deceptive reports to Ameri- ican newspapers, in which the wretched condition and pauperism of the " toilers " of free-trade England are pictured with harrowing details. That these reports are not written for information, but for the express purpose of being: used as " scare-crows " for the credulous Ameri- can " toiler," is apparent from the fact that Mr. Porter studiously avoids making comparisons between the condi- tions prevailing before the " free-trade" system had fairly been inaugurated in England and after. lie does not in- form his American readers of the fact that the condition, the wages, the mode of living, as well as the morals of the laboring class, have improved a hundred per cent since England's present fiscal system has been introduced. He is silent about the fact that forty years ago, under the strictly protective system, the number of able-bocued paupers in the United Kingdom, with a population of less than 29,000,000, was 934,419, and that in 1SS3, after the long period of practical free trade, and with an increased population of over 36,000,000, the number of able-bodied paupers had actually decreased to 799,296. Again, in speaking of the degradation prevailing among the English working classes to-day, as a true renegade, Mr. Porter fails to do justice to his native land by avoiding to mention the eloquent fact that in 1S46, under an exor- bitant protective tariff system, the annual convictions in the United Kingdom were 41,008, against 15,898 in 1882, under the free-trade system. 140 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. For the purpose of throwing light upon the subject of "pauper labor in Europe," which as a "scarecrow" is rendering such effective service to the protectionists, we will now furnish the testimony of reliable journals, and of "protected workingmen," with reference to our own pauper labor. We have selected but a few of these reports; they will, however, suffice to give a general idea of the condi- tion of the people Avhose fate it is to earn a livelihood in our so-called protected industries. On February 6, 1884, the Cleveland Herald, — good protectionist authority, — contained the following : For some time past all sorts of stories have been circulated in refer- ence to the suffering of the miners and their families scattered along the Pennsylvania railroad between this city and Allenlown. These people have had their wages reduced from time to time until they are now only getting from sixty to seventy cents per day, or an average of about sixty five cents. These reports have excited considerable comment, and in order to verify them a Herald correspondent visited the mines. "After arriving in Alburtis, Pa.," writes the correspondent," I procured a sleigh and drove through the entire district, covering some thirty miles, and visited many homes ^f the miners, beside some forty- five mines in full operation. Alburtis has a population of nearly six hundred people, and their true condition is probably expressed in the words of Isaac Bickel, proprietor of the American House, who said: ' ' ' Never in the history of the town has there been so much suffering among the poor. The panic of 1873 is no comparison. The store- keepers have shut down on the men, and are now doing a strictly cash business throughout the ore district.' " George Schrack, residing in a small log hut near Farmington, was called'on in the evening. The picture presented here was one of extreme pity. The children, four in number, were found huddled together about the stove. They were thinly clad and three of them were suffering with the measles. The floor was carpetless and the room pre- sented a dismal appearance. The furniture was old and bore evidence of hard usage. The bed-room adjoining the kitchen contained two beds, in which the entire family slept. Two of the window panes were broken out and stuffed with old clothes. Mr. Schrack. who works in OUR PAUPER LABOR, lttl one of the mines in East Texas, five miles distant, did not reach home till 7:30. Supper had been prepared and consisted of bread, molasses, mush and coffee. A stiff breeze was blowing from the northwest and the cold air fairly whistled through the cracks of the old structure. '"Will you kindly give me an insight into your daily life, Mr. Schrack ? ' " " ' Well, to tell you the truth, it is a tough one. I get up at four o'clock every morning and leave here half an hour later in order to reach the works at six o'clock.' " " ' What are your duties ? ' " " ' I am a loader, and with the help of another man we load from sixty to seventy cars per day.' " " ' What are you getting per day ? ' " " ' Sixty-two cents.' '' " ' How do you manage to live with that amount? ' " " ' Oh, we manage to just hang together. We can't afford meat but once a week. Bread and molasses constitute our chief diet with a few potatoes and corn meal thrown in.' " " How about your clothing, shoes, etc. ? ' " " ' The children have no shoes and really I cannot afford to buy any for them.'" " ' How much did you earn in January? ' " " ' $11.38. £ made a little over eighteen days,' " " ' How much does it cost you to live? ' " " ' My earnings did not quite cover the bills and the grocer told me that hereafter none of the men would be allowed to exceed their earn- ings. I have not handled a cent since December the 1st.' " " 'How's that?'" " ' Why, you see, after the grocer is paid, nothing is left.'" This is the story of a dozen or more, and with the exception of one or two cases all tell the same story. Benville Eck, employed as foreman in the mines of Kaufman & Co., at Alburtis, said: " I have been employed in the mines over twenty years and get $30 per month. I live four miles from here and generally get up about four o'clock in the morning. I am a married man and have three children. I don't know how the men live, but judging from what I see here, bread and molasses are the chief articles of diet." Another account, recently written to the New York World by a correspondent who is investigating the condi 142 THE PROTECTIVE TAEIFF. tion of the " protected" mine workers in the Pennsylvania coal region : Outside of "Japan " (a name given a miners' settlement) but still in JedOo, I came to another tumbledown collection of shanties. In the front of one was a sad-faced Welsh woman of so intelligent a countenance I could uot forbear to question her. Her husband, she said, worked as breaker for eighty cents a day. It was the best he could get. I entered the house and was struck by its neatness. The woman was superior to her circumstances. I asked to see a ticket. She showed me one. It represents the work of a boy of ten, one of fourteen and a man. EARNINGS. By boy of ten, 253 hours $17 45 By boy of fourteen, 236 hours , 18 56 By man, 249 hours 29 38 Total gross earnings .$65 40 CHARGES. To balance (debt) $61 40 To team 75 To rent of three rooms 2 50 To coal 1 50 $66 15 Balance (debt) , , . , 75 To merchandise 47 46 Balance (debt) $48 21 " So you are heavily in debt, I see ? " " Yes, sir; like all the rest." " You have a hard time making it go." " Oh, sir, I couldn't make it go at all if I didn't go out and work myself. All the money we can see is what I bring home. No thanks to the mines for that." " Now, I would like to ask, gentlemen operators, if this is right? You make a father work, you turn his sons of ten and fourteen into treadmill 3laves, and then compel the mother to go outside and work in order to eke out a livelihood. If this be right and decent in your minds, no wonder you think it proper to enter into gigantic conspiracies to put up the price of coal aud rob the poor of our great'cities, who buy by the scuttlef ul, and buy perforce when fuel is at its dearest. No wonder you OUR PAUPER LABOR. 143 think it no offense to defy the laws of Pennsylvania, for the lesser offenses are swallowed up by these greater ones." The correspondent thus pathetically continues : ' ' I supped last night in a hovel with a man whom we may call John Richardson, and his interesting family. There were nine at table, six children, ranging from Pat, the donkey-boy of fifteen, to Charlie, the baby, that lay asleep in his mother's lap, Mr. and Mrs. Richardson, and myself, a self-invited guest. "The bill of fare as originally planned consisted of a couple of loaves of bread from the ' pluck me ' store where John does his trading, compelled so to do if he would get work in the mine where he is employed, some salt to eat upon the bread, a bit of salt pork for the father and eldest son, some huckleberries and red raspberries mixed, picked by the little girl, a small libation of milk, John owning an interest in a cow, and some tea, composed, as near as I could judge, of one part cheap green tea, and four parts sweet fern, or some other herb gathered near by, to eke out a warm decoction. To this bill of fare I added a large beefsteak from the round, a couple pounds of cheese, together with a paper of sweet crackers for the little ones. If you could have seen the way these unwonted luxuries were reveled in by the whole Richardson groupe, I am sure you would have felt the warm shivers run up and down your backbone as they ran up and down my own. " There is a full supply of so-called ' Hunks ' in town. This is the miner's name for the poor creatures who are brought over here in gangs from Hungary, Poland, Austria, Russia and Italy, and put to work at wages that no man Avith a family to support could stand. The highest paid them is ninety cents a day. They work for what they can get, and herd together like cattle, twenty and thirty in a single building, sleeping on the floor, or in the woods when the weather is warm, and paying their housekeeper $4 per week for their board. The decent laborers of all nationalities are upon an equal footing at the mines, but these cattle are outcasts, and deserve to be so. I shall devote a separate letter to a description of these creatures, the bane of the mines, which will be taken from life." The Chicago Herald of July last contributes the fol- lowing: " Newspaper correspondents have lately achieved the difficult task of exploring this beautiful region — meaning the collieries of Hazleton, Pa. — hitherto so severely ignored by the protectionist hair-raisers. With what commiseration for poor Ireland and benighted free-trade rid- 144 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. den England, with what pride in the institutions of the land of his birth, must every American read of the recent evictions at Hazleton collieries, near Wilkes Barrel" "For brutality and consequent misery they surpass the most exag- gerated horror yet reported from Ireland." " Hazleton is a delightful village nestling in the carboniferous hills near the Hazel Brook mines. Village and hills and collieries are the property of a firm named J. S. Wentz & Co. The firm will not sell or lease a foot of land to anybody, nor allow a man to build a house for himself. It compels every employe in the mines to rent from it, at from $5 to $6 a month. The men are forced to .sign a lease which places them absolutely at the company's mercy. They expressly waive every benefit or protection which they might have under the laws of the State. They agree that the moment they cease work for the company they must leave their homes, and can be ejected on ten days' notice; and they further have to sign what is termed an ' amicable suit of ejectment,' by which the company can at any moment issue a writ and evict them. " This, mind you, is a strictly American and highly protected lease. Mark how it operates: Notices to quit were sent round to the strikers some weeks ago. On Saturday Deputy Sheriff Brockway, armed with the writs issued in ' amicable suit of ejectment,' and backed by a body of coal and iron police in the pay of the company, appeared in the vil- lage and began to evict. Six families with all their goods and chattels were thrown on the hillside; they were the families of Neal Gallagher, Daniel Nigan, Patrick Bowen, Barney Gallagher, Joseph McGonegal and Patrick Dunlavy. Everything the house contained was thrown pell-mell out of doors and window, the women and children driven out and the doors locked behind them. From their names it is apparent that these tenants came from the land of iron leases and heartless evic- tions, in the full hope, presumably, of finding relief in the land of the free. Their oppression did not stop here. Not only were they thus deprived of home and shelter, but not a soul in the village dared shelter them or their goods. The company had given notice that any tenant affording shelter to those evicted would be himself dis- possessed. Mrs. Dunlavy was sick in bed when the officers entered the house, but she had to go, and her bed was put outside after her. It was with difficulty that she obtained permission to stop over night at a neighbor's, nor were the evicted tenants able to remove their goods, for the company had prohibited any wagon from entering its lands for that purpose, and refused to grant the use of its own teams. Women and children were compelled to hunt miles in search of a place to spend the OUR PAUPER LABOR. 145 night, and some unable to obtain shelter were forced to sleep on the bare ground, without roof to cover them. Tbeir goods are lying to-day just as they were thrown out, the people being unable to move them. "It is not to be supposed that such tilings could happen without comment. On the contrary, the whole region was boiling over with indignation, though choking its impotent wrath through fear of incur- ring the horror themselves, for everybody thereabouts belongs to Wentz & (,'o. Even the press dared not make mention of what took place. ' What can we do ? ' a local editor demanded of the correspondent. ' The coal kings have the making of the postmasters, no matter which party is in power. If any paper dares to open its mouth about these outrages the postmasters get the wink and our paper is kicked upon the floor — its subscribers look in vain for it. One paper near here, at Freeland, has defied the autocrats and told the truth about them, and for years the editor has labored on the verge of bankruptcy. Oh, I tell you these men are above the law. We have submitted to them, and not until the metropolitan press take hold of the matter will justice ever be done here. " The company store system is, of course, prevalent in this region, and not the least of the links in the chain of slavery The Stone bill, passed in the Pennsylvania legislature in 1884, makes this system illegal. But what of that ? What is law to a protected coal baron? The miners arc now compelled to trade at the company's stores, but if they don't do so — well, their services are no longer required. Then there is a doctor furnished by each company, and each miner with a family must pay seventy-five cents a month, whether sick or well, while each single man of twenty-one or more is docked fifty cents a month for the benefit of this pampered physician. Other doctors are 'not allowed.' Hundreds of company doctors have made fortunes out of the business. Then each man pays fifty cents a month towards the support of a priest, but this is not insisted on. Four dollars is stopped for rent, and $1.90 for coal, with sixty-five cents added for delivery, and sometimes taxes are added upon the dwelling. Thus it results that the men very rarely draw more than $2 or $3 in money at the end of the month. Their slavery is com- plete. It is remarked that, under these conditions, the mining popula- tion grows sullen and dispirited; that the young men flee away to the cities as they grow up, leaving their places to be filled by cheap Slav labor imported for the purpose; that the young women take to a life of shame rather than live in the cursed atmosphere of their youth; that the children are jojdess and ignorant. The houses are horrible; the saloons are better, and the company sells the liquor. Men take to dissipation from sheer despair. A strained, unnatural feeling of dread pervades the 146 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. place, for every one knows that spies are about and be dare not speak.' To close this account of Pennsylvania horrors the cor- roborative testimony of Mr. John Jarrett is now offered, he being fully posted in regard to the wages and condi- tion of the miners. Mr. Jarrett is authority in matters of protection which no protectionist will dare to impeacn. On the 6th of September, 1883, at a meeting of the United States Senate Committee on Labor and Capital in the city of New York,Mr. Jarrett was sworn and examined : " Please state your residence and occupation." ' ' My name is John Jarrett. I reside at Sharon, Pa. At present I am president of the Amalgamated Iron and Steel Workers of the United States." " Do you know anything of the condition of the Pennsylvania coal- miners? " " I do, sir. " ' How many do you think there are? " "There must beat least ninety thousand coal-miners in Pennsyl- vania, of whom about sixty thousand are the heads of families." " The men who mine the iron and coal? " "Well, coalmining in Pennsylvania, in my opinion, is a more important interest than ore-mining, and the condition of the coal-miners in Pennsylvania is pitiable, miserable in the extreme." " You say their condition is pitiable and miserable. How much so isil?" " It is because the wages of coal-miners are too low. They are illy paid. Then, too, they suffer from the truck system. Under that system they pay one hundred per cent more for what they buy than our people do. Then, the "nouses they live in are extremely miserable. If I feel particularly for any branch of labor in this country jt is for the poor coal-miner. He risks his life day after day for a mere pittance. Every time he departs from the light of day he does not know whether he will ever see it again. And while in some branches it does not require much skill to be a miner, in others it does, and I think the coal-miner ought to be better paid, better clothed, better housed and better fed than he is." " Have you been among the English miners? " "Yes, sir; and from my experience among the miners in England I may say that they are really better cared for than are the coal-miners in the United States," OUR PAUPEK LAEOE. 147 " Do you mean that they have more comfort during the year." "Yes, sir. Then the truck system has heen entirely wiped out there the men are getting their money every week." Mr. Jarrett, it will be seen, admits under oath that from personal experience the " pauper labor " in the coal mines of free-trade England is better cared for and has more comfort during the year ; in short, that their condition is more prosperous than that of their brethren in " protec- tion-blessed " Pennsylvania. " Sixty thousand heads of families," he says, "to whom probably two hundred thou- sand women and children are looking for support, are in a pitiable, miserable condition, poorly paid, poorly clad, poorly fed and poorly housed." The following testimony before the United States Senate Committee of a "protected" workman in one of the cotton-mills in ISTew England is highly inter- esting and instructive. It is the tragic history of the daily life of a class of " American " labor, of which no parallel can be found in free-trade England. Thomas O'Donnell, a mule-spinner, at Fall Kiver, Mass.: " I have a wife and two children. I went to work when I was young and have been working ever since in the cotton business. I earn $1.50 a day. I pay $1.50 a week for rent. I have not worked more thau half the time since the great strike three years ago. If a man has not a boy to act as back-boy, in a great many cases they discharge a man and put in men who have boys capable enough to work in a mill and earn thirty or forty cents a day. And another thing that helped to keep me down: a year ago this month I buried the oldest boy we had, and that brings things very expensive on a poor man. For instance, it will cost here, to bury a body, about $100. Now, we could have that done in England for about £5. That would not amount to much more than about $20, or something in that neighborhood. That makes a good deal of difference. Doctor's bills are very heavy, about $2 a visit, and if a doctor comes once a day for two or three weeks it is quite a pile for a poor man to pay." " They charge you as much as they charge people of more means? " "They charge as much as if I was the richest man in the city 148 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. except that some of them might be generous once in a -while and put it down a little at the end; but the charge generally is $2. That makes it hard. I have a brother who has four children, besides his wife and him self. All he earns is $1.50 a day. He works in the iron works at Fall River. He only works about nine months out of the twelve. There is generally about three months of stoppage, taking the year right through, and his wife and family all have to be supported for a year out of the wages of nine months — $1.50 a day for nine months out of the twelve to support six of them. It does not stand to reason that these children and he himself can have natural food or be naturally dressed. His children are often sick, and he has to call in doctors. That is always hanging over him, and is a great expense to him; and, then, if he does not pay the bill, the trustee law comes on him. That is a thing that is not properly looked after. A man told me the other day that he was trusteed for $1.75, and I understood that there was a law in this State that a man could not be trusteed for less than $10. It seems to me there is something wrong in the government somewhere — where it is, I can't tell." ' How much money have you saved?" "I have not a cent in the house; didn't have when I came out this morning." " How much money have you had within three months? " " I have had about $16 inside of three months." " How much have you had within a } r ear? " " Since Thanksgiving I happened to get work in the Crescent mill, and worked there exactly thirteen weeks. I got just $1.50 a day,with the exception of a few days that I lost, because in following mule-spinning you are obliged to lose a day once in a while; you can't follow it up regularly." " Thirteen weeks would be seventy-eight days, and, at $1.50 ad?y, that would make $117, less whatever time you lost? " "Yes; I worked thirteen weeks there and ten days in another place, and then there was a dollar I got this week, "Wednesday." " Taking a full year back can you tell how much you have had? " " That would be about fifteen weeks' work. Last winter, as I told you, I got in and worked up to somewhere around Fast Day, or may be New Year's Day; anyway, Mr. Howard has it down on his record, if you wish to have an exact answer to that question; he can answer it better than I can, because we have a sort of union there to keep our- selves together." " Do you think you have got $150 within a year? " OUK PAUPEK LABOR. 149 "Well, I could figure it up if I had time. The thirteen weeks is all I have had." " That would be somewhere about $133, if you had not lost any- time? That is all you have had to support yourself and wife and two children?" " Yes, sir." "Have you had any help from outside? " "No sir.", " Do you mean that yourself and wife and two children have had nothing but that for that time? " " That is all. I got a couple of dollars' worth of coal last winter and the wood picked up by myself. I go around with a shovel and pick up clams and wood to help out." " What do you do with the clams? " "We) eat them. I don't get them to sell, but just to eat for the family. That is the way my brother lives too, mostly. He lives close by us." " How many live in that way down there? " " I could not count them they are so numerous. I suppose there are one thousand down there." " A thousand that live on $150 a year? '' "They live on less." " How long has that been so? " " Six years this month." " Why do you not go west on a farm? " " How could I go ? Walk it ? " " Well, I want to know why you do not go out west on a $2,000 farm, or take up a homestead and break it and work it up, and then have it for yourself and family? " " I can't see how I could go out west if I have nothing to go with." " It would not cost you over $1,500? " " Well, I never see over a $20 bill, and that is when I have been getting a month's pay at once. If some one would give me $1,500 I will go." " Is there any prospect that any one will do that? " " I don't know of anybody that would." " You say you think there are a thousand men or so with families that live in that way in Fall River? " " Yes, sir; and I know many of them. They are around there by the shore. You can see them every day." " Are you a good workman? " "Yes, sir." 150 THE PEOTECTIYE TAEIFF. " Were you ever turned off because of misconduct, incapacity or unfitness for work? " " No, sir." " Or because you made any trouble among the help?" "No, sir." " What would you work for if you could get work right along? " " Well, if I was where my family could be with me and I could have work every day I would take $1.50 a day and be glad. I would not have to pick up clams. I have had no coal, except one dollar's worth, since Christmas." " When do the clams give out? " "They give out in winter." ' ' What do you have for fuel ? " " Wood or coal." •' Where does the wood come from? " " I pick it up along the shore. Any old pieces around that are not good for anything. There are many more that do the same thing." " Do you get meat to live on much? " " Very seldom." " What kind of meat do you get for your family? " " Well, once in awhile we get a piece of pork and some clams and make a clam-chowder. We sometimes get a piece of corned-beef, as some of us like that." "Have you had any fresh beef within a month? " " Yes, we had a piece of porksteak for four of us yesterday." "Have you had any beef within a month?" " No, sir. I was invited to a man's house on Sunday; he wanted me to go up to his house and we had a dinner of roast pork." "That was an invitation out; but I mean, have you had any beef- steak in your own family, of your own purchase, within a month? " " Yes, there was a half pound, ora pound on Sunday." " And there were four of you in the family?" " Yes, sir." " How -many pounds of beefsteak have you had in your family within this year?" " I don't think there has been five pounds of beefsteak in a whole year?" " You have had a little porksteak?" " We had a half pound of porksteak yesterday; I don't know when we had any before." " What other kind of meat have you had during the year? " OUR PAUPER TARIFF. 