Volume No ..m. William Sellers. Gu Shelf No. . . . .. .; :. ' i 1 - . : - ^^y-&^?<-^: : ' - - -T - ,-, -.-,' . - " ;-;- : : : ;'':/::>;;;.;'.---.':.;.: -:-,: fey 'A | -.-";-''' ' ; '-v.. : -'' ''' -'. ' " ^:'. ': ^W^:^^ 1819 TOTE ST. ADDRESSES AND LETTERS ON TO WHICH IS ADDED AN INTRODUCTION, TOGETHER WITH COPIOUS NOTES AND AN INDEX. BY WILLIAM D. KELLEY, M. C. PHILADELPHIA : HENRY CAREY BAIRD, INDUSTRIAL PUBLISHER, 406 WALNUT STREET. 1872. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S71, by WM. D. KELLEY, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C. S. A. .GEOROE & Co., STKREOTYP_RS. COLLINS, PRINTER. UNIVERSITY OF CAUFOJfcftL SANTA BARBARA TO THE GREAT 3IASTER OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE, THE PROFOUND THINKER, AND THE CAREFUL OBSERVER OF SOCIAL PHENOMENA, MY VENERABLE FRIEND AND TEACHER, HENRY C. CAREY, THIS VOLUME IS WITH GRATEFUL AFFECTION INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR. PHILADA., NOT. 1, 1871. 18J VI INTRODUCTION. IN offering this volume to the public it is proper to state that I make no pretension to a critical knowledge of litera- ture or rhetoric, and that, when preparing the papers it con- tains, I did not suppose they would ever be coljected for republication. They are expressions of opinion called forth by occasions ; and, as the reader will observe, not unfre- quently in the excitement of current debate in the National House of Representatives, or in response to invitations to address popular assemblies under circumstances that pre- cluded the possibility of reducing them to writing in advance of their delivery. It is proper also to say that I am not wholly responsible for their publication in book form, inas- much as they have been collected and annotated in deference to the judgment and wishes of citizens of different sections of the country, who, though strangers to each other and en- gaged in pursuits involving apparently conflicting interests, agreed in persuading me that by this labor I might render a service to those of my countrymen who are engaged in farm- ing or who depend on their labor for the means of support- ing their children while giving them that measure of educa- tion without which no American citizen should be permitted to attain maturity. While I regret some expressions in the colloquial portions of the Congressional speeches, and would have omitted them could it have been done without impairing the argument, I find no reason to question the soundness of my positions. The theory that labor the productive exercise of the skill and muscular power of men who are responsible for the faith- ful and intelligent performance of civic and other duties is merely a raw material, and that that nation which pays least for it is wisest and best governed, is inadmissible in a de- mocracy ; and when we shall determine to starve the bodies and minds of our operatives in order that we may successfully compete in common markets with the productions of the under-paid and poorty-fed peasants of Europe and the pau- pers of England, we shall assail the foundations of a goveru- v VI INTRODUCTION. ment which rests upon the intelligence and integrity of its peo- ple. To defend our country against this result, is the office of a protective tariff, and for this duty it alone is sufficient. This was not always my belief. My 3 T outhful judgment was captivated by the plausible but sophistical generalities by which cosmopolitanism or free trade is advocated, and my faith in them remained unshaken till events involving the prostration of our domestic industry, and the credit not only of cities and States, but of the nation, demonstrated the insufficiency or falsity of my long and dearly cherished theories. In 1847, I had seen with gratification the protec- tive tariff of 1842 succeeded by the revenue or free trade tariff of 1846. To promote this change, I had labored not only with zeal and industry, but with undoubting faith that experience would piAve its beneficence. A number of remarkable circum- stances conspired to promote the success of the experiment. The potato rot was creating an unprecedented foreign de- mand for our breadstuffs. It was then ravaging the fields of England and the continent, having already devastated the fields, and more than decimated the people of Ireland, who. to escape starvation, were fleeing en masse to this country. The gold fields of Australia and California nau just been dis- covered, and promised, by increasing the circulating medium of the world, and concentrating many thousands of emigrants, who would engage in mining, in countries without agricul- ture or manufactures, to create great markets for our produc- tions of every kind, thus increasing our trade and quickening every department of industry. Beyond all this, however, and, as I afterwards came to understand, as a result of the condemned protective tariff, in conjunction with recent im- provements in our naval architecture, our commercial marine was growing rapidly, our ship builders were prosperous, and our ship owners were receiving as compensation for extra speed a shilling a chest in advance of English freights for carrying tea from Hong Kong or Canton to London. Each of these circumstances was a good augury for the success of a tariff for revenue only. Going into effect under such favor- able conditions, it must, I believed, procure for our farmers cheap foreign fabrics and wares, and secure a constantly in- creasing market for the productions of their farms ; and by enlarging our share in the carrying trade of the world compel the rapid construction of ships and steamers, whose employ- ment would increase our receipts of coin and im migrants. Trade being so nearly free, we must in a few years see the ships of all nations coming to New York for assorted cargoes, and our commercial metropolis would then become the finan- cial centre of the world, in which international balances would INTRODUCTION. yii be settled. That these were but a small part of the great results my theories promised will appear to any one who will refer to the annual reports of the then Secretary of the Treasury, Robert J. Walker, who was not more sanguine than I, and whose statements of the general prosperity that would flow from a revenue tariff were as positive and rose- tinted as those with which Messrs. Atkinson and Wells now beguile their followers. Were we early revenue reformers worshippers at false shrines, or did the sequel approve our faith? History answers these questions with emphasis. It needed but a de- cade to demonstrate the folly of attempting to create a mar- ket for our increasing agricultural productions, and to develop our mining and manufacturing resources lay the application of the beautiful abstractions disseminated by Free Trade Leagues. It was just ten years after the substitution of the revenue tariff of 1846 for the protective tariff of 1842, that the general bankruptcy of the American people was announced by the almost simultaneous failure of the Ohio Life and Trust Company, and the Bank of Pennsyl- vania, and the suspension of specie payments by almost every bank in the country. In that brief period, our steamers had been supplanted by foreign lines, and out- clipper ships driven from the sea, or restricted to carrying between our Atlantic and Pacific ports. At the close of that brief term, the ship-yards of Maine were almost as idle as they are now when railroads traverse the country in all directions and compete with ships in carrying even such bulky commodities as sugar, cotton, and leaf tobacco ;* and while the families of thousands of unemployed workmen in our great cities were in want of food, Illinois farmers found in corn, for which there was no market, the cheapest fuel they could obtain, though their fields were underlaid by an inexhaustible deposit of coal that is almost co-extensive with the State. Capital invested in factories, furnaces, forges, rolling mills and machinery was idle and unproduc- tive, and there was but a limited" home market for cotton or wool. Taking advantage of this condition of affairs, foreign dealers put their prices down sufficiently to bankrupt the cotton States, to induce many of our farmers to give up sheep raising, and to constrain many thousand immigrants who could not find employment to return to their native countries. 1847 had been a good year for farmers, mechanics, miners and merchants ; but 1857 was a good year for sheriffs, * See figures from the report of Mr. Nimmo, Chief of Tonnage Division, in note, page 431. VI 11 INTRODUCTION. constables and marshals, though few were purchasers at their sales except mortgagees, judgment creditors, and capitalists who were able to pay cash at nominal prices for unproductive establishments, and hold them till happier circumstances should restore their value. Not one of the glowing predictions of Political Economy had been fulfilled, and the surprise with which I contemplated the contrast presented by the condition of the country with what it had been at the close of the last period of protection, amounted to amazement. Nor did my cherished theories enable me to ascertain the cause of the sudden and general paralysis, or suggest a remedy for it. Yet I could not abandon them, for, as their ablest recent American champion, Mr. Edward Atkinson, of Boston, in his article in the Atlantic Monthly for October, says of the details of the Revenue Re-' form budget, they were "simple, sensible, and right." Was not each one a truism that might be expressed as a maxim nn indisputable proposition the mere statement of which es- tablished its verity ? To prove that they were not responsible for the prostration of our industries, the want of a market for our breadstuffs, and the widespread bankruptcy that pre- vailed, required the enunciation of but one of them : CUS- TOMS DUTIES ARE TAXES.* No one can dispute this proposi- tion, for the people pay them, and the Government collects them, and not only may but should raise its entire revenue through them. Surely nobody could have the temerity to assert that an industrious and prosperous people could be re- duced to idleness and bankruptcy by the i-epeal or reduction of taxes, and thus charge this national disaster to free trade and the doctrinaires who had kindly taught us Political Economy, and induced us to abandon the protective sj'stem. The case was clear. Yet, strange to say, perfect as the de- monstration seemed to be, I was forced by the condition of the country to doubt and ask myself whether, in some occult way, the reduction of the rate of duties might not have had something to do with producing it. The results promised by the teachers of my cherished science, and those attained by experiment, were irreconcilable, and I was constrained to sisk myself whether it might not be possible that Political Economy was not an exact an absolute science, the laws of which were equally applicable to all nations, without re- gard to the conditions and requirements of the people, or the extent, variety or degree of the development of their re- sources ? It was easier to harbor this doubt than to believe the alternative, which was, that the Almighty had not put > Sec Dr. Bushnell, in note, pages 317, 318. INTRODUCTION. ix production, commerce and trade in the United States under the government of universal and immutable laws, but had left them to the control of chance. This conclusion being inadmissible, there was nothing left but to waive the further consideration of the subject, or to withdraw my theories from the dazzling light of abstract reason, and examine them under the shade of present experience. It is a cardinal maxim among the adherents of free trade that TWO MARKETS IN WHICH TO BUY AND SELL ARE BETTER THAN ONE, and I could not dispute it ; but when in the pro- gress of my re-examination, I announced it to an intelligent protectionist as indisputable, he admitted that it was so. " But," said he, " where is the evidence that free trade is the road to two markets for the United States?" In endeavoring to answer this question satisfactoril}' to myself it became apparent that I had evaded the real point at issue. Both parties to the controvers}" agree that two mar- kets are better than one. But the protectionists say, " Do not risk the loss or diminution of the home market afforded by our people when fully employed and well paid, by at- tempting to secure another, in a direction where success will be, to say the least, exceedingly doubtful ; " the free traders saying, " Court foreign trade by all means, and as you are sure of the home market, you will thus secure two." Which are right ? To determine this, we must ascertain whether trade between nations is reciprocal or nearly so.* To settle this question, I made a thorough and searching appeal to the trade statistics of our own and other countries, and ascertained that the amount of our productions con- sumed by the manufacturing nations of Europe has in no degree, in any year, depended upon the amount of their pro- ductions consumed by us; but on the contrary, that they never took an equal amount, and frequently, when we were taking most from them, took least of everything but cotton, which they could not obtain elsewhere, from us. Thus it had often occurred that when our store-houses were being gorged with productions of the underpaid workmen of Eng- land, she, taking gold and silver from us, had gone to Prussia, Germany, Austria, Turkey, and France, who bought but little from her, and the chief diet of whose laboring people consisted of rye bread, potatoes and garlic, for her breadstuffs. This examination further showed that the amount of breadstuffs England will ever take from us is measured by the slight deficiency she may expect to experi- ence after having exhausted the markets of those lower priced * See extract from Kirk's Social Politics, in note, page 186. X INTRODUCTION. countries, whose people are subjects, and whose wages mark the minimum on which families may subsist. When ^Esop's stupid dog snapped at the shadow in the water he lost his bone ; and the investigation convinced me that the attempt to secure a second market by reducing our customs duties had destroyed our home market, but opened no other for any of our productions except gold and silver, and State and corporate bonds. It had given England, with her low rates of wages and interest, two markets in which to sell, and by destroying our home market for grain, an additional one in which to buy; but had deprived us of the one 'on which, under an adequate system of protection, we could always depend, as has been shown by the uniform general prosperity that has prevailed since the Merrill tariff of 1861 went into effect. Thus it appeared that the fallacy was not in the ab- stract proposition which neither party disputed, but in the assumption that free trade would insure us two markets. Kindred to the foregoing proposition, and equally unde- niable as an abstract truth, seemed this other : You SHOULD BUY WHERE YOU CAN BUY CHEAPEST.* Yet we had been doing this for ten years, and were bankrupt. This condition of affairs could not, it seemed to me, be the result of reduced rates of duties, and the paj'tnent of reduced prices for what we had consumed. What process of reasoning could show these facts to be related as cause and effect ? England could sell us railroad bars to lay over our wide stretches of limestone country, and our immense fields of coal and iron, at lower prices than, in the undeveloped condition of our resources, and with our higher priced labor and money, we could pro- duce them ; and we had bought our supply from her. With her accumulated capital, machinery, skilled labor, and her lower wages, she could also spin and weave cotton and wool, and make the cloth into garments cheaper than our country- men could, and we had bought from her our clothes, or the cloth from which to cut them. So, too, she could sell us chemicals, prepared drugs, pig-iron, raw steel, and an im- mense number of other commodities for less money than we could produce them ; and we had gone to her markets and bought them where we could buy them cheapest. Mean- while, we had mined hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gold and silver; had raised unprecedented crops of cotton, tobacco, and bread stuffs ; had produced immense supplies of naval stores and other exportable commodities ; and had, withal, issued hundreds of millions of interest-bearing bonds, by which our future productions and those of our posterity * See Dr. Lushncl), in notes, pages 285 and 354. INTRODUCTION. XI were mortgaged. Yet, strange to tell, in spite of the lower duties paid on our imports, and the lower than American prices at which we had procured our supplies, we had not gold and silver enough to serve as a basis for a redeemable currency, and being, in many instances, unable to pay the interest on our bonds were sued and sold out by our English friends, to whom our gold, silver, and bonds had gone. We were, however, rich in one class of commodities the produc- tions of the farm. Of these the people of the Western States had a superabundance. It was, however, unfortunately, not possible to make them available, as our English creditors would not take them even in payment of debts unless we would, after paying for their transportation to the sea-board, let them have them at the low prices at which they could obtain like articles which had been produced by the ill-fed peasants of Russia, Prussia, Austria, Hungary, and Turkey. Than to do this it was better for farmers in the extreme West to let their crops perish on the field. Our condition was anomalous. There was no element of wealth, or of the conveniences of life that could be produced by a reasonable amount of labor outside of the tropics of which we did not possess greater stores in the form of raw materials than any other nation ; and of the productions of the farm our supply was so superabundant that some of us were, as I have said, using corn for fuel ; yet, our manu- facturing operatives were poor and unemployed, our farmers were unable to pay for past purchases or fresh supplies, and our merchants and banks, involved in the common fate, were unable to meet their obligations. Did this strange ex- perience prove that it is not best to buy where you can buy cheapest ? No. But it did prove that money-price is not the test of cheapness; and that we buy more cheaply, though the nominal price of each commodity be higher when we buy what we consume of those who will buy what we produce at fair prices, than we do when we buy at lower prices for cash, or on credit, and permit our productions to perish for the want of a market. Thus did deductions from unquestion- able and present experience demonstrate the fallacy of the system of " established principles," which I had cherished as a sufficient economic creed. The terrible ordeal through which the working classes of England are now passing, is constraining her statesmen and scholars to bring the prevailing system of Political Economy to the test of experience, and one of these scholars has been bold enough to deny not only the policy, but the morality of the proposition I have just considered. Mr. David S3 T me, in a well-considered and powerful article on the " Method of Po- B Xll INTRODUCTION. litical Economy," in the Westminster Review for July, 1871, which has come under my notice since the foregoing was written, says : "A close investigation will, indeed, lead to the conclusion that the spirit of the moral law is incompatible with the modern economic doctrine of buying in the cheapest, and selling in the dearest market. For a scrupulous sense .of duty will often compel a man to act contrary to his own personal interests. Such a man will conduct himself in his business relations on the strictest principles of honor and fair dealing. He will refuse to take an advantage when the law may permit it, when, by so doing, he might prejudice the interests of others. He will not take all he can get, and give as little as he can ; but he will give as much as he can afford, and take only what is fair and equitable. This is not Utopianism, but the true spirit of the moral law. " If, moi'eover, we consider man in the social state, we shall find that the individual is bound to recognize the interests of others as well as his own. He cannot, even if he would, be guided in his social relations by an exclusive regard for his own interests. In seeking his own advantage he must be careful to do nothing that might in any way be injurious to his neighbor. He must not sell a spurious article for a genuine one, nor a deleterious compound for a wholesome one. He must not use false labels or unjust weights Economic science recognizes the existence of the social state, and the social state presupposes the existence of the social virtues honor, honesty, and a regard for the feelings and rights of others." It was not easy to abandon opinions I had cherished through so many years, and in which my faith had been so implicit, but it was still more difficult to' accept the oppo- site system, that of protection, which I had so often de- nounced as false, selfish, and exclusive. Nor did I do this hastily: more than two years had been devoted to the writings of the ablest advocates of both systems, and still I halted between them. Meanwhile, it became apparent to me, not only that Political Economy was not a science, but that it was impossible to frame a system of abstract economic propositions which would be universally applicable and bene- ficent ; and, further, that the same principles could not be applied beneficially to England and the United States. The conditions of the two nations are not the same, but are in striking contrast. England is a small island, but the United States embraces almost the entire available territory of a continent. The former is burdened by an excess of popula- tion, and vexed by the question as to how she shall dispose INTRODUCTION. xiii of the excess ; but our great need is industrious people, and with us the question is how can we increase immigration. She has to import food for half her people, and her foreign trade is to her what seed-time and harvest are to the countries from which she procures the breadstuff's she requires but cannot produce ; but were they on our soil, we could feed ten times the number of her whole people ; and even while I write, the merchants of Minnesota, Iowa, and other northwestern States are suffering financial embarrassment because the farmers thej 7 supply cannot find a market for their crops. She is dependent on foreign countries for most of the raw mate- rials she consumes ; but we have within our limits exhaust- less stores of every variet} r not dependent upon tropical heat for their production. Her resources are ascertained and developed ; but ours await development, and in regions, any one of which is larger than all western Europe, including the British Islands, await definite ascertainment. Her popu- lation is compacted within narrow limits, and her railroads are completed and paid for ; but our people are settled sparsely over half a continent, and most of our system of roads, for which the capital is yet to be produced, is to be constructed. The charges for transportation within her circumscribed and populous limits are very light ; but over our extended and thinly-settled country they are necessarily heavy. Her facto- ries were erected and supplied with machinery while she main- tained the most rigid system of protection the world has ever seen ; but ours are to be built as experiments in the face of threatened free trade which would involve a more unequal competition than any against which she defended hers by protective duties and absolute prohibitions. Her average rate of interest is 3 per cent, per annum ; but ours is never less than 6 per cent, per annum, and in large sec- tions of the country is often 3 percent, per month. The great body of her laborers, even since the recent extension of the suffrage, are subjects without civic duties ; but ours are citi- zens, and liable to such duties. She pays the daily wages of her workmen with shillings ; but we pay ours with dollars worth four shillings each, and give many classes of them more dollars than she does shillings : It is, therefore, impos- sible that the same economic polity can be applied with equal advantage to countries whose condition presents so many and such important contrasts. Ten years under a tariff which levied the lowest rates of duties consistent with the purpose of raising by imports the amount of revenue required by the current expenses of the government, sufficed to destroy the industries and credit of the American people. The immense advantages England XIV INTRODUCTION. possesses in manufactures and trade have enabled her to with- stand the untoward influence of free trade for a longer period than we were able to ; but at the end of a quarter of a cen- tury it has become apparent that even the mistress of the seas and the work-shop of the world cannot, at less cost than the loss of national prestige and threatened revolution, throw her ports open to unrestricted competition. The effect on England of the abandonment of the protective system does not exhibit itself in wide-spread bankruptcy as it did with us. The enormous accumulations of capital held by her privileged classes have prevented this. It is, however, ob- servable in the disappearance of the small farmer, and of the small work-shop that in more prosperous times would have expanded into a factory ; in the concentration of land and machinery in the hands of a constantly diminishing number of persons ; and in the rapidly increasing destitution, idle- ness, intemperance, and despair of her laboring classes.* In the course of his admirable sermon before the Univer- sity of Oxford, December 20th, 1868, Rev. Brooke Lambert said : " The severance between the rich and the poor is to me an even sadder thing than the wretched state of the labor market. I can fancy a remedy possible for the one, I can foresee no remedy for the other. The gap between them seems widening every day, as trade and land fall into the hands of large capitalists, who absorb all smaller concerns, all smaller holdings." And Blackwood's Magazine for April, 1810, in an article entitled " The State, the Poor, and the Country," says : " The lamentable depression of trade, and consequent want of employment which have recently prevailed, have now reached a most serious magnitude in many of the larger towns, and most of all in London and its far-spreading suburbs. The intensity of the distress in the metropolitan districts has not been equalled in recent times. And the break-down of our Poor-law system, despite all efforts of voluntary associations, has been appalling in its results. Not a week passes without several cases of ' deaths from starvation,' duly attested by the verdict of coroners' in- quests, where the medical and other evidence reveals an amount of unaided wretchedness and starvation, which one would suppose impossible in a civilized country. Men, women and children dying from sheer famine in the heart of the wealthiest city in the world ! " The extracts from the works of Sir John Byles, Sir Edward Sullivan, Professor Kirk, Messrs. Grant, Patterson, Smith, Hoyle, and other recent British writers, which will be found in notes throughout this volume, more than con- * See extracts from Grant's Home Politics, in note, pages 31, 32; and Sir Ed- ward Sullivan's Protection to Native Industry, pages 194, 195. INTRODUCTION. XV firm this statement. Sir Edward Sullivan admonishes the governing classes that if they do not wish to reduce England to the condition of a manufacturing country without work- shops or skilled workmen, they must protect native industry sufficiently to restore the home market for cotton fabrics, which has fallen off 35 per cent., by reason of the fact that the enforced idleness of masses of the working people has de- prived them of the ability to consume this indispensable ele- ment of comfortable attire ; and Mr. Hoyle produces from official statistics the figures to prove the startling statement. Nor can the British Government longer close its eyes to this distress and continue to assert that THE LAW OP SUPPLY AND DEMAND is the heaven-appointed and all-sufficient regu- lator of societary movements. It is even now feebly attempt- ing to regulate both supply and demand by its own action. To this end Earl Granville, Foreign Secretary, as early as the 14th of April, 1870, addressed a ciixmlar dispatch to the Governors of British Colonies, from which I take the follow- ing paragraph : " The distress prevailing among the laboring classes in many parts of the United Kingdom has directed public attention to the question of Emigration as a means of relief. It has been urged on Her Majesty's Government that while there are in this country large numbers of well-conducted, industrious laborers, for whom no emploj^ment can be found, there exists in most of the colonies a more extensive demand for labor than the laboring class on the spot can supply. The result of emigration would, therefore, it is said, be equally advantageous to the emigrant and the colonies to the former, by placing him in a position to earn an indepen- dence ; to the latter, by supplying a want that retards their progress and prosperity. Under the circumstances, Her Majesty's Government is anxious to be furnished with your opinion as to the prospects which the colon}' under your government holds out to emigrants, both of the agricultural and the artisan class. " The points on which we should be specially desirous of receiving information are: the classes of laborers whose labor is most in demand in the colony under your govern- ment ; the numbers for whom employment could be found ; the probable wages they would earn ; whether married men with families could obtain wages to enable them to support their families, and house accommodation for their shelter ; what assistance or facilities would be provided to pass the emigrants to the districts where their labor is in demand ; and whether any pecuniary assistance would be granted XVI INTRODUCTION. either toward their passages, or toward providing depots and subsistence on their first arrival, or toward sending them up to the country." That England will soon so far modify her revenue system as to re-adopt many of the distinctive features of the Pro- tective System, I confidently predict. Not that I credit her privileged classes with quick or enlarged sympathy with the laboring classes, but because I know that they have always had sufficient tact to avert popular outbreak by timely con- cession. And though I remember how the people of Ireland and Orissa were permitted to starve, I still believe that the consumers of England will consent to pay duties on such goods as compete with English labor in the home mar- ket, and relieve from taxation the tea, coffee, sugar, currants, raisins, tobacco, and spirits of the laboring classes, rather than incur the risk of widespread famine in London, Lanca- shire, and other great industrial centres of the country. But, were they capable of the fatuity of withholding their consent, the question has passed from their decision. Their last con- cession to the popular will, the extension of the suffrage, makes this one inevitable. The article in Blackwood, alreadj 7 " referred to, thus defines the position of the question : "A new power has been introduced into our political sys- tem, new forces are at work within the pale of the Constitu- tion. The Government has become National in the fullest sense of the word ; and with the change a new breath of life is stirring society. New views are rapidly forming ; new hopes and aspirations are entering into the heart of the masses. The rule of the middle classes established by the Reform Bill of ] 832, has come to an end ; and the doctrines which regulated the legislation of that period are now being tested and considered from a different, indeed opposite point of view. " For nearly forty years the prime object of our legis- lation has been the interests of the Consumers ; now, we shall soon have the masses advocating their own interests as Producers. What is more, the State has now become simply the nation itself, acting through a chosen body of adminis- trators ; and it is easy to discern that under the new regime the Government will be called upon to adopt a very different policy in domestic affairs from that represented by the prin- ciple of the Whigs and doctrinaires, which has been para- mount since 1832. That principle well suited the interests of the wealthy and comparatively fortunate classes, who needed no help from the State, yet who got all they asked for, by the abolition of all custom duties which shackled their business. But will that principle keep its ground now that the weaker classes also have a voice in the Government ? INTRODUCTION. Will they not maintain that they, as an integral part of the nation, have a claim to be fully considered in the policy of the Government ; and that, if they can point out any s t ystem of governmental action which will benefit them, without doing injustice to the rest of the community, no doctrinaire limitations upon the actions of the State shall be allowed to stand in the way? The maxims of the Liberals, which have been predominant since 1832, will be thrown into the crucible and tried anew. Already in vague murmurs, which ere long will become distinct and earnest speech, the masses are be- ginning to say that the principles which have been in vogue during the rule of the middle classes will not suit them. ' Our interests,' they say, ' are those of Producers, not of Consumers. " ' We also are poor, and you are wealthy ; we are weak, and you are strong ; with us employment is a far more pre- carious thing than it is with you, and we have but small earnings to fall back upon when out of work. State help, though not needful to the middle classes, is needed at times by us ; and we shall never rest contented until that principle is acknowledged and properly applied.' " The government cannot long refuse to listen to this de- mand, which no longer comes from the laboring classes alone, but is enforced by many such writers as those to whom I am indebted for many of my most instructive notes, and now by Blackwood, the Quarterly Reviews, and other great organs of opinion. That school of political economists who pro- pound free trade as the result of their system is finding less favor with the thinkers of England than heretofore. They discover that it is not producing the results it promised, but other and very different ones, and are demanding that it be tested by the inductive system, and proven by the facts of experience. It has become clear to many of them that under its influence the working people are not prosperous or contented ; that the home market for some of their great staples diminishes steadily ; and that in spite of Government assurances that British trade increases, it is stationary, if not absolutely diminishing. Discarding statements prepared by skilful statistical jugglers like Mr. Wells, our late Com- missioner of Revenue, they are comparing and analyzing re- sults for themselves, and have thus detected the fraudulent practices by which the}' have been deceived. The last trick British statistics have been made to play was b}- her Majesty's Commissioners of Customs, who, to prove the stead}' in- crease of trade, proclaimed with much triumph that the ex- ports during 1870 were 11 per cent, greater than they were in 1868. This cheering result, which, isolated from the gen- eral facts to which it is related, is true, is made to prove the XV111 INTRODUCTION. steady increase of trade by a device that would do no dis- credit to the cunning and audacity of our great statistical manipulator. This is the process by which it is done. The French army moved toward the German frontier about the 15th of July, 1870, and at the close of the year the war was at its height, promising not only to be of long dura- tion, but threatening to involve all Eui-ope. It caused a general suspension of the industries of France and Germany, whose wares and fabrics were crowding those of England out of so many markets, or the employment of their opera- tives in the production of arms and munitions of war. It also gave England an immense market for these. But what was, perhaps, more important than all this, it caused the withdrawal of the commercial marine of those countries from the ocean, and gave the ships and shops of England a mo- nopoly of the carrying and foreign trade of the world. Her trade could not fail to be exceptionally large that year, as owing to the war having extended far into it, and been pro- longed by the folly of the Commune it will be this year. The Commissioners of Customs prove the virtues of free trade by contrasting the exports of this exceptional year with those of 1868, in which they were lower than they have been since 1865. The following official figures will suffice to show that the exports from Great Britain for the last four years, including 1870, which was so exceptionally large, have on the average been less than during 1866 by the consider- able sum of more than $6,700,000 per annum: 1866. Total %alue of British Exports 188,917,536 1867. ' " " 181,183,971 1868. ' " " 179,463,644 1869. ' " " 189,953,957 1S7<>. ' " " 199,649,938 The reader who will add the value of the four years, '67-70, and divide the result by four, and compare the figures thus obtained with the total exports of 1866, will ascertain pre- cisely how rapidly and steadily the trade of Great Britain increases. Mr. Syme, in the course of his article in the Westminster Review, to which I have referred, says : " Political Economy exhibits no sign of progressiveuess. Instead of discoveries, of which we have had none of any consequence since Adam Smith's time, we have had endless disputation and setting up of dogmas. Whatever progress ma} r have been made in other sciences during the last century, there has been none in this. The most elementary principles are still matters of dispute. The doctrine of free trade, for instance, which is looked upon as the crowning triumph of Political Economy, is still very far from being uni- versally recognized. Even in England, after twenty years' INTRODUCTION. XIX trial under most favorable circumstances, free trade has been put upon its defence. We make no progress, and from the very nature of our method of investigation, we can make none. The Political Economist observes phenomena with a foregone conclusion as to their cause. His method, in fact, is the method of the savage. The phenomena of nature, the thunder, the lightning, or the earthquake, strike the savage with awe and wonder ; but he only looks within himself for an explanation of these phenomena. To him, therefore, the forces of nature are only the efforts of beings like himself, great and powerful, no doubt, but with good and evil propensities, and subject to every human caprice. Like the Political Economist, he works within the vicious circle of his own feelings, and he cannot compi*ehend, any more than the savage, how he can discover the laws which regulate the phenomena which he sees around him. The savage would reduce the Divine mind to the dimensions of the human ; the Political Economist would reduce the human mind to the dimensions of his ideal. " Our conclusion is, that the inductive method is alone applicable to the investigation of economic science, and that we shall never be able to make any solid progress so long as we continue to follow the a priori method a method which has not aided, but clogged and fettered us in the pur- suit of truth, and which is utterly alien to the spirit of mod- ern scientific inquiry." For the edification of those who may be incredulous as to free trade being on its defence in England, Mr. Syme refers to Professor Bouamy Price's arraignment of it in the Con- temporary Review of February, 1871.* The London Quarterly Review for July [1871], contains a spirited article on "Economical Fallacies and Labor Uto- pias," in which it handles with great freedom " the school of political economists now in the ascendant." The date at which it was published proves that the author could not have seen the article entitled " Free Trade Revenue Re- form," in our Atlantic for October, yet he says : " There is an utopianism which counts its chickens before they are hatched, nay, cackles over chickens it expects to hatch from eggs that are addled." Referring to Mr. John Stuart Mill, who, had the Atlantic's article been anonymous, might, from the freedom with which it disposes of existing relations and interests, well have been suspected of its authorship, the Quarterly proceeds to say: " If Mr. Mill, the recognized leader of that school, is to be designated as an economical ' enthusiast,' or perhaps more * See also irmnrks of Sir John Byles and Mr. R. H. Patterson, in notes, pages 199 and 200; and also of Sir Edwurd Sullivan, in note, pages 3T8. 379. XX INTRODUCTION. properly as the founder and propagator of economical en- thusiasm, he has earned that designation more by the exces- sive exercise of the dialectical than of the imaginative faculty, and does not so much body forth to himself the forms of things unknown, as suggest to his disciples revolutions, un- realized even in imagination, of all existing relations between classes and sexes, as logically admissible, and not to be set aside as practically chimerical without actual experiment. His enthusiasm is the speculative passion of starting ever fresh game in the wide field of abstract social possibilities philosophically indifferent to all objections drawn from the actual conditions of men, women, or things in the concrete. Mr. Mill would be very capable, like Condorcet, of deriving from the doctrine of human perfectibility the inference that there was no demonstrable reason why the duration of human life might not be prolonged indefinitely by discoveries (here- after to be made) in hygiene. And to all objections drawn from universal human experience of the growth and decay of vital power within a limited period, it would be quite in the character of his mind and temper to reply calmly that the life of man, like the genius of woman, had not hitherto been developed under such conditions as to draw out its capabilities to the full extent. Like Condorcet, too, while dealing perturbation all around him, Mr. Mill is impertur- bable, and might be described as he was, as ' un mouton en rage un Volcan convert de neige ! ' " It was the opinion of the great Bonaparte, that Political Economy would grind empires to powder, though they were made of adamant. The British Government is proving the excellence of his judgment, and schoolmen and theorists are industriously laboring to induce the American people to confirm it by even a grander illustration. This pretended science which, Mr. Mill s&ys, " necessarily reasons from as- sumptions, and not from facts," is sedulously and devoutly taught at Yale, and most of our leading colleges. It is for- tunate that the intimate relations of many of the students with the industries and people of the country render the scholasticisms of their teachers harmless ; and in parting from them, they sometimes throw back upon them the terrible results of experience, as their reply to the weary chapters of deductions from assumptions with which they have been tortured. How boldly and aptly, yet respectfully this may be done, was shown by Mr. Orville Justus Bliss, of Chicago, at Yale's last commencement. A leading scholar of his class, he had been selected to deliver the Valedictory, in the course of which he said : "A cry for relief has gone forth, and refuses to be hushed We cannot always ignore these men. Neither can we for- ever satisfy them by quoting Adam Smith. Suppose some wise individual should stand with a copy of ' The Wealth of Nations ' in his hand before a mob of London bread- rioters, and begin to read the chapter on wages ; would they all go off rejoicing in the beauties of the science, and con- vinced that they were happy ? Political Economy has had ample trial in England. A mill agent recently said, ' I re- gard my work people just as I regard my machinery. So long as they can do my work for what I choose to pay them, I keep them, getting out of them all I can. When my machines get old and useless, I reject them, and get new ; and these people are part of my machinery.' Is not that a sufficiently rigorous application of the law of demand and supply ? And it describes the whole factory system in Eng- land, up to the time when the agitators took it in hand. What it has done for England, I need not repeat. Suffice it to say, that Political Economy, as a solution of this question, is a disastrous failure." And again : " The poor cannot help themselves. They are tied hand and foot with an enslaving destitution. We say : ' It is a free country ; let every one make of himself as much as he can.' We challenge one and all to an unbounded competition. But to these people the seeming fairness is mockery. It rivals the brave boy who first takes a good long start, and then turns around and offers to race with you to the next corner. The child of the laborer may lift him- self from his degradation, and become a power for good. But there must be some measure of intelligence, to serve as a basis upon which to build. They must be made to feel that society is their friend, not an enemy, whose prosperity is their defeat. What, then, is the laying of a cable, or the spanning of a continent? What beauty do they find in literature, what exaltation in science I had almost said, what solace in religion ? Not in the name of an endangered society, imminent as its peril is ; not in the interests of great money-wielders, plainly as those interests point to educated labor, do I plead the cause of these people ; but because they are part of our common humanity, and have a right to partake of our common, intellectual, aesthetic, and social delight." I have said that I believe England will soon reaftopt many of the distinctive principles of the protective system. Un- less we determine otherwise, she must do this soon. Her newly enfranchised producers will demand it, and the action of her colonies will impart vehemence to the demand. Pro- tection is a settled principle with the governments of Vic- XX11 INTRODUCTION. toria, "N"ew South Wales, Queensland, and other Australian colonies. Speaking of this, together with the fact that they are establishing Customs Unions on the principle of the Zollverein, Charles Wentworth Dilke, in his Greater Britain, says : " It is a common doctrine in the colonies of England that a nation cannot be called 'independent' if it has to cry out to another for supplies of necessaries ; that true national existence is first attained when the country becomes capable of supplying to its own citizens those goods without which they cannot exist in the state of comfort they have alread}'- reached. Political is apt to follow on commercial depen- dency, they say." After a somewhat glowing portrayal of the moral beauty of cosmopolitanism or free trade, Mr. Dilke, recurring to the colonies, says : " On the other hand, it may be argued that if every State consults the good of its own citizens, we shall, by the action of all nations, obtain the desired happiness of the whole world, and this with rapidtty, from the reason that every country understands its own interests better than it does those of its neighbor. As a rule, the colonists hold that they should not protect themselves against the sister colonies, but only against the outer world ; and while I was in Melbourne an arrangement was made with respect to the border trade between Victoria and New South Wales; but this is at present (1868) the only step that has been taken toward inter-colonial Free Trade." The British Government cannot, without our consent, main- tain its present revenue system for five years more. But we may enable it to postpone the change a few years longer, inasmuch as by maintaining our workshops in England rather than in the United States, we can soothe popular discontent by giving employment to her hundreds of thou- sands of unemployed workers. This would also not only increase her foreign trade, but by enabling those who are now idle and requiring support to earn wages and purchase supplies, would, till we should again reach bankruptcy, re- vive her home market.* To repeal or reduce our protective duties, while our people are burdened by the annual levy of more than $100,000,000 of internal taxes, is the only method by which the languishing trade and industry of England can be materially invigorated under her present free trade revenue system. f Should the American people conclude that cheap goods for cash constitute the chief end of men and na- tions, and that their interests will be best served by having * See extract from Ryland's Iron Trade Circular, in note, page 405. f See extract from Our National Resources, and how they are Waited, by Wm. Hoyle, page 103. INTRODUCTION Xxiii their ores smelted, and their pig-iron, railroad bars, Besse- mer and cast-steel, chemicals, cotton and woolen goods, and other wares and fabrics, made in foreign lands by people whose food is raised by the ill-fed peasants of Russia, Prussia, Aus- tria, and Turkey, the discontented artisans of England will probably be pacified, and the emigration of her skilled work- men to this country be arrested for a decade. What the farmers of the Mississippi Valley would do with their crops meanwhile, is a question worthy of their consideration. But I may remark that it was the consideration of the question, Where shall the farmers of America find a steady and remunerative market for their crops ? that confirmed my adherence to protection. The circumstances were these : In 1859, during the period of doubt heretofore referred o, I sought the privilege of renewing a neglected intimacy with Henry C. Care3 r , to whom I have since gone, and never in vain, when troubled by doubt on any economic question. Hitherto, our intercourse had been that of earnest adherents of conflicting systems, but henceforth it was to be that of friends in council, or rather of teacher and pupil. I already recognized the fact that with their surplus capital, immense sums of which are invested in our bonds and those of other nations which pay as high rates of interest as we do, it was always possible for English manufacturers, in every depart- ment of production, to combine, and by selling their goods, for a season or two, in this one of their many markets, at rates slightly below their actual cost, to destroy their Ameri- can rivals, whose capital was not often adequate to the de- mands of their business, and who, when compelled to borrow, were subject to high rates of interest.* And I also knew that the workingmen of this country could not maintain homes and rear and educate families on such wages as those of other countries were compelled to receive. But the question that gave me difficulty was (for such I mistakenly supposed must be a result of protection), why should the farmer be taxed to defend the manufacturer and his employees against such conspiracies, and this inevitable, though fatal, competi- tion ? This apparent conflict of interest it was at which I halted, and the service Mr. Carey rendered me was that of showing me that no such conflict existed ; but that, on the contrary, the prosperity of the American farmer did then, and always must, depend on the steady employment of the Ameri- can miner, artisan, and laborer, at such wages as would enable them and their families to be free consumers of the produc- tions of the fleld, the orchard, and the dairy. With the clear * See extract from Report of Parliamentary Commission, in note, page 328. XXIV INTRODUCTION. perception of this truth, that, at least in the United States, the prosperity of the farmer is dependent on that of the manu- facturer, and the prosperity of the manufacturer equally de- pendent on that of the farmer ; and that, in so far there was no conflict, but an absolute harmony of interests between them, I became a protectionist. My last doubt had been re- moved, for I now saw that the Protective System was not chargeable with .the selfish exclusiveness I had ascribed to it, but was, in fact, the truest and most beneficent cosmo- politanism ; nay, more, that it was essential to the enjoy- ment of absolutely free trade by the American people. Let me hastily demonstrate the truth of these proposi- tions. Trade is most free when there is an active and remunerative demand for all the commodities that can be produced ; and this is when the people are so generally em- ployed in remunerative pursuits that the number steadily increases of those who, by their earnings, can, while supply- ing themselves and families with the average necessaries and conveniences provided by modern civilization, accumu- late sufficient capital to enable them to change their busi- ness, or vicinage, as inclination, health, or circumstances may dictate. In other words, trade is most free when the great- est number of people are able to buy or sell, to work or rest, to spend money in travel, or for a coveted luxury or to deposit the amount required for this in a savings bank, or purchase therewith an interest-bearing bond. The authors from whose works most of the notes by which I have en- forced the doctrines of my addresses and letters have been taken, prove that the number of the people of England, Ire- land, Scotland, and Wales who enjoy these conditions, is steadily diminishing ; that there are more than a million in- habitants of these countries who are vagrants, and more than another million who are paupers ; and that this is not because they were born to pauperism and vagrancy, but because, at least in a large majority of cases, they cannot get work whereby they may earn the means of independent subsist- ence.* As freedom from customs duties does not establish free trade, it has not enabled them to sell or buy freely. On the other hand, the farmers of Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas find that there is such a surplus of food in the world that their trade is greatly re- stricted. Having all raised grain and live stock, there is no chance for commerce between them, and though we are im- porting vastly more foreign goods than ever before, they can- * See statements of Grant, Sullivan, Kirk, Hoyle, R. Dudley Baxter, Smith, and Patterson, in notes, pages 24-5, 195-7, 267-9, 338-9, and 422. INTRODUCTION. XXV not find a market for their productions at prices that will re- imburse the cost of production. These States abound in the ores of iron, copper, lead, zinc, nickel, and other metals, and in fuel and water-power. They all raise wool, some of them cotton, and Arkansas is a natural silk field, in every quarter of which the mulberry tree is indigenous ; but these exhaust- less stores of the elements of wealth, and the forces whereby they may be utilized, have been neglected. Had they been largely appropriated, there would be no glut in the grain markets of these States. Trade throughout their limits would be both free and active. Many of the vagrants and paupers of England have the skill to mine and smelt ores; to convert them into wares ; to spin wool, cotton, and silk weave them into fabrics, and color them with exquisite skill and taste. Can we not, in lieu of homesteads, offer such of their skilled countrymen as still have the ability to come, steady work at such generous wages as will tempt a million or two of them miners, smelters, engineers, machinists, spinnei's, weavers, dyers, and other classes of artisans to come and open the mines of those States, build and work furnaces, forges, rolling-mills, and factories ? This would not only give their farmers free trade, but by building up towns, and requiring local railroads, quadruple the price of every acre they own.* This can only be done by putting Protection on the founda- tion of a settled policy, for who will invest capital in mines, mills, or furnaces to stand idle while we go abroad for our wares and fabrics ? Or why should intelligent artisans come here to be idle, or work for such wages as they can earn at home ? The farmer should have a liberal price for his grain, but to live well and enjoy free trade he must let others live, not grudging the laborer generous wages for his work, or with- holding from enterprise and capital just guarantees of a fair return for their efforts at developing the resources of a new country. Could a million of English people, the adults being, not farmers but miners, smelters, machinists, engine builders, spinners, weavers, dyers, and artisans generally, be induced to settle in the States I have named, and pursue their respective callings, the glut in the grain market would soon disappear, and the freest trade would prevail between them and the farmers. By the pre-emption and homestead laws, we are tempting agricultural immigrants to come by tens of thousands annually to increase our production of grain and live stock. Protection to high wages is needed to bring other classes. The homestead on which nothing marketable can be raised will prove but a poor boon to the * See notes, pages 202 and 360-1. XXVI INTRODUCTION. immigrant. And by promoting the immigration of arti- sans, we should render to the impoverished masses of England the highest service. By making prosperous American citi- zens of a million of them, we should improve the chances in life of those who remained behind. The prosperity that would result from the infusion of such an immigration into even the remotely interior States I have named, would quicken the trade of England ; for a prosperous people always consume freety, irrespective of the money price of commodities. They will not only satisfy their wants, but gratify their desires ; and our importations are always largest when, under pro- tective duties, our labor and machinery are most fully em- ployed. The present is a striking illustration of this fact. The existing tariff is highly protective. With a larger free list of raw materials than ever before, the rate of duty averages, I believe, about 40 per cent. ; yet, our imports are vastly in excess of any former year. How are we to account for this paradox ? Thus : We are prosperous, and a pros- perous people will gratify their desires. The value of our foreign imports during the last fiscal year was nearly 22 per cent, greater than those of any preceding one. In the year ending June 30th, 1866, they amounted to $444,811,066, but did not attain this magnitude again till that which ended with June, 1871, during which they exceeded it by nearly $100,000,- 000, having been $541,493,776. This increased importation of foreign goods surprises no intelligent protectionist. It but confirms his theory that protection is the pathway to free trade : that a well protected and generous home market is the only basis on which extended foreign trade can be main- tained.* When, as is the case at present, customs duties are so adjusted as to countervail the lower rates of wages and interest prevailing in competing countries, increased importations do not come as they would under free trade, to undermine and destroy our industries, but to supplement them. Our productive power increases more rapidly than our imports, and we are producing each year a greater per- centage of our total consumption. But rapid as is the in- crease of our productive power, such is our general pros- perity that our ability to purchase and consume tasks it to its utmost in all departments save that of farming. This is shown by the fact that in those departments in which our production has increased most steadily and rapidly, the home demand is so active and remunerative that it saves us from sending so many of our goods as we did in less pros- perous seasons to foreign markets for sale in competition * See note, page 10. INTRODUCTION. with the cheaper goods of Germany and England. If readers desire proof that such is the case, they will find it on page 125, of the July number of the North American Review, where Mr. Wells enumerates a number of articles of which we export less than we did in 1860, and points to that fact as evidence of declining prosperity. Every reader will recognize the fact that our production of each of the articles named by him has increased in a ratio exceeding that of our increase of population, and see that the circumstance from which the writer cunningly suggests our failing condition, is pregnant proof of our increased prosperity, our power to purchase and consume more than ever before. I may re- mark, in passing, that this is but a fair illustration of the unscrupulous ingenuity that has characterized the writings of Mr. Wells since his return from England. Without free access to our markets, England cannot find employment for her people or capital ; but as our tariff, by defending the home market, invites enterprise, her capital and people can find profitable employment in developing our resources, and both are coming.* Thus reinforced, we are producing such a proportion of our own wares and fabrics, including those consumed by the cotton planters and tobacco growers of the South, that we can afford to receive in luxu- ries, or such necessaries as we need in excess of our capacity to produce, part of the proceeds of those special agricultural supplies which Europe takes from us because they cannot be obtained elsewhere. This must be the solution of the para- dox, for while augmenting our imports so largely, we are producing not onty vastly more iron, steel, lead, copper, zinc, and the infinite variety of utilities into which they may be converted ; of cotton, woollen, silk, and flax goods ; of chemicals, clocks, watches, jewelry, and works of art, than ever before ; but of " dwelling-houses, cooking- stoves, furnaces, pumps, carriages, harnesses, tin-ware, agricultural tools, books, hats, clothing, wheat, flour, cheese, steamboats, cars, locomotives, bricks, coal oil, fire engines, furniture, marble-work, mattresses, printing-presses, wooden- ware, newspapers," and a thousand other things, which, it is falsely said, " cannot be imported to any great extent, under any circumstances," and the production of which gives "to the farmer by far the largest market for his produce." So great indeed is the prosperity of all classes, save those farmers who have gone beyond the reach of a market, that Mr. Atkinson, in his onslaught on Protection in the Atlantic Monthly, is constrained to acknowledge that : " At the pres- ent time this country is so vigorous, and production so great, that a vicious currency and an enormous tariff simply \ * See note from Kirk, page 389. XXV1U INTRODUCTION. appear to create uneasiness, but do not seriously impede prosperity." To have withheld such an admission, damaging as it is to the author's argument, would have been still more damaging. It gives an aspect of fairness and candor to an article that is essentially ingenious and disengenuous ; and had it not been made, each intelligent reader would recall the prosper- ous condition of the country as a sufficient reply to his sug- gestions : For our general prosperity is not known and felt by ourselves only, but by the British people and government. The Commissioners of Customs state that the amount of the manufactures of Great Britain, taken by the United States during 1870, was 28,335,394, adding that this is "the largest sum ever reached in any year, with the exception of the very prosperous year of 1866, when the values were 28,- 499,514, and exceeding the value of the exports of I860, the year before the American war, by six millions, or nearly 31 per cent." It is not unworthy of note that the only year in which our British imports exceeded those of last year was one of extreme protection, and that in each they exceeded by more than 31 per cent, those of the last year of free trade, or a revenue tariff. A leading English journal, over- looking the fact that the amount had ever been exceeded, says : " The United States have long been the best customers the British manufacturers have had throughout the world, and last year their pre-eminence is more marked than ever." Thus does current experience attest the mutual dependence of the American farmer and manufacturer, and prove that for them the protective system is the only road to really Free Trade. That at so late a day, as it did, it should have re- quired Mr. Carey to convince me of these truths, illustrates the almost absolute dominion long cherished abstractions obtain over the minds of men ; for no fact in our history is established by more abounding proof than the dependence of our farmers on a home market capable of consuming more than 90 per cent, of the annual crop of the country. It is proven anew by each year's experience, and strikingly illus- trated by the statistics and general results of each of the alternating periods of Protective and Revenue Tariffs. A thorough examination of these results will, I am persuaded, convince any candid mind that a rigid 83'Stem of Protection must, for many years, be the paramount political necessity of the farmers of the United States. But, waiving historical or statistical proof, I propose to test the correctness of this proposition by existing facts. The price of grain is not satisfactory to our farmers, and, as I have more than once suggested, is not sufficient to cover the cost of production and transportation to the seaboard INTRODUCTION. XXIX of tlie crops of the trans-Mississippi States. Is this the result of an unusually fruitful year ? By no means. For the yield per acre throughout the country has been considerably below the general average. It is because too large a proportion of our people are engaged in producing grain, and have, in a year in which the foreign demand is exceptionally large, produced it in excess of the world's demand. The leaders of the corn market of England watch the progress of the crops of the Continent as closely as they do those of the British Islands, inasmuch as they usually draw thence from 90 to 95 per cent, of the annual deficiency. And their ad- vices for this year are as follows, as I learn from one of their organs, published September 1 1th : " The great deficiency in the area under wheat on the Continent (in France and Ger- many), as reported by us in Ma} r last, could not fail to show a very large falling off in their crop as compared with 1868 and 1869, and hence, instead of being liberal exporters of grain as formerly, they will require to import freely during the year. Our late advices from Russia confirm previous estimates in regard to their crops, viz.: that their surplus of wheat will be 10 per cent, less than last year." If, under these circumstances, there be no market for our crop, when and where may we expect to find one ? Certainly the near future does not promise a European one ; for the war be- tween France and Germany has terminated, and the peasants of both of those countries are preparing their fields for the production of the usual amount of grain for the English market in 1872. Nor is the remoter prospect more promis- ing. The increase of the population of Europe is scarcely appreciable. But her capitalists adopt improved methods of production, and the rapid extension of her railroad sys- tem is bringing her interior grain fields into cheaper and more rapid communication with her capitals and seaports. Under these circumstances, to anticipate a steady and re- munerative trans-Atlantic market for our grain would be absurd. And what is the outlook at home ? For the far- mers of the remote interior it is even more gloomy. Our laws offer sublime inducements to the peasantry of the world to come and increase our production of grain. To every one who will do this, they offer with citizenship and free schools a farm without money and without price ; and constantly increasing tens of thousands of them are accepting the offer annually. I do not think it would be an exaggera- tion to place the number of new farms that will be pre- pared for crops this year, in the six States I have heretofore named, at one hundred thousand. Who are to consume their productions ? Says Professor Kirk, in his admirable essays on " Social XXX INTRODUCTION. Politics in Great Britain and Ireland : " " There are above 70,000 souls in the east end of London who must emigrate speedily or die Above 25,000 of these are workmen more or less skilled in engineer and shipbuilding occupa- tions. These are not shepherds, nor are they ploughmen, nor will they ever be to any great extent one or the other. They are mechanics, and will be so go where they may. In the vast hives of industry in Lancashire there are a greater number who must emigrate or die Not one is either pastoral or agricultural, and few are likely ever to be either." Some of these, he tells, are able to get off "to Massachu- setts to find full occupation in cotton." Charity is sending others, and the Government transporting as many as it can to its North American provinces. Can we not prove our cosmopolitanism, and our desire that all men may trade freely, by giving 150,000 skilled workmen of London and Lancashire the guarantee of steady work at generous wages, and so open a way for the employment of those who, for the want of passage money, must otherwise die, as Blackwood says, " from sheer famine in the heart of the wealthiest city of the world ? " What a market would they and their fami- lies create for farm products in all their varieties, and how immensely and rapidly would the application of their skill and industry to our undeveloped resources increase the gen- eral wealth of the country ! Let the report of our high wages, with assurances that these shall be protected by law, be made in all the great industrial centres of Great Britain, France, Belgium, and Germany, as the freedom of our public lands has been in the pastoral and agricultural districts, and our farmers will not long want a market. But this involves the maintenance of a rigid and generous system of Protection. In the ad- dresses and letters, which compose this volume, the reader will find little else than the application of the principles here enunciated to questions of policy as they have arisen since the suppression of the rebellion. In advocating such a system of Protection as would en- able our miners and manufacturers to pay wages sufficiently liberal to induce skilled workmen to immigrate and enable them to become liberal consumers, I have believed that I was asserting and defending the right of the American farmer to a market a remunerative market for his crops. Should this volume convince any number of my countrymen of the correctness of these views, it will vindicate the judgment of those who persuaded me to prepare it for publication, and gratify the most ardent wish of THE AUTHOR. PHILADELPHIA, November 1st, 1871. CONTENTS. PAGE INTRODUCTION v PKOTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. (Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, January 31, 1866.) The one want of our country Why the South demanded free trade Results of free trade Effect of free trade on the poor whites of the South How England established her supremacy England preaches but does not practise free trade Free trade exhausts land and impoverishes farmers Free trade keeps us in subjection to England's colonial policy France England Prussia Shoddy Secret of Bonaparte's power What protection has done for Germany Washington, Jefferson and Jackson Man cannot compromise principles Then and now Virginia Pennsylvania challenges gener- ous competition A suggestion and example to the South We can pay our debts " without moneys " The people of the prairies need a protective tariff Domestic commerce is more profitable than foreign What Congress should do We are still in colonial bondage to England Protection cheapens goods 9 TRADE WITH BRITISH AMERICA. (Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, March 7, 1$&5.) The Reciprocity treaty Coal Difference between anthra- cite and bituminous The former should be free Duty on the latter not a tax on American consumer, but is paid by the exporter 85 HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. (Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, January 3d, 1867.) 100 > CONTENTS. PAOl THE SOUTH ITS RESOURCES AND WANTS. (Address delivered at New Orleans, May 11, 1867, as reported in the New Orleans Republican.) 146 (Address at Montgomery, Alabama, May 16, 1867, as reported in the Montgomery Sentinel.) 159 (Address at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Delivered June 17, 1867, as reported for the Inquirer.) 171 AMERICAN INDUSTRY AND FINANCE. (Speech delivered at the Music Hall, Milwaukee, Sep. 24, 1867. Re- ported for the Daily Sentinel, and revised by the Author.) 185 CONTRACTION, THE ROAD TO BANKRUPTCY, NOT TO RESUMPTION. (Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, January 18, 1868.) 210 INTERNAL REVENUE. (Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, June 1, 1868.) The spirit tax a special burden on the West It enhances the cost of drugs and restricts exports The South com- peting with the West, and increasing the necessity for di- versified industries 239 REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF THE REVENUE. (Remarks delivered in the House of Representatives, Feb. 4, 1869.) The condition of the working classes in 1857-8, and in 1867-8 compared 253 THE EIGHT-HOUR SYSTEM. Letter to the operatives in the work-shops and factories of the Fourth Congressional District of Pennsylvania, May 19, 1869 278 MR. WELLS' REPORT. (Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, January 11, 1870.) Cast steel English schedule of an American tariff on steel endorsed by Mr. Wells Pig Iron Wages paid in South Staffordshire, England, in 1866 Coal and the British North American Colonies How the South should diversify its in- dustry What Taxes should be repealed 284 PERSONAL EXPLANATION. (Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, January 20, 1870.) 320 . CONTENTS. 7 PAGE FARMERS, MECHANICS, AND LABORERS NEED PROTECTION CAPITAL CAN TAKE CARE OP ITSELF. (Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, March 25, 1870.) Protection cheapens commodities The Internal Revenue system It is expensive and inquisitorial, and should be abolished at the earliest possible day Free trade means low wages and a limited market for grain Wages and subsistence of families of laborers in Europe Cincinnati Her workshops and workmen Protective . duties not a tax How the Internal Revenue can be dispensed with Effect of protection upon prices again The tariffs of England and France discriminate against American farmers England a hideous monopoly Free trade supports it A home market A prediction fulfilled Protection stimulates immigration Skilled workmen the most valuable commodity we can im- port French free trade The purpose of the Free List Duties on wool and woolens The way to reduce the taxes The defects of the present tariff, and the remedies suggested by the new bill Duties which need readjustment The present law should be revised, not overthrown The care- ful consideration bestowed upon the bill by the committee How it will stimulate the shipping interest Steel ad valorem Stephen Colwell The classification of iron not new Proof that protection cheapens goods Silk poplins Tin and nickel Effect of protecting nickel 322 THE VALUE. OF AN INEXPORTABLE CUR- RENCY. (Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, June 8, 1870.) 392 JUDGE KELLEY'S ACCEPTANCE OF THE NOMI- NATION FOR CONGRESS, July 2d, 1870 397 LETTER ON THE CHINESE QUESTION, Aug. 22d, 1870. 403 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION AND INTERNA- TIONAL EXPOSITION. (Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, January 10, 1871.) Philadelphia Her Park Her working people How they live What they produce What foreign manufacturers will learn by visiting her 415 / CONTENTS. fiai DOMINICA. (Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, January 27, 1871.) Effect of the acquisition upon ship-building and our ocean marine Slavery in Cuba Our responsibility, and how we may avoid it Extent to which we support Slavery in foreign countries False position of the Democracy on this subject.. 427 REVENUE REFORM. (Speech delivered in the House of Representatives, April 18, 1871.) 