151 " Well, we have had corned beef on Sundays for dinner, and some cabbage; that's all I can remember of." " What have you eaten? " " Well, bread, mostly, when we could get it; we sometimes couldn't make out to get that, and have had to go to bed without a meal." ' ' Has there been any day in the year that you have had to go with out anything to eat?" "Yes, sir, several days." " More than one day at a time? " " No, sir." " How about the children and your wife; did they go without any- thing to eat too?" "My wife went out this morning and went to a neighbor's house and got a loaf of bread and fetched it home, and when she got home the children were crying for something to eat." " Have the children had anything to eat today except that, do you think?" " They had that loaf of bread; I don't know what they have had since then, if they have had anything." "Bid you leave any money at home?" "No, sir." "If that loaf is gone, is there anything in the house?" " No, sir, unless my wife goes out and gets something; and I don't know who would mind the children while she goes out." " Has she any money to get anything with?" " No, sir." "Have the children gone without a meal at anytime during the year?" " They have gone without bread some days, but we have sometimes got meal and made porridge of it." " What have the children got in the way of clothing?" " They have got along very nicely all summer, but now they are beginning to feel quite sickly. One has one shoe on, a very poor one, and a slipper that was picked up somewhere. The other has two odd shoes on, with the heel out. He has got cold and is sickly now." " Have they any stockings?" "He had two stockings, but his feet comes through them, for ther" is a hole in the bottom of his shoe." " What have they on the rest of their person?" " Well, they have a little calico shirt; what should be a shirt; it is 152 THE PROTECTIVE TAEIFF. sewed up in some shape, and one little petticoat, and a kind of a little dress." " How many dresses has your wife?" " She has had one since she was married, and she hasn't worn that more than half a dozen times; she has worn it just going to church, hut when she comes back she takes it off, and it is pretty near as good as when she bought it." " She keeps that dress to go to church in?" " Yes, sir." " How many dresses aside from that has she?" " Well, she got one three months ago." " What did it cost?" ' It cost $1 to make it, and I guess about $1 for the stuff, as near as I can tell." "What else has she?" " Well, she has an undershirt that she got given to her, and she has an old wrapper which is about a mile too big for her; somebody gave it to her." " Have you had $1 or $2 worth of coal for the winter?" "I think it was a quarter of a ton last winter; I believe it was $2.25 worth." " You say that a good many others are situated just like yourself?" : ' Yes, sir; I should say as many as a thousand down in Fall River are just in the same shape, if not worse; though they can't be much worse. I have heard many women say they would sooner be dead than living. I don't know what is wrong, but something is wrong, There is an overflow of labor in Fall River, I guess." " Why do not these people go out west upon farms and go to farm- ing?" "They have not the means. Fall River being a manufacturing place, it brings them there; and when the mills in other places stop for want of water, that brings them to Fall River. I think there are quite a lot of them from Lowell and Lawrence." " Is there anything else that you want to say to the committee?" " Well, as regards debts; it costs us so much for funeral expenses and doctor's expenses; I wanted to mention that." "You have stated that. It is clear that nobody can afford either to get sick or die there." "Well, there are plenty of them down there that are in poor health, but I am in good health and my children generally are in fair health, but OUR PAUPER LABOR. 153 the children can't pick up anything and only get what I bring to them." "Are you in debt?" " Yes, sir." " How much?" " I am in debt for $15 of those funeral expenses since a year ago." " You live in a hired tenement?" "Yes; but, of course, I can't pay a big rent. My rent is $6 a month. The man I am living under would come and put me right out, and give me no notice whatever, if I didn't pay my rent. He is a sheriff and auctioneer man. I don't know whether he has any authority to do it or not, but he does it with people." " Do you see any way out of your trouble; what are you going to do for a living, or do you expect to stay right there?" "Yes, I can't run around with my family." " You have nowhere to go to, and no way of getting there if there was any place to go to?" "No, sir; I have no means nor anything, so I am obliged to stay there and try and pick up anything as I can." " You don't know anything but mule-spinning, I suppose?" " That is what I have been doing, but sometimes I do something with pick and shovel. I have worked for a man at that, because I am so hard put. The way they do there is this: There are about twelve or thirteen men that go into a mill every morning, and they have to stand their chance looking for work. The man who has a boy with him, he stands the best chance; then if it is my turn or a neighbor's turn who has no boy, if another man comes in who has a boy, he is taken right in, and we are left out. I said to the boss once: ' It is my turn to go in, and now you have taken on that man; what am I to do? I have got two little boys at home, one of them three and a half years, and the other one a year and a half old, and how am I to rind something for them to eat? I can't get my turn when I come here.' He said he could do nothing for me. I says, ' Have I got to starve? Ain't I to have any work?' They are forcing these young boys into the mills that should not be in the mills at all ; forcing them in because they are throwing the mules out and put- ting on frame rings. They are doing everything of that kind that they possibly can to crush down the poor people, the poor operatives there." The New York World, which has given to the sul ject of "pauper labor" special attention, thus describes the condition of the poor girls employed in one of the highly protected silk ribbon factories of that city: Amid the busy hum and whirl of a hundred looms some four times that number of girls were plying their deft ringers. 154 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. The employes of the factory numbered 550, and with the exception of the weavers at the looms and the foreman and packers, all were women and girls. The majority were girls of from thirteen to eighteen years of age, the older girls and the women of course doing the more important work. The girls and women were, without exception, spot- lessly clean and neat. A few questions put to the proprietor of the factory brought out the cold, hard facts that the working hours for the girls and women were from seven o'clock till six, winter and summer alike, and their wages from $3 to $7 a week. The rest might have been conjectured, but the reporter seized a moment when one of the warping machines was quiet and approached the girl in charge, a little damsel of apparently sixteen or seventeen years. " I get $3 a week," she said. " I had to work three weeks here for $1 a week. It took me that long to know how to watch the spools. Then they gave me $2.50, and last month they raised me fifty cents. ' ' I have a sister two years older than myself . She works in a paper- box factory, and cannot earn more than $2.50 a week. Our mother goes out washing, and the three of us together earn enough to keep us. "This work is not very hard, but I have to get up at half-past five o'clock in the morning. It's quite dark now when we get to work. We have a Saturday half-holiday, but we get paid 50 cents less every week than if we had to work that afternoon. ' ' I shall be eighteen years next birthday. No, of course I should not be able to' live on my earnings if I were alone. It's only by living with my sister and mother that we can get along; but I shall get a raise to $3.50 next week, and if I get on they will give me better work and $5 a week soon." To close this unattractive chapter on the life of our wage workers the following on the highly protected " labor " in some of the great industries of New York city, drawn by the New York Herald, is added : " The gulf that separates the custom workman from the unfortu- nates who make up ready-made clothing seems all but immeasurable. " Not in pleasant homes nor in comfortable workrooms are the lat- ter to be found, but in dingy, foul-smelling rear houses, in moldy cel- lars, iu crumbling garrets or in the noisome, cramped and crowded rooms of those traps — the tenement houses of New York, where men OUR PAUPEK LABOR. 155 women and children are huddled together at the rate of over two hun- dred thousand to the square mile; where hope perishes and where it seems impossible to live, much less to work. " Here their lives are passed, forever engaged in a fierce struggle with want. Slaves of poverty, bound with fetters they cannot break, held fast in the iron grip of circumstances, they toil on instinctively until the release comes. ' ' The average earnings of men and women do not exceed $6 a week the year round, and for this miserable pittance they must labor from twelve to sixteen hours a day throughout the busy season. Then come the three idle months during which they live — well, as best they can, for they have no surplus from nine months' work, their earnings tben being barely sufficient to keep body and soul together. Through the streets of the city they plod, looking for work, and in their wretched, cheerless houses they rest, waiting for work." Now talk about " pauper labor in Europe ! " Talk about the high tariff being the only barrier against the reduction of the wages of the American workingmen to the basis of the starvation wages of England ! Talk about the " blessing " of protecting American labor against the competition of foreign paupers ! To "protect," so it is alleged, American tailors and to raise their wages, there is a duty of forty per cent levied on ready-made clothes imported from abroad, or forty cents on every dollar's worth of goods, or $4 on each $10 worth. Now how much of this does the American tailor get? Not a penny — not a farthing. His wages are shown to be about the same as those paid in London, while in fact his living is more expensive. The American manufacturer, having squeezed down his wages to the "pauper labor" basis, levies and collects from the people of this country a tax of forty cents on each dollar's worth of ready-made clothing, and for the most part shoddy and worthless clothing at that, and pockets it. But, perhaps, the worst picture and the most striking refutation of the claim that protection secures to the 150 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. laborer steady work at good wages, is shown by the fol- lowing, taken from the same journal: " The condition of the laborers in 1 he sugar refineries is literally that of 'white slaves.' The lowness of their wages is by no means the sum of their hardships. In no occupation is the toil more exhaust- ing, in none so oppressive, in none more beset with menace to the health, or even to life and limb. " There are rooms in a sugar refinery where the temperature is kept at 180° year in and year out. Of course that is nothing in the hottest chamber of the Turkish bath. But you would think it was something if you had to endure it day after day or night after night, from ten to twelve hours at a time, and not only to endure it but to earn your daily bread by toiling in this horrible heat. " The average wages is $30 a month to a man. ' Thirty dollars a month ! And nearly all of them are men of family, men with wives to render happy and with children to clothe and to bring up in ways of decency and intelligence. " Since the last strike the wages of the sugar refiners have been a trifle, only a trifle, better than they were before. They are now four- teen and a half cents an hour. Think of that, when the meanest 'long- shoreman gets sixty cents an hour and the commonest hod-carrier $l.. r ;0 a day. And the sugar refiner obtains no difference of wages whether he work day or night, while the 'longshoreman's night pay is a good deal more than he receives for day labor. ' ' Before the strike the men in larger refineries were paid only thirteen and a half cents an hour and those in some of the smaller onet but twelve and a half cents." An Englishman who had quit the business, wlien asked concerning the comparative condition between the sugar refineries in this country and in England, said : " If I were to work in a sugar refinery again I would much prefer to do so in England. You can live better there on the wages which they give you than you can here. Twenty-two shillings a week amounts to eighty-eight cents for each working day. Mind you, you have regularemployment there, too, the year round. Here, if you were sure of the fourteen and a half cents an hour, miserable pay as it is in com- parison with that of other occupations, it would be something worth striving for to men in our poor condition. It is just there where the shoe pinches at the present time. The 'bosses' are bent upon getting OUR PAUPER LABOR. 157 their own prices for sugar and are cutting down the production. They don't care a rap how much it affects the poor workingrnen. You have been told that one half of the journeymen sugar refiners were idle Worse than this. Many of those who are not idle are not allowed to work half their time. Some of them get only three, four, or five hours at a time. How far will that amount of labor go toward supporting a man, think you, let alone a wife and family? Why, there are poor fellows whom I know, married at that, who have not managed to make more than $20 or $25 a month for many months past. The average I should say, is about $30 per month. There are some, of course, who are old workmen and who stand best with the ' bosses' who make from $39 to $44 a month. But isn't it monstrous that that should be the highest wages to which a good man may attain after years of hard toil and faithful service? "What the men complain of most, however, is the lack of work. And they would be a great deal more cheerful if they even got paid for all the time that they devote to the service of their employers. It's a regular thing for a man to be ' docked ' for a quarter of an hour at the end or in the middle of his day. The men are asked to be at the refinery at certain hours. What can they do with these little fag ends of hours that are left them when the foreman bids them go for the day? "Think of ' docking ' these poor fellows who make only fourteen and a half cents an hour, three and five-eights cents for fifteen minutes not employed? I left the business because I don't think that any man who calls himself a man should be content with fourteen and a half cents an hour. The foregoing are only isolated cases, but they are sufficient to convey a general idea of the deplorable con- dition of the working people in our most highly protected industries. The reports of special newspaper corre- spondents, and the sworn statement of these intelligent operatives simply corroborate the numerous reports which have almost daily been published during the last ten years ; and the fact that such cases of destitution and misery as the above are never heard of among the un- protected farmers, and but few among the other laborers employed in unprotected trades and occupations, must 158 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. convince every reflecting mind that protection is not a blessing but is the curse of American labor. Moreover these damaging facts to the claims of pro- tectionists have never been denied and, indeed, cannot be denied. These people are the living monuments of the heartlessness and cupidity of a privileged class. Suppose their assertions were admitted, that the workers in Eng- land are in a worse condition than ours, is there not a world-wide difference between the natural conditions of the two countries to account for it ? England is a small, overpopulated island, with iron and coal as her only natural resources. America is a land immense in extent, sparsely settled, endowed with natural wealth and advantages unsur- passed by any other country on the globe. In making invidious comparisons betweeu the condition of the work- ers in both, the protectionists are adding insult to injury. Such pictures of human misery and wretchedness as the above should not be among the possibilities in America. There are many reasons why affluence and comfort should be the exceptions among the working classes of England, while there is absolutely no excuse why in the United States plenty should not be the rule. And what is the principal cause of this anomaly % It is not so much insufficiency of wages as insufficiency of work. The Fall River " clam-picker " stated the question most tersely when he said : "I would be perfectly satisfied with $1.50 a day, if I had work all through the year." And why this lack of work ? England is selling five hun- dred yards of woolen and cotton fabrics to foreign nations where we sell but twenty, and all other manu- factured articles in proportion. OUR PAUPER LABOR. 159 Is the Englishman such a superior business man? Has he more good sense ; has he greater spirit of enterprise ? Are the managers of his mills more efficient and invent- ive than ours? No; but instead of confining his trade within England's realm, and instead of insisting on cash sales, he trades everywhere at a profit. He trades his cotton goods and miscellaneous wares at a profit with the merchant of Peru for copper. He trades his cutlery and dry goods in Buenos Ayres for the hides, tallow and wool of the Argentine Eepublic. He gives steady work to thou- sands of laborers in manufacturing his copper into utensils, and the Argentine hides into leather, which he then trades at a profit with the Frenchman for wines, silk and jewelry which he sells at a profit at home, and the wool he sells at a profit for cash, or trades for agricultural produce in New York ; proceeds ta New Orleans and buys cotton at the same figure his Yankee competitor buys it for, takes it home, setting his countless operatives to work it up into fabrics for the markets of the United States and the rest of the world. But the Englishman has this one additional advantage over all his competitors: his govern- ment throws no obstacle in the way of his trading pro- pensities ; it gives him free scope in providing his manu- facturing friends in Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, and on the Clyde, with all the raw material required, without taxing it a penny. Suppose the American government should resolve to pursue a similar liberal policy ? Is there a reasonable ground for doubt, that, in possession of the enormous natural advantages over those of Great Britain, we would not soon outstrip that country in the race for commercial supremacy, secure an abundance of work for our laborers, and thus put an end to pauperism in the manufacturing centers of the United States ? THE EFFECT OF PEOTEOTIOJST UPO^T TJKPKOTECTED LABOR THERE is some plausibility in the claim of protection- ists that the laborers employed in the coal and iron mines, in the furnaces and rolling-mills, the cotton and woolen-mills, and other manufacturing industries (the products of which are protected by high import taxes), receive some benefit from that protection, and there may be some excuse for the belief of the miner or mill operative, that a system which increases the profits of his "boss" has the effect of increasing his wages, and for him to grow enthusiastic over that S3 r stem ; but how a person employed in the building or the thousands of other unpro- tected trades and occupations, or a farmer, or laborer, who receives not one cent's benefit from this system, while it increases everything he buys, can "enthuse"over it, is absolutely incomprehensible, and vividly reminds one of the stupid " white trash " of ante helium times. Only a quarter of a century ago the slave-holders claimed that it was in the interest of the negro that he robbed him of his labor, and the three million " white trash " who suffered most from the effect of the peculiar institution, lustily re-echoed that claim. To-day the iron and coal lords of Pennsylvania are setting up the claim that it is in the interest of their work- ingmen that they ask protection for their product, and a majority of the fifteen million unprotected farmers and workingmen, who are among the chief victims of this system, are at the same time its staunchest supporters. 160 EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON UNPROTECTED LABOR. 161 There is no difference in principle and effect between the ignorant white trash champion of slavery times, and the ignorant, white labor champion of protection of to-day. Any sane man, giving this subject but a moment's re- flection, must perceive that the only American labor that can receive any possible benefit from protection is the labor employed in making goods similar to those that are imported. It would be as useless and as absurd to lay import duties upon articles that from the nature of things can- not be imported, as it is to lay a duty upon articles that a/re not imported, such as upon wheat and other agricult- ural products, of which we have a surplus to sell. An article produced or service rendered in this country cannot be protected against a similar article produced or similar service rendered abroad, unless this foreign article or service can be brought in competition with the home article or service, and the wages of labor employed in pro- ducing such articles or in rendering such services can, there- fore, not possibly be affected by a tariff on imports, high or low. Brick or stone buildings, for instance, cannot be im- ported, and as long as the European " pauper builder " stays and works in Europe, he cannot compete with the American builder; our masons, bricklayers, carpenters, roofers, plumbers, plasterers, painters and all other work- men employed in the building trade, or in rendering per- sonal services, cannot in the nature of things be protected by a tariff on houses, and it is the height of impudence to insist that the protective sj T stem can or does affect, favor- ably or unfavorably, directly or indirectly, the wages of any man employed in any of the various branches of the 162 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. building trade, or the thousands of occupations entirely disconnected from manufacture or mining. To be sure, the " pauper carpenter, 1 ' bricklayer, plas- terer, etc., may come across the Atlantic and bring his labor to this country free of duty, to compete with the labor of American workmen, by offering to work for lower wages. There are no laws in the United States protecting labor in the building trade against an overflow of " for- eign pauper labor." There is absolute free trade in that. This holds good for all unskilled labor of the country, whether employed in protected industries or not; whether engaged in tilling the soil, handling the spade, or swinging the ax. It holds good for the great mass of the American laborers employed upon the farms, upon our streets or in the shops, in trade and transportation as well as those ren- dering professional and personal service. The unpro- tected classes, form the largest majority of the producers, such as merchants, tradesmen and mechanics of the coun- try; they are the rule, the protected few the exception. In order to make this statement clear, let us take a few occupations and examine the claims made by the protec- tionist, that the labor therein employed is benefited by the protective system. "Claim Every Thing" is the shibboleth of protection- ism, but it will hardly do to claim that European railroad, express' and inland navigation companies, and the "pauper labor" therein employed, can by any possible device be brought into competition with similar compa- nies and its labor in this country. To be sure, the "European pauper" employed in that line of business may come to this country and import his labor faculties EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON UNPROTECTED LABOR. 163 free of duty, and being accustomed to work for " pauper wages" and to live upon cheaper food, he may, as is claimed, very profitably be used by our transportation magnates in "bearing" this particular labor market, and in compelling their employes to submit to a cut in wages. Now, will some acute protectionist inform us what earthly benefit it is to any of the million of men employed in the transportation business, that the product of the cotton and woolen manufacturer, of the iron and coal operator, and of the whole tribe of subsidy beggars is protected by the Federal government from 50 per cent to 150 per cent against the product of their foreign com petitors? The benefits are all the other way, and every person employed in transportation is tributary to the manufacturer to the amount of the increase in the price of the commodities he has to purchase. According to the last United States census there were in 1880 two million persons classified as laborers. Their tools are very simple; they consist of the shovel, the spade and the pick, the saw and the ax, the spur and the whip. They are our daily toilers, doing the work which rehires great physical exertion. They clean our streets and sewers, dig our trenches, throw up our railroad em- bankments, drive our teams and take care of our horses, split our wood, load and unload our vessels and freight cars — in short, they perform the toilsome drudgery of the American people. All this labor has of a necessity to be done here, and "European pauper labor" cannot possibly compete with the American laborer, and it is adding insult to injury to tell him that the rate of his wages depends upon the amount of import taxes piled upon the things he must buy. The only way in which the foreign pauper laborers can 164 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. be brought into competition with our American labor is by shipping them to this country, which is done to a liberal extent by the bosses of our protected industries.* Hun- dreds of thousands of these laborers are yearly landing at Castle Garden under the system of absolute free trade, immediately to compete with similar American laborers, and by overcrowding the labor market are breaking down the wages of our own labor. Now let us suppose the protective s} 7 stem were wiped out ; cheajr European commodities permitted to come in at a low duty, compell- ing the home manufacturer to lessen his profits by lower- ing the price of his goods ; is it not plain, as far as these two million of laborers are concerned, they being mainly consumers, that they would be immensely benefited by the change? From the same census report it appears that in 1880 1,075,653 persons earned their livelihood as domestic serv- ants. The rate of wages of these people differs accord- ing to circumstances and locality. When gold was discovered in California there was hardly a limit to the prices paid for domestic service ; $5 nor $10 a day commanded the best. ♦About a year and a half ago there was a strike of the cigar-makers of the city of Milwaukee. They were striking for an increase. At that time the manu- facturers there accorded the demands of the cigar-makers, except one firm, which, being the largest, declined to fall in. As a consequence, the other manu- facturers, who had already acceded to the wishes of the strikers, were induced to lock them out and not to re-employ them while they continued to belong to the "union "or would insist upon an increase of wages. This result accom- plished, the advertising began throughout the country for cigar-makers to gi» to Milwaukee — this firm, at the same time, sending agents to Germany to insert in the public papers very rose-colored pictures of Milwaukee and the surround- ing country, of the advantages of employment offered by them, etc. This was not only done, but circulars were sent out, and the consuls of the United States, stationed in the different parts of Germany, indorsed these rose-colored pictures and descriptions with their signatures and with their official seals. A very good use was made of the representatives of this country in Germany, it will be .seen, to assist in defeating and undermining the working-men in Mil- waukee— Report of lite U. S. ( ommittee on Labor and Capital, EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON UNPROTECTED LABOR. 