448 THE NEW NORTHWEST. (An address on the North Pacific Railway, in its relations to the development of the Northwestern section of the United States, and to j the Industrial and Commercial Interests of the nation. Delivered in the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, June 12, 1871. Reported by D. Wolfe Brown, Phonographer.) Pacific Railroad History The Pennsylvania Central Road A quarter of a century The Northern Pacific Railroad Compared with other routes Growth of railroad traffic The New Northwest Genial climate Wool and beetroot sugar Montana Lieut. Doane's report Settlements along the line Comercial advantages The Northern river system The future Pacific Metropolis Some official testimony Grades A natural pathway Effect on American commerce Pacific Coast harbors Puget Sound Productions Re- sources and seasons The work of development Philadelphia interests 454 INDEX 495 SPEECHES AKD LETTERS ON INDUSTRIAL AND FINANCIAL QUESTIONS. PEOTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 31sT, 1866. THE House being in the Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union Mr. Kelley said : Mr. Chairman The eloquent gentleman from Indi- ana, [Mr. YOORHEES,] whose voice during the war was so potent in the councils of the Democratic party, and who has borne so prominent a part on this floor in resisting all the legislation by which the rebellion was to be, and has been crushed, in the course of his recent de- fense of the President's message and policy lauded him as a champion of free trade. He said the President had struck " a manly and honest blow " at the protection afforded by the tariff to the varied industries of the coun- try, and cited this brief extract from his message in proof of his assertion : "Now, in their turn, the property and income of the country should bear their just proportion of the burden of taxation, while in our impost system, through means of which increased vitality is incidentally imparted to all the industrial interests of the nation, the duties should be so adjusted as to fall most heavily on articles of luxury, leaving the necessaries of life as free from taxation as the absolute wants of the Government, economically administered, will justify." Entertaining, sir, the views I do, and which I propose to submit to the -committee, I had found in that portion of the President's message the expression of a desire to foster the industry, develop the resources, and increase the wealth and power of the country. Till the gentleman called my attention to the fact, I had not observed that 9 10 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. Mr. Johnson's expression was enigmatical and susceptible of at least a double construction. I will not, however, detain the committee by endeavoring to ascertain the President's meaning, which time will disclose ; but with- out abandoning the hope that my apprehension of his words is correct, will proceed, in a general way, to demon- strate that the gentleman's views as to how we may best equalize and increase the wealth of the people of the United States are erroneous. In the course of his remarks he said : " We have two great interests in this country, one of which has prostrated the other. The past four years of suffering and war has been the opportune harvest of the manufacturer. The looms and machine shops of New England and the iron furnaces of Pennsyl- vania have been more prolific of wealth to their owners than the most dazzling gold mines of the earth." Again : " The present law of tariff is being rapidly understood. It is no longer a deception, but rather a well-defined and clearly recognized outrage. The agricultural labor of the land is driven to the counters of the most gigantic monopoly ever before sanctioned by law. From its exorbitant demands there is no escape. The European manufacturer is forbidden our ports of trade for fear he might sell his goods at cheaper rates and thus relieve the burdens of the con- sumers.* We have declared by law that there is but one market into which our citizens shall go to make their purchases, and we have left it to the owners of the market to fix their own prices. The bare statement of such a principle foreshadows at once the consequences which flow from it. One class of citizens, and by far the largest and most useful, is placed at the mercy, for the necessa- ries as well as luxuries of life, of the fostered, favored, and protected class to whose aid the whole power of the Government is given." And again : " Free trade with all the markets of the world is the true theory of government." Sir, as I proceed, it will, I think, appear that we have more than " two great interests," and that protection such as can only be afforded by a tariff is required by them all ; * Experience has demonstrated the absurdity of this theoretical conclusion. The tariff of 1857 was a free trade tariff. The duties it fixed were lower than had prevailed since the 1st of July, 1812, yet the importation of foreign goods under it in 1858-59 and '60 averaged but $327,849,178. The tariff which Mr. Voorhees denounced was confessedly protective ; the duties it levied were about treble those imposed by the law of 1857, and higher than had ever been levied before, yet the importation of foreign goods during the years 1866-67-68 and '69, when the people of the Southern States were too much impoverished by the war to construct railroads or indulge in foreign luxuries, averaged $416,920,364. (See the official table appended to speech of March 2bth, 1870.) PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 11 that they are interwoven with such exquisite harmony that no one of them can suffer alone ; and that to destroy any one is to impair the vital power of all. Gruff old Samuel Johnson said in substance that, when he contemplated the many diseases to which human life is a prey and the countless means for its destruction, he won- dered that anybody lived to maturity ; and when, on the other hand, he beheld the infinitude of specifics offered for every form of disease, he was led to wonder that people ever died. And the thought recurs to me as I contem- plate the condition of our country from either of two stand points that of the despondent patriot and him who conceals his determined treason under expressions of acquiescent loyalty, or that of 'the cheerful patriot who knows something of our unmeasured resources. Kegard- ing our debt, which set forth in figures seems so crushing, and our pension lists, which, embracing more names than did the muster rolls of the contending armies at Waterloo, announce the fearful amount of infirmity, widowhood, and orphanage for which we are bound to provide ; remember- ing how the ruling powers of other nations hate us ; look- ing at the immense extent and resources of the British dominions on our north, and considering how sedulously the imperial Government has pursued the design of uniting those dominions and constructing such governmental works as would " render Canada accessible to her Majesty's forces at all seasons of the year, as well upon grounds peculiar to Canada as from considerations affecting the interests of the other colonies and of the whole empire ;" remember- ing, again, the Monroe doctrine, and the fact that he who occupies the throne of Mexico is, though an Austrian, the creature of the ambitious man whose will is law to France ; and, in view of these facts, considering the inter- nal condition of our country, with nearly a million square miles of our territory desolated by four years of stubborn war, and with its people divided into three classes, dis- trusting and hating each other four millions of them born as things for a market and strangers to the enjoy- ment of any human right ; six or eight millions more poor and ignorant nearly as they, and unused and averse to labor, less hopeful, and tending each year more nearly to dependence on the rifle, the net, and the line ; and the remaining class, less numerous than either of the others, but possessing all the wealth and culture, acknowledging 12 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. themselves a conquered people, but with rare exceptions proving by all their acts that they are unconverted, and that they hate the Union, its Constitution, and the people who maintained the unity of the one and the sovereignty of the other as intensely as they did when they began the unholiest war of history ; regarding, I say these facts, the disguised traitor may still hope for the accomplishment of his purpose, and the despondent patriot may well despair. On the other hand, he who contemplates our geographi- cal position, which makes us, on the one ocean, business neighbors to seven hundred and fifty millions of the peo- ple of Asia, and on the other to two hundred and fifty millions of the busy people of Europe, our vast agricul- tural resources, our unestimated mineral wealth, the mag- nitude of our rivers, and the natural wealth of the coun- try they drain, the capacity of our people for enterprise, their ingenuity, and persistence, and who withal com- prehends the laws of political economy and social science, and believes that a free and educated people will give practical effect to great truths, smiles with derision upon him who sees danger to our country in the complicated facts suggested. I have before me, sir, the yellowed pages of a pam- phlet, printed in London in 1677, which contains a panacea for all our ills, the suggestions of which, illustrated by the experience of our own and other nations, will, if applied to our resources, bring permanent peace and prosperity to our country, elevate the freedman into the prosperous and intelligent citizen, bless the master spirits of the South with wealth beyond their past imaginings, and give them, as steady competitors in the race of life, " the mean whites," as they designate their poor neighbors ; will re- construct their broken railroads and canals, rebuild their ruined cities, towns, and villages, and make their barren and wasted fields bloom and blossom as those of the fair- est portions of the North, of Belgium, Germany, France, or England. This quaint old pamphlet was written by "Andrew Yarrinton, Gentleman," and is entitled, "England's Im- provement by Sea and Land. How to outdo the Dutch without Fighting, to pay Debts without Moneys, to set at Work all the Poor of England with the Growth of our own Lands." It disposes very effectually of the gentle- man's proposition that free trade " is the true theory of government." PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 13 When Andrew Yarrinton wrote, the Dutch were dis- puting the supremacy of the seas with England, and she was exporting raw materials and buying manufactured articles ; and one object of his pamphlet was to relieve the English people from the taunt of the Dutch that they " sold their whole skins for a sixpence, and bought back the tails for a shilling " a commercial policy which the American people, with rare and brief exceptions, have steadily pursued. To Yarrinton and Sir George Down- ing, author of the Navigation Act, an American by birth, and a member of the first graduating class of Harvard college, England, in my judgment, owes more of her wealth and power than to any other two men, however illustrious their names may be in her history. Before they influenced her counsels Holland was mistress of the sea. But the Navigation Act and the employment of her people on the growth of her lands, transferred the scep- ter to England. The purpose of Downing's bill as de- clared in its preamble, was " to keep his Majesty's subjects in the plantations in a firmer dependence," to " increase English shipping," and to insure "the vent of English woolens and other manufactures and commodities." What Yarrinton and Downing taught their country we can prac- tice for the benefit of ours. And as England outdid the Dutch without fighting, so can we outdo her by the arts of peace, and enforce the Monroe doctrine against the world without firing a gun ; and, vast as is our indebted- ness, strangers will come and cast their lot with us and liquidate it if we so legislate as " to set at work all the poor of " the United States " with the growth of our own lands." They will bring with them arts and industries, and implements with which we are not familiar ; will open new quarries, mines, and ore banks ; will build new fur- naces, forges, mills, and workshops; will revive wasted lands and open new fields, and by creating a home mar- ket will enable the farmer to practice skillful and remuner- ative husbandry, and will create American commerce by enabling our merchants to supply ships with assorted car- goes of American goods. THE ONE WANT OF OUR COUNTRY. Sir, the pressing want of our country is men. We need not sigh for additional territory. We need go to no foreign nation for any product of agriculture. Abundant 14 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. as are our. ascertained stores of gold, silver, coal, iron, copper, zinc, lead, cinnabar, kaolin, petroleum, and the infinite number of substances man has utilized, the extent of our mineral wealth is unmeasured and unimagined. And our ocean-bound coasts, the immense inland seas that bound us on the north, the land-locked Gulf that laves our southern shores, and our grand rivers, impel us to com- mercial enterprise, and proclaim the one great want of our country to be men. Labor alone can make these un- paralleled resources available ; and when by securing to industry its just reward we shall develop and attract hither from other lands a supply of labor that will make the march of our conquest over the elements of our wealth steadily progressive, our debt, though expressed by the numerals required to tell it now, will shrink into compar- ative insignificance, and the Powers which b}' treachery and disregard of international law during the last four years would have destroyed us, will assume relatively Lilliputian proportions. These are not new thoughts. So long ago as 1689, Locke, in his Essay on Civil Government, said : " Let any one consider what the difference is between an acre of land planted with tobacco or sugar, sown with wheat or barley, and an acre of the same land lying in common, without any husbandry upon it ; and he will find the improvement of labor makes the far greater part of the value. I think it will be but a very modest com- putation to say that of the products of the earth useful to the life of a man, nine tenths are the effects of labor. Nay, if WE will rightly consider things as they come to our use, and cast up the several expenses about them what in them is purely owing to nature, and what to labor we shall find that in most of them ninety-nine hun- dredths are wholly to be put on the account of labor. There cannot be a clearer demonstration of anything than several nations of the Americans are of this, who are rich in land and poor in all the com- forts of life ; whom nature having furnished as rich as any other people with the materials of plenty, that is a fruitful soil, apt to produce in abundance what might serve for food, raiment, and delight, yet for want of improving it by labor have not one hundreth part of the conveniences we enjoy." But to make labor fully available it must be steadily employed and generously rewarded, and to secure these results the employments of a country must be largely diversified. A nation whose territory is broad and remote from dense populations cannot, by pursuing commerce and agriculture alone, prosper or endure. This is the decree of nature. Land, as well as man, requires rest and food ; PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 15 and a purely agricultural and commercial nation can afford neither of these. The social history of the world verifies this proposition. To make a nation prosperous remuner- ative employment must be accessible to all its people ; and to that end industry must be so diversified that he who has not the strength for agricultural or other labor requir- ing muscle may make his feeble sinews available in some gentler employment. Agriculture and commerce afford few stimulants to inventive genius; diversified industry offers many. Childhood in a purely agricultural com- munity is wasted in idleness, as are the winter mouths of robust men, and to realize the truth of the maxim that time is money, the varied industry of a country should offer employment to all for all seasons of the year, that each day may be made to earn its own subsistence. And herein is illustrated the harmony of interests, for where diversity of employment is successfully promoted, agricul ture finds its readiest markets and earns its richest rewards: for within accessible distance from the city or town the farmer has a market for those perishable productions which will not bear extended transportation, but the cultivation of which, in alternation with white or hard crops, strengthens and enriches his land. But of this hereafter. WHY THE SOUTH DEMANDED FREE TRADE. Unhappily, sir, it has not been the policy of those who have governed our country to permit, much less to en- courage, such needed diversification of employment and productions. I have before me an imperial octavo volume embracing more than nine hundred pages, and illustrated with the likenesses of many distinguished southern states- men and teachers. It is entitled "Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments, comprising the Writings of Ham- mond, Harper, Christie, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartwright on this Important Subject, by E. N. Elliott, LL. D., President of Planters' College, Mississippi, with an Essay on Slavery in the Light of International Law, by the Editor." This volume, so valuable to the future his- torian, bears the imprint of Prichard, Abbott & Loomis, Augusta. Georgia, 1860. And the title page announces that it was " published and sold exclusively by subscrip- tion." When this work was published, the establishment of the southern confederacy was, doubtless, a foregone conclusion in the minds of its publishers and their patrons; 16 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. there was, therefore, no further reason for the southern leaders disguising the purposes they had had in view while, in the name of the Democratic party, governing our coun- try. I refer to it in order that these distinguished writers may, for themselves, declare the aims and motives that governed them. The objects they proposed to attain are thus expressed under the head of " Economical Relations of Slavery : " "The opposition to the protective tariff by the South arose from two causes ; the first openly avowed at the time, and the second clearly deducible from the policy it pursued ; the one to secure the foreign market for its cotton, the other to obtain a bountiful supply of provisions at cheap rates." " But they could not monopolize the market unless they could obtain a cheap supply of food and clothing for their negroes, and raise their cotton at such reduced prices as to undersell their rivals. A manufacturing popu- lation, with its mechanical coadjutors in the midst of the provision growers, on a scale such as the protective policy contemplated, it was conceived would create a permanent market for their products and enhance the price ; whereas if this manufacturing could be prevented, and a system of free trade be adopted, the South would constitute the principal provision market of the country, and the fertile lands of the North supply the cheap food demanded for its slaves. Again : " By the protective policy, the planters expected to have the cost of both provisions and clothing increased, and their ability to monopolize the foreign markets diminished in a corresponding degree. If they could establish free trade, it would insure the American mar- ket to foreign manufacturers, secure the foreign markets for their leading staples, repress home manufactures, force a large number of northern men into agriculture, multiply the growth and diminish, the price of provisions, feed and clothe their slaves at lower rates, produce their cotton for a third or fourth of former prices, rival all other countries in its cultivation, monopolize the trade in the article throughout the whole of Europe, and build up a commerce that would make us the ruler of the seas." Again : " The markets in the Southwest, now so important, were then quite limited. As the protective system, coupled with the contem- plated internal improvements, if successfully accomplished, would inevitably tend to enhance the price of agricultural products, while the free-trade, anti-internal-improvement policy would as certainly reduce their value, the two systems were long considered so antago- nistic that the success of the one must sound the .knell of the other. Indeed, so fully was Ohio impressed with the necessity of promoting manufactures that all capital thus employed was for many years entirely exempt from taxation. " It was in vain that the friends of protection appealed to the fact that the duties levied on foreign goods did not necessarily enhance the cost to the consumer; that the competition among the home manu- PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 17 fadurers and between them and foreigners ha-1 greatly reduced the price of nearly every article properly protected ; that foreign manu- facturers always had, and always would, advance their prices aci,jrding to our dependence upon them ; that domestic competition was the only safety the country had against foreign imposition ; that it was necessary ive should become our own manufacturers in a fair degree to render ourselves independent of other nations in time of war as well as to guard against the vacillations in foreign legislation; that tlie South would be vastly the gainer by having the market for its pro- ducts at its own doors and avoiding the cost of their transit across the Atlantic ; that, in the event of the repression, or ivant of proper expan- sion, of our manufactures by the adoption of the free-trade system, the imports of foreign goods to meet the public wants would soon exceed the ability of the people to pay, and inevitably involve the country in bankruptcy. Southern politicians remained inflexible and refused to accept any policy except free trade and the utter abandonment of the principle of protection. Whether they were jealous of the greater prosperity of the North and desirous to cripple its energies, or whether they were truly fearful of bankrupting the South, we shall not wait to inquire." The author doubtless felt that it would be sacrilegious to inquire too curiously into the motives of the ministers of a monarch so absolute as King Cotton, but we, who do not live in the fear of his majesty, may freely, and not without advantage, consider the questions propounded. And again, in connection with the assertion that with slave labor they could not become manufacturers, and must therefore remain at the mercy of the North, both as to food and clothing, unless the European markets should be retained, the writer says southern statesmen saw that " Combinations of capitalists, whether engaged in manufacturing wool, cotton, or iron, would draw off labor from the cultivation of the soil, and cause large bodies of the prodiicers to become consumers, and that roads and canals, connecting the West with the East, were effectual means of bringing the agricultural and manufacturing classes into closer proximity, to the serious injury of the planters." These honest and fearless exponents of the free trade of which the gentleman from Indiana says the President is an advocate, seem to have considered the chief end of man, that is, of all American men, save slave-holding planters, to be to produce cheap food for slaves ; and in this book, so remarkable for its frankness, we find a quo- tation from a speech made by one of them, which runs as follows : " We must prevent the increase of manufactories, force the surplus labor into agriculture, promote the cultivation of our unimproved western lands, until provisions are so multiplied and reduced in price that the slave can be fed so cheaply as to enable us to grew our 2 18 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. sugar at three cents a pound. Then, without protective duties, we can rival Cuba in the production of that staple and drive her from our markets." RESULTS OF FREE TRADE. By the persistent and domineering pursuit of these ends by the South, and the unhallowed spirit of compromise which always controlled the North, the manufactures of the country were destroyed ; and the West (for great rail- way thoroughfares had not then been constructed) having been reduced to dependence on the South for her market, consented to her own ruin. It may be that having deprived herself of any other market, her poverty and not her will consented ; but the story of her seduction and ruin is thus happily told in " Cotton is King : " " The West which had long looked to the East for a market had its attention now turned to the South, the most certain and conven- ient market for the sale of its products ; the planters affording to the farmers the market they had in vain sought from the manufacturers. In the meantime steamboat navigation was acquiring perfection on the western rivers, the great natural outlets for western produce, and became a means of communication between the Northwest and the Southwest, as well as with the trade and commerce of the At- lantic cities. This gave an impulse to industry and enterprise west of the Alleghanies unparalleled in the history of the country. While then the bounds of slave labor were extending from Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, westward over Tennessee, Alabama, Missis- sippi, and Arkansas, the area of free labor was enlarging with equal rapidity in the Northwest, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. Thus within these provision and cotton regions were the forests cleared away or the prairies broken up simultaneously by those two antagonistic forces. Opponents no longer, they were harmonized by the fusion of their interests, the connecting link between them being the steamboat. Thus also was a tripartite alliance formed, by which the western farmer, the southern planter, and the English manufacturer became united in a common bond of interest, the whole giving their support to the doctrine of free trade." With this unnatural alliance the work seemed to be completed, and in verification of the theories of the north- ern leaders of the Democratic party who, like the gentle- man from Indiana, took their opinions from the southern planters, the commerce of our country should have rapidly expanded, and Great Britain furnished a market for all our surplus grain. But what were the results? The laboring people of the manufacturing States were soon without employment and living upon past earnings. The deposit lines in our savings banks ran down; the banks of discount and deposit lost their specie; merchants made PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 19 i small sales, or sold on long and uncertain credits ; and sagacious men saw that bankruptcy impended over all. The ruined people of the North and East were unable to pay for the products of the South or West. Large numbers of them, abandoning the callings to which they had been trained, and in the pursuit of which while pro- viding amply for the support of their families they could have accumulated capital and added to the national wealth and power, became unskilful farmers on mortgaged land in the distant West. England, no longer simply mistress of the sea, but the commercial mistress of the world, seek- ing customers who could pay for what they purchased, bought her grain from the Baltic, from Egypt, or wherever she could buy it cheapest or with greatest convenience ; and the western farmer, having supplied the coarse pro- visions that were required as cheap food for the slaves, and their two hundred and fifty thousand masters, saw his wheat rot in the field, and consumed his corn as fuel. But what was the effect of this free-trade alliance upon the interests of the planters? Did it enlarge their mar- kets, increase the price of their staple, and by a golden harvest to them, seem to compensate for the universal ruin in which it had involved the people of the North? We shall see. Had cotton manufactures in this country been fostered, the manufacturers of England and America would have been competitors in the cotton market, and, as com- petition among buyers ever does, would have maintained the price of that commodity. But the mad pursuit of cheup food for slaves had destroyed competition for the planters' product. Their policy had given England a monopoly of the market for cotton. They had made En- gland, to whose ports the fabricants of Europe went for their supply, their only customer; and she, having ac- cumulated capital which yielded but small interest, while they were needy debtors compelled to borrow, found her- self in a condition to control the price of their commodity. Perceiving the vast relative importance of a continued supply of cheap cotton to an immediate return of interest on the capital involved in one year's supply, the English merchants accumulated cotton to an extent that enabled them to decline further immediate purchases from those who were always in debt to their factors, and whose necessities in the absence of any other market would soon compel them to sell at any price. And the author from 20 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOE. whom I have quoted so extensively gives us, on page 72 of the volume, the legitimate result of the folly of the chief American party to the tripartite alliance in favor of free trade, when he says : " Cotton, up to the date when this controversy had been fairly commenced, had been worth, in the English market, an average price of from 29 7-10 to 48 4-10 cents per pound ; but at this period a wide-spread and ruinous depression occured, cotton in 1826 having fallen in England as low as 11 9-10 to 18 9-10 cents per pound." Thus had free trade, the reign of which the Democratic party is endeavoring to restore, accomplished its mission in the United States. Commerce, manufactures, and agri- culture, involving the merchant, artisan, farmer, and planter, were all prostrate and at the mercy of the capital- ists of Great Britain, whose selfishness is only equaled by that of the class whose arrogance and unreasoning will had thus subjected the entire people of our county to their control. EFFECT OF FREE TRADE ON THE POOR WHITES OF THE SOUTH. Mr. Chairman, having ascertained the result of the planters' free-trade policy upon their own interests and those of the people of the North, let us contemplate the condition of the masses of the people of the cotton States. I will not detain you by any reference to that of the slaves and free people of color. Other occasions will be more fitting for that. But on nearly one million of square miles of territory which the planters regarded as their exclusive domain, were some six or eight million people designated as "poor" or "mean whites," to whom were accorded all the rights of citizenship, and I will inquire whether their interests had been promoted by this policy ? Let us, in contemplating their condition for a few moments, do it, not from our stand-point, but through the eyes of southern men. Mr. Tarver, of Missouri, in the course of a paper on Domestic Manufactures in the South and West, published in 1847, says : "The free population of the South maybe divided into two classes the slaveholder and the non-slaveholder. I am not aware that the relative numbers of these two classes have ever been ascertained in any of the States, but I am satisfied that the non-slaveholders far outnumber the slaveholders perhaps by three to one. In the more southern portion of this region, the non-slaveholders possess, gene- PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 21 rally, but very small means, and the land which they possess is almost universally poor, and so sterile that a scanty subsistence is all that can be derived from its cultivation ; and the more fertile soil, being in the possession of the slaveholder, must ever remain out of the power of those who have none. " This state of things is a great drawback, and bears heavily upon and depresses the moral energies of the poorer classes The acquisition of a respectable position in the scale of wealth appears so difficult, that they decline the hopeless pursuit, and many of them settle down into habits of idleness, and become the almost passive subjects of all its consequences. And I lament to say that I have observed of late years that an evident deterioration is taking place in this part of the population, the younger portion of it being less educated, less industrious, and in every point of view less respectable, than their ancestors." Governor Hammond, addressing the South Carolina Institute in 1850, spoke of this portion of the people of the South when he said : " They obtain a precarious subsistence by occasional jobs, by hunt- ing, by fishing, by plundering fields or folds, and too often by what is in its effects far worse trading with slaves, and seducing them to plunder for their benefit." William Gregg, Esq., addressing the same Institute in 1851, said : " From the best estimate that I have been able to make, I put down the white people, who ought to work, and who do not, or who are so employed as to be wholly unproductive to the State, at one hundred and twenty-five thousand By this it appears that but one-fifth of the present poor whites of our State would be necessary to operate one million spindles I have long been under the impression, and every day's experience has strength- ened my convictions, that the evils exist in the wholly neglected condition of this class of persons. Any man who is an observer of things could hardly pass through our country without being struck with the fact that all the capital, enterprise, and intelligence is em- ployed in directing slave labor ; and the consequence is that a large portion of our poor white people are wholly neglected, and are suffered to while away their existence in a state but one step in advance of the Indian of the forest." Hon. J. H. Lumpkin, of Georgia, in a paper on the In- dustrial Regeneration of the South, published in 1852, in advocacy of the establishment of manufactures which had been attempted in Georgia, but which had been resisted on the ground that they would become hot- beds of crime and endanger the safety of slavery, said : "It is objected that these manufacturing establishments will be- come the hot-beds of crime But I am by no means ready to concede that our poor, degraded, half-fed, half-clothed, and 22 PROTECTION TO AMEEICAN LABOR. ignorant population without Sabbath schools or any other kind of instruction, mental or moral, or without any just appreciation of character will be injured by giving them employment which will bring them under the oversight of employers who will inspire them with self-respect by taking an interest in their welfare." Down to that time free trade had certainly done but little to bless the poor white people of the South. Nor does it seem from recent descriptions, and from our obser- vation of them in military prisons and hospitals, to have materially benefited them down to the present day. J. R. Gilmore, Esq., "Edmund Kirke," in his discourse on the social and political characteristics of the southern whites, before the Jersey City Literary Association, estimated the number known as the " mean whites" at over four mil- lions, and described them as " herding together in sparse communities and gleaning a sorry subsistence from hunt- ing, fishing, and poaching, in the mountain districts of Virginia, upper Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and in the sand hills of North Carolina and the barrens of Tennessee, and throughout the rest of the South ; as hovering around the borders of large plantations, quartering themselves upon the 'chivalry,' stealing the deer from their forests and the hams from their smoke-houses." He said they were tolerated by the planters for the two hundred thou- sand votes they gave for slavery and the mad theories of the planters, and added, " They are far below the slaves in morals and civilization ; are indolent, shiftless, thieving, lying; given to whisky-drinking, snuff- dipping, clay-eating, incest, and all manner of social vices. Not one in a thou- sand of them can read ; not one in ten thousand can write;" and that he " had met many who had never seen a book or newspaper, and some who had never heard of a Bible or a spelling-book." Mr. B. C. Truman, an accredited correspondent of the New York Times, in a letter to that journal, dated Mont- gomery, Alabama, October 23, 1865, said : " There is a class of beings in all the southern States known as poor whites. The little monosyllabic adjective does not give the faintest idea of these things with bodies and souls. How under the heavens they live is a question for the philanthropist, if indeed that paragon of benevolence has ever visited the region in which they exist the 'homes' of the poor whites. In a visit to Spanish Fort a few days ago, in company with a naval officer, we stopped at the 'shebang' of one of this species. Most of these poor whites are natives. The individual whom we called upon, however, was a Scandinavian, but had lived in the place we found him for thirty PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 23 years. For a long time he made his living by manufacturing tur- pentine ; but the trees ran out years ago, and since then he has lived upon what he has raised, buying nothing but sugar and coffee, for which he traded chickens and eggs. His wife was of the regular mold, lean and long, with seven little children by her side, and a pipe in her mouth. I told her I was a newspaper correspondent, and she did not know what that was. I endeavored to explain, and found that she did not know what a newspaper was, and yet she resides within twenty miles of Mobile. The husband could not read or write his name, but could drink like a fish. Both husband and wife had on wooden shoes, while the children exhibited no feet covering except what nature had provided for them. " Throughout the southern portion of Alabama, upon both sides of the river, is what is known as the ' piney woods country.' It is one of the most barren sections I have ever seen. Neither corn nor cotton will grow to any extent. Sweet potatoes are the chief pro- duct, and this vegetable and bacon, and a little corn bread, form the bill of fare morning, noon, and night all the year round. These people are scattered all through these piney woods, and live in log huts which in a way protect them from the tempestuous weather and violent storms of wind and rain which howl through this barren waste during certain periods of the year. Oh, how I pity these poor beings who have been the recipients of uncounted woes and un- heard-of sufferings during the long, long years of African slavery ! " Dixon, the traveling correspondent of the Boston Daily Advertiser, whose admirable letters prove him to be a keen observer and faithful reporter, writing from Fort Valley, Georgia, November 15th, said : " Whether the North Carolina ' dirt-eater,' or the South Carolina ' sand-hiller,' or the Georgia ' cracker,' is lowest in the scale of hu- man existence would be difficult to say. The ordinary plantation negro seemed to me, when I first saw him in any numbers, at the very bottom of not only probabilities, but also possibilities, so far as they affect human relations ; but these specimens of the white race must be credited with having reached a yet lower depth of squalid and beastly wretchedness. However poor or ignorant or unclean or improvident he may be, I never yet found a negro who had not at least a vague desire for a better condition, an undefined longing for something called freedom, a shrewd instinct of self-preservation. These three ideas, or, let me say, shadows of ideas, do not make the creature a man, but they lift him out of the bounds of brutedojn. The Georgia ' cracker, 1 as I have seen him since leaving Milledge- ville. seems to me to lack not only all that the negro does, but also even the desire for a better condition, and the vague longing for an enlargement of his liberties and his rights. I walked out into the country back of Albany and Andersonville, when at those places, and into the country back of Fort Valley this morning ; and on each occasion I fell in with three or four of these ' cracker ' fami- lies. Such filthy poverty, such foul ignorance, such idiotic imbe- cility, such bestial instincts, such groveling desires, such mean long- ings, you would question ray veracity as a man if I were to paint the pictures I have seen ! Moreover, no trick of words can make 24 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. plain the scene in and around one of these habitations ; no fertility of language can embody the simple facts for a northern mind ; and the case is one in which even seeing itself is scarcely believing. Time and effort will lead the negro up to intelligent manhood ; but I almost doubt if it will be possible to ever lift this ' white trash' into respectability." Sir, is not the gentleman from Indiana mistaken in as- serting that free trade " is the true theory of government," and can a policy which produces such results as these writers have depicted be wise ? Can we rely on it to pay the interest on our debt, to meet the pensions we owe to those who have been disabled in our service, or to the widows and children, or aged and dependent parents of those who have laid down their lives in our cause ? Such free trade as he advocates can produce but one result ; and that is bankruptcy, personal, corporate, State, and national. It is against the laws of nature and the providence of God. It involves as a necessary consequence idleness for one half the year to all, and for all the year to many of our people who would find adequate and remunerative em- ployment under a system of- diversified industry. HOW ENGLAND ESTABLISHED HER SUPREMACY. The propositions I enunciate are not deduced from our experience alone. All history affirms them. Other na- tions have tried free trade and ever with the same result. England, the workshop of the world and mistress of the seas as she proclaims herself, tried it, and from the time of Alfred to that of Edward the Confessor, sold her skins for a sixpence, and bought back the tails for a shilling, by exchanging her unwrougbt wool for Dutch and Flemish clothing ; and the question as to how population might be prevented from exceeding the ability of the land to feed the people perplexed her rulers throughout the long period.* * Believing herself to be strong enough she has renewed the experiment, and at the end of a quarter of a century of free trade, finds herself agitated as never before by the question, " How shall we feed our people ?" Daniel Grant says : " No man doubts the broad fot that we cannot feed ourselves. It has been ac- cepted by Parliamentary Committees, made the plea for large Inclosure Acts, and it caused the repeal of the Corn Laws ; equally as little can it be doubted that this condition is ever on the increase, for it is shown by the Registrar General's returns, and the ever-increasing competition for work. Bay by day the tell-tale of our population mounts higher, and its results are to be found in the increas- ing requirements for foreign food. But at great Manchester meetings men tabu- late out this enormous increase, and appeal to it as an evidence of the value of free tnide; whilst the facts are that our imports of food have only the one mean- ing, viz : we import that food which we cannot produce for ourselves. The re- PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 25 Even so late as the thirty-sixth year of Elizabeth's reign a law was enacted against " the erecting and main- taining of cottages," which, after reciting that "great in- conveniences have been found by experience to grow by erecting and building of great numbers and multitudes of cottages which are daily more and more increased in many parts of this realm," enacts that no such tenement shall be erected unless four acres of land be attached to it. And Charles I., in 1630, issued a proclamation "against build- ing houses on new foundations in London or Westminster, or within three miles of the city or king's palaces." This proclamation also forbade the receiving of inmates in the houses which would multiply the inhabitants to such an excessive number that they could neither be governed nor fed. The population of England has quadrupled since then, and her modern capitalists, regarding labor as raw material, maintain a supply of laborers in sufficient excess of the demand to cheapen it to the lowest point, to which end the British islands raise for annual exportation, a quar- ter of a million of people, feeding them in their unpro ductive infancy and childhood. The change has been wrought by the diversification of her industry, which has been accomplished by so legislat- ing as to set at work all the poor of England with the growth of her own lands ; and the spectacle which Ire- land presents, of years of famine, and an industrious people whose attachment to their native land is intense, fleeing by millions from the homes of their childhood and the graves of their ancestors, is the result of that one-sided free trade which England, since the Union, has forced upon her, by which her woolen, worsted, silk, cotton, and linen factories have been destroyed. Protected by her lation that food thus bears to our population makes itself felt in a variety of ways ; it changes the character of our pauperism, the conditions of our destitu- tion, and the price of food itself; it also enforces the importance of our export trade and the danger of foreign competition. All these circumstances, so appa- rently remote, are linked together by the one tie, that our land cannot feed our people. *" With respect to the first point, the state of our pauperism, it is so changed that it no longer represents its original elements. The first poor-law was based on the idea that paupers were the idle and the worthless, and to such a labor test was the natural limitation of help ; but to-day men seek work and cannot find it, enforced idleness saps energy, and thus it is they sink slowly down to pauperism. /The same may be said of destitution with even greater force; that silent, hopeless, broken misery, which is too powerless to create work, too feeble to force it, and too proud to beg that poverty which sinks, suffers, and dies; that destitution of all others the most fearful, and the most real, also springs from over-population.'' Home Politic*, by Daniel Grant, pije 169. London, 1870. 26 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. legislation of 1783, these and other branches of diversified industry were prosperous and her people contented at the date of the Union. But English free trade having done its work nothing is now of so little value in Ireland as an able-bodied laborer with a good appetite. Let him who would understand the causes of the miseries of the Irish people and the depopulation of Ireland read the thirteenth chapter of Henry C. Carey's Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign. It is a brief story, but pregnant with instruc- tion upon the point under consideration. I cannot tell, sir, when England first determined to abandon dependence on the production and exportation of raw materials, but find by reference to McCallagh's Indus- trial History, page 74, that in 1337 she passed an Act im- posing "A duty of forty shillings per sack on all wool exported by native merchants and sixty shillings on all exported by foreigners. The next year a Parliament was held at Westminster that went still fur- ther in the same direction, enacting that no wool of English growth should be transported beyond seas, and that all cloth-workers should be received, from whatever parts they should come, and fit places should be assigned them with divers liberties and privileges, and that they should have a certain allowance from the king until they might be in a way of living by their trade." While England remained a purely agricultural country her capitalists encountered the difficulties which those of the South have to overcome, and Wade, in his History of the Middle and Working Classes, page 31, says : "In the year 1376 we have evidence of a strong disposition to vagrancy among laborers, in a complaint of the House of Commons that masters are obliged to give their servants high wages to pre- vent their running away ; that many of the runaways turned beg- gars and lived idle lives in cities and boroughs, although they have sufficient bodily strength to gain a livelihood if willing to work, and that the chief part turned out sturdy rogues, infesting the kingdom with frequent robberies." There are those who utter such complaints in our days, and especially deplore the fact that they " are compelled to give their servants high wages to prevent their running away." At a meeting of the planters of Marlboro' dis- trict, South Carolina, the proceedings of which I find re- ported at length, and properly attested, in the Charleston Daily News of December 9th, the following, with many like resolutions, were adopted : PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 27 " Resolved, That, if inconsistent with the views of the authorities to remove the military, we express the opinion that the plan of the military to compel the freedman to contract with his former owner, when desired by the latter, is wise, prudent, and absolutely neces- sary. " Resolved, That we, the planters of the district, pledge ourselves not to contract with any freedman unless he can produce a certifi- cate of regular discharge from his former owner. " Resolved, That under no circumstances whatsoever will we rent land to any freedmen, nor will we permit them to live on our prem- ises as employes. " Resolved, That no system can be devised for the present which can secure success where the discipline and management of the freedman is entirely taken out of the hands of the planter, and we invoke the authorities to recognize this fact, which cannot but be apparent to them. " Resolved, That we request the military to cease the habit of making negroes act as couriers, sheriffs, and constables, to serve writs and notices upon planters a system so destructive to good order and discipline." It is evident that neither the thunders of Gillmore's " swamp angel," nor the howl of her ponderous shells, had sufficed to awaken these somnolent gentlemen to consci- ousness of the fact that the fourteenth century had passed in the Palmetto State. Englishmen in those early days exhibited the same ele- ments of character as the negroes of our days, showing that however the complexion of races may differ, the im- pulses and yearnings of humanity are the same in all times and among the children of all climes. Each man embraces the elements of perfect manhood and the germ of every human faculty and emotion ; and the Africo- American, in his new-found freedom, desires, as did the English laborer of the fourteenth century, to work for whom he pleases, at what he feels he can do best, and in the field which will give him the amplest reward. Slight as the stimulants applied to British manufacturing industry by parliamentary protection had then been, they caused the land-holders to manifest as much anxiety for despotic control over the laboring people as do the par- doned rebels of the South ; and Wade tells us that the complaints of the Commons in 1406 furnish evidence of the competition which had commenced between rural and manufacturing industry at that day, and that " To avoid the statutes passed some years before for compelling those who had been brought up to the plow till they were twelve years of age to continue in husbandry all their lives, agricultural 28 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. laborers had recourse to the expedient of sending their children into cities and boroughs, and binding them apprentices when they were under that age ; and that further, in order to counteract this, it was enacted that no person, unless possessed of land of a rental of twenty shillings a year should bind children of any age apprentices to any trade or mystery within a city, but that the children should be brought up in the occupation of their parents, or other business suited to their conditions." But even in those dark days the British Government seems to have been more enlightened than they who claim the right to legislate for the Southern States, or Brevet Brigadier General Fullerton, late Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau at New Orleans ; for it provided that such children were nevertheless to be allowed to be sent to a school in any part of the kingdom ; which their proposed legislation and his arbitrary orders for the government of the laboring people of Louisiana would effectually prohibit. These stupid parliamentary restrictions on the freedom of laborers were not to edure forever, and the progress of England in the development of her resources has been marked by a constantly-growing system of protection, not always judicious, sometimes infringing the rights of the subject, but tending constantly to build up the power of the kingdom, increase the material comfort of the subject, and give her ascendency over the nations of the world. In 1727, Dean Swift, appealing to the Irish people in behalf of Ireland, said : " One cause of a country's thriving is the industry of the people in working up all their native commodities to the last ; another, the conveniency of safe ports and havens to carry out their goods, as much manufactured, and bring those of others as little manufactured, as the nature of mutual commerce will allow ; another, the disposi- tion of the people of the country to wear their own manufactures and import as little clothing, furniture, food, or drink as they can conveniently live without." These were not abstract notions with him, for by that time England had become thoroughly protective in her policy, and was increasing in population, wealth, and power; while Ireland, though not wholly disregarding the necessity of protecting her own workmen and developing her resources, exhibited a tendency to be governed by that plausible but shallowest of economical sophisms which teaches that it is wise, regardless of all other cir- cumstances and conditions, to buy where we can buy for least money and sell where we can sell for most, and was PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 29 sinking in the scale of national consideration. How pro- tective England had become, is illustrated by the fact that from having for many centuries exchanged her raw wool for manufactured cloths, she had in 1660 prohibited the exportation of unmanufactured wool. This prohibition continued till 1825. And to protect her silk manufactur- ers, from 1765 to 1826, she prohibited the importation of silk goods manufactured in other countries, and confirmed the parliamentary prohibition by a reservation in the treaty of commerce concluded with France in 1786. She also prohibited the export of tools and machines used in various branches of manufactures. In 1696 she prohibited by special act of Parliament the exportation of Lee's stocking-frame a machine invented nearly a century be- fore. She also prohibited by various acts the exporta- tion of certain machinery used in woolen, silk, cotton, and linen manufactures. Such favor did protection to English labor find that her laws prohibiting exportation were made to embrace presses or dies for iron buttons, engines for covering whips, tools for punching glass ; in fact, anything for which it was thought worth while on the part of any class of manufacturers or mechanics to seek protection at the hands of Parliament by securing Englishmen a monopoly of the implements required for the production of their goods. And when, in 1824, a commission, created to inquire into the expediency of repealing these prohibitions, reported generally in favor of the repeal, it was unable to recom- mend their unconditional abrogation, but qualified the suggestion by recommending that the Privy Council should continue to exercise their discretion in permitting the ex- portation of such tools and machinery then prohibited as might appear to them not likely to be prejudicial to the trade or manufactures of the United Kingdom, " because it is possible that circumstances may exist which may render a prohibition to export certain tools and machines used in some particular manufactures expedient." To justify even this conditional repeal the commission set forth the advantages England had derived from the pro- tection of her infant or feeble industries in the following language : " Placed beyond all comparison at the head of civilization as re- gards manufacturing skill, with capital far more ample than is pos- sessed by any other people, with cheap and inexhaustible supplies of 30 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. iron and fuel, and with institutions every way favorable to the de- velopment of the industry and ingenuity of her citizens, she must always be able at least to maintain her superiority of position where circumstances are in other respects equal, and be ready to turn to the utmost advantage every improvement which may reach her in common with her less powerful rivals." It was not, we perceive, until by adequate protection to her labor she had kept the balance of trade in her favor long enough to make capital so abundant as to secure a steady and ample supply of money at low rates of interest ; and by setting all her people to work on the growth of her lands had trained artisans and accumulated an abun- dance of superior machinery, which had paid for itself by profits on its use, that England was willing to admit the labor of the world to compete with that employed in her varied industries. Nor had she resorted to these devices alone in her pro- gress to this assured position, for an English writer, Porter, in his history of the Progress of the Nation, says : " Previous to 1825, the jealousy of our Legislature in regard to the progress of foreign manufactures was extended so far as to in- terfere even with the natural right of working artisans to transfer their industry to countries where it could be most profitably exerted. Any man who had Acquired a practical knowledge of manufacturing processes was thereby rendered a prisoner in his own country, and not only might the arm of the law be interposed to prevent his quitting his native shores, but heavy penalties were imposed on all persons who should abet the expatriation of one of our artisans." ENGLAND PREACHES BUT DOES NOT PRACTICE FREE TRADE. These, however, were not the most effective means by which England has protected her capital and augmented her power. While prohibiting the exportation of tools and machines, and restraining her skilled workmen from emigrating, she was, from so early as 1337, as we have already seen, encouraging by special grants and privileges the artisans of other countries to bring the implements of their industry and employ them within her limits. Her policy is unchanged. The free trade she proclaims is theo- retical and plausible, but to some extent false and delusive.* * England's enormous annual subsidies to Steamship Companies are part of an ingenious system of protection by which she hopes to maintain a monopoly of ship building and the carrying trade. She thus pays part of the freight on PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 31 The world hailed her admission of foreign grain free as a step toward really reciprocal free trade. Her statesmen, however, saw in it a master-stroke by which her manu- facturing supremacy would be maintained. Sir Robert Peel knew that the manufactures of England were the source of her power : that cheap food for her laborers xvas an element of cheap production ; and believed that so long as other nations would employ her to manufacture their raw materials it was immaterial whether she raised anv grain, and that every acre of her arable land not required to raise vegetables and fruits which do not bear transportation, might be appropriated to sheep walks and pasturage, and, through her diversified industry she would draw from the prairies of the United States, the banks of the Nile, and the shores of the Baltic a sup- ply of food far more generous than the insular dimensions of England could possibly yield. Her policy is to undersell all others. To do this she must depress the wages of labor, and to accomplish this she must provide her laboring people at the lowest possi- ble prices with the simple and coarse fare on which her low wages compel them to live. To have retained the duties on grain would have been, in so far, to tax raw materials, as we do,* but she is too astute for that. She wants cheap food for her slaves as the southern planters did for theirs, and seeks to get it as they did by forcing British free trade on the American people. She is the foe of the working-men of every country, and impairs their wages by depressing those of the men upon whose toil her own power depends, f She protects the capital of foreign raw materials used by her manufacturers, and the fabrics and wares they export. These subsidies amounted last year, as was stated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his speech of April 20tb, 1871, when presenting to Parlia- ment his budget for this year, to 1,225,000, or over $6,000,000. *The Act of July 14th, 1870, reduced the duty on tea and coffee and trans- ferred to the free list many varieties of raw material which we cannot yet pro- duce : and I hope that Congress will, during the next session, make tea and coffee free. The harmless stimulants taken morning and evening by the farmer and laborer should not be taxed. f Let us for a moment think what are the conditions of our poor to-day. Apart from the question of our agricultural population, whose almost hopeless lot is best told by the simple fact, that in many places the luxury of meat is comparatively unknown ; apart from the questions of special emergency, such as the cotton famine, or the East End Emigration Society, which hap been brought into exis- tence for the purpose of relieving the grent mass of destitution and poverty in 32 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. England as I wish to protect the labor, ingenuity, and en- terprise of the American people. Her aim is to be the workshop of the world, and to bind the people of all other lands to the rude employments of unskilled agri- culture. Her agricultural interests resisted the repeal of the corn laws. To admit grain duty free it was said would ruin the farmers and lessen the market and taxable value of the land of the kingdom. But experience demonstrated the laws of social science and proved the harmony of in- terests by increasing the agricultural products of England in a ratio equal to the increased amount of her import of raw material and food for her land and people. FREE TRADE EXHAUSTS LAND AND IMPOVERISHES FARMERS. I have said, sir, that a nation cannot prosper by foreign trade and agriculture alone ; and our bitter experience of wasted lands and oft-recurring bankruptcy, contrasted with the steadily increasing affluence of the agriculturists of England, confirms the fact. Let us examine this ques- tion. We boast ourselves an agricultural people, and are content to look to nations beyond the seas for the fabrics we consume and a market for our products. Not having a home market we cannot diversify our crops, bat must confine ourselves to the production of those commodities that neighborhood; apart from all such special and exceptionnl cases, we ha-ve the general sense of depression and want everywhere spread around us. It is not necessary to dwell on the scenes of human misery, where wholesale suicides or cruel murders mark'the profound despair of those who lay trembling on tie confines of want. It is equally unnecessary to recall those verdicts that appear time after time at coroner's inquests under the simple but expressive phraseology " Death from Starvation." It is not necessary to recall these things, because the newspaper press of the country drives these truths borne without stint and without compromise; but it may be important to remember that the individual cases, which thus come to the surface, are known only by accident, and thnt the great mass of misery that suffers and dies, dies and tells no tale. Occasionally and by accident the curtain is drawn on one side, and we see into the midst of the life of poverty that surrounds us ; and we then know by the glance thus afforded us, what the general life must be; wasted by poverty, decimated by fever, shattered by want; and it thus rises before us, in the full force of its ap- peal to that sense of human sympathy which is common to us all. But the general ncceptance of the positions here stated will be aided by a few facts. Let us see what the barometer of pauperism has to tell us. Our pauper population in 1866, was 920,344; in 1867, 958,824; in 1868, 1,034,823; and the number is still increasing ; yet these numbers show that our pauper population has in- creased 114,479 persons in two years, or at the rate of more than 1000 per week. Home Politict, by Daniel Grant, p. 3. London, 1870. PROTECTION TO AMERICAN' LABOR. 83 which will keep long and will bear transportation. Wheat, corn, pork, cotton, rice, tobacco, and hemp are our great staples, and our crops, omitting those produced within a radius around the large cities, narrowing as they diminish in importance, decrease from year to year, while those of England, stimulated and varied by a home market, in- crease so wonderfully that science pauses before declaring that she has yet ascertained the measure of wealth a single well-fed acre under scientific culture will yield. The virgin soil of America gives back to the farmer at least thirty bushels of wheat to the acre ; and in his early crops he does not fear the Hessian fly, the midge, weevil, or any insect-destroyer of grain. In the old wheat-growing States remote from cities, the same amount of labor be- stowed upon an acre is rewarded by but seven or at best ten bushels, and the farmer regards himself as lucky whose fields are not visited once in three years by some of the deadly foes to wheat the insects that live and swarm upon the diseased juices of feeble grain, the offspring of fam- ished soil. The most caref ally-prepared tables I have been able to find give twelve bushels or less as the average wheat crop per acre of America." In England the fields are enriched by the bones, woolen rags, and other nutritious manures which we export ; the grain crop is followed by a green crop, or those vegeta- bles, the tops of which absorb from the atmosphere and return to the earth the aliment abstracted by cereals ; and the amount of labor which, when England was a purely agricultural country, drew but from twelve to fifteen bushels of wheat from an acre, is now rewarded by from thirty-eight to forty-three bushels, or the equivalent thereof in roots for the sustenance of man and beast. Under our exhausting process of extorting from famished fields the last elements of the white crop, and our ex- portation of fertilizers and manures, our very fruit crop is disappearing. The diseased trees of the orchard, the apple, the pear, the plum, blossom and bring forth fruit, and the borer, the curculio, and others of the insect tribe that are sent to scourge us into good husbandry, revel in it, and it falls before maturity as if to give some sub- sistence to the starved stem that gave it its sickly life. This is no fancy sketch. In endeavoring to sell in the dearest money markets and buy where we can buy for least money, we have sold the very life of our acres and 3 34 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. mortgaged ourselves to a class of middle-men, mostly for- eigners, who take the results of our industry as the price of carrying our products to market and bringing us the few and inferior commodities the tails we receive in return for our skins. Our life is an inevitable game of cross purposes. Ambitious of commercial importance we produce only raw materials and can have no commerce, but must enhance the maritime power of our rival by em- ploying her ships, sailors, and merchants to do our carry- ing; and while eager to keep down our steadily-increasing foreign indebtedness we ship our least bulky but most potent manures in the same British vessels that carry away our cotton, corn, and gold. The real balance of trade is ever against us, and our debts commercial, corpo- rate, and State are ever increasing. Let us mine gold and silver never so fast, we can keep none of it. Our suspensions of specie payments are periodical. England maintains the balance of trade as steadily in her favor ; and her statisticians calculate that her annual accumula- tion of capital has attained the enormous dimensions of 50,000,000 or $250,000,000. Her limits offer no invest- ments for this annual increase, and the managers of the railroads that carry our crops over our own soil to the sea- board for shipment extort exorbitant freights to enable them to pay interest on bonds sold at low rates to foreign holders, or pay large dividends to British capitalists who, in default of other investments offering profits equally great, have taken the stock. Without manufactures we can have neither foreign trade nor commercial marine ; for a purely agricultural people, depending on foreign na- tions for a limited market, have nothing with which to freight vessels to the general markets of the world, and no assorted commodities to exchange for those that would enrich the country and build up upon the sea-board com- mercial emporiums with native citizens and American in- terests. But, sir, let us look a little more closely at the effect on the land of the country of the mad theories propounded by the gentleman from Indiana. Professor Henry gave it as his opinion, some years ago, (and I believe it to be true to-day,) that there was more wealth invested in our soil in fertilizing matter at the moment this country was dis- covered by Columbus than there is at present above the surface in improvements and all other investments. Ohio, PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 35 justly proud of her comparatively superior American agriculture, was admonished by John H. Klippart, Esq., corresponding secretary of her State Board of Agriculture in 1860, that her staple crop, wheat, was annually decreas- ing in its yield per acre ; that in less than fifty years the average product was reduced from thirty to less than fifteen bushels per acre, and that unless her farmers turned their attention, and that very soon, to the renovation of their wheat lands, even Ohio would soon be one of the non-wheat-producing States. During the first five years of the last decade her corn crop averaged SGfV^j bushels to the acre, while during the last five years of the decade its average had fallen to 32/ v V It matters little, practically, whether a man sell his acres or sell only their vital prin- ciples. It would have been better, could we have done it, that we had exported our acres in all their breadth and depth than to have extracted from them as we have, and exported or burned as fuel their productive power. We should then have seen that that market in which goods can be bought for the least money is not always the cheapest, and realized how fearful a price we were paying for the tails of the skins we had sold so recklessly. I have referred to Ohio as an example, not because her case is exceptional, but because if it be exceptional it is ill favor of her better than average American husbandry. The South has been less desolated by war than by long continued unreciprocal free trade with England. The ravages of war can soon be repaired. Houses, canals, and railroads can soon be rebuilt. Villages, as unimportant as those of the South, (and in this I embrace her cities all other than New Orleans,) are things of very rapid growth in countries where men are free to exercise their skill or enterprise, and industry is well rewarded. But who shall restore her waste lands ? War was not the demon that blasted them ; it was the free trade that England imposes on semi-civilized nations; it was the desire to create a monopoly of the cotton and sugar trade ; it was the belief that a poor and ambitious people whose expenditures anticipated their annual crop could be victorious in a commercial contest with a wealthy people whose diver- sified industries gave them the control of all markets, and whose accumulations of capital enabled them to choose their own time and place for purchasing. I will not describe what I have seen in the South, or take the reports brought by 36 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. northern men. Let southern men describe the condition of their plantations. A southern journal, which is quoted by Carey in his Social Science, but of which the name is not given, says : " An Alabama planter says that cotton has destroyed more than earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. Witness the red hills of Georgia and South Carolina, which have produced cotton till the last dying gasp of the soil forbade any further attempt at cultivation ; and the land, turned out to nature, reminds the traveler, as he views the dilapidated condition of the country, of the ruins of ancient Greece." Dr. Daniel Lee, in his Progress of Agriculture, in the United States Patent Office Beport for 1852, says : " Cotton culture presents one feature which we respectfully com- mend to the earnest consideration of southern statesmen and plan- ters, and that is the constantly increasing deterioration of the soil devoted mainly to the production of this important crop. Already this evil has attained a fearful magnitude ; and under the present common practice it grows a little faster than the increase of cotton bales at the South. Who can say when or where this ever-augment- ing exhaustion of the natural resources of the cotton-growing States is to end, short of their ruin ? " De Bow, in his Eesources of the South, published in 1852, says : " The native soil of middle Georgia is a rich argillaceous loam, resting on a firm clay foundation. In some of the richer counties nearly all the lands have been cut down and appropriated to tillage ; a large maximum of which have been worn out, leaving a desolate picture for the traveler to behold decaying tenements, red old hills, stripped of their native growth and virgin soil, and washed into deep gullies, with here and there patches of Bermuda grass and stunted pine shrubs, struggling for a scanty subsistence on what was once one of the richest soils of America." Governor Hammond, in an address before the South Carolina Institute in 1849, after presenting the same class of facts, said : " These are not mere paper calculations, or the gloomy specula- tions of a brooding fancy. They are illustrated and sustained by facts, current facts of our own day, within the knowledge of every one of us. The process of impoverishment has been visibly and palpably going on step by step with the decline in the price of cotton." Clement C. Clay, of Alabama, speaking in the United States Senate, said: " I can show you, with sorrow, in the older portions of Alabama, in my native county of Madison, the sad memorials of the artless PROTECTION TO AMERICAN" LABOR. 37 and exhausting culture of cotton. Our small planters, after taking the cream off their lands, unable to restore them by rest, manures, or otherwise, are going further West and South in search of other virgin lands, which they may and will despoil and impoverish in like manner In traversing that county, one will discover numerous farm-houses, once the abode of industrious and intelligent freemen, now occupied by slaves, or tenantless, deserted, and dilapidated ; he will observe fields, once fertile, now unfenced. abandoned, and covered with those evil harbingers, foxtail and broomsedge ; he will see the moss growing on the rnoldering walls of once thrifty villages, and will find ' one only master grasp the whole domain ' that once furnished happy homes for a dozen white families. Indeed a country in its infancy, where fifty years ago scarce a forest tree had been felled by the axe of the pioneer, is already exhibiting the painful signs of senility and decay apparent in Virginia and the Carolinas." Dr. Lee, in the paper to which I have already referred, says: " Of the land cultivated in this country, one hundred million acres are damaged to the extent of three dollars per acre per an- num, or, in other words, a complete restitution of the elements of crops removed each year cannot be made short of an expense of $300,000,000." FREE TRADE KEEPS US IN SUBJECTION TO ENGLAND'S COLONIAL POLICY. Sir, this is a melancholy picture to contemplate a country wasted in its youth, and its people impoverished in the midst of abounding natural riches. And, sir, what adds to its sombre character is the fact that it is not acci- dental that it is not the result of Providence, save as Providence permits some men to trifle with their rights and interests, and others to take advantage of their wicked- ness, weakness, or folly. It is the work of man ; it is the result of design ; it has been brought about as the end sought to be obtained by the sagacious and far-seeing legislators who have guided the counsels of Great Britain and their allies, the free trade leaders of the Democratic party of our country. The laws by which these melan- choly results were produced are demonstrable, and have long been well understood. They are the golden rule as administered by selfish and perfidious England to young or feeble nations and her own colonies. They were under- stood by Locke when he prepared his essay on Civil Government. Dean Swift, as I have shown, expounded them when he endeavored to inspire the people of Ireland with wisdom and save to that unhappy country a future. 38 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. They were understood by Andrew Gee when he published his work on Trade in 1750, and among other illustrations of his clear apprehension of them said : " Manufactures in our American colonies should be discouraged, prohibited We ought always to keep a watchful eye over our colonies, to restrain them from setting up any of the manu- factures which are carried on in Great Britain ; and any such attempts should be crushed at the beginning Our colo- nies are much in the same state as Ireland was in when they began the woolen manufactory, and as their numbers increase, will fall upon manufactures for clothing themselves, if due care be not taken to find employment for them in raising such productions as may enable them to furnish themselves with all the necessaries from us. . . . . As they will have the providing rough materials to themselves, so shall we have the manufacturing of them. If encour- agement be given for raising hemp, flax, etc., doubtless they will soon begin to manufacture, if not prevented. Therefore, to stop the progress of any such manufacture, it is proposed that no weaver have liberty to set up any looms, without first registering at an office, kept for that purpose That all slitting-mills, and engines for drawing wire or weaving stockings, be put down That all negroes be prohibited from weaving either linen or woolen, or spinning or combing wool, or working at any manufacture of iron, further than making it into pig or bar iron. That they also be pro- hibited from manufacturing hats, stockings, or leather of any kind. This limitation will not abridge the planters of any liberty they now enjoy ; on the contrary, it will then turn their industry to promot- ing and raising those rough materials If we examine into the circumstances of the inhabitants of our plantations, and our own, it will appear that not one-fourth of their product redounds to their own profit, for, out of all that comes here, they only carry back clothing and other accommodations for their families, all of which is of the merchandise and manufacture of this kingdom. . . . . All these advantages we receive by the plantations, be- sides the mortgages on the planters' estates and the high interest they pay us, which is very considerable." * I think, sir, that I have shown by the extracts I have made from that remarkable book, " Cotton is King," that the men of the South understood the laws of trade (certain as that of gravitation) well enough to comprehend the fact that free trade must ultimately destroy the varied inter- ests of the North. They may not, mad with ambition as they were, have seen that the operation of the laws whose penalties they were inflicting upon others would involve them in common destruction; but that they understood the fatal operation of free trade upon the great interests of the country is apparent in every chapter of the essay from which I have quoted. * See quotations from Thomas Jefferson in Speech on Centennial Celebration, Jan. 10, 1871, tupra. PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 39 I know not, sir, whether the gentleman from Indiana has studied the laws of social science, but they have been thoroughly comprehended by the statesmen of England, and furnish the key alike to her diplomacy and legisla- tion. Illustrative of this is the case of Portugal. In the latter part of the seventeenth century she had established manufactures of woolen goods, which were thriving, add- ing to the comfort and prosperity of her people, and to her own respectability and power. They, however, needed protection against the hostile capital and more fully devel- oped industry of England, and in 1684 the Government, discovering the advantages it derived from these manu- factures, resolved to protect them by prohibiting the im- portation of foreign fabrics of the kind. Thenceforward their increase was so rapid as to attract the attention of British capitalists, who determined upon their destruction. This was not to be accomplished at once; but, evading the technical language of the law, they manufactured arti- cles under the names and of descriptions not precisely covered by the act of prohibition, which would supply their places, and threw them in great abundance into the Portuguese markets.* The effect upon the industry of the country was soon felt, and the Government gave its * This device hag been practiced upon during the two past years to the great detriment of the public revenue and of the American wool grower and manufacturer, by invoicing woolen and worsted goods as manufactures of cow and calf hair. Mr. .In iiK-s Dobson, in a letter which appears in the New York Daily Bulletin of January 26th, 1871, says: "In the first place, I would say that these so-called 'calf hair cloakings' are not made from the materials the importers say they are. but in place of being made from cow or calf hair are only go in part the balance being wool; and some goods that have been so classified contain nothing but wool. Out of two hundred and eighty-five invoices that had passed, between July 1st to Nov. 7th, 1870, under the assumption of being calf hair, there were seventy invoices of curled Astrachans which, if properly and honestly invoiced, would have paid duty as manufactures of worsted goods. Samples of these goods can be seen in the Appraiser's Office in New York, if they have not been destroyed since Nov. 7th, 1870. If they have, then I can produce certified samples by the Deputy-Appraiser who passed them. About twenty specimens of the poorer quality of these so-called calf hair goods were submitted by the Treasury Depart- ment for microscopic examination, for the purpose of detecting whether any wool was contained in them, and in every instance wool was discovered, some speci- mens contained seventy per cent, wool, while others had variable proportions. You can find this report in the Treasury Department at Washington. You can also find it embodied in the Department letters, of Dec. 7th and 8th, 1870, to the Collector of the Port of New York. Again, your correspondent says that the assumption that one house in Huddersfield had sent nine-tenths of these goods to the United States, is groundless, like the rest of my statements. All I have to say to this is that I here quoted a portion of the American Consul's letter written to the Collector of New York, calling his attention to the frauds that were being daily perpetrated on the revenue of the country. The letter bears date September 17th, 1870, a copy of which is on file both in New York 40 PEOTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. attention to the matter, and prohibited the introduction of these "serges and druggets." But British capitalists were as determined that their fabrics should clothe the people of Portugal as they have since been that we should con- sume their cotton, woolen, steel, iron, and other goods ; and what they had been unable to accomplish by the mere force of capital or by skilful evasions of Portuguese laws, they at last achieved by diplomacy. Portugal fail- ing to perceive that England could not produce Portu- guese wines, as she cannot produce American cotton, hemp, rice, tobacco, and grain, listened to the words of such diplomacy as induced us to enter into the Canadian reci- procity treaty, and subjected the energy, ingenuity, and industry of her people to the control of the Government and capitalists of England ; the inducement to this step, artfully put forward by Great Britain, was that the wines of Portugal should be admitted into Great Britain at a duty one-third less than that imposed on wines imported from other countries. The effect of this treaty on the indus- try of Portugal is narrated by an English writer, who says : " Before the treaty our woolen cloths, cloth serges, and cloth druggets were prohibited in Portugal. They had set up fabrics there for making cloth, and proceeded with very good success, and we might justly apprehend they would have gone on to erect other fabrics until at last they had served themselves with every species of woolen manufactures. The treaty takes off all prohibitions and obliges Portugal to admit forever all our woolen manufactures. Their own fabrics by this were perfectly ruined, and we exported 100,000 value in the single article of cloths the very year after the treaty. "'I he court [of Portugal] was pestered with remonstrances from their manufacturers when the prohibition was taken off pursuant to Mr. Methuen's treaty. But the thing was passed, the treaty was ratified, and their looms were all ruined." British Merchantmen, vol. 3, p. 253. In the spirit of the diplomacy of Methuen was the par- und Philadelphia, also at the Treasury Department at Washington, and is a public document. He gays : "' My attention having been drawn to the fact that certain manufacturers of this district huve refused to give calf-hair certificates to the goods sold this firm in question, because they knew them to be false and did not wish to perjure them- selves for the sake of gain, however the impression gained ground that the sworn certificate was only a matter of form. I was led to infer that this house in question must be the house who had so misled the manufacturer, and the developments have reached such a form that I feel it incumbent on ine to call the attention of the revenue officers at New York to all the invoices of this firm, which have passed through this agency.' " PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 41 liamentary eloquence of Henry, now Lord Brougham, in 1815. Having described the effect of the peace of 1814, which bound continental Europe to the use of British manufactures, and produced an excessive exportation of British goods in that direction, he said : 'The peace of America has produced somewhat of the same effect, though I am very far from placing the vast exports which it occasioned upon the same footing with those to the European market the year before, both because ultimately the Americans will pay, which the exhausted state of the Continent renders very unlikely, and because it was well worth while to incur a loss upon the first ex- portation in order by the glut to stifle in the cradle those rising manu- factures in the United States which the war has forced into exis- tence contrary to the natural course of things." Though I should not pause here, I cannot abstain from asking the gentleman from Indiana whether he is ready to permit " British capitalists " to glut our markets and stifle in the cradle the rising manufactures which the late war has called into existence ? In further proof that they will do so, and if we do not protect them, throw the work- men engaged in our furnaces, forges, factories and work- shops out of employment, let me add that the commis- sion appointed under the provisions of the act of 5th and 6th Victoria, chapter ninety-nine, showed how well it un- derstood that the supremacy of Great Britain depends on the maintenance, at whatever cost, of her manufacturing supremacy. In its report to Parliament in 1854 it said : " I believe that the laboring classes generally, in the manufactur- ing districts of this country, and especially in the iron and coal dis- tricts, are very little aware of the extent to which they are often indebted for their being employed at all to the immense losses which their employers voluntarily incur in bad times, in order to destroy foreign competition, and to gain and keep possession of foreign mar- kets. Authentic instances are well known of employers having in such times carried on their work at a loss amounting in the aggre- gate to three or four hundred thousand pounds in the course of three or four years. If the efforts of those who encourage the combi- nations to restrict the amount of labor, and to produce strikes, were to be successful for any length of time, the great accumulations of capital could no longer be made which enable a few of the most wealthy capitalists to overwhelm all foreign competition in times of great depression, and thus to clear the way for the whole trade to step in when prices revive, and to carry on a great business before foreign capital can again accumulate to such an extent as to be able to establish a competition in prices with any chance of success. The large capitals of this country are the great instruments of war- fare against the competing capitalists of foreign countries, and are 42 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. the most essential instruments now remaining by which our manu- facturing supremacy can be maintained ; the other elements cheap labor, abundance of raw materials, means of communication, and skilled labor being rapidly in process of being realized." FRANCE, ENGLAND, PRUSSIA, SHODDY Nor, sir, Lave other nations failed to discover that social life is not subject to chance, or to enforce what are now termed the laws of social science. Indeed, the more saga- cious and powerful nations have been compelled in self- defence to do what we grand as are the dimensions and resources of our country must do or be forever dependent and subject to ever more frequently-recurring periods of bankruptcy, private, corporate, State and national. Carlyle's brilliant word-painting depicts the horrors that flowed from contempt for the value of labor in France, and the historian of the rebellion just crushed will portray those which flowed from our disregard of the rights of the laboring people of our country. Had Louis XIV. appre- ciated the value and national power of the skilled indus- try of France, he would not have revoked the edict of Nantes ; commenting upon which, Hume says : "Above half a million of the most useful and industrious subjects deserted France, and exported, together with immense sums of money, those arts and manufactures which had chiefly tended to en- rich that country. . . . Near fifty thousand refugees passed over into England." Since the days of Colbert, however, with the exception of a brief term during which she adherred to the stipula- tions of a " reciprocity treaty," into which England in- veigled her, France has protected her industry by pro- hibitory acts, by bounties or concessions, and by high pro- tective duties. Her present astute ruler and the British Government have recently attempted to dazzle and mis- lead other nations with theories of free trade which neither was willing to carry into operation ; but the tariff act pre- pared by M. Chevalier, after conference with Mr. Cobden, who, in his desire to improve the condition of the labor- ing classes of England by securing them cheap food, was led to adopt all the fallacies of the school of free traders, is perhaps the most scientifically protective revenue law ever devised. France permits none of her raw material, which is not absolutely in excess of her demand for food or fabrics, to PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 43 be exported ; nor will she admit into her ports any article that may come in competition with her industry without requiring it to pay her and her people adequate compen- sation for the injury such admission may inflict. A recent illustration of tfais is before us. The free-trade papers are announcing that France has determined to admit raw whalebone free of duty. They cannot, however, tell us, that she has consented to admit foreign hops on the same terms ; for while inviting cargoes of whalebone to her ports, she has rejected an application for the free admis- sion of hops. She welcomes the product of the American whaler, for whalebone enters into an infinite number of her manufactures. She has no domestic source from which she can derive the article ; and the duty upon it as upon any raw material, was a tax upon her manufacturers, or a bounty to their rivals. She therefore remits the duty for the same reason that she taxes hops. She pro- duces much wine, and but little beer ; and her own soil and labor furnish her with an adequate supply of hops for all uses within her limits. To admit them would be to injure her agriculturists, and perchance, to stimulate an appetite for a beverage that might injure the market for French wines. We ship in the same vessel our wheat, and the bones, rags, and other refuse matter which would, were our own industry broadly diversified, after applica- tion to many purposes of use and pleasure, restore to the earth the elements extracted from it by the tons of wheat which they accompany to foreign markets. These France, England, and Germany guard most sedulously; and in a pamphlet now before me, entitled " The History of the Shoddy Trade, its Rise, Progress, and Present Posi- tion," published in London in 1860, I find that in Eng- land : " Materials regarded at one time as almost worthless, are con- verted, by the improved processes of manual labor and machinery, into valuable elements of textile manufactures. The seams or re- fuse of rags are used after lying to rot, for the purpose of manuring arable land, particularly the hop grounds of Kent and adjacent counties, and are also made into flock partially for bedding and stuffing uses. They are, moreover, (which seems strange indeed), manufactured into a chemical substance, namely, prussiate of potash, a valuable agent in dyeing. Shoddy dust, too, which is the dirt emit- ted from rags and shoddy in their processes, is useful as tillage in like manner with the waste which falls under scribbling-enirines. Tlw latter is saturated with oil, in which consists, mainly, the fertilizinj 44 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. property. Waste is of more value than dust for farming purposes, the former having been generally about double the price of the latter ; but dust has of late increased in value so as to be well nigh equal to waste. A large quantity of these materials is annually sent from this district (the West Riding of York) into Kent and other counties to till the soil. Shoddy dust is useful in other respects than as tillage. It is now even carefully preserved in separate colors and applied in the manu- facture of flock paper-hangings, which are the best description of this article. Not a single thing belonging to the rag arid shoddy system is valueless or useless. There are no accumulations or moun- tains of debris to take up room or disfigure the landscape ; all, good, bad, and indifferent, are beneficially appropriated." Of these valuable materials this little work shows that America furnishes England more than any other nation, and that in point of quality her woolen rags are the best, even better than those derived from the city of London ; that so largely are we the consumers of the cloths manu- factured in greater or less part from our own refuse mat- ter, that a commercial crisis in this country affects every manufacturer in the shoddy districts ; and that the most calamitous eras in the history of the generally thriving towns depending on this manufacture were the years im- mediately following 1837 and 1857, when their industry was entirely suspended by the destruction of the Ameri- can market. France, less lavish of her wealth and more careful of the welfare of her people than we, sedulously guards such elements of wealth and comfort. How sedulously, will appear from the following extract from the little work I have just quoted: "As to rags, we have not been able to import any from France, on account of their having been prohibited as an article of export ; but according to the treaty of commerce just concluded between France and England [that arranged between Chevalier and Cobdeii], the former has engaged to remove the prohibition, but reserves the privilege of imposing a heavy duty on rags shipped thence to this country. The amount of duty has not been fixed yet, we believe ; but there are fears on our part that it will be such as to preclude either paper or woolen rags being brought over to any material ex- tent." The fear expressed by the writer was well founded. Shrewd men played at an intricate game when that treaty was made; and while France consented far enough to give a text upon which she and England might preach free trade to the other nations of the world, she reserved to herself the amplest power to maintain the most perfect de- PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 45 fensive warfare between her interests and those of aggres- sive England.* Prior to 1844, England herself subjected rag-wool, that is, shoddy-wool prepared from rags by any other nation, to a duty of a half-penny per pound ; but when other nations refused to sell trer their rags in bulk, the prepared or rag- wool became the nearest approach she could obtain in adequate supply to that species of raw material, and she abolished the duty which, light as it was, favored the in- dustry of her rivals. Nor is Prussia behind France and England in this mat- ter, for the same pamphlet tells me that at Berlin there are a number of manufactories of rag-wool, several of which have been established by enterprising Englishmen from the shoddy towns of Dewsbury and Batley. "These factories," says the writer, "produce both shoddy and mungo, and appear to be successful undertakings. The principal reason why our countrymen prosecute this business at Berlin and other places in Prussia is because that Government levies a heavy duty on the exportation of rags, and permits shoddy, the manufac- tured article, to go out free, thus affording facilities for an export trade in rag-wool not extended to rags." Insignificant as the territory of Prussia is in comparison with ours, the Government has found it well to insist upon Englishmen, who wish to work the raw materials of the country, coming with capital and machinery to furnish employment to its men, women, and children with the growth of the land, and to supply agricultural stimulants and a market for farm products within its limits, rather than repeat the unsuccessful experiment of clothing the people in foreign goods by selling their raw material at a price fixed by a distant customer, and buying it back in cloth at prices fixed by the same party. Will the Ame- rican people never learn this simple lesson ? SECRET OF BONAPARTE'S POWER. The first Napoleon said, and his words cannot be too often repeated in a republican country, a majority of whose people are dependent on their labor : " In feudal times there was one kind of property land ; but there has grown up another industry. They are alike entitled to the protection and defense of the Government." * The French were merely throwing dirt in our eyes when they reduced their ad valorem duties from 50 or 30 to 15 per cent, on articles that would be equally as well prohibited by an ad valorem duty of 5 per cent. ; or in changing total prohibition for a 30 per cent, ad valorem duty on articles that could not be sold at a profit, even if admitted without any duty at all ; yet this is actually what i.< done. Sullivan : Protection to Native Industry. London, 1870. Am. Ed. p. 65. 46 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR And how did he attempt to protect and defend what was and ever will be almost the only property and de pendence of the majority of the people their skill and industry? Let us learn from Chaptal, his Minister of the Interior, who, in his work on the Industry of France, says : " A sound legislation on the subject of duties on imports is the true safeguard of agriculture and manufacturing industry. It coun- tervails the disadvantages under which our manufactures labor from the condition of the price of workmanship or fuel. It shields the rising arts by prohibitions, thus preserving them from the rivalship of foreigners until they arrive at complete perfection. It tends to establish the national independence, and enriches the country by useful labor, which, as I have repeatedly said, is the principal source of wealth It has been almost everywhere found that rising manufactures are unable to struggle against establishments cemented by time, nourished by numerous capitals, with a credit es- tablished by continued success, and conducted by numbers of expe- rienced and skilful artists. We have been forced to have recourse to prohibition to ward off the competition of foreign productions. . . . . I go further: even at the present time, when these va- rious species of industry are in a flourishing state, when there is nothing to desire with regard to the price or quality of our produc- tions, a duty of but fifteen per cent., which would open the door to the competition of foreign fabrics, would shake to their foundations all the establishments which exist in France. Our stores would in a few days be crowded with foreign merchandise, which wouldbesold at any price in order to extinguish our industry. Our manufacto- ries would be devoted to idleness through the impossibility of the proprietors making the same sacrifices as foreigners ; and we should behold the same scenes as followed the treaty of commerce of 1786, although it was concluded on the basis of fifteen per cent " Cotton yarn forms the raw material of our numerous laces and calicoes. If we freely open our ports to this material, which has undergone but a single operation, behold the infallible results. One hundred million livres at present production would be destroyed for the spinning manufactures of France, because it is invested in build- ings, utensils, and machinery, constructed for this purpose alone ; two hundred thousand persons would be deprived of employment ; eighteen millions of manual labor would be lost to France, and our commerce would be deprived of one of its principal resources, which consists in the transportation of cotton and wool from Asia and America to France. " Let it not be presumed that I deceive myself. I am well ac- quainted with the state of our cotton spinning and that of the two neighboring countries. In France, it is true, manual labor is cheap, but on the other side more extensive establishments, supported by large capitals, afford advantages against which it is impossible for us as yet to struggle. To this must be added that the English spin- ning machinery has been in use for sixty years, that the proprietors are indemnified for all the expenses of their first establishment, that the profits have been converted into new capitals, whereas ours are of recent formation, and the interest of the first investment ought for a long time to be computed in all the calculations of the profits PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 47 of the manufactory. The English manufacturer, reimbursed for his first investment, and possessing a large capital, is able to make sacri- fices to overwhelm and level us, whereas the French manufacturer ia destitute of defense unless protected by the tariff." Chaptal understood as thoroughly as Brougham that England had the power, and that it was her constant policy to "stifle the infant manufactures" of other nations "in the cradle." His language is as applicable to our interests now as it was to those of France when uttered : and we can find no other safeguard for our agricultural and com- mercial interests than such sound legislation on the sub- ject of duties on imports as protected the infant but rising manufactures of France. I cannot abstain, sir, from submitting to your considera- tion in this connection a brief specimen of vigorous con- densation from the instructive address of John L. Hayes, Esq., before the National Association of Wool Manufac- turers : " No sooner had the First Consul, Bonaparte, grasped with a firm hand the reins of state, than he resolved to develop upon the French soil all the elements of wealth concealed within its bosom. He wished to appropriate for France all sciences, arts, and industries. Made a member of the Institute, he uttered this noble sentiment : ' The true power of the French Republic should consist, above all, in its not allowing a single new idea to exist which it does not make its own.' To learn the necessities and resources of the nation, he called upon savans, painters, and artisans to adorn with their productions the vast hall of the Louvre. From this epoch a new career was opened to the industry of France, which found its most magnificent protector in the chief of the State. Napoleon said : 'Spain has twenty-five million merinos; I wish France to have a hundred mil- lions.' To effect this, among other administrative aids, he estab- lished sixty additional sheep-folds to those of Rarabouillet, where agriculturists could obtain the use of Spanish rams without expense. By the continental blockade he closed France and the greater part of Europe against English importations ; and the manufacturers of France were pushed to their utmost to supply, not only their domes- tic, but European consumption. They had to replace, by imitating them, the English commodities to which the people had been so long accustomed. The old routines of manufacturing were aban- doned, and the reign of the Emperor became, in all the industrial arts, one long series of discoveries and progress. Napoleon saw that the con- quest of the industry of England was no less important than the de- struction of its fleets and armies. He appealed to patriotism, as well as science and the arts, to aid him in his strife with the modern Carthage. Visiting the establishment for printing calicoes of the celebrated Oberhampf, Napoleon said to him, as he saw the perfec- tion of the fabrics : ' We are both of us carrying on a war with Eng- land ; but I think that yours, after all, is the best.' ' These words,' says M. Randoing, 'so flattering and so just, were repeated from one end of France to the other ; they so inflamed the imaginations of the 48 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. people that the meanest artisan, believing himself called upon to be the auxiliary of the great man, had but one thought, the ruin of England.' " WHAT PROTECTION HAS DONE FOR GERMANY. Before the establishment of the Zoll-Verein, which oc- curred in 1835, Germany exported raw materials. Hav- ing sold her skins for a six-pence, she bought back what few tails she could at any price. Her laboring people were poor, and, as is now the case in Ireland, in such ex- cess of her ability to feed and clothe them, that she was ever ready to sell a contingent to any party that might be engaged in war, and, if need be, to swell the ranks of both contending armies. In the absence of protective duties, there was nothing of so little value to her as an able-bodied German peasant. But the establishment of that Customs- Union has changed all this. It protects her industry, and as a consequence she imports raw materials from America and all other countries that adhere to her ancient semi- barbarous policy, and exports her grain and wool con- densed into broadcloth and the multiform products of well- protected industry. The annual crop derived from her soil increases per acre steadily as that of England, and in about the ratio of the diminution of ours. Wise laws have here again demonstrated the truth that there is a harmony between the varied interests of the people of a country, and that by a wide and universal diversification of employments the welfare of each and all is advanced. Forty years ago England had not perfected her protec- tive system so far as to admit all raw materials free of duty, and Germany sold her thirty million pounds of raw wool, upon which she collected a duty of twelve cents a pound, part of which, when manufactured into low grades of cloth, she sold at immense profits in Germany. But thirty years of protection have changed all this. Germany now raises over one hundred million pounds of wool, and imports very considerable quantities; and having com- pacted her grain and wool into fine cloths, she exports them to all parts of the world. When the Zoll-Verein was formed, says Henry C. Carey :* * Slave Trade, Domeitic and Foreign, p. 310. This invaluable work does not, as its title implies, relate specially or mainly to chattel slavery. It is the illus- tration of the correctness of Mr. Carey's opinions drawn from the history and condition of many countries. If it be true that "history is philosophy teaching by example," its author should take a high place among historians. Carey's Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign, should receive the consideration of every candid student of social science, and no library is complete in this department without it. PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 49 " The total import of raw cotton and cotton yarn was about three hundred thousand cwts ; but so rapid was the extension of the manufac- ture that in less than six years it had doubled ; and so cheaply were cotton goods supplied that a large export trade had already arisen. In 1845, when the Union was but ten years old, the import of cotton and yarn had reached a million of hundred weights, and since that time there has been a large increase. The iron manufacture also grew so rapidly that whereas, in 1834, the consumption had been only eleven pounds per head ; in 1847 it had risen to twenty-five pounds, having thus more than doubled ; and with each step in this direction, the people were obtaining better machinery for cultivating the land and for converting its raw products into manufactured ones.."* WASHINGTON', JEFFERSON, AND JACKSON. In what strange contrast with this policy, so fruitful of blessings, has been that which we have pursued, and of which the gentleman from Indiana claims President Johnson as an adherent. Opposed to privileged classes we have legis- lated in the interests of but one class, and that an oligar- chy ; proclaiming " the greatest good of the greatest num- ber " as our supreme desire, we have so legislated as to impair the value of labor, the only property of a majority of our people ; vaunting our national independence, we have so legislated as to prevent our escape from a condi- tion of commercial, manufacturing, and financial depend- ence ; and while justly proud of our general intelligence, we have so legislated as to justify the manufacturing and commercial nations of the world in classing us among the semi -barbarous governments, whose people, rich in natural wealth, have not the capacity to mould and transmute raw materials into articles of utility, comfort, and refinement, and in ranking the people of the United States, in their estimation, with those of Turkey, Portugal, Ireland, and the mixed races of Central and South America. The fathers of the country were, in this matter, wiser than their children. They had suffered from the rigid enforcement by Great Britain of Andrew Gee's suggestion to u keep a watchful eye over our colonies, and restrain them from setting up any of the manufactures which are carried on in Great Britain ;" and they knew that if the nation they had founded was to be powerful, and its people prosperous, they must be relieved from that policy by the only means possible the adherence to those defensive laws which * The largest and most successful iron and steel establishment in the world is not in England. It is Krupp's, at Essen, Prussia. Its protected wares compete with those of England in every country. 4 50 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. would protect an infant against the aggressions of a giant. The Constitution was adopted in 1787 ; President Wash- ington was inaugurated in 1789, and in his address of the 8th of January, 1790, said : " The safety and interest of the people require that they should promote such manufactures as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly for military supplies." And on the 15th of the same month, Congress resolved " That it be referred to the Secretary of the Treasury to propose and report to this House a proper plan or plans conformably to the recommendations of the President in his speech to both Houses of Congress, for the encouragement and promotion of such manufac- tures as will tend to render the United States independent of other nations for essential, particularly for military supplies." And in 1791 Congress adopted an Act for imposing duties on imports, the preamble of which contains the following language : " Whereas it is necessary for the support of the Government, for the discharge of the debts of the United States, and the encourage- ment and protection of manufactures, that duties be laid on goods, wares, and merchandise imported." In a communication five years later than this, Washing- ton said : " Congress have repeatedly directed their attention to the encour- agement of manufactures. The object is of too much importance not to insure a continuance of these efforts in every way which shall appear eligible." And Mr. Jefferson, in his message of 1802, said that " To cultivate peace, maintain commerce and navigation, to foster our fisheries, and protect manufactures adapted to our circumstances, etc., are the land-marks by which to guide ourselves in all our rela- tions." These expressions are inconsistent with the opinions adverse to the policy of fostering manufacturers in this country embodied by Jefferson in his Notes on Virginia in 1785 ; but he was not one of those fools who hold it a weakness to change an opinion, even under the discipline of experience ; and in a letter to Mr. Benjamin Austin, dated January 9, 1816, when the subject of a protective tariff was agitated by the people and was about to be brought to the attention of Congress, said in support of his matured judgment : "You tell me I am quoted by those who wish to continue our dependence on England for manufactures. There was a time PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 51 when I might have been so quoted with more candor .... We have since experienced what we did not then believe, that there exists both profligacy and power enough to exclude us from the field of interchange with other nations that to be independent for the comforts of life, we must fabricate them ourselves. We must now place the manufacturer by the side of the agriculturist. He, therefore, who is now against domestic manufactures must be for reducing us either to dependence on that foreign nation, or to be clothed in skins and to live like wild beasts in deris and caverns. I am proud to say that I am not one of these. Exper- ience has taught me that manufactures are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort ; and if those who quote me as of a different opinion will keep pace with me in purchasing nothing foreign \vhere an equivalent of domestic fabric can be obtained, withotit any regard to difference of price, it will not be our fault if we do not have a supply at home equal to our demand, and wrest that weapon of distress from the hand which has so long wantonly violated it." General Jackson's oft-quoted letter to Dr. Coleman, of North Carolina, was about eight years later than that of Mr. Jefferson, and nothing that he ever wrote illustrates more admirably his strong common sense and devotion to the rights and interests of all the people of the Union which he so resolutely defended. Writing to one of that class who have been pleased to call themselves " planters," to distinguish them from the " hard-fisted farmers " of the North, upon whose interests they were then waging war, that they might secure cheap food for their slaves, he said: " I will ask, what is the real situation of the agriculturist ? Where has the American fanner a market for his surplus products? Except for cotton, he has neither a foreign nor a home market. Does not this clearly prove, when there is no market, either at home or abroad, that there is too much labor employed in agriculture, and that the channels of labor should be multiplied ? Common sense points out at once the remedy. Draw from agriculture the superabundant labor; employ it in mechanism and manufactures, thereby creating a home market for your breadstuff's, and distribut- ing labor to a most profitable account ; and benefits to the country will result. Take from agriculture in the United States six hundred thousand men, women, and children, and you at once give a home market for more breadstuff's than all Europe now furnishes us. In short, sir, we have been too long subject to the policy of the British merchants. It is time we should become a little more Americanized, and instead of feeding the paupers and laborers of Europe, feed our own ; or else, in a short time, by continuing our present policy, we shall all be paupers ourselves." MAN CANNOT COMPROMISE PRINCIPLES. Mr. Chairman, why have we not regarded the teachings of history, the monitions of the fathers, the oft-recurring and bitter experience of the past? Why have we been 52 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. content, to find the mass of artisans and artificers of the coun- try, at intervals of from seven to ten years, without employ- ment, drawing from the savings bank their hoarded earn- ings, seeing the little homes, under the roofs of which they had hoped in ripe age to die, passing under the sheriff's hammer ; and to see the forge, the furnace, the mill, and the workshop idle, and changing hands by forced sale oftentimes at less than a fourth, and sometimes at but a tithe of their original cost? Why have we been content to see the crop of the farmer rot in the field, while the laboring people of the cities were gnawed by hunger, and causing doubts of the stability of republican institutions by threatening, and in at least one instance absolutely per- petrating, bread riots? Why has our march of emigra- tion been a march of desolation, and the son of him who emigrated to Ohio as the far West, finding his labor unre- warded by the famished land, been constrained to cry " Westward ho ! " and go to contend with the trials and deprivations of frontier life, and found a new State still more remote from markets ? And why was it, sir, that when those who would over- throw our Government fired upon the flag, that, with our unequalled ingenuity, our sheep walks of limitless extent, our boundless water power, and our measureless stores of coal and iron, we were unable to provide adequate clothing and arms for the seventy-five thousand men summoned to our defense ? There is but one answer to all these questions. We suffered all these ills because we had disregarded the laws I am endeavoring to illustrate and other fundamental truths in which, on every public occasion, we proclaim our' belief; had endeavored to maintain in this free and busy age an anachronism, involving the denial of all rights, and the repression of the native ability of the laborers of one half of our country; and had endeavored to prove the solecism that slavery is an essential element of free institu- tions, and adds to the power of a country contending for supremacy with nations that are using every expedient to animate the industry, ingenuity, and enterprise of their peo- ple. By oppressing others we enfeebled and degraded ourselves. Slavery has its laws, and they are irreconcil- able with those which quicken industry and develop material power. Time will not permit, nor is this the occasion for their discussion. It is enough for the present to say that they do not tolerate intelligent or requited PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 53 labor. They were understood and enforced by the slave- owning oligarchy, and were submitted to by the masses of the people, whose artfully fostered pride of race de- luded them into the belief that the inequalities of caste were consistent with the democracy of a professedly Christian republic. At last the delusion is dispelled, and with it go the cruel necessities by which those who, being freemen, were, under the compromises of the Constitution, enslaved by the inherent laws of slavery; and our country having corrected the solecism and banished the anachronism, may now enter upon a career of competition with the most advanced nations of the world. The vast and varied attractions the United States present to the hopeful, the enterprising, ingenious and skilled workmen of the world, are the means by which we may enfeeble all rival Powers, while building up our own, and augmenting the prosper- ity of our rapidly-increasing people. Slavery being dead, let us entomb with it its twin barbarism, British free trade. Henceforth our legislation may well be directed to advancing the greatest good not only of the greatest num- ber, but the unquestioned good of all ; and in this it will stand in strange contrast with its purposes and policy in the past. To show how wide that contrast will be, let me turn again to King Cotton. On page 96 of this royal volume I find it written: "At the date of the passage of the Nebraska bill, the multiplica- tion of provisions by their more extended cultivation, was the only measure left that could produce a reduction of prices and meet the wants of the planters. The Canadian reciprocity treaty, since se- cured, will bring the products of the British North American colonies, free of duty, into competition with those of the United States ivhen prices with us rule high." This was not written by an English hand. Our forges, furnaces, and factories were unprofitable capital. Coal, ore, and limestone lay undisturbed in the places of their original deposit, and mechanics of skill and energy went begging for employment. Yet an American writer rejoiced that the means had been secured by which the farmers of the country could be made to suffer with the afflicted multitude. With that want of patriotism which has long characterized the leaders of the Demo- cratic party, he exulted over the subjection of the agri- cultural interests of his country to those of British North America by that misnamed reciprocity treaty with Canada 54 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. which southern influence had forced upon us, and lauded it as the sure means by which the farmer should be driven to a still greater distance from all other markets than that afforded by the few hundred thousand men who regarded no interests but their own, and believed that these could only be promoted by procuring still cheaper food for their millions of slaves. But listen to him again. On page 123 I find the follow- ing : " From what has been said, the dullest intellect cannot fail now to perceive the rationale of the Kansas-Nebraska movement. The political influence which these Territories will give to the South will be of the first importance to perfect its arrangement for future slavery extension, whether by division of the larger States and Territories now secured to the institution, its extension into territory hitherto considered free, or the acquisition of new territory to be devoted to the system, so as to preserve the balance of power in Congress. When this is done, Kansas and Nebraska, like Kentucky and Missouri, will be of little consequence to slaveholders compared with the cheap and constant supply of provisions they can yield. Nothing, therefore, will so exactly coincide with southern interests as a rapid emigration of freemen into these new Territories. White free labor, doubly productive over slave labor in grain-growing, must be multiplied within their limits, that the cost of provisions may be re- duced, and the extension of slavery and the growth of cotton suffer no interruption. The present efforts to plant them with slavery are indispensable to produce sufficient excitement to fill them speedily with a free population ; and if this whole movement has been a southern scheme to cheapen provisions and increase the ratio of the production of sugar and cotton, as it most unquestionably will do, it surpasses the statesmanlike strategy which forced the people into an acquiescence in the annexation of Texas. And should the anti- slavery voters succeed in gaining the political ascendency in these Territories, and bring them as free States triumphantly into the Union, what can they do but turn in as all the rest of the western States have done, and help to feed slaves, or those who manufacture or sell the products of the labor of slaves ? " These paragraphs show that the slaveholders achieved what an examination of the topography of the country might have led them to regard as a last grand triumph. Their system held undisputed sway ; and let me ask whether, had they been content to live under the Govern- ment that existed, it could have prospered long? Two interests alone were to be pursued: the growing of grain in the North and West, and the growing of cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, and hemp in the South. In the light of the extracts, showing the rapid exhaustion of our soil by the exportation of its products, which I presented in the earlier PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 55 part of my remarks, and of the experience of every far- mer and planter, will it be asserted that this system of culture could long have continued ? Science could have calculated the years of its possible duration with almost perfect accuracy. When, under such a system, could the earth have rest for recuperation? And whence could come the stimulants to restore its wasted energies ? The system omitted these essential conditions of prosperity, and thereby provided for its own decline. The scheme was an impracticable one, which though it might have served as a temporary expedient, could not endure, for it was in conflict with the laws of Providence. It may be that an indistinct perception of this drove the oligarchy to the madness of war ; for all now admit that there was not, in the election of Mr. Lincoln, or the purposes of the Eepublican party, anything to justify their attempt to destroy the Union by war. But be this as it may, the war did but hasten, by a few years, the inevitable termination of their persistent folly and crime. The com- mercial crisis of 1860, following so closely upon that of 1857, and repeating, as both did so minutely, in all their details, the disastrous and wide-spread incidents of 1837 and 1840, would in themselves have constrained the people to demand such legislation as would promote and secure a diversification of our industries, the development of our resources, and the laying of foundations for a widely-ex- tended commerce. The American people had become too numerous, too enlightened, too energetic, and had endured too many of these commercial crises to have been willing longer to submit their fortunes and destinies to the control of the few arrogant theorists, whose views were so narrow and whose fancied interests were so diametrically opposed to those of all the rest of their countrymen. THEN AND NOW. Sir, let us contemplate for a moment our condition when the champions of slavery and free trade fired on the flag of the country. April, 1861, found us unable to clothe our soldiers or furnish them with implements and muni- tions of war. When the President called for seventy-five thousand troops, and that number of the flower of our countrymen promptly responded, they were clad, not in our blue alone, but in gray, the chosen color of our enemy, in black, in red, or any other color, because we had not 56 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. the proper material with which to clothe them. We had not the quality of iron from which to fashion a gun barrel, nor could we make it. We had not blankets to shield our men from rain or frost, in camp or bivouac; and as the people regarded the base character of the articles with which our army was provided, many of which had been made from American rags in the shoddy towns of York- shire, they raised a universal cry of " fraud " against both public officers and contractors. Our mills, forges, furnaces, and factories stood still. The frugal laborer was living upon the earnings of past years. Commerce, having dwindled from the expiration of the protective tariff of 1842, had ceased to animate our ports. The crops of the West stood ungathered in the fields, and the bankruptcy of 1857, from which we had not yet recovered, had returned to sweep away the few who had withstood the surge. But the case is altered now. Necessity has compelled us to do what reason and experience long ago suggested. The fact that we determined to pay in gold the interest on our bonds and to obtain the required bullion by collecting the duties on imports in coin, has done much to animate and diversify our industry. This fact and the general results of the war* for the duties we lay on raw materials and our internal taxes more than counterbalance the pro- tection afforded to many branches of" industry by our tariff* laws have enabled us to recover from our prostration and started us in a career of prosperity and progress ; and if wisdom guide our legislation, the waste lands of which I have read will soon be reinvigorated ; the ancient village will be absorbed in the expanding city ; new towns will mark the plain and river bank ; and where the mean white and the negro have loitered listlessly through the months, diversified and well-paid industry, quickening their ener- gies and expanding their desires, will employ all their hours, arid enable each to carve his way as an American citizen should do in a career that will afford him pleasure or profit. The gentleman from Indiana may desire to recall the idle- ness and misery of 1860, but I cannot believe that he is justified in intimating that President Johnson sympathizes with him in this respect. * The most immediate and beneficent of which was the volume of currency created by the i?sue of greenbacks. PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 57 VIRGINIA. General Frank P. Blair, jr., intent upon neutralizing any service he may have rendered the country during the war, having gathered about him the representative men of the eighty thousand disfranchised traitors of Missouri with whom he now affiliates, recently charged, as does the gentleman from Indiana, that the Kepublican party of the country is under the control of men whose object is to aggrandize New England, and by a protective tariff tax the agricultural interests of the country for the benefit of a few wealthy manufacturers, and that the resistance offered to the admission of representatives of the con- quered but unregetierated people of the South by Congress is the result of this purpose. How false this is he well knows ; for every member of the family in the councils of which he bears so distinguished a part, and which always speaks as a unit, may be shown, by their published utterances, to understand that protection to American industry is essential to the prosperity of the agricultural interests of the country. Adequate protection to Ameri- can industry, its defense against the assaults of the accu- mulated capital, machinery, cheap labor, and skill of foreign countries, is of less importance to the middle and New England States than to any other portion of the country. The wasted South most needs it ; and next to the South, the Northwest, rich in all the elements of man- ufacturing greatness, and poor only from her want of local markets, which the diversification of her-industry and developement of her multifarious resources would create. Sir, Virginia is not a New England State ; nor do her people delight in being called Yankees, though they will hereafter be as proud as we are of our national cognomen. But no portion of our country, unless it be General Blair's own Missouri, with her boundless stores of varied mineral wealth, would be so blessed by setting all its poor at work upon the growth of its own lands as Virginia. A discrimi- nating writer, who in August last traversed a large portion of the gold region of the State, in company with three eminent mineralogists, in the course of an article in the December number of Harper's Magazine, says : "To give any adequate description of the mineral wealth which Virginia contains, would be not only to minutely describe every rod of her entire length, embracing hundreds of miles, but to enu- merate almost every mineral of value hitherto known among man.- 58 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. kind. It is not in gold alone that she abounds but, scattered in profusion over almost her entire surface are to be found iron, copper, silver, tin, tellurium, lead, platinum, cinnabar, plumbago, manganese, asbestos, kaolin, slate, clay, coal, roofing slate of the greatest dura- bility, marbles of the rarest beauty, soap stone, sulphur, hone-stone, equal to the best Turkey, gypsum, lime, copperas, blue stone, grind stone, cobalt, emery, and a variety of other materials that we have hitherto been compelled to import or to do without. Indeed, it may be said, without exaggeration, that in the single State of Virginia, in the most singular juxtaposition of what might be considered geolog- ically incongruous materials, is to be found an almost exhaust- less fund of God-given treasures, more than enough to pay off our whole national debt, and only awaiting the rnagic touch of capital and enterprise to drag them to light for the benefit of man." Of what avail have these boundless deposits of multi- form riches been to the people of Virginia, and what have the Democratic party, slavery, and British free trade done for their most fortunately situated and devoted adherents ? The aristocracy of Virginia have withheld from the laborer his hire, and the native fertility of their land has wasted away. They have traded in human muscles as a source of power, and laboring men have shunned their inviting climate ; and their water power, exceeding in one year the muscular power that all the slaves found in the United States at the taking of the last census could put forth in a lifetime, has flowed idly to the sea, often through forests so wide that it could " hear no sound save its own dashing." And the State, from having at the close of the last century been the first in point of population and political power, fell, in sixty years, asTis shown by the census of 1860, to be the fifth in population, and to rank the equal of free young Indiana in the fifth class in political power. The laws of Providence are inflexible, and it could not be otherwise. Despising labor, the Heaven-appointed condition on which alone man shall eat bread, she tended year by year toward poverty and want, and though she raised million^ of laboring people of every shade of hu- man complexion, the sweat of their brows enriched not her fields but those of other states. Like Germany before the establishment of the Zoll- Verein, and Ireland since the Union, she raised little else than labouring people for exportation. If he who fails to provide for his family be worse than an infidel, what shall be said of the legislation that drives the heirs to so goodly a heritage as the lands of Virginia forth in want and ignorance to dwell among strangers ? PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 59 The Republicans of New England and the Middle States would make all her people comfortable, happy, and intel- ligent, in the homes of their fathers. We of Pennsylva- nia will welcome them to generous rivalry in every branch of industry to which we have devoted ourselves. In this age of iron, fire is force, and Virginia is underlaid by the purest fuel. If she wishes to leave her rich gold and silver mines in all their wealth to posterity, let her rival us in contributing to the needed supply of iron and steel for the exhausted South. Her kaolin is equal to any in England, and why will she not lessen our dependence on that country by building up an American Staffordshire, and embodying in porcelain the conceptions of American art? And as the product of the quarries of New Jersey and northeastern Pennsylvania have driven British roofing and school slates from our northern market, why will she not send hers to every market in the South ? The country would be none the less powerful or respecta- ble if every child in that section, however black, were expert in the use of the slate and pencil, or if their now squalid homes were embellished, as are those of many of the working people of the North, by ornate brackets, shelves, mantles, pier slabs, and table, bureau, and wash- stand tops of what everybody but the connoisseur and expert mistakes for porcelain, mosaic, or Spanish, Egyptian, red and green Pyreneese, verd-antique, Siennese, porphyry, brocatel, or other marbles, but which are produced at little cost from the slate of Lehigh county. PENNSYLVANIA CHALLENGES GENEROUS COMPETITION. Is it said, sir, that Pennsylvania seeks to obtain a mo- nopoly of the American iron market? Why, then, does she ask you to so legislate that capital shall find its advan- tage, and the laborer become rich, in working the unmea- sured iron and coal-beds of her near neighbors, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee ? England can no longer supply herself with charcoal pig- iron. She has not the fuel. Her forests have yielded to the demand for pasturage and sheep walks. She is in this respect dependent on foreign countries, and buys such pig metal as raw material where she can get it best and cheap- est, from Sweden, Norway, Russia, or Nova Scotia, all of which are in the same isothermal zone, in which are found 60 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. underlying forests which yield an average of fifty cords per acre, the inexhaustible beds of better than Swedish ore of the Marquette region of Michigan and Wisconsin. And, gentlemen of the Northwest, I ask you whether pa- triotic Pennsylvania manifests a disposition to tax you for her advantage when she challenges your competition, and implores you to help her to outdo England without fight- ing and enrich yourselves by setting unemployed laborers at work with the growth of your own lands? The Besse- mer or pneumatic converter is coming largely into use, and the exigencies of the war and the incidental protection it has given our industry have created manufactories of American steel ; and in each of these facts you have a guarantee of steady increase in the demand for your un- rivaled product, and of the profits of the railroad compa- nies, which will carry away your commodities and return with people to build the cities your expanding iron and steel works must create. A few figures will verify these assertions. Dr. Eobert H. Lamborn, than whom there is no more careful statistician, tells us that " By comparing the production of this region with that of other iron districts, it will be found that it produced in 1864 more pig metal than Connecticut or Massachusetts in the same year, and sixty per cent, more than New York in 1850. Reckoning ore and metal to- gether, the mines of Marquette threw into consumption in 1864 154,905 tons of metal, or three-fifths as much as the total pig-iron production of the United States, according to the census returns of 1850, and one-eighth of all the pig-iron produced by the United States in 1864." In view of these gratifying facts, can it be possible that the people of the Northwest are anxious /for an early re- newal of the " tripartite alliance formed by the Western farmer, the Southern planter, and the English manufactu- rer," so exultantly referred to in "Cotton is King," by which the furnaces producing all this metal shall be closed, and their proprietors and the laborers they employ reduced to bankruptcy, as those of Ohio and Pennsylvania have so often been by British free trade ? If, gentlemen of Missouri, Pennsylvania is seeking a monopoly, why do her people labor to persuade you to produce at the base of Iron mountain and Pilot Knob the utilities to the creation of which they devote their capital and industry ? No, our efforts are not selfish. We wish to raise the prostrate South and give her an onward and PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 61 upward career, and to secure to the American laborer wages so liberal that the report thereof shall invite to our shores the skilled and enterprising workmen of every craft and country. By employing all our people with the growth of our own lands we can create an urgent de- mand for labor, and thereby solve the most difficult prob- lem before the country ; for when labor is in quick de- mand its value will be regarded and the rights of the laborer protected. By no other means can the exhausted South be restored, or the work of her recuperation be commenced. Who will emigrate to the recently insurgent States ? Vast and varied and peculiar as are their natural resources, will capital, proverbially timid as it is, fly to a region charac- terized by turbulence and lawlessness, or enterprise to a land in which labor is regarded as the disgraceful office of a subject race, and where legislation is employed to re- press the intellect and suppress the aspirations of the laboring people for a higher and better life? Sir, there is not a Northern State that does not outbid them for emi- grants and offer superior inducements to the capitalist and those that are infinitely more attractive to him who has but his labor and that of his family to sell. Pennsylvania needs a million laborers. She can feed and clothe and house them all should they come to her in the current year. We want them to gather and refine petroleum, to construct and manage railroads, to conduct our internal carrying trade, to build factories, forges, furnaces, foun- deries, and the towns they will beget; to quarry slate, zinc, coal, iron, marble, and the thousand other elements of wealth condensed within the limits of our State. Inert as these natural elements of wealth are, they are of no available value; but the quickening touch of labor will transmute them all to gold ; and energy, enterprise, and capital in the hands of men whose earlier years were passed in manual labor, are holding out to industry the richest bribes to induce it to come and help pay our national debt and increase our country's power by enrich- ing themselves and us. But, sir, we offer higher induce- ments than wages in dollars and cents. Our equal laws, recognizing the fact that the children of a State are its jewels, put a school-house near every laboring man's dwelling, and as a reward for his industry, and to increase the power of the State, secure to each child coming into it 62 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. the keys of all knowledge in the mastery of the English language, the art of writing, and at least the elementary rules of arithmetic. And in the neighborhood of every hamlet the church spire points the way from earth to heaven. Before the altar employer and workman meet as equals, and in the same class in the Sunday-school their children learn practical lessons of Christian equality. A SUGGESTION AND EXAMPLE TO THE SOUTH. These are conditions that the South cannot yet offer to the emigrant from our fields or those of Europe. If she would prosper she must Americanize her system of life, abandon her contempt for labor, and her habits of violence and disregard of law. She must learn to respect man as man, and stimulate his exertions by quickening his intel- lect, expanding and chastening his desires, and insuring him a just reward for whatever he shall put forth in the way of industry, ingenuity, or enterprise. She can only create the elements of her new and great future by devel- oping the resources now at her command, the chief of which she will find to be her apt and docile laboring peo- ple. Her present purpose seems to be not to do this, but to enter on a new career of oppression. Her dream is still of dominion over large plantations and imbruited laborers. Let her abandon the problem, " How can I make my la- borers work ? " and occupy herself upon the gentler one, " How can I induce these people by whom I am surrounded to enrich themselves and me ? " and she will begin to learn how rich and powerful she is. When she shall have ac- complished thus much, when her laborers are freely paid and her common schools offer shelter and culture to the laborer's child, she may successfully appeal to those who can elsewhere find wages, security, and equal chances in life to come and cast their lot with her. She should has- ten the coming of that day. In common with us, she is burdened by the debt of $3,000,000,000 in which she has involved us. Let her remember that she, too, has coal, iron, lead, copper, zinc, silver and gold, cinnabar, tellu- rium, and all the elements of manufacturing and commer- cial power which characterize so abundantly every section of our country ; that she has broad land which will not be fully worked when every man and woman within its limits may say, with truth, "I am indeed an American citizen, and have, by my well-requited voluntary labor, earned the PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 63 bread my dear family has this day eaten." And she will find that she has added vastly to her wealth when the field hand shall have been transformed into a skilled workman ; when he who, under the lash, has lazily hoed cotton or corn, under the stimulus of liberal wages, converts ore and coal into rails, cannon, or anchors, or into any of the thou- sand minor fabrics from the fish-hook and the sail or pack- ing needle to the heavy and complicated lock advertised in the catalogue of one concern, that of Russell & Erwin, of New Britain, in Connecticut a State producing so lit- tle iron as to be scarcely remembered when enumerating the iron-producing Commonwealths of the country. This concern, I am informed, sold but $30,000 worth of goods in the first year of its operations, and $3,000,000 worth during the last year. Meanwhile it has concentrated in the village enlivened by its works a thriving and highly- educated population, and has converted unskilled laborers into mechanics and accomplished mechanicians, though their hands were no nimbler or their minds more compre- hensive or versatile than those of the laborers to be found in the devastated South, whose extermination or expatriation seems to be within the purview of those who assert their right to control the policy of that section. It is not for the rich, the comparatively few who have accumulated capital, that we demand protection. We ask it in the name of the millions who live by toil, whose de- pendence is on their skill and ability to labor, and whose labor creates the wealth of the country. To what fearful competition they are subjected when by withholding pro- tection we leave them undefended against the assaults of British capital, is aptly set forth by Daniel J. Morrell, Esq., in his admirable letter to the secretary of the Ame- rican Iron and Steel Association. He says : "That portion of the price of a ton of imported iron which stands for the wages of labor, represents coarse food, mean raiment, and worse lodging, political nullity, enforced ignorance, serfdom in a sin- gle occupation, with a prospect of eventual relief from the pariah. " That portion of the price of a ton of American iron which stands for the wages of labor, represents fresh and ivholesome food, good raiment, the homestead, unlimited freedom of movement and change of occupation, intelligent support of all the machinery of municipal. State and national Government, with a prospect of comfortable old age, at last dividing its substance with blessings among prosperous children. "Thus it is easy to see why imported iron may be cheap and American iron dear ; for the latter, in addition to its other burdens, 64 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. pays an extraordinary tax to freedom and enlightenment, which are assuredly deserving of protection." Mr. Morrell evidently does not agree with the magnates of the South in their opinion that the way to make a State great and powerful is to oppress and degrade its working people. WE CAN PAY OUR DEBTS "WITHOUT MONEYS." I have never been able to believe that a national debt is a national blessing. I have seen how good might be in- terwoven with or educed from evil, or how a great evil might, under certain conditions, be turned to good ac- count; but beyond this, I have never been able to regard debt, individual or national, as a blessing. It may be that, as in the inscrutable providence of God it required nearly five years of war to extirpate the national crime of slavery, and anguish and grief found their way to nearly every hearth-side in the country before we would recog- nize the manhood of the race we had so long oppressed, it was also necessary that we should be involved in a debt of unparalleled magnitude, that we might be compelled to avail ourselves of the wealth that lies so freely around us, and by opening markets for well-rewarded industry, make our land, what in theory it has ever been, the refuge of the oppressed of all climes. England, if supreme selfish- ness be consistent with sagacity, has been eminently saga- cious in preventing us from becoming a manufacturing people ; for with our enterprise, our ingenuity, our freer institutions, the extent of our country, the cheapness of our land, the diversity of our resources, the grandeur of our seas, lakes, and rivers, we should long ago have been able to offer her best workmen such inducements as would have brought them by millions to help bear our burdens and fight our battles. We can thus raise the standard of British and continental wages, and protect American work- men against ill-paid competition. This we must do if we mean to maintain the national honor. The fields now un- der culture, the houses now existing, the mines now being worked, the men we now employ, cannot pay our debt. To meet its annual interest by taxing our present popula- tion and developed resources would be to continue an ever- enduring burden. The principal of the debt must be paid; but as it was contracted for posterity its extinguishment should not PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 65 impoverish those who sustained the burdens of the war. I am not anxious to reduce the total of our debt, and would, in this respect, follow the example of England, and as its amount has been fixed would not for the present trouble myself about its aggregate except to prevent its increase. My anxiety is that the taxes it involves shall be as little oppressive as possible, and be so adjusted that, while defending our industry against foreign assault, they may add nothing to the cost of those necessaries of life which we cannot produce, and for which we must therefore look to other lands. The raw materials entering into our manufactures, which we are yet unable to produce, but on which we unwisely impose duties, I would put into the free list with tea, coffee and other such purely foreign essentials of life, and would impose duties on commodities that compete with American productions, so as to protect every feeble or infant branch of industry and quicken those that are robust. I would thus cheapen the elements of life, and enable those whose capital is embarked in any branch of production to offer such wages to the skilled workmen of all lands as would steadily and rapidly increase our numbers, and, as is always the case in the neighbor- hood of growing cities or towns of considerable extent, increase the return for farm labor ; this policy would open new mines and quarries, build new furnaces, forges and factories, and rapidly increase the taxable property and taxable inhabitants of the country. Would the South accept this theory and enter heartily upon its execution, she would pay more than now seems her share of the debt and feel herself blessed in the ability to do it. Her climate is more genial than ours ; her soil may be restored to its original fertility; her rivers are broad, and her harbors good ; and above all, hers is the monopoly of the fields for rice, cane sugar, and cotton. Let us pursue for twenty years the sound national policy of protection, and we will double our population and more than quadruple our capital and reduce our indebtedness per capita and per acre to little more than a nominal sum. Thus each man can " without moneys " pay the bulk of his portion of the debt by blessing others with the ability to bear an honorable burden. How protection, by animating, diversifying, and reward- ing industry, will pay our debt is well shown by the experience of the last five years. And though we do not 5 66 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. owe that experience to sagacious legislation, but, as I have said, to the exigencies of the war, it should guide our future steps. The disparity between gold and paper has added to the duties imposed on foreign products, and enabled our manufacturers to enter upon a career of pros- perity such as they have never enjoyed, save for a brief period, under the tariffs of 1824 and 1828, and again for four years under that of 1842, a prosperity in which the farmers are sharing abundantly, as is shown by the fact that they are now out of debt, though most of their farms were mortgaged five years ago. When the war began we could not, as I have said, make the iron for a gun-barrel ; we can now export better gun-barrels than we can import. We then made no steel, and had to rely on foreign coun- tries for material for steel cannon and those steel-pointed shot by which alone we can pierce the five-and-a-half inch iron-clads with which we must contend in future warfare. Many of our regiments that came first to the capital came in rags, though every garment on their backs was new, and many of them of freshly imported cloth. But, sir, no army in the world was ever so substantially clothed and armed as that which for two days passed in review before the President of the United States and the Lieuten- ant General after having conquered the rebellion, and which, when disbanded, was clad in the product of Ameri- can spindles and looms, and armed with weapons of American materials and construction. It is said that ten years ago " a piece of Lake Superior iron ore was a curiosity to most of our practical metal- lurgists." In 1855 the first ore was shipped from Mar- quette county. How rapid the enlargement of the trade has been is shown by the following statement : In 1855 there were exported 1.445 tons. 1856 11,594 1857 26,184 1858 31,135 1859 65,679 1860 116,948 1861 45,430 1862 115,720 1863 185,275 1864 ' 235,123 The production of charcoal pig iron in that region, we are told by Dr. Lamborn, commenced at the Pioneer works near the Jackson mine in 1858. Those works were the PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 67 pioneers of a great army, and already the Collinsville, the Forrestville, the Morgan, and the Greenwood furnaces are in profitable operation. The production of charcoal iron in that county has been as follows : In 1858 there were exported 1,627 tons. 1859 7,258 1860 5,660 1861 7,970 1862 8,590 1863 8,908 1864 13,832 And though we produced no steel in 1860, a table con- structed from information furnished by the report of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue for the year ending June 30, 1864, shows that the Government had in that year derived $391,141 39 of internal revenue from the steel made and manufactured in the United States during that year. Time will not permit me to indicate the many new branches of industry which have sprung up, or the vast extension and improvement of those which, under our old free trade system, had found an insecure footing and were enduring a sickly existence. I may, however, venture on a few remarks upon this head. California is not a New England or an eastern State ; she has perhaps been less affected by the war than any other State, unless it be Ore- gon ; and I find that, though she raised in 1859 but 2,378, 000 pounds of wool, she raised in 1863, 7,600,000, and in 1864, 8,000,000 pounds. She is, we are assured by her papers, realizing the advantage of bringing the producer and consumer together ; and though during the last year she shipped to New York some 7,500,000 pounds of wool, she is showing that her people understand the importance of saving the double transportation they would otherwise pay on those of their own products they might consume that for carrying the raw material to the factory, and that for bringing the fabrics back again. I find in one of her papers the following statement : " CALIFORNIA WOOLEN MILLS. The Pioneer Mill, at Black Point, California, has thirty-one looms at work now, consumes annually 1,200,000 pounds of wool, employs 220 laborers, pays out $100,000 yearly in wages, uses a capital of $500,000, and runs fifty-two sewing machines. About one-fourth of the wool purchased is used in mak- ing blankets, the importation of which has now entirely ceased, the home production having taken entire possession of the market. 