165 In Chicago, or in any other large city, the wages of domestic servants, both male and female, are higher than in the smaller towns in the country. Has the protective tariff anything to do with that % And if domestic serv- ants in this country earn, on an average, ten times the Avages paid in Germany for the same labor, is it on account of protection, or is it because there are ten per- sons in Germany to one here willing to do the work of a domestic servant? There is absolute free trade in domestic labor, and if all indications do not deceive, the European " pauper serv- ant" will soon overflow this country and will cause a reduction of wages, even if all importation of foreign goods are prohibited. Protection to the one million servants of the country means no more nor less than fifty per cent additional cost for every article they must buy. Under the classification of manufacture and mining 1 the last census report enumerates 172,726 blacksmiths. JSTow, it would probably puzzle Mr. " pig-iron " Kelly himself, if he were asked to exactly state where the bene- fits of the protective system to a blacksmith come in. Our horses and mules can not conveniently be shipped to Europe to be shod by some "pauper blacksmith" for one- quarter of the amount that it costs here. There is one way, however, in which this horse-shoe- ing may be made cheaper, in spite of the high tariff on horse-shoes, nails, coal and the smith's tools, and that is, by bringing the "pauper blacksmith" from Europe to this country, on the free-trade-in-labor plan, in suffici- ently large numbers to create a surplus over the demand of that particular labor here, w r hen increased competition among the blacksmiths will enable the bosses to "bear" the wages. 166 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. If the solicitude of the protectionists for American workingmen is genuine, why do they not ask Congress tc lay a heavy tax on the import of pauper blacksmiths ? Their solicitude is a fraudulent pretense by which black- smiths, the same as all other toilers, are fooled into the support of the so-called " Protection to American Labor " folly. The same census furnishes the information that 44,851 persons are devoting their time to the useful occupation of barbers. The average price for a shave in large cities is fifteen cents, and ten cents in the country towns. In Germany the same service may be obtained for less than one-third the amount, or four or five cents. Will any protectionist assert that it is the protective system which enables the American barber to obtain three times the amount charged in Germany for the same service? Is it not mainly because in Germany peo- ple shave themselves to a large extent, while in busy America, where time is money, it is cheaper to be shaved ? Consequently, barbers here are in more demand, while the supply is limited. Increased demand in services, the same as increased demand in goods, is always followed by an increase in wages. Now, if these 44,851 barbers are so fortunately sit- uated as to obtain three or four times the wages their less fortunate fellows obtain in Europe, are they in any way indebted to the prevailing system of protection for this special advantage, and have the men in charge of, or who are employed in any other industry, the right to demand that each one of these barbers contribute a part of his earnings, say one or two cents from each shave, to the support and encouragement of some other particular in- dustry, and without a farthing's equivalent in return? EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON UNPROTECTED LABOR. 167 The claim is too flimsy to be earnestly considered by anybody. The census says that in 1880 our flouring-mills occu- pied 53,440 millers. Suppose these millers earn $2.50 a day on the average, while the European miller earns only seventy-five cents a day. How is the American miller to be protected against the pauper miller of Europe? It would be an expensive business for us to send our grain to Europe to be made into flour by the European miller and shipped back again. But even if it were possible, it would not be profitable, for, although we are paying our millers three times the wages paid to millers abroad, owing to our natural advantages and the superior skill and intelligence of our mill operators, American flour undersells in the markets of Liverpool the "pauper" flour of every other country. Nothing can protect, that is, can increase the American millers' wages but an enlarged market for his product. The more flour we export the more millers we need. If the demand exceeds the supply, a rise in wages is in- evitable. The last United States census enumerates 79,625 engi- neers and firemen. It would probably tax the ingenuity of the "smartest" protectionist to tell us how the wages of these 80,000 American laborers can be so threatened by the cheap wages of the European " pauper engineer and fireman" as to require "protection." Our engines cannot conveniently be " fired " and " run " from Europe with their cheap " pauper engineer and fire- man " labor. All that work has to be done here. The only competition, and a consequent reduction in wages, this class of labor has to fear, is the labor of the European "pauper engineer and fireman," which, under the free 168 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. trade system in labor is imported into this country by thousands. Is it due to the protective system that the 85,G71 physicians and surgeons, the 227,710 teachers, the 30,477 musicians, enumerated in the last census, receive on the' average double and triple the remuneration similar service commands in Germany ? No, it is due to the * exceptional natural advantages this country has over those of any other country in the world. And as these useful classes of our population can- not obtain any possible benefit from protection, why should they be taxed upon their necessaries for the benefit of some manufacturer? They are all willing to contribute their share to the support of the government, but every dollar taken from them for the benefit of another citizen is simply robbery. The last census enumerates 380,718 persons as clerks. It will not be maintained that the wages of these clerks, whose labor has necessarily to be done here, can be pro- tected against the cheap wages of the "pauper clerk" in Europe by a tariff on imports. It is a plain matter of sup- ply and demand. If trade is brisk the demand for clerks will increase and so will their wages, provided the sup- ply in clerks is short. But, as agriculture is being discarded by "Young America," and the trades-unions step in and prohibit our young boys from learning a trade, clerical help will soon be a drug in the general labor market of the country, when the wages of this class may fall below the wages of the pauper clerks in overcrowded Europe. The washing of our dirty linen by the 121,942 launder- ers and washwomen enumerated in the last census is much more expensive here than in Europe. But the "pauper EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON UNPROTECTED LABOR. 169 launtlerers" of the old country who would do the work for less than one-half cannot, as long as they remain there, possibly compete with the American labor employed in washing. There being no competition, there can be no protection against it. But, on the other hand, protection enhances the price of every article the launderers have to purchase fifty per cent on the average, consequently reducing the amount of their earnings just that much. Of what benefit is it to the 64,678 clergymen enumer- ated in the last census that, by a shrewdly-devised system of taxation, the manufacturer of cloth is placed in a posi- tion to charge fifty or seventy-five per cent more for the clothes he is obliged to appear in upon a Sunday ? Does the cloth manufacturer divide the extra profit obtained through protection among the preachers ? But it is useless to continue these illustrations ; the remarks made in reference to each applies with equal force to all the 4,047,238 persons enumerated in the last census under the head of professional and personal serv- ices; to the 1,819,256 persons enumerated under the head of trade and transportation, and to over half the persons enumerated under manufacture — as, for instance-, the 41,309 bakers, the 194,079 boot and shoemakers, whose employers could compete with any shoemaking employ- ers in the world if they were not heavily taxed by the duties on raw material, the 373,143 carpenters and join- ers, the 49,138 coopers, the 34,536 employes (not specified), the 41,352 fishermen and oystermen, the 102,473 brick and stone masons, the 128,556 painters and varnishers, the 22,083 plasterers, the 72,726 printers, lithographers and stereotypers, the 77,050 saw-mill employes and the hundreds of thousands in numerous other trades. EFFECT OF THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM ON" MANUFACTURERS. IF, as I have endeavored to show, the protective system does not promote the general prosperity of the coun- try, that it injuriously affects the farmer, that it does not benefit labor employed in protected industries, while it robs unprotected labor of half of its earnings through the increased price of the necessaries of life, the system ought, at least, to possess the quality of benefiting the industries for which it was established. Now, if I am able to show that while protection enriches a few of the manufacturers and mine owners it injures the many, that the tax upon the raw material of the manufacturer prevents him from competing in foreign markets, that it impedes the progress and full develop- ment of our industrial resources, that it robs labor of its opportunities for steady employment, that it places a pre- mium upon the production of shoddy, worthless articles, that, by destroying competition, it fosters combinations and monopolies, and the organization of powerful trusts, to the extortion of the consumers, and to the det- riment of individual thrift and enterprise, and last, but not least, that it has the pernicious effect of dividing the people of the United States into two antagonistic classes, then I believe I have proven my case. As has already been shown, the exorbitant increase of the tariff rates during the needs of the late war, causing a falling off in the importation of foreign articles, had the 170 EFFECT OF PROTECTION 03Sf MANUFACTURERS. 171 immediate effect of increasing the demand for the home- made product. The wastefulness of a prolonged war, the steady flow of immigration to the United States, and, later on, the needs of the recuperating South, all served to keep this demand in excess of the supply. Attracted by the enormous profits realized, capital began to drift into numerous manufacturing enterprises ; the facilities of old factories were enlarged, new ones established, and supplied with modern and more effective machinery. The causes above enumerated, added to the speculative period of railroad extension and a depreciated currency, had the effect of keeping prices stationary. Times were good and the people apparently prosperous. Labor found ample and remunerative employment, and the manufact- urers and corporations realized immense fortunes. But when these extraordinary demands were supplied, and all the railroads needed and many that were not needed had besn built, the home market for iron and the various manufactured products became " glutted," and as a consequence, in 1878 the inflated manufacturing balloon exploded with a crash. The sad story of that period is well remembered in every household in the land, for but few were left unharmed. It was a period of bankruptcies, of financial ruin and desolation. Protection was thus brought face to face with its logical effect — over-produc- tion followed by industrial paralysis. This period was forcibly described by Gen. Banks, who, upon the floor of Congress, said : "Business is suspended. The people do not buy and they do not sell. They are holding their breath, waiting for what may possibly be the result of the action of Congress upon these subjects, or for some fortunate and 172 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. fundamental change in the condition of financial and public affairs — a change that I fear will not come. This year must be one of calamity to the government, as it is of financial and industrial depression and distress to the people in all parts of the country. The signs of it are all around us ; multitudes out of employment ; labor strikes threatened or inaugurated of unprecedented magnitude in this country and in Europe; savings banks tottering ; unpaid taxes accumulating with frightful rapidity; debts increasing; property diminishing in value; confidence wanting and hope failing; stay laws suggested or enacted ; and too frequent suggestions of communism and revolution awakening." To Mr. Banks' gloomy picture may be added that of the Hon. "Wm. M. Evarts, Secretary of State, under Presi- dent Hayes, an ardent protectionist, who in his annual report said : "Out of 1,714 blast furnaces, 478 are out of blast, in all representing $400,000,000 capital." Add to these the closing up of thousands of various manufacturing establishments and mines for good, or for longer and shorter periods, the universal cutting of wages, and the throwing out of employment of hundreds of thousands of workmen, who, as "tramps," filled the highways of the country, and whose physical needs served to create a state of insecurity in the land, and the picture will be completed. This period was but the natural result of the govern- ment's hot-house policy, and it is easy to see that a com- parative few manufacturers, those only who were able to weather the storm, were the beneficiaries of the fifteen years of protection, while some of the people who had been prosperous enough to save a few dollars during this EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 173 historical period of inflation, now lost it through the col- lapse of savings banks, insurance companies and the shrinkage in railroad stocks. This was the state of the country at the close of the last decade, a condition in which it might have remained indefinitely, but for the years of plentiful harvests imme- diately following. FREE RAW MATERIAL. Now, as to the second proposition, " that the tax upon the raw material of our manufacturer prevents him from competing in foreign markets, impedes the progress and full development of our industrial resources, and robs labor of its opportunities for steady employment." I think I am safe in saying, that the most pernicious effect of this system upon the manufacturing industries of the'country is the tax levied upon its raw material. This import tax, which also enhances the price of the home article from twenty-five to fifty per cent, naturally increases the cost of production to that extent, thus pre- venting our manufacturers from competing with the for- eign producers, who obtain their raw material tax free. The great staples upon which our principal industries are based, are iron, wool, cotton and coal. There is hardly a finished article of any kind of which one or the other of these materials is not a compo- nent part, and consequently, any tax laid upon these mate- rials is a tax upon every factory in the land, and is as much a tax upon the necessaries of life as a tax would be upon bread and meat. But while it unjustly oppresses the American consumer, it has also the effect of shutting out the American manufacturer of finished goods from the benefits of the world's market, because his foreign com- petitor pays no such tax. 174 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. Take the iron industry, for instance. Consider for a moment the multiplicity of interests involved in trans- forming the crude material into the infinitesimal varieties of articles, from the huge naval iron-clad to the insignifi- cant hair-pin; the thousands of large and small factories, keeping busy hundreds of thousands of hands ! Think of the unremitting strain and ingenuity which taxes the brain of the managers of these various interests, in the endeavor to extend the market for their wares in compe- tition with the English, German and French manufacturer, which they are now doing to a limited extent, *and then contemplate the action of our Federal government, which is doing its utmost to stifle these laudable efforts by authorizing the owners of a few iron mines and their rail- road allies, to levy a tribute of $7.00 a ton upon their raw material ! Aside from the impudent and absolutely fraudulent claim, that protection on iron ore and pig-iron is needed * Testimony of Mr. D. B. Buford, of Rock Island, one of the most extensive and successful plow makers in the world, before the tariff commission : " There is not one article that we make, that is in the least benefited by the tariff. On the contrary, almost everything- that Ave buy is enhanced by the tariff, and of course our customers, in turn, have to pay more for what they buyof us. Almost every manufacturer in the West laborsundcr this disadvantage. We ship large amounts of our products abroad where we have to compete whh foreign makers. Elsewhere we are compelled to enter the field and fight, hampered Jt>y increased cost of materials, caused by the duties upon iron and steel." Mr. Lucius Wells, formerly manager of Deere & Co., Moline, Til., " which turned out 100,000 plows in 1881, says that the cost of every implement turned out by his house is enhanced 15 to 25 per cent by the present tariff, with no compensating benefit." "The industries at Trenton are suffering from useless obstructions imposed by the existing tariff. I seek to remove the obstructions in order that the capital and labor employed in branches of business affected by them may have steady and remunerative occupation which is now impossible. The removal of the duty on scrap iron, for example, which benefits no existing interest whatever, would enable every idle train in Trenton to be run day and night, and the money which is now paid for foreign rods would be largely distributed among the working-classes of Trenton who are condemned to idleness through no fault of their own, and every business interest of the city would flourish in a corre- sponding degree."— Spccclt, of Hon. Ahram S. Hewitt, at Trenton, N. J. EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 175 against the pauper labor of Europe, there is no earthly reason why the producers of that material should be entitled to more favors than the producer of cotton, who gets along very well without protection. Considering, that our iron ore is found almost on the earth's surface, consequently mined with greater facility and at less expense, there is no good reason why this ma- terial should be higher in price than in England.* At all events the additional expense of freight to bring it here would more than cover the difference in the price of labor. ♦"There is no place in the United States, and probably not in any other country, where iron can be manufactured more cheaply than here." (Geolog. Survey of Ohio, Vol. Ill, page 174.) And again (Ibid, page 661) : "In facilities for making iron, the owners of these lands are substantially independent of tariff and panics. There is really no danger that the price of iron will become so low thatit cannot be manufactured at a profit." * The Pittsburgh Gazet te (high tariff ) proclaims in tones of exultation that at last natural gas and superior workmanship have " overcome the low wages of England and other European countries." It goes on to tell, with much super- fluity of words, how that Park Brothers, of the Black Diamond Steel Works, have established branch houses in six or eight of the principal cities of Europe, India and Australia, for the sale of the finer grades of steel, particularly that used in making edged tools, The cities referred to are London, Paris, Stock- holm, St. Petersburg, Madras, Christiana, Dartmund, Sydney, Melbourne and Athens. The reader is assured that this " means business " on a large and increasing scale. He is further informed that such is the superiority of the Pittsburgh works in the production of these grades of steel, that Swedish iron is imported by the manufacturers, made into fine steel, and sent back to the country from which it originally came. Now, it is exceedingly gratifying to know that Pittsburgh manufacturers can make tool steel and sell it in the markets of the world, including England, and ask no favors of competitors. That is the sort of tiling in which Ameri- cans may justly take pride. And it is the sort of thing that Ave would witness on a far more extensive scale, if our manufacturers were not protected to death ; that is to say, if they were not handicapped by tariff taxes on produc- tion, at every turn, as the Pittsburgh concern is, from the ore to the finished product. It would le still more gratifying to be fully assured that the Pitts- burgh concern was engaged in straight and honest competition. It will not be so gratifying to learn that it is exacting from American purchasers the full pound of flesh allowed by the tariff, and thus making inordinate profits at home to enable it to sell to foreigners at a trifling profit. Full assurance upon that point would materially deepen the glow of pride with which one contem- plates a signal industrial triumph achieved by Americans, even, though **hey may be largely indebted to gas for their success.— Chicago Tin\es, 176 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. The actual cost of producing a ton of pig-iron in Pennsylvania and Ohio has been variously estimated at from $10 to $13, but the statement of some of the most prominent iron manufacturers, in reply to a circular letter from the American Iron and Steel Association, the lead- ing protectionist organization in the country, leaves no doubt upon that subject. These gentlemen admit, that, " when wages were much higher, the actual wages paid for mining iron ore were $2.81, and for the coal $1.22. Adding 40 cents wages paid for quarrying limestone, we get the total labor for producing the raw material of one ton of pig iron to be $4.43, instead of $10.26, as claimed by the association. If, to the actual labor paid for mining the raw material, as given positively by the census — $1.35 per ton, of ore, which the statistics of Mr. Swank, the general manager of the association, says averages fifty-five per cent metallic iron, and 79 cents per ton of coal, of which one and one-half tons are used to smelt a ton of pig — and to the labor of transportation, as estimated by the protectionist Iron Age, we add a profit of twenty per cent, the expenses at the furnace itself, and the sundry charges, we find that the real cost of the pig, per ton, will vary from $10.50 to $1-3, accord- ing as the business is conducted under economic man- agement and with improved plant, or the reverse." This statement is signed by J. B. Sargent, Sargent & Co., New Haven, Conn. ; Eclw. J. Shriver, ~New York ; Graham McAclam, late president Cromwell Iron Com- pany, New York ; Lindley Yinton, president Yinton Iron "Works, Indianapolis ; M. D. Harter, treasurer and super- intendent Aultman & Taylor Company, Mansfield, Ohio ; John II. Miller, secretary and treasurer Schreidt & Miller EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 177 Company, Mansfield, Ohio ; Isaac Harter, president Peer- less Eeaper Company, Canton, Ohio; W. G. Gibbons, Wilmington, Del. Several iron furnaces in the Hocking Valley, Ohio, are now producing pig-iron at $10 per ton. But of late years the South, with her eleven thousand square miles of coal beds, of iron ore and limestone, has entered the field and wil> prove a much more dangerous competitor to the iron lords of Pennsylvania than England.