68 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. Nearly half the production is flannel, which is gradually crowding the imported article out of the market. About one-third of the wool consumed at this mill is made into tweeds and cassimeres, which is mostly made up into clothing in San Francisco. Broadcloth is not made there in quantity, because of the scarcity of pure Merino wool. The Pioneer and Mission Mills together consume about 2,400,000 pounds of wool, employ about 450 laborers and $1,000,000 of capital, and pay out $200,000 in wages annually." Well done, California. Your tweeds and cassimeres and blankets will crowd foreign articles not out of your own State alone, but out of the markets of the Pacific slope. You will soon need machinists to construct your sewing-machines and make the tools for those who do such work. Land around your cities will grow in value; and those who own it need not compete with farmers so distant from market as to limit them to the production of grain alone. Hay, potatoes, turnips, and all other roots for the sustenance of man and beast, and fruits for the table, may engage their attention and give them ample reward for their labor. Oregon has also felt the quickening influence of the times. She paid to the internal revenue department, during 1864, taxes on the manufacture of $128,620 67 of woolen cloth. THE PEOPLE OF THE PRAIRIES NEED A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. The people of the prairies, next to those of the desolated South, are interested in the creation and maintenance of diversified industry. While they depend on grain-grow- ing, and that commerce which English free trade permits the producers of raw materials to enjoy, cities will be founded and grow at points on the lakes and rivers ; but none of these even can be great cities without manufac- tures. Here and there a concentration of railroads may also create a first-class town or an inferior city ; but the rest of their wide country will be but sparsely populated by an agricultural community, and dotted at wide distances apart by beautiful villages such as now gratify the eye of the traveler through the West. The prairie States have within them the elements of innumerable profitable industries. The western farmer clears his new land by girdling and burning the primitive forests. The wood is not without value, and condensed as it might be, it would bear transportation to a market. PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. . 69 Constituents of mine have been for two years engaged in erecting works which cover over fifteen acres of land for the production of paper pulp from wood. There now lie around their vast buildings thirty-five thousand cords of wood ; and in a few days they hope to put their works in operation. For awhile they ran part of their machinery and produced to their entire satisfaction and that of the trade pulp which, intermingled with five per cent, or less of that produced from cotton rags, furnished admirable printing paper. Now, the corn husks ay, and the corn with the husks of the farmers of the West, go to waste, or find no better use than supplying them with fuel during the winter. The following article, clipped from the New York Evening Post of November 25, invites them to experiment and learn whether they act more wisely in wasting this material than the southern planters, who feared the establishment of American manufactures, did in failing to utilize their cotton seed, which, if we may accept De Bow's authority, would have produced from $100,000,000 to $120,000,000 per annum if converted into oil and oil cake : " At a recent meeting of the Institute of Technology in Boston, Mr. Bond made a statement of results recently attained in this coun- try and in Europe in the manufacture of paper from corn husks. Experiments upon this material have been in progress in Bohemia since 1854, but have not reached a satisfactory result until within the last two or three years. In the successful processes lately adopted the husks were boiled in an alkaline mixture, after which there remained a quantity of fiber mixed with gluten. The gluten was extracted by pressure, forming a nutritious article like ' oil cake,' and then the fiber was subjected to other processes in which it pro- duced the real paper ' stock ' or ' pulp,' and left a fiber which has been made into strong and serviceable cloth. The husks yield forty per cent, of useful material ; ten per cent, of fiber ; eleven per cent, gluten, and nineteen per cent, of paper stock. This paper stock is equal to that made from the best linen rags. Allowing the profit of thirty-eight per cent, to the manufacturer, the different articles can be produced for six cents per pound for fiber, one and a half cent for gluten, and four cents for paper stock." Were this branch of manufactures well established on the prairies, the press of the West would give up its denunciations of the paper makers of the country as con- spirators, monopolists, and extortioners, and cease to pub- lish such paragraphs as the following, clipped from a recent number of the Galena (Illinois) Gazette : 70 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. " We understand that many of the people of Warren and other towns in the east part of the county are using corn for fuel. We had a conversation with an intelligent gentleman who has been burning it, and who considers it much cheaper than wood. Ears of corn can be bought for ten cents per bushel by measure, and seventy bushels, worth seven dollars, will measure a cord." Could the people of Illinois bring themselves to believe that they are capable of doing any other labor than raising raw material, they would bring into use cheaper fuel than corn or wood at seven dollars a cord. Their lands are underlaid by lead, zinc, copper, and iron ; and would they determine to bring their metals into market as much manufactured as their skill and supply of labor will per- mit, they would, by creating a demand for fuel, compel the development of the magnificent deposits of bituminous coal by which nearly the whole State is underlaid. Let them be admonished before it is too late that the fertility of their soil, exuberant as it is, is not exhaustless. But, inviting as is this branch of my subject, I must leave it with the remark that, ignorant as we are of the extent of our mineral deposits, we are more ignorant of the uses to which may be applied many elements of life with which within a limited range of purposes we are quite familiar ; and that, varied and wide as are the ex- panding opportunities to achieve usefulness and wealth, he who embarks his capital or enterprise in such as will yield the most golden results will not be more benefited by the introduction of new branches of manufacture than the owners of land, who will find in the markets of the village and the refuse of the factory the means of follow- ing the methods of English husbandry, succeeding the exhausting white crop by a green one, and giving to the soil each year more of the elements of fertility than the crop abstracts from it ; and who, having a market at their doors, will save the transportation which now makes a yard of Manchester cloth worth many bushels of wheat in Kansas, and a bushel of Kansas wheat worth many yards of the same cloth in Manchester. Under free trade transporters, factors, and commission men absorbed what would have been the joint profit of the American manu- facturer and the grain-grower, had the producer and the consumer been side by side or in reasonable proximity to each other. PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 71 DOMESTIC COMMERCE IS MORE PROFITABLE THAN FOREIGN. There is other commerce than that between foreign nations. France and England lie nearer to each other than New Jersey and Ohio, or than Indiana and Missouri. Commerce between New England and the Pacific slope takes place at the end of longer voyages than that between New and Old England. A quick market and active capital make prosperous commerce. Interest on borrowed capital is often a fatal parasite, and a nimble sixpence is always better than a sluggish shilling. Commerce is the traffic in or transfer of commodities. It should reward two capitals or industries those of the producer of each commodity ; and where trade is reciprocal, and really free, each man selling or buying because he wishes to do so, it does reward both. It is, therefore, apparent, that if we consume American fabrics, as well as home-grown food, these two profits, and a third, (two of which now accrue to foreigners, one absolutely and the other in great part,) would remain in the country. These are the profits on the production of raw material, on its manufacture, and too often on its double transportation. But trade between a country in which capital is abundant, and the machinery of which, having paid for itself in profits already realized, is cheap, as is the case in England, and a new, or in these respects poor country, as is ours, is never reciprocal ; for the party with capital and machinery fixes the terms on which it both buys and sells. In addition to keeping both profits on our commerce at home and doing our own carrying, the diversification of our industry will insure markets for all our products, and render the destruction of any one of the leading interests of the country by a foreign commercial Power an impos- sibility. By securing the home market to our industry, and giving security to the investment of capital in fur- naces, forges, mills, railroads, factories, founderies, and' workshops, we can steadily enlarge the tide of immigra- tion. Men will flow into all parts of our country some to find remunerative employment at labor in which they are skilled ; some, finding that land, mineral wealth, water- power, and commercial advantages are open to all in an eminent degree, will come in pursuit of enterprises of mo- ment, and each new settlement, and each new branch of 72 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. industry established, around which thousands of people may settle, will be a new market for the general products of our skill and industry: so that we shall not only be- come independent of Great Britain in so far as not to depend on her for that which is essential to our comfort or welfare, but independent in having a population whose productions will be so diverse that though the seas that roll around us were, as Jefferson once wished them, " seas of fire," our commercial, manufacturing, and agricultural employments could go on undisturbed by what was happen- ing in other lands. When we shall have attained this condition of affairs we will build ships and have foreign commerce, for we will have that to carry away which, being manufactured, will contain in packages of little bulk our raw material, food, mechanical skill, and the labor of our machinery ; and in exchange we will get whatever raw material we do not produce, and the ability to retain the basis of a sound currency which England and France, by the free trade they preach but do not practice, now draw from us and other countries in the position we so humbly occupy of producers of raw material, and whose people lack the foresight or the ability to supply them- selves with clothing and the means of elegant life. WHAT CONGRESS SHOULD DO. Mr. Chairman, it is not my purpose to propose at this time any specific modifications of our tariff or internal revenue laws. They operate most unfortunately upon several leading interests of the country. But I have con- fidence in the gentlemen composing the Committee of Ways and Means, and the suggestive report of the United States Revenue Commission is now before us. The responsibility will justly rest on Congress, if with such aids we fail to correct those incongruities in our laws which have prostrated several important branches of manufactures. I may, however, remark that I am opposed to prohibi- tions or prohibitory duties, but will gladly unite in imposing on foreign manufactured commodities such dis- criminating duties as will defend our industries from overwhelming assaults at the hands of the selfish capital- ists who see that Britain's power depends on Britain's manufacturing supremacy, and are ever ready to expend a portion of their surplus capital in the overthrow of the PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 73 rising industries of other nations. Judicious legislation on this subject will, by inviting hither her skilled work- men and sturdy yeomen, so strengthen us and enfeeble England that she will not make railways and other im- provements for military purposes in Canada, for she will see that, when Canada shall be made the base of military operations against the United States, her American domin- ions will pass promptly into our possession. WE ARE STILL IN COLONIAL BONDAGE TO ENGLAND. I find, sir, in a journal upon which I am in the habit of relying, in an article on the British exports of iron and steel, the statement that during the seven months termin- ating July 31, 1865, the United States purchased more than one third of the railroad and bar iron exported by England. "While we were thus adding to the wealth and power of England, by purchasing one third of her entire export of railroad and bar iron, one of her " men-of-war," commanded by an American traitor, was destroying our unarmed whalers engaged in the peaceful pursuits of their dangerous trade, and our furnaces, forges, and rolling-mills were idle, or but partially employed. The internal taxes levied directly and indirectly on a ton of American rail- road iron are heavier than the duty imposed on a ton of foreign rails by our tariff, and at this time most of the fur- naces and rolling-mills of our country are suspended. The Pennsylvania iron works at Danville, in that State, make both pig and railroad iron. The invested capital of the company is $1,500,000. When in full operation it em- ploys twelve hundred men, upon whom not less than five thousand women and children depend. The works are adapted to the production of both pig iron and rails. They cannot, however, produce an adequate supply of iron for the rolling-mills, and the company are annual pur- chasers of pig iron. Their capacity is twenty-seven thou- sand tons of pig iron and thirty-three thousand tons of rails. Their actual production in the last two years was but as follows : In 1864, Pig iron 17,154 tons. Bails 22,512 " In 1865, Pig iron 14,758 " Rails 15,956 " The Rough and Ready rolling-mill, in the same town, is capable of producing about twelve thousand tons of rails 74: PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. per annum. Its proprietors purchase their pig iron. Its production during the two last years has been in the exact proportion to its capacity as that of the Pennsylvania works. The difficulty with both is that our internal taxes so far more than counter-balance the protection afforded by our tariff that when gold ranges at less than forty, British iron masters can undersell either in our own mar- kets. Our laws instead of protecting American labor, thus discriminate against it and in favor of that of England. The duties and internal taxes on iron evidently need re- vising. The interest is depressed, not only in Pennsyl- vania, but in every part of the country. During the latter part of the seven months referred to, four rolling-mills in southeastern Ohio, with a capacity of sixteen thousand tons of rails per annum, were idle, and the blast furnaces in the region which can produce one hundred and thirty- five thousand tons of charcoal pig metal, produced in 1865 but fort-five thousand. Of the twenty furnaces on and near the Alleghany river, in Pennsylvania, only eight were in blast at the close of the year. I am told there are nine blast furnaces in Missouri capable of producing about forty-five thousand tons, and that but three are now in operation. But one of the four blast furnaces near Detroit was in operation in December. The twenty-five rolling-mills of Pittsburg were, I am informed, then running but quarter-time, and the production of bloom iron in the counties of New York bordering on Lake Champlain was in 1865 but about one third of that of 1864. Let me ask, sir, whether Congress is faithful to the laboring men of the country when it de- prives them of the opportunity to enrich themselves and the country by expending their labor on the growth of our own lands ? From the same journal I also learn that, during the same seven months, the United States imported more than one-half of the unwrought steel exported from Great Britain, while a very carefully prepared list of the steel- works of the country, showing the kinds of steel made, the product for the last year, and the capacity of each, shows that the product during the last year was but eighteen thousand four hundred and fifteen tons, though the capacity of the works is forty-two thousand one hun- dred tons. It thus appears that we could have made of the growth of our own lands, and by the employment of PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 75 our own people, every ton of rails, bar iron, and un- wrought steel we imported during that period. Will the gentleman from Indiana say that it would not have been wise to withhold this patronage from our treacherous rival and bestow it upon our toiling countrymen ? The western farmer and the railroad man say, " Let me buy iron and steel cheap ; it is my right to buy where I can buy for least money ;" and their ^Representative, comply- ing with their wishes, refuses to put an adequate duty upon iron and steel. May it not be pertinent to remind these gentlemen that the manufacturers of the iron and steel they import live in houses built of British timber and British stone, and furnished with British furniture ; that they are taught, so far as they are educated, by Eng- lish teachers ; attended in sickness by English doctors ; clothed and shod by English artisans; and that their wages are expended in confirming British supremacy by augmenting British industry and British commerce; that they are fed with wheat gathered on the banks of the Nile and the Baltic, or wherever England can buy it cheapest ; and that General Jackson's assertion, that to transfer six hundred thousand men from agricultural to manufacturing employments would give us a greater mar- ket for our agricultural products than all Europe now supplies, is as true now as it was when first uttered. And that, if we import the men to make the iron and steel we will need for 1866, 1867, and 1868, the implements with which they will dig the limestone and ore, and mine the coal, will be of American production ; the food they will eat will be grown on American soil ; the timber of the houses they will occupy will be cut from American forests ; the stones with which it will mingle will be quarried from American quarries ; and the tailor, shoemaker, and hat- ter, the teacher, preacher, and doctor, and all others whose services they will require, and whose presence will augment the population of the village, the town, or the city will be Americans, and depend for their supplies on American labor. And may I not ask whether the farmers of the country, in being relieved from colonial dependence, and having a steady market thus brought to their door a market in which wheat from the banks of the Nile and the shores of the Baltic will never compete with and cheapen theirs would not, though they paid more dollars per ton, find that they were buying their iron and steel 76 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. cheaper if they gave fewer bushels of wheat for it, and less frequently consumed their surplus crops as fuel or permitted them to rot in the field ? He does not buy most cheaply who pays least money for the articles he gets, but he who gives the least percentage of his day's, month's or year's labor in exchange for a given com- modity ; and tested by this standard, the cheapest market in which iron and steel can be bought for American pur- poses will be found in the protected market of America. PROTECTION CHEAPENS GOODS. But protection begets competition and invariably cheapens the money value of commodities. This is not mere theory ; it is fact established by the experience of all nations that have protected their industry. Washing- ton's Secretary of the Treasury understood this as per- fectly as the adept in social science understands it to-day. Every nation that ever protected its industry improved the quality and lessened the price of its productions ; and no people, while not protecting their manufactures, have ever been able to hold a fair position among the commer- cial nations of the world, because they could not compete in cheapness with protected industries. "While Holland protected her industry more adequately than England, she sold her cheap goods in that country and maintained her supremacy on the seas. It was then that the Dutch raised the ire of Andrew Yarrinton by taunting Englishmen with their want of skill, and England with her want of civilization, in selling her raw products at the price others would give, and buying back part of them when manufac- tured at the price at which others would sell. But when England perfected her protective system, her superior advan- tages in coal and iron gave her commercial supremacy, by enabling her to cheapen articles she had believed herself unable to produce, and to employ British ships in carry- ing English fabrics to mere growers of raw material in every part of the world. France, as I have shown, protects her industry, and her silks, laces, cloths, cassi meres, and products of iron and steel hold their place in the markets of the world in spite of England's larger commercial marine and more abun- dant supply of coal and iron. Has protection increased the price of anything but labor in Germany ? Before the establishment of the Zoll-Verem or Customs-Union she PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 77 exported nothing but raw materials, and was only too happy, as I have shown, to send with these her peasantry either for war or civic purposes; but under the influence of protection the value of man has risen in Germany, and that of German products fallen in the markets of the world, till her cloths and the multifarious products of her di- versified industry compete with those of England and France in the markets of the United States, and other nations whose people devote themselves to the production of raw materials. Even Eussia, with her thirty millions of recently freed serfs, who enter upon the duties of freemen without disturbance, because the wise Emperor who enfranchised them had secured employment and wages for each by protecting the industry of all, is now entering into the general markets of the world in competition with France, Germany, Bel- gium, and England. But we enter no foreign market with productions which attest our wealth, skill, genius, or enter- prise ; and the prices of what we do export grain, coarse provisions, and whisky depend on such contingencies as drought, excessive rain, the potato rot, or other wide- spread calamity for a transatlantic market. When good crops prevail in Europe there is no market there for us. Consistent with the experience of other nations has been our own. Under the tariffs of 1824 and 1828 the prices of all those commodities in the production of which our people engaged to any extent fell rapidly. When the tariff of 1842 went into effect our country was flooded with British hardware of every variety, from a tenpenny nail to a circular saw, and from table cutlery to butt hinges, thumb latches, etc. But when 1847 came round, four years of adequate protection had so stimulated the skill and ingenuity of Americans, and had brought from Great Britain so many skilled workmen, that our own market, at least, was ours for an infinite variety of iron- ware, and we have held it in many departments of the business from that day to this, no nation having been able to undersell us in our own streets. If, sir, we are now paying too high for iron and steel-ware, we are but suffer- ing the penalty of our folly. Had we continued the pro- tection afforded by the tariff" of 1842, or modified it from time to time as branches of business and the condition of the market required, by transferring the duties that had defended and advanced a branch of industry to articles needing greater protection, we would now be producing 78 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. an adequate supply of cheap iron for our own use, and competing with France and England in the markets of Mexico and Central and South America. We are thus, I say, paying the penalty of our own folly in having de- stroyed our industry and rendered the investment of capi- tal in manufacturing enterprises insecure. Let but the capitalists of the country know that Congress will so revise the duties on railroad iron as to give it adequate protection over the taxation its production encounters under the law for raising internal revenue, and competi- tion will spring up all over the country and make from the growth of our own lands cheaper and better iron or steel rails than we can import. How can it be otherwise ? Do not the people of Michi- gan and Wisconsin wish to develop their resources and make them available? Are the people of Missouri insen- sible to the advantages which would flow from deriving income from the conversion of their mountains of ore into rails, machinery, and hardware ? Will not the peo- ple of Tennessee allow the descendants of the colored men who worked his furnaces and gave Cave Johnson his majority in his first contest for Congress, and others like them, to enrich that devastated State by working her mines and bringing her forges and furnaces again into profitable use ? And why may not the whir of the roll- ing-mill be heard throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, Vir- ginia, Georgia, and other Southern States which are heavily underlaid with iron ? There will be quick de- mand for the yield of all if we determine to develop the wealth of our whole country, and interlace its parts, as we should, with railroads. By excluding from our markets one-third of the annual export of railroad and bar iron from England we will bring hither the men who make it. - Why should we, with the capacity established in five years for when the war began and furnished its incidental protection, the manufacture of steel was unknown in our country why should we, who in five years have created facilities for manufacturing about fifty thousand tons of steel per annum, buy from England one-half of her entire export of unwrought steel ? Rather let us enfeeble her and strengthen our country by bringing hither the men who make it.* The iron of the States I have named, * How effectively the diversification of our industries and the better wages pro- tective duties enable us to pay for labor is doing this, is thus shown by Professor PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 79 and I may say of almost every State of the Union, would give us steel as pure and tenacious as England can make. The establishment of this branch of trade would lead to immense internal commerce, and reward our railroads with business that would flow both ways in all seasons of the year. The ores of the Marquette region will be in request in every iron-producing State, as those of Sweden, Norway, Russia, and Nova Scotia are in France and England: WHY AN EXPORT DUTY SHOULD BE LAID ON COTTON. Mr. Chairman, permit me, in drawing to a conclusion, to repeat that we need not resort to the prohibitions which have been practiced by other countries. Our natural advantages and those which spring from our personal free- Kirk of Edinburgh. His figures also prove that British emigrants are no longer chiefly agricultural laborers, but skilled artisans. He says : " So long as there is inhabitable surface on the earth not yet occupied, it is probable we shall have emigration. This abstract thought, however, has very little to do with the actual facts of emigration as it now goes on. It is, as we have seen, a great delusion for men to think that our emigrants are going away from us because there is no room for them in their native land. It is a still greater delusion to imagine that it is a relief to those who remain behind to bo quit of those who go. If our readers will give us a little careful attention, we may be able to make the truth clear as to our situation in this important matter. " In 1815, the total emigration from the United Kingdom was 2081 in 1866, it had risen to 204,882. That is such an increase as may well arrest the attention of all who feel interested in their country. There were higher years than 1866 ; but these had to do with the gold fever, and need not be taken into account in our present paper. In 1852, for example, the number of emigrants rose to 368,764 ; but 87,881 of these went to Australia and New Zealand. It is to the steady flow of nearly 200,000 persons a year, as reached from the small begin- ning 2081 in 1815 that it is interesting to turn attention. "And yet it is far more interesting to consider the destination of these emi- grants. The number from 1815 gives a grand total of 6,106,392 persons, and of these no less than 5,044,809 went to North America. Large as the Australian and New Zealand exodus has been, it had reached only 929,181 in 1866 ; that is, it had not reached one million when the American had gone beyond five. It is important, too, to notice that by far the largest number of our emigrants to America go to the United States. In 1866, those to the ' colonies ' were 13,255, while to the States they reached the high number of 161,000. It is therefore very clear that it is with America we have specially to do in considering the bearings of this vast and growing emigration. The States of America are not now a new country. They begin to have all the characteristics of an old estab- lished nation, especially in their northern and eastern portions. New England is a well peopled region of the world; and, to as great an extent as Old Eng- land, it may be regarded as a manufacturing country, and certainly not a land remaining to be occupied. An emigration from Britain to these States is not a going forth to subdue the wilds of the earth's surface, but to increase the popu- lation of large manufacturing centres. " This leads us, however, to notice further, the nationality of the emigrants going from us. Up to 1847, the emigration was from Ireland in a very much larger proportion than from the rest of the Empire. During the following eight years the flow from Ireland became comparatively low, though it still keeps up to a high rate. The emigration from Scotland was next in importance to that 80 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. dom, are sufficient to relieve us from all difficulty on this point. There is, however, one of our agricultural pro- ductions upon which, did the Constitution permit, I would lay an export duty ; and that is cotton. And I hope the Constitution will be so amended as to permit it; for though for years for the life of more than a generation the country was ruled in the interest of slavery, to the destruction of the interests and rights of our free laborers, by the pretended apprehension that if American cotton were not cheapened rival fields would be developed, the delusion has been dispelled, and all men know that ours are the only available cotton fields of the world. For five years we maintained along the coast of the cotton States a of Ireland, when the extent of our population is taken into account. England, with six times as many people as Scotland, sent but few emigrants till of late years. The Irish emigration was so great, that in 1851 the census revealed a deficiency in the population amounting to 2,555,720. That is, had Ireland had no emigration in the ten years previous to 1851, she would have had 2,555,720 more than were actually in the island. In 1861, there had been a positive de- crease of 751,251, instead of an increase of a much larger figure, and it is anti- cipated that there will be a still more important decrease in 1871. In 1851, but more so in 1861, Scotland was found to be affected in a somewhat similar way, though not to the extent of producing an actual decrease in the number of peo- ple. Instead of an increase of twelve or thirteen per cent., as was in former decades, there was only one of six per cent, from 1851 to 1861. The rate of in- crease in England and Wales had not been sensibly affected. Now the chief stream of emigration is flowing from England. In the first or winter quarter of the year 1869 the emigration was 2702 Scotch, 9800 Irish, and 11,100 Eng- lish. It need not be told any one who thinks and reads at all on the subject that it is now in England almost exclusively we have excitement in connection with emigration. And we may assuredly calculate that the census of 1871, and far more fully that of 1881, if matters go on as now, will reveal a decrease in the population south of the Tweed. " What is the great relation in which these three kingdoms stand to each other and mankind ? Ireland is agricultural and pastoral ; so is Scotland to a great ex- tent ; England is the workshop for these and for the world. There is a small manufacturing power in Ireland, a much greater in Scotland, but by far the greatest of all in England. This explains how emigration did not set in on England or on Scotland, as it has done on Ireland. It also explains why it did not till now affect England as it has affected Scotland. A pastoral people are the first to emigrate in the course of nature. An agricultural people are the next in order. From a land like this a manufacturing people would never emi- grate if matters were right. The climate and mineral store of this country are such that no other country can at present compete with it in manufacturing power, if the natural course of things were followed. Even our shepherds have an immense advantage at home, and our farmers have a still greater advantage, but our manufacturers have so great facilities as can scarcely at present be equalled. It is, consequently, matter of extreme interest when we find that Englimd is emigrating. It introduces us to the mining, mechanical, and manu- facturing character of our emigrants now. There are above 70,000 touls in the east end of London who must emigrate upeedily or die. They are being shipped off as fast as charity and Government can transport them to North America. Above 25,000 of these are workmen more or less skilled in engineer and ship- building occupations. These are not shepherds, nor are they ploughmen, nor will they ever be to any great extent one or the other. They are mechanics, and will be 80 go where they may. In the vast hives of industry in Lancashire there PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 81 blockade such as never was attempted before. The people of those States planted no cotton and burned much of what they had produced, and did all that madness or ingenuity could suggest to develop rival fields if any ex- isted; and what is the result? Necessity constrained the temporary use of Indian cotton, and Calcutta became so rich that her ryots put silver tires around their cart wheels. But when the power of our armies had reopened the cot- ton fields of the South, when it became known that freed- men were working upon the Sea Islands, and that our Government was again to possess the cotton region of the South, there came a fearful revulsion in India, and all men acknowledged that God had given the United States a monopoly of the available cotton fields of the earth.* Upon that one production we should put an export duty, are a greater number who must emigrate or die. These are getting off as fast as they possibly can to Massachusetts to find full occupation in cotton. Not one is either pastoral or agricultural, and few are likely ever to be either. Irish- men and Scotchmen can be anything, but not so Englishmen, and they will not need to be anything in the world but what they have been. Their skill is too valuable to be sent to the backwoods when abundance of rough hands are there already, and skilled men are needed to make a great country fit to manufacture for itself. Till within the last four years our emigrants were chiefly pastoral and agricultural, noio they are chiefly mining, mechanical, and manufacturing. It is to this that we feel it of such importance to call attention. Our position as a nation depends to a great extent, upon our usefulness to the world in a mechanical and manufacturing line. Commerce has its being in the fact that one nation is so situated that it excels in one thing, while another excels in another. It is in the exchange of produce that all trade lies, and such exchange clearly depends on the excelling we have mentioned. If this nation loses its excellence in manufacturing power, it loses its only possible share in the ex- change of the world, and its commerce dies. " We must also look at the effect of emigration on the character of the popu- lation left behind. How do the Emigration Commissioners account for the vast deficiencies in the population of Ireland ? More than two millions and a half of deficiency was double the emigration, but it was accounted for by the fact that the young men and women had gone off to such a degree that marriages and births had fallen off sufficiently to account for all. ' The proportion of persons between the ages of twenty and thirty-five,' in the ordinary settled course of society, is about twenty-five per cent. that proportion among emigrants is above fifty-two per cent. This is not the only matter of consideration at this point. Miss Rye, in a letter to the Times, some months since, said : ' I will not, I dare not, spend my time in passing bad people from one port to another.' And ' bad people ' cannot, as a rule, pass themselves; they have generally no incli- nation to do so. No doubt bad enough people go, but that is not the rule. We dare not now send our criminals abroad, nor dare we send our paupers, nor should we be allowed to send any class unfit to support themselves. It is the best of our mechanical and manufacturing hands that are noio yoing, and they are leaving the proportion of those who burden society largely increased.' " Kirk : Social Politici in Great Britain and Ireland, page 112. London and Glasgow, 1870. * An export duty of 2 cents a pound on unmanufactured cotton, coupled with the free export of yarns and fabrics, would soon transfer the capital, skill, and machinery of Lancash ire to our cotton growing States, in most of which exhaustk-83 water-power runs to waste. 6 82 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. and the result would be that the men of the cotton States, no longer dependent on England for a market for their bulky raw material, would, with their cheaper fabrics, drive her cotton goods from the markets of the world. Though I would not, by legislation, prohibit the export of the elements of any branch of manufacture or machinery, I will endeavor to retain in the country many of the ele- ments of manufactures that now go abroad, by making them more valuable in this country than in any other, and by impressing upon the American people the conviction, so long ago inculcated upon the people of Ireland by Dean Swift, that to enrich themselves they must " Carry out their own goods an much manufactured and bring in those of others as little manufactured as the nature of mutual com- merce will allow." To gratify our patriotic desires we need not resort to prohibitory duties. We can nationalize our policy by relieving from duty tea, coffee, and every raw material which we do not produce, but which enters into our manu- factures or arts.* I would give the wool-growers protec- tion, but would stimulate the manufacture of carpets and increase the demand for American wool by admitting free of duty those low grades which we do not produce ; and would lay light duties on those articles in the manufacture of which machinery has been perfected and large capitals have been accumulated, especially where the original cost of the machinery has been returned in profits ; and would make them heavier and heaviest upon those branches of * American production, furnishing all National power, is to the country, its commerce, and trade, on a large scale, what the water-wheel and the steam en- gine are to mills and machinery on a small one the prime mover. In the absence of this great National prime mover, as it may be called, all motion, nay, even the life of the body politic itself must cease. As all of the people of the country must, ultimately, directly or indirectly, live off of or from this production, so must all taxes, National, State, and local, be finally drawn from American producers, unless some portion of our taxation can be levied upon foreigners who geek our markets, and enjoy the advantages and profits thereof. Such being the case, it follows that the American producer has a right to demand that his Government shall levy duties on foreign imports, and in so doing shall levy them, first and foremost upon those commodities the like of which are produced in this country, for the following reasons: First. Because such commodities come in direct competition with the produc- tions of American producers who are obliged to pay National, State, and local taxes ; and to grant privileges to foreigners which are and must be withheld from ourselves would be a manifest and gross injustice on the part of the Govern- ment to its own people. Second. Inasmuch as these commodities are such as are produced in this coun- try, foreigners may be made to pay the duties thereon, as, having American competitors with whom they must compete, these duties must first be paid by them before they can place themselves in a position for such competition. If PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. 83 industry which are most feeble but give assurance of ulti- mate success. When we do this our country will cease to be a mere agglomeration of sections, and we will be a national people, homogeneous in our interests by reason of their immense diversity. Such, sir, is my plan for enforcing the Monroe doctrine, acquiring Canada, paying the national debt, and by reliev- ing the South of its embarrassment, recementing the shattered Union. The poor whites must be weaned from the rifle, net, and line, by the inducements of well-re- warded labor. Their idle wives and children may thus be brought to habits of order, method, and industry, and in a few years we shall cease to remember that in this nine- teenth century, and under our republican Government, there were for several decades millions of people tending rapidly to barbarism. The same inducements will disclose, even to the eye of prejudice, the manhood of the freed man, and that kindly relation between the employer and his employe which exists throughout the busy North and East will spring up in the South. Oppressed and degraded as he has been, the colored man will find that there are fields open to his enterprise, and a useful and honorable career possible to him, and will prove that, like other men, he loves property and has the energy to acquire it, the ability to retain it, and the thrift to make it advan- tageous to himself, his neighbors, and his country. Let us then measure our resources by experiment and open them to the enterprise of the world ; and the ques- tion whether we owe three hundred or three thousand millions will, ten years hence, be one of trifling import- not made to pay these particular duties, there are no other taxes which they can, by any possibility, be made to pay in selling in our markets; and the heavily taxed American has an absolute right to demand that, enjoying the advantages and profits of these markets, foreigners shall take with them some of the many drawbacks and disadvantages which he himself is obliged to bear. Third. Because if these duties are in whole or in part levied upon productions the like of which we do not ourselves produce, and must or will have, they must ultimately and inevitably fall upon the shoulders of American producers, thus causing them to be again taxed, indeed almost encompassing them by a net- work of taxation, escape from which is impossible. Hence we develop the grand and immutable principle : That the moral right of the Government to levy duties on articles the like of which are not produced in thii country, only commences when it hat exhausted all the means of collecting duties on such articles as are produced in the country, or until it has reached a full measure of the burdens imposed upon American producers and still finds itself in need of revenue. Then, and then only, may it, consistently with the rights of Ameri- can producers, resort to other sources of taxation, including duties on the importa- tion of commodities the like of which are not produced in the country. The flights of American Producers. By Henry Carey Baird, Philadelphia, 1870. 8-4 PROTECTION TO AMERICAN LABOR. ance ; and, as Andrew Yarrinton showed the people of England how to " outdo the Dutch without fighting," we will find that peace hath her victories for us also ; Canada will come to us like ripe fruit falling into the hands of the farmer ; and if Maximilian remain in Mexico, it will be as the citizen of a republic and an adherent of the Monroe doctrine. TEADE WITH BKITISH AMERICA. SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 7, 1866. THE House, as in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, having under consideration the bill (H. R. No. 337) regulat- ing trade with the British North American possessions Mr. Kelky said : Mr. Chairman : If I had made my remarks yesterday afternoon, I should have added another to the many illus- trations I have given this session of the mistake made by the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. WentworthJ when he said I never took less than an hour when I got the floor, for I am quite sure that twenty minutes would then have sufficed me. But I have had a night in which to examine the provisions of this bill and to reflect upon them, and I shall probably ask the attention of the House for a longer period this morning. I would have been satisfied yesterday with the amend- ment proposed by the distinguished gentleman from Mary- land [Mr. F. Thomas] with one or two others. To-day, however, this will not satisfy me. Sir, the bill should be rejected. It is false in principle and in detail, and will materially diminish the revenues of the country by sus- pending several important branches of our industry. As I conned its sections I became doubtful of its origin; whether it was of British or American conception. There are many of its features which constrain me to think that it is of foreign and not of American origin. I point, gentle- men, to the ninth section. Its authors seem to have been oblivious to the fact that we are still living under demo- cratic-republican institutions, and have not yet fallen under a dictatorship. The ninth section confides the regulation of all the commerce that may grow up between the United States and the British Provinces to the absolute and unrestricted control of the President. Let me astound gentlemen who have not examined the bill by reading that portion of the section to which I refer : 85 86 TRADE WITH BRITISH AMERICA. " SEC. 9. And be it further enacted, That the President is hereby authorized to terminate or suspend the provisions of this act, or any section or sections thereof, and as to the whole or part of the British North American colonies, by giving public notice of such termina- tion or suspension, whenever in his opinion it may appear just and proper, etc." Sir, such power may be exercised by the Emperor of Eussia in regard to the commerce of his empire ; but such power, regulating the trade of this country according to his caprice, has never been confided to the President of the United States, or will be while the American people remain free. Mr. Rogers. "Will the gentleman allow me to ask him a question ? Mr. Kelley. I would rather not now. The gentleman knows my time is limited. Mr. Rogers. I wanted to ask the gentleman from Penn- sylvania if this bill gives the President any more power than was proposed to be given to him by the Freedmen's Bureau bill? Mr. Kelley. I have no time for side issues now. I will answer that question some time when my distinguished friend has the floor and kindly yields to me. [Laughter.] Sir, this bill is of a piece with others now pending before the House. It is like the loan bill, which proposes to contract the business of the country to the narrow dimen- sions it filled before the war, and to give the Secretary of the Treasury, while he has an average balance of $40,000, 000 lying on deposit in the banks, the power to control the currency of the country by contracting or expanding it at his will. It is also in this respect like the postal bill, which, as an inducement to the people to buy their envel- opes from Government employes or contractors, proposes to give one free of cost to every man who buys a postage stamp. Sir, when I regard these features of the bill, I feel that its paternity may have been American, that it may have emanated from the Administration. But when I consider its provisions in reference to trade, and see how well they are calculated to prostrate many of the leading interests of the country; the advantages it secures to foreign com- modities which compete with the productions of our laboring people; how it stimulates the development of the resources of the British Provinces, and induces emigration TRADE WITH BRITISH AMERICA. 87 to them, while it restricts the development of our resources, and is calculated to divert immigration from our shores : when I see all this, I say, I feel that the Canadian ministry must have concocted this bill. Mr. Gonkling. I would like to ask the gentleman from Pennsylvania a question pertinent to what he is now saying. Mr. Kelley. I would rather not yield now, having just declined to yield to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Rogers]. I know, Mr. Chairman, how hard it is to break away from habit, to escape from established usage ; and I re- member that for more than ten years, under the fraudu- lently named reciprocity treaty, we have had our habits, usages, and modes of thought controlled by the infamous provisions of that treaty ; and it may be that this influ- ence has controlled the committee that presented the bill. But, sir, nothing is more certain than that had we never had that treaty we never would have had this bill ; it is its legitimate offspring, and embodies many of the worst vices of its parent. Sir, what was that treaty ? It was conceived in iniquity and executed in sin. It was one of the master-strokes of policy of the sagacious and recklessly ambitious men who had even then determined to destroy our country. Its object was to enfeeble and impoverish the North, and to strengthen the Provinces of our most powerful enemy, which bound the whole line of our northern frontier. It was the result of a deliberate conspiracy, the first object of which was to give the American market to foreign manufacturers, by destroying every leading branch of American manufactures ; and the second was, when they had attained the first, to prostrate the grain-growers and provision-producers of the West and North, and thus re- duce the impoverished North to subjection to the slave- holding oligarchy of the South. Its ultimate purpose was to produce bankruptcy and discord in the North, that they might more easily accomplish their then purpose, which they expressed by open war in April 1861. In order that gentlemen may see that I speak by the record, I send to the Clerk's desk a volume bearing the imprint of Prichard, Abbott, & Loomis, Augusta, Georgia, 1860, and entitled "Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Argu- ments, comprising the Writings of Hammond, Harper, 88 TRADE WITH BRITISH AMERICA. Christie, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartwright, on this Important Subject, by E. N. Elliott, LL.D., president of Planters' College, Mississippi, with an Essay on Slavery in the Light of International Law, by the Editor." Let one of these distinguished men inform the country whether I am correct in what I now say. The Clerk read, as follows : " Thus also was a tripartite alliance formed by which the western farmer, the southern planter, and the English manufacturer became united in a common bond of interest, the whole giving their support to the doctrine of free trade. " This active commerce between the West and South soon caused a rivalry in the East, that pushed forward improvements by States or corporations, to gain a share in the western trade. These im- provements, as completed, gave to the West a choice of markets, so that its farmers could elect whether to feed the slave who grows the cotton or the operatives who are engaged in its manufacture. But this rivalry did more. The competition for western products en- hanced their price and stimulated their more extended cultivation. This required an enlargement of the markets, and the extension of slavery became essential to western prosperity. " We have not reached the end of the alliance between the west- ern farmer and southern planter. The emigration which has been filling Iowa and Minnesota, and is now rolling like a flood into Kan- sas and Nebraska, is but a repetition of what has occurred in the other western States and Territories. Agricultural pursuits are highly remunerative ; and tens of thousands of men of moderate means or of no means are cheered along to where none forbids them land to till. " For the last few years public improvements have called for vastly more than the usual share of labor and augmented the con- sumption of provisions. The foreign demand added to this has in- creased their price beyond what the planter can afford to pay. For many years free labor and slave labor maintained an even race in their western progress. Of late the freemen have begun to lag be- hind, while slavery has advanced by several degrees of longitude. Free labor must be made to keep pace with it. There is an urgent necessity for this. The demand for cotton is increasing in a ratio greater than can be supplied by the American planters, unless by a corresponding increased production. This increasing demand must be met, or its cultivation will be facilitated elsewhere, and the mon- opoly of the planter in the European markets be interrupted. This can only be effected by concentrating the greatest possible number of slaves upon the cotton plantations. Hence they must be sup- plied with provisions. " This is the present aspect of the provision question, as it regards slavery extension. Prices are approximating the maximum point, beyond which our provisions cannot be fed to slaves, unless there is a corresponding increase in the price of cotton. Such a result was not anticipated by Southern statesmen when they had succeeded in overthrowing the protective policy, destroying the United States Bunk, and establishing the sub-Treasury system. And why has this TRADE WITH BRITISH AMERICA. 89 occurred ? The mines of California prevented both the free-trade tariff (the tariff of 1846, under which our exports are now made, approximates the free-trade principles very closely) and the sub- Treasury scheme from exhausting the country of the precious metals, extinguishing the circulation of bank notes, and reducing the prices of agricultural products to the specie value. At the date of the passage of the Nebraska bill, the multiplication of pro- visions by their more extended cultivation was the only measure left that could produce a reduction of prices and meet the wants of the planters. The Canadian reciprocity treaty, since secured, will bring the products of the British North American colonies, free of duty, into competition with those of the United States when prices with us rule high, and tend to diminish their cost." Mr. Kelley. Mr. Chairman, as the bill before the House has, in my judgment, all the vices of that treaty, I shall propose the following as a substitute for it. The Clerk read, as follows : "Strike out all after the enacting clause and insert as follows : "That from and after the 17th of March, 1866, there shall be levied, collected, and paid on all articles imported from her Britannic Majesty's possessions in North America, that is to say, from Can- ada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Prince Edward's Island, and the several islands thereunto adjacent, Hudson's Bay Ter- ritory, British Columbia, and Vancouver's Island, the same duties and rates of duties which are now imposed by law on like articles imported from other foreign countries." Mr. Kelley. I am not prepared to say that my substi- tute contains all the provisions it should ; that it may not be amended with advantage ; but I do say that it is infi- nitely preferable, for every leading interest of the country, to the bill now under consideration. Why should we have a special tariff law for the British Provinces? What have they done to win our love? Why should we sacrifice our interests to protect or ad- vance theirs ? The gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Morrill] said in the course of his remarks that we should not base our action on hatred or fear. I do not propose to base any of my acts in this House upon any of the passions. I mean to be governed by cool judgment. But, sir, I remember that when we were in a death grap- ple with our insane brethren of the South, the people of these Provinces smote us first on one cheek and then on the other ; and I know, sir, if we were prepared to for- give them seven times seventy, their transgressions against 90 TRADE WITH BRITISH AMERICA. us had exceeded that number before they organized a raiding party and sent it into the gentleman's own State to rob the banks and murder the citizens who attempted to defend them. Backed as they are by the power of England, they are our most dangerous enemies, because they are our nearest ; and I do not find it laid down even in the Christian code of morals that we shall injure our- selves and impoverish our families and country to benefit those who would have disseminated poison among us, who would have burned our cities and towns, and who did all that the devilish ingenuity of the madmen of the South could suggest to injure us and destroy our country. They are foreigners to our soil, and let us regard them as we do the people of other countries, as friends in peace and enemies in war. Let us legislate for them, as the substitute I have submitted proposes to do, precisely as we do for the rest of mankind. I can understand, sir, in the light of the invaluable book from which I have had an extract read, and to which I have so often referred in previous discussions, why every provision of the so-called reciprocity treaty was adverse to our country. Both par- ties to it meant mischief to us. But I cannot understand why a bill should be reported by the Committee of Ways and Means containing so many of its worst features, and which if adopted, would inevitably strike down several of the principal or leading interests of our country. It might well be entitled a bill to destroy the fisheries, salt-works, and lumber trade of the country, and to prevent the work- ing of bituminous coal-beds within the limits of the United States, east of the summit of the Alleghanies. Should it become a law it will ruin all these great branches of industry. The gentleman from Vermont, in introducing the bill, said with great plausibility more plausibility than can- dor, I am sorry to say : " Coal is a raw material, and for every ton of iron made at least three tons of bituminous or two of anthracite coal are consumed. It is the motive power of railroads and steamboats as well as of manufacturing establishments. We tax iron and all other manu- factures when produced and sold, and we tax railroads and steam- boats on their business. Can we not afford to have our coal free ? It is, too, an article of universal consumption, required in our rigor- ous climate in large quantities by those unable to clothe themselves in heavy and abundant woolens or thick and costly furs ; by the poor as well as the rich. There are hardly more reasons for a tax TRADE WITH BRITISH AMERICA. 91 on coal than upon firewood. In addition to this, our own coal-fields are unsurpassed in extent and quality by any in the world. " But our export to the Canadas of coal from Ohio, Virginia, and Pennsylvania bids fair to equal in amount all that we bring from the Provinces ; the value of our exports in 1864 being $555,332, and that of our imports $883.805. So that under any circumstances here is one article which approaches the idea of reciprocity, and an interchange effects economy in long Hues of freight, relieving our- selves as well as others from positive loss." Carlyle tells us that nothing lies like figures, although the general proposition is that figures never lie ; and the statement just quoted is as plausibly delusive as a statement each of the propositions of which is in itself true can be. Sir, is chalk cheese, or cheese chalk ? In speaking about bituminous and anthracite coal we speak of two distinct articles, as unlike as cheese and chalk. This bill does not in any way, or by any possibility, affect either advantageously or disadvantageously the anthracite coal trade and interests of the country. Canada must have our anthracite coal. She has none of it, nor can she obtain it elsewhere. Our Pennsylvania anthracite coal-fields are a God-given monopoly, as are the long-staple cotton-fields of the South. Our anthracite interest asks no protection. Indeed, were it constitu- tional to impose an export duty you might" put a light one on anthracite coal, and the Canadas would still buy it from us. The $555,332 worth of coal exported under the treaty in 1864 was anthracite, and in fact, therefore, has no part in a discussion relating as this does to the bituminous coal interests of the country. The article bears the name of coal, and there is no other reason why it should be named in connection with this bill. From what fields, and to what provincial ports, have we exported bituminous coal from Ohio ? I ask the well- informed gentlemen who compose the Ohio delegation to tell me if there be one line of steamers, or any other kind of boats, employed in carrying Ohio coal to the British Provinces. Why, sir, they could not sell it at the wharf in any provincial town for its cost. Virginia coal go to the British Provinces ! It cannot, in the nature of things, have gone there save as a curiosity for mineralogical cab- inets. It never went there as an article of commerce. The gist of the gentleman's argument is that we need cheap coal. Why, then, does he not propose to take the 92 TRADE WITH BRITISH AMERICA. duty of a dollar and a quarter per ton off British coal, so that we may have it still cheaper ? Where is his logic ? Mr. Morrill. Does the gentleman desire an answer ? Mr. Kelley. Yes, sir. Mr. Morrill. Mr. Chairman, in relation to this subject of coal, I confess that I arn not clear that it is proper to protect it at all. I do believe that it is one of those arti- cles that cannot be increased by protection, and if it is so, the whole foundation of the doctrine drops out, in my judgment.* I think, as I stated in the extracts which the gentleman has just read, that it is so nearly allied to fire- wood that it deserves perhaps no protection. And while I am up allow me to ask the gentleman if he has any statistics to show that this coal that goes to Can- ada is not bituminous coal. Do they not use it there for the purpose of making gas ? Or do they use anthracite coal throughout the Provinces for making gas ? I ask for information. Mr. Kelky. I will answer the question of the gentle- man. Some small quantity of Ohio coal may have gone there for experiment in gas making, or occasionally a vessel may have carried it as ballast to some western town. It is not a recognized article of commerce, and there is neither an organized company for the sale or carrying of bituminous coal from Ohio, Virginia, or Pennsylvania, to the Canadas. I admit that there may be special cargoes shipped for gas companies in some extreme western parts of Canada, but that does not touch the argument. But while I admit the fact, for the argument's sake, I must say that I do not believe it, for I do not see how it can be true. * The fallacy of the theory that coal " is one of those articles that can- not be increased by protection," is evident from the rapid increase in the production of bituminous coal for consumption upon the Atlantic seaboard, which has been accompanied by a marked decline in price of the imported arti- cle since the duty of $1.25 per ton upon it was revived by the expiration of the Reciprocity Treaty in Marcn, 1866 : Home Production of Bituminous Price of Pictou (N. S.) n^ t f Year. Coal for consumption on the Coal delivered in Atlantic Seaboard. Boston, duty paid. 1863 1,656,852 $ 7.40 Free 1864 1,711,798 10.40 Free 1865 1,989,247 9.60 Free 1866 2,482,932 8.54 $1.25 1867 2,788,103 8.10 1.25 1868 3,308,655 8.16 1.25 1869 4,233,980 7.78 1.25 1870 4,168,476 6.60 1.25 TRADE WITH BRITISH AMERICA. 93 The gentleman from Vermont says the production of coal cannot be increased. Allow me to say that I am speaking for no Pennsylvania interest to-day. I am speaking for poor, wasted, war trampled Virginia, for Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mis- souri, Georgia, and all the southern States. They all need our fostering care, and have inexhaustible beds of bitumi- nous coal that ought to be productive. I am not willing that the rebellious people of the South shall become my political master or equal in the councils of the nation until they are politically regenerated. But I desire to develop their natural resources, to induce capitalists, laborers, and men of enterprise to go and settle among them, and build up industrious and peaceful Commonwealths in the hearts of whose people loyalty to the Union shall dwell. It is in these interests that I speak. The bituminous coal interest of eastern Pennsylvania is comparatively unimportant ; but we have the only paying bituminous coal company east of the summit of the Alleghany mountains. Thirty odd millions of capital have already been invested outside of my State in this branch of the coal trade. Thirty millions more have been invested in railroads to convey the coal from the mines to market, and though it is all unproductive, or nearly so, the owners do not abandon it as lost. They hope that Congress, impelled by a sense of justice, or the pride of American citizenship, will protect them against the assaults of British capital and ill-paid labor. They have waited in hope for the day when the infamous treaty which blasted their prospects should be annulled and they be permitted to enjoy equal chances with for- eigners in our own markets. Give them but an even chance, burdened as they are by our war taxes, and all these dead millions will become productive. I challenge any mem- ber of the House to name another bituminous coal com- pany than the Westmoreland Company that has paid or earned a dividend in the last three years on the eastern slope of the mountains. Give them protection equal to the taxes, direct and incidental, which you impose upon them, and you will find that instead of the product of 1867 being but two million tons, as it was last year, its increase will show that we can produce ninety-five million tons, as Eng- land did in that same year. Our fields are broader and richer than hers and those of Nova Scotia combined. They are scattered from the mountain above the clouds, on the 94 TRADE WITH BRITISH AMERICA. brows of which Hooker and his brave comrades fought, eastward, northward, southward and westward all over the country. Give our miners but that measure of protection, which, under the weight of taxation they bear, will secure an equal chance in our markets, and they will give you an adequate supply of coal, and in two or three years domes- tic competition, while it will by patronizing your railroads and carrying companies have filled your Treasury and ena- bled you to reduce your scale of taxation, will bring down the price of coal in all our markets. Pennsylvania, I repeat, has no special interest in this question. Her interest is that the general prosperity of the country shall be promoted. We want you manufac- turers of New England to clothe the men who dig and handle our coal; we want you men of the Northwest to feed the men who dig and handle our coal ; and Pennsyl- vania will rejoice in her share of the general prosperity which will then bless our country. Sir, I turn to the fortieth page of the letter of the Secre- tary of the Treasury, embodying the report of the revenue commissioners, and find that in the fiscal year 1865 there were imported, under the reciprocity treaty, 13,025,432 bushels, being 465,194 tons of bituminous coal, free of duty, from the British Provinces. There were imported in the same year, paying a duty of $1 25 a ton, 6,131,608 bushels, being 218,986 tons, from England. There were exported of domestic production, which, as I have said, was all or nearly all anthracite, 3,708,264 bushels, and there were exported of foreign production 25,536 bushels, making nearly 1000 tons. Sir, will it be said that the vast coal-beds of this coun- try cannot supply our wants, and that we cannot increase our production? Or will any gentleman say that a duty of fifty cents is enough to protect these embarrassed but important interests? I ask gentlemen to mark the fact, that though 465,194 tons came in under the reciprocity treaty, free of duty, from her Provinces, England was still able to send in, and pay $1 25 duty per ton, the enormous amount of 218,986 tons. Is it not apparent from these facts that we will bankrupt every bituminous coal com- pany in the country if we pass this bill ? Do gentlemen say our demands in this behalf are exor- bitant, or ask why our coal cannot be sold cheaply as that of England and the Provinces ? I answer them in part by TRADE WITH BRITISH AMERICA. 95 another question, which is, do they wish the American miner to toil for the wages given to laborers in English collieries? Sir, the heartlessness of the capitalists of En- gland was never more fully exposed than by the report of the parliamentary commission appointed to inquire into the condition of the mining population of the country.* England's shame is nowhere written in broader or darker colors than in that report, and I will not permit myself to believe that any member of this House is anxious that we should emulate that page of her history. Our better wages for labor and our heavy war taxes answer the suggestion thrown out. How much England and her American Provinces did to protract and aggravate the war is known to all, and I am not willing they should derive advantage from their treachery. On this subject I quote a few lines of a letter from an intelligent coal operator : " It is almost impossible to compute precisely the amount of revenue that Government reaps from a ton of bituminous coal, but the fairest way to get at it will be to take the cost of putting the article on board a vessel before the war, (or in I860,) $3 50 per ton, as compared with the present cost, seven dollars per ton, making an increase in the actual cost of $3 50 per ton. This increase is in the main occasioned by the taxes which have been levied in order to support the Government, (which we pay cheerfully ;) and they touch every article of provisions and repairs about the mines and railroads, as well as the two and a half per cent, upon the gross rate of trans- portation and five per cent, upon the net earnings of the carrying companies, which, when all summed together, amount to very nearly if not quite three dollars per ton." Sir, we are in a transition age; and here I reply fur- ther to the remark of the gentleman from Yermont that coal ought not to be protected. We are in a transition age in more senses than one. We are passing from war to peace and from the age of iron to the age of steel. In a few years, if we foster our industry, steel will supplant iron in almost all the uses to which it is now applied. Sir, coal and iron are the muscles of modern civilization ; and fire ignited coal is the material force that is impel- ling us onward and upward. Had the southern States had equal mastery with us of these elements, I doubt whether we would yet have made conquest over them. I query * " Though England is deafened with spinning-wheels, her people have not clothes; though she is black with digging of fuel, they die of cold; and though she has sold her soul for grain, they die of hunger." Iluskin. 96 TRADE WITH BRITISH AMERICA. whether the result might not have been otherwise than it was. What were Vulcan and the Cyclops to an American mechanic handling a steam engine or a trip-hammer ? We live in a new age. Old mythologies and traditions serve but to hamper us. We must adapt ourselves to the agencies by which we are surrounded and the exigencies in which we are involved. Sir, when the consular wreath first graced the brow of Napoleon he had only conquered Italy, which in the somewhat boastful language of the historian, extended " from the Alps to the Papal dominions." And what had he done ? Why, sir, all that Italy which he had conquered, could it be lifted bodily, could be set down comfortably within the limits of the State of Maine or of South Caro- lina. He had never then commanded so many men as Burnside marched through the city of Washington when taking his single corps to swell the grand army of Lieu- tenant General Grant in the Wilderness. How was it that we could move such masses of men, fight this war over the broadest theatre of international or civil war known to history, and conclude it in little more than four years ? It was because we used coal and iron as our muscles, and fire ignited coal as our force. These gave us New Or- leans, and battered down Fort Fisher. And I may add that, had there been a well-stocked railroad from Mos- cow to the Ehine, Napoleon's retreat would have been marked by fewer horrors, and the history of the nine- teenth century would not probably have read as it does. And if the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means desires to secure us a respectable position among the nations, he will not strike down, disparage, or neglect the coal and iron interests of the country, to subserve any interest of his State, or section. They are the primordial elements of our greatness, and should be cherished above all others. Look at their power. Behold a woman with an iron machine moving noiselessly before her; it is im- pelled by coal and iron fashioned into an engine, and is doing more work in one day than one hundred such women could have done in a week one century ago. Or see yonder pallid little girl attending such a machine ; she will produce results in one day that would have taxed the industry of her grandmother for years. The power of these delicate people is not superhuman ; it is coal and iron that produce these more than magical results. TRADE WITH BRITISH AMERICA. 97 The gentleman doubts whether the production of coal can or should be stimulated, and is willing we should depend on our most powerful and our nearest enemies for this elemental substance. The country will not respond to such purblind patriotism. And the passage of this bill will reduce us to such abject dependence. In eleven months of 1865 I do not go back to 1864, but take the first eleven months of 1865, of last year sixty-six per cent, of the bituminous coal consumed in the States east of Pennsylvania was mined by the laborers of Britain or of the British Provinces. Let me prove this. The amount of bituminous coal received at Boston and New York from the British Provinces, free of duty, to the 1st of December, 1865, was 392,158 tons. The amount of English coal received at the same points during the same period, which paid a tax of $1 25 per ton, was 103,- 723 ; total foreign coal, 495,891 tons. The amount of coal produced in the United States, delivered during the same period at the same points, was but 287,874 tons ; balance in favor of foreign coal, 208, 874 tons one coal company in the British Provinces declaring dividends of one hun- dred and seventy-five per cent, in a year, and but one of the hundreds of companies in our country being able to de- clare a dividend of one per cent., making a contrast so unfa- vorable to us that many of our enterprising people, as was shown yesterday by the gentleman from Maryland, [Mr. F. Thomas,] abandoned their country and embarked their capital in the coal regions of Nova Scotia. Can we strengthen our country by exporting enterprise, industry, and capital? And is it not marvelous that such an exhibit against us can be made, in view of the facts that our bituminous coal- fields are so much broader and richer than those of En- gland and Nova Scotia combined, and that we depend for the support of our Government and its credit upon taxes derived in great part from the forge, the furnace, the foun- dery, the railroad, the machine sh6p, the coal-bed, and iron mine ? Are gentlemen willing to perpetuate the malign influence that has produced a state of facts so disparaging to our intelligence, patriotism, and interests? No; I be- lieve they will agree with me that the time has arrived when we should develop our own resources, foster Ameri- can labor, and guard our own interests. One effect of the reciprocity treaty has been to send to Canada one million 7 98 TRADE WITH BRITISH AMERICA. five hundred thousand immigrants who, but for the advan- tages it gave the Provinces over us, would have swelled our population. Let us now, by taking care of our own people, induce them to come and share our burdens and blessings.* Sir, I have said that I would not legislate with reference to the Provinces under the influence of fear or hate. It would indeed be unwise, for these people will jet be our countrymen. When British free trade, by preventing the people of the British Provinces from diversifying their in- dustries, shall have impoverished their soil and repelled im- migration from their shores ; when that system of trade which keeps those upon whom it is inflicted at hard labor in the production of white crops, has impoverished their fields as it has those of our old States, and reduced them to oft-recurring bankruptcy, as it inevitably must; and when adequate protection to our labor shall have developed our boundless resources, and generous wages invited to our shores the skilled laborers of the world, the contrast be- tween our condition and that of the people of the Provin- ces will impel them to unite their destiny witli ours, and I will be ready to greet them cordially as compatriots. Sir, what do we get in return for the immeasurable de- gradation proposed by this bill ? Why, sir, we get the right to navigate the St. Lawrence and to patronize the canals and railroads of Canada, and the right to cut lumber mark you, "the right to cut lumber or timber of any kind on that portion of the American territory in the State of Maine watered by the river St. John and its tributaries, and when floated down that river to the sea to ship the same to the United States from the Province of New Brunswick without any export duty or other duty." I take it, sir, that these rights will not be long withheld from us, even if we determine to give the American miner a fair field in which to compete with those of England and her Provinces. Let me pause for a moment to say to the gentleman that his statement of the amount of coal imported and exported is more plausible than candid in a respect not yet noticed. It is appraised at ad valorem prices, which are specie prices in the land from which it is exported ; while ours is calculated at currency prices. This fact must * Since the repeal of the Reciprocity Treaty, there has been a large annual immigration of Canadians to the United States. TRADE WITH BRITISH AMERICA. 99 be borne in mind in making the calculations of relative quantities. But to resume and conclude. Sir, to get these rights we give precisely the same rights in larger degree and with greater advantage to the British colonists. We will there- fore get them without this bill. I do not wish to acquire them by force. I am anxious to see them granted recipro- cally by our country and the Provinces; but not as this bill does it. It can be done by treaty or by act of Congress ; but be that as it may, do not let us agree to destroy the fisheries of New England, the salt-works of West Virginia, Michi- gan, and Louisiana, the lumber business of the Northwest and of Maine, and the bituminous coal-works of the whole country, as the price of the privilege of yielding more specifically and in kind than we get. No, sir; let us maintain our rights, our interests, and our country's dignity. Let us go on our way as though there were no British Provinces ; and the mere action of British legislation, constraining their people, as I have already said, to unrequited agricultural labor, will make them sigh for our prosperity. And then we shall find that the American Constitution is as elastic as it is grand and enduring. It has expanded to embrace immense tracts of territory. Our flag has swept from the limits of the ori- ginal thirteen States to the Pacific, and southward to the Kio Grande ; and, sir, when the people of Canada shall, as they will if we protect our labor, ask to unite their destin- ies with ours, the world will receive additional proof that when Providence impelled our fathers to the creation of our Government, it gave them the wisdom to bless us with a Constitution which is the fit canopy of a continent, and will yet crown one. HOW AND WHEN OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 3, 1867. The House being in the Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union Mr. Kelley said : Mr. Chairman : Within an hour of the opening of the present session I introduced the following resolution, which was adopted without dissent : " That the Committee of Ways and Means be instructed to in- quire into the expediency of immediately repealing the provisions of the internal revenue law whereby a tax of five per cent, is im- posed on the products of the mechanical and manufacturing indus- try of the country." On the succeeding Monday, having in the meantime examined the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, I submitted the following : " Resolved. That the proposition that the war debt of the country should be extinguished by the generation that contracted it is not sanctioned by -sound principles of national economy, and does not meet the approval of this House." I hoped that this resolution would also receive the im- mediate assent of the House, but it was thought proper to refer it to the Committee of Ways and Means. I am, how- ever, not without an assured hope that with the sanction of that committee it will at an early day meet the approval of the House and relieve the country from the profound anxiety and depression created by the unprecedented pro- positions of the Secretary. With these resolutions in view I propose, Mr. Chairman, to detain the committee for a little while by an examination of that budget of inapti- tudes, incongruities, and nan sequiturs the report of the Secretary of the Treasury. 100 HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. 101 This report is indeed a noticeable document. It abounds in phrases and propositions of doubtful meaning ; its ab- stract propositions, many of which as mere abstractions are true, and should be considered by the founder of a new and independent community, are not only inapplica- ble to, but are contravened by the inexorable peculiari- ties of our condition ; its abounding facts do not sustain but with emphasis gainsay the conclusions they are mar- shaled to support ; and the means by which it proposes to return to specie payments and extinguish the national debt within given periods would, by virtue of laws as fixed as that of gravitation, produce bankruptcy, indi- vidual, corporate, State, and national, and postpone the per- manent resumption of specie payments for a quarter of a century. There is nothing in this report to gratify one's national pride. As we read it we seek excuses for its author, and hope we may be able to say for him that he confided its preparation to a subordinate who dealt un- fairly by him. It may, however, be that Mr. McCulloch, like an oarsman, rowed one way and looked another, and was too modest to announce his real purpose. He may have improved the occasion to repair a neglect in the edu- cation of the people ; for Rev. Mr. Nasby tells us that the Secretary was present at the Cabinet meeting convened to consider the "onparallelled loosenin uv the Nashnel- Union-Johnson-Dimekratic party in the various States wich held elections on the 9th uv October last," and that he attributed it " to the limited knowledge the masses hed uv 'Ingeany bankin.'" But, be this as it may, I am sure the country will sustain the assertion that whatever com- mendation the report may deserve or receive from "In- geany " or other bankers, it is marked by no sugges- tion adapted to the existing exigencies of our country. The Secretary's wisdom is that of a man owning a thousand fertile acres, who by the aid of a loan on mort- gage had fenced them in and built barns and all requisite outbuildings, and gathered live stock and the many im- plements by which genius has lightened the labors and increased the profits of the farmer, and who withal had able-bodied sons to share his labors, and was by aid of these accumulating a fund with which in a few years he could extinguish his indebtedness; but who when afire consumed his barns and implements and choice stock, would not use his savings to renew his stock and iniple- 102 HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. ments, but though his creditor was not anxious for his money, would sell his interest-bearing bonds and hand over the proceeds, his working capital, as part payment of the mortgage debt. He who under such circumstances would come to such a conclusion and execute it, would find but little sympathy among his neighbors. Eager as they might be to repair his losses, they would not be likely to make him county treasurer or confide the township funds to his administra- tion. They would probably deem him inadequate to the management of his own property, and feel that their neighborhood was well rid of one who could thus stupidly sacrifice his resources and doom his sons to idleness or to earn laborers' wages on the land of strangers. Yet, dis- avowing all disposition to exaggeration or caricature, I present such an one as the prototype of our Finance Minister, as he discloses himself in this report. Witness the exultation with which he announces that during the brief period of fourteen months, namely, from August 31st, 1865, to October 31st, 1866, the principal of our debt was reduced $206,379,565.71. I wonder whether in his exultation Mr. McCulloch remembered that this immense sum of more than $206,000,000 had been added to the cost and market price of the product of but four- teen months of American labor, and that by its addition to the cost and price of our home productions those of the underpaid labor of Europe had been given the advan- tage over the American laborer, in our own markets and those of the world. I wonder whether in his pride he perceived that he was announcing the needless abstraction of more than two hundred and six millions of active working capital from the business men of this country, many of whom were struggling to maintain infant indus- tries which had been called into existence by the war and needed the fostering care of the Government to give them prosperity and permanence. Unfamiliar as he appears to be with the laws of social science and the history of their development, it is possible that he did not know the ad- vantage he was giving to British monopoly over compet- ing American enterprise and industry by recommending the continuance of the excessive taxation which enabled him to pay those hundreds of millions. England is the foe of the laborer in every land. To maintain her mono- poly she must undersell other nations in their own mar- HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. 103 kets, and to effect this must depress the wages of labor to the lowest possible point and use shoddy or other base material whenever it can be done without immediate de- tection. Her capitalists are, we are assured, accumulating 100,000,000 or $500,000,000 surplus capital per annum ; and for more than a century it has been their policy to apply a portion of this surplus to the destruction of the industries of other nations by underselling them, though for a time it involved loss on certain kinds of goods. We have often been the victims of this unscrupulous policy, and if the suggestions of the Secretary prevail it will again prostrate us. The war of 1812 developed *mr productive power very considerably ; but in two years after the Avar closed the capitalists of England, by the express advice of her lead- ing statesmen, and in pursuance of a deliberate combina- tion, swept our young manufactures out of existence. In the course of a speech in Parliament in 1815, Henry Brougham, exulting over our wide-spread bankruptcy, said : "It is well worth while to incur a loss upon the first exportation, in order by the glut to gtifle in the cradle those rising manufactures in the United States which the war has forced into existence." History, so far as that chapter is concerned, is repeating itself, and our market is glutted with British woolen goods which until our factories shall discharge their work-peo- ple and suspend operations will be sold at less than cost. The assessment of extraordinary taxes for the extinguish- ment of the war debt while such a contest is waging will make the victory of our enemy an easy one.* The policy is suicidal, and will prove fatal to our revenues by paraly- * English manufacturers are beginning to discover that the internal taxes to which free trade subjects them, operate as a bonus to their foreign competitors. Win. Hoyle, a cotton manufacturer, recently published a work entitled, Our JVa- tionnl Jtenource*, and How they are W>ed. It ran quickly to a fourth edition, on the 88th page of which I find the-following : " I have often heard it stated, and there is considerable truth in the statement, that, owing to the heavy local taxation in Manchester, and other large towns, spinners and manufacturers find it impossible to compete with country mill. 1 ", where the taxation is lighter; and hence it is observed that, whilst no new mills are being built in Manchester, old ones are being stopped, and the trade is grad- ually shifting to more lightly taxed regions. " What ii true of different districts in the same country, is equally true of dif- ferent countries ; the rates which a manufacturer has to pay must come out of trade profits, which makes the production of goods more expensive; and, conse- quently, other things being equal, if a large mill is taxed at the rate of 500 per annum in this country, but only 100 on the Continent, the Continental manu- facturer has the advantage of 400 per annum over his English competitor/ 104 HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. zing the productive power of the country and diminish- ing the ability of the people to consume either dutiable or taxable commodities. This is not the language of declamation. It has high official sanction, among which is that of the revenue commission appointed by the Secre- tary himself, as appears by the following extract embodied in the last annual report of the secretary of the -National Association of Wool-Growers. Before presenting this extract I should remark that the tax on manufactures has been reduced from six to five per cent, since the preparation of the official reports to which it refers : " The internal revenue tax paid in the year 1865 upon ' woolen fabrics and all manufactures of wool ' amounted to $7,947,094, being 3.79 per cent, upon the whole of the internal revenue collected. How heavily this tax bears upon our manufactures is shown by facts pre- sented in the report of the secretary of the State of Massachusetts upon the industrial statistics of the State for the year 1865. The capital invested in woolens proper is shown to have been $14,775,- 830, and the value of the woolen product to have been $48,430,671. Six per cent, upon the latter sum, the amount of the revenue tax, is $2,905,846, being 19.66 per cent, or in round numbers 20 per cent, upon the capital invested in woolens. This tax has been paid cheer- fully under the impulses of patriotism. But it cannot be borne long. In the language of one of the special reports of the revenue commission, ' It has no parallel, probably, in the fiscal regulations of any civilized nation. It would utterly destroy in ten years two- thirds of the various kinds of production subject to its operations.' " Gentlemen will not fail to observe how perfectly the views of the commission are supported by the facts above cited in relation to the woolen manufacturers of Massa- chusetts. But I recur to the report of the commission: " A very large proportion of the manufacturing establishments in the United States sell products yearly to two or three times the amount of their invested capital ; and in many departments of production their sales yearly amount to more than three times the cost of their establishments. If the capital invested be $100,000 the sales may amount to two or three hundred thousand dollars, and the tax on that business will range from twelve to eighteen thousand dollars ; that is, from twelve to eighteen per cent, on the cost of the manufacturing establishment." And again : " In every point of view in which it is presented it seems clear that the six per cent, tax upon manufactures will destroy productive power in a increasing progression ; that it will in a few years, if not removed, furnish a sad monument to perpetuate the memory of a great mistake." HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. 105 The Secretary's time and attention have probably been so absorbed by his offical guillotine that he has not been able to examine the reports submitted to him by the re- venue commission. I will, in the hope of bringing them to his attention, add to the foregoing the following brief extract from their preliminary report of last year, submit- ted to him by Mr. Commissioner Wells : " The remedy, therefore, for the difficulties above pointed out and illustrated, save in a few striking instances which have probably re- sulted from oversight in the framing of the law, must, in the opin- ion of the commission, be sought for in such a revision of the pre- sent internal revenue system as will look to an entire exemption of the manufacturing industry of the United States from all direct taxation (distilled and fermented liquors, tobacco, and possibly a few other articles excepted). This the commissioners are unhesi- tatingly prepared to recommend." * These grave considerations, though specially reported to him by his own agents, do not seem to have attracted the attention of Mr. McCulloch ; for while exulting over the rapid payment of the debt, without seeming to detect the cause of the popular emotion, he says : " Nothing in our history has created so much surprise, both at home and abroad, as the reduction of our national debt. The won- der excited by the rapidity with which it was created is exceeded by the admiration of the resolution of the tax-payers themselves that it shall be speedily extinguished." It is true, Mr. Chairman, that surprise and wonder agi- tate the practical men of the country. These emotions are not, however, excited by the fact that we were able to bear extraordinary taxation while the development of our * While in England Mr. Wells saw reason to abandon this view. His last report as Special Commissioner of Revenue was made in December 1869. Our internal taxes abstracted from the people that year $185,235,867. Did he recommend their exemption from this grievous burden, or any consider- able portion of it ? Let him speak for himself. While admitting that the sur- plus of the preceding year had been $124,000,000, and that of the current year would be much larger, he said : " Allowing, then, for the extreme possible loss under incomes, the amount of taxation above proposed to be remitted to the people, in consideration of the present large and increasing turpltu of receipt! over expenditures, would be in the neighborhood of $26,000,000." He would retain not only $150,000,000, or 175,000,000 of internal taxes, but proposed in connection therewith a schedule of tariff by which not less than $82,500,000 should be raised from tea, coffee and other imported articles of food and drink. By what potent logic had he been persuaded to abandon often-expressed opinions, and assert that the true way to stimulate development was to paralyze industry by excessive taxation on the food of the laborer and the productions of his toil ? 106 HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. boundless productive power was stimulated by the exi- gencies of the war, ancl our own market was secured to our own producers by the difference between our lawful currency and gold, in which payment of duties on imports was required. The taxes under which those hundreds of millions accumulated were assessed while war was raging and for war purposes, and could have been borne as long as the conditions I have indicated were maintained. Wise men know this, and that the war terminated abruptly and earlier than was expected, and do not hold the Secretary accountable for the results of this contingency. No mat- ter what sacrifices it involved, the people would have cheerfully borne them rather than yield the questions put at issue by the war. But these questions have been hap- pily settled by war's arbitrament. Peace is restored, our currency approximates the specie standard, and it is dis- covered that by aid of our inordinate internal taxes for- eign manufacturers are monopolizing our home market. Our publishers buy their paper and print and bind their books in England or Belgium ; our umbrella-makers have transferred their workshops to English towns ; our woolen and worsted mills are closed or closing, and the laborers in these branches are not only wasting their capital, which consists in their skill and industry, but drawing from the savings-banks or selling the Government bonds in which they had invested their small accumulations to maintain their families during the winter; and our enlarged impor- tations of foreign goods are swelling the balance of trade against us and preparing us for general bankruptcy. The surprise of which Mr. McCulloch speaks is excited by the fact that in view of this condition of things the Secretary of the Treasury should urge the maintenance of extra- ordinary taxes sufficient to enable him to apply not less than $50,000,000 per annum to the extinguishment of our debt by the rapid absorption of the only portion of it which bears no interest.* Wonder amounting almost to awe does possess our people, but it is excited as was that of the unsophisticated sailor who, in the midst of an exhibition of magical illusions, was blown into the air by the accidental explosion of powder, and in his damaged condition wondered what would come next in the order of exercises. * Mr. McCulluch's proposition was to maintain all existing taxes in order to contract the currency by cancelling $50,000,000 of greenbacks annually. HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. 107 That the tax-payers have resolved that the principal of our debt "shall be speedily extinguished" I deny. They regard the attempt as Quixotic, as destructive of our in- dustrial interests, and beneficial only to money-lenders^ speculators in Government securities, and foreign manu- facturers. Sir, if the Secretary is accessible to the voice of remonstrance he must by this time be satisfied that there is no tax-payer in the country who is not engaged in im- porting foreign goods or shaving notes, or who, having bought . bonds at low rates in a depreciated currency, hopes to have them redeemed at an early day in specie, who does not dissent from the assessment of extraordi- nary taxes for the extinguishment by the generation which created it, of a debt, the security of which is un- doubted and which was incurred for the benefit of pos- terity. The opinion of the people on this question is modestly expressed by the editor of the ablest and most instructive of our industrial journals, the Iron Age. He says : " We are glad to see that a resolution for the entire removal of the manufacturers' tax of five per cent, has been introduced, and hope it will be adopted. As an independent proposition, outside of any other amendment of the tax or tariff laws, this will commend itself to the good sense of the country as one so manifestly just that we should expect there would be a very general expression of public feeling in its favor. All classes can heartily unite in this effort to untrammel the industry of the country and to cheapen production. The free-trader and protectionist can at least here agree ; the workman is quite as directly interested in this matter as the employer, for the effect of the tax is only to restrict the demand for the products of his labor. As a war necessity we cheerfully accepted this burden which the manufacturers of tlie country have borne with such uncomplaining loyalty ; but now that the necessity is past, and that the national exchequer is in such a condition that it can easily and safely dispense with the revenue it produced, we think we are entitled, on behalf of manufacturers and their workmen, to demand its repeal. England, with all her load of taxes, has no such impost as this ; her uniform policy is in every way possible to cheapen the production of her wares, and in the unequal contest which we are called to wage with her it is in the last degree unwise to put ourselves under this additional and unnecessary disability." Sir, this generation embraces the widows, orphans, and maimed soldiers of the contending parties in a civil war, each of which parties had armies numbering more than a million men in the field. They at least are in no condi- tion to welcome excessive taxation, especially those of 108 HOW OTJB WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. the South, who are without even the poor pittance we give ours as pensions. The folly of the dull farmer I have supposed a case of stupidity scarcely probable, though possible within the range of human dullness is the wisdom by which the Secretar}' proposes to guide the finances of this country and extricate them from embar- rassments which in this report he depicts as almost over- whelming. Let us hear him. He says that '' He has been clear in his convictions that specie payments are not to be restored by an accumulation of coin in the Treasury to be paid out at a future day in the redemption of Government obli- gations ; but rather by quickened industry, increased production, and lower prices, which can alone make the United States what they ought to be a creditor and not a debtor nation." And as if to illustrate his want of sincerity, or the con- fusion of his ideas, proceeds to speak of "certain branches of industry that are now languishing under the burdens which have been imposed on them ;" and to tell us that though " the people of the United States are naturally a commercial and maritime people, fond of adventure bold, enterprising, persistent" " The disagreeable fact must be admitted, that, with unequaled facilities for obtaining the materials, and with acknowledged skill in ship- building, with thousands of miles of sea-coast, indented with the finest harbors in the world, with surplus products that require in their exportation a large and increasing tonnage, we can neither profitably build ships nor successfully compete with English ships in the transportation of our own productions. Twenty years ago it was anticipated that ere this the United States would be the first maritime Power in the world. Contrary to our anticipations, our foreign commerce has declined nearly fifty per cent, within the last six years." And as if to impress us more profoundly with our present inability to bear excessive4axation, he sets forth the following statistics : "The tonnage of American vessels engaged in the foreign carry- ing trade which entered United States ports was In 1860 5,921,286 In 1865 2,943,661 In 1866 3,372,060 "The tonnage of such vessels which were cleared from the United States was In 1860 6.165"924 In 1865 3,025,134 In 1866 3,383,176 HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. 109 11 The tonnage of foreign vessels which entered our ports was In 1860 2,353,911 In 1865 3,216,967 In 1866 4,410,424 " The tonnage of foreign vessels which were cleared was Tons. In 1860 2,624,005 In 1865 3,595,123 In 1866 4,438,384" While admitting that something of the diminution of our shipping must be attributed to the effects of the war, the Secretary, as if to prove that high taxes have been more destructive than war, says : " The scarcity of American vessels ought to have produced, and but for a redundant currency and high taxes would have produced, activity in our ship-yards and a rapid increase of tonnage ; but this has not been the case. The prices of labor and materials are so high that ship-building cannot be made profitable in the United States, and many of our ship-yards are being practically transferred to the British Provinces. It is only a few years since American ships were sought after on account of their superiority and cheap- ness ; and large numbers of vessels were built in Maine and other States on foreign account or sold to foreigners, while at the same time our own mercantile marine was being rapidly increased. . . . . It is an important truth that vessels can be built very much cheaper in the British Provinces than in Maine. Nay, fur- ther, that timber can be taken from Virginia to the Provinces, and from these Provinces to England, and there made into ships which can be sold at a profit ; while the same kind of vessels can only be built in New England at a loss by the most skilful and economical builders "The same causes a redundant currency and high taxes that prevent ship-building tend to prevent the building of houses and even of manufactories. So high are prices of every description that men hesitate to build dwellings as fast as they are required, and thus rents are so advanced as to be oppressive to lessees, and the healthy growth of towns and cities is retarded. So it is in regard to manu- factories. Mills which were built before the war can be run profita- bly, but so expensive are labor and materials that new mills cannot be erected and put into operation with any prospect of fair returns upon the investment unless upon the expectation that taxes will remain as they are and prices be sustained, if they are not advanced. The same causes are injuriously affecting agriculture and other in- terests which it is not necessary to particularize. It is everywhere observed that existing high prices are not only oppressing the masses of the people, but are seriously checking the development, growth, and prosperity of the country. What remedies does our sagacious Secretary propose for the evils he so truthfully depicts ? One, and apparently in his judgment the most efficacious, is that which I have 110 HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. been considering, namely, to add not less than four or five million dollars per month to the price of American products by taxing them to that amount for the express purpose of extinguishing so much of our national debt ! If gentlemen doubt my statement I beg them to give the re- port an attentive reading. This mad policy pervades all its suggestions. Nor is it to be temporary. It is to be the fixed policy of the Government, and he says our debt which, according to his statement, was on the 31st of October last $2,551,424,121.20, " can be paid by the gene- ration that created it." Sir, if my suspicion that the preparation of the Secre- tary's report was committed to a treacherous subordinate be correct, gentlemen will be able to estimate the wanton- ness of that person's cruelty by the fact that in further illustration of the absurdity of its leading proposition he proceeds to tell us that " between the years 1848 and the 1st of July, 1860, the product of the gold and silver mines of the United States was about $1,100,000,000," but that " it is not probable that the amount of gold and silver now in the United States is very much larger than it was eighteen years ago." And as if to give greater effect to what, were it not gravely trifling with the prosperity of the American people, might be regarded as a huge joke, adds the fact that beside exporting all our bullion we have, in exchange for perishable foreign commodities which we might have fabricated from our own raw materials, given to foreign capitalists, who now hold them, interest-bearing evidences of debt to the amount of $600,000,000, as fol- lows : United States bonds $350,000,000 State and municipal bonds 150,000,000 Railroad and other stocks and bonds.. 100,000,000 Total $600,000,000 Nor does he yet stay his hand in presenting reasons why we should not adopt his proposition, for he informs us that the reports of the custom-houses show that though we exported specie during the fiscal year which ended June 30th, 1866, to the amount of $82,643,374, the balance of trade, as shown by those reports, was still against us in gold values $8,009,577. And with a mea- sure of candor for which I award him full credit adds : HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. Ill " But these figures, taken from the reports of the custom-houses, do not present the whole truth. For many years there has been a systematic undervaluation of foreign merchandise imported into the United States, and large amounts have been smuggled into the country along our extended sea-coasts and frontiers. To make up for undervaluations and smuggling, and for cost of transporta- tion paid to foreign shipowners, twenty per cent, at least should be added to the imports, which would make the balance for the past year against the United States nearly $100,000,000. It is evident that the balances have been largely against the United States for some years past, whatever may have been the custom-house re- turns." Mr. Chairman, I confess my ignorance of " Ingeany bankin'," and will proclaim my gratitude to any of its dis- ciples who will so far admit me to its mysteries as to ena- ble me to reconcile the Secretary's premises and conclu- sions. Meanwhile I ask who but he, unless it be bankers and shavers of notes, importers of foreign goods, and holders of our bonds who desire to get two dollars for every one they invested in them, who but these does not see in this fearful array of evidences of our tendency to universal bankruptcy a necessity for developing our productive power by diminishing the internal taxes of the country to the lowest possible amount consistent with an economical administration of the Government? And who except the classes just enumerated does not see that by continuing the course we are pursuing we are retarding the perma- nent resumption of specie payments and postponing the day when we shall be able to enter judiciously upon the extinguishment of our debt ? Mr. McCulloch does not seem to perceive that this fear- ful array of facts is but so many concurrent items of evi- dence that notwithstanding our freedom, enterprise, and energy, and our infinitely diverse, easily-accessible, and inexhaustible stores of natural wealth, our extended sea- coast, fine harbors, broad lakes, and far-rolling rivers, which invite us to manufacturing and maritime effort and preeminence, we are but a mere commercial dependency. Like all other debtors we are at the mercy of our credi- tors. Though richer in natural resources than all of them combined, the continuance of our prosperity is dependent upon the caprices or necessities of England and the na- tions of Europe, which, by protecting their industry and importing only raw material or commodities but slightly wrought and exporting products as much manufactured 112 HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. as possible, practice economies unknown to us, and by diversifying their industry provide remunerative employ- ment for all their people. Manufactures and agriculture are each the handmaid of the other, and the successful practice of both is a prere- quisite to profitable and sustained commerce. That sea- board nation which most diversifies its productions and best protects its skilled labor against unequal competition will ever be foremost in the race for commerce. No, sir ; the Secretary does not see the proper applica- tion of the facts he cites, and while dilating upon them illustrates his profound ignorance of the progress social science has made by reiterating trite maxims from Eng- lish handbooks of political economy to prove that inter- national trade-balances are settled with gold and silver and that the flow of specie " indicates the condition and results of trade between different nations." In the light of these laws I point him and the country to the fact that the trade between us and foreign nations has carried them our cotton and wool, our beef, pork, grain and other 'staples, and $1,100,000,000 of our bullion with $600,000,- 000 of our bonds to pay for wines, silks, laces, cloths, etc., which have been consumed, and iron rails to stretch across the coal and iron beds which underlie our country from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific and from the lakes to the Gulf, and ask them if the facts do not indicate bankruptcy as the " result " if the present and past " con- dition " of that trade be maintained ? And whether, when as now we are compelled to look to internal taxes for the bulk of our receipts, when duties on foreign imports could under no possible system provide us with adequate income, it would not be well as a pure question of revenue to so adjust our taxes as to relieve American labor and land from every possible exaction, and by every possible device stimulate the development of our pro- ductive power and the immigration of skilled laborers into the country ? Thus, and thus alone, can we check the flow of specie and bonds to Europe and retain among us as capital the production of our gold and silver mines with which to redeem the $600,000,000 of bonds now held by foreigners. This the Secretary professes to desire, but how the imposition of extraordinary taxes upon our industry to the amount of $50,000,000 per annum is to promote it he has not condescended to inform us. HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. 11B The scheme of the Secretary is as unprecedented as it is unwise. It is without a single historical example. The first Federal debt was funded in 1791, and for sixteen years no effort was made to reduce it/ In 1807 the re- ceipts of the Government from ordinary sources were in excess of current expenses, and the surplus was applied to the debt. This easy and natural process of extinguish- ment continued until 1812. The average rate of payment per annum from 1807 to 1812 was about $6,000,000, and at the breaking out of the war with Great Britain the debt had been reduced from $75,000,000 to $45,000,000. It was swollen by that war to $127,000,000 ; but no ex- traordinary taxes were imposed for its redemption. The revenues of the Government were derived from ordinary sources, and such balances as remained after paying cur- rent expenses were applied to its absorption. No states- man of either period proposed to cripple industry and retard the development of the country by the imposition of extraordinary taxes as a means of extinguishing its debt. They wisely stimulated both by imposing higher duties upon foreign importations, and under the avowedly protective tariffs of 1824 and 1828 paid it off. Such a spectacle had never been witnessed before, for no other nation had ever liquidated its entire debt. The American people will rather follow the successful example of the statesmen of those days and foster our industry, than accept the crotchets of our present Secre- tary of the Treasury and cripple labor and diminish pro- duction by extraordinary taxation. They freely lent their substance to the Government and hold more than eighty per cent, of our national securities, and none of them are demanding payment. Nor need we be specially anxious about that part of our bonds that are held in Eu- rope. They who hold them bought them as investments or as matter of speculation. As investments they pay better interest than the holders can elsewhere obtain with equal security, and we are not required to prostrate our industry by a vain attempt to hasten the day on which foreign speculators shall realize anticipated profits. Eng- land has never been guilty of such stupidity. When the Napoleonic wars closed, the governing class of England held her bonds, and like the money-changers and " Ingeany " bankers of our country clamored for the re- sumption of specie payments that they might ge% par for 8 114 HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. the bonds which they had bought during those wars at such prices as our own sold for and in paper as irredeem- able and depreciated as ours has been. By this operation they would have made an average of one hundred per cent, on their investments. But governing class as they were, it was not until seven years after the close of the war that the statesmen who controlled the financial affairs of Great Britain attempted the experiment of resumption, or till the suspension had endured for well nigh a quarter of a century. And only within a few years I think I may say within the present decade has England made serious effort to reduce the principal of her debt, nor has she yet imposed an extraordinary tax for the purpose. Her statesmen knew that her population was increasing and her productive power in process of rapid development, and they know that so long as the interest is ready at maturity and the creditors of the nation see that its taxes are diminishing and its population and resources increas- ing, they will regard the investment as safe. Thus has England, while permitting her debt to increase, by showing her steady ability to diminish the taxes upon her people and provide for interest and current expenditures, been able to reduce the interest on her debt from war rates to the low rates at which she now holds it ; and that debt which by its immense volume seemed to overshadow her whole future, is now not in the proportion of ten per cent, per man, per dollar, and per acre to what it was at the date of the treaty of Paris. So will it be with us if we shun the nostrums of the Secretary of the Treasury. The estimated wealth of the loyal States at this time is $17,- 428,000,000, and their annual product is at least $4,685,- 000,000. But thirty years hence, if the progress of our growth is not retarded by financial charlatanism, the wealth of those States will be $90,000,000,000, and the annual product not less than $23,000,000,000, and the now prostrate but naturally richer South will then rival the people of the North in prosperity and tax-paying power. Let me, Mr. Chairman, as it is due to the Secretary I should, say, that he does not rest this urgent demand for the speedy extinguishment of the debt upon principles of social science or national economy. In this matter his head yields to his heart. He is guided by a sentiment. He prides himself upon his magnanimity, and would ruin HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. 115 the industry of the North and retard the development of our county for a century if need be rather than wound the sensibilities of our " erring southern brethren." Thus, after indulging in some trite reflections upon the evil of public debt in general, he tells us that " To the perpetuation of the existing debt of the United States there are also, it may be proper to remark, serious objections grow- ing out of the circumstances under which it was created. Although incurred in a great struggle for the preservation of the Government, and therefore especially sacred in its character, its burdens are to be shared by those to whom it is a reminder of humiliation and defeat. It is exceedingly desirable that this, with other causes of heart-burnings and alienation, should be removed as rapidly as pos- sible, and that all should disappear with the present generation, so that there may be nothing in the future to prevent that unity and good feeling between the sections which are necessary for true national prosperity." To others than the Secretary it is known that the coun- try is no longer divided into hostile sections. That which made the South sectional was slavery and pride of caste. Slavery, thank God, has been forever abolished, and pride of caste is vanishing. Yes, sir, the decree, sustained by a majority of nearly half a million of the voters of the northern States and enduring as the fiat of Heaven, that pride of caste must disappear from American politics has gone forth. Henceforth he who breathes the air of our country, let his color or fatherland be what or where it may, may by his own volition invest himself with the attributes of American citizenship. Every one born on the soil is a citizen, and our naturalization laws are hence- forth of universal application. I fear the southern people after reading the Secretary's report will regard him rather as a man of sentiment than of affairs. They may applaud the delicacy of his sensibil- ities, but while doing so will probably wish that a well- informed statesman presided over his Department. De- structive to northern interests as the attempt to provide for the payment of our debt by extraordinary taxes on this generation would be, the southern people are less able than we to endure the mad experiment. Among them are, as I have said, the widows, orphans, and maimed sol- diers of their armies, whose poverty is not relieved even by the pittance we give as pensions to the same classes ; their industrial system has been overthrown and is not yet reorganized ; their cities and towns by their dilapida- 116 HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. tion tell how their trade and commerce have suffered, and their lands to a great extent lie waste; their banks, insur- ance companies, and other moneyed institutions have gone into liquidation ; their railroads are in ruins and almost bare of rolling-stock ; and they are making daily appeals to the people of the North, whose presence among them the baser sort of Southerners will not permit, for capital with which to open and work mines of gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, and coal, in which their land abounds. Scourged by the results of their own folly they are awakening to a knowledge of the value of their possessions, and are propos- ing to make them available. They desire if they can obtain the requisite capital to locate the factory near the cotton-field and the forge and furnace near the mine and ore bed. A brief extract or two from southern papers of very recent date will show how cruel Mr. McCulloch is to those to whom he wishes to be so kind. Says the Petersburg, Va., Index: "The variety of schemes devised for the relief of that numerous and unfortunate class of persons who are now laboring under pecuni- ary embarrassment evinces the necessity, as well as the difficulty, of providing an adequate remedy for the mischief sought to be pre- vented. A further extension of the stay law, a total or partial re- pudiation of private indebtedness, and the exemption of specified property from involuntary alienation are some of the expedients now brought forward to meet the pressing exigencies of the occasion." The Nationalist, Mobile, Alabama, says : " Reliable planters from Mississippi say that not one half dozen, on an average, in each county in that State, can pay their debts. Large tracts of valuable land are selling at nominal rates. And the Eichmond, Va., Times says " If the tide of immigration continues to flow by us, and we make no energetic and intelligent effort to secure it, taxation will speedily devour what little the war left, and a few years hence when the pine, the persimmon, and the sassafras have made a wilderness of many a broad and once fertile field, some inauspicious day the tax-gatherer or the sheriff will hang out his red flag over the ruins of the old family mansion, and then, alas for the paternal acres, and the dear, eacred old homes of our boyhood ! for 'every thing, even the dear old graveyard, where repose the honored dust of our forefathers and the bones of many a noble ' soldier son ' and fair daughter, will pass into the hands of some codfish-eating Puritan from Boston or Nan- tucket." HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. 117 How incapable the people of North Carolina are of en- during extraordinary taxation is shown by reference to facts which occurred anterior to the war by a writer in the Newbern Times of September 8. After saying with truth that " the old North State is inferior to none of her sisters in the combined advantages of situation, climate, agricul- tural and mineral riches," he proceeds to make the follow- ing exhibit : " In 1860 North Carolina ranked as twelfth among the States, containing a population of 992,622, of whom 331, 059 were slaves. The free population are distributed according to places of birth, as follows : Born in North Carolina 634,220 Born in other southern States 21,446 Born in northern States 2,399 Born in foreign countries 3,299 Born at sea and not classified 201 " While North Carolina was thus receiving from without her limits about twenty-seven thousand immigrants, she sent as emigrants to other States no less than 272,606 of her free-born offspring who are scattered throughout the western and southwestern States, of whom. Tennessee received 55,000, Georgia 29,000, Indiana 27,000, Alabama 23,000, Arkansas 18,000. " She was ninth among the States in her contribution to the population of the Union ; seventh in contributing to the popula- tion of other States ; behind all, save little Delaware and South Carolina, which ranks last of all, in the reception of citizens from other States. " Of the vast foreign immigration, numbering upward of four mil- lions, which has built up the manufactures and the internal improve- ments of the northern and western States, she received only about three thousand, standing in that respect behind every State in the Union and behind three of the Territories." But how capable the future people of North Carolina will be is well shown by the editor of the Old North State, published at Salisbury. In an article entitled " The Future of North Carolina," he says: " The questions present themselves, how is all this to be done, and can the Government promote the great object by a proper policy ? We shall endeavor to answer these questions to the best of our poor ability. " The abolition of slavery has, in our opinion, changed the destiny of the State. The negro cannot be entirely relied upon as a laborer, and he must be assisted by, or his place be supplied with white labor- ers sooner or later. These, except in a small portion of the State, cannot be profitably employed in agricultural pursuits until other interests are brought prominently forward and partially developed. This cannot be done without an influx of capital from abroad. " The greatest of these interests, and those which we shall notice 118 HOW ODE WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. on this occasion, are the raining and manufacturing interests. It is perfectly useless for us to speak of the vast mineral wealth of North Carolina ; it is known to all the world to be inferior to that of no country on the globe, both in quantity, quality, and variety of min- erals, but we may have no capital to render them available. " And to the capitalist who desires to engage in manufacturing, no country in the world presents more inducements than North Carolina. Her water-power is unsurpassed. As a general thing steam is useless in the State for manufacturing purposes ; for the face of the country is intersected by water courses such as abound in few other lands. If we look at the map we shall see that there is a perfect net-work of streams, showing that it is one of the best watered portions of the earth, and the structure of the country is such that every one of these streams can be made to drive machin- ery. All this magnificent provision of nature has thus far been per- mitted to waste, in a great measure at least. " It is scarcely necessary to refer to these facilities more in detail. Every reader knows the vast capacity of our larger rivers for these purposes. That of the Roanoke, the Neuse, the Haw, the Deep, the Main Yadkin, the South Yadkiu, the Little Yadkin, the Catawba, and other rivers of the State for driving machinery, is scarcely equaled by any in the world, while we have many other smaller streams of very great capacity. "And when all this water power is turned to account for manufac- turing purposes, as it will be at no great distance of time, when' we have thousands of furnaces in full blast turning the ores from the bowels of the earth into the richest marketable commodities, and when our vast deposits of coal shall be used for these and other purposes for which nature intended them, what a country we will have ! What vast amounts of wealth must then flow into our laps. Our State will then be dotted over with the most flourishing manu- facturing towns and villages and our now barren fields will teem with the richest verdure. " This must necessarily be so. We stated at the outset that until the mining and manufacturing interests were at least partially de- veloped imported white labor could not be profitably employed in agricultural pursuits. But when these interests become to be e power in the State the thing changes. All the thousands, if not the hundreds of thousands, of factory operatives and miners must find a support, and the result will be that vast home markets will be created. The soil will be heavily taxed for their sustenance and consequently vast improvements will be made in our system of agri- culture and nothing needs improvement more.* But we will not pursue this line of remark further we have presented the general outlines and we leave it to the imagination of our readers to fill up the picture. In the course of time the farms of our State will rival those of the Dutch Pennsylvanians ; our lands will become equally productive, while our system of internal improvements will become equal to theirs." More gladly, sir, than the people of the North will * Dreading such an influx of immigrants, the democratic members of Congress from North Carolina voted with the free trade representatives of New York city against protective duties. HOW OUB WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. 119 those of the South welcome release from every dol- lar of taxation from which sagacity can exempt them. And I assure the Secretary that the people of no part of the country have shared so largely as those of the South the surprise and wonder to which he alludes- Mr. McCulloch truly says : " We have but touched the surface of our resources ; the great mines of our national wealth are yet to be developed." This is specially true as to the southern portion of our country, and in the name of the impoverished people of that section I ask, is it well to tax a generation the sur- face of whose resources has not been touched by the transmuting hand of labor, and the mines of whose wealth are yet to be developed, in order to pay the principal of a mortgage the holder of which neither needs nor desires his money ? and would not wisdom or state craft suggest the propriety of enabling the owners of these mines of wealth to accumulate cap'ital with which to work them and by the magic touch of labor to convert them into cur- rent gold ? The taxing process must continue our ex- hausting dependence on foreign nations, while the de- veloping process would make us as free commercially as we are politically, and enable us, by our example of liberal wages and freedom from their exhausting hours of toil, to influence the commercial and manufacturing usages of European States, as our political example is influencing their political and social institutions. The Secretary, however, has other prescriptions than that of excessive taxation by which to restore the country. In his opening paragraphs he says : " With proper economy in all the Departments of the Govern- ment, the debt can be paid by the generation that created it, if wise and equal revenue laws shall be enacted and continued by Congress, and these laws are faithfully enforced by the officers charged with their execution." Again, he tells us that he " has mainly directed his at- tention to measures looking to an increase of efficiency in * Mr. McCulloeh's Fort Wayne speech, in which he promised to bring about a resumption of specie payments in two years by contracting the currency, cost the American people hundreds of millions. The mere announcement paralysed enterprise. No new projects were undertaken till Congress prohibited further contraction, and many that were in process of construction were suspended or abandoned. Practical men everywhere saw that the result of his policy would be bankruptcy and not resumption. 120 HOW OUE WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. the collection of revenues, to the conversion of interest- bearing notes into five-twenty bonds, and to a reduction of the public debt." Efficiency in the collection of reve- nues, forsooth ! " The faithful enforcement of laws by the officers charged with their execution ! " These are brave words to fall from the lips of one whose faithless exercise of official functions in this very matter has dur- ing the past year cost the Government more than $50,- 000,000. Brave words, indeed, are these from one who in a wicked attempt to subvert the popular will by the cor- rupt use of official patronage has removed hundreds of well-tried, capable and experienced officers of the revenue and customs departments and substituted for them men deficient alike in capacity, experience, and character. There is not a congressional district in the country whose people are not grieving over the fact that the Secretary of the Treasury, who embodies these fine phrases in his re- port, has wantonly and wickedly aggravated the onerous taxation under which they groan. Let who else will speak of the necessity of a faithful administration and due enforcement of the revenue laws, for which every patriot will pray, becoming modesty would constrain the Secre- tary of the Treasury to avoid the topic. This is a matter on which Congress should take early action, and if it means that the customs and internal revenue laws shall be faithfully and impartially enforced it must see that another than the author of the report I am considering shall have the selection of officers for their enforcement. Some of the Secretary's suggestions are embodied in distinct no, not in distinct, but in numerical propositions. To one of these I invite the attention of the committee. It is as follows : " 2. That the duties upon imported commodities should corres- pond and harmonize with the taxes upon home productions, and that these duties should not be so high as to be prohibitory, nor to build up home monopolies, nor to prevent that free exchange of commodi- ties which is the life of commerce. Nor, on the other hand, should they be so low as to seriously impair the revenues, nor to subject the home manufacturers, burdened with heavy internal taxes, to a competition with cheaper labor and larger capital which they may be unable to sustain." " There's wisdom for you ! " I venture to assert that Jack Bunsby never uttered a more characteristic propo- sition than that ; and all will agree that since the cele- HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. 121 brated Kane letter of James K. Polk our political litera- ture has embodied no utterance more shrewdly Delphic. This ingeniously inexpressive proposition is not the Secretary's only allusion to " home monopolies." He seems to hold them in special dread ; and it is to be deeply regretted that he has not indicated the arguments by which his apprehensions are sustained, as they are not to be found in the works of the disciples of any school of politi- cal economy or social science. The teachers of free trade do not agree with him in be- lieving that high duties " build up home monopolies." They assert that protection secures undue profits to cer- tain branches of production and tempts capitalists to ruin themselves by so overdoing the business as to glut the market and compel them to sell their goods at small pro- fits or at a loss. Their theory proceeds upon the want of judgment in capitalists and business men but by assert- ing that high duties beget undue domestic competition denies that they promote local monopolies. Nor does Mr. McCulloch agree with the school of pro- tectionists, for they say that ^assured protection against unequal competition gives capitalists confidence and in duces them to open mines and build furnaces, forges, and factories, whereby constant employment and ample wages are secured to the otherwise idle people of the country. This theory proceeds on the assumption that the American manufacturer is competent to measure the contingencies of our own markets and of the course' of foreign trade, but is not competent to resist the gigantic efforts which were commended by Lord Brougham, and one of which is now making by the Crcesus-like capitalists of England "to stifle in the cradle those rising manufactures in the United States which the war has forced into existence." Our present condition resembles very closely that of the States of Europe at the close of Napoleon's wars, and the following passage from the admirable address of John L. Hayes, Esq., entitled, "The Fleece and the Loom," em- bodies illustrations of fixed laws applicable enough to our condition to dispel even the Secretary's dread of " home monopolies :" " What would have been the future industrial condition of conti- nental Europe if at the time when peace restored the nations to labor the textile manufactures had been left to their own free course and no legislation had intervened to regulate their progress ? Can 122 HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. there be any doubt that they would have become the exclusive oc- cupation of England ? Alone in the possession of steam power and machinery ; alone provided with ships and means of transport ; alone endowed, through her stable legislation, with capital to vivify her natural wealth, she had absolute command of the markets of the Continent. The question was presented to the continental na- tions whether they should accept the cheap tissues of England, or at some sacrifices repel them, to appropriate to themselves the labor arid profit of their production. The latter course was successively adopted, with some modifications, by each of the continental na- tions ; and with what results to their own wealth and the industrial progress and comfort of the world ? Instead of a single workshop Europe has the workshops of France, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Bel- gium, .Sweden, Denmark, Spain, each clothing its own people with substantial fabrics ; each developing its own creative genius and peculiar resources ; each contributing to substitute the excellence of competition for the mediocrity of monopoly ; each adding to the progress of the arts and the wealth and comfort of mankind." * The fifth of the Secretary's propositions is " the rehabi- litation of the States recently in insurrection." Refer- ring to the conquered territories, which notwithstanding the President's usurpations await the action of the law- making power for reconstruction, Mr. McCulloch says : " Embracing as they do one-tnird part of the richest lands of the country, and producing articles of great value for home use and for exportation to other countries, their position with regard to the Gen- eral Government cannot remain unsettled, and their industrial pur- suits cannot continue to be seriously disturbed, without causing such a diminution of the production of their great staples as must necessarily affect our revenues, and render still more unsatisfactory than they now are our trade relations with Europe There will be no real prosperity in these States, and consequently no real prosperity in one-third part of the United States, until all pos- sess again equal privileges under the Constitution." If it be true, as it undoubtedly is, that " one-third part of the richest lands of the country " are by reason of tem- porary causes not producing " articles of great value for home use and for exportation to other countries," would it not seem to suggest the idea that this unhappy state of affairs should be permitted to pass away and these lands be made productive before they should be burdened with taxes not demanded by imperious necessity ? And the question whether before these lands shall be able to bear taxation for that purpose the people of the North, whose Why may not the Carol in as compete with New England in cotton goods, and Alabama and Missouri with Pennsylvania in iron aud steel HOW OUR WAR DEBT CAN BE PAID. 123 sacrifices during the war saved the integrity of the Union, should be called upon to extinguish the debt created by the crimes of the possessors of this broad and rich ter- ritory ? The people of the northern States have certainly arrived at this conclusion, and I have shown that school- ed by suffering the people of the South, while antagoniz- ing them on many points, agree with them in this. Pursuing this branch of his subject, Mr. McCulloch asks, " Can the nation be regarded as in a healthy condi- tion when the industry of so large a portion of it is de- ranged ?" And the people, North and South, answer " No ; and in our enfeebled condition we pray you not to rob us of our working capital in order to extinguish a debt which was contracted for the benefit of mankind and future ages." He asks again, "And can the labor question at the South be settled as long as the political status of the South is unsettled?" And the country answers, "Yes, there is no inseparable connection between the labor question and the political status of the conquered terri- tories;" and adds that the " political status " of the South cannot be settled until its rebellious leaders discover that the loyal people of the country are able to defend its in- stitutions against the usurpations of Andrew Johnson, and accepting the constitutional amendments already adopted and which are in process of adoption by three-fourths of the States which now constitute the Union, submit to Congress constitutions republican in form upon which the people shall have set the seal of their approval. The people of the loyal North cannot restore those of the con- quered territories to their " political status. 1 ' We can only consent to their restoration when they shall be wil- ling that it shall take place on terms which will render the future peace of the country secure, and for this we are and have been ready. The leaders of the South, not we, are the dog in the manger. It is they who, by refus- ing to abandon the dogmas that evoked the war and the oligarchic institutions that sustained it, resist the influx of the tide of immigration that would fertilize their lands and republicanize their institutions. The imminent want of the people of the South is not " political status." That would not enable them to settle the "labor question." What they want is capital and currency and a willingness to permit loyal men, whether 124 HOW OUR WAR DEBT f enterprise, and rob millions of laboring people of their whole estate. But permit me to inquire what effect this experiment will have on the public revenues ? Can an honest bank- rupt contribute much to the exchequer of his country ? Are those who are conducting business at a loss apt to make large contributions to the fund derived from income tax ? And are unemployed laborers who have drawn and consumed their last dollar in a condition to buy dutiable or taxable commodities ? No, sir ; as the number in each of these classes increases the public revenue diminishes ; and in view of the facts I have hastily presented I am prepared to say that with full employment, even though prices had continued as high as they were during the war, which I maintain was impossible under the influence of our increasing activity and productive power, the people 224: CONTRACTION THE ROAD TO BANKRUPTCY. could better pay the taxes they then endured, heavy as they were, than they can with a contracting currency, low prices, and but partial or no employment for men and ma- chinery, pay the greatly diminished rate suggested by the Commissioner. Mr. Chairman, two policies were open to us at the close of the war. We have tried one, and the results are but too painfully apparent ; the other is still open to us. It is true we cannot repair the losses already endured, but we can check the downward tendency, quicken industry, and give a new impulse to the productive power of the coun- try. It was open to us to diminish the depreciation in the rate of wages by diminishing taxes and fur- nishing as we had done during the war, a sound circu- lating medium adequate in volume for the rapid ex- change of commodities among our own people, and thus secure employment to our laborers with fair wages for their work ; or, on the other hand, we could by imposing taxes not demanded by our exigencies and contracting the currency impair confidence, force sales, palsy enterprise, reduce wages, and deprive the laborer of a market for the only commodity he has to sell his industry. Gentlemen will say there can for the present be no em- ployment because the markets are overstocked, and there is what political economists often speak of, "a glut in the market." Sir, the time has never been when the markets of the world were glutted. When that event shall come, every home will be well furnished, and every human being well clothed. A superabundance of the necessaries of life cannot exist while the urgent wants of millions can- not be supplied. Our markets are not glutted. The stock of goods of every kind in the hands of merchants is unu- sually low, and there are unemployed people in the coun- try who need them all and who would gladly labor for the means to purchase them all. The wretch that shivers in a cheerless home without food, fuel, or adequate clothing ; she who, ill-fed herself, shares her last crust with her hun- gry children ; and they who in the midst of winter are deprived of the privilege of toiling, and as their goods are thrown rudely into the street realize a landlord's power when rent is in arrear, do not believe that the market is glutted. Nor is it. The disease from which we suffer is not glut or plethora. Its seat is in the functions of circulation. It is congestion produced by a financial CONTRACTION THE ROAD TO BANKRUPTCY. 225 tourniquet applied by a charlatan. That phrase " glut in the market " involves a perversion of terms, and is used to express the fact that the masses are from some cause una- ble to consume their usual supply of the comforts or necessaries of life.* It does not, as it implies, express the fact that there is, an over supply of commodities essential to the comfort of man, but that there is financial derange- ment. It is a convenient phrase for the theorist, a veil used to conceal a fact the occurrence of which should ad- monish every statesman that there is something wrong in the prevailing practice of government. The author of the next treatise on popular fallacies should make " glut in the market " the subject of a leading chapter; for they who use the phrase invariably confound terms and designate the consequence as the cause. Thus the Irish Republic, in the course of a generally able article in its issue of January 4th, says : "From all parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut we have been receiving, during the past six weeks, the very unwelcome intelli- gence that mill-owners and manufacturers were either contracting their producing operations or suspending them altogether. Eun- ning half or quarter time appears to be the order of the day ; while not unfrequently the engine fires are blown out and the machinery left to rust in idleness. The cause is obvious. There is little or no demand for goods. The consequences are what we have already stated. The hands of hundreds of thousands of honest workmen are idle, and their children are ill-fed and ill-clad under the biting blasts of a North American winter." Let me point out the fallacy of this statement. Fires * There are other means of producing an apparent glut in the market, than by suddenly contracting the currency of a busy and prosperous people. The work- ing men of England in a blind effort to improve their condition, have limited the amount of production, and thereby glutted their market as effectually as Mr. McCulloch would have glutted ours had Congress not prohibited further con- traction. In "Social Politics " Prof. Kirk says : " It may not be out of place here to notice that there is a burden of no small magnitude left behind among the working men in their own state of mind on social matters. Many of them actually think the less they work the better ! And they insist that no man shall do more than a very limited amount of work if they can prevent him ! They insist that no one shall learn to work be- yond a very limited number ! They and their children are actually dying in hundreds for want of houses to live in, and yet they think that the fewer houses they build the better ! They are miserably clad, and yet they think the fewer clothes they make the better ! They are in semi-starvation because of high prices, and yet they actually think that the higher they can make the cost of production, the better for them ! " " Production is yet so far below the wants of men ; in other words, there are yet so many starving and ill-clad, ill-housed thousands in the world, that ' over-production ' is ridiculous." Ibid. 15 226 CONTRACTION THE ROAD TO BANKRUPTCY. are blown out and machinery left to rust in idleness, not because there is no demand for goods, but because through- out the South and West there is no circulating medium with which to effect exchanges; and the policy of the Secretary of the Treasury with the cry of the creditor class for resumption have destroyed confidence in indi- vidual credit. The proposition should be stated thus : " There is little or no demand for goods. The cause is obvious : it is that the hands of hundreds of thousands of honest workmen are idle, and their children ill-fed and ill-clad, because mill-owners and manufacturers have been compelled to contract their operations and withhold from laborers employment and wages with which they would be able to purchase the products of the farmer and manufac- turer." The general theory I am advancing is not new, and is one that should never be disregarded by those who legis- late for the people of a republic. The social evils we are enduring, the bankruptcy that is overtaking so many men of enterprise, the want and enforced idleness that prevail so largely among our laboring classes, are due to two causes : excessive internal taxation, and the curtailment of our currency at a time when the numbers and activities of our people were rapidly increasing. The Secretary of the Treasury and his adherents are responsible for this general prostration of credit and business. They talk of the honor of the country, and the necessity of maintaining it by making the paper dollar equal to the gold dollar, and of hastening the day when our bonds shall be paid in gold. The means to which they resort will not produce the results they desire, but will defeat them. Nor are those who resist them hostile to the bondholder. They aim to secure the laborer the possession and just fruits of his hard inheritance, and by the rapid development of the boundless resources of the country and the restoration of general prosperity to enable the Government to meet the utmost of its obligations with honor at maturity. The con- test is between the creditor and the debtor class the men of investments and the men of enterprise ; and during all such contests the laboring classes are inevitable sufferers. The issue thus raised is as old as civilization. And now, as always heretofore, the creditor class is the aggres- sor. Alison, in his " History of Europe " from the fall of Napoleon to the accession of his nephew, says : CONTRACTION THE ROAD TO BANKRUPTCY. 