* * Recent investigations of the cost of making pig-iron in the South throw additional light on this subject. Mr. R. W. Knott, of the Louisville Courier- Journal, cited in that journal in 1884 figures from the books of an Alabama fur- nace producing 1,786 tons per month, showing that pig was actually produced at a cost of $9.77 per ton (including $4.76 for coke, $1.30 for ore, 80 cents for lime- stone, $1.67 wages, 61 cents officers' salaries, 53 cents taxes, stock, fuel, and mis- cellaneous expenses). Mr. R. P. Porter, of the Philadelphia Press, protectionist, was sent South to counteract these figures, but his own report, in his paper of June 4, 1884, gave among his figures a cost of $11.90 at Sloss furnace, $9.20 Alice furnace, $11.90 Cowan furnace. Mr. J. C Bayles, of the Iron Aye, in his pres- idential address at Chattanooga, before the American Institute of Mining En- gineers, made an estimate of $12.35, being for ore, $3(21-5 tons at $1.25); for coke, $5 (two tons, at $2.50) ; for limestone, one ton, 85 cents ; for wages and salaries, $2.50 ; for interest and expense, 50 cents ; for repairs and replacements, 50 cents. Since the furnaces at Birmingham, Ala., neither mine coal or ore, nor quarry limestone for themselves, but buy their materials, the cost of this part of the product is directly ascertainable by anyone who can get at the facts on the spot. Mr. Lindley Vinton, president of the Vinton Iron Works, Indian- apolis, visited these furnaces in May, 1885, and describes the region as the most promising field for iron making in the world — rich coal in thick veins running horizontally near the surface, covering an area of 11,000 square miles ; along its borders rich hematite and fossil ores and beds of limestone, its surface covered with forests for charcoal, the furnaces of the best models, with Whitwall stoves, and every facility for making the best use of the ore ; limestone, coal and char- coal at the furnace-doors. The ore, a red and brown hematite, is delivered in the stock-house, guaranteed to contain 50 per cent of iron, at 90 cents per ton, limestone at 90 cents per ton, coal at $1.15 per ton ; " the material for a ton of iron can be purchased for from $4.25 to $5, delivered at the stock-house." Using Mr. Bayles 1 figures as to quantity, with actual figures instead of estimates of price, we have then for ore (2 1-5 tons, at 90 cents) $1.98 instead of $3 ; for coke (two tons, at $2 to $2.25) $4 or $4.25, instead of $5 ; for limestone, 90 cents, instead of his 85 cents, a net decrease of $1.37 or $1.47, making the cost of mater- ial $6.88 or $7.38. The estimate for quantity of coke used is large. Adding Mr. Bayles 1 own estimate ($3.50) for labor, salaries, expense and replacement, we have the total cost $10.38 to $10.88 per ton. Mr. A. S. Hewitt estimates the labor cost at furnace at $1.40 per ton, a still further reduction. It was stated that the 178 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. In Bradstreet's market report, September 23, 1887, the selling price of our pig-iron was shown to be $21 and 822 a ton, or an additional profit of from $9 to $12 per ton. And for whose benefit ? It is claimed that foreign ore and pig-iron are taxed to protect American labor. But how much of this extra price goes to the miner and iron-worker? Last year this same pig-iron was quoted at $18, a net increase of $3 per ton in one year. Have the wages of the men who did the work been in- creased one cent during that time ? ~No, and as long as they believe that protection does increase their wages, there is no necessity for actually doing it. It is for no such purpose that the government of the United States :ost of ore to Mr. Morris was 25 cents per ton royalty (reaching as high as $10,000 >er acre to the Pratt Iron and Coal Company, owning the mines), 29 cents min- ing, 25 cents transportation to furnace, the selling price being 90 cents, delivered it stock-house. The monopoly of the Pratt Iron and Coal Company makes the cost of coke high, although the coal is mined by convicts whose wages are bare .subsistence. Coke is quoted at $2.25 per ton, but costs the furnace men in quan- tities nearer $2, whereas, with a fair profit to the coal mines, it should not cost over $1.25 to $1.50. Connellsville coke is quoted in Pennsylvania at $1.50 f. o. b., .uid has been as low as $1.15. The figures of Southern production are criticised is making insufficient allowance for repairs and replacements, interest and Adequate profit, and there is probably some force in these criticisms. But hiking all these allowances into consideration, it is evident that pig can be made there profitably at between $10 to $11 per ton. The laborers at these furnaces uid coke ovens, pets of "protection," are paid 75 to 90 cents, a few $1 per day ; out, taking the average wages paid according to the census report-of 1880, when the coke chargers got $1.49 and the laborer $1.27 per day, and the labor figures A-ere given as labor for mining 1.6 tons of coal 38 cents, coking 43J>£ cents, with nn average consumption of 1% tons of coke per ton of iron ; for mining ore 30 rents to $1 per ton ; limestone never over 40 cents per ton — Mr. Vinton figures the labor cost in a ton of iron at labor in coke 75 cents to $1; labor in ore 60 cents to $2; labor in limestone 20 cents to 40 cents ; labor at furnace $1 to $1.50, a total of $3.05 to $4.90. All the rest of the cost of pig is cost of transportation of materials (partly labor), royalty to the mine-owner, interest and profit to the capitalist. The landholder, who has perhaps bought land of the government at $1 to $5 per acre, is the great beneficiary of the protective system. Next to him come the transportation companies, with their watered stocks and monopoly tariffs. It is their partnership which causes the $25 shares of Lake Superior mines to sell at $300, while laborers get $1 a day or less. From Secretary Manning's Report. EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 179 stands guard at the frontier and prevents foreign ore from being brought in in competition with American ore. It is for the sole benefit of the handful of owners of ore- lands and the powerful railroad magnates, that our iron and steel industries are prevented from supplying Mexico, South America and the rest of the world with their mis- cellaneous fabrics, and our workingmen are robbed of steady and lucrative employment. There is but little difference in the actual cost of pro- duction between England and the United States, which is proven by the fact that during the crisis of 1879 Pitts- burgh manufacturers were enabled to sell iron as low, or nearly so, as it was sold in England. Mr. John P. Verrie, representing the Philadelphia Iron and Steel Company, testified before the Tariff Commission, "that even to-day (1882) Pittsburgh is selling iron in the East at $10 a ton less than the same iron can be imported for. So that it is not a question of competition any further with foreign manufacturers ; it is a question of home competition, and I do not think it is a sectional issue ; I think it is a national issue. " Pittsburgh has very many natural advantages. She is located on a river which takes her products to the extreme West and Southwest at a very cheap rate ; she has the best coal at a cheap rate ; she has gas without any cost, and iron of the best quality, which enables her, in mixtures with our own inferior ores, to make as good iron as any manufacturers can make, and, with the cheap trans- portation which she has, she is enabled to transport iron to the Atlantic coast and deliver it cheaper than the Eng- lish or the New England manufacturers can. I therefore come here to ask protection for the eastern coast, although that may seem an anomaly. The Allegheny Mountains 180 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. are a protection to the West as against eastern compe- tition. The West has an unlimited territory increasing- all the time, while we have a very narrow belt on the Atlantic coast. Therefore I claim protection from Pitts- burgh !" In Germany and Spain mineral lands belong to the government. The mine operator pays a royalty of two cents a ton in the former and three cents in the latter country. The American owner of ore lands, having purchased his land from the government at $1.25 per acre, exacts a royalty from the furnace-man, an interest upon a valuation of $10,000 per acre, much in the same fashion as our western lumber lords raise the value of their " stumpage." The cost of making pig-iron in England averages about $9.00 a ton. If the expenses of freight and commission of about $4.00 per ton is added, the American producer would be amply protected. If iron ore were put upon the free list the owners of ore land could not monop- olize the output, but would be compelled to accept a reasonable royalty. It must not be supposed, by any means, that the placing of iron ore upon the free list would cause the American iron market to be flooded with foreign ore ; it would only serve as a preventive against the inordinate charges of our iron and railroad lords. Our importations of iron ore have been about five hundred thousand tons annually, and if w r e had to import the nine million tons Ave need for consumption, there would not be vessels enough to carry it, and the freight rates would be prohibitive. The taking off of the tax on iron ore and on pig-iron would injure no interest, but would reduce the enormous profits now made by a few operators, while EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 181 it would infuse a wonderful impetus to the various branches of our iron industries and start up new enterprises all over the country. The line of exports of our finished iron and steel goods, which are confined to-day to tools, engines, agricultural implements, house-builders" hardware and a few others, would immediately be extended to the more bulky articles of iron castings, coarsely-finished machin- ery, anvils, sledge-hammers, and other heavy products of our iron and steel industries. This increased demand, of manufactured goods would naturally require more labor- ers, increase their wages, and by being steadily employed, their prosperity and consequently their contentment would be insured.* *"An active business experience of nearly forty years, thirty of which have been occupied in manufacturing', a fair actual acquaintance with, and knowl- edge of, the natural resources of tins country and of most of the countries of Europe, an examination and comparison of the methods of the United States and European manufacturers and their respective facilities, advantages and disadvantages, has convinced me that the United States of America is fully capable of taking and maintaining- an independent position as a manufacturing nation, and that her manufacturers, if left to fight their own battles against all comers, in a free-trade field, need no protection whatever against foreign man- ufacturers. "The fact that they are now able to sell, to some little extent, their manu- factured goods in neutral.' countries against the competition of the manufact- urers of Europe, is evidence of what they might do if relieved of the incubus of an enormous customs tax on the foreign raw mater iaU they use, and the corre- spondingly high price of American raw materials that then o/re compelled to use. "Under our tariff system, which is called 'the pi-otective system,' an attempt is made from time to time to adjust the duty on the various articles of foreign manufacture to conform to the supposed necessities of the American manufacturer of similar articles, and as the duty on one article is raised to meet the necessities, or more likely to protect the ignorance and unthrift of the American manufacturer, other manufacturers, imagining that the cost of making their own goods, or the cost of the living of themselves and their employes, has been increased by this advance in the tariff, combine and obtain an advance in the tariff on the classes of goods made by them. " Then the producers of the raw material think there is an opportunity for them to get the duty on their products raised, and so the figures have climbed upward by a step here and another there, and then a good pull altogether, till we have built a tariff wall around us that not only keeps nearly all foreign raw material and manufactured goods out of the country, but keeps nearly all of our manufactured goods at home, and so circumscribes our market, dwarfs 182 THE PROTECTIVE TAEIFF. COTTON AND WOOL. Next to iron, cotton and wool are unquestionably the most important crude materials entering into the manu- facture of finished articles. On the subject of cotton, which is untaxed, there is only this to say, that in spite of the restrictive tariff which enhances the price of every article which enters into their business, some lines of American cotton goods are now successfully sold in China, and even in England, in com- petition with English " pauper "-made goods, and but for the voracious appetite of the manufacturing corporations of New England, which insist upon their pound of flesh, there is not a cotton fabric of any kind, made in this country, that would not successfully compete with England in the world's market. American commerce, and suppresses nearly all possible material for commerce, except the products of our soil that may be wanted abroad. Is it not time now that we all take a few long steps downward — nearer terra flrma — and get into a condition to have a foreign commerce ? " This country is so rich in fertile lands, on which can be cheaply raised all kinds of produce necessary for the sustenance of man and beast, and all the raw materials necessary for clothing, it is so rich in the ores of all the use- ful metals and in the coal to convert them, that surely no product of the soil, nor of animals supported on the product of the soil, nor mineral ore, nor metal from the ore, can need the protection of a revenue tariff. These raw materials are placed by a kind Providence almost in the producer's hands, and fortunate should they esteem themselves who have, at so little cost, become the owners of the fertile lands and rich mines from whicli these raw materials are so easily obtained. "The workingman certainly needs no protection on his labor, provided lie can gethis food and clothing and all the articles that enter into the subsistence of himself and family free from the high prices influenced or induced by a high tariff, and even if he does need protection he cannot get it, because if the laborer tries to make a 'corner' in the price of labor, importations of foreign labor come in without limit and duty free. " With raiv materials free of duty, labor free of duty, and freights and other expenses on a free-trade basis, the manufacturer will need no protective tariff, but, I am sure, cannot only hold all he ought to hold of the home market, but obtain a large share of the foreign markets." — Testimony of I. B. Sargent, home- manufacturer of cutlery, before United States Tariff Commission. EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 183 This condition of affairs was well understood in the "trade" as early as 1S82. While the western cotton manufacturers uniformly urged upon the United States Tariff Commission radical reductions in the duties of all lines of cotton goods, the New England corporations kept perfectly still, not one of their representatives appearing before the commission. This silence was maintained for the sole reason, that, while a large increase of duties could not be had, a controversy upon the subject before the Tariff Commission would furnish the public with informa- tion reserved for their own circle. This reticence on the part of so important a New England manufacturing interest caused Commissioner Kenner (ultra- protectionist), at the close of their labors uneasily to remark : " Can you tell me why it is that in regard to a great industry like the manufacture of cotton goods we have not heard from any of the manufacturers, or why they have not made any recommendations to us % " As a matter of course, Mr. Kenner did not expect " recommendations " from that quarter, urging a reduc- tion of the existing exorbitant duties of from forty to seventy-five per cent, but what he undoubtedly thought he had a right to expect, was that the New England gentlemen would come before the commission, and in a general Avay warn them of the dangers following a reduc- tion of duties on their cotton fabrics. Such statements as, " What a calamity it would be for the operatives in our mills, now working at the munificent remuneration of $250 a year, to place them in competition with the pauper labor of Europe," would have justified the com- mission before the American people in their final action of raising the tariff on cotton goods ten per cent. In speaking of the western manufacturers, Mr. Ken- 184 THE PROTECTIVE TAKIFF. ner acknowledged, " that some of them would prefer to have no tariff on their goods at all ; that they had grown strong enough, and were now ready, like old England, if they could get their supplies where they could buy them cheapest, to have free trade with the loorld" " These statements," he says, "are from people who seem to know about these matters, and they declare they are willing to accept a radical reduction in the tariff rates in all their lines. I speak now," Mr. Kenner continued, " of what is called cotton goods manufacturers ; a repre- sentative of a cotton factory in Cincinnati made a posi- tive assertion to that effect; and when in St. Louis we had similar suggestions." The price of cotton goods has been kept within rea- sonable bounds, through competition between the home manufacturers, and therefore the American consumer is not oppressed in the same degree that he is in the price on woolen goods. Thus it will be seen, that the protective tariff injuriously affects our cotton industry in general ; that it is a useless impediment to its full development, and, to use the language of some of the manufacturers themselves, "they have grown strong enough and are now ready, like old England, if they could get their sup- plies where they could buy them cheapest,~to have free trade with the world." WOOL. The existing tariff on foreign wool is undoubted^ the most monstrous contrivance to unjustly oppress the poor, and to cripple an important American industry, of all the protective enactments on the statute books. For the presumed benefit of a handful of wool-growers in the Eastern States, who persist in raising wool on land worth EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 185 $100 per acre, the price of the clothing, bedding and imdercloth of sixty millions of people is enhanced from forty to one hundred per cent ; not that the increased price of the raw wool enhances the cost of the finished article directly, but owing to this unjust tax the wool manufacturer insists upon an enormous indemnifying duty on the foreign product.* It is a well-known fact that this country does not raise half the wool required for our own wants, and but for the large unoccupied areas of land in Texas and California, the per capita percentage, which has been estimated at seventy-six sheep to every hundred * " If you reduce the tariff on raw material, we could stand a reduction of duties. So long- as we pay a high duty on raw material we must keep it on the manufactured article. The manufacturers are not strenuous for high duty if they could have cheaply the articles they work with ; but if you have to pay duties on all the articles you work with, you have to add your duties on to the price in order to make any profit to the manufacturer. This duty on wool has averaged about twelve and a half cents a pound for the last five or ten years, and on greasy wool at that. It prohibits the purchase of wool in Buenos Ayres, the only wool imported at the time the duty was put on ; but that is equal to about fifty cents on wool enough to make a pound of cloth ; and now if we have got to import that, and we have to, that regulates the price of our home wool, pretty much. Then of course our duty, in order to protect the manu- facturer, has got to be put on top of that; and if he pays a duty on his indigo, oils, dye-stuffs, and everything of that kind, that must be considered, and the duty put on the price." — Chas. L. Harding, wool manufacturer, Boston, Mass., before the United States Senate Committer. "Woolen goods, protected by one hundred per cent, hardly enable their manufacturers to make sufficient profit to save them from bankruptcy. I know from my own experience that goods manufactured in Berlin undersell Amer- ican-made goods that are protected by one hundred per cent duty. These goods are made of cloth which costs in Berlin seventy-five cents, while the American article is sold for $1.75. The cloth is made of wool, which costs here thirty cents, while the Berlin manufacturer can use Australia wool, which costs one- half the price. This sufficiently explains why we cannot compete against Berlin-made goods. If, instead of raising the tariff on manufactured goods, we were to abolish the tariff on wool, we should be amply protected by a tariff of twenty or twenty-five per cent."— Manufacturer's Testimony before United States Tariff Commission. " We would advise the entire removal of the duties on raw material and dye stuffs, feeling that no change in the tariff would do more to increase our trade with foreign countries on textile fabrics and by opening up this outlet, 186 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. inhabitants, would be much less even than that of Europe, where land is scarce and valuable, and is estimated at sixty-six sheep for every hundred inhabitants, while in South Africa the estimate is 890 sheep to every hun- dred ; Australia, 2,402, and the Argentine Republic, 2,580, these latter countries having an abundance of cheap lands. But the most instructive and significant feature in this land question, in relation to sheep husbandry, is contained in the statistics of the Agricultural Department, giving the respective decrease and increase of the number of sheep in the older and more newly settled lands of the tend to prevent the great and violent fluctuations in prices, which are so dis- astrous to a healthy industrial growth."— J". V. FarwellSc Co., Chicago. "From the figures given you, which are absolutely correct, you will per- ceive that the American manufacturer is placed at once under great disadvant- age in procuring his raw material, in comparison with the German manufact- urer, on account of the duty of thirty cents per pound and the higher freight and custom-house charges, which compel him to invest a cash capital of $50,000 in his stock of wool, etc., and on which he must pay interest, insurance and taxes, against only $20,000, which are necessary to stock same with in Germany with the same quantity and quality of wool, etc. " Unless this duty on the raw material, ' wool,' is taken off, the woolen man- ufacturer of America cannot compete with Europe, except in the lower grade of goods, where cheap machinery and comparatively little manual labor is used, because the tariff rates are the same on finer grades as on lower grades of goods. It is a fact, to which I need hardly call your attention, that the finest woolen goods are not and cannot be manufactured here at remunerative rates or at any profit, on account of the pi-esent tariff."— Alfred Dodge, Manufactured of Pearshill, New York, to Secretary Manning. " The first thing I would do is to equalize raw material, so that we could use it freely with a great many goods we do not make now. If we had free raw material, we should greatly improve the condition of our people."— George C. Jliiliardson, Representing the Cotton and Woolmills at Lowell, Laurence, Saco and Lcwiston. "Raw material should be as free as possible. Why, m this country, be- fore all others, should it want any protection, with such an abundance of cheap and fertile land, great forests of timber, mines of coal and iron almost on the surface of the ground, and thus they can be and are made ready for the market at less cost than in any other country, and as our grain and cotton is cheaper and needs no protection, so should all our raw materials be." — D. I. Johnston, Cotton-Manufacturer at Cohoes, N. Y. "The effect of our tariff on wool is to give it to the foreign manufacturer Effect of protection on manufacturers. 187 United States. From them it appears that in 1867 there were about 30,000,000 sheep in the States of New York, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa and "Wisconsin. In 1877, after ten years of protection, this number of sheep had decreased to 14,500,000, or to less than one-half. (While it is not maintained that this decline of sheep- raising was caused by the tariff, it certainly shows the utter fallacy of the claim that protection favorably affects this industry.) During this same decade the number of sheep in Texas and California increased from less than 1,000,000 to 11,500,000, all of which goes to show that, next to a favorable climate, an abundance of cheap lands at least forty per cent below the price in this country, and more than equivalent to the whole possible difference in the cost of labor." — Managers of the Home Mills Company of Woolen-Manufactures. 'The present duty is partly specific and partly ad valorem, the specific being- supposed to furnish an equivalent for the duty on the raw material, and the ad valorem for the other items referred to above. To make the duty entirely specific would either overtax the poor man's cloth or admit the rich man's broadcloth with a very small duty, neither of which things should be done. It will therefore be absolutely necessary to keep the tariff on woolens about where it is until such time as the western farmers learn by experience that tin: liiijli tariff on wool does not benefit them, and become ready to let in wool at a low tariff." — Chas.Merriman, Woolen-Manufacturer, Providence, H. I. " The duty on wool does not help the wool-grower. The effect is to cause the importation of fabrics, whereas, if imported in the raw state, much domes- tic wool would be used mixed with the foreign, and our home growers would furnish at least half the wool for the goods now made wholly of foreign wools. " Free wool would also enable our idle mills to start up, and we could, after a short time, export some of our goods, making a market for our home-grown wools. " Free wool would raise prices abroad to a point that would make the cost here such as to enable our growers to compete favorably on the qualities adapted to their several localities. "It would give them a steady market, and tend to bring them in direct communication with the consumers, saving the profits of speculators. It is now seldom the case that the grower gets the advantage of an advance in market values. " It would be of more benefit to the wool-grower than to the manufacturer, as it would start up and increase the machinery, and make a demand for the wool. " It would give the grower what he most needs, customers and competition 188 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. is the absolute requirement for the successful raising of sheep on an extended scale. "Consequently, it will be easily seen, that, as fast as our western States and territories grow in popula- t ion thus fast the sheep are driven away. All our lands west of the Alleghanies are much too valuable for sheep- raismg, and there is just as much sense in the attempt of an Ohio farmer to raise sheep in competition with the shepherds on the La Plata, as would be the effort of a New-England agriculturist to raise wheat upon his little barren farm in competition with the Minnesota farmer on his extended lands of unexampled fertility. The lands for his wool. The home-grown will be used, so far as suitable, before the im- ported. Onder the same conditions it will have the preference. "It would not raise prices of the fabrics so as to interfere with full con- si i miition by the laboring classes." — Wool-Manufacturers' 1 Reply to Secretary Manning. " Duties upon raw or partially manufactured materials that are consumed by our manufacturers, just so far as they raise the cost of such materials, evi- dently nullify the nominal protection by the tariff on the finished goods. Just so far they give the foreign competing manufacturer the advantage over our own, and raise the prices to the ultimate consumer of the goods, and so far lessen his ability to consume. ''Manufacturers have been induced to invest capital in various enterprises under the delusion that they had an advantage over the foreign manufacturer from a 'protective' tariff, not knowing that the same tariff enhanced the cost of their products to an equal or greater extent. The materials for many woolen goods are thus increased in cost more than the duty on the finished fabrics, and the manufacture of such goods must result in failure when attempted in this country so soon as they experience the full effect of foreign competition. "No manufacture, unless it be a monopoly, can remain for a long time unduly profitable in this country. Competition is sure to reduce profits after a short time to the average of other business requiring equal capital and skill. "Our house has been in business for more than fifty years, and in all that time, as now, closely connected with and interested in various manufacturing operations. From our observation and experience we have learned that a high tariff is not of necessary "protection, either to the laborers or to the employers. On the contrary, it is usually a snare and delusion. "It is our firm belief that the labor of our country would be better protected and manufacturers be upon a much sounder basis with free raw material. A tariff that, keeping the present taxes upon spirits and tobacco, would raise such additional revenue as may 1 e required for the needs of the government would, EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 189 east of the Missouri are becoming more valuable from year to year, and it is only a matter of time when the sheep range of Texas will also have to make room for our regular diversified agricultural industries. Of all the " be it enacted," there is not one which so flagrantly and forcibly exposes the short-sightedness of the supposed beneficiaries, and the " unfathomable stupidity " of our average congressman as the protective enactments on wool. Don Quixote, the celebrated Spanish knight, in trying to stop his windmill, was but a miserable stumper when compared to the enlightened American statesman of to-day, who thus attempts to interfere with the in our opinion, be quite sufficient." — Beech & Co., Woolen-Manufacturers, Hart- ford, Conn. " In our opinion, the admission of raw material free of duty is a reform in the tariff that is imperatively demanded by the condition of manufacturing- interest, and would greatly aid in improving business generally." — George Bullock, representing Worsted-Mill* at Conshohocken, Pa. "If the present duty, or any duty, are to be levied on wool, then a cor- responding duty should be put upon woolen fabrics." — Geo. W. Powell, Presi- dent Amazon Hosiery Company, Michigan City, Ind. " To my mind the first and all important step, to make a change in the tariff, should be the repeal of duties on the raw materials of manufacture. This country needs free wool, coal, ores, jute, hemp, lumber, salt and dye-stuffs. If this would increase the revenues, then duties on sugar and other necessaries can be decreased. " Taxes on raw materials are inconsistent even with the theory of protec- tion. They shut us out from all markets when our own is glutted by overpro- duction. The element of cost, by reason of the tax on raw material, kills us. "The taxes on the articles named are distinctly disadvantageous to the people of Philadelphia, eastern Pennsylvania and adjacent States. The taxes on iron ore and coal operate as a means of perpetuating discriminations against this city in the freight charges by the railroads. The government gets from these but a small revenue, but the exactions of the railroad companies amount to millions a year."