227 " Whoever has studied with attention the structure or tendencies of society, either as they are portrayed in the annals of ancient story or exist in the complicated relations of men around us, must have become aware that the greatest evils which in the later stages of national progress come to afflict mankind, arose from the undue influence and paramount importance of realized riches. That the rich in the later stages of national progress are constantly getting richer and the poor poorer is a common observation, which has been repeated in every age, from the days of Solon to those of Sir Robert Peel ; and many of the greatest changes which have occurred in the world in particular the fall of the Roman empire may be distinct- ly traced to the long-continued operation of this pernicious tend- ency For the evils complained of arose from the unavoidable result of a stationary currency, coexisting with a rapid increase in the numbers and transactions of mankind; and these were only aggravated by every addition made to the energies and productive powers of society." Again, he says : " But if an increase in the numbers and industry of man coexists with a diminution in the circulating medium by which their trans- actions are carried on, the most serious evils await society, and the whole relations of its different classes to each other will be speedily changed ; and it is in that state of things that the saying proves true that the rich are every day growing richer and the poor poor- er." Alison's History of Europe, 1815 to 1852, chapter 1. As Sir Archibald Alison was not gifted with more than human prescience he could not have foreseen the condition of our country in the years that are passing. If, therefore, he described it, he did so by declaring a general law. That he did portray our condition with nice discrimina- tion no one can controvert. Let us see how exact a com- pliance the contraction policy is producing with all the conditions the conjunction of which he tells us must pro- duce the most serious evils to society. The close of the war found us with a currency expanded somewhat beyond the amount to which we had been used before the rebellion, but with everybody in the North well employed. Men of character were able to borrow money at moderate rates of interest, and were everywhere engaging in new enterprises that were not merely specula- tive, but calculated to add to individual and national wealth. Labor was in demand at fair wages. It is true that food was high, for a great war had raged through a series of years, and been succeeded by years of drought or excessive rain, during which the fields had not yielded their usual crops. This no legislation could have averted ; 228 CONTRACTION THE ROAD TO BANKRUPTCY. but in spite of it the people at large were prosperous and confident that a fruitful year would adjust the cost of food to the prices of other commodities. From ten to twelve millions of our people, occupjing more than six hundred thousand square miles of our most fertile territory, which abounds in water-power and varied mineral resources, were almost without currency. Their whole capital, other than lands and houses, railroads and canals, had been in- vested in confederate loans or otherwise exhausted. Their banks and insurance companies were bankrupt. They had cotton, tobacco, naval stores, and the fields from which to produce these and all other agricultural com- modities. They had laborers skilled in their arts of cul- tivation, and willing to toil for wages unreasonably low, but they had no currency, no circulating medium with which to make commercial or other exchanges of property or to pay their laborers. At the same time an unusual stream of emigration was flowing to us from transatlantic countries. Enterprise was pushing rapidly westward, and towns and cities were rising where, when the war began, the buffalo had roamed over unbroken prairies. With these additions to our population and to the area over which it was to cir- culate what was there to indicate the propriety of a curtail- ment of the medium by which transactions between man and man and community and community were to be carried on? For myself I was unable to see any, and protested against the mad theories of the Secretary of the Treasury and his disciples. In the course of my remarks on the Sd of January, 1867, to which I have alluded, I said: " Neither the Secretary of the Treasury nor Congress know whether our currency is in excess of the amount required by legiti- mate and healthful trade, or if it be, how long it will remain so if undisturbed by legislation. Nor can we settle these points by an appeal to experience, for many of our conditions are novel. That would be a curious and instructive calculation which would show the country the precise demand for currency created by the opera- tion of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, or by the enlargement of the Army and Navy and clerical force of the Government. " Under the discipline of Providence the southern people will, before many years glide away, consent to permit their fields to be tilled, their mines to be worked, and their cities to be rebuilt and expanded ; and who can tell the amount of currency that will then be required by the four million enfranchised slaves and the millions of poor whites, who did not in the past, but are hence forth to earn wages and buy and sell commodities, or for handling the crops and CONTRACTION THE ROAD TO BANKRUPTCY. 229 mineral productions of the South ? Since we last adjourned the iron horse has crossed Nebraska on one of the routes to the Pacific, and his snort has been heard in the neighborhood of Fort Riley on another ; and during the last year three hundred thousand industri- ous people, who had been fed and clothed through unproductive childhood at the cost of other nations, came and cast their lot among us to till our fields, smelt our ores, work our metals, and manage our spindles and looms ; and I cannot guess what amount of currency these energetic people and the westward-marching column of our civilization will require. But, sir, of one thing I am certain, which is that had the Secretary of the Treasury not de- stroyed all sense of security in the future, the demand for currency to purchase, especially in the South, mineral and other lands, and develop their productive power, would have prevented the acumula- tion of the immense deposits which now lie paralyzed in bank or are loaned on call to speculators in the necessaries of life. We unsettled values and made or scattered fortunes by the rapid expansion of the currency ; and the people implore us to avoid another violent change fraught with like consequences, and to stay the work of contraction till we shall have ascertained, at least proximately, the amount of currency required by healthy and legitimate trade." But, Mr. Chairman, gentlemen ask, do you not wish to return to specie payments? I answer, yes; but not by the way of bankruptcy and repudiation ; and that way leads contraction in the midst of an increase such as never existed before in the numbers of men and fields for their activity. Keturu to specie payments] Are we doing it? No, sir. The difference between the greenback and gold dollar widens with each month. And while a greenback dollar will buy less gold it will purchase much more of any other commodity than it would a year ago. The rate of interest demanded for loans in the West and South is so inordinate that it has suspended enterprise and must exhaust the resources of any man who attempts to pay it; and while the laboring people are idle the capital which should furnish them employment may be borrowed from the banks of Boston or New York, in whose vaults the bulk of our currency has accumulated, by those who have gold or United States bonds to offer as security, at four per cent, per annum. Contraction has destroyed con- fidence. The possessors of "realized riches" have no faith in spindles and looms that are producing goods for a falling market, or forges and furnaces the productions of which must be sold at a loss, and invest their funds in Government bonds, or let them lie on deposit till they can buy, at a small percentage of their value, mills, factories, mines, and other valuable properties, when bankruptcy 230 CONTRACTION THE EOAD TO BANKRUPTCY. shall cause them to be exposed at public or judicial sale. Sir, we are not on the road to resumption, and will not be till we restore confidence and quicken industry by repeal- ing needless taxes which are giving foreign manufacturers an advantage in our market, and deprive the Secretary of the Treasury of his power to contract the currency and tamper with the market value of every species of property by secret operations in gold and the credit of the country. Mr. Chairman, the Secretary and his adherents will assume to find a response to the suggestions I have made in the facts set forth by the Special Commissioner of Revenue in his valuable report showing that the income of the country from either internal revenue or customs has not fallen off during the last two years. The Com- missioner's statements are indisputable, and I thank him for the industry, patience, and care he has exhibited in procuring and digesting the materials for his report. But, sir, there is a fact that deprives this response of any- thing like conclusive power. It is not alluded to by Mr. Wells, because it touched no point he assumed to discuss. Let me state it. The revenues of the country from 1860 to 1865 were derived from the loyal States. During that time the confederate States did not contribute to our public revenue, and Maryland, Kentucky, Tennes- see, and Missouri were ravaged by war. To find a reply to my argument in the Commissioner's report it should show not only that our revenues during the last fiscal year have exceeded those of 1864 and 1865 in the ratio of our ordinary growth and progress, but also how largely the ten States now being reconstructed, with Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Maryland, when freed from the tramp of war, were able contribute to the resources of the country. To this fact the Commissioner does not allude. No, sir ; it requires the contributions made by the people of the insurgent and border slave States during the last fiscal year to furnish the Commissioner with the gratify- ing figures he presents to the country and its creditors. A fair statement of the account would contain the amount received from the southern States as a credit and be debited with the amount lost by the paralysis of industry and the productive power of the North. Were the ac- count thus stated it would be apparent to all that, not- withstanding the addition of fifty per cent, to the taxable CONTRACTION THE KOAD TO BANKRUPTCY. 231 population, the current revenue derived by the Govern- ment was not increased, but simply steadily maintained. Gentlemen may say that the South has yielded but little internal revenue besides that derived from the cotton tax, and I freely admit that she has not contributed so largely as we might well have hoped ; but I affirm that her con- tributions would have been much greater had our policy been wiser. It has affected that section of the country more potently for evil than it has the North. Our society was not disorganized and our industrial force was admira- bly arranged and producing its best results, yet we are suffering derangement and paralysis. Wide sections of the South had been ravaged by war, and, as I have already said, its financial institutions and the accumulated capital of its citizens not invested in lands and buildings had been absorbed by the confederate loan or consumed in the war; but by judicious treatment its recuperation should have been so rapid as to have been the marvel of the world. That the natural resources of the South are greater than those of the North is undeniable. She is capable of producing every agricultural product that can be grown in our climate. Her mineral resources are greater and more varied than ours ; she lies near the sea and abounds in navigable rivers, affording cheap water transportation to seaports for the greater portion of her productions, and to her belongs the monopoly of the pro- duction of cotton, fine tobacco, rice, and naval stores, and, until now that we are availing ourselves of the beet, of the sugar fields of the country also. Immense bodies of land, as fertile as any in the country, and which has never felt the pressure of the plowshare, are to be found in every southern State. Louisiana alone has sixty thousand such acres which will yield cotton or sugar, wheat or corn. Marvellous as was the increase of the productive power of the loyal States during the war, that of the southern States almost equalled it. Gentlemen will not forget that, her Merrimac had sunk the Cumberland before our first monitor was ready to measure power with her. Great Britain supplied her with much of her munitions of war, but the unmechanical South overwhelmed us with sur- prise by the large share of these she produced for herself. Great Britain again, in defiance of our admirable blockade, clothed many of the confederate soldiers, but the spindles and looms of the constantly-increasing factories of the 232 CONTRACTION THE ROAD TO BANKRUPTCY. South were each year supplying a larger percentage of cloths for civic and military wear. She had depended on New England for boots and shoes, but she found that she could tan her own hides, and people were found to make boots and shoes. Thomas ville, North Carolina, is the Lynn, though not the only shoe manufacturing town of the South. Without detaining the committee by details of the improvement and extension of her railroad system, I will mention the fact that though Virginia and North Carolina had never been able to build a road from Dan- ville to Greensboro', whereby a central through route from North to South would have been completed, that road was built in the first year of the war. This increased the value of every foot of a chain of roads extending from Richmond to New Orleans, which now carries a large portion of freight passing between the eastern States of the North and the South and Southwest. But, sir, without elaborating the point, let me state in general terms that the value of the lands of the South were trebled by the recognition of facts which the war compelled the southern people to recognize, namely : that they could raise their own food, and that they had advan- tages over those on whom they had hitherto depended for food for man and beast in the markets of the eastern States, Central and South America, the West India Is- lands, and Europe. As cotton and sugar had been the only crop of the greater portion of their country the peo- ple had come to believe that they had but one harvest season that in which those crops were gathered and pre- pared for market. But when the armies of the confederacy had to be fed from the fields within its lines they discov- ered that they had three harvest seasons the spring for wheat and grasses, summer for corn, and autumn for cot- ton and sugar. And in this very year many a broad acre, after having yielded its golden harvest of wheat, will have the stubble turned under and be planted in corn that will mature before the frost threatens it. The necessities of the war also taught them the value of deep plowing, fer- tilizers, and of keeping procreative stock for the work for which they had kept only mules in the past. As an illus- tration of the value of these discoveries, let me say that it is within my knowledge that Mr. McDonald, of Con- cord, North Carolina, in order to settle the question of the value of deep plowing and the application of phosphates CONTRACTION THE ROAD TO BANKRUPTCY. 233 in the production of cotton, tried two experiments on fields which together embraced one hundred acres of land that had ever been regarded as too poor for cotton land. Wishing to make the experiment for public as well as private advantage, Mr. McDonald took the opinion of the planters of his section of the State as to the possibility of making cotton on such land, and found no man among his neighbors or visitors who believed that it would return him the value of the seed with which he would plant it. But with a heavy old-fashioned Pennsylvania plow he broke the land and turned in a given amount of super- phosphate to the acre, and lo, when the season came for gathering cotton he had the demonstration that the poorest land in Cabarras county had been made to yield the finest crop of cotton ever raised within her limits, and which many of her citizens pronounce the finest ever raised in North Carolina. The many intelligent planters who ob- served this experiment now know that by the aid of pro- per implements and adequate stimulants to the soil their fields may be made to yield a hundred per cent, more cot- ton than they ever have yielded, and that with but fifty per cent, of the labor hitherto applied. But, as I have before said, the people of this wonder- fully endowed section of our country were without a cir- culating medium. This was their paramount necessity. For the want of it all their interests were suffering. The Special Commissioner of Revenue suggests that our con- dition is such that " soothing and sustaining " treatment rather than the " heroic " is most likely to promote and hasten our recovery, and I beg leave to inquire whether his suggestion is not much more applicable to them. Inor- dinate taxes have borne more heavily upon the people of the South than upon us, and contraction has operated with still more aggravated severity upon them, as whatever re- dundancy there may have been in our currency at the close of the war would have been absorbed by the inviting fields of enterprise offered by the South, and would have gone there to quicken her resources and enable her people to consume dutiable goods and those from which internal revenue is collected by the sale of stamps. That the pro- ductive power the war developed in the South has been suppressed by lack of currency, and that by contraction we are abstracting from her people the little they had, is becoming apparent to every observant man. We find 234 CONTRACTION THE EOAD TO BANKRUPTCY. evidence of it in every paper that comes from the South. The Standard, (Ealeigh, North Carolina,) of the 4th in- stant, says : " Everything seems to have fallen in price except breadstuffs and meats, which maintain former prices on account of their scarcity. Judgments are passed, execution sales are common, the bankrupt law is taking hold of estate after estate, property of all kinds is rapidly falling in price, lands are changing hands and will soon be knocked off for a mere song ; and there is no prospect, so far as we can see, that this condition of things will speedily improve. One of the first effects will be to greatly restrict if not abolish the credit system. Every step, no matter how painful or how much to be de- plored, is in that direction. Credit is based on confidence between man and man, and where there is no confidence there can be no credit. The end will be that a large majority of our people will find it impossible to meet their obligations, and must have indulgence in some way, or the hard earnings of many years will be sacrificed under the sheriff's hammer or in courts of bankruptcy." And a correspondent of the New York Tribune, writing from Hinesville, Liberty county, Georgia, last month, says: "A sale has taken place at this county seat that so well marks the extreme depression in the money market that I send you the par- ticulars : Colonel Quarterman, of this county, deceased, and his ex- ecutor, Judge Featter, was compelled to close the estate. The pro- perty was advertised, as required by law, and on last court day it was sold. A handsome residence at Walthourville, with ten acres at- tached, out-houses, and all the necessary appendages of a first-class planter's residence, was sold for $60. The purchaser was the agent of the Freedmen's Bureau. His plantation, four hundred and fifty acres of prime land, brought $150 ; sold to a Mr. Fraser. Sixty-six acres of other land near Walthourville brought three dollars ; pur- chaser, Mr. W. D. Bacon. These were all bonafide sales. It was court day, and a large concourse of people were present. The most of them were large, property owners, but really had not five dollars in their pockets, and in consequence would not bid, as the sales were for cash. In Montgomery, Alabama, lots on Market street near the capitol, well located, 50 feet by 110 feet, averaged but $250 each. The Welsh residence on Perry street, two-story dwelling houses, in- cluding four lots, sold for $3500 ; Dr. Robert M. Williams was the purchaser. The same property in better times would not have brought less than $10,000. The Loftin place, near Montgomery, containing one thousand acres, was recently rented at auction for forty cents an acre. The same lands rented the present year for three dollars an acre." It is proper that I should admit that something of this depression is due to the resistance leading men of the South present to her constitutional restoration to the Union and the hostility the baser sort of her people ex- CONTRACTION THE ROAD TO BANKRUPTCY. 235 hibit toward northern settlers : yet there are wide sections of the country into which northern men may go and find themselves welcomed as benefactors if they go to engage in any industrial pursuit ; and it must also be admitted that under our present scale of taxation and with the Sec- retary of the Treasury constantly threatening contraction and able to execute his threat, that capital will not engage in any new enterprise either North or South. Commissioner Wells is right in prescribing " soothing and sustaining " rather than " heroic " treatment for our diseased body-politic ; and if the capitalists of the country -do not wish to swell the cry of repudiation till it shall be- come the shibboleth of a party, they had better abate their demand for the further contraction of the currency and consent to the repeal of taxes that are proving the cor- rectness of Dean Swift's proposition that " We can double the taxes and diminish the income one-half." The rapid development of the wondrous resources of our country and recuperation of the South will, under happier condi- tions, soon swell the volume of our exports beyond that of our imports, and enable us to recall our bonds from abroad in exchange for commodities, and resume specie payments without grinding into bankruptcy or beggary the men of enterprise and laborers of the country. In refutation of the favorite theory of the cbntractionists that the price of gold regulates the price of domestic produc- tions I pause to refer to the fact that the difference. between gold and greenbacks widens daily, yet the purchasing power of a greenback is now for almost every article of home production twice what it was when the bulk of our bonds were subscribed for, and is increasing coevally with a steady rise in the price of gold. The suit of clothes in which I stand, and which I know to have been woven from pure Ohio wool, was bought for forty dollars in greenbacks ; not from what is called a slop-shop, but from the merchant tailors who have made my clothes for years. In 1864 it would have cost twice that sum. Many styles of cotton goods which were commanding an advance of four hundred per cent, at that time are now selling at prices less than those they brought before the war. If any gentleman be disposed to dispute the increased general purchasing power of greenbacks, irrespective of the price of gold, I recommend him to examine pages 42, 43, and 44 of the Eeport of the Special Commissioner of Eevenue. He will there find abundant evidence of the fact. 236 CONTRACTION THE EOAD TO BANKRUPTCY. Had Congress at the close of the war hastened to re- lieve the country of the taxes against which I am pro- testing, and while avoiding any expansion of the currency proteced its volume from diminution, and assured the peo- ple that no essential change in its volume should be made until the business of the country had adjusted itself to the conditions of peace, production would have advanced and our bonds would have been returning to us in the pockets of emigrants or in settlement of a favorable balance of trade, and millions of people North and South, who are to-day eating bread they have not earned, would have been busily employed and adding to the nation's wealth by earning each day more than they consume. A gradual decline in prices was inevitable, but it would not have de- stroyed confidence and suspended production, and with immensely increased production, both agricultural and manufacturing, there would have been no cry of a " glut in the market." The people of the South, whose agricul- tural stock and implements, furniture and apparel, were exhausted during the war, would have been supplying their wants by the sale of the results of their industry. Under the influence of northern capital and enterprise water-power that now runs to waste through cotton fields would have been moving spindles and looms. Forges, furnaces, and rolling-mills such as those the war developed at Chattanooga, Atlanta, Lynchburg, and other points, would be in profitable operation, and by supplying mer- chantable iron diminishing our dependence upon England and keeping down that balance of trade which with the interest on our bonds held abroad must prevent the re- sumption of specie payments as long as we continue the " heroic " treatment of sacrificing all other interests in order to give increased value to the hoarded wealth of the possessors of "realized riches." An increasing de- mand for skilled labor in the South would also be a pow- erful agent in the work of reconstruction and the redemp tion of the country from financial embarrassment. Mr. Chairman, Bishop Kingsley, in one of his admira- ble letters from Europe, from Sweden, I think, stated that there were ten million industrious people in Europe eager to leave their fatherlands, cross the Atlantic, and identify themselves with us. This statement seemed to bear the aspect of exaggeration, but is confirmed by the judgment of ev.ery judicious traveler with whom I have conversed. CONTRACTION THE ROAD TO BANKRUPTCY. 237 "We have room for them all ; we need them all, and could give them " ample room and verge enough " in which to live prosperously could the navies of the world bring them all to us in a single year. We need them on our vine and pasture lands and our grain-fields ; in our forests, our mines, and our ore-beds. We want the industrial secrets and experience they possess, but which have not been in- troduced into our country. We need them to guide our magnificent water-powers running to waste, and so har- ness them that they shall labor for us as they speed their way to the sea. But would they better their condition to come to us at this time ? I fear not. Most of them can live where they are, and are used to the ills they suffer ; but could they hope to prosper as strangers in a strange land, in which there is not adequate employment for the native workingman ; in which that most powerful of productive agents, the steam-engine, is idle and powerless, and ma- chinery is decaying in inaction, because the Government arbitrarily interferes with a volume of currency to which all values had adjusted themselves, and which as a me- dium of exchanges in internal trade was enhancing the wealth and power of the nation in a ratio unprecedented In its history or the history of the world ? Sir, it is in the power of Congress, by reanimating the industry and restoring the confidence of the country before the sun of May shall have fitted the fields of the North for the plow, to prepare a welcome for all these people who may be able to come to us. I have indicated the princi- pal measures by which this is to be done. There are other measures suggested to which I would gladly allude, but for the discussion of which the future will offer more fitting occasions. I have no fear for the distant future. There is nothing in our condition to justify a dread of re- pudiation. We are not poor and exhausted, but are richer than we or any other people ever were. I have shown that the country was richer at the close of the war by a newly created productive power far more than equal to the entire indebtedness created by the war. I have pointed to the fact that the South, now the home of freedom, will under its inspiration be no longer a burden upon the ex- chequer of the country for her postal system and other Government service, as she has hitherto been, but will contribute as liberally to its income as the most prosper- ous portions of the North have done or will do. Con- 238 CONTRACTION THE ROAD TO BANKRUPTCY. traction of the currency and excessive taxation have tem- porarily diminished our productive power, and may pro- duce a period of most unhealthy agitation, but the strife waging in our midst is, as I have shown, the offspring of the natural desire of the possessors of riches to expedite and increase their profits. But we are not here to legis late for them beyond the protection of their just rights. Our charge is far nobler than that ; it is the welfare of a great, intelligent and enterprising people. Justice to all will injure none, and by laboring to promote the welfare of the poor and lowly we will do most to protect the pro- perty and guaranty the rights of those whose estates are largest. Were it in our power and within the scope of our functions to organize a system of cooperation, or by any other means to harmonize the conflict between labor and capital employer and employed it would con- fer the highest blessing upon our country and give sta- bility to every interest. There is, could we but discover it, a solution of that difficult question, and let us hope that with our vast wealth, our immense bodies of public land, the intelligence and enterprise of our people, we may solve the difficult problem, and by the happy condition of our people compel the rulers of the Old World to follow our example and guaranty to every citizen of their coun- tries the right to exercise every privilege and prerogative of a free man. INTEKNAL EEYENUE. SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF KEPRESENTATIVES, JUNE 1, 1868. The House being in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, and having under consideration the bill (H. B. No. 1060) to reduce into one act and to amend the lawa relating to internal taxes Mr. Kelley said : Mr. Chairman : I would be unwilling to trouble the committee upon this most important bill without more special preparation than I have been able to make, were it possible for me to remain in the city and participate in the discussion at a later day. But the condition of my health requires that I should seek repose in the quiet of my home. I must therefore avail myself of the present opportunity to offer some general suggestions, the perti- nence and importance of which will, I hope, justify the seeming temerity of following the elaborate and well- digested remarks of the able chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means in an extempore discussion of the general character of the bill. First, permit me to thank the Committee of Ways and Means for the method and industry exhibited in the pre- paration of this bill. They have done a great work for the country in reducing to order and system the internal revenue laws. And I hope that before Congress rises their bill will, with such amendments as the Committee of the Whole and the House may determine to make, be adopted. It will be a great relief to the industry and enterprise of the country, and produce a great improvement in the morals of the people. Our law is now in such a condition that it is a fountain of demoralization. The revenue service is becoming discreditable, and honorable men dislike to admit that they belong to it. Many of the taxes it imposes are worse than injudicious; and that on distilled spirits has been demonstrated to be not only excessive but unnatural. It is not only not 239 240 INTERNAL REVENUE. adapted to the condition of our country, which is too broad for the surveillance of a metropolitan police, but is in entire disregard of the infirmities of average human nature. The wisest prayer uttered by men is that they may not be led into temptation ! But our Govern- * rnent has overwhelmed its agents by subjecting them to the almost irresistible temptations the whisky ring is able to present under existing laws. Few well-informed men will assert that much less than one hundred million gallons of whisky have been dis- tilled in this country during the last year. The legal tax on this amount would be $200,000,000. Yet our receipts have been only about thirteen million dollars, as we have just been told by the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, [Mr. Schenck,] to whom I tender my thanks for his able exposition of the provisions of the bill and the condition of the internal revenue service. Last year more than twenty-nine million dollars were collected from whisky this year, less than one half of that sum, and by the collection of this insignificant amount we have enabled swindlers to extract from the honest consumers of the country not less than $100,000,000. And yet those to whom the execution of the laws for the collection of this tax is confided are sealed and bound by oaths at all points, and there is not one of our revenue officers who has connived at any part of this immense and wide-spread robbery of the Government, who has not clothed his soul with perjury as with a garment. We cannot impose restraints, and couple them with tempta- tions which average men cannot resist, and enforce our restraints by law, one whit more than we can by our statutes reverse the laws of gravitation. And experience proves that in this matter of a tax of two dollars per gallon on whisky we have undertaken an experiment not more plausible than that of regulating gravitation or the course of the stars by statute. Sir, our legislation has diverted the production of dis- tilled spirits from its natural locality the grain-fields of the West and the Southwest and concentrated it in the cities of the sea-board. The chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means tells us that the frauds are chiefly perpetrated in Philadelphia and Chicago. I hope they are; for I am told by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue that one house in Philadelphia has, within the INTERNAL REVENUE. 241 knowledge of the Department, sold more whisky than the aggregate amount for which the Government has received tax in the whole State of Pennsylvania; but, differing from the chairman of the committee, he said that in this bad eminence Philadelphia is overshadowed by New York. Sir, it is affirmed by common rumor that one of the New York agents of the Revenue Bureau, whose name has recently become distinguished in another connection, has saved from his inadequate salary more than two million of well-invested dollars in the brief period of about two years. Our legislation has not only transferred the seat of the manufacture of whisky and high wines, but it has changed the substances from which they are produced. The whis- ky of America is no longer distilled from the grain of our fields, but we import, we buy with gold from foreign lands, the material with which to make an inferior article ; and the money which should go West for grain or spirits is carried in foreign bottoms, paying freight to foreign ship-owners, to buy foreign material from which to make that which, under a reasonable rate of tax, would be made in Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas, and the other grain-grow- ing States. More than this, sir ; our legislation on this subject has changed the personnel of the whole trade. Go into which- ever of the cities you please, and you will no longer find the names of the old-established distillers and rectifiers, or if you find their names you will also find that the personnel of the establishment has changed ; and it has come to pass that a business requiring large capital and broad premises is in the hands of strangers, men who^are unknown to their neighbors, and many of whom, as I was assured within a fortnight by a distinguished officer of the revenue depart- ment, would be engaged in burglary or highway robbery, or expiating such crimes in penitentiaries, but that they find it safer and vastly more profitable to deal in illicit whisky and swindle the Government and honest trades- men. Let gentlemen consult their constituents and ask who have taken the places of the honorable men who years ago added to the wealth of the community by their indus- try and integrity in the distilling and rectifying business. Few gentlemen will, I apprehend, be willing to exhibit the names and aliases of the men now engaged in either trade in their respective districts and endorse the list as a 16 242 INTERNAL REVENUE. roll of honor. Yictims of black mailing and illicit but protected competition, honorable men have abandoned or are preparing to abandon the business. By defying the limitations of human nature we have also reversed the course of the carrying trade in this matter, and instead of whisky coming over the railroads from the West whisky made from grain and within proper limits nutritious your roads are freighted west- ward with whisky distilled from molasses, and bound to kill at forty rods. Were whisky used only as a beverage, I would not deplore this fact ; but it is largely consumed in the arts of general production. And what effect is this having upon the general industry of the country ? It is closing manufactures of chemicals, establishments for the production of perfumery, the manufacture of varnish, and a large number of other articles. It is diminishing the general production of the country, and lessening the wages of large classes of skilled laboring people. Sir, there is within my district one chemical works which has been largely engaged in the production among others of alcoholic drugs, such as chloroform, and using alcohol as a solvent .for ingredients in other drugs, such as quinine. From a small beginning the gentlemen conducting this establishment had increased their consumption of alcohol to about one hundred and forty thousand gallons per annum. But being conscientious men, who are unwilling to violate the laws, though they might do so with impunity, and who abide by their pledge to the Philadelphia Drug Exchange to consume no alcohol that has not paid its tax, their consumption has been reduced to fifteen thousand gallons per annum, and their skilled workmen are being scattered or earning the poor wages of unskilled laborers in employments to which they are unused. But, sir, this is not all the harm done the community in this connection, for men who scruple not to make contracts with fraudulent distillers are stocking the market with inferior drugs, and substitutes for the purer articles my constituents for- merly produced are being imported in foreign bottoms and paid for in gold, together with freight to foreign ship-owners on the inferior commodity. The people of the Northwest, it seerns to me, are special- ly interested in this question. They will find that they cannot afford to expel from their inland section of the INTERNAL REVENUE. 243 country any branch of manufactures. They need the opportunity to export their grain concentrated in the form of whisky, high wines, or other manufactures.* I am no Cassandra and they will not believe me, but I tell them they are entering upon a competition that will exclude them from the markets of the world, if they depend upon the export of their grain in bulk as food or mere raw material. Do you mark, gentlemen of Missouri, Illinois, and Wisconsin, that California is loud in the expression of her gratitude for the fact that one hundred and thirty vessels have been added to the fleet for carrying her grain to New York and transatlantic ports ? They can send grain in bulk twenty-three thousand miles to the seaboard of New England or Old England at less cost for transpoT- tation than you can send yours to the seaboard by rail. Oregon is groaning under her crop of wheat, and her peo- ple are fearing that means for its transportation to market may not be at hand. But this distant competition is not what you have most cause to dread. The South, no longer your customer for food for man and beast, looms up your competitor. Her advantages over you are manifold as they are manifest. She lies between you and the ocean. Her grain fields are upon the banks of navigable rivers which flow to the Gulf or the ocean, and at or near the mouth of each is a seaport. From Norfolk around to Galveston, Texas, the grain of the farmers of the several States may be floated to the sea -board upon rafts and there find shipping. England and western Europe are riot the countries to which we chiefly export grain and flour. Our chief markets for these are Central and South America, and the islands to which the southern States are neighbors; and I tell you that if the people of the faf Northwest do not take heed, and by diversifying their industry convert their raw materials into more compact productions, the day is not three years distant when their crops will waste * It costs a bushel of wheat to carry a bushel from Minnesota or Kansas to New York or Boston for shipment or consumption. One bushel of corn will not pay the freight on another. But if the grain be concentrated into alcohol, four bushels will pay the transportation on from sixteen to twenty. If shipped as grain, that is the end of it to the farmer ; but if it be distilled he not only reduces the cost of transportation, but raises a crop of hogs, and has manure with which to replenish his acres exhausted by successive crops of corn or wheat. Before the tax was put on whisky we exported immense quantities of alcohol, to the great advantage of farmers. Now we scarcely export any. The repeal of the tax on spirits would revive this branch of our foreign commerce. 244: INTERNAL REVENUE. in the fields for the want of a market to which they will pay the cost of transportation.* These may seem to be idle statements. But you, gentle- men from the upper Mississippi and the Missouri, know that arrangements are making for carrying your grain in barges to New Orleans for shipment thence. The rivers of the South are never ice bound as yours are through a long- winter. Sir, the ablest pamphlet upon the resources of this country I have read in many years is that from the pen of Hon. John B. Eobertson, of Louisiana, who tells the people of that State that on four million acres of her soil which are yet unbroken by the plow experiment has demonstrated the fact that sixty bushels of wheat to the acre may be raised sixty bushels of southern wheat that will bear transportation through the tropics, as spring-sown northern wheat will not. Gentlemen laugh and shake their heads ; but when I tell them that six hundred bushels of sweet potatoes to the acre is in that region not more than a fair average crop, they may imagine that the land is somewhat more fertile than that they have been accustomed to man- age. Seven hundred bushels of that esculent are frequently produced from an acre. But if each acre will yield but twenty bushels of wheat near a seaport, the competition will be disastrous to the grain-grower of the remote inte- rior. But, sir, I have wandered into a digression, but shall esteem myself fortunate in having rendered the coun- try a service if some few gentlemen note and ponder the facts I have suggested. To return to the subject I say to gentlemen that they need the distillery and rectifying establishment, that whisky, high wines, lard and oil, rather than grain in bulk, shall seek a market from their region. It will be better for all if we of the East consume your productions than it can be if your constituents are to con- tinue to consume whisky distilled in enlarged tea and coffee-pots in cellars and garrets from imported molasses. Entertaining the views I have expressed, I rejoiced to hear the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means announce the fact that the tax of two dollars had been but * The recent Franco-German war and the reduction of the California wheat crop fifty per oent. by drought, have probably prevented the fulfilment of this prediction ; but they have not sufficed to put up the price of grain. War and drought are not adequate guarantees for a steady market for the grain crops of this country ; nothing but a wide diversification of the industries of the West will avert the ruin of the grain-growers of that section. INTERNAL REVENUE. 245 nominally retained, and express the hope that the House would not sustain it. But, Mr. Chairman, he proposes in the name of the committee that the tax shall be fixed at seventy-five cents. It is an immense reduction, but it does not go quite low enough to check the fraud or to restore this important trade to its natural channels. While sick at rny home last week, I took the liberty of inviting to my bedside some of the best distillers and chemists of Phila- delphia ; separately and apart as they came I interro- gated them as to the cost of molasses whisky and the point at which the tax might safely be placed ; and there was unanimity among them in saying that at seventy-five cents molasses whisky could in the hands of men with some capital, incur the risks of the law, and make a fair profit. The reduction would doubtless diminish the production of whisky from molasses and thus reduce the price of molasses to such a point as to enable skilful men to operate with the certainty of large gains. They also agreed that at sixty cents the ground would be debatable, but if Congress wanted to shut molasses whiskey out from competition and to contend only with such fraud as might be effected at regular distilleries, and rectifying establishments, the tax should be put at the maximum of fifty cents ; and that every cent below that until it reached twenty-five would be a guard to the revenue, an additional guard thrown round the revenue and a diminution of the temptation which the Government is now offering for perjury, conspiracy, and fraud. I hope, therefore, the tax will be reduced to at most fifty cents ; and if I am able to be in my seat and find my vote will be effective in bringing it to forty cents, I shall cast it with the belief that while the change will save the revenues of the Government, it will also save the morals of the people by diminishing the temptations to which they are subjected. I desire to say, Mr. Chairman, that when I feared that two dollars might be adhered to by the committee as the tax, and that the industries of the country would be assessed $200,000,000 in order that the infamous " whisky ring " might continue to riot in fat living and amass colos- sal fortunes, and that the Government, except in special taxes, as provided for in the bill, would receive no more revenue from this source than it has been getting, I was of the opinion that the rates proposed in the bill were inor- dinate. The estimates, as we get them from the present 246 INTERNAL REVENUE. Secretary of the Treasury, have always been vastly in ex- cess of expenditures, and vastly below the actual receipts of revenue. The Secretary's estimates have not been can- did. Under the pretence of a desire to extinguish the principal of the debt it has seemed to be his policy to re- duce the rewards of labor and prevent the development of the natural wealth of the country. Misled by his false estimates, at fault hundreds of millions of dollars each year, we have burdened the industry and restrained the progress of the country. I am unwilling to be longer thus deluded by this systematic misrepresentation. For my own part I am determined to vote for the lowest possible amount of taxation that will provide with certainty for the pay- ment of the current expenses of the Government and the interest on the public debt. I find in the report of the Special Commissioner of Kevenue, Mr. Wells, made in January, 1868, a passage which I shall read as illustrative of the truth of my asser- tion and the correctness of my theory : " That the United States is the only one of the leading nations of the world which is at present materially diminishing its debt and re- ducing its taxes ; and the only one, moreover, which offers any sub- stantial evidence of its ability to pay its debt within any definite period, or even anticipates the probability of any such occurrence. In proof of which we submit the following statements and sta- tistics : "The figures already presented demonstrate that the United States, from the 31st of August, 1865, to the 31st October, 1867, substantially reduced its liabilities by the sum of over two hundred and sixty-six million dollars, or at an average rate of over ten mil- lions per month for the whole included period ; and that during the year ending June 30, 1867, taxation was reduced by law to an esti- mated amount of from eighty to one hunded million dollars per annum." Sir, the Commissioner also informs us that our revenues do not diminish proportionately with the reduction of tax- ation. After presenting a tabular statement of the revenues of .the Government for the years 1866 and 1867, he says : "A comparison of the figures above presented indicates a falling off in the receipts of internal revenue for the fiscal year 1867, as compared with those of 1866, $44,986,509. Such a falling off, how- ever, is apparent and not real, as will be evident when the great re- duction of internal revenue taxes, made by Congress during the last fiscal year, is taken into the account. To what extent this re- duction has actually amounted cannot be precisely stated, but the INTERNAL REVENUE. 247 taxes abated or repealed at the first session of the Thirty-Ninth Congress were estimated as sufficient to occasion an annual loss of revenue, taking the returns of the preceding fiscal year as a prece- dent, of about sixty million dollars ; while the further abatement at the second session of the same Congress was likewise estimated, in- cluding the reduction of the income tax, at from thirty to forty million dollars. It would, therefore, have been nothing but reasona- ble to infer that the revenues for the last fiscal year (1866-67) would have fallen short of the aggregate of the preceding year (1865-66) by an amount equal to the reduction of the taxes, the effect of which was fully experienced during the period referred to ; which reduction may be prudently estimated at from sixty to seventy million dol- lars. In addition to this, it should be remembered that the last fiscal year in the United States was a year of great commercial and mercantile depression a year in which the crops in all sections of the country were much below an average, and in which manufactur- ing operations were extensively interfered with by disagreements between employers and their operatives ; and yet, notwithstanding all this, the internal revenue did not fall off to an extent commensu- rate with the amount of taxes abated or repealed ; but, on the con- trary, exhibited a comparative net gain of from fifteen to twenty- five million dollars." Sir, this is not miraculous or even wonderful, for our country is expanding in resources and taxable population beyond the degree in which any country or people ever before expanded. Six hundred miles, said the gentleman from New York, [Mr. Brooks,] into the Indian territory your Pacific railroad now runs. Yes, sir ; in the midst of what but last year were plains and hills, to which civiliza- tion was a stranger, is now the flourishing city of Cheyenne, with its tax-paying population thriving and prospering, and along the whole six hundred miles of that road be- yond the infant city of Omaha are people who, two years ago, were citizens of other lands or among the landless laborers of this country, who this year in their new and independent homes, will contribute to the revenues of the country through the various departments of the internal tax law and by the generous consumption of dutiable goods. " Three-fifths of all other persons," is the language with which the Constitution refers to four million of our peo- ple those four millions who hitherto lived without the use of money, and were habitually clad in such garments as are given the pauper and prisoner, where these unfor- tunates receive least sympathy to-day walk erect in man- hood and womanhood. They handle money which their labor earns. They occupy homes. Many thousands of them own lands, and standing up under their own vine and 248 INTERNAL REVENUE. figtree acknowledging no man as master, and asking no man to supply their wants, they contribute to the revenues of the Government. Four million additional consumers of taxable and dutiable goods. They are using the matches which pay the Government a penny a box; and no longer going barefoot they contribute to the income of the Government when they buy the blacking with which to polish their boots. And, sir, there are another four million dwelling among them, the poor whites of the South, who were as innocent as they of matches and blacking, and im- ported silks or ribbons, but by consuming which they now, or soon will, contribute to. the support of the Government which has enfranchised them also. Three hundred thousand immigrants a year are coming in steady flowing streams to swell the taxable resources of the country ! Eight million of people elevated from a condition little above that of the brute into tax-paying and dutiable goods-consuming people! And can we in view of these facts estimate the future from data furnished by the past? No, sir, we cannot from any one year cal- culate the resources of the country in the next, unless we impose upon our industry such burdens as will prevent its profitable employment, check immigration, and restrain the development of our wondrously varied resources. Three years ago the vast coal-beds of the West, under- lying an area of one hundred and twenty-six thousand square miles ; embracing a part of Kentucky, five thousand miles ; a part of Indiana, fifteen thousand ; the greater part of Illinois, thirty -five thousand ; and stretching under the Mississippi river and underlying nearly the whole State of Missouri and a large part of Kansas, together with that other wonderful coal formation additional to those to which I have referred, and separated from them by a narrow rocky strata, which underlies nearly the whole State of Iowa, were scarcely recognized except at Covington, Ken- tucky, as among the material resources of the country.* But the ore of Iron Mountain, in Missouri, as I have here- * As an illustration of the power for varied industries these vast deposits of coal offer to the West, I may mention the fact that three tons of coal driving a pteam-engine represent the labor power of a man for his lifetime. Richard Garsed, Esq., of Frankford, Pa., manufactures, in every day of ten hours, 33,000 miles of cotton thread obtaining from seven tons of coal the necessary power. Supposing it possible for such quality of thread to be made by hand, it would require the labor of 70,000 women during the same time to accomplish this work. INTERNAL REVENUE. 249 tofore suggested to the House, is now carried on trains to the interior of Indiana, where, by the use of native coal, purer than has been known on the other side of the Atlan- tic, purer than I had ever seen before, it is being converted into every form of utility to which iron may be applied, and supplying the West with better and cheaper iron and steel than it has hitherto been able to purchase ; and the train that brings the rich ore to Indiana carries back to Missouri coal superior even to that of the Big Muddy, thus demonstrating the possibility of building up at either point an iron and steel industry before which those of England, France, Belgium, and even Prussia, justly famous as is her Krupp, will sink into comparative insignificance. The true policy of this country, in view of its vast resources, and of the rapid and steady aggrega- tion and exaltation of its people, is to reduce internal taxation to the minimum, to relieve its industry and its resources from every burden possible, to see to it that all just demands on the Government are amply provided for, and to leave the principal of the debt to be liquidated when the people of the South shall have recovered from the ravages of war, and when, enlightened by experience, the Northwest shall have adjusted itself to the competition it is to endure from the grain-growing capacity of the South, and the determination of her people to revenge themselves so far as they can upon their conquerors by growing it and monopolizing the markets open to Ameri- can grain. I hope, therefore, that though I may be absent during the consideration of this bill, others will see to it that every tax which touches the industry of the coun- try or annoys the people by its impertinent exaction, that can with safety be reduced, will be. And in this connnection I turn to schedule A, which imposes a tax upon a $300 carriage, upon a gold watch, upon the piano you have provided for your daughter ; and which requires citizens to account for the spoons and forks in use in their houses, whether given to them as wedding presents or preserved as a slight memorial of the fact that they had remote ancestors. A Member. It is not taxed unless kept for use. Mr. Kelley. When it comes into use it becomes taxable. After the baby is born the pap-spoon is taxable, until then it may, as a present, escape the tax collector's inquisition. The whole amount of taxes collected under schedule A 250 INTERNAL REVENUE. during the last year, when it yielded more than ever be- fore, was $2,116,000. Now, the chairman of the commit- tee has shown you that under his bill at the very low- est possible estimate you are to have a surplus of $46,000,- 000. Hitherto you were to have no surplus, and you raised an excess of $120,000,000 each year. Start out with aiming at $46,000,000 of surplus, and during the year with the incoming tide of prosperity you will find that you have needlessly assessed $146,000,000 of taxes. T will not enumerate the provisions of the section to which 1 refer. You will find them embraced in section one hundred and sixteen, on page 171. I have been told by collectors of internal revenue that more penalties are incurred by neglect of the tax on gold watches than on any other article. More persons are made to feel that your laws inflict unjust penalties by this tax than by any other. I have heard of an instance of a conscientious widow who, learning subsequent to the day on which it should have been paid, that there was such a tax, went and reported that she had five daughters, each of whom had a gold watch, and had a special penalty in addition to the tax imposed on each by reason of her conscientiousness. The taxes are frequently collected in a manner to make the law as odious as possi- ble; and if a Republican, or the wife or daughter of a Republican complains, the answer is, " My party is not re- sponsible for it ; we did not make the law. Why do you not get the Republicans to remedy the annoyance of which you complain ? " And I trust the Republican majority in this Congress will remove all these almost fruitless but annoying taxes. Sir, all the objects named in schedule A have in no one year paid one per cent, of the revenue ; they have never reached more than eight-tenths of one per cent, of the income of the Government. In the report of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, to which I have referred, you will find the figures set out, and the nearest they have ever come was seven hundred and ninety-six thousandths of one per cent, of the annual revenue. Why make our taxes so odious by penetrating inquisitorially into the secrets of every maiden lady and widow in the land, and inquiring whether she can conscientiously swear that her old carryall is not worth $300, for the sake of swelling in so slight a degree the surplus revenue ? Again, sir, it has occurred to me that the committee, be- INTERNAL REVENUE. 251 lieving many of these taxes to be inordinate, have hoped to enforce them by extreme penalties. Thus, in section sixty-nine it is provided : " That if any distiller, rectifier, wholesale liquor dealer, com- pounder of liquors, distiller of oil, brewer, or manufacturer of tocacco or cigars, shall omit, neglect, or refuse to do or cause to be done any of the things required by law in the carrying on or conducting of his business, or shall do anything by this act prohibited, if there be no specific penalty or punishment imposed by any other section of this act for the neglecting, omitting, or refusing to do, or for the doing or causing to be done, the thing required or prohibited, he shall pay a penalty of $1000 ; and, if the person so offending be a distiller, rectifier, wholesale liquor dealer, or compounder of liquors, all distilled spirits or liquors owned by him, or in which he has any inter- est as owner, if he be a distiller of oil, all oil found in his distillery, and if he be a manufacturer of tobacco or cigars, all tobacco or cigars found in his manufactory, shall be forfeited to the United States." What, sir ! if his youngest errand boy commits an error of that kind, if some of his servants be suborned, if any of his agents do what ought not to be done, or omit to do what the law requires, are you to forfeit his whole stock ? I trust the committee will at least insert the words " wil- fully and designedly," so that for a mere accident the entire stock and business of a man may not be confiscated, or he be subjected to litigation. Did my strength permit I would gladly consider some other provisions of the bill. But, sir, I have presented the main views that impress me. They are, in the first place, that the bill, even as modified by the suggestions of the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, and the reduction of the tax on whisky to seventy-five cents, offers a bribe of many million dollars to a ring organized throughout the country and knowing its men in every city, county, and State a bribe of enormous amount to tempt bad men to perjury, conspiracy, and fraud ; and I trust that the tax will be reduced to a point which will make it certain that molasses whisky cannot be made and sent to the West with profit. Preclude the use of that imported ingredient, which may be distilled in any cellar or attic, and compel distillers to use grain, and you will secure to the officers of the reve- nue a chance to discover frauds, punish swindlers, and con- fiscate illegal goods. And I ask gentlemen while consid- ering this bill to carry with them the proposition that the true standard of estimate for the receipts of the next year, 252 INTERNAL KEVENUE. and the true object at which to aim in making assessments, is simply to provide for the payment of the interest on the public debt and the current expenses. They may be as- sured that if they will make ample provision for these ob- jects, they will provide the means to pay from forty to seventy millions of the principal of the public debt, as our receipts always largely exceed the Commissioner's and Secretary's estinlates. I have not the strength to stand while I analyze the figures I noted as they fell from the lips of the chairman of the committee. If I had I could, I think, make a per- fect demonstration of my proposition from the materials he furnished. But, thanking the members of the commit- tee for the attention they have given me, I leave the work in their hands with confidence that it will be faith- fully done. REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF THE REVENUE. REMARKS DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTA- TIVES, FEBRUARY 4, 1869. The House being in Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union on the President's annual message Mr. Kelley said : Mr. Chairman : On the 19th of January, the Committee on Printing submitted a resolution to print twenty thou- sand copies of the report of the Special Commissioner of the Revenue for the use of the House, and one thousand bound copies for the use of the Treasury Department, and though I had no hope of preventing its adoption, I felt constrained to resist the motion and submit the reasons which impelled me thereto as fully as I could in the brief time allowed me by the courtesy of the gentleman from New Hampshire, [Mr. Ela,] who presented the resolution. I could not hope that the House would refuse to print a report the preparation of which had cost the Government so much money in the pay of the Commissioner and his clerical, assistants. What I sought to do was in some measure accomplished ; it was to send with the report a note of warning to the country. I then said : " I hope the resolution reported by the committee will not be adopted. I do not think the report ought to receive such an en- dorsement. I do not see how Congress can consistently cast it broadcast over the country. It is a report full of figures, which are so ingeniously selected and marshaled that one might suppose it had been prepared specially to show the pestilent character of that most false and dangerous of all the aphorisms embodied in the English language, namely, that ' figures cannot lie.' They are so culled and marshaled in this report as to lead to conclusions false, delusive, and damaging to our country, and especially unjust to that Congress which has carried the country through the great struggle from which she has just emerged. I do not mean to say that the figures embodied in it are in themselves false ; upon that point I do not speak now ; but I do mean to say that they are so detached from their correlatives as to lead to conclusions utterly at variance 253 254 EEPORT OP SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. with facts which are notorious and familiar to every gentleman on this floor." " The gentleman who is named in the report as having collected the statistics and made the calculations has, so far as I Jcnoio, done his duty fairly ; but the Commissioner who selected the material for this report, and prepared and marshaled it, has not done so with a view to let Congress and the country deduce conclusions from an impartial array of facts, but to sustain a foregone conclusion and advocate a favorite theory of his own, which is, in my judgment, at variance with the true interests of the country." And again : " The thesis of the report is that we have since 1860 so legislated that while wealth is accumulating more rapidly than it ever accumu- lated in any land or age, the poor are steadily growing poorer and the rich richer ; that the yawning gulf between poverty and wealth is ever widening in this country, and that the laboring man and his family cannot live as well upon their earnings as they could in 1860. " The report and it is voluminous devotes five or six pages only to the progress of wealth and productive power in this coun- try, but they suffice to show that it is with constantly increasing velocity and momentum. If it be true in that respect, and the laboring people are really becoming poorer daily, we are on the eve of an aristocracy more potent than any that has preceded it, and of a social condition such as the world has never seen. I propose to inquire whether this startling proposition be true. The Com- missioner, assuming that his array of facts has established it, says on page 21 : " ' It has been well said that there can be no true theoretic conclu- sion which will not be proved by the facts whenever the theory can be applied. We have given the theory of the effects of incon- vertible paper money, and we find that the facts prove it. The rich become richer and the poor poorer.' " Not satisfied with this, he says : " ' The aggregate wealth of the country is increasing, probably, as rapidly as at any former period ; * yet it does not follow that there is the same increase in general prosperity. The laborer, especially he who has a large family to support, is not as prosperous as he was in 1860. His wages have not increased in proportion to the increase in the cost of his living. There is, therefore, an inequality * In 1868 when his sinister ends required him to array the poor against the rich, the workman against his employer, Commissioner Wells found it covenient to make this truthful admission. But a year later, when preparing his report for 1869, which was happily his final one, he found it necessary to array the farmers of the country against the manufacturers, both workmen and employers, he devoted pages to proving that the increase of the aggregate wealth had been but about half as rapid as during the preceding decade. He stated correctly the rate of increase between 1850 and 1860 to have been 129 per cent., and fixed the rate for the last decade at but 65 per cent. The final result for the latter period has not been ascertained, but enough is known to prove that the rate was, notwithstanding the war, equal to that of the preceding decade, 129 per cent., as the aggregate as far as ascertained is over $31,000,000,000. REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. 255 in the distribution of our annual product which we must, in no small degree, refer to artificial causes. This inequality exists even among the working classes themselves. The single man or woman, working for his or her support alone, is in the receipt of a rate of wages from which savings may be made equal or greater than ever before, especially in the manufacturing towns, where the price of board is, to a certain extent, regulated artificially by the employer.' And again, I ask gentlemen to listen to the Commis- sioner's statement of the condition to which their legisla- tion has reduced our countrymen : "'Unmarried operatives, therefore, gain; while those who are obliged to support their own families in hired tenements lose. Hence, deposits in savings-banks increase, while marriage is dis- couraged ; and the forced employment of young children is made almost a necessity in order that the family may live.' " If this be the condition of our country, do we not, as I have said, perpetrate a great fraud when we ask the labor- ing immigrant to come and dwell among us ? The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Garfield] did me the honor to reply to me in a rejoinder which had been pre- pared for the occasion, as appears from his remark that, " hearing that this attack was to be made, I have asked information from two sources in order to test the correct- ness of the Commissioner's position." His reply would, I doubt not, have been more candid had it been prepared after he had heard what I had to say. His misrepresenta- tion of my position was not intentional. It arose from his misconception of the point I would make when I should have an opportunity to express my convictions. In view of the passages from my remarks already quoted, especially of my announcement that I did not mean to examine the question whether the figures embodied in the report are, in themselves, false, but did " mean to say that they are so detached from their correlatives as to lead to conclusions utterly at variance with facts which are notor- ious and familiar to every gentleman on this floor," he was hardly justified in saying that I had admitted "in the first place that the facts stated are generally correct ; that the sta- tistics collected and arranged in tables are true and correct- ly stated." / certainly did not admit the truth or correctness of that which the single purpose of my remarks was to deny, and which every fact I presented contradicted. I am sure, from the gentleman's well-known character, that he would not have made this assertion had his remarks been pre- pared after he had heard me. After he had thus charged me with admitting all I had been denying and disproving, 256 REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. he said that it must be, then, that I refuse to print this re- port because its facts and deductions do not square with my theories and notions, and exultingly proclaimed my opposition to the printing a most damaging admission.* I resume the discussion in pursuance of a promise made when the fall of the Speaker's gavel announced the expira- tion of the brief time allowed me, and in the hope of showing by an array of facts, many of which were not then in my possession, the dangerous fallacies the Com- missioner has attempted to sustain by " doctored," " manip- ulated," " garbled," " marshaled," or in other words, art- fully arranged figures. The correctness of the figures set forth in the report I am willing, as I then was, to admit for argument sake, but not in fact, as time has not yet permitted me to test them fully. They may in themselves be true ; but there is a falsehood known as the suppressio veri the statement of part of the truth in such a manner as to produce the eft'ect of a positive falsehood ; and of that I charge that the Commissioner has been guilty in almost every part of his voluminous report. He who denies the existence of Deity, and in support of the denial quotes the last four words of the exclamation " the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God," as a complete sentence, misrepresents the teachings of the Psalmist, though he correctly quotes that particular portion of his language. The falsehood is in the manner of the state- ment, and not in the thing stated. This illustration is not inapplicable to the document under consideration. Gentlemen who read the report from pages 14 to 21 in- clusive, will find an abundant array of tabular compara- tive statements which, if they be true and in themselves constitute the whole truth, prove most adequately its assertion : " That for the year 1867, and for the first half of 1868, the aver- age increase of all the elements which constitute the food, clothing, and shelter of a family has been about seventy-eight per cent, as compared with the standard prices of 1860-61." And that the rate of increase in wages for the year 1867 as compared with 1860-61, was but as follows : * For an illustration of the ludicrous absurdity of some of Mr. Wells' posi- tions und fabricated facts, which Mr. Garfleld hastened to defend with such zeal, readers are referred to the tables of weekly earnings and expenditures of families, quoted from the Commissioner's report on pages 271, 272. They show the wonderful dexterity with which Mr. Wells subordinates the most palpable facts to the theories he embraced during his visit to England. REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. 257 "For unskilled mechanical labor, fifty per cent.; for skilled mechanical labor, sixty per cent." I pause for a moment to deny the correctness of these statements, and to assert that the price of the necessaries of life enumerated in these tables are, on an average, not more than fifty per cent, higher than in 1860, while labor is now immeasurably more fully employed at an advance of from eighty to one hundred per cent, over the wages of that year. But this is a point about which ingenuity may cavil, and is not essential to the support of my argu- ment. To give Mr. Wells' figures any practical value they should have been accompanied by another column for each year, in which should have been stated the num- ber of working people employed in each of the several branches of business referred to, and the number who, though skilled workmen at those branches, were unable to obtain employment of any kind by which to earn wages. The omission of these elements from the calculation vitiates the Commissioner's figures, even though they are in themselves true, and conceals the fraud this report was intended to perpetrate. Let the gentleman from Ohio glorify the memory of 1860 as he may, I confidently reiterate what I said in the former discussion : " Eighteen hundred and sixty and 1861, and from 1857 to the autumn of the latter year, was one of the darkest periods ever seen by the laboring people of America. Not one out of five of the skilled workmen of the country was steadily employed. In Phila- delphia, when they wanted to build a street railroad they advertised for two hundred and fifty hands at sixty cents a day, and more than five thousand offered, a majority of whom were skilled artizans who could find no other employment. In the neighborhood of one of the establishments, the statistics of which go into this report, a rolling- mill, the number of unemployed men was so great that the county authorities, to save its skilled workmen from open pauperism, deter- mined to build a turnpike, and experienced hands from rolling-mills were employed at breaking stone and road-making at fifty cents a day rather than become paupers. For the comparatively few who had employment the wages are, I assume, honestly given in the report ; but of the many who were picking up a precarious living by getting an occasional day's work at half wages or quarter wages no account is taken ; and thus facts that may be true in themselves, by being separated from those which would have explained and inter- preted them, are made to libel our country and the Congress that carried it through the war. " Let me in this connection bring the attention of gentlemen to some facts : " Look at the palatial buildings erected in this city during the last year and the comfortable dwellings for mechanics and laborers. 