— Wrn. Singerly, of Philadelphia. " It is plain to me, as it has been expressed in your pamphlet, that the duty on wool handicaps the American woolen-manufacturers ; therefore, beingasyou say the best judges of their own intei'csts, why not carry out the principle to the end and say, Ave are opposed to any duty on wool, and ask for its abolishment? Act consistently, and do what your own intelligence tells you to be right. Now, there is another thing which I have noticed for some months back, and that is, that from one to three thousand enses of manufaci ured cotton goods have been shipped weekly to the ports of London, Liverpool and Glasgow. How is it that 190 the protective tariff. immutable laws of exchange. It is of no consequence to him that the climate, the soil, the price of land and of labor in Ohio and Pennsylvania are not adapted for wool-raising on a grand scale, and that, to overcome these unfavorable conditions, great sacrifices have to be made. He seems to contemplate with supreme indifference this fact, as well as, the fact that the sixty million inhabit- ants of the United States might the more comfortably clothe themselves with one-half the money they now pay, if they were permitted to huy the wool they need where the soil and climate are favorable to wool-raising, and where land and labor is cheap. The idea does not the American cotton-manufacturer can exporthis products to an English mark- et and sell at a profit? And they must do it, or they would quit sending them. Does not this same American cotton manufacturer have to compete in the same American labor market from which the American woolen-manufacturer has to gx't his supply of labor, and also the American farmer has to get his labor with which lie has to raise his wheat, corn, tobacco, pork, beef, dairy products, and ex | h at them to a foreign market, and sell in competition with the half-civilized labor of the Eastern world or the pauper labor of Europe, even the serf labor of Russia, which, although not serfs to-day, I am told, are not much better off? When the American cotton-manufacturer can sell his products in the English markets in competition with the English pauper labor, and pay the high Ameri- can price for labor to produce his products, does he want any protection? Sup- pose, for illustration, that the American woolen-manufacturer could go into the cheapest wool-markets of the world, just the same as the American cotton-man- ufacturer gets his cotton as cheap as any manufacturer, could not the Ameri- can woolen manufacturer produce equally cheap woolen goods? If not, will you please give me the reason why? Now let us take the specific duty on wool, which you say must be added to the price of American woolen "goods to over- come the specific duty now collected on wool. We will put it at forty cents, while the pamphlet says it will require forty-six and three-quarters cents per pound to put the American manufacturer on an equal footing with the European manufacturer. The census report of 1880 puts the woolen product of our country at something- over $200,000,000 per annum. While present at a banquet given l>y the National Association of Woolen-Manufacturers some few years back at the Continental Hotel, in Philadelphia, the president of the association, in giving an account of the woolen-manufacturing- interests of America, said the products per annum at that time were about $293,000,000. Now, let us take the census report and say it is correct of §200,000,000, and say the manufactured goods cost $1.50 per pound (which is a very high average of American-manufactured woolens), it would make about 13-1,000,000 pouads, aud add to it the specific duty of forty cents per pound. This will add to the EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 191 seem to find a lodgment in his shallow head, that the fellows who raise the cheap wool of Australia, South America and South Africa might be in need of some of our manufactured goods, or, if not in need now, might be induced, by and by, to exchange with us for our products their cheap wool (for which they have no earthly use). This condition of things has been a/ptly illustrated by Mr. Edward Atkinson, the great statistician, in his pamphlet on the " Collection of Kevenue." " The Kaffir of South Africa was formerly a savage warrior ; he is now a peaceful shepherd in whom some of the desires of civilized life have been developed. How cost of the American -woolen-goods pi*oduct about $54,000,000. In addition to this we import annually, say $50,000,000 worth of wool and woolens, the duties on which, at an average of say seventy-five per cent, would be $37,500,000. The pamphlet claims that the woolen-manufacturer is entitled to an ad valorem duty of thirty-five per cent to overcome the cheap pauper labor put into the manu- facture of woolen goods in Europe. Now, this ail virion urn duty will add to the selling price of the $200,000,000 worth of American-manufactured woolens another $50,000,000. If we take the $54,000,000 of specific duty added to the woolen goods product of America and say two-thirds of the duties collected on imported wools and woolens, we will find what it costs the American consumers of woolen goods to protect the handful of persons called wool-growers. The two items will amount to about $95,000,000, or very nearly $2 each for every man, woman and child in the United States in 1880. Now, when you add the ad valorem duty, or what it adds to the cost of all woolen goods consumed in the United States, it will make another $70,000,000, or when all the exactions that are taken from the consumers of woolens in the United States, over $150,000,000, or about $3 each for every individual in our country. Now, there are engaged in the woolen and worsted interests of the United States about 120,000 persons of all ages and sexes; these, along with a probably much less number of persons called wool-growers, are those who extract from the pockets of the 9,000,000 farm- ers and the many other millions of tradesmen, working-men, professional men and men engaged in transportation who go to make the grand aggregate of the American people, who are taxed as above to proted Less than a quarter of a million people engaged in wool-growing and woolen-manufacturing. How long would the American citizen stand such a tax for such a purpose were ita direct tax '? And yet they just as surely pay it as though the tax-gatherer came around and collected it directly. Four circular letter says: 'The object for which the pamphlet was written, viz., preserving the foundation rock of our prosperity as wool-manufacturers, the present woolen tariff. 1 If it is the foun- dation rock it must be a very slippery one, and weas woolen-manufacturers occa- sionally get off the rock and out into deep water, and some occasionally get 192 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. has this come about ? By the desire of the civilized men of Europe and America for a kind of wool which the climate and soil of South Africa will produce. It happens that, upon the hills of South Africa, wool can be raised with no labor except that of the shepherd to tend the sheep and the annual shearing, but the wool is abso- lutely useless in that climate. On the other hand, wheat, tobacco, butter, cheese, iron-ware and tools cannot be raised or made there at all. "What has happened from these conditions ? The first settlers tempted the Kaffirs to become shepherds by offering them good bread, butter, cheese, iron and other luxuries hitherto unknown to them, but yet real necessities for the full development of the manhood in them. Europe and America took their wool and gave them the wheat. " But now the United States says, or rather Ohio says, We can raise all this wool. True ; but instead of expend- ing only the labor of a Kaffir, who can do nothing else, we must build great barns to protect our sheep in our cold winter, we must employ farmers to raise hay and roots to feed them, and we must expend two days' labor of a civilized man, where the half-civilized Kaffir need expend but one ; yet we ought to be protected in our drowned, and the great mass at times make very narrow escapes. Let any per- son running a woolen-mill from 1873 to 1877 ask himself why it was during that time that at least one-third of the woolen-machinery of the country was idle ; and it was the same with every other interest at that time. It was said that there was a million of men tramping from one end of the country to the other, willing to work, but could find none to do. Where was the rock foundation at that time ? Let us look at a later date, from 1883 to 1885. Have we not wit- nessed a similar state of things? What had become of the rock of prosperity at this time? Why were so many woolen-mills idle? Why was the woolen-mill bought by Mr. Ayres in Massachusetts for $225,000, which was said to have cost over a million of dollars? What had become of its capital? That mill must certainly have gotten off the foundation rock of prosperity."— Win. Dean, Woolen-Manufacturer, Newark, Del.,ieply to National Association of Wool-Man- ufacturers. EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 193 labor ; we, the educated, civilized men of Ohio and Ver- mont and Massachusetts need to be protected against the poor, half civilized creature — we are afraid of him. God has given him more sunshine than us, and if he advances we shall be degraded. Suppose Europe were equally afraid of the poor Kaffir, and protected itself against his wool ; what would become of it ? "ISTo one would give him wheat or any commodity for it ; he cannot eat or wear it, and it is the only thing he can raise. If he cannot sell it he must cease work, cease progress, relapse into barbarism — all the missionaries in creation couldn't save him ; yet, if protection against the Kaffirs wool is good for America it is good for Europe, and ought to be adopted." Which is the greater "Kaffir" of the two, the native of South Africa, who is trying to adapt himself to modern progress and civilization, or the American congressman ? But how about the Ohio wool-grower ? Mr. Atkinson thus answers the question : " Twenty cents' worth of wheat will buy of the Kaffir a pound of wool. The Ohio farmer can furnish twenty cents' worth of wheat, we will say, by half an hour's labor ; but a pound of wool will cost him a whole hour's labor, or forty cents. " Now, if you put a revenue duty of fifteen cents on the wool raised by the Kaffir, it will still come, asjts total cost in the United States will still be only thirty-five cents. The Ohio farmer will still make wheat to exchange for it, only we shall get less wool for a bushel of wheat ; but if you impose a duty which involves any incidental pro- tection or any other kind of protection, it must be over twenty cents, so as to raise the cost of the Kaffir wool to over forty cents. Suppose you put the duty at twenty- 194 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. five cents, then the Ohio farmer is protected, and can make it for less than its cost plus the duty ; the Ohio farmer gives up raising wheat, but expends twice the labor on wool ; commerce with the Kaffir ceases ; woolen cloths cost double ; the government has no revenue ; the civilized man has put his two hours' labor against the Kaffir's one, and by means of protection has won the game ; the Kaffir relapses into barbarism, and that is the end of it ; but is the civilized man any better off than he was before ? He has now to pay a direct tax for the support of the government and has less time to work it out than he had before." And is it not a matter of easy calculation, that for every dollar the farmer profits by this protection on his wool, he pays $2 in the increased price of his clothing, farming utensils and household furniture, on account of the tariff, and that, consequently, he is a loser in the end ? The import duty on wool is divided into Class I. Clothing-wool, ten cents per pound, if the value is thirty-two cents or less, and twelve cents per pound, if the value exceeds thirty-two cents. In addition, ten per cent on its value. Class II. Fine combing- wool, and alpaca and goat's hair are taxed in the same ratio as the above. Class III. Known as carpet wool, two and one-half cents per pound, if the value is twelve cents a pound, or less, and five cents a pound if the value exceeds twelve cents. The duty on washed clothing - wool is doubled and is trebled on scoured wool. This duty is almost prohib- itive, and not only excludes our manufacturers from foreign markets, but actually doubles the price of the bet- EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 195 ter kind of clothing to the American consumer. This class of wool is too expensive to be used in the manufact- ure of the cheaper class of goods, and, in order to supply the enormous demand for this kind of clothing, our man- ufacturers are compelled to resort to so-called "substi- tutes; a respectable expression for the word " shoddy." " Shoddy " is made from old rags, of which large quan- tities are imported. All our ready-made clothing, the principal wearing apparel of the American farmer and working-man, is wholly or partially manufactured out of this miserable stuff. A } r ear ago, The Breeders Gazette of this city, one of the leading agricultural papers of the country, contained the following lucid expose of this outrageous swindle : " Shoddy is used to the extent of more than one-third of the weight of the wool clip of the United States. But how can this be avoided? There is not more than half enough clothing-wool raised in the United States for mak- ing the goods consumed. The other half must be procured elsewhere, or half the present wear must be of old clothes without being manufactured. Under the present tariff, without the use of these substitutes, the clothing of the poorer classes and those of moderate means would cost fully double present prices. The manufacturer must use such material as he can get for making the fabrics his customers require. He would prefer to use all clean wool. It would be much easier to make his goods with this than with any other material. But the tariff sa} T s you shall not have the wool without you pay fifty to one hundred per cent more for it than it costs } T our competitors in other countries. If you use shoddy or other substitutes, you can have the same protection, by the specific duty of thirty-five cents per pound on the goods, as if you use the finest silk 196 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. and wool. In one case the material in a pound of goods may not cost more than twenty cents, and in some others the fine wool alone costs $1.25, and the silk nearly fifty cents additional for a pound of the finished goods. The substi- tutes you can buy here in almost any quantity, or import by paying ten cents duty. The fine wool you must import in some shape, and pay for duty alone much more than the specific duty on the goods. The laws of trade, working under the tariff, govern the shape in which the material is imported, and these favor the use of shoddy in our home manufactures. In other words there is a premium of thirty-five cents per pound offered by the tariff for the use of shoddy and other substitutes that we can buy at or below the prices they cost in foreign coun- tries, and there is a tax, more or less heavy, according to the quality, upon the pure wool that must be imported if the goods are to be made in this country, over and above the so-called compensating duty on the foreign goods. These are plain, naked facts that anyone can substan- tiate by going to the proper sources for information. It is unfortunate that this is not more readily available, and that those who are called upon to vote on these questions do not have the time and disposition to learn the exact truth." "What do the farmers and working-men say to this ? Shades of the fathers, what a sight to behold ! Our farmers of the West, who are supplying these " fellows over the water" with over $600,000,000 worth of cereals and provisions annually, standing about in brand-new suits, manufactured out of the cast-off woolen clothing of the despised "European pauper"! To be sure, this miserable stuff is "cheap," but if poor quality and wear is considered, it is dear at any price. EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 197 The other clay I met the father of three little boys, whose daily earnings average about $1.75 per day. After pinching his household down to the bare necessaries of life, he managed to save $20 with which he hoped to clothe his boys for the winter. Going to one of the large ready-made-clothing houses down town, he was offered three suits at $6.50 each, which he considered very reasonable. It was to be an agreeable surprise to the boys and his wife. The latter, having had some experience in the clothing line, examined the yarn of which the suits were made, when, casting a despairing glance at the father and laying the bundle upon the table, she exclaimed : " Old man, } 7 ou have been swindled ; this is the purest shoddy and will not last the boys a month." " That is the best they had in the store," was the reply, " and there is no use in trying to do better anywhere else." But this poor man's experience is probably the experi- ence of many of my readers ; the prophecy of that man's wife, " that the boys' suits would not last a month," will no doubt be fully realized. This is the kind of clothing the great mass of the American people are compelled to purchase, and this is the kind of cheajmess which Mr. Eandall said, in his recent speech at Atlanta, "has been vouchsafed us by protectio?i on wool." But the utter recklessness with which this tariff legis- lation is carried on is strikingly exemplified by the duty on wools of the the third class, or carpet wools. There is no wool of this class worth mentioning raised in the United States, and over ninety per cent of all that is used by our manufacturers is imported. This fact was brought before the Tariff Commission by every manu- 198 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. facturer of woolen goods, and even by the secretary of the National Association of Wool-Growers.* These remonstrances notwithstanding, and in spite of these requests to have this class of wool put upon the free list, the commission, with the characteristic obstin- acy of our rock-rooted protectionists, made a reduction of but half a cent on a pound. The duty on this class of wool benefits no interest whatever, but greatly injures the manufacturer of carpets, who might, otherwise, successfully compels with the Euro- pean carpet-weaver in foreign markets. This fact is evidenced by the testimony of Mr. James Dobson, an extensive carpet manufacturer of Philadelphia, who says : " That carpets of the same quality of goods are, practically, as cheap here as in England" MVedo not grow these wools, not because we cannot produce them, but because it is unprofitable. I have seen beautiful carpet wools from Colorado, grown from descendants of the Mexican Churros, with fiber as white as mohair. We do not grow these wools for the very simple reason that it is more profitable for the farmer to grow something else. Dr. Randall used to say : " The farmer will not grow rye when he can grow wheat." I pointed out to an experienced wool-grower a picture of some Cheviot sheep in my office, and said to him : " Why don't you try that race of sheep? They are profitable in Scot- land.'" His answer was, "It will cost me no more to grow Leicesters or Cots wolds, and their wool and carcasses are worth twice as much." The Churro sheep of Colorado, which I spoke of, will produce but two or three pounds of wool, while, improved by a Merino cross, the product in wooljs four or five pounds. The grower is all the time doing his best to breed away from carpet wools; as a consequence he wants no duty to encourage him to grow these wools. He knows that under no amount of protection would the cultivation of these wools be profitable.— Secretary National Association of Wool-Growers. Foijfte above reasons we request that carpet woolsbeputonthefreelist. We believe that this will be in the interest of all parties, wool growers, wool-manu- facturers and consumers, and that it is for the general interest of the whole country that at least all raw materials that do not compete with home products, anJ which enter into important established industries, should be admitted free, in order that such industries may receive the fullest practicable development, raid thus in turn contribute in a thousand direct and indirect ways to the con- sumption of articles of American growth and manufacture.— Testimony of Mr. Wm. Whitman, representing the National Association of Wool-Growers, before the Tariff Commission. EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 199 "What has been said of the effect of this tax upon the raw material of the iron, steel, cotton and wool industries is applicable to almost every other branch of manufacture and trade in the country. The hat industry, for instance, is hampered by an average tax of thirty-five per cent upon its raw material, very little of which is made in this country. The boot and shoe manufacturers are crippled with a tax of twenty-five per cent upon the calf skins they use. The manufacturers of all kinds of copper-ware are compelled to pay a tax of four cents per pound to the wealthy copper-mine owners, while these same owners sell the same article in England for three cents per pound less. The manufacturers of lead pipes and of other articles of lead, pay to the lead-mine operator the enormous tribute of two cents on every pound used. Nickel, which enters largely into the manufacture of plated goods, is loaded down with the outrageous duty of thirty cents per pound. From testimony given before the Tariff Commission, it appears that almost the entire production of nickel in this country is from one mine in Pennsylvania, and I am told that the effect of the duty on nickel, which is practically a prohibitory one, it being so large as to prevent the prof- itable importation of nickel at all, has been to yield an enormous profit to the producer of this article in Penn- sylvania, he being the largest producer in America. The nickel manufacturers state that the moment the duty was increased to its present figure, without any increase in the cost of production at all, without any increase in wages, without any increase in invested capital, there was an immediate doubling of the price per pound to the 200 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. nickel plater, and that that price has been maintained, and to some extent increased, since that time. This injustice has been carried to such an extent that the Meriden Bri- tannia Company, which is one of the largest consumers of nickel in this country, has been obliged to establish a factory in Canada in order to compete for the foreign market. The price of nickel in this country is such, owing to the existing tariff, that our goods cannot be profitably ex- ported, and with all our skilled laborers and understand- ing of the business (and we make the best plated goods that are made in the world), we cannot sell them in Eng- land, in South America, or on the continent of Europe, because we have to pay so much for our raw material. The manufacturer of jute goods must pay a duty of $15 a ton, and twenty per cent on its value. Hardly any jute is raised in this country, and although America con- sumes more jute goods than any other country in the world, owing to the exorbitant tax on the raw material, it makes but one forty-second of the production of England. But the tax which has inflicted the most irreparable injury upon the whole country is the duty on the raw mate- rials which enter into the construction of a ship. It amounts to forty -three per cent on the average. While the United States once stood at the head of the ship-building nations of the world, that tax has closed our ship-yards, thrown sixty thousand American sailors out of employ- ment, or- compelled them to navigate foreign ships, and has driven the American flag from the high seas.* * Take off the tariff on Nova Scotia coal and iron ore, and there is no rea- son why all the coast of New England, from Machiasto Massachusetts Bay, and from Massachusetts Bay to Long- Island Sound and New York, should not be lined with furnaces and rolling-mills. Take off the tax on Nova Scotia coal and ore, and Maine, which, under the " keep on the tax policy," is the one and EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 201 Consequently, the damage inflicted upon the country by our tax on raw materials must be understood to be properly appreciated. It is a two-edged sword which cuts both in buying and in selling. If we refuse to take in pay the produce of people who are in want of manufactured goods, we simply make it impossible for that people to trade with us. Oar trade with Australia is a case in point. We are very much in need of plenty of cheap wool. But our government prohibits our merchants from trading with the people of Australia upon an equitable basis, by placing an exorbitant tax upon their wool, in consequence of which, instead of buying from us the manufactured articles they need, they buy from England, France and Germany, all of which allow their wool to come in free. This condition of affairs has been fully described by Consul Griffith, at Sidney, Australia, in the following let- ter to the State Department: " The people here complain that it is not just to expect them to purchase goods and wares from the United States when wool, the chief product of Australia, is almost excluded from the United States market on account of protective duties. I believe, however, if a better knowl- edge of the character of the Avools grown here existed in the United States the trade would be much larger than it is. only state in the union that is decreasing in population, which is falling behind- hand in manufactures and in the disbursement of wages to its people, station- ary in her agriculture, increasing in the number of her illiterates and crim- inals, paying her female school-teachers less than is paid by the emancipated slaves of Alabama and South Carolina, and is witnessing the steady progress to annihilation of her former great special industry of wooden shipbuilding; take off the taxes, I say, and Maine might build iron ship* for the world, and place upon her deserted harbors industrial establishments that would man than rival those now existing in Scotland upon the Clyde, and in Germany upvn the Weser." — David A. Wells, Ex.-U. S. Ta.r Commissioner. 202 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. " The Australasian wools best suited for the United States market are chiefly of light, sound, shafty fleece. These wools are usually produced in the south and south- eastern Iiiverina districts, in this colony, and in the upper Murray district in Victoria. Australasian wools are, as a rule, soft-handling, fine-haired and silky. These proper- ties are mainly due to climatic influences, although the natural pasturage of the interior has without doubt assisted in developing these characteristics. Some of the high grades of wool grown in the United States compare very favorably with Australasian wools, but, as a rule, the American wools are harsher and are wanting- in elas- ticity and fitting properties. " The modification of the present duties on Austral- asian wools would undoubtedly give a great impetus to the commerce of both countries. The United States would then draw more largely than ever on the colonies for all wools suitable for fine and superfine cloth and ladies' dress goods. There is no question about the Amer- ican manufacturers being able to produce fine cloths and ladies' dress goods of equal quality and finish to those of the most celebrated mills of Europe, and yet, on account of the duty on Australasian wool the American merchants are obliged to import the great bulk of these articles from England, France and Belgium. " In the event of the reduction of the duties on Aus- tralasian wools, or of the admission of that class of wools peculiar- to this country, and not grown in the United States, the American mill-owner would soon be in a position not only to undersell in his own market all woolen fabrics of a foreign make, but to compete success- fully with other woolen-manufacturing countries in the various markets of the world. At the same time the EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 20., American flockmaster would not experience any loss by the change in the tariff, as the wools imported would be of a different quality from those which he is able to produce. The advantages resulting from such a change would also be very great to Australasia, for there would then be a keener competition than at present for those classes of wool especially adapted to the American markets." Consequently, as before stated, our manufacturing capacities far exceed the requirements of the home market, and as long as production is confined to the com- paratively narrow limits of the United States, overpro- duction, auction and sheriff sales, the closing of factories and the enforced idleness of labor, with all its heart-rend- ing miseries, are the disastrous results. An export tax upon cotton and cereals would not be more unjust or more impolitic than the import tax upon the raw material of our manufacturers. Imagine for an instant the dire consequences following such a suicidal policy. Suppose our government should levy an export tax of say twenty- five per cent upon these agricultural products, which would close the foreign markets to the surplus product of our farmers and planters, how many } T ears would it re- quire to shut up every factory in the country and bring ruin and desolation to every household in the land? Free raw-material would put three-fourths of our manufacturers upon a level with their foreign com- petitors in the markets of the world, increase the demand for their products and insure permanent and lucrative employment to their operatives. But, if our manufacturers were thus relieved, as a matter of justice to the consumer, an indemnifying re- duction of taxes on the finished articles ought to follow. 204 THE PKOTECTIVE TAEIFF. MONOPOLY. The amazing claim set up by protectionists, that their system has the effect of lowering the price of the man- ufactured article, reminds one of the Irishman's reply to his employer when told, if he did not want his wages re- duced to fifty cents a day, he had better vote for the pro- tectionist candidate for Congress. " Boss," said he, "if yez indade belaved that, yez'd re- quoir iv'ry mither's son of us to vote t'other way." So, if the protectionists really believed protection had the effect of lowering prices, they would fight the system to a man. This, however, is but one of their many pretenses orig- inated to bolster up an iniquitous system ; in other words to sugar-coat the pill. Its advocates are perfectly well aware of the fact that the causes for this phenomena of price reduction are to be found in the immutable laws of human progress, in the ingenuity and perseverance of man, who is con- stantly at work to invent some new contrivance to im- prove and apply new machinery, and to adopt more modern methods of manufacture, Avhereby time may be saved, the expenses of production lessened, and the efficiency of labor increased. This progressive movement by which prices are lowered is going on in Old Europe, where competition is excess- ive, at a more rapid rate than here, and it is owing to this fact alone that our tariff, however exorbitant, is insuf- ficient to keep out foreign goods. The restrictive policy of the government, which con- fines our manufacturers to the home supply, is daily bringing us nearer to the conditions prevailing in the Old EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 205 World. The products of our mines and factories being largely in excess of our requirements, the small and finan- cially weaker concerns have had either to succumb to the pressure or be absorbed by the more wealthy and powerful corporations. But these disastrous results, notwithstanding this cut- throat competition in the wild race for the mastery in the home supply, continue unabated, and possibly with more tenacit}^ What formerly has been but a cat-and- dog fight has now become one between giants. This relentless war of competition, having lasted for years, is the only cause of the ruinous reduction in prices, and there is no doubt but that the statement of the well- known statistician, Mr. Atkinson, is correct, that at the present time the profits of the manufacturers on the average do not exceed five per cent of the capital invested. Protection has seen its best days, and instead of longer being a benefit to the manufacturers it is a loss to a majority of them. Prof. Tausig, of Harvard Uni- versity, truthfully says: "The manufacturer does not, on account of this import tax, obtain exceptional profits in the production of these protected articles. It is true that in some cases of monopoly he may permanently make high profits. But in many cases he fails to do so. It may cost more, from inherent and natural causes, to make the protected article at home than it costs to make it abroad. In this case — the most frequent — the home producer gets higher prices in consequence of the duty, but he does not make correspondingly high profits. The tax on the consumer here represents simply the greater cost, the inherent natural disadvantage of making the com- modity at home. It represents a useless diversion of na- 206 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. tional industry. Thus a commodity is made at home which can be more cheaply bought abroad, and nobody is ben- efited by the tax imposed upon the consumer." The system is now become simply one of waste and of reciprocal plunder. The manufacturers are eating each other up, or, rather, steal from each other in the fashion of the monkeys in Exeter Exchange, London, as described by an English writer : " These monkeys used to be confined in a row of nar- row cages, each of which had a pan for his food. When all the monkeys were supplied with their suppers, it was observed that scarcely anyone of them ate from his own pan. Each thrust his arm through the bars and robbed his right and left-hand neighbor. Half of what was so seized was spilt and lost in the conveyance to his own mouth, and while one monkey was thus unprofitably en- gaged in plundering some other monkey, his own pan was exposed to a similar depreciation by his friend in the rear." This illustration of mingled knavery and absurdity is shockingly human, and fairly shows that half of what the manufacturers seize from each other is lost in the " shuffle." They understand that the only remedy for this condi- tion of affairs consists in a mutual understanding that their interests are identical, and this furnishes the solu- tion to the great mysterious movement now in progress, to organize every important branch of industry in the United States into a "pool" or a "trust,"* with a view * Every one knows about the thirty-million-dollar steel combination, which has not kept the price of rails from declining from $166 a ton in 1867 to $32 a ton in 1884, but during this decline has kept the price of rails — that is the price of transportation, that is the price of everything- — higher in this country than any- where else. Chairman Morrison of the Committee of Ways and Means is a wit- EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 207 of curtailing production and maintaining prices, and thus, if possible, to avert the impending industrial crash. To those who have but superficially considered the effect of the protective system, it may seem a rash statement to make, that the government of the United Slates is primarily responsible for this prevailing mo- nopoly mania with which the country is now afflicted. It is not capital that creates monopolies, it is the absence of competition, and, as long as competition is nut debarred, there need be no apprehension from con- centrated capital. But competition being destroyed by ness to the fact that the chimneys of the Vulcan Mill at St. Louis stood smokeless for years, and meanwhile its owners received a subsidy reported at $400,000 a year from the other mills of the combination for not making rails, with, however, no payment to its men for not working. The " Age of Steel " startled the country last January by the statement that a monster pool was to be formed of all our pig-iron manufacturers. The country was to be divided into six dis- tricts. As many furnaces were to be put out of blast as were necessary to prevent us from having too much iron, and these idle furnaces were to share, like the Vulcan Steel Mill, the profits of those that ran. This has not yet proved to be history, but it may turn out to have been prophecy. There are too many nails for the nail-makers, though no such complaint has been heard from the house-builders. There is a nail association, which at the beginning of the year advanced prices ten cents a keg. Last November it ordered a suspension of the nail machines for five weeks, to the great distress of eight thousand workmen, who are also machines — self-feeders. " We linpc," said the nail-men, according to a Pittsburgh dispatch of December £9, 1882, "to show consumers that we can not only control production, but that we can do so unanimously, and at the very time when nails are the least wanted." On April 9, of this 5'ear, the nail manufacturers of the West met again at Pittsburgh, and adopted the most modern form of pool, with managers having full powers to regulate prices and restrict production. "An early advance of prices may be expected," Ave are told. Every mill in the West is in the pool. Nail-buyers are not allowed to converse with nail-makers. All business must be done through the board of control. There is too much barbed wire for the wire manufacturers, though not for the farmers, and a pool, under the "entire control " of eleven directors, has, within a few -weeks, been formed, in which are enrolled all the chief manufacturers. Its members met in March, in St. Louis, and advanced prices. They met again in Chicago, April 4, and advanced prices ten per cent, and adjourned to meet in thirty days for the purpose of making another advance. This combination cuts off competition at both ends. It confederates the makers, so that they 208 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. the action of the government in taxing the foreign article, thereby preventing its importation, and, consequently, conferring upon the home manufacturer of a like com- modity a monopoly of the home market, there is no escape from this dilemma. It may not have been the intention of our legislators to create these pools and trusts, but it is the logical effect of this one-sided legislation, and all attempts to charge capital with the responsibility are absolutely frivolous. A great deal of misleading clap-trap is heard about the accumulation and concentration of capital. The industrial progress of the age, the application of steam shall not sell in competition with each other, and it buys all its raw material through one purchasing agent, so that its members do not buy in competition. Thirteen concerns making wrought-iron pipes in this country met in Decem- ber last to unite under the very appropriate name of the Empire Iron Company. Each was to deposit $20,000 as security that he would adhere to rules to prevent the calamity cf too much iron pipe. One feature of the pool was that it pro- posed to keep men on guard at each mill, to keep account of the pipe made and shipped ; and these superintendents were to be moved around from one mill to another at least every eight weeks. April 1, 1883, when the rest of us were lost in the reckless gayety of All Fools' Da j', forty-one tack manufacturers found out there were too many tacks, and formed the "Central Manufacturing Company of Boston," with $3,000,000 capital. The tack mills in the combination run about three days in the week. "When this combination, a few weeks ago, silenced a Pittsburgh rival by buying him out, they did not remove the machinery. The dead chimneys and idle machines will discourage new men from starting another factor}', or can be run to ruin them if they are not to be discouraged in any other way. The first fruits of the tax-pool were an increase of prices, to twice what they had been. And again : " When President Gowin, of the Reading Railroad, was defending that com- pany in 1S75 before a committee of the Pennsylvania legislature, lor having taken part in the combination of the coal companies to cure the evil of "too much coal" by putting up the price and cutting down the amount for sale, he pleaded that there were fifty trades in which the same thing was done. He had a list of them to show to the committee. He said: " Every pound of rope we buy for our vessels or for our mines is bought at a price fixed by a committee of the rope manufacturers of the United States. Every keg of nails, every paper of tacks, all our screws and wrenches and hinges, the boiler flues for our locomotives, arc never bought except at the price fixed by the representatives cf the mills that manufacture them. Iron beams for your houses or your bridges can be had only at the prices agreed up- EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 209 and electricity, the division of labor in factories, have, collectively, rendered the concentration of capital a necessity, and, as long as capital is thus legitimately employed, its concentration is beneficial, rather than injurious to the general welfare of the country. The injury inflicted upon the community is not in the use but in the abuse of great wealth, which is the same as any other abuse, a subject for judiciary or legislative interference. The building of our railroads required the concen- tration of capital, but that the country in general has been immensely benefited by the change from the stage- coach and cart to the passenger and freight car, will hardly be questioned. If, however, the managers of these railroads abuse their trust by stock-watering, to the detriment of the original shareholders ; violate their duties as common carriers (for which they obtained their franchises), by organizing pools with competing lines to extort unreasonable charges; discriminate between ship- on by a combination of those who produce them. Fire-brick, gas-pipe, terra- cotta pipe for drainage, every keg of powder we buy to blast coal, are pur- chased under the same arrangement. Every pane of window glass in this house was bought at a scale of prices established exactly in the same manner. White lead, galvanized sheet iron, hose and belting and files are bought and sold at a rate determined in the same way.— Henry D. Lloyd, North American Review June, 1886. In some instances values are being artificially staved by the " trusts " that are springing up everywhere, but where the law of competition are allowed to work out their legitimate results, prices are weakening. Railroad-building has been greatly overdone, and so have many branches of manufacturing, and steel rails are again lower, as the result of overproduction. Meanwhile, the work of consolidation into trusts and Jay Gould schemes goes forward, and the tele- graph lines are all being merged into the Western Union. The coal men have squeezed 25 cents more on every ton cf anthracite, and even the Chicago milk- men have formed a "trust." Sugar refiners have consolidated into a " trust" and the first-fruits are seen in an advance in that saccharine article. The farm- ers are about the only people who are neglecting to form "trusts," and they are consequently selling their wheat and corn at very moderate profits.— Market report, Chicago Titnes, Oct. 18, 1887, 210 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. pers, and form combinations with powerful monopolies for lower rates, or the exclusive transportation of their products to uphold and rob the great public ; in this case the capital invested has been diverted from its original design. And here again the government is responsible for the injury, if it fails, by adequate legislation, to pro- tect the private rights of the citizen. What has been said of the benefits accruing to the general public by the concentration of capital for railroad purposes, holds good when applied to our manufacturing and mining industries. As a rule, capital is exceedingly cautious and unless a new enterprise promises profitable returns, it does not concentrate to an alarming extent, and as long as individual enterprise is permitted to have fair play and competition to have full sway, the concen- tration of capital in any branch of industry can work no possible injury to the public. But when, as has been said before, government steps in and presumes to manage, regulate and protect certain branches of industry, it does so with the tacit understanding that the capital invested in such industry shall have the monopoly of the home market to the extent of the obstruction which bars out foreign competition, and in some of the most important branches it is left to the caprice of those engaged in those industries to make this monopoly absolute. It is, for instance, manifest that the placing of a pro vective tariff upon coal, or upon mineral of any descrip- tion, is- paramount to the creation of a monopoly, since the extent of these gifts of nature is limited and may be absorbed or controlled by a few. The magnitude and exclusiveness of this class of monopolies is, in the absence of foreign competition, only a matter of capital available and of greater or less unscru- EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 211 pulousness on the part of the operators to concentrate these natural gifts in the hands of a limited number of individuals or corporators. The coal monopoly of Pennsylvania and Ohio is a case in point. Almost every acre of the extensive coal lands of these states has passed from private parties into the hands of a powerful and unscrupulous syndicate.* The richness of these mines exceed those in England a thousand times, and, while in the latter country the " black diamond " is only found at great depths, here it is found almost on the surface of the earth. The cost of mining coal is about sixty cents per ton, or less than the amount of the tax *Last July Messrs. Vantlorbilt, Sloan, and one or two others out of several hundred owners of coal lands and coal railroads, met in the pleasant shadows of Saratoga to make " a binding- arrangement for the control of the coal trade." "Binding - arrangement," the sensitive coal presidents say, they prefer to the word "combination." The gratuitous warmth of summer suggested to these men the need the public would have of artificial heat, at artificial prices, the coming winter. It was agreed to fix prices, and to prevent the production of too much of the raw material of warmth, by suspensions of mining. In anticipation of the arrival of the cold wave from Manitoba, a cold wave was sent out all over the United States, from their parlors in New York, in an order for half-time work by the miners during the first three months of this year, and for an increase of prices. These are the means this combination uses to keep down wages — the price of men, and keep up the price of coal — the wages of capital. Prices of coal in the West are fixed by the Western Anthracite Coal Association, controlled entirely by the. large railroads and mine-owners of Pennsylvania. This association regulates the price Avest of Buffalo and Pittsburgh and in Canada. Our annual consumption of anthracite is now between 31,000,000 and 32,000,000 tons. The West takes between 5,000,000 and 6,000,000 tons. The com- panies which compose the combination mine, transport, and sell their own coal. They are obliterating other mine-owners and the retailer. The Chicago and New York dealer has almost nothing 1 to say about what he shall payor what he shall charge, or what his profits shall be. The great companies do not let the little man make too much. Year by year the coal retailers are sinking into the status of mere agents of the combination, with as little freedom as the consumer. The total amount of anthracite coal land is estimated by President Gowen, of the Reading, to be between 260,000 and 270,000 acres. Of this the Reading Coal and Iron Company owns 95,000 acres, and also holds under a lease of the Central Railroad of New Jersey about 14,000 acres, making in the neighborhood of 110,000 acres. The Lehigh Valley Railroad controls about 25,000 acres ; the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western about ~0,000 ; the Delaware and Hudson 212 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. upon foreign coal, and it can be delivered at a fair profit in New York at $3.50 per ton and at $4 in Chicago. But this greedy syndicate is not satisfied with a fair profit ; it ^counts its profits only. This is the way they do it. Three or four gentlemen, quietly sipping a glass of champaign and smoking their Havanas, may be found yearly either at Saratoga, N. Y., or in one of Delmonico's private cabinets, discussing the situation of the coal market. They are not there for the purpose of ascer- taining how an abundance of fuel at a reasonable price can be secured for the country ; it is not for this they have met. The very thought of plenty and cheapness is repng- about 20,000 ; the Pennsylvania Coal Company 8,000 to 10,000, and the Pennsyl- vania Railroad 5,000 to 10,000. The rest of the coal lands is held by individuals, firms and corporations, and is " necessarily tributary " to the railroad lines of the companies above named, with all that that implies. The capitalization of the coal companies with that of their satellites is upward of $500,000,000. This capitalization was declared by the New York legislative committee to be excess- ive. Mr. James B. Hodgskin explained, some years ago, in The Nation, how this inflation was brought about. A generation since, the most important coal lands were covered by the prettiest farms and the wildest mountain forests in the United States, then worth fifty cents to fifty dollars an acre. They were bought up by speculators who sold them to the companies at ten to twenty times the real cost. When railroads were found to be necessary for the develop- ment of the mines, railroad schemes were taken in hand by the same class of men, who had acquired experience, skill and money by their manipulation of the mining companies, and similar tactics were employed to make money cut of the new roads. Roads were built costing but one-half or three-quarters of the first mortgage bonds issued on them, and were then saddled with additional stock capital equal to the bonds, making the nominal capital of the roads three or four times the real cost. Of com-se, the road was expected to earn dividends on the $25 of real cost as well as the $75 of fictitious cost. The swollen total at which the capitalization of the coal companies now stands was obtained by adding the dropsical mining stocks to the dropsical railroad stocks. This is one of the cases in which like has not cured like. One of the sights which this coal side of our civilization has to show is the presence of herds of little children of all ages, from six years upward, at work in the coal breakers, toiling in dirt, and air thick with carbon dust, from dawn to dark, of every day in the week except Sunday. These coal breakers arc the only schools they know. A letter from the coal regions in the Philadelphia Press declares that " there are no schools in the world where more evil is learned or more innocence destroyed than in the breakers. It is shocking to watch the vile practices indulged in by these children, to hear the frightful oaths they EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 213 nant to them. It is through scarcity and high prices that they expect to reap a bounteous harvest. The ques- tion with those gentlemen is only : " What is the total sum we can safely extort from the public the coming- year — how much of this sort of robbery will the patient people stand ? " The fact that a hundred thousand miners, the bread for their families, is dependent upon their deci- sion, that hundreds of thousands of families all through the country will suffer for the want of fuel during a pro- longed winter does not enter into their computations for an instant. At the adjournment of the trio, the ukase is sent forth that so many tons of coal, and no more, shall be mined the coming season, the price being left for con- sideration at a future meeting. In view of what is now taking place in this country it use, to see their total disregard for religion and humanity." In the upper part of Luzerne county, out of 22,000 inhabitants 3,000 are children between six and fifteen years of age, at work in this way. "There is always a restlessness among the miners," an officer of one of the New York companies said, "when we are working them on half time." The latest news from the region of the coal com- bination is that the miners are so dissatisfied with the condition in which they are kept, by the suspension of work and the importation of competing Hun- garian laborers in droves, that they are forming a combination of their own, a revival of the old Miners' and Laborers' Association, which was broken up by the labor troubles of 1874 and 1875. Combination is busy in those soft-coal districts, whose production is so large that it must be sent to competitive markets. A pool has just been formed covering the annual product of 6,000,000 tons of the mines of Ohio. Indiana and Illinois are to be brought in, and it is planned to extend it to all the bituminous coal districts that compete with each other. The appearance of Mr. Vanderbilt, last December, in the Clearfield district of Pennsylvania, at the head of a com- pany capitalized for $5,000,000, was the first entry of a metropolitan mind into this field. Mr. Vanderbilt's role is to be that of producer, carrier, dealer and consumer, all in one. Until he came, the district was occupied by a number of small companies and small operators, as used to be the case in the anthracite field in the old days. But the man who works himself, with his sons, in a small mine, cutting perhaps from twenty to forty tons a day, cannot expect to survive the approach of the Manhattan capitalist. The small Clearfield producers, look- ing at the fate of their kind in the anthracite country, greeted Mr. Vanderbilt's arrival with the question : " What is to become of us ? " "If the small operator," said one of the great man's lieutenants, " goes to the wall, that is his misfortune, not our fault."