17 258 REPOET OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. How many of them there are you have all seen. They are built by squares and blocks. I have endeavored to ascertain how many were built in 1860, and can hear of but four dwelling houses built in Washington in that year. In 1861, so far as I have been able to learn, but one dwelling house and one public school-house, the con- tract price for which was $3500, were erected. Leaving Washing- ton, I go to to my own city, and by turning to the report of the building inspectors find that in 1860 twenty-four hundred and seventy- two houses were built. The decline had commenced, and in 1861 but sixteen hundred and seventy-three were built. In 1860 we enlarged five hundred and eighty-eight buildings ; in 1861 but two hundred and four were enlarged. But in 1868, when the Commissioner tells us labor was not as prosperous as in 1860, we erected forty-seven hundred and ninety-six buildings and enlarged twelve hundred and fifteen. In 1868 there was an active demand for labor, and its price was high. It could determine its own wages. In 1860 labor was begging employment and wages were low. As a general thing mechanics had to accept whatever wages were offered, though in a few instances favored establishments were able to run continuously, and pay fair wages, and these exceptional cases have furnished the Commissioner data for what he announces as a general law. " The low rate of wages that ruled in 1860 would have led a pro- ficient in political economy to look for the facts I am now about to lay before you. It is a law of social science that when employment is scarce labor must accept low wages, and lose time ; but when employment is quick and active, labor regulates its own wages and is constantly employed. The tables presented by the Commissioner ignore this law, and are consequently a fraud upon Congress and a slander upon our country, the working people of which were never so prosperous as now. " Let me exhibit some other comparisons between 1860 and 1868 which bear upon the question at issue. In that blessed year, 1860, which the Commissioner eulogizes, the sheriff of Philadelphia received seventeen hundred and forty writs for the sale of real estate, while in 1868, the year he denounces as one of congressional wrong and pecuniary depression, the sheriff of that city received but seven hundred and six writs for the sale of real estate, a falling off of largely more than. fifty per cent., though in the interval there had been an increase of forty per cent, in the population, and vastly more than that in the wealth of the city." la connection with these statements I brought to the attention of the House on that occasion such figures drawn from the reports of the savings-banks of seven States as I happened to have at hand. Since then I have been able to add to my collection of that class of facts, some which I will proceed to exhibit. I have the official statement of the total amount of deposits in the savings-banks of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, of the Philadelphia Saving-Fund Society, which is allowed to receive but $200 from any one depositor in a year, and of the savings-banks of the city of Newark, New Jersey, REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OP REVENUE. 259 for 1860 and 1861, and of these institutions, and a third at Newark, a dime savings-bank, which has since come into existence, for 1867 and 1868. I have also reports from other states, but as they do not cover the four years designated they could not be embraced in the table I have compiled. That I have not been wanting in diligence in my endeavors to procure such official information as would enable me to make a general comparative table for these years will be attested by gentlemen on this floor and in the Senate, of whom I have requested the names of the proper parties to whom to apply, and by Mr. Spofford, the Librarian of Congress, to whose industry and courtesy I am much indebted. All the information obtained shall be fully presented, and I think the gentleman from Ohio, [Mr. Garfield,] though he may remember 1860 as a pleasant and prosper- ous year, will be persuaded that millions of his country- men remember it as a year of agony, during which gaunt want entered their homes because the last dollar of their past earnings had been extorted from them by idleness enforced by a revenue or free trade tariff. I have not been able to ascertain the number of deposi- tors in all the institutions to which I am referring for each year, but have them from the Saving-Fund Society of Philadelphia and the savings-banks of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. These are, however, sufficent to indicate the general condition of the class of people who are depositors in such institutions, and whose alleged relative poverty in 1867 Mr. Wells so deplores. On the 1st day of January, 1860, there were twenty-one thousand two hundred and sixty-five depositors in the institution at Philadelphia, and on the 1st of January, 1861, there were but twelve thousand six hundred and sixty-two ; and the total amount of deposits had gone down from $4,083,450 to $2,251,646, or little more than one half. In Massachusetts, as an official statement before me shows, the number of depositors has fallen off in but two years between 1834 and 1868, inclusive. In 1865 the total decrease was one hundred and twenty-eight, an almost incalculably small fraction of one per cent., but in the year 1861, in consequence of the want of employment in 1860, the number fell off five thousand and ten, or two and one-sixth per cent., and the deposits remaining at the close of the year were reduced $268,797. 260 REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. The number of depositors in the savings-banks of Rhode Island has receded in but one year between 1855 and 1868 inclusive, which was 1861, when they fell off five hundred and ninety-eight, notwithstanding which the -aggregate deposit increased $119,119 83. The extreme force of the depression which, as the result of our adhesion to free trade and an exportable metallic currency, overtook the country in 1857, and terminated only with the issue of the currency known as greenbacks, and the passage of the protective tariff of 1861 seems to have fallen upon New Hampshire as early as 1858. From 1850 to 1868, inclusive, the number of depositors in savings-banks of that State has decreased in but two years, 1858 and 1866. In the latter year the number of deposi- tors fell off about one per cent., notwithstanding which the deposits increased $26,265 31 ; but in 1858 the depositors fell off seven per cent., or thirteen hundred and twenty- three, and the deposits were reduced $159,627 40. While recounting the manifold blessings that period brought to the working people of the country the gentle- man from Ohio [Mr. Garfield] reminded me that the work- ing people were docile in that year, and indulged in no strikes either for higher wages or against a reduction of their pay. He said : " It was a year of plenty, of great increase. I remember, more- over, that it was a year of light taxes. There was but one great people on the face of the globe so lightly taxed as the American people in 1860. Now we are the most heavily taxed people except one, perhaps, on the face of the globe ; and the weight of nearly all our taxes falls at last on the laboring man. This is an element which the gentleman seems to have omitted from his calculation altogether. "The gentleman says that at the present time laborers are doing better than in 1860. I ask him how many strikes there were among laborers in 1860-61 ? "Were there any at all ? And how many were there in 1868 ? Will the gentleman deny that strikes exhibit the unsettled and unsatisfactory condition of labor in its relations to capital ? In our mines, in our mills and furnaces, in our manufac- turing establishments, are not the laborers every day joining in strikes for higher wages, and saying that they need them on ac- count of the high price of provisions, or that the capitalists get too large a share of the profits ? " The gentleman has my thanks for bringing this significant fact, so destructive of his own argument and that of Mr. "Wells, to my attention. He knows that it was not until Jeshurun waxed fat that he kicked ; and he ought to REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. 261 know that unemployed workmen, who had drawn the last dollar from the savings-bank, and parted with furniture in exchange for food and fuel, were not in a condition to strike, and had no employers whose decrees they might resist. I need no more powerful illustration of the absurdity of the assertions of the Commissioner than the fact that the workingmen of to-day, in contrast with their abject condition in 1860, find so wide a market for their labor and are so comparatively easy in their condition that when their rights or interests are assailed they are able to offer resistance to the assailant. Our positions are fairly taken, and as the condition of savings-banks furnishes the truest and most general index to the condition of the laboring people, the facts I am about to present will overthrow him who is in error. Be the judgment of the general public what it may, I am confi- dent that the memory of every American workingman who remembers the experience of 1860 will sustain me in this controversy. Having shown the loss of depositors and deposits in the only banks from which I could obtain in- formation on those points in or about 1860, let me show the increase of depositors and deposits in the same banks in 1867 and 1868 : Increase in State or City. Year. number of depositors. deposits. Increase of New Hampshire ....1867 4,967 $2,672,15005 1868 7,476 2,705,242 01 Massachusetts 1867 31,740 12.699,31940 1868 34,501 14,406,75283 Rhode Island 1867 6,845 3.651,934 11 " 1868 4.429 2,984,988 81 Philadelphia 1867 2,490 579,746 03 1868 2,234 761,90100 94,682 $40,462,034 24 The contrast these figures present to those of 1860 does not give the Commissioner's theory much support, and casts a shade of doubt over the accuracy of the position taken by the gentleman from Ohio. It may, however, be regarded as exceptional, and I therefore propose to present a broader range of facts, embracing the amount of deposits in the banks of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Newark, New Jersey, and the only institution at Philadel- phia from which I have been able to obtain this informa- tion for the years 1860-61 and 1867-68. I have sought for 262 REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. corresponding facts from the other New England States and New York, but have not been able to obtain them. These tables are, therefore, as complete as industry and the broadest research possible in so limited a period could make them. As, however, they present so perfect a cor- respondence for both periods it is fair to presume that they indicate the condition of the savings-banks and their de- positors throughout the country. The total amount of deposits in these banks in 1860-61 was as follows : I860 1861 Maine $1,466,457 56 $1,620,270 26 New Hampshire 4,860,024 86 5,590,652 18 Massachusetts 45,054,236 00 44,785,439 00 Ehode Island 9,163,760 41 9,282,879 74 Philadelphia 4,083,450 28 2,251.646 46 N , (1,687,55151 1,539,93234 rK 1 253,82672 269,18267 66,569,307 34 $65,330,002 65 65,330,002 65 Decrease ............. $1,239,304 69 By this statement it is shown that the savings-banks in these four States and two cities in one year, during what the Commissioner and the gentleman from Ohio call a sea- son of great prosperity for working people, lost deposits amounting to $1,239,304 69. The total deposits for 1867 and 1868 in the banks of the same States, the same institution in Philadelphia, the same in Newark, with the addition already referred to of a dime savings institution which was not in existence in 1861, were as follows: 186T. 1868. Maine ................. $5.998,600 26 $8,132,246 71 New Hampshire ....... 10,463,41850 13,541,53496 Massachusetts .......... 80,431,583 74 94,838,336 54 Ehode Island ........... 21,413,647 14 24,408,635 95 Philadelphia ............ 5,003,37942 5,765,28063 ( 4,405,726 46 5,430,874 60 Newark ............... ^1,116,762 26 1,338,596 94 I 325,920 57 468,160 74 $128,759,038 32 153,823,667 07 128,759,038 32 Increase $25,064,628 75 This exhibit is as unfortunate for the Commissioner's facts and theories as that which preceded it, for it shows REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. 263 that in spite of all his rhetoric about the crudities and op- pressive character of the legislation of Congress the de- posits in these banks, which fell off so largely in his sea- son of prosperity, have increased $25,064,628 75 during the last year, and that the aggregate deposit at the close of 1868, his disastrous period, is largely more than double that of 1860, which he says was so prosperous. In the pursuit of a complete comparative table for these four years I have obtained an amount of information which, though it does not relate to the particular years alluded to, will not be without interest to the House and the country, and I will therefore proceed to present the figures with as much method as I can. Through the kind assistance of the honorable gentle- man from the Troy district, New York, [Mr. Griswold,] I have authentic statistics from the savings-banks of his State ; and though we were unable to obtain the figures for the years 1861 or 1868, I can present the number of depositors, the total amount of deposits, and the amount deposited during each year for the years 1860, 1866, and 1867. They were as follows : Tear Total nun l>er Total amount of depositors. of deposits 1860 ......... 300,693 $67,440,397 $34,934,271 1866 .......... 488,501 131,769,074 84,765,054 1867 .......... 537,466 151,127,562 99,147,321 From Vermont I have been able to obtain only the total amount of deposits for 1867 and 1868. They were as follows : Tear. Total amount of deposits. 1867 $1,898,107 58 1868 2,128,641 52 From Connecticut I have been able to obtain but the total amount of deposits for 1860, 1861 and 1866. They are as follows : Y Total amount r " of deposits. 1860 $18,132,820 00 1861 19.377670 00 1866 31,224,464 25 Thus the figures derived from every quarter are con- sistent with each other, and the contrast between the con- dition of things that prevailed between 1857 and 1861 264: EEPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. for the return to which the Commissioner sighs and that from 1861 to the close of 1868, which he so deprecates, is in itself sufficient to show the grotesque absurdity of his theory, that the head of every family could save money and make deposits in 1860 and that none but unmarried people could do so in 1867 and 1868. Let me repeat his language on this point : " Unmarried operatives, therefore, gain ; while those who are obliged to support their own families in hired tenements lose. Hence deposits in savings-banks increase, while marriage is discouraged ; and the forced employment of yonng children is made almost a necessity in order that the family may live." The country will hardly believe that when every head of a family among the laboring people of New York could save money the whole number put at interest but $34,000,- 000 per annum, and that when their condition had been so sadly impaired by the unwise legislation of Congress that people feared to marry because their wages would not ena- ble them to support families they deposited $99,000,000 annually, or nearly three dollars for one, and that the num- ber of depositors nearly doubled, and the total amount on deposit to their credit ran up one hundred and twenty-five per cent. Thus, in defiance of the Commissioner's facts, heartily as they are indorsed by the gentleman from Ohio, the returns from savings-banks prove that, with our labor protected and a cheap and expanded currency, our small farmers and workingmen have been able to lay up hundreds of millions ,of capital for their support in age or adversity, and upon which they receive interest. These are happily corrobo- rated by other facts, which in a striking manner prove the superiority of the present condition of the classes of peo- ple to which I allude over that to which the Special Com- missioner of the Revenue would lead them back. While accumulating capital in savings-banks they have felt them- selves able to make still more ample provision for their families after they shall have been called away by the dread summoner, death. In the course of the former dis- cussion of this subject I invited your attention to the fact that in Massachusetts alone there were policies of life in- surance outstanding on the 1st of January, 1868, for the enormous sum of $1,234.630,473. Through the further kindness of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Griswoldj REPORT OP SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE 265 I have been able to obtain the life-insurance statistics for that State for 1859, 1860, 1866, and 1867. The tables show the number of policies in force at the close of each of these years, the total amount of the policies, and the number of companies issuing them : No of No of Amount Tear. compa- poli- of policies in nies. cien. force. 1859 14 49,617 8141,497,977 82 1860 17 56,046 163,703,45531 Increase 3 6,429 $22,205,477 49 1866 39 305,39a 8853.105,87724 1867 43 401,140 1,161,729,776 27 Increase 4 95,750 8308,623,89903 From this table it will be seen that the increase in the number of policies and the amount insured during 1867 was nearly a hundred per cent, in excess of the total num- ber insured and the amount of insurance at the close of 1860, and that the percentage of policies for such small sums as small farmers or workingmen may maintain had increased, as the average value of policies in 1860 was $2,920 88, and had fallen to $2,896 07 in 1867. I had hoped to present results from the life insurance companies of Connecticut, but have failed to receive them. I have, however, some facts from one company chartered by New Jersey whose office is at Newark and its principal branch at Philadelphia. Through the kindness of the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Halsey] I am able to present the number of policies issued by the Mutual Bene- fit Life Insurance Company, the Company referred to, on the 1st of January of four years. They are as follows : j. . No. of policies outstanding. January. 1861 7,575 January, 1862 7,026 January, 1867 29,858 January, 1868 34,31 I have also been favored with the number of policies outstanding for substantially the same period by the American Life Insurance Company of Philadelphia, to- gether with the number of its policies which were for 3000 or less. They are as follows : 266 REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. _ No. of Amount " a olicies. insured for. December 31, 1860 991 $1,090,450 00 December 31, 1861 1,120 1,206,00000 December 31, 1867 7,656 18,312,478 93 December 31, 1868 10,282 24,759,901 59 The number of these policies in each year, which were on the lives of people of limited or moderate means, and were for $3000 or less was as follows : _. No. of Amount ear- policies. insured. 1860 827 $789.150 00 1861 938 920.600 00 1867 '. ^.6,125 9,724,378 93 1868 6,689 13,021,878 93 The relative magnitude of our national debt disappears before these statistics ; for if the policies existing be main- tained the companies of Massachusetts and New York and the two referred to outside of those States will pay to the widows and children or creditors of the parties insured a sum vastly in excess of our total debt, and it is not unfair to assume that the greater portion of the whole amount will be paid to that class of people whom the Commis- sioner describes as so oppressed by a protective tariff and the cheap and abundant currency now in use. When in my former remarks on this subject I invited your atten- tion to the figures relating to life insurance then in my possession, I said : "When people in addition to laying up money at interest are in- suring their lives, they are living well ; but when, as in 1860, past accumulations in savings-banks are running down, and they are wasting their time in enforced idleness, they cannot live well and contribute freely to the support of the Government. Accept the recommendations of the Commissioner and you will paralyze indus- try, reduce wages, throw the producing classes upon their deposits for support, and deprive them of the power to keep up the insur- ance on their lives. Such facts as I have presented are sufficient to refute a thousand fine-spun theories. It may with the ingenuity that fashioned this report, be said that the policies to which I have re- ferred are on the lives of wealthy people. But such is not the case ; two hundred and sixty-five out of each thousand of them are for $1000 or less ; five hundred and forty out of each thousand are for 82000 or less ; seven hundred out of each thousand for $3000 or less. Only three hundred out of each thousand are for amounts over $3000. These policies are the precautions taken by well-paid industry to provide for widowhood and orphanage after the head of the family shall have paid mortality's last debt." It is not improper, Mr. Chairman, that in concluding this REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. 267 branch of my subject I should say that I have presented no statement which is not warranted by official indorse- ment, and that I hesitate not to assert that could the busi- ness of the savings-banks and life insurance companies of the whole country be investigated the results would con- form to those I have produced. They are truly surprising, and should they through our widely diffused periodicals find their way across the waters, will prove an abundant antidote to the Commissioner's notice to those who have thought of Emigrating to this country, but who desire to live in wedlock, that they may not hope to do so under the legislation of that Congress which has for several years been in such absolute government of the country as to render the veto power of the Executive nugatory. They are, in my judgment, important enough to produce some effect upon the credit of the country, for they show that our laboring people are saving and putting at interest hun- dreds of millions of dollars annually, and that the people at large are paying from their abundance more, largely more, than the interest on our national debt to life insur- ance companies, as a provision for their widows and orphans when they shall no longer be able to provide for and pro- tect them.* * The facts presented in the text, exhibit the condition of the workingmen of Protective America, and the following testimony of Wm. Hoyle, of Manches- ter, and R. Dudley Baxter, will show how it compares with that of those of Free Trade England. It is found on pages 38 to 42 of the 4th edition of Our National Resources, by Wm. Hoyle. London. 1870. "The present population of the United Kingdom (1869) is 30,838,210; of these, 1,281,651 are returned as paupers, and 6692 as vagrants. " The following table will show the gradual and continued increase in our pauperism. It gives the number of paupers in the United Kingdom from 1860 to 1870 inclusive: England and Wales. Scotland. Ireland. Total. 1860 851,020 114,209 44,929 1,010,158 1861 890,423 117,113 50,683 1,058,219 1862 946,166 118,928 59,541 1,124,635 1863 1,142,624 120,284 66,228 1,329,136 1864 1,009,289 120,705 68,135 1,198,129 1865 971,433 121,394 69,217 1,162,044 1866 920,344 119,608 65,057 1,105,009 1867 958,824 121,169 68,650 1,148,643 1868 1,034,823 128,976 72,925 1,236,724 1869 1,039,549 128,339 74,745 1,242,633 1870 1,079,391 73,921 " The Government returns as to pauperism and vagrancy do not, however, by any means represent the extent of these two evils. They give the number 268 REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. The Commissioner's theory, that our legislation is mak- ing the rich richer and the poor poorer, is that which was hurled at us by every copperhead orator, from Horatio Seymour down, during the last canvass. We also encoun- tered it in every rebel paper in the South, and there were those who feared that it might produce an effect upon the popular mind. I was not one of them. The American people are intelligent enough to know when they have the toothache, or are involved in a lawsuit, or are being stripped of property through the medium oi a sheriffs sale, and remembering the disasters of the last free- trade and hard-money era of the country, I contrasted it with their present condition and relied confidently upon their judg- ment. In order to test the accuracy of my memory and judgment on this point, I appealed during the canvass to the statistics of my own city, and among other telling facts found, as I have already told you, that in 1860 the sheriff of Philadelphia had received seventeen hundred and forty writs for the sale of real estate, and that in 1867 he had of paupers on the books on the 1st day of January, and the number of vagrants who apply for lodging or casual relief on the same day; but this, but very im- perfectly portrays the pauperism, etc. of the country. According to this method of reckoning, if a man becomes chargeable to the union on the 2d of January, and comes off again on the 31st of December, he is not counted, though he has been receiving relief during the whole year, except two days. The statistics of the Poor Law Board, give the number of paupers and vagrants relieved on one day, (which is what they profess to do), but it does not give the number of persons who get relief as paupers and vagrants during the year. This is the idea gener- ally received, but it is erroneous. " In order to get the number of persons who received relief during 1869, we must multiply 1,281,651 by 3i, which gives 4,485,778. This, then, is the real number of persons who were chargeable as paupers, at one time or another, during that year, or nearly one in seven of the entire population. Admitting that a considerable number of these might be persons who applied twice or three times over during the year, it would still leave us about one in every ten of the popu- lation as having been paupers during the course of the year." " In reference to this subject, Mr. R,. Dudley Baxter, in his work on Nation- al Income, remarks : " ' The average number of paupers at one time in receipt of relief in 1866, was 916,000, being less than for any of the four preceding years. The total number relieved during 1866 may, on the authority of a return of 1867, given in the Appendix, be calculated at three and a half times that number, or 3,000,000. All these may be considered as belonging to the 16,000,000 of the manual labor classes, being as nearly as possible, twenty per cent, on their number; but the actual cases of relief give a very imperfect idea of the loss of work and wages. A large proportion of the poor submit to great hardships, and are many weeks, and even months, out of work before they will apply to the guardians. They exhaust their savings; they try to the utmost, their trade unions or benefit societies ; they pawn little by little all their furniture ; and at last are driven to ask relief.' " But even the figures which hare been given do not by any means represent adequately the pressure of our poverty. There are a very large number of per- sons who are dependent upon their friends and relations ; and there arc a nuin- REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. 269 received but seven hundred and six a decrease of more than sixty per cent., although the population of the city had increased more than forty per cent. What makes this fact more significant is, that under our system of selling land under ground rents the purchase of a homestead is the savings-bank of the Philadelphia workingman. I also as- certained the number of suits that were instituted in the years 1857-58-59 and 1865-66 and 1867, respectively, in our local courts. The evidence from this source is not less significant than any that has preceded it. The court of common pleas is emphatically the poor man's court. It obtains jurisdiction by appeal from the judgments of mag- istrates, and the amount at issue before its juries is for sums less than $100. The result of my investigation showed that the number of suits brought in the latter years, notwithstanding the increase of population which had taken place, was but little more than one-half the num- ber who, as Dudley Baxter says, submit to great hardships sooner than apply for relief. If all who are thus situated be summed up, it cannot amount to much less than one-third of the entire population of the manual labor class, or from fifteen to twenty per cent, of the entire population. " The Government returns in reference to vagrancy are even more imperfect and unsatisfactory than the pauper returns. I have not been able to obtain any national figures to illustrate this, but it will be sufficiently manifest if I give the statistics in reference to one union the Bury Union, in which I reside. " The following table gives the number of paupers and vagrants returned to the Poor-Law Board, January 1st, 1870, and published in their report as represent- ing the pauperism and vagrancy in the Bury Union, the population of which, in 1861, was 101,142. Paupers 4,372 Vagrants 11 v " The actual number of cases of pauperism and vagrancy during the year end- ing March, 1870, in the Bury Union was as follows : No. of cases of Paupers relieved 15,012 " " Vagrants " 15,474 " These returns corroborate the figures given by Mr. Purdy, in reference to the pauperism of the country ; and they show that if the total cases of vagrancy during the year were given, it would numerically be equal to, or greater than the number of paupers. " No doubt a very large number of the vagrant cases are from among the pau- pers, and in a large proportion of the cases, the same parties apply several times over in the same Union, and also at different Unions ; still, it shows that there is a very large class of our population who have no fixed dwelling-place; they move about getting a living, by begging or stealing, or by imposition upon the public, as may be most convenient. Adding this class to the pauper class, it reveals an amount of destitution and demoralization in the country that is perfectly appal- ling, and that is a lasting disgrace to our civilization and Christianity." 270 REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. ber instituted in the former period. The figures are as follows : SUITS IN COMMON PLEAS. 1857 2,503 1858 2,651 1859 3,041 8,195 1865 1,500 1866 1,461 1867 1,672 4,633 Decrease of cases 3,562 The jurisdiction of the district court extends to all cases involving more than $100. Its records are consistent with those of the common pleas. The figures from its records are as follows : DISTRICT COURT. 1857 9,894 1858 9,702 1859 7,262 26,858 1865 4,977 1866 5,716 1867 6,674 17,367 Decrease 9,491 I am sure I do Mr. Wells no injustice when I complain of his palpable negligence in omitting to appeal to such sources of information as I have indicated, and attempting to deduce general laws by which to guide our legislation from the lame and impotent array of facts he has digested. We pay him a salary which he deems adequate. His traveling expenses are at the cost of the Treasury, and he is surrounded by a competent clerical force, and that he should have rested all his theories upon an array of facts so meagre and so easily disproved is, to say the least, not creditable to his industry or judgment. The gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Garfield] told us that hearing of my intended attack he had asked information from two sources in order to test the correctness of the Commissioner's position. That was an idle waste of time. Had he spent it in examining Mr. Wells' figures, he would have discovered from their own manifest incongruity that no two or two hundred authorities could give them a char- acter for respectability or the weight of authority. The REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. 271 gentleman is an arithmetician and knows that $111,000 are not twenty-one and forty-nine hundredths per cent, of $5,164,500, and that $37,000 are not seven and twenty-six hundredths per cent, of $5,053,500. Yet the Commis- sioner tells us they are, and so impairs the value of the important table on page 111 of his report. I invite the gentleman's attention to the two elaborate tables to be found on page 16 of the report, the first purporting to show in parallel columns the " average weekly expendi- tures for provisions, house-rent," etc. ; the second, " average weekly earnings," and the third "surplus for clothing, housekeeping goods," etc., of families in 1867 ; the other in corresponding columns purporting to show "average weekly expenditures of families of varying numbers in the manufacturing towns of the United States for the years 1860 and 1867, respectively." More remarkable tables than these never were prepared by statistician. I had supposed that Mr. Delmar, late chief of the Bureau of Statistics, was a paragon in his way; but he must look out for his honors, for in these tables the Special Commissioner of Eevenue has beaten him, roundly in his own department. Unhappy Delmar! Happy Commissioner Wells ! For Delmar's report Con- gress had nothing but an indignant vote requiring its sup- pression, though it lay ready printed and bound ; but for Wells' budget of more egregious blunders it has such admiration and approval, that no love of economy could restrain it from voting to print it for the widest possible circulation. The tables to which I refer must speak for themselves, for no man can describe or characterize them. They are as follows : Average aggregate weekly earnings and expenses of families for 1867. Size of families. Average weekly expenditures for provisions, house-rent, etc. Average weekly earnings. Surplus for cloth- ing, housekeep- ing goods, etc. Parents and one child $10 24 $17 00 7.; Three adults 8 35 17 52 917 Parents and two children 12 26 18 75 640 Parents and three children Parents and four children 15 02 17 79 19 50 23 33 4 48 n *J. Parents and five children 15 23 17 11 1 88 Parents and six children 11 67 13 50 i si Parents and seven children 23 78 25 00 1 22 General average of the above... $14 29 $18 96 $4 67 272 REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. Table, showing the average weekly expenditures of families of varying numbers in the manu- facturing towns of the United States for the years 1860 and 1867, respectively. Size of families. Average weekly wages. Average weekly expenditures for provisions, house- rent, clothing, etc. Surplus in 1860. In 1867. In 1860. In 1867. In 1860. Parents and one child $17 00 17 52 18 75 19 50 23 33 17 11 13 50 25 00 $12 17 12 00 11 50 12 41 14 15 10 37 9 50 15 17 $17 00 17 52 18 75 19 50 23 33 17 11 13 50 25 00 $9 96 10 31 10 79 11 33 13 18 9 46 7 67 14 09 $2 21 1 69 71 1 08 97 91 1 83 1 08 Three adults. Parents and two children Parents and three children Parents and four children.. Parents and five children Parents and six children Parents and seven children General average of the above.... $18 96 $12 16 sis 96 $10 85 $1 31 I hope the gentleman from Ohio will give these tables a reasonable amount of consideration, and if he still thinks they may be correct refer them to another authority the ancient matrons of his district. But before making this reference, I beg him to advise the ladies of the fact that he draws his question from an official document ; for if he fails to take this precaution they will hold him guilty of perpetrating a practical joke at their expense, by submit- ting to their judgment so absurd a proposition. They will doubtless admit that parents with two children cannot live so well on the same money as parents with but one, and that as a general rule it costs more to maintain parents and three children than is required for the support of those with but two or one, and that the same is true with reference to parents and four children ; but they will pro- bably doubt his sincerity when he asks whether parents with five children can live as well on less money than is required to support parents with but three, and will laugh at the proposition that parents with six children can live as well on less money than parents with but two ; and I think I hear them crying out, " Why, sir, what do you mean by asking us whether parents with six children can live for less than parents with two, and yet in the same breath telling us that if they happen to have a seventh, be it boy or girl, it will more than double the expenses of the whole family ? " Unwelcome seventh child ! According to Wells you come into the family of every laboring man to double the household expenses though all your six REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. 273 predecessors be still sheltered by the paternal roof! Lucky children numbers five and six! henceforth you will be welcomed "every where ; for the Special Commis- sioner of Revenue has proved that in all instances your coming reduces the expenses of the family to less than they were when the household flock consisted of but two ! According to the Commissioner this law of social life, hitherto undiscovered, is absolute, and prevailed alike in 1860 and 1867. To invite attention to these tables is to subject them to ridicule ; and yet, Mr. Chairman, they are the foundation- stone and the keystone of Mr. Wells' entire structure; upon them he rests all his argument, and from them he deduces his conclusion, that marriage is a luxury the laboring people of America cannot safely enjoy. Happily for the country they are so flagrantly and absurdly false, that Mr. Wells' deductions and conclusions will be re- ceived but as the vain imaginings of a dreamy and indo- lent theorist.* In view of the unquestioned facts I have brought to the attention of the committee, and the urgency of the Com- missioner for a return to the revenue tariff and contracted currency of 1860, 1 am forced to the conclusion that he re- gards poverty and idleness as supreme blessings to the laboring people of our country, and I rejoice that I succeeded in obtaining the floor upon the motion to print his report, and sounded an alarm to the masses of my countrymen by telling them that it is an insidious plea for their im- poverishment. In my judgment, the first duty of an American statesman is to watch and guard the rights of the laboring classes of the country. They produce its wealth, they fight its bat- tles, and in their hands is its destiny ; for at every election they cast a majority of the ballots, and upon their intelli- gence, integrity, and manly independence rest the welfare of the country. To make Republican government an enduring success, we must guard the productions of our laborers against competition with those of the ill-paid and oppressed laborers of Europe, so that each head of a family may by the wages he can earn maintain a home, and be able to support his children during the years required to * The general judgment of Mr. Wells is less favorable than this. His sudden conversion to free trade is generally ascribed to something more tangible than dreams. 18 274 REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. give them the advantages of our common school system. If the Commissioner's report proves anything to those who are able to detect its fallacies, and test the fulness and accuracy of its comparative tables, it is that under the in- fluence of the cheap and abundant currency we now have, and the system of protection which the war forced us to adopt, the American people are consuming more of the necessaries and comforts of life than they were ever before able to consume ; are producing more of what they con- sume than ever before, and in spite of the taxes imposed by the national debt and other incidents of the war, are coming to be commercially independent of other nations. Yes, sir, under the influence of a tariff which, though it levies duties on raw materials and commodities which we do not and cannot produce, is still in a measure protective, and an adequate amount of currency, we are slowly emerging from our commercial dependence upon England, as is shown by the fact that our imports have steadily diminished since 1865. Thus in 1866, 1867, and 1868, respectively, the amounts of foreign merchandise imported into the country were as follows : Year ending 30th of June, 1866 4. $423,470,646 Year ending 30th of June, 1867. . . v . 374,943,502 Year ending 30th of June, 1868 344,873,433 Thus it appears that notwithstanding the facts that the increase of our wealth is unparalleled, and the natural in- crease of our population is very rapid, and that " from the 1st of July, 1865, to the 1st of December, 1868, about one million natives of foreign countries have sought a perma- nent home in the United States," our purchases of foreign commodities are steadily diminishing. The sapient de- duction of the Special Commissioner of the Kevenue from these facts is, that we are unable to trade with foreign nations, and that to stimulate foreign trade we must reduce the wages of our laborers, and diminish the amount of currency now profitably employed in the development of our productive power. His theory is that " all commerce is in the nature of barter or exchange," and his complaint is that: " We have so raised the cost of all domestic products that ex- change in kind with all foreign nations is almost impossible. The majority of what foreign nations have to sell us, as already shown, we must or will have. What foreign nations want and we pro- REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. 275 duce. cotton and a few other articles excepted, they can buy elsewhere cheaper. We are, therefore, obliged to pay in no small part for such foreign productions as we need or will have, either in the precious metals or, what is worse, in unduly depreciated promises of national payment." The Commissioner's exception of " cotton and a few other articles " leaves Hamlet out of the play, and surren- ders his whole case, for we can raise enough of the articles he excepts, and of which we have a natural monopoly, to pay for every foreign production " we must or will have." The beneficent results of free labor in the former slave States are an agreeable surprise to its most sanguine friends. The South is abundantly rich in mineral and agricultural resources, but she is suffering from the want of currency to develop them. Were she adequately supplied with cur- rency, and the season should be a favorable one, her pro- duction of cotton, and the few other articles excepted by the Commissioner, would more than double that of 1868, and as other nations must have her cotton, tobacco, rice, and other semi-tropical productions which they cannot procure elsewhere, it seems to me that the true way to stop the flow of precious metals and Government bonds is to stimulate production by protecting the wages of labor and avoiding any contraction of the currency. In support of this view, let me call attention to the fact that we send from eighty to one hundred million dollars abroad annually for sugar. If capitalists will lend the planters of Florida, Louisiana, and Texas the means to cultivate their sugar- fields, they will produce crops that will save a large per- centage of this vast sum to the country.* I showed, in a former discussion of this subject, that we bought about forty-five per cent, of the entire amount of railroad iron exported by Great Britain during the first ten months of 1868, saying: " I hold in my hand a circular which reads thus : ' Fifty-eight, Old Broad street, London, November 30, 1868, from S. W. Hopkins & * Since my remarks were delivered, I have received from Messrs. McFarlan, Straight A Co., commission merchants of New Orleans, their trade circular of February 1st, from which I extract the following corroboration of my views : " Receipts of the Louisiana sugar crop this season to 30th ultimo, inclusive, foot up 47,419 hogsheads sugar, and 109,518 barrels, 4692 half barrels, and 17 quarter barrels molasses. But for lack of promptness in commencing grinding early, and of adequate preparation on the part of the producers for securing a large yield, and the early severe frosts, succeeded by floods of rain, the Louisi- ana sugar crop of 1868 would probably have reached 115,000 hogsheads at least, or about three times the product of 1867. The yield of 1868 must have been re- 276 REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. Co.. exporters of railway iron. Monthly Report of Exports of Rails from Great Britain, extracted from the Government returns.' By this report it appears that in the ten months ending October 31, 1868, Great Britain exported 509,968 tons of rails. Gentlemen pro- bably think that England's colonial dependencies took most of this iron ; that British India, British North America, and Australia took it. No, gentlemen ; we are her chief commercial dependency. She is our mistress, and we maintain her throne and aristocracy. No ; the British dependencies took but 84,000 tons, and her Republican dependency, the United States, took 228,000 tons. Of the 509,968 tons of rails, we took 21,000 tons more than were taken by British India, Russia, British North America, Sweden, Prussia, France, Spain and the Canaries, Cuba, Brazil, Chili, and Australia." The Commissioner makes no note of such facts as this, but finding some fortunately situated manufacturers of pig- iron guilty of making profits almost equal to those which merchants and bankers average, he holds them up to con- tempt and ridicule, and wonders yes, in an omcial report, sneeringly expresses his surprise that they have not pe- titioned Congress to legislate for the reduction of their profits ! He probably does not know that the high rate at which pig-iron is now selling is stimulating the production of that primary article to an extent that promises an early home supply and such competition among our own people as must inevitably cheapen the price of iron and reduce the profits of those whose product is now in unusual re- quest. In proof of this assertion, I not only point the Commissioner to the rapid increase of the means of pro- ducing pig-iron in Pennsylvania, but appeal to all the gen- tlemen on this floor from districts in or near which coal, iron ore, and limestone are found. Districts hitherto un- known to the iron trade are now producing large quanti- ties of pig-iron ; and I ask gentlemen from New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, southern Illinois, Missouri, Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, duced by mere waste, caused by lack of wood, lateness in beginning to grind and the unfavorable weather during the latter part of the grinding season, say 25,000 hogsheads or more, leaving, perhaps, 90,000 hogsheads to be realized. This great waste from a bountiful crop is greatly to be regretted, and we may hope it will not be repeated. " The production of domestic cane-ntoeet, properly protected and encouraged, might be increnoed far beyond the ides of many who are directly interexted. We believe the sugar lands of this State and Texas might be made to produce the entire 650,000 tons of sugar said to be required annually by the people of the United States, saving the $100,000,000 of specie paid yearly for foreign sweets, including charges and import duty, or perhaps fifty to sixty millions ac- tually paid to foreign producers. We have cpace only to ask the genuine finan- cier to consider this important instrumentality in aid of a return to the specie basis." Nute to Pamphlet Edition. REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENUE. 277 North Carolina, and Oregon, whether there are not more furnaces erecting in their States, respectively, than ever were in process of erection at one time before, and whether those already existing are not in full operation ? Virginia has no voice on this floor with which to respond to my appeal, but it is within my knowledge that Pennsylvanians are constructing furnaces, forges, and rolling-mills in va- rious parts of that State. If we would turn the balance of trade in our favor, and put our bonds at par, and stop the outflowing of gold interest by receiving them in the hands of immigrants, or in pay for our cotton, rice, tobacco, pro- visions, etc., we must avoid the Commissioner's nostrums, free trade, and hard money, and promote the development of the boundless natural resources of the country. By no other means can we arrest the export of specie and bonds in exchange for foreign commodities. There are many points in the Commissioner's report that I would gladly review, but having addressed myself to a single one, I will leave them for the consideration of others. Meanwhile I congratulate the country that it is so strong, and the currents of its prosperity are so broad, and moving with such increasing volume, that no official report or the vagaries of no theorist can impair or arrest its progress. THE EIGHT-HOUR SYSTEM. LETTER TO THE OPERATIVES IN THE WORKSHOPS AND FACTORIES OF THE FOURTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA. THE duties with which Congress, by special resolu- tion, charged the Committee of Ways and Means, of which I am a member, will probably consume the vacation, and require me to be absent from my district and labor- ously engaged, while my colleagues are enjoying the rest and recreation which with my impaired health I so much need. I cannot, under the circumstances, give the time to conference and correspondence with my constituents to which their interest in public affairs entitles them, and therefore address you thus publicly on topics which many communications from you show me you deem to be of prim- ary importance at this time, viz : the practicability of the eight-hour system, and the propriety of the order of the Secretary of the Navy, which apportions the pay of work- men in the Navy Yards to the number of hours' service performed. Though your letters differ in form, the substance is about the same : and by replying to two questions, I think I can answer most of your communications. You really ask but two questions, and I hope that each of you who has written to me on this subject will accept this as a reply. Your questions are : First : Are you in favor of the eight-hour system ? Second : Do you sustain the order of the Secretary of the Navy prohibiting the payment of the same wages for eight hours' work in a Navy Yard that are paid for ten hours' work in private establishments? The first question I answer in the affirmative. I am in favor of the eight-hour system, and am not a recent con- vert to the doctrine. It is more than 35 years since, as an apprentice in a jewelry establishment, I united with the 278 THE EIGHT-HOUR SYSTEM. 279 journeymen of that and other trades in promoting the recognition of the ten-hour system. There are some of my co-laborers who, at this distant day, can testify that in support of the reform we proposed, I then asserted that the laborer's day should be divided into three equal divi- sions, inasmuch as he could by eight hours of honest labor produce enough to entitle him to eight hours for rest, and eight hours for recreation or study. At that time a mechanic's day's work, at indoors employment, from Sep- tember to April, ended at eight o'clock in the evening; and I never lighted my lamp for night-work without feeling that humanity was outraged by the fact that the millions whose toil produced all the wealth were com- pelled at the cost of sight and health to labor thus, while those who only bought and sold their productions were free from such exactions. Those early convictions abide with me, and have controlled my votes as your represen- tative. It is true that I have not proposed to establish the eight- hour system by Act of Congress. That would have been to attempt an impossibility ; but that I have sedulously and courageously labored to remove all hindrances, and prepare the way for its establishment is also true. Much has been done ; and that the time is near when the working people of the United States, if they will take a comprehen- sive view of their position, and firmly maintain their in- terests, can establish the eight-hour system, I conscien- tiously believe. One of the principal obstacles to this just reform has been to some extent removed, and another, which seemed to be beyond human control, has been wholly obliterated during the nine years through which I have been your representative. I, of course, allude to free trade and slavery. Our country is so extended, its resources are so vast and diversified, and the sources of profitable employment for our people are so manifold, that we may establish our own industrial system, and maintain it against all opposition, without abridging the quantity or quality of the food, cloth- ing, or culture of any of our people. We can live and prosper, and expand while maintaining a system of absolute commercial independence. Then the eight-hour system will be practicable, but until this be ef- fected, and while our markets are freely opened to the pro- ductions of Belgium, France, Germany, and England, our 280 THE EIGHT-HOUR SYSTEM. labor system must conform more or less closely to those of these competing nations. They produce every result of me- chanical skill and labor that we can, but they do not pay the same price for any kind of labor. Belgium and France pay for a day's work by a skilled hand with francs worth twenty cents gold; England with shillings worth twent} 7 -- five cents gold ; and America with dollars worth about seventy cents gold at this time;* and the American receives for almost every variety of work as many dollars as the Englishman does shillings, or the Belgian or French- man francs. It is, therefore, obvious that we cannot sell our productions in those countries, and that, in the absence of a tariff that will protect your wages, and which will equal the difference between the wages which workmen in those countries are compelled to accept, and those which you receive for ten hours', and hope to get for eight hours' labor, they can undersell us in our own markets, and de- prive you of work and wages by closing aur workshops and factories. Though politically independent, we are commercially dependent. We endured a long war as the price of our political independence, but have hitherto con- sented to be held in commercial dependence, and to allow Belgium, France, Germany, and England to determine what wages the American workman shall receive and how many hours he shall work each day to support his family. To promote our commercial independence and secure our labor market to our own people and those who may become such by immigration, have been the constant objects of my labors as your representative. When these objects shall be attained, the eight-hour system can and will be established. But till then, you can- not enjoy it. To my mind nothing is more apparent than this. A word, now, as to the prospect. In 1857, we had a revenue tariff. Free trade prevailed. What was your condition ? A large portion of you were without employ- ment. The price of goods was low, but you had no work by which you could earn money to buy them, cheap as they were. Banks and savings banks failed : the con- stable and sheriff were busy ; immigration was arrested, and large numbers of immigrants, discouraged by the hopeless prospect, returned to their native countries convinced that * Worth eighty-seven cents, July 10th, 1871. THE EIGHT-HOUR SYSTEM. 281 the American Republic was not a happy home for the working man. Free trade is the subordination of the im- mense productive interests of our country to the demands of the few who are engaged in foreign commerce, and such were its natural results. We now have a protective tariff) and the circumstances are widely different. We are mining more coal, making more iron, planting more grain, and building more locomotives, houses, factories and work- shops than ever before. Labor is in demand, and immigra- tion increasing marvellously. The prospect of steady work and American wages, is bringing to our shores workmen skilled in every craft, and the assurance of a home market for their crops is bringing farmers from all the countries of Europe to settle among us. From the number that have already arrived, the Commissioners of Emigration predict that we will receive this year 400,000 European emigrants, an increase of 70,000 over any previous year. I submit to you the question, whether this is not a significant proof of the happy effect of the protective tariff which the exi- gences of the war compelled us to adopt. Under its influence labor is in demand, and the laborer is steadily becoming more independent ; and if we perfect and main- tain a system of thorough protection, you will be able to establish and maintain the eight-hour system. This will compel other nations to follow our benificent example, or behold their best workmen and most enterprising farmers leave their shores and come to swell the power of the great Republic. To ascertain how the existing tariff may be improved is the duty with which the Committee of Ways and Means is charged, and to which my colleagues and I expect to devote the entire vacation. The results of our labor must promote your objects. It is already apparent to the Committee that the administration of the law can be much improved, and that many articles, especially of tropi- cal growth, which we do not produce, but which enter as raw material into many of our manufactures, and upon which duties are now collected, should be admitted free. Four millions of laboring people, who, from the founda- tions of our government, have been used to antagonize your interests, are now free to co-operate with you. They were slaves, and their emancipation has not only enabled them to assert their right to just wages for their labor, but opened as a new field to free labor that portion of our coun- trv which is richest in combined agricultural and mineral THE EIGHT-HOUR SYSTEM. resources, but from which trade societies and free schools for the children of working people have always been ex- cluded. The results of this great change must soon be widely felt. Slaves, could not without danger to slavery, be trained to skilled labor. Therefore the South produced only raw materials, and her statesmen, desiring the markets of the world in which to sell their cotton and tobacco, and to buy their supply of manufactured goods, always sup- ported free trade at the cost of the commercial indepen- dence of the country, and the interests of the working peo- ple of the North. The war against slavery was waged not more for the enslaved negro than for the rights of free labor. To the second question I reply, that, inasmuch as I be- lieve that public officers are bound to obey the law, I am compelled to sustain the order of the Secretary of the Navy. The law of 1862 provides " that the hours of labor and the rate of wages of the employees in the Navy Yards shall conform, as nearly as is consistent with the public in- terests, with those of private establishments in the imme- diate vicinity of the respective yards." This act is still in force, and the Solicitor of the Navy and the Attorney- General, to whom the question has been referred, have ad- vised the Secretary and President Grant, that under its pro- visions the Government cannot legally pay for eight hours' work the same wages that are paid for ten hours by private establishments in the immediate vicinity of the yards respec- tively. If, therefore, men who work in Navy Yards are to receive 25 per cent, more than they would get for the same work in private establishments, the act of 1862 must be repealed. That can only be done by Congress. Neither the Secretary of the Navy, nor the President, has the power to repeal a law or the right to disregard one. Though none of you have put the question to me directly, some of you will now ask, will you vote for the repeal of this act ? I regret that I do not feel able to answer this question definitely. As at present advised, my judgment is against its repeal ; but on either of two conditions, I will vote for it. The first of these conditions is, that it shall be made apparent to me that the tax-payers of my district, including the women and children, who labor in factories ten hours or more to the day, believe that the men who work in Navy Yards are entitled to 25 per cent, more wages for the same work than the same class of workmen receive in private establishments in Philadelphia THE EIGHT-HOUR SYSTEM. 283 The other condition is, that I shall be convinced that the repeal of the act in question will promote the acceptance of the eight-hour system in private shops or yards. Private establishments compete with each other and with those of other countries in the sale of their productions. But the Government does not manufacture for a market, and, there- fore, could not be cited as an example of the successful working of the system. If the Government adopts this rule in advance of indi- vidual employers, you will find that all work that can be done in private shops will be sent there, and the number of hands employed in Navy Yards will be very limited. Congress, while struggling to reduce our colossal debt, will not require much work to be done at League Island, or any other station, if 25 per cent, above the average market rate is to be paid for every day's work. .-, But neither time nor printer's space will permit me to present all the considerations touching this question with which my mind is laboring. To such as I have set forth I invite your candid consideration. The destinies of the work- ing people of our country are in their own keeping. I have not sought to flatter or propitiate you. While I remain your representative, you are entitled to know my views on questions which many of you regard as of vital impor- tance ; and I have written frankly, withholding no word that candor requires me to utter. I address you as a grateful friend, and not as a supplicant for further honors : for, if I am permitted to consult my own wishes, my con- nection with public office will terminate with the XLIst Congress. Yours, very truly, WM. D. KELLEY. NEW YOKE, May 19th, 1869. MB. WELLS' EEPOET. SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF KEPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 11, 1870. The House being in the Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union Mr. Kelley said : Mr. Chairman : I have more than once endeavored to impress upon Congress the fact that fire is the material force or nervous power, and iron and steel are the muscles of our more modern civilization. The trip-hammer, with its won- derful power and more wonderful precision and delicacy of stroke, has supplanted the sledge-hammer, and circular and gang-saws do in a day the work at which the hand-saw labored for months. Machine tools, such as lathes, drills, planers, and shaping machines, impelled like the trip-ham- mer and saws by the unwearying steam engine, itself a mere embodiment of coal and iron ore, increase the perfec- tion and amount of the artisan's productions and relieve him of the exhausting toil which shortened the life of his father and made him prematurely old. Nations, too, are subject to these new conditions. How- ever free their institutions may be, a people who cannot supply their own demand for iron and steel, but purchase it from foreigners, are not independent ; nor is their de- pendence merely commercial ; they are politically depend- ent ; and if the nation on which they depend for these essential elements of modern warfare be arrogant and treacherous, as England proved herself during our late civil war, they must endure contumely and outrage with unresisting humility. Commerce and war both demand iron ships ; we tell the weight of our guns, whether of steel or iron, by the ton, and that of our steel-pointed shot by the hundred weight ; and while we depend upon her for the material of which to construct ships, guns, and shot, the statesmen of England know they can trifle with and postpone the settlement of the Alabama claims. Able as 284 MB. WELLS' REPORT. 285 we were to crush with irresistible power a gigantic rebel- lion, they know that until we shall have enough furnaces, forges, rolling-mills, machine-shops, and skilled artisans to produce and fashion a supply of iron and steel sufficient for our wants in peace and war, we cannot engage in war with England because we must depend on her for these primary essentials to successful modern warfare.* I am impelled to renew these suggestions by the report of David A.Weils, Esq., Special Commissioner of Eevenue, which abounds in propositions inimical to the best interests of the country, which if adopted by Congress will compel us to occupy a subordinate position among nations, though our population may equal that of all Europe, as our territory already does that of the whole family of European Powers. As I read page after page of this extraordinary paper I became more earnestly anxious to detect the full force of its suggestions, and, if possible, to divine the motive or spirit that prompted them. As an expression of the opinions of Mr. Wells this paper can do but little harm, but its circulation in Europe under the sanction of Congress may impair our credit and arrest the tide of immigration now flowing in upon us in unprecedented volume. It is in the nature of a notice to the capitalists of Europe that as a people, notwithstanding the amazing * "The great mind of Washington was not too slow to make this discovery. And what did we also discover in our war of 1812, but that we had nothing to equip the war? Having no woolen manufacture, we could not clothe our soldiers ; we could not even make a blanket. We had been free-traders, buying all such things because we could buy them cheaper; but we now discovered, that we might better have been making blankets at double the cost for the last fifty years. The same was true of saltpetre for gunpowder ; of guns, and cannon and swords ; and iron and steel out of which to make them. A nation that is to be a power must have at least a sufficient supply of iron made at home, no matter what the cost, to arm itself for war. We began also to make the discovery, shortly, that the very insignificant article of salt, coming in short supply, was nearly a dead necessity one of the munitions of war and that manufacturing it for ourselves at doable the cost would have been a true advantage. . . " Protection, though it be a losing bargain, as in trade, is generally necessary in States that are young, in order to their full organized development. We were a young nation in the war of 1812, and we very soon discovered in facts already referred to, the lowness of our organization, and the very incomplete scope of our industrial equipments. Our products were not various enough to make us a complete nation. It is often urged as the special advantage of young nations, that they can have the benefits of free trade, without trouble from the shock that must be given to old artificial investments ; but we bad another kind of shock to bear that was far more perilous, from the scant equipment in which our previous free-trade practice had left us. Perhaps we were gaining in wealth by such trade, but we were miserably unprepared by it for the stress of our great public trial." Rev. Horace BwiJinell, D. D., " Free Trade nd Protection." (Scribner't Magazine, for July, 1871.) 286 MR. WELLS' REPORT. expansion of our country, we are tending toward bank- ruptcy ; and to the oppressed laborers of other lands, that our working people are becoming from year to year, not only relatively but absolutely poorer, and that this is there- fore not the country to which poor but aspiring men should emigrate. It demonstrates to the satisfaction of Mr. Wells' admirers and clients that though our wealth increased during the last decade one hundred and twenty- six per cent., its utmost increase during this decade can be bat sixty-five and eight hundreths per cent. ; and that the grand total of our real and personal property cannot be over $23,400,000,000* Time will not permit me to point out the fallacies in this portion of his report, as I would gladly do ; and I proceed at once to invite the attention of the committee to points which seem to require more special animadversion. But, before turning to these, let me request gentlemen from Massachusetts, Ohio, Indiana, and New York, if they have not already done so, to turn to pages 24 d seq., and learn how rapidly their respective States are sinking into poverty, and how much poorer their people are per capita than they were in 1860. The suggestion will doubtless surprise them ; yet so cunningly does Mr. Wells present it * Mr. Wells is the oracle of revenue reformers, and this furnishes an apt illus- tration of his accuracy, as his statement of the rate of increase was not much more than 50 per cent, out of the way. " Deducting the value of the then slave property, the real and personal estate of this country, as shown by the census of 1860, amounted in round numbers to $14,000,000,000, being about $8,000,000,000 in excess of the valuation of 1850. ' Much, however, of this large increase,' as we have since been told by Com- missioner Wells, 'is known to have been due to more accurate methods of enum- eration, and to the inclusion of many elements previously left unnoticed.' Allowing for this, the increase of the decade could scarcely have exceeded $6,000,000, and is, indeed, estimated by the Commissioner at even less than this amount. " Thus far the Census Bureau has given us no estimate of the property of 1870 ; but from a valuable document just now published by the Bureau of Statistics, and for which we are indebted to the labors of its head, Mr. Edward Young, we learn that it will be shown to be about $800 per head, giving, of course, thirty- one thousand millions as the total amount, and exhibiting an increase of proba- bly seventeen thousand millions in a decade, nearly one-half of which had been years of war, accompanied by a waste of life and property such as had been rarely ever equalled. "Through the decade 1850-60, there was none of the waste of war. Peace prevailing, eight millions were added to the numbers of our people, and yet the addition to our wealth amounted to but six thousand millions, or about $750 per head of the then added population. " Throughout the last decade there was a waste of war estimated by Commis- sioner Wells at no less than nine thousand millions. The addition to our num- bers proves to be but seven millions, and yet the growth of wealth has been seventeen hundred millions, or about $2500 for each head of the added popu- lation." Forney' t Prew, June 15th, 1871. MR. WELLS' REPORT. 287 that foreigners who are not familiar with the truth so patent to every observer will be deceived by it and feel they had better " Bear those ills they have, Than fly to others that they know not of." One of the processes by which Mr. Wells sustains his theory, though not wanting in ingenuity, is very simple. It is to assume that everything is now worth from thirty- five to thirty- nine per cent, less than it was at the time with which he proposes his comparison. We know that wheat and flour and every variety of cotton and woolen goods are cheaper now than they were in 1860. But Mr. Wells' theory is, that as there is a difference in the market value of gold and greenbacks, commodities of domestic production ought to be dearer ; and applying his theory to such facts as he sees fit to present, he assumes that they are dearer, and so establishes the melancholy warning to all persons proposing to emigrate that this is not the country to which they should come. No demonstration of the falsity of his theory or of its absurdity induces him to halt, but in spite of these he presses onward and applies it in every case. When examining his last annual report I confronted him with the large accumulation of deposits in the savings-banks as evidence that the workingmen of the country were not then, as he asserted, "growing poorer, while the rich were growing richer," and, after a year's^ reflection, he answers my array of facts in this wise : " Again, the returns of savings-banks are often referred to as showing a highly prosperous condition of the masses. Properly considered, however, they indicate a very different state of things. Thus, the first and almost the only fact which attracts the attention of a mere superficial observer in examining these statistics is a large apparent increase in deposits from 1860 to 1868 or 1869. But an intelligent examination will at once show that a very great part of the apparent accumulation referred to is mere inflation. For exam- ple, let us take the case of Massachusetts, where the conditions for increase would seem to be most favorable : In 1860 the savings-banks deposits in this State were, in round numbers $45,000,000 In January, 1869, in currency, $95,000,000, or in gold at 133 71,000,000 Increase in eight years.. $26,000,000 or $6,000,000 less than the aggregate deposits of 1860 would have amounted to in the same time at a compound interest of seven 288 MR. WELLS' REPORT. per cent. ; or in other words, the deposits of 1860 were not made good in 1869, without reference to the increase of population, even if we reckon only their natural increase at compound interest. It is evident, therefore, that some cause has eaten into the accumulation which existed eight years previously, and has occasioned the with- drawal of a portion of that accumulation." If this statement be fair the deposits in the savings- banks of the country fluctuated fearfully on the 24th of September last, when gold ranged from 123 to 165 in an hour, and such of the depositors as were in that end of the New York gold-room where it was selling at 135 were vastly richer than those who were at the same moment in the other end at which Albert Spires was buying it for 160. A story told in connection with Mr. Spires' operations on that occasion seems to me to illustrate the value of Mr. Wells' theory. It is said that a young man without capital who had found his way to membership of the gold exchange, but had been bankrupted even of credit by the operations of the preceding day or two, stood near Mr. Spires, and as that gentleman cried " One sixty for one million/' tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Taken." "Same price for two millions more," cried Spires. " Taken," said the young bankrupt ; and so until Spires had bid, and he taken his bids for $13,000,000. They then separated, and the young bankrupt drawing aside, with a pencil calculated upon the back of a letter his profits, and turning to a friend triumphantly exclaimed " I have just made $750,000 out of old Spires." " Why," said a by-stander, " you do not expect to get any of it, do you ? " " No ; certainly not," said he, " but, blast him, I thought I would give him gold enough." This operation between a lunatic and a bankrupt, neither of whom owned a dollar of gold, and by which neither forfeited a cent, had about as much relation to their fortunes as the market price of gold has upon the price of domestic commodities, or deposits in the banks to which Mr. Wells applies it. In further proof of its absurdity I invite attention to the fact that if his theory be correct the depositors in the savings-banks of Massachusetts have by no effort of their own, without increase of industry or unusual economy on their part, but by his magic power, acquired, since the pre- paration of his report, more than $9,000,000, as gold is now not at 133 but at 120; and that they will, if they do not make haste and withdraw their deposits, and we go on as MR. WELLS' REPORT. 