— Henry D. Lloyd, North American Review, June, 1886. 214 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. is not too much to say, that a great mistake was coih mitted by the " Fathers " in allowing coal, mineral and salt lands to pass into individual ownership, instead of reserving it to the government, the latter charging a mere nominal royalty for development. But for the govern- ment to confer upon the fortunate owners of coal lands the additional prerogative for exclusively supplying the country with coal, by excluding the foreign article, is more than a mistake ; it is a crime ; it is the surrender of a portion of the people's earnings into the hands of greedy speculators by an arbitrary governmental act. The amount of the tax on. foreign coal does not as materially affect its introduction as does the fact that this proscriptive system of production is the accepted policy of our government. The seventy-five cents tax serves the American coal syndicate just as well as did the tax of $1.50. This state of the case was well understood by the coal barons when they submitted to the reduction. As long as capitalists are aware of the fact that, whenever any protected industry is threatened by an " overflow " of the cheaper foreign article, all they have to do is to set the lobby at Washington to work, they will hardly ven- ture their means in the precarious enterprise of developing mines in Nova Scotia, or in constructing vessels to trans- port the product to the United States. By way of illustration ; a few days ago, while visiting a gentleman having his office in the First National Bank building, by chance we came to speak of the hardships entailed upon the public by the coal monopoly. I was informed by him that previous to the enactment of the duty on coal, he had organized a company in Boston for the development of a coal mine in Nova Scotia, and the enterprise had succeeded so well they were able to deliver EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 215 excellent coal in Boston at $4.25, with a profit of $1 per ton. It was the intention of the company to enlarge their facilities with the prospect of eventually supplying not only Boston with coal, but many of the manufactur- ing centres of New England, also. These fine prospects came to naught on account of the act of Congress which placed a protective duty upon foreign coal. The company was forced into bankruptcy and entailed upon my friend a loss of $10,000, his whole fortune. This pernicious effect of the tax on foreign coal is the effect of every tax levied upon any other mineral, and upon many of the raw materials used in the early stages of manufactures, such as iron, copper, zinc, lead, nickel or salt, and of wool, lumber, sugar, etc., etc. To create these over-reaching monopolies was not prob- ably the motive which actuated Congress in affording " protection " to the producers of these raw materials ; but these monopolies, and trusts, which are a curse to the country, are here on that account, nevertheless. So for instance, in the case of lumber it was probably with the honest intention of encouraging- the "infantile" lumber industry of Northern Wisconsin and Michigan, and in the hope that their labor might be protected against the "pauper labor" of Canada, that a tax of $2 a thous- and feet was laid upon Canada lumber. Our lawmakers did not intend, possibly, to give to a limited number of individuals who were fortunate enough to get possession of large tracts of pine land at $1.25 per acre and less, the exclusive privilege or monopoly of supplying the great Northwest with lumber ; but, whether intentionally or unintentionally, Congress did so in fact. Twenty-five years of pickings afforded by protection has enabled a compara- 216 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. tively small number of them to grow enormously rich.* But they seem not satisfied with the earth. " The gov- ernment protects us" they say, "against foreign interfer- ence, and the large profits we have heretofore realized must not now be curtailed by any annoying home competitors. Let us organize a pool, and fix the price of lumber to suit ourselves. We must have no nonsense about our yearly dividends. These small-fry operators must either come into the combine and agree with us to pluck the stupid geese of our Western towns and farms, or be crushed out," and so the lumber trust becomes an institution of the country In a previous chapter it has been shown by Mr. Dean how rapidly the owners of pine land in Wisconsin and Michigan are creating a gigantic monopoly ; how the price of lumber is raised by the artificial rise of the ''stump- age ; " but now we have the information that a wealthy logging company, with an available capital of from sixty to seventy million dollars, is forming a complete ring around the pine forests of northern Wisconsin; that one by one the great lumber firms have been compelled to enter into the pool to protect their interests, and that the few who had the temerity to buck against the pool were brought to a realizing sense of their situation, paying dearly for their show of independence. Again, Congress has placed a duty of twelve cents a hundred on imported salt, or about one hundred per cent. The president of the Salt Association of Michigan, where * Ex-Gov. Alger of Michigan is a great traveler. He rides about the country in a private car and seldom spends more than seven days In one place. He makes his car his business-office, and does $1,000,000 worth of business in it annually. Alger, it is said, has made about $8,000,000 since the war. His lumber interests are enormous.— Chicago Tribune, October 27, 1887. EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 217 half the salt used in this country is manufactured, admit- ted before the Tariff Commission, that salt is only pro- duced in large quantities in New York, Virginia and Michigan; that the enormous salt bed in the North reached from Canada, under lake Huron into the States ; that they were consequently, inexhaustible." "What we protest against," continued this salt-lord, "is a removal of the duty from salt, because our Canadian neighbors have to pa} 7- only $1.25 for the labor which costs us $1.75." It must be supposed that the commission believed him and believed that his solicitude for his laborers alone actuat- ed him, for the duty on salt was not removed, and as labor in this business is now " protected," the great packing indus- tries, the farmers and dairymen and the consumers of salt generally, must pay just about twice as much for their salt as they would had not the government said to the manu- facturers of salt, "go right along and charge any price you see fit for your salt." I stand guard between you and the fellows in Canada who have the impudence to offer salt at a ruinous price to the American people, for as long as this people are silly enough to believe that the Canadian will work in the salt mines of Canada for $1.25 while he might just cross the line into Michigan and get $1.75, so long they will make no fuss about your extor- tionate price on salt. But this government aid notwith- standing, the article is in danger of falling in price, on account of overproduction in the salt mines of Michigan. So the output must be restricted. Thus the demand for a trust that will regulate and control the salt produc- tion of the country and fix the price. Consequently, a short time ago, a meeting was held for this purpose in Pittsburgh, the " Protection Hub " of the land, at which sixty-three salt firms were represented, and all the pre- 218 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. liminaries for entering into a gigantic "salt trust" were perfected. Another case : Perhaps we ought to be charitable, and say that it was not the intention of Congress to create a monopoly by raising the duty on steel blooms which are used in the manufacture of locomotive tires of driving and car- wheels from forty-five to ninety per cent. It has done so, never- theless. It did not say to the three principal mills of the country, the agent of which lobby ed at Washington for the increase, we will lay this duty to give you the exclusive privilege of supplying all the railroad companies of the United States with the products of your mills ; but that was the effect, for, as soon as the duty had been raised, the combination, being the strongest, drove every other competitor out of the business (a Chicago firm sharing that fate), raised the price of their steel tires to an extor- tionate rate, and as completely monopolize the American market to-day as if an expressly stipulated grant had been voted them by the United States Congress. Blunders of similar cases might be cited but for the purpose of illus- tration these are sufficient. This is the way our manufacturers and mine-owners propose to obviate the difficulties and embarrassments resulting from home competition. Every industry worth mentioning has been or is being formed into a monopoly under the seemingly innocent title of " National Associa- tion of So-and-So;" and every recalcitrant manufacturer who refuses to enter the compact for robbing the public, and to pay his pool money, is boycotted, until he is either ruined or brought into submission. This more recent and most absolute system of mono- poly is known under the designation of " trust," EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 219 A trust is organized by the election of a number of trustees to whom the property, the machinery, stock — in fact, the whole business — of every individual manufacturer in a certain line of products, is transferred at an appraised value. In pay for his business, the individual manufact- urer receives a given number of shares and a certain amount in cash. If it is desirable to lessen production, one or more of such establishments are closed up, but if kept running, the former proprietor may remain the man- ager at a salary fixed and paid by the trust. The trust is strictly an American institution. The monarchies of the old world, even, have the welfare of their subjects too much at heart to allow such a fungus to fix itself upon the tree of state. It is only in a govern- ment where legislation may be controlled by great corpo- rations that trusts are possible. " Trust " combinations rest, first, on a. monopoly fos- tered by the protective tariff which excludes foreign com- petition, and second, on an unlawful conspiracy to corner the home market. Of these trusts to exclude foreign competition, one of the most powerful is: THE STEEL KAIL MONOPOLY. "The Bessemer patent of making steel rails — an Eng- lish invention — was purchased by a American syndicate consisting of about a dozen iron-mill companies, which formed a close pooling corporation, or what in practice amounts to a trust monopoly, and since that time — 1877 — have fixed their own prices for railroad and all steel made in this country by the Bessemer patent process. They had to reduce the old process price of $80 to $100 per ton in order to get orders to make a market. They were protected by a $28 per ton tariff up to the revision 220 xaK rKOTECTIVE TARIFF. of 18S3, when it was reduced to $17 per ton. "A struggle is now in progress," says the N. Y. Daily News, "between the steel-rail manufacturers and the railway managers. It is further said that the latter have decided not to pur- chase any more rails until the price is reduced to $30 per ton. On their part the steel-rail syndicate still demand from $33 to $35 per ton, and on one pretext after another have closed down their mills one by one, some to make repairs and others for different reasons, until to-day nearly all the steel-rail mills of the country are idle. In 18S7 the Bessemer mills of the American syndicate produced 2,049,638 gross tons, and for 1886 1 ,562, 410 gross tons — an increase of 487,228 tons for 1887. It is well here to inquire what the country pays to this steel-rail octopus over and above the amount paid for rails in Great Britain, and which rails are now being fur- nished to India — our present wheat and coming cotton competitor — for its railways in process of construction. The Indian railways purchased rails all last year at from $16 to $20 per ton. Our octopus has been selling to American railways during the same period at from $35 to $40 per ton. This would make a difference in the cost of the railways constructed in the United States during the last year, in round numbers, of over $30,000,000, as com- pared with their cost if constructed of foreign steel. When the steel syndicate charges the railroads more than $40 per ton the latter can import English steel, which costs on shipboard at Liverpool about $20 per ton ordinarily; and delivered at Xew York, Boston, Balti- more, Charleston, New Orleans, or Galveston, the cost without the duties would be $23 to $25 per ton, accord- ing to the expense of freight. With free competition railroad steel would rarely rise above $28 to $30 per ton n this country. EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MAN CTFACTURERS. 221 The railroads are therefore asking, if railroad steel can be made and sold by the Bessemer syndicate at a pro- lit for $28 to $30 a ton, what is the $17 per ton tariff for? But the industry, next to railroad building, which con- sumes the most iron, is that of iron ship-building. It is claimed that it is the lower wages paid by English ship- builders that enables England to monopolize the carrying trade of the world. Out of the great mass of evidence collected upon this industry which is most significant, is that given by Thomas J. Curran, an ardent protectionist, a boiler-maker and ship- builder himself. He was authorized to speak before the Senate Committee in behalf of the Ship-Builders' Associa- tion. " By letting in free ships," he saj^s, " that is, giving foreign ships American registry and permitting them to sail under the American flag, you will take the bread from the families of many American world ngmen ; you will deprive American workingmen of a great deal of work — take it away from them and give it to England." "How do the wages of the workingmen in the ship-yards on the Delaware compare with the wages of the same class of workingmen on the Clyde?" — "The workingmen on the Clyde receive better wages; ' l hey receive at least $4 a week more than they do on the Delaware." " Is not the Delaware the great place for iron ship-building in this country? " — " It is the principal iron ship-building point in this country." " What do you know about the comparative purchasing power of the wages received by the workmen on the Clyde and the wages received by the workmen on the Dalaware? " — " I know about it from reports." "Which on the whole is better paid, the Clyde workmen or the American workmen on the Delaware? Whose wages will purchase most of the comforts of life? " — " Well, certainly, where a man receives $4 a week more, and where he can buy more for a dollar than he can buy here, his wages must be more and he must have more comforts." "You understand, then, that the necessaries cf life are cheaper iu the old country than they are here? " — "Yes, sir. -" 222 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. " Then why is it that we cannot huild ships as cheap here as they can build them there, if the men there get higher wages, and if the pur- chasing power of their wages is better there than here? " — " The prin- cipal reason that I know of for not repealing that law is that at the present time there are in England and Scotland ships that have been lying there for the last ten, twelve, or fifteen years — in fact, they have been out of use altogether, and the repeal of our laws so as to allow American reg- istry to foreign bottoms would cause them to bring those ships over here and run them under the American flag." "Old ships?" — "Yes, old ships; they would be brought here and palmed off on the American people. But on the other hand, by not repealing the law. in a short while our companies here will be forced to build their own ships, new ships." "Then you are not afraid of the competition of new vessels built on the other side at the same time that you are building ships here, but only of the introduction of the old ships that are already built and lying idle over there which you think would be thrown into our market if the navigation laws were repealed?" — "From the statistics it has been shown that one gentleman who is at the head of a firm on the Delaware river can build ships, or he says he can build ships, as cheap as $52 a ton — as cheap as they can be constructed ou the Clyde." " What do you mean by $52 a ton? "— " That is, constructing the ship from the bottom up at that rate. She has so much tonnage ; so many thousand tons ; and he says he can build a ship for $52 for every ton. He says he can construct ships just as cheap on the Delaware as they can construct them on the Clyde." "What is the price on the Clyde — $52 a ton?"— "I cannot say what the price is on the Clyde." ' ' The wages of the workmen being higher on the Clyde, have you any well-formed opinion as to why we cannot or do not build ships on the Delaware as cheaply as they are built on the Clyde?" — "Well, you take capital that is invested in England and Scotland, and the capitalist, if he can get 4 or 4V£ per cent on his money, is content to put it into manu- facturing business. But it is not so with our capitalist here. If a capi- talist here cannot make 15 or 20 per cent on his capital he is not going to put it into manufacturing." Then it is because capital invested in ship building here is not satis- fied with the return which capital invested in ship-building in England is satisfied with. Is that the reason? " — " Yes, sir ! 1" Here we have the whole question of iron ship-building in a nut-shell. After warning the commission that a EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 223 reduction of the tariff on ships would take the bread out of the mouths of thousands of workingmen, Mr. Curran is forced to the singularly contradictory admission that English workmen on the Clyde receive higher wages and enjoy more of the comforts ef life than the American workmen; but that the difficulty in competing with England is due to the greater greed of the American man- ufacturing capitalist. Mr. Curran's silence concerning the duty upon the raw material entering into the building of iron ships, amounting to 43 per cent in the average, can only be explained by the fact that he is one of the bene- ficiaries of this tariff robbery. Is it not plain, therefore, that if the duty on raw material were removed, the Amer- ican ship builder could not only compete, but undersell his English competitor ; that free trade in ships would compel the "boss 1 ' ship-builders to be content with reasonable profits ; that in reviving the ship-building industry, employ- ment would be given to thousands of laborers who are now crowding into other industrial branches, and a restoration of the ocean transportation now monopolized by England be looked for. The !New York Times has made a thorough expose of the number and magnitude of these peculiar and modern contrivances of our manufacturers to escape the legiti- mate results of the isolating system of protection consist- ing in over-production, lowering of prices and eventual bankruptcies. Among these combinations are the follow- ing: COPPER. In copper there has been practically a trust for many years. The import duty on copper is prohibitory. All the lake mining companies have been so completely over- shadowed by the Calumet & Hecla Mines that they virt- 224 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. ually put all their products into a pool which has been controlled by the officers of the Calumet & Hecla. About twice a year the managers of the pool have been in the habit of meeting with a combination of manufacturers and announcing the terms on which they would sell to manufacturers. They would not sell on any terms to brokers, consumers, or speculators. The following memorial sent to "Washington was occasioned by a dispatch from London to a New York house ordering 3,000,000 pounds of copper to be bought below the market price in the United States. To the Honorable Congress of the United States: Your petitioners respectfully represent that they are manufacturers of brass and brass goods, consuming annually over ten million pounds of ingot copper; that the copper product of the United States is greatly in excess of home consumption; - and that large quantities are annu- ally exported. They represent to your honorable body that the import duty of four per cent per pound now in force is not required to protect home producers, but its sole and only effect is to enable speculators in copper to artificially enhance its value by exporting large quantities at a much lower price than that which they demand for home consumption. The duty is thus made to serve only the purposes of speculation and monopoly, and is a great and continuous detriment to the legitimate business of manufacturers and consumers. We therefore pray that ingot and all manufactured copper may be placed on the free list. N. O. Nelson, James Powell, John Farrell," Committee. LEAD. The production and price of lead are regulated and controlled by the National Lead Trust, which is just about completing its organization. There are only ten or twelve mills in the country which smelt lead, and they are all in the West. These and the mine-owners form the trust, about which very little appears to be known in this city except the undisputed fact that the trust exists. EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 225 The organ of the trust said when the first steps in the organization of the trust were taken : " The present price of lead is about as high as it can be to maintain its stand- ing in the market as against the imported article, and the aim of the syndicate will be to keep up this price." The price is now much higher. paving-pitch. The pitch used in roofing and paving is said to be con- trolled in this country by a combination in Philadelphia. Not a yard of felt roofing-paper and not a gallon of pav- ing-pitch, can be obtained unless permission is given for its sale by the Philadelphia syndicate. Eecently a meeting of the coal-tar or pitch distillers and felt-roofing manufacturers was held at their head- quarters in New York, and the price of felt roofing was advanced twenty-five cents a roll. After the meeting the members of the combine adjourned to the Hoffman House for a banquet. Retail dealers in roofing materials say this advance is entirely uncalled for, and that it will ruin their business. The only reason that they can assign for the increase in price is the greed of the corporations who control the entire production in this country, and have for two years been gorging themselves with enor- mous profits. The prices at which the felt and pitch are sold are said to be several hundred per cent of the cost, and although there is a duty of twenty per cent these articles can be imported from England and sold here con- siderably below the present prices. But the strength of the pool is such that contractors dare not buy except from members of the ring. The consumption of tarred paper and roofing pitch has also been restricted by the advanced price, and people have used tin, slate and shingles instead. 226 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. CORDAGE. There are less then thirty cordage mills in the coun- try, and for years they were controlled by a pool which limited production and fixed prices. This pool was broken last spring and a new one, representing two-thirds of the productive capacity, was formed in the summer. The new pool is said to control the supply of imported manila and similar raw material. The average ad valo- rem rates of duty last year were as follows : Manila, 21.06; jute, 20; sisal, 14.80; tarred cables and cordage, 30.13 ; untarred manila cordage, 32.89 ; other untarred cordage, 30.08. RUBBER SHOES. This industry is said to represent an investment of $50,- 000,000 and an annual trade of $100,000,000. The duty on rubber shoes is 25 per cent. Our erratic contempo- rary, the Sun, complains loudly that " it is well-nigh im- possible to produce for love or money in the open market a pair of sound, substantial, honest, staying rubber over- shoes," and says that some one can get rich by making good overshoes and selling them at a reasonable price. " We venture to remind the Sun, says the N. Y. Times, that competition has virtually been killed in this business." PAPER. The paper trade in its many branches is controlled by as many trusts and combinations as there are ramifica- tions in the business. The entire industry is apparently conducted under the direction of a few committees, with the idea, of course, of maintaining prices and regulating production. There is first of all the American Paper Manufacturers' EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 227 Association, in which all the trade all over the country is united for mutual advantage. The members meet once a year for discussion, and in the meantime executive com- mittees have power to act. There are several divisions of the association, each with one of the Yice-Presidents of the ass ociations and a special committee to regulate its affairs. There are the envelope-makers, division, the blank-book division, the book and news division — mean- ing the makers of papers used in printing books and newspapers — the writing-paper division, the strawboards division, the straw wrapping-paper division, the chemical fiber-paper division, and other divisions and subdivisions of the trade, including as well the manufacturers of machinery for making envelopes, paper bags, etc. ENVELOPES. The makers of envelopes in the United States have made a compact trust and prices are to be raised. The duty on envelopes is twenty-five per cent. PAPER BAGS. The trust formed in the bag-making industry controls the price of grocers' bags and the large flour sacks used in the West. It is stated that these flour bags are made of manila rope stock and jute butts. The duty on un- tarred manila rope averaged last year 32.89 per cent, on manila it was 21.66, on jute butts 19.13, and on the manu- factured bags it appears to have been 35 per cent. The makers of strawboards — the heavy pasteboard so extensively used in the manufacture of paper boxes — have one of the strongest pools in the trade. There are about one hundred concerns in various parts of the country engaged in turning out strawboards, but they work together harmoniously and are stiff in holding 228 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. up prices. The pool has an executive committee, which not only fixes the prices, in accordance with an agree- ment made by the trade at the general conventions, but they regulate production also. When there is a threatened abundance of boards in the market, so as to endanger the prices fixed by the pool, certain mills are ordered to be shut down. Several mills not in the pool have been bought up by the combination, so as to prevent overpro- duction. There are several hundred factories where straw wrapping-paper is made. The machinery and plant used are so nearly like those required in the manufacture of straw boards that it is said that the wrapping-paper men could turn to and make boards if necessary. This fact acts as a partial check upon the strawboard pool and prevents it becoming too high-handed. Ninety-seven per cent of the strawboard makers of the company belong to the pool. The list is too long a one to give the names here. The straw -paper men have also an organization. It was recently perfected at a meeting in this city under the name of the Straw-Paper Association of the United States. Its very first step was to advance prices ten per cent. SCHOOL SLATES. The manufacturers have formed a combination which controls the business, and this combination has raised prices- seventeen per cent since May last. The duty is thirty per cent. DUOK. All the manufacturers of standard cotton duck in the United States are united in a solid pool. They have com- plete control of the production in this country of the EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 229 heavier grades of duck, such as are needed for sail-cloth, tarpaulins, car -roofs, tent-cloths, and all the manifold uses to which canvas is put. The pool is called the Cotton Duck Association of the United States. It was organized about a year ago, and is a flourishing and successful combination, which has put up the price of cotton ducks from 15 to 20 per cent within the year. The organization is virtually a trust, in the sense that it limits the output of the mills and has a pool commissioner to whom all reports of production must be sent from each mill. It has also a rigidly- guarded price-list, which every member of the trade is obliged to adhere to under penalty. WATCH TRUST. The following statement is furnished by a gentleman in the business : ~~ About three years ago the watch-case manufacturers of the United States formed an association for mutual rjrotection, and about the same time the watch-movement manufacturers did likewise. Then the job- bers in American watches combined; their association being known as the National Association of Jobbers in American Watches. The Due- ber Watch-Case Manufacturing Company, of Newport, Ky., was the last firm to come into the watch-case combination, and shortly after it did come in it was expelled. That was last November. The Rock- ford (III.) Watch-Movement Company is the only concern of any pretensions that has kept out of the watch-movement com- bination. The capital controlled by these three associations is about $30,000,- 000, divided as follows: National Watch-Case Manufacturers' Associa- tion, $5,000,000; National Watch-Movement Manufacturers' Associa- tion, $5,000,000; and National Association of Jobbers in American Watches, $20,000,000, Now these three associations have combined to promote the interests of all, and the triple alliance is managed by the watch-case and the watch movement manufacturers. The jobbers con- trol the greatest amount of money, but the others control the produc- tion, and that is of more importance. 230 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. That is the history of the combination, of which the Brooklyn Watch Case Company is one of the promoters and virtually the head. Just now it is and for some time past has been endeavoring to drive the Dueber Watch Case-Company to the wall. The Dueber Company is the largest in the United States, employing about 1,000 hands turning out about 1,200 watch-cases a day, and, of course, with such a concern on the outside, the combination finds it difficult to regulate prices. CARTRIDGES. The American cartridge, says the Times, is preemi- nently the product of trusts and pools. In the first place the lead is trusted. The formation of a combination of the lead-smelting firms of the West, under the name of the National Lead Trust Company, has been " quietly pushed to a successful issue." The price was then from 4.10 to 4.45. Since that time it has been carried to 5.10, and it is now 4.95. The smelters are said to be exerting some in- fluence in Mexico with the hope of causing an export duty to be laid by the Mexican Congress on Mexican ores. Then there is the great copper ring, which by cornering the copper market and making pool or trust agreements with the mines of the world, raised the price of copper from £39 to £85 10s., the price now being £77 5s. The manufacturers of sheet copper are said to have main- tained a " combine " for some years. It will be seen that the component parts of the American cartridge have been pretty thoroughly "trusted," and now it also appears that the cartridge itself does not go into the world of trade, and consumption to be buffeted by the blows of competition. Other combinations of a similar character are, the Standard Oil Company, the Cotton-seed Oil Trust and the Gas Trust, and although these latter monopolies are not the direct outcome of the protective system, they are the logical result of our governmental policy. EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 231 All these combinations have one common object, and they must stand or fall together. They compel the American people to pay from fifty to one hundred and fifty per cent more for the articles of daily necessity than they would if competition had not been throttled by the United States government. The evil spirit which keeps watch that no harm may come to what they are pleased to call the "American System " is the iron king of Pennsylvania. Twenty-five years ago, cotton was considered by far the most important staple product of the country, not so much from a pecuniary point of view as owing to the tremendous influence the cotton planters then wielded in the legislation of the country. But the war came, and with it the abolition of slavery, which dethroned King Cotton. Royalty in American product, however, was maintained and its scepter was transferred into other and more exacting hands — the hands of the Pennsylvania iron-masters. Iron, to-day, is an infinitely more powerful king than cotton ever was, and the iron grip his metallic majesty has upon the millions of white slaves of this vast domain, as well as upon the majority of the members of the United States Congress, may cause the country as much suffering as the grip of King Cotton caused it. He holds the key to the situation, manipulating without let or hindrance the taxing powers of the federal government in his own, and in the interest of his allies. His will is the supreme law of the land, so far as matters remotely connected with tariff legislation are concerned, and no reduction of duties on imports of any kind, however dis- tant from the iron interests can be had, without his consent. His royal majesty has a well-organized corps of janis- saries, who are watching along the line of his protected 232 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. underlings, giving alarm at the slightest break, levying tribute from all, for the support of his iron throne. This organization and its workings were fully described a few months ago by the Detroit News'. " The American Iron and Steel Association is a power- ful organization, composed of the iron and steel manu- facturers of the United States, bound together by the strongest ties of self-interest. Its organization is thorough. It is directed by shrewd leaders, it is never in need of funds, and when it has an object to attain it moves for- ward like a well-drilled and well equipped army. Its headquarters are at Philadelphia, where its organ, the Bulletin, is edited by James M. Swank, a statistical expert, who can manipulate figures to the demonstration of any problem in finance or political economy — at least to the satisfaction of the members of the association. " The chief object of this banding together of manu- facturers is not the maintenance of established prices, the collection of information about the business in which they are engaged, etc., as might naturally be supposed. These things are but incidental, and are of minor consequence. The purpose toward which the association bends its greatest efforts is the continuance of the iniquity of the protective tariff tax. Without this special privilege, the iron and steel industries would be compelled to stand upon their own merits, as do other kinds of business which are less favored, and which are unshielded from competition by an "impregnable wall of high tariff tax. In order to combat a growing public sentiment against this outrageous injustice which taxes the people for the benefit of special interests, a large amount of money must be spent, and the beneficiaries of the system uncomplainingly contribute to it with a lavish hand, for they know that they will get EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 233 it back a hundred fold. There are pamphlets to be pub- lished, newspaper organs to be maintained, lecturers to be employed and liberal contributions to be made to the campaign fund of congressional candidates who are opposed by men who would strike down this iniquity. But the chief field of labor lies at the national capital, where experienced lobbyists are maintained at a great expense, and where the kind of arguments which they commonly use are most effective. This is undoubtedly the most expensive field of operation for the American Iron and Steel Association, and it is the most generously cultivated, because the members well know that it yields the most liberal returns. " It is interesting to know how the association raises all the money it expends every year for the maintenance of this special privilege of taxing the people for the benefit of those in the iron and steel business — a system which has developed "iron kings" and " steel kings," with their millions accumulated in a few years, w^hile the poverty- stricken toilers in the mills are compelled to work on starvation wages. This is explained by a circular which lies before us, in the form of an "annual assessment," made by the association upon one of its members, a Mich- igan iron manufacturing company. The following are the rates of the assessment : " One-half cent per ton of two thousand pounds on all pig iron produced at your works. "Three-fourths of one cent per ton of two thousand pounds on all rolled or wrought iron produced at your works. " Two cents per ton of tw r o thousand pounds on all crucible steel produced at your works. " One cent per ton of two thousand pounds on all blis- ter, German and puddled steel produced at your works. 234 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. "Three-fourths of one cent per ton of two thousand pounds on all Bessemer steel produced at your works. " Three-fourths of one cent per ton of two thousand pounds on all Siemens-Martin steel produced at your works. " One cent per ton of two thousand pounds on all steel manipulated at your works. " Opposite these separate items are blanks for the dif- ferent amounts and the sum total of the 'assessment.' When it is considered that the mines and furnaces of Michigan alone in one year (1884) produced 2,500,000 tons of ore and pig iron, some faint idea may be obtained of the total fund which this association secures by means of annual assessments, to combat legislations that threaten to destroy the special privileges of protection. It will be seen that on this basis Michigan must have contributed $12,500 of the fund for the year 1884, on its pig iron product alone. Add to this the assessments in the various classes of steel and rolled and wrought iron, and then re- member that the other iron producing and manufacturing States are assessed the same, and the reader will have some faint idea of the enormous corruption fund which is raised every year by this association for the purpose of influencing legislation." These are rugged facts, calculated to throw a flood of light upon the paradox which some people wonder at, viz. : "Why Congress continues to pour into an already overflowing treasury the proceeds of an oppressive and unnecessary war tax, and why the waves of public senti- ment in favor of reform beats ineffectually against the doors of legislation. And this is the final outcome of a fiscal system of which Mr. Blaine, page 212, vol. I, of his Twenty Years in Congress, says : EFFECT OF PROTECTION ON MANUFACTURERS. 235 "Protection, in the perfection of its design, as de- scribed by Mr. Hamilton, does not invite competition from abroad, but is based on the controlling principle, that competition at home will always prevent monopoly on the part of the capitalist, assure good wages to the laborer, and defend the consumer against the evil of extor- tion f " CONCLUSION. ""TTTHEN spoliation has once become the recognized V V means of existence of a body of men," says Bas- tiat, " united and held by social ties, they soon proceed to form a law which sanctions it, and to adopt a system of morals which sanctifies it." These few words of M. Bastiat fully describe the condition of affairs in this country to-day. The tendency to organize every branch of industry, save that of agriculture, into a controlling pool, trust or combination of some sort, for the purpose of destroying competition in order to "bull" prices, shows the exist- ence of a " body of men whose recognized means of ex- istence has become that of spoliation." For the last quarter of a century the national legisla- ture has lent itself to the framing of laws which have sanc- tioned this system, and the American people, by their seeming aquiescence, have sanctified it. Protection and spoliation are synonomous terms, and monopoly is but " protection in the perfection of its design." It is the legal- ized process " of taking money out of the pockets of the many to put into the pockets of the few," and this pro- cess must, with unerring precision, terminate in the inor- dinate accumulation of wealth by a favored class, and the corresponding impoverishment of other classes. The argument of Mr. Atkinson, that machinery, man- ufacturing facilities and wages have increased, and the profits of manufacturers decreased, and his denial that 236 CONCLUSION. 237 the rich are growing richer, and the poor poorer, does not dispose of the question. The facts, published in the daily press as they transpire, and the proceedings in the courts of the country show conclusively that, notwithstanding his denials, the rich are growing richer, and the poor are growing poorer. In his arguments Mr. Atkinson seems to deal with the individual manufacturer whose products have fallen in price under the natural law of competi- tion. He does not appear to take the circumstance into account that competition is almost a thing of the past ; that combinations, trusts and monopolies are the rule, and free competition the exception. Circumstances alter cases. Left each to his own ex- ertions, the manufacturers would compete with each other for the home market, and, in order to obtain a share of it, each (provided he carried on a legitimate business), while not selling at a loss, would have to content himself with a reasonable profit. But by com- bining into a trust, the foreign article being excluded under the tariff, the American consumer is placed at the mercy of the manufacturers who raise the price of the home product at will. Do not the sugar kings, whose yearly exactions have been estimated at $10,000,000, grow richer by this oper- ation, and the consumers grow correspondingly poorer ? Or, if a combination of coal barons and railroad mag- nates can compel me to pay $2 per ton more for coal than I ought to pay but for such a combination, am I not by that operation made $2 poorer, and have not these unscrupulous operators grown correspondingly richer? Suppose this process of extortion is repeated upon every article of household and wearing apparel purchased for myself and family, and this sum is multiplied ten 238 THE PROTECTIVE TAKIFF. million times (which very nearly constitutes the number of families in the country), do not these aggregate exac- tions, variously estimated at from $600,000,000 to $800,- 000,000 annually, ruthlessly taken from the pockets of these ten milllion householders and put into the pockets of a few thousand mine-owners, manufacturers and rail- road magnates, this much enrich the latter (allowing for loss in the shuffle) and impoverish the former? If this pumping process is allowed to be continued indefinitely, it will require no Adam Smith to figure the outcome, and the most elaborate disquisition about the " wage fund," or hair-splitting arguments on " the distribution of wealth," can explain away the fact that the rich monop- olists have grown richer and their victims have grown poorer. Of course, this matter of poverty is relative. A man need not necessarily be a beggar, or be really destitute to be poor. In this country all consider themselves poor who cannot clothe and house themselves respectably, pro- cure enough wholesome food to eat, and cannot give their children a common-school education. Millions of the American people would be able to stand this constant strain upon their resources and not feel perceptibly poorer, but these extortions of forty cents on every dollar's pur- chase seriously affect millions less fortunately situated, with but little or no opportunity for recuperation. The prevailing discontent among the working-classes, more especially in the highly-protected industries, is mainly attributable to this cause. It is something more than whimsical fault-finding, and the student of political economy, or the statesman, who would attempt to explain away their grievances or deny their existence^ is render- ing a questionable service to his country. CONCLUSION. 239 As some writer aptly expresses it : '' "We are living here under the immutable and inex- orable laws of the social organization. We cannot cheat these laws, or evade them. If we try to escape their oper- ation in one point, they avenge themselves in another. We cannot manipulate the law of value, so as to make things exchange otherwise than in the ratio of supply and demand, without losing more in one way than we gain in another. We cannot legalize plunder under any guise whatever, without surely wasting wealth and impoverishing robbers and robbed together. We cannot arrange any system, of gambling which will increase wealth, since wealth comes only from labor properly applied. We cannot employ the taxing power of the government to increase wealth, but only to diminish it." However, the evils from which we are suffering cannot all be attributed to the vicious system of protection, nor is it claimed its modification or removal will prove the universal remedy. But one thing is certain, that it has contributed more to the unequal distribution of wealth, to the creation of a state of contention between labor and capital, than all the other causes combined. The beneficiaries of the protective system should remember that sooner or later " murder will out ; " that the principles underlying this government have not yet been suppressed in the hearts of the American people ; that they will still insist upon the old-fashioned doctrine, " the interests of the few must be subservient to the interests of the many," and the enforcement of this doctrine by legal enactments must at no distant day be had. How conservative or how radical these changes shall be will depend upon the amount of resistance to be overcome. A removal of the taxes on raw materials, and a cor- 240 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. responding lowering of the taxes on the finished product, would doubtless satisfy the American people to-day, while a prolonged struggle, or an attempt to cheat them by a repeal of internal taxes on luxuries, such as on whisky and tobacco, might so exasperate them, as to cause them to demand the removal of every protective feature on the statute books. The American consumer must steadily keep in mind the admonition of a friend of the people, who has said " that it ought to be utterly indifferent to the man who has to pay the money for the higher priced article, on account of the protective system, what argument, what pretext, what name, sacred or profane, they (the protectionists) may make to give gravity to the steal. If they are poet- ical, let him think of the 'Eule of Three.' If they quote Scripture, let him take care of his pockets, and if they make promises of the home-market, let him reply that one bird in the hand is better than a dozen in the bush. If they make promises of high wages, let him give the answer, that cheap rent, cheap capital, and cheap labor is their motto. His money which he has earned at hard work is at stake ; therefore, let him keep a clear head and a cool e} r e, — let him beware of quack doctors who make long speeches ; they will ravish him if they get him in their nets. Believe nobody, nothing — except that two and two are four. " If an angel or an archbishop preaches anything to the contrary, give them no heed. " If judges on the bench contradict it, let him tell them they sit there to administer the law and not arithmetic. He has money, and therefore everybody is in a plot against him. There is something in his pockets, and he will be beset right and left till they are cleaned out." CONCLUSION. 241 This unique piece of advice, like the rules of the Vicar of Wakefield, deserves to be framed and placed over the mantelpiece of every farmer and workingman in the land. Had they followed the first principle of this advice, keeping their hands upon their pockets, as well as their bosses have done, they would not for years have been, with a prospect of continuing to be, the under dog in the struggle. Under the deceptive and fraudulent pretext of protec- tion to American labor, the privileged classes have suc- ceeded in persuading a majority of the workingmen and farmers that the system under which they are slowly being ground to dust is a blessing in disguise, and that highly taxed commodities will inevitably lead to general pros- perity; it is, therefore, to this want of information upon these vital questions that they must ascribe the largest share of their troubles. As stated at the beginning of this volume, the only 'protection the government of the United States can legally bestow upon any of its citizens is police protection. But instead of thus confining itself to its duty of pro- tecting the rights of the citizen from the encroachment of others, the government has drifted into a system of pater- nalism, which is constantly devising means for the destruc- tion of these rights, and w T hich is the special guardian and advocate of a preferred class. In violation of the letter and spirit of the Constitu- tion, innumerable special laws have been enacted for the avowed purpose of affording valuable privileges to private individuals and corporations at the expense and to the detriment of all the rest. The welfare of the individual, however humble, can- not be injured without detriment to the whole. 242 THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. The interests of the nation are identical with the interests of the individual. What is the interest of the individual? lie wants peace. He wants security. He wants freedom to be his own, to earn his own, to hold his own, and to exchange his own surplus, value for value, with the positive, well-ascertained surplus of others. How can there be peace with everything ordered for the purpose of governmental robbery and individual dis- honesty ? How can he have security, when weakness is the prey of strength, poverty of wealth, and honesty of fraud ? How can he have the freedom of his own, earn his own, hold his own, and exchange his own, when the gov- ernment is uniformly legislating against him, and in the interest of a preferred class ? END. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. FEB 6 lafii ft. MOV 8 NOV 211976 \9T3 IK OlSCHAt^GE-URt MAR 8 WO Form L9-25//i-9,'47(A56l8)444 tWm'ERSITYofCAnrORNU 3 1158 00567 3297 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 990 123 2