289 we have gone for the last two or three months under the financial management of Grant and Boutwell, soon make $15,000,000 more in the same easy, and, I fear, unhallowed way ; for when gold comes to par even Mr. Wells, with all his ingenious effrontery, will not deny that having been able to maintain a deposit of but $45,000,000 in 1860, they have in eight years become able to maintain one of $95,000,000, which amount they may draw in gold or redeemable currency, though they deposited greenbacks when gold was at more than 200. Before parting with this subject I beg leave to inform the committee and Com- missioner Wells that at the close of 1869 the aggregate deposits at rest in the savings-banks of Massachusetts were not as he states $95,000,000, but $112,000,000, showing that the laboring people of that State, who he says are eating up their former savings so rapidly, have added $17,000,000 to their interest bearing investment during the last year. The prominent characteristics of Mr. Wells' report are audacity and devotion to the interests of England and her American colonies. That it is ingenious and plausible cannot be denied ; but that it is so does not in my judgment furnish proof of the Commissioner's ability or evidence of his possession of well-grounded convictions on indus- trial questions. Indeed, the fact that many of the sugges- tions which are most earnestly pressed contravene those embodied in his former reports, and his avowal that in offering them " he has placed himself in antagonism to many with whom he was formerly in close agreement," afford ample ground for doubt on both points. " Remember, gentlemen,' 1 said the experienced merchant who now so ably fills the office of collector of the port of New York, when conferring with the Committee of Ways and Means, "that the legal ability of England and the con- tinent is constantly retained by foreign manufacturers to indicate the means by which your tariffs may be evaded." Mr. Wells visited our transatlantic rivals in his official capacity, and while among them doubtless availed himself of the ability of their large array of able and well-paid coun- sel. Whether he also was retained is for the present the subject of conjecture. But that he enforces as "opinions and recommendations which have been forced upon him by conviction," the wishes of the English manufacturers, there is abundant evidence in his report, as I propose to show. 19 290 MR. WELLS' REPOKT. The most audacious of Mr. Wells' assertions, and one that pervades the whole report, is that customs duties are always a tax on the consumer, increasing the price of the imported article on which they are levied, and enabling the home producer to realize undue profits by keeping pro- duction steadily below the current demand for the com- modity he produces. "Were Mr. Wells a tyro, and this report his first publication, charity would deem this a blunder and ascribe it to ignorance ; but he is a man of large experience, and has written much, and reference to any of the publications which led to his appointment to the commissionership, or to his preceding reports, will convict him of basing this official paper on a principle, the falsity of which lie has time and again demonstrated. His bad faith in this is proven, I think, by a single extract from his report made December, 1807, in which, speaking of the higher duties he then advised Congress to put on steel, he said :* "On steel much higher rates of ditty than those recommended upon iron are submitted. Although these rates seem much higher, and are protested against by not a few American consumers of steel, yet the evidence presented to the Commissioner tends to establish the fact that if any less are granted, the development of a most im- portant and desirable branch of domestic industry will, owing to the present currency derangement and the high price and scarcity of skilled labor, be arrested, if not entirely prostrated. This is claimed to be more especially true in regard to steel of the higher grades or qualities. It is also represented to the Commissioner that, since the introduction of the manufacture of these grades of steel in the United States, or since 1859, the price of foreign steel of similar qualities has been very considerably reduced through the effect of the American competition, and that the whole country in this way has gained more than sufficient to counterbalance the tax levied as a protection for the American steel manufacture, which has grown up under its in- fluence," * Mr. Wells' recommendation of increased duties, in his report for 1867, was not confined to steel, but embraced almost every article we produce. And in his report for 1868, he did but point out the results of the system of protection, which, since his visit to England, he assails and endeavors to betray, when he said : " More cotton spindles have been put in operation, more iron furnaces erected, more iron smelted, more bars rolled, more steel made, more coal and copper mined, more lumber sawed and hewn, more houses and shops constructed, more manufactories of different kinds started, and more petroleum collected, refined, and exported, than during any equal period in the history of the country ; and this increase has been great both as regards quality and quantity, and greater than the legitimate increase to be expected from the normal increase of wealth and population." MB. WELLS' REPORT. 291 Mr. Wells can dispute none of the facts asserted in the extract just read, which prove that he knows that prior to the close of 1867, highly protective duties on steel had not been a tax on, but a boon to the consumer ; so great a boon, indeed, that, by enlarging the supply and increas- ing competition, they had so far reduced the price of steel that, to quote his words again, " the whole country in this way has gained more than sufficient to counterbalance the tax levied as a protection for the American steel manufac- ture, which has grown up under its influence." You, Mr. Chairman, and many of our co-laborers on this floor, are interested in the extension and improvement of our magnificent railroad system, and I propose to illustrate the treachery of the Commissioner by briefly referring to the effect of high protective duties on Bessemer steel rails. In 1864, there was no establishment in the United States for the manufacture of such rails. The lowest price at which an American company could buy them in England was $150 per ton cash, gold, including freight to New York or Philadelphia. No English maker would sell them at less. Agents of the Pennsylvania Central, and Phila- delphia, Wilmington and Baltimore roads, went abroad and canvassed the market, and having been assured that such rails could not be produced and sold at a living profit for a lower price than this, purchased a small quantity for each company. The duty was then, as now, an ad valorem duty of forty-five per cent., which at that price was equiva- lent to about three cents a pound. Gold was then above 200, and each ton of rails had cost when laid on the wharf in Philadelphia, $390, currency. Our country abounds in the materials from which to make not only Bessemer rails, but every quality of steel, and the wages paid to American workmen are high enough to tempt skilled workmen from England and Germany ; and in view of these facts, several enterprising railroad men de- termined to establish Bessemer rail works. This was not to be done in a day. It required the selection of a judi- cious site, the erection of extensive buildings, and the con- struction of a large amount of machinery, which consumed considerably more than a year. During all this time the price of English rails remained at $150 cash, gold, per ton delivered on the wharf in America. But at length the Freedom Works, at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, so-called in commemoration of our partial enfranchisement from the 292 MR. WELLS' REPORT. grasp of foreign monopolists, were ready to take orders, and another establishment for their production was erecting at Troy, New York, when lo ! the same English manufac- turers, who had been unable to sell at less than $150 per ton, canvassed our market to find buyers at $180. What wrought this great change? Had the Commissioner's Eng- lish friends been making profits off our railroad companies greater than he ascribes to our producers of salt, pig-iron, lumber, and other things essential to national independence ; or were they willing to sacrifice the profit on a small part of their product in order to crush an infant rival, whose development they feared ? Be this as it may, in less than four years competition has brought the price of Bessemer rails down so rapidly, that orders are now taken in England at eleven pounds sterling, or about fifty- five dollars, deliv- erable at Liverpool or Hull. Meanwhile, mills for their production at Troy, New York, Chester, Pennsylvania, Cleveland, Ohio, and Detroit, Michigan, have been com- pleted ; and the plans have been adopted for others at Mott Haven, New York ; Pittsburg, Johnstown, and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; and at Baltimore, Cincinnati, and St. Louis:, but their construction awaits and is dependent on the action of Congress on the tariff. These facts are known to Mr. Wells, yet he endeavors to persuade the country that a pro- tective duty is always a tax on the consumer, and labors to induce Congress to reduce a duty which was at the rate of three cents to one of one and a half cent per pound ; a change which he well knows would close all our Bessemer rail works, and restore to his English friends the monopoly of our market, at such prices as they might demand. What can have brought him to such a conclusion ? What is to be his reward for such a consummation? If gentlemen will turn to page 125 of the report, they will find a schedule presenting a classification of steel, and proposed rates of duty on each class. It purports to be Mr. Wells' own suggestion, and is submitted with all the emphasis that the abundant resort to italics can give. I hope gentlemen will examine it, for I think that, with its private history, it furnishes a clew to his change of views on the question as to whether a protective duty that de- velops a great industry is a tax, and his Saul-like conversion on the steel question. For nearly a quarter of a century our duties on cast-steel have been assessed upon the value of the commodity, or ad valorem ; and recent investigation MB. WEALS' REPORT. 293 by an agent of the Government has shown that throughout the whole of the period the steel-makers of Sheffield, by refusing to sell directly to American purchasers and con- signing their goods to agents in this country for sale, by which cunning arrangement they could successfully practice a system of undervaluation, have been defrauding the Government of a large portion of its dues. The Sheffield steel-makers are men of wealth and social position, and this discovery of their long-continued and systematic fraud upon our Government has not been a pleasant thing for them. The charge is distasteful to them. A combination to cheat and defraud has an ugly sound. They squirm under it, and admit that steel has been in- voiced to the United States at lower rates than those at which they sell in England or to the people of the Conti- nent, but assert that, low as the invoice prices have been, they are the prices at which they sell in this country. Good, kind-hearted, benevolent people ! How they do love the Yankees ! To be willing to sell them their wares cheaper than they will to their own countrymen or to any of the people of Europe ! Have they any reason for doing so, or do they pretend to have any ? Yes ; they are not without a show of reason. They say and their letters are on file in the Treasury Department, and their agents have appeared there to enforce the statement that our market is essential to the maintenance of their works, and that such is the competition they encounter from our steel-makers, that they are forced to sett to us at lower rates than they do to the English or any other people. In a letter to our consul at that city, dated July 10th, 1869, Thomas Firth & Son, of Sheffield, say : " We have a very large steel trade in America, amounting to a large proportion of our whole business, and in that market there is, from various circumstances, much competition ; and these two causes large trade and competition combined have induced us to be satisfied with a smaller average profit there than we have realized on the average in our other markets." Mr. Wells has seen the report referred to, that of Mr. Farwell, the Treasury agent, and has examined, or ought to have examined, all the papers in this controversy, and might have cited them as proof of the assertion in his former report, that the reduction in the price of steel has more than compensated the American people for all the duty paid on that article since the establishment of our first sue- 294 MR. WELLS' REPORT. cessful steel works in 1859. But I have been led into a digression. I had said that the discovery of their systematic frauds was not a pleasant thing to the English steel-makers, and was proceeding to say that, foreseeing that it would pro- bably lead to the abandonment of od valorem and the levy- ing of specific duties on steel, they overwhelmed the Secre- tary of the Treasury and other official personages with unsolicited, and, of course, disinterested advice. That we should not suffer for want of their experience, the draft of a bill providing a scale of duties on steel, was prepared, as I am informed and verily believe, by or in consultation with a member of one of the leading firms of steel-makers of Sheffield, and sent over to a gentleman specially connected with legislation on financial subjects. I have examined the original draft as it came from Sheffield, and have a copy of it before me. It is a proposition by the vulture to protect the dove. It is plausible in its minute classifi- cation. It would, had it been honestly named, have been entitled a bill to prohibit the manufacture of steel in the United States. It is, however, entitled, " A bill to amend an act entitled ' An act to increase duties on imports, and for other purposes,' approved June 30, 1864." It furnished Mr. Wells his schedule ; and that gentlemen may see how completely he has adopted it, how entirely his views on this important subject are in accord with those of the steel monopolists of England, whose interest it is to hold us in commercial and maritime dependence, I will ask the re- porters to put the two schedules in parallel columns. It is, perhaps, due to Mr. Wells, in this connection, that I should mention the fact that he so far exercised his own judgment in making this recommendation, as to modify two or three unimportant rates, and to change the order from that in which the items stand in the English draft of the bill ; and that to make the comparison easy for the readers of the Globe, I have arranged them in the order chosen by Mr. Wells : WELLS' SCHEDULE. SHEFFIELD BILL. On scrap steel, ^ cent per On scrap steel, \ cent per ponnd. pound. On blister steel in bars broken On blister steel in bars broken up for melting, l cents per up for melting, 1 cents per pound. pound. On German steel in bars, 2 On German steel in bars, 2 cents per pound. cents per pound. MR. WELLS' REPORT. 295 WELLS' SCHBDCLE. On shear steel in bars, 2 cents per pound. On cast-steel ingots and on all rough and unfinished castings in steel, 1 cent per pound. On castings in steel, drilled, bored, or hammered cold, 1^ cents per pound. On cast-steel in bars, 2 cents per pound. On east or German steel in plates to 16 wire gauge, inclusive, 2 cents per pound ; from 17 to 24, 2 cents per pound ; above 24, 3 cents per pound. On cast or German steel in form of wire and sheets which are drawn or rolled cold to 16 wire gauge, 3 cents per pound. Thinner than 16 wire gauge, 3 cents per pound. On cast-steel tires for rolling- stock for railroads, 2 cents per pound. On cast-steel straight axles, shafts, piston-rods, and general forgings to pattern, 1 cent per pound. Do. do. rough-turned, 1 cents per pound. Do. do. finished ready for use, 2 cents per pound. On cast-steel crank axles forged to shape only, 1^ cents per pound. On cast-steel crank axles forged to shape, rough-turned, planed, and slotted, 1 cents per pound. Do. do. finished ready for use, 2 cents per pound. On cast-steel rails 1 cents per pound. On steel not otherwise pro- vided for, 2 cents per pound. SHEFFIELD BILL. On shear steel in bars, 2| cents per pound. On cast-steel ingots, 1 cent per pound. On castings in steel with holes drilled or bored, hammered or turned or planed in parts, but in no case hammered or worked hot, 1^ cents per pound. On cast-steel in bars, 2 cents per pound. On cast or German steel in sheets or plates to No. 23 wire gauge, 2 cents per pound. On cast or German steel in form of wire or strips which are drawn or rolled cold to 16 wire gauge, 3 cents per pound. When drawn or rolled smaller than 16 wire gauge, 3 cents per pound. On cast steel tires for rolling stock for railroads, 2 cents per pound. On cast-steel straight axles, piston, connecting and coupling- rods, crank-pins, slide-bars, and general forgings to pattern only, 1^ cents per pound. If forged to shape and rough- turned or planed, 1 cents per pound. If finished ready for use, 2 cents per pound. On cast-steel crank-shafts, if forged to shape only, 1| cents per pound. On cast-steel crank-shafts, if forged to shape, rough-turned, planed, and slotted, 1 cents per pound. On cast-steel crank-shafts, if forged to shape, finished ready for use, 2 cents per pound. On cast-steel rails, 1 cent per pound. On steel or manufactures of steel, not otherwise provided for, 2 cents per pound. 296 MR. WELLS' REPORT. It will be observed that the foregoing schedules are, as I intimated, not absolutely identical, but they are so nearly so as to prevent Mr. Wells from denying that they sprang from the same brain, and pleading the possibility of coin- cidence I do not say the probability, but the possibility of coincidence on so many points of rate and general and technical phraseology. And it will be further noticed that where the slightest departure in rate occurs in any one item, as is the case in two or three unimportant instances, it is immediately compensated for in the next item by a corresponding change the other way. Thus, Mr. Wells is more generous to his countrymen in the matter of Besse- mer rails than their Sheffield rival would be. He pro- poses to kill them instantly by putting the rate at one cent per pound ; while Mr. Wells is willing to give them breathing time in which to put their houses in order by letting them die slowly at one and a half cents. And in the next item the Englishman proves the more generous ; for he proposes two and a half cents on all steel and manu- factures of steel not provided for, and Mr. Wells would crush his countrymen instantly by making the duty on those articles but two cents. I cannot leave this branch of the subject without saying that I believe gentlemen generally who compare these schedules will agree with me in thinking that Mr. Wells' Sheffield employers have treated him badly, scurvily. Har- ing induced him to father their project, so predjudicial to his country and so destructive to the business of many of his countrymen, they violated faith with him when they made their paternity of the scheme known by sending a copy of the bill to official quarters in this country in ad- vance of the publication of his report. PIG-IRON. With all the zeal of a new convert or counsel laboring to secure a contingent fee, Mr. Wells applies to pig-iron his assumption that a protective duty is necessarily a tax on the consumer, and by the plausibility of his argument would make innocent and inexperienced people believe that he really hoped to secure cheap pig-iron by reducing the duty on that article from nine dollars a ton to three. Could he close our steel works, as the acceptance of the Sheffield schedule recommended by him would do in three months, and arrest the progress we are making in the in- MB. WELLS' REPORT. 297 creased production of pig-iron, he would do more to re- tard the progress of his country toward commercial pros- perity and national supremacy than Davis, Lee, and all the heads of the rebellion accomplished. I cannot conceive the single cause that would do more to depress and im- poverish our people and retard the growth of our country than the sudden prostration of these great interests at a time when the English or continental manufacturer will purchase none of our grain for which he has to pay a penny in advance of the price for which he can buy from the peasants of Austria, Hungary and Eussia. But this recommendation with reference to pig-iron is consistent with the rest of the report, throughout which the desire is manifest to make the United States as com- mercially dependent on and tributary to England as though they were still part of her North American colonies. He cites pig-iron, coal, salt, and lumber as illustrations of a class of cases where excessive and unnecessary duties have been imposed and maintained "uriiha view of enhancing the cost of articles indispensable to many other branches of pro- duction ;" and elsewhere says that the only reply offered to his assaults upon this great and essential interest " is that a continuance of the present duty on pig-iron is necessary to insure employment to American labor." I pause to notice his assertion, that Congress in the midst of a great war imposed unnecessary exactions in order to increase the cost of an article so essential as iron to the life of the nation, simply to remark that such an in- timation is worthy the man who can sap and mine the great interests of his country as Commissioner Wells is doing. The present duty on pig-iron was imposed for two purposes, both of which were patriotic. The first was to raise additional revenue, and the other to stimulate the conversion of ore, coal, and limestone, of which in almost every part of the country we have inexhaustible supplies, into a material the increased production of which was a prerequisite to the general extension of our industries and the maintenance of the dignity and rights of the nation, which were then being violated by the armed cruisers of the country to which we looked for a supply of pig-iron and Bessemer rails. And, sir, I am happy in being able to show that it has accomplished both these objects, and that if permitted to stand for five years it will, while contribut- ing largely to the reduction of our debt, insure us not only 298 MB. WELLS' REPORT. a home supply of pig-iron, but such ample means of pro- ducing it as will enable us to enter the markets of the world in competition with England. What has it done as a revenue measure ? During the year that ended on the 30th of June, 1868, we derived from this duty $1,011,10996; in the succeeding year, closing on the 30th of June, 1869, $1,199,762 55 ; and in the current fiscal year it will give us a still larger income, without in the slightest degree impairing the revenue de- rived from our consumption of foreign iron in more ad- vanced condition. This is shown by the following state- ment of the quantities of the various kinds of iron and steel exported from Great Britain to the United States dur- ing the ten months ending October 31st, of the years 1868-69, in tons of 2000 pounds : 1868. 1869. Iron, pig and puddled 84,564 132,491 Iron, bar, angle, bolt, and rod 38,200 51,738 Iron, railroad, of all sorts.. 255,462 294,368 Iron castings 1,213 1,677 Iron hoops, sheets, and boiler plates... 15,999 31,292 Iron, wrought of all sorts 4,020 7,364 Total 399,458 518,930 Steel, unwrought 14,847 15,612 Has not the duty of nine dollars per ton on pig-iron been eminently successful as a revenue measure ? I think it has ; but its most abundant success has been in its power to increase the supply, improve the quality, and lessen the cost of domestic pig-iron. The Commissioner raises no question as to the relative quality of British and American iron, and does not state the quantity of our an- nual production, except that in one of his hypothetical calculations of the values realized from different depart- ments of industry, he places the annual product for 1869 at 1,725,000 tons, or about 1 75,000 tons below the ascer- tained production of that year. That the average quality of American pig, bar, and railroad iron is superior to the average of the same descriptions of English iron is an almost universally -conceded fact ; but to blazon this to the world would not serve the interest of the Commissioner's British friends, and he is therefore silent upon this aspect of the question also, though he tells us with much elabora- tion what he has been told has been the cost of production per ton at several points in this country, and the market price per ton during the year in England and here. MR. WELLS' REPORT. 299 But though his report abounds in hypotheses and calcu- lations based on estimates and suppositions, he nowhere tells or attempts to tell us what we would have been made to pay the British iron master for his inferior pig, bar, sheet, and rails if the American production of pig-iron had not been more than doubled since the establishment of this duty, and if the manufacture of cast-steel and Besse- mer rails had not also been established at so many points within our limits since the exigencies of the war com- pelled us to adopt protective duties. He is not ignorant of. the fact that in little more than a year past sixty-five new blast furnaces have been erected, and that they are to em- ploy a portion of the people of fifteen States. Six of them are in New York, one in New Jersey, nineteen in Pennsylvania, one in Maryland, four in Virginia, six in Ohio, five in Indiana, three in Illinois, five in Michigan,, two in Wisconsin, six in Missouri, three in Kentucky, one in Georgia, two in Alabama, and one in Tennessee. These furnaces have increased our productive power to nearly two million five hundred thousand tons per annum. Arrange- ments are also making for the erection of more than fifty other furnaces during the year upon which we have just entered, many of which have been commenced. The esti- mated product of pig-iron for this year is two million two hundred and twenty-five thousand tons, or about fifty per cent, of the annual average production of Great Britain. These facts are, I repeat, known to the Commissioner ; and he knows also that by a law as inevitable as that of gravitation domestic competition increasing in such a ratio must at an early day bring down the price of iron as it has that of wheat and flour, and of knit and other cotton and woolen goods, to a point beyond danger from foreign competition ; and that by thus relieving us from depen- dence on England for the first essential in a great war, it will also make us her competitor in the markets of the world in a field her supremacy in which has hitherto made her the commercial mistress of the world. I will not offer an estimate of what would have been the price of pig-iron had not the necessities of the Govern- ment compelled Congress to impose duties that were pro- tective and which justified men of enterprise in opening coal mines and ore-beds and erecting furnaces ; but to ena- ble gentlemen to judge for themselves, I submit the follow- ing. On page 85 of the report I am considering the Com- missioner says : 300 MR. WELLS' REPORT. " How great the demand of the future is likely to prove may be inferred from the circumstance that while the per capita consump- tion of Great Britain and Belgium, after allowing for exportation, has reached one hundred and eighty-nine pounds per annum, the present annual consumption of the United States is not in excess of one hundred pounds per capita. No nation, furthermore, at the present time, with the exception of Great Britain, is producing pig- iron in sufficient excess of its needs to allow of a surplus for expor- tation ; and in Great Britain the prospect of any future increase is entirely dependent upon the uncertain condition of her being able to supply coal on a scale of consumption that is already in excess of one hundred and four million tons per annum." On page 3 of his report made January, 1869, lie tells us that " In France the annual product of pig-iron was in 1866, 1,253,100 tons, and in 1867, 1,142,800 tons, showing a decline of 110,300 tons. " In Austria the official returns of the iron trade show a diminu- tion of forty-two per cent, in 1866 as compared with 1860, and of sixty per cent, as compared with 1862." In that valuable paper, the report of A. S. Hewitt, Esq., United States Commissioner to the Paris Exposition, we learn that ours is almost the only country in the world that can largely expand its production of iron. Mr. Hewitt agrees with Mr. Wells that it is problematical as to whether England can for the present increase her production mate- rially. He thinks she may maintain her present position among continental producers ; but beyond this he does not think she can go, by reason of the depth of her mines and the " intrinsic difficulties of producing the required sup- ply of materials and labor, without an enormous increase of cost." The iron production of the world for 1866, as stated by Mr. Hewitt, was as follows : Countrie, *$- Wr ir n - England 4,530,051 3,500,000 France 1,200,320 844,734 Belgium ". 500,000 400,000 Prussia 800,000 400,000 Austria 312,000 200,000 Sweden 226,676 148,292 Russia 408,000 350,000 Spain 75,000 50,000 Italy 30,000 20,000 Switzerland 15,000 10,000 Zollverein 250,000 200,000 United States 1,175,900 882,000 Totul 9,322,047 7,205,026 MR. WELLS' REPORT. 301 Thus it appears that with a production of less than ten million tons for the world's supply no other country than ours is in a position to make a large and immediate addi- tion to its annual production. The difficulties in the way may be briefly stated thus : Sweden possesses exhaustless supplies of the richest primitive ores, but she has no coal, and her annual production of charcoal-iron is believed to have reached its limit. Her function will henceforth be to mine and export ore. Russia has ample supplies of ore, but so far as exploration has yet discovered is deficient in coal. She can, however, for some time somewhat aug- ment her production of charcoal-iron. Austria, Italy, Spain, and the States of the Zollverein have ore, but little or no coal available for iron making, and are unable to ex- tend, if they can maintain, their present production of charcoal-iron. France has neither coal nor ore sufficient to supply her wants; England furnishes her with one third the coal she now consumes 'in the manufacture of iron. Little Belgium has both coal and ore, and they are advantageously situated, but the field is so contracted that she cannot increase her production beyond her own wants, and Prussia is a large importer of coal and pig-iron from England. So much for the prospective increase of sup- plies ; while, as illustrative of the growing demand. I need only allude to the gigantic systems of railroads building in America, Russia, and India, the latter at immense cost by England, in the hope of impairing our supremacy as producers of cotton.* Had we continued to rely upon England for pig-iron in excess of our capacity to produce it at the time of fixing nine dollars as the duty, and also to draw our supplies of bar iron, cast-steel, and Bessemer rails from her, the extension of our railroad system must have been checked and the per capita consumption of iron in this country been much restricted. For nine years before the imposition of that duty our annual production had been less than 800,000 tons, and that of England had not increased at the rate of 100,000 tons per annum. Our demand increases at the rate of from 170,000 to 200,000 tons per annum. Whence but from our own ore beds and coal mines could the sup- * There were in operation in the United States on the 1st of January, 1871, 53,399 miles of railroad, 4999 miles of which were completed during 1869, and 6199 during 1870. Could England have furnished the iron required for this extension ? 302 MR. WELLS' REPORT. ply have been drawn? The production of pig-iron in England and the United States from 1854 to 1862 inclusive, was as follows : England. United States. 1854 3,069,838 716,674 1855 3,218,154 754,178 1856 3,586,377 874,428 1857 3,659,447 798,157 1858 3,456,064 705,094 1859 3,712,904 840,427 1860 3,826,752 913,774 1861 3,712,390 731,564 1862 3,943,469 787,662 These figures show that the two great iron-producing countries of the world, England and the United States, in- creased their joint production less than one hundred thousand tons per annum for nine consecutive years, while we alone demand an increase of at least one hundred and seventy thousand tons, and prove the assertion that but for the application of an incentive to the production of iron in this country the expansion of our railroad system and our general material progress must have been impossible. Was there any charm by which an increased supply could be evoked ? Was there any means by which the disparity between the wages of English laborers in iron works and such as were essential to the support of American citizens who might engage in the production of iron could be counterbalanced ? Yes, Mr. Chairman, there was one, and that was applied. It was to impose such a duty as would give capitalists and men of enterprise a guarantee that if they paid workmen fair American wages for building fur- naces, digging and hauling coal, ore, and limestone, and converting them into pig-iron they should not be under- sold in our own markets by the productions of underpaid British workmen. Nine dollars per ton it was believed would give them that guarantee, and yet leave our mar- kets so largely open to English competition that we should derive more duty from pig-iron than we had done under lower duties. I have spoken of the difference between the wages of English and American workmen. Let me show how great it is. The English shilling is twenty-five cents of our money. Commercial men know this ; there are, how- ever, many of our people not familiar with the details of commerce and the exchangeable value of money to whom ME. WELLS' REPOKT. 303 it may be proper to state the fact. Turning again to the report of Mr. Hewitt, which I recur to frequently and always with a renewed sense of obligation, I find the rates of wages paid in England in 1866 to have been as fol- lows: WAGES PAID IN SOUTH STAFFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND, IN 1866. Per Day. Common laborers 2s. 6d. to 3s. Qd. Puddlers 7 6 to 7 10 Puddlers' helpers 2 6 to 2 11 Puddle rollers 9 Heaters 7 Heater helpers 3 6 Finishing rollers 11 ....... Shinglers 9 to 15 Machinists 4 to 16 Blacksmiths 4 to 5 Masons 7 6 to 8 6 The average price of skilled and unskilled labor at the iron works in England does not exceed 4s. a day. At the coal and iron works of Creed & Williams, in Belgium, the wages paid in 1866 were as follows : Per Day. Common laborers Is. 2d. to 3s. 6d. Loaders of coal 2 6 to 2 11 Wood-cutters 2 6 to 2 11 Wood or tree-setters 3 1 to 5 Miners 211 to 4 2 Exceptional men ....5 to 6 AT THE BLAST FURNACES. Fillers ......1 1 to 2 1 Box fillers ..........14 to 1 8 Common laborers. ...1. 5 to 1 8 Furnace-keepers , 2 1 . to 2 11 IN THE ROLLING-MlLL. Puddlers 4 2 to 5 Helpers 2 3 to 3 1 Rollers 4 2 to 5 10 Helpers 3 4 to 4 2 Shearers 110 to 2 6 Common laborers 1 5 to 2 1 In all other European countries wages are lower than in Eng- land. These figures are worthy of the study of the working men of this country, whom Mr. Commissioner Wells is 304 MB. WELLS' REPORT. striving to array in hostility against those whose interests are identical with their own the men who have embarked their capital in an attempt to make the United States com- mercially and politically independent of Great Britain, and who, if sustained in good faith, will not only accom- plish this, but enable us to meet her in the markets of the world with pig, bar, and sheet-iron, with steel in all its forms, including cutlery, and with iron ships carrying a commerce as extended as her own upon every sea. Having shown that the experiment of nine dollars per ton has been successful as a revenue measure, now let us see what effect it has had in stimulating production. When it was adopted English iron-masters saw that with our in- exhaustible fields and rich varieties of coal and ore we must soon become competitors with them for our home market, and at no distant day a formidable rival in the general markets of this continent. This it was their in- terest to prevent if possible, and though their increase of production had been less than 100,000 tons per annum for the preceding nine years, they added 500,000 tons the next year, and in 1865 produced nearly 900,000 tons more than they had ever done before. I have shown the production of the two countries from 1854 to 1862. The Morrill tariff, which raised the duty to $6, went into effect in 1861. In 1864 the duty was raised to $9. The results have been as follows : England. United States. 1863 4,510,040 947,604 1864 4,767.951 1,135,497 1865 4,819,254 931.582 1866 4,523,897 1,350,943 1867 4,761,028 1,461,626 1868 1,603,000 1869 1,900,000 I regret my inability to ascertain the English produc- tion for 1868 and 1869; but in view of the average of the five years quoted, and the fact that the production of 1865 exceeds so largely the years that succeeded as well as those that preceded it, it is fair to assume that it has not been in excess of that year in either of these. These figures confirm the impression that England has attained her maximum production ; for while her increase since 1863 has been scarcely appreciable, ours has been about one hundred and ten per cent. In view of all these facts, I MR. WELLS' REPORT. 305 think that it appears again in the matter of pig-iron, as it did in that of cast-steel and Bessemer rails, that a protec- tive duty has not been, as Mr. Wells asserts, a tax on, but is a boon to the American consumer. COAL AND THE BRITISH NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. I have said that the report is devoted to the promotion of the interests of England and her North American colo- nies, and have, I think, shown that if its suggestions were carried into effect it would arrest the rapid increase we are making in the production of iron and steel, and remand us to commercial and political dependence on our haughty and faithless rival. I propose now to illustrate Mr. Wells' palpable desire to promote the interests of England's North American colonies the new dominion, that asylum of our foes in war and base of illicit opera- tions against our revenue system in peace. The sea-board provinces, whether on the Atlantic or Pacific ocean, are suffering discontent that is rapidly be- coming chronic. From 1854 to 1866 the colonists were more than contented, they were proud and joyous, and immigrants flowed in and settled among them. They con- trasted their condition with ours, and plumed themselves upon their superior prosperity. Their clip of wool and crops of cereals increased annually, their fisheries were in- creasingly profitable, and their coal mines yielded unpar- alleled profits in one year one Nova Scotia coal company having paid its stockholders the almost fabulous profit of one hundred and seventy-five per cent. They were more than hopeful of the future ; they were confident and arro- gant. With them the southern confederacy was a fore- gone conclusion, and with it as an ally, and England as their sponsor, they saw the near approach of the day when this new triple alliance should hold the Yankee States as in a vice, and crush or strangle them at pleasure. This was in 1864. Their tone is less joyous now. Indeed, it is sad unto wailing. Listen to one of them, a Nova Sco- tian, as he pours the story of their wrongs and sufferings through the columns of Lippincott's Magazine for July last: " But the petition of three hundred thousand good subjects was treated with indifference, and even an inquiry into their grievances was refused. Then it was, in the bitter sorrow and indignation that filled us at that time, that we turned our eyes to the great nation 20 306 MB. WELLS' REPORT. beside us for assistance. But even there no help was to be had. The reciprocity treaty had been abrogated in return for the sympa- thy and assistance which Canada had given to the South ; and the only thing which could support our commerce and encourage our industries under the heavier duties of Canada was thus denied us, and continues to be denied us.* At the present moment we are in a sad ease. The duties and taxes of the Canadian administration bear heavily upon us ; our commerce is languishing, our industries are all but paralyzed. The markets which nature intended for us, and which commerce had marked out for her own, are closed to us, and in consequence we fi.h less, mine less, manufacture less, export less. Our political position is as bad as perplexing. We will not continue in our present union with Canada if we can help it. Wo have laid our grievances before England. England refers us to Canada; Canada refers us to England. England trusts to our loy- alty, Canada to our cupidity or our fear, to keep us in the union. If even we succeed in getting repeal we cannot stand alone without a treaty with the United States. If that is denied us and who can doubt it ? we must even seek our own good in transferring our al- legiance." This is a faithful portraiture of the condition of the British provinces on the Atlantic coast ; and that of British Columbia on the Pacific and Puget Sound is quite as hope- less. It was once the base of an extended system of smug- gling over our borders, but the provincial Government, being unable to support itself by internal taxes, was com- pelled to raise revenue by a tariff almost as heavy as our own, though there are no manufactures to protect. This destroyed the profitable business of smuggling across our borders, and brought Victoria, the city which it had been fondly hoped would be the commercial rival of San Fran- cisco, to absolute despair. It is a deserted city. In July last, as my colleagues on the Committee of Ways and Means can attest, more than half the buildings within its limits were tenautless and for rent or sale, and at high noon its streets were as deserted as though pestilence had scourged it. Let me pause, Mr. Speaker, to ask what has wrought this wondrous change, and why more than one hundred thousand of the people of the provinces during the last year came to dwell among us and share the burdens of our great war debt ? These results are the legitimate conse- quences of wise and patriotic legislation by Congress. Commissioner Wells understands it as well as the rest of us. He knows as well as the Nova Scotian I have just * The Reciprocity Treaty expired March, 1866. MR. WELLS' REPORT. 307 quoted that the repeal of the Reciprocity Treaty wrought the ruin of the provinces. That treaty, which was forced upon us by our old southern masters, was designed espe- cially to promote the prosperity of the British North American provinces at the cost of the northern States of the Union. It was specially designed by the planters of the South as a blow at the prosperity of the farmers and stock- breeders of the northwest. It went into effect in June, 1854, and expired, or I may properly say was rescinded by Con- gress, in March, 1866. It was admirably adapted to accomplish its purpose, and the period of its duration was that of the greatest growth of Britain's power along our borders. That gentlemen who represent the grain-grow- ing States may not suspect me of misstating the object of the reciprocity movement, I beg leave to again invite their attention to a few words from pages 95 and 96 of that remarkable book, " Cotton is King," the politico-economi- cal text-book of the authors of the late rebellion : "This is the present aspect (1858) of the provision question as it regards slavery extension. Prices are approximating the maximum point beyond which our provisions cannot be fed to slaves unless there is a corresponding increase in the price of cotton. Such a re- sult was not anticipated by southern statesmen when they had suc- ceeded in overthrowing the protective policy, destroying the United States Bank, and establishing the sub-Treasury system. "And why has this occurred ? The mines of California prevented both the free-trade tariff and the sub-Treasury scheme from exhaust- ing the country of the precious metals, extinguishing the circulation of bank notes, and reducing the prices of agricultural products to the specie value. At the date of the passage of the Nebraska bill the multiplication of provisions by thetr more extended cultivation was the only measure left that could produce a reduction of prices, and meet the wants of the planters. The Canadian Reciprocity Treaty, since secured, will bring the products of the British North American colonies, free of duty, into competition with those of the United States when prices with us rule high, and tend to diminish their cost." But this treaty has been rescinded. Why refer to it ? Does the Commissioner propose to renew it? No, sir; that would be frank, and not in accordance with his prac- tice. He moves stealthily toward his sinister objects. He is a protective fitee-trader, a free-trade protectionist, a disciple of Henry Clay, but an advocate of the free-trade dogmas of John C. Calhoun. He does not propose a renewal of the Reciprocity Treaty; but asserting that all customs duties are taxes, and increase the price of the article on which MR. WELLS REPORT. they are levied, he demands cheap fuel, food, and beer, and proposes to secure these desirable objects by removing all duties from articles the production of the North American provinces. Nor does he do this in terms. Taking the leading staples of the provinces separately, he submits specious, but false reasons for the removal of all duties from each of them. He would give the people of the provinces the benefits they derived from the Reciprocity Treaty without stipulating for any of the few benefits it brought his coun- trymen. ,To adopt his recommendations in this behalf would be to pay from the Treasury of the United States annually to the colonists from six million to ten million dollars as a consideration for their continued submission to British legislation and colonial policy. They are tend- ing toward the Union. They were alien enemies during the war, but millions of them now desire to be friends and fellow-countrymen, and the way to promote this consum- mation, so devoutly to be wished, is to let them know that the avenue to free trade with us is through annexation. This accomplished, they would share our prosperity and our responsibilities, and their country would cease to be a base of hostilities as it now is in peace and war. Let me not be suspected of misrepresenting the position of Mr. Wells. The principal articles the provinces export are lumber, wool, coal, barley, and the other cereals, and from these he would remove all duties, though they yielded during the year which ended June 30, 1868, $4,352,770 49 in gold, or about six millions in currency. It is true some of the wool which contributed to this amount came from, other countries, and some of the coal from England; but in order to restore prosperity to the trade of the provinces, he would admit their staples free, even though other coun- tries might share the advantage. Though very urgent that the duty should be taken off Canadian barley, he makes no specific recommendation as to the removal of duties from the other cereals. He merely speaks of the " extreme emergency " that can "justify a tax on the breadstuffs and food of a nation." His argument in favor of free grain ai^ provisions from the provinces is enforced in this wise :' " Coal is a necessity of life next in importance to food ; indeed, as both are in our climate absolutely indispensable, it cannot be said that either is more or less needful than the other, for life cannot be sustained without both. The universally recognized principle of MB. WELLS' REPORT. 309 taxation that a tax should be taken from what can be spared forbids the laying of a tax upon that which is indispensable to rich and poor alike." A free translation of all which is, that as New England has no coal, and cannot raise her own supply of grain and provisions, and can get both cheaper from the British colo- nies than she can from the prairies of the northwester the coal-fields of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, or North Carolina, it is a crime against nature and the British Gov- ernment to lay duties on the grain and provisions of the provinces. Leaving the question of the propriety of retaining duties on grain, live stock, and provisions to the consideration of gentlemen from the West, I propose to examine what the Commissioner has to say on the subject of coal. But before entering more fully upon this subject, let me apply to grain and provisions the argument he makes for free provincial coal, associating them with it in his text, that we may see whether his argument does not apply to them with greater force in proportion as Wisconsin, Iowa, Min- nesota, and Kansas are more remote from " the northeast- ern sea-board" than the coal-fields of Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Pennsylvania : " ' If the enhanced price paid by the consumer for his coal,' wheat, corn, or provisions, 'in consequence of the existence of this duty, were all paid to the Pennsylvania miner ' or western farmer, ' it would be, of course, great injustice ; but the country would be none the poorer because the law took money from one man and gave it to another. But it happens that while the consumer pays the increase, the immediate producer is not benefited, inasmuch as the whole enhanced price is expended in paying for the transportation of the coal.' grain, or provision, ' to a greater distance; in other words, the payment is for unnecessary transportation, i. e., useless labor. Now, no acquisition of skill can change this. It is fixed by the laws of na- ture. To the end of time it will cost more ; i. e., it will take more labor to bring every ton of coal,' grain, or provisions ' from western Pennsylvania,' Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, or Kansas ' across the Alleghany mountains ' or the lakes ' to the northeastern sea-board than to bring it from Nova Scotia. So long as a duty makes it possible to bring coal,' grain, or provisions ' from the for- mer source, so long that unnecessary work will be done; but the price does not represent a profit, but the cost of useless labor.' " Is not this argument conclusive ? Does it not prove that her Britannic Majesty's liege subjects of the new Do- minion should grow our grain and stock, and grind our flour, as well as mine our coal as long as their freedom 310 MR. WELLS' REPORT. from our war debt will enable them to do it more cheaply than we can ? If this be not the conclusion to which it leads, I hope some gentleman from a grain-growing or cattle-raising district will show us why. Mr. Wells does not like Pennsylvania, and throughout his report ignores the essential facts that Virginia and North Carolina have tide-water coal-fields of better quality and greater extent than those of Nova Scotia, from which New England can be more cheaply supplied than from the provinces ; and that Maryland sends more bituminous coal from her mountains to the "northern sea-board" than Pennsylvania does or ever did. In this, however, he is as frank and truthful as in other respects. I do not wonder that he dislikes the people of Pennsylvania. By their persistent energy, as the letter of Thomas Firth & Son shows, they have so increased the supply and reduced the price of cast-steel as to seriously affect the profits of his Sheffield clients ; and by the large increase they are mak- ing of blast furnaces they threaten to enter the markets of the world at an early day -against all England with pig- iron. Nor do I forget that it was Pennsylvania Eepre- sentatives and economists that hastened to bring to the attention of the country the equivocations, duplicity, and falsehoods with which his last annual report abounded. Speaking of the duty on coal, he says, " it is urged as a protective measure," and refers to it as a " tax on fuel." This involves but two misstatements of fact, namely, that the duty is urged or levied for protection, and that it is a tax on any American consumer of coal. Neither of these allegations is true. The protectionists of the country do not regard the question of the duty on coal as a politico- economical question, and the New York Tribune, know- ing that the price of coal would not be affected by the abolition of the duty, advocates its repeal as a means of proving the absurdity of the free trade argument. They do not urge it as a protective, but as a revenue measure, and, in view of the present condition of the provinces, as eminently a political question. As a political question it has great significance, as every provincial exporter of coal knows experimentally that the duty is not paid by the American consumer, but is deducted from the extraordi- nary profits he would realize if the duty were removed, and which he did realize during the continuance of the Reciprocity Treaty. As an economical or protective mea- MR. WELLS' REPORT. % 311 sure, it is not worth consideration ; as a revenue measure, it involves the receipt by the Treasury of about five hundred thousand dollars gold annually, a comparatively small matter, but of some importance ; but it is as a political question that it is most worthy of consideration. As Mr. Wells and the free-trade league have industriously pro- moted a general misapprehension of this subject, I pro- pose, as I have said, to devote a few minutes to its eluci- dation. I propose to show, first, that as an economical question it is not of sufficient importance to deserve consideration. This can be done by inviting attention to the relation of the total amount of foreign coal imported from all sources to the amount consumed in the northern Atlantic States alone. Were the whole amount involved it would not be sufficient to affect the supply or price, as the grand total imported from all countries on both coasts has exceeded 600,000 tons in but three years, and 500,000 in but three others, and the consumption of coal east of the Alleghany mountains and north of the Potomac will be about 20,- 000,000 tons this year. What the consumption is on the Pacific, where coal from British Columbia was until within a few years the sole dependence, I have no data for an ac- curate estimate. Whatever the amount is it should be deducted from the total in estimating the percentage of supply derived by New England from Nova Scotia and England; the residue, whatever it may be, is assuredly not sufficient to affect either the price or supply. But the question does not relate to the whole of this residue, but only to so much as would be the amount im- ported if the duty were off in excess of that brought in under duty. As English coal has always been subject to duty, we have no means of ascertaining how much the re- peal of the duty might increase importation from that country ; but as her scientific men have admonished her of the danger of exhausting her supplies of coal and even Mr. Wells agrees with recognized authorities in believing that her production has reached its maximum and as she has more advantageous markets nearer home, the repeal of the duty would not probably affect perceptibly the im- portation from that quarter. How much the imposition of the duty on provincial coal has affected the total amount imported we can ascer- tain, but, unfortunately, the Treasury reports do not ena- 312 MR. WELLS' KEPORT. ble us to distinguish between the amount imported on either coast. The Pacific States, as I have said, formerly depended on British Columbia ; but since the opening of the mines at Mont Diablo, Seattle, and other points within our territory, the quantity of provincial coal imported is said to be diminishing. But assuming that the whole amount received on both coasts came from Nova Scotia, and was consumed in New England, the repeal of the treaty and imposition of the duty cannot have had an ap- preciable effect on the price or supply in the markets of that section, as will appear from the facts I am about to submit. The amount of provincial coal imported into the coun- try, on both coasts, has exceeded 400,000 tons in but two years ; and the largest amount imported in any one year was 465,194 tons, which was in 1865. With one other exception, that of 1866, when the amount reached 404,254 tons, the total import on both coasts never reached 340,000. It is to be regretted that the proportion of these amounts that went into California and Oregon cannot be ascertained. Could this be done it would make the pretence that the duty on Nova Scotia coal affects either the price or supply of coal in New England so supremely absurd that Mr. Wells himself would abandon it. But the sum in contro- versy is less than this; it is the difference between the average amount annually imported free under the treaty and the amount which comes to our markets and pays a duty of $1 25 per ton. The duty, as I have said, came into effect on the expira- tion of the treaty in March, 1866, so that the year in which the largest amount was imported was that immediately preceding its repeal. I propose to ascertain the amount about which this wide-spread controversy has been raised, by contrasting the average importation for the three last years of free coal under the treaty, including that which so far exceeded all others, with the three years immedi- ately succeeding the repeal of the treaty, during which it paid $1 25 duty. During the last three years in which it was free from duty the average annual importation was 855,490 tons, and during the three succeeding years in which it paid duty the average annual importation has been 326,626, showing an annual difference of but 31,864 tons. Surely no man with less effrontery than Mr. Wells will say that the deduction of 31,864 tons from one of MR. WELLS' REPORT. 313 many sources from which a supply ranging at about 20,- 000,000 tons are derived can have affected either the sup- ply or price of the commodity. But if we assume that one-third of the importation of provincial coal is upon the Pacific coast which, I think, we may safely do we will see how utterly inappreciable must be the effect of the maintenance or repeal of the duty on provincial coal. Thus, Mr. Chairman, it must become apparent that the maintenance of the duty is not, as Mr. Wells asserts, " urged as a protective measure." Surely those who have the machinery to bring 20,000,000 tons to market annually need not shrink from the effect of a cause which increases or diminishes the total amount twenty or thirty thousand tons per annum. I propose next to show the falsity of Mr. Wells' other proposition, namely, that this duty is a tax on the con- sumer. Happily, this is susceptible of demonstration. The Pictou coal is of a lower grade, and consequently of less value than the Cumberland coal of Maryland, or the tide- water coal of Virginia. Its price is always lower than these in any market. The average price of Nova Scotia coal by cargo at Boston per ton of 2240 pounds du- ring 1861, the first year of the war, as shown by weekly quotations in the Boston shipping-list and price- current, was $4 67. It was then duty free, and so continued for more than five years. The war did not inflict greenbacks and an inflated currency upon the coal operators of Nova Scotia. It did not create an enormous system of internal taxation to oppress them. Their laborers were not tempted by patriotism or offers of bounty, or taken by draft to the battle-field to bleed and die for their countny, as were those of the American operator. Nor did all these causes com- bine to make an increase of wages necessary to the sup- port of the laborer and his family. No, sir ; their wages remained as before, or were reduced by the fact that thou- sands of able-bodied sympathizers with the rebellion sought safety and employment in the provinces; and British emi- gration, that but for the war would have come to us, flowed in upon them. Our immigration, which for the six years preceding the war had exceeded an average of 140,000, fell off to less than 92,000 in each of the years 1861 and 1862, although the emigration from Liverpool to America was not diminished during these years; while therefore we suffered for the want of labor, it was from these causes 314 MR. WELLS' REPORT. for a time redundant in the provinces. All the conditions were such as to enable the provincial operators to produce and sell coal cheaper during the war than they had done before. But was the price in Boston regulated bj its cost ? No, prices never are ; it depended on our necessi- ties, and followed the price of American coal. Thus the average price in 1862, as shown by the authority I have already quoted, was $5 60 ; in 1863, $7 40 ; in 1864, $10 40 ; 1865, $9 60. In March of the next year the treaty expired, and it became subject to duty, and, accord- ing to Mr. Wells' theory, must have gone up $1 25, or to $10 85 per ton. But in this case his theory is in conflict with the facts, as it is so frequently, for in that year coal sold, duty paid, at $8 54, netting the exporter and foreign carrier but $7 29, and in 1869 it gave them forty-four cents less, having averaged but $8 10 ; and in 1868 it averaged $8 16, so that in each and every year it bore the same re- lation to Cumberland coal that it has always borne since the latter was introduced to the New England market about twenty years ago, and sold at about a dollar a ton lower. These facts, in my judgment, prove two things; one of which is that the Acadian coal operators do not send us coal as a benevolent, but as a commercial operation, out of which they make all they can at the prices current in our market ; and the other is, that they can afford to pay the duty and make a living profit by selling us the very limited amount they can mine at the rates current in our markets. In this they obey the law which is now teach- ing our western producers of grain, by a painful experi- ence, the importance of a home market ; that law, and it is universal in its application, is, that he who has to carry his commodities to a distant market must pay all the charges thereon, while he whose goods are sought by cus- tomers fixes his own prices and makes the purchaser pay all charges. It thus becomes apparent that the repeal of the duty on coal would not reduce the price of that article in New- England one cent, per ton or increase the amount brought to market appreciably ; its only effect would be to take from the Treasury an average of from four to five hun- dred thousand dollars in gold annually and give it to the colonists as a reward for remaining contented subjects of her Britannic Majesty ; a proposition at which rny pa- MR. WELLS' REPORT. 315 triotism revolts, though it be ever so earnestly recom- mended by Mr. Commissioner Wells. HOW THE SOUTH SHOULD DIVERSIFY ITS INDUSTRY. I think I have sufficiently disclosed the devotion of our Special Commissioner of Revenue to the interests of England; but I cannot refrain from inviting the attention of gentlemen from the South to the treacherous sugges- tions he offers them on the subject of the proper means of diversifying their industry. On this subject he says : " '['lie large amount of capital thus becoming annually available at the South will undoubtedly seek in great part investment in domestic and local enterprises and speedily lead to the establish- ment of manufactures on an extensive scale. The true diversity of employment which results from freedom has now, therefore, be- come to the South for the first time possible ; and southern capital can soon be advantageously applied to the manufacture of agricul- tural tools and implements, leather, wagons, wooden-ware, soap, starch, clothing, and similar articles. These are manufactures in which iron, steel and cloth are raw materials. They employ the largest amount of labor in proportion to product and capital, and warrant the payment of high wages. On the other hand, what are commonly called manufactures, namely, iron and steel, and cotton and woolen cloth, are examples of concentration. They require large capital, employ but few hands, and would naturally come 'much later* We already have in the United States an excess of cotton and woolen spindles, and to invest capital in more would be simply a waste when there are vast needs at the South requiring far less capital, and warranting much greater compensation for labor than can be paid in textile fabrics" Most of the southern States abound in coal, varieties of iron ore of very high quality, limestone, and water- power. Inaccessible as their interior districts are from the sea-board, freight adds heavily to the cost of iron purchased either from the Atlantic States or England. They need preeminently among the. States of the Union an extension of railroads and the establishment of found- eries, rolling-mills, locomotive works, and machine-shops. The primary prerequisite to the ample development of the great resources of the southern States is an adequate supply of cheap iron and the means of shaping it for use. * The people of Virginia, Tennessee and Georgia have wisely shown their contempt for Mr. Wells' Suggestion that they should postpone efforts to make iron. Staunton, Atlanta and Chattanooga have already become celebrated for the quality and quantity of iron they produce, and the work done by their roll- ing-mills. This may be bad for Mr. Wells' English friends, but it is certainly well for us. 316 ME. WELLS' REPORT. They have few skilled laborers, and the manufacture of pig-iroa and the rolling of rails require but comparatively few skilled men. The digging and hauling of coal, ore, and limestone require no special preparation. It is work for the unskilled laborer at which freedmen can succeed, and they are therefore in a condition to engage in the production of this article of primary importance, though they may not have the trained artisans for the introduc- tion of simpler branches of mechanics. The cotton growing portion of the United States is the proper locality for cotton factories. The South can spin yarn and produce unbleached fabrics at from fifteen to twenty per cent, less than the same work can be done in New England, and cheaper even than it can be done by the underpaid laborers of Great Britain. Will gentlemen from the South consider that what the picking-room is to the English or northern factory the gin-room is to the factory near the cotton-field, and that all charges incurred between the two would be saved by the southern manu- facturer ? Before cotton reaches either New or Old Eng- land it must be pressed and baled and hooped and marked and transported, losing interest and paying freight and commission at each stage of the transportation; and when it has arrived at the threshold of the distant factory it must be freed from its hoops, stripped of its bagging, and put through the processes of the picking-room to restore it with as little damage as possible to the condi- tion in which it was when it left the gin. From all these charges the manufacturer in the cotton district is free ; and together they amount to what would be a fair profit, which in connection with the improved quality that would result from the use of the unbroken fiber he would use would enable him to spin yarns for all the northern States and England too. But this would hurt the English cotton- spinner ; this would advance the interests of the United States to the detriment of England, as would the establishment in the midst of the coal and iron fields of Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, and Georgia of furnaces, founderies, rolling-mills, and steel-works. Fortunately, the people of the South are deeply impressed with the importance of the early introduction of these branches of manufac- tures; and among the sixty-five furnaces erected during the last year four are in Virginia, six in Missouri, three MR. WELLS' REPORT. 317 in Kentucky, one in Georgia, two in Alabama, and one in Tennessee. It is not, therefore, probable that very general heed will be given by the people of the South to the advice offered by Mr. Wells, or that they will abandon the hope of exporting their cotton in yarn and fabrics, the manufacture of which will give employment to and improve the condition of their now unemployed men, women, and children, or will forego the privilege of an adequate supply of good and cheap iron manufactured in their midst, in order to turn their attention to making "wooden-ware, soap, starch, clothing and similar articles." They will not, I apprehend, be willing to forego their greatest source of profit in order to oblige him by per- mitting England still to retain her supremacy as the cot- ton-spinner and principal iron manufacturer of the world. WHAT TAXES SHOULD BE REPEALED. Mr. Chairman, permit me to repeat the fact that duties which serve to develop the resources of a country and cheapen commodities, by inducing home competition, the diversification of labor and the opening of new sources of employment, and increase the general stock produced, are not taxes even though they fail to reduce immediately the price of the commodity on which they are imposed, as adequate duties on cast-steel and Bessemer rails have done. Thy are during the interim the price paid for establishing the commercial and political independence of the country ; or may rather be regarded as a tempo- rary advance to be reimbursed in the near future by pro- ducing a sense of national security, a wider field of pro- fitable employment for the people at large, and an adequate and cheaper supply of better goods through the long future.* But such is not the case with all duties. There are duties that are taxes and must remain so forever, or into that far future whose possibilities we cannot foresee. Such are duties imposed on commodities which we do not * The proposition is, or may be, to raise the price of a manufactured article for a time, in the expectation that advances in skill and machinery, and a more secure place in the market where conspiracies abroad eannot break in to crush out the capital invested will by and by, or perhaps in a very short time, afford us the same articles at prices greatly reduced. Even Adam Smith saw this; conceding that " a particular manufacture may sometimes be acquired sooner than it could have been otherwise, and after a certain time may be made at home as cheap, or cheaper than in the foreign country." (" Wealth of Nations," vol. i. p. 448. > And what have we ourselves discovered, in hundreds 'of ins- 318 MR. WELLS' REPORT. and cannot produce, but which enter into the daily life of the people, either directly as food, or as the raw material of articles we are producing in competition with countries whose laborers receive not & f moiety of the wages paid for the same work in this country, and which are neces- sary for the support of a family whose children are to be educated for future citizenship. We raise no tea or coffee, and the duty of twenty-five cents a pound on tea, which is at the rate of seventy-eight and a half per cent, on the cost of our whole importation for 1868, and of five cents a pound on coffee, or at the rate of forty-seven and a half per cent, on the importation of 1868, are taxes purely and simply taxes. Yet the Commissioner does not propose to repeal or abate these, and why should he ? Neither England nor her North American colonies pro- duce tea or coffee. Not only does he not propose to repeal these taxes now, but in his ''schedule of a tariff construct- ed with a view of obtaining from the smallest number of imported articles an annual revenue of $150,000,000 " he retains them both and proposes to raise $22,000,000 a year from them, namely, $12,000,000 from coffee and $10,000,000 from tea. We now impose a duty of fifteen cents a pound on pepper. As we grow no pepper, this is a tax a tax at the rate of two hundred and ninety-seven per cent, on the entire importation for 1868, and which extracted from the people in that year $792,490 45. The like duty on allspice is a tax. It is at the rate of three hundred and seventy-six and a half per cent., and drew from the people in 1868 $142,981 50. These duties and many scores of such that I could indicate are all taxes, as they stimulate no industry, but tax the food of the farmer and laborer; but they do not move the sympathies of the Commissioner. He does not propose to repeal them, for the articles they burden are not produced in England or her North American colonies. They were imposed as revenue measures during a great war, and have been tances, but exactly this, that the losses or taxation prices we expected did not come, but thut the articles protected have been cheapened, some of them, too, from the very first. Who could have imagined that our rough-handed, half- trained mechanics would be able to hold successful competition with the skilled workmen of Europe in the manufacture of an article as delicate ns the watch ? And yet we are getting our watches now at scarcely more than half the former price, and are even gelling watches at a profit in the open market of the world. We consented to make a lost, but the gain came along too soon to let us distinctly iee it. Iliinknell, "Free Trade and Protection." MB. WELLS' REPORT. 319 cheerfully endured by a patriotic people, but they increase the cost of living, operate as a burden on our laboring people, and should be repealed at the earliest day the fin- ancial condition of the country will permit. Mr. Chairman, there are other taxes, of some of which the people justly complain taxes that burden our labor, consume the profits of capital, and paralyze the energy of the most enterprising among us. They add to the cost of our gas and our travel, whether by railroad, stage, or steamboat. We cannot draw our own money from bank or make a payment to our creditor without feeling them. They touch and prick us at all points. Their enforcement requires the maintenance of a special department of the Government, the agents of which penetrate inquisitorially every home and workshop in the land. They increase the cost of all our productions and restrict the limits of our commerce by shutting our over- taxed goods out of markets in which but for them we might compete with our foreign rivals. They, too, were the product of the war. The necessities in which it in- volved us gave rise to the system of internal taxes with its Commissioner, assessors, collectors, supervisors, detect- ives, and thousands of subordinates ; and sound policy requires that those duties which, while they protect the wages of the laboring man and develop the resources of the country, supply the Treasury with large amounts of revenue should be retained, and that these direct and inquisitorial taxes which so oppress and annoy us should be removed as rapidly as possible. The repeal of these would animate all our industries; but the repeal of the duties recommended by the Commissioner would flood our country with the productions of the underpaid la- borers of Europe, silence countless looms and spindles, close our factories, extinguish the fires in our furnaces and rolling-mills, and leave the grain of the husbandmen, for which there is now no market in Europe, to rot in the field or granary, while their countrymen and former cus- tomers starve. However ardently Mr. Commissioner Wells may desire this consummation, I trust that Con- gress, by protecting the wages of the American laborer, will forever avert it. PERSONAL EXPLANATION. SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 20TH, 1870. The House being in session Mr. Kelley said : I ask unanimous consent to make a brief personal ex planation. The Speaker. For how long ? Mr. Kelley. Five minutes. There was no objection, and it was ordered accordingly. Mr. Kelley. Mr. Speaker: I send to the Clerk's desk the St. Louis Democrat of January 17th, 1870, and ask the Clerk to read the paragraph I have marked. The Clerk read as follows : " This cheap cry of British gold is about played out. There are a great many more men in Congress and out of it, who are bribed to advocate what they know to be against the public interest by Amer- ican gold than by British. We might easily retort ou Mr. Kelley. It would be easy to say that his personal interest, to the extent of $100,000, in iron works in Irondale, Ohio, bribes him to cast a vote against the public welfare. But that sort of argument may well be left altogether to those who have no better at command." Mr. Kelley. Mr. Speaker : I have called the attention of the House to this paragraph, not by reason of its own importance, but because 1 have from time to time seen ar- ticles in the papers, speaking of my great pecuniary interest in pig-iron. I did not know how to account for them until within a few days one of the gentlemen from Ohio, [Mr. Garfield,] or his colleague, [Mr. Wilson,] handed me a letter, the printed heading of which informed me that " William D. Kelley & Sons are the proprietors of Grant Furnace, Ironton, Ohio." I saw, then, that those who made this intimation had, at least, a reasonable basis of fact. I want to say that I do not know my namesake, but was pleased to hear that he is a worthy and prosperous 320 PERSONAL EXPLANATION. 321 man, with a large family of sons about him, who are labori- ously aiding him in his business, while I, less fortunate, happen to have but one son, who is not yet fifteen years of age. I am not interested in a foot of land in the state of Ohio. I never had means enough, having been a lawyer whose services were not liberally requited, to embark in manufacturing pig-iron or any other commodity. Nor do I own, directly or indirectly, one dollar of capital or stock in any mining or manufacturing interest in the world. God knows that, as I feel years creeping over me, I regret my past indifference to pecuniary matters, and wish that I had been able to acquire some such property 21 FARMERS, MECHANICS, AND LABORERS NEED PROTECTION CAPITAL CAN TAKE CARE OF ITSELF. SPEECH DELIVEEED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 25, 1870. The House being in the Committee of the Whole, and having under consideration the bill (H. E. No. 1068) to amend existing laws relating to the duties on imports, and for other purposes Mr. Kelley said : Mr. Chairman : I presume that gentlemen who have listened to the course of this debate expect me to apolo- gize for having been born in Pennsylvania and adhering to rny native State. From what has been said it seems that her people are regarded by free traders as a discredit- able community, and she, in her corporate capacity, as an object of odium. Sir, I am proud of dear old Pennsylvania, my native State. She was the first to adopt the Federal Constitu- tion, and was in fact the key-stone of the Federal arch, holding together the young Union when it consisted of but thirteen States, and she is to-day preeminently the representative State of the Union. You cannot strike her so that her industries shall bleed without those of other States feeling it, and feeling it vitally. She has no cotton, or sugar, or rice fields; but apart from these she is identified with every interest represented upon this floor. Gentlemen from the rocky coast of New England and those from the more fertile and hospitable shores of the Pacific, especially the gentlemen from the beautifully wooded shores of Puget Sound, complain that their ship- yards are idle. Hers, alas ! are also idle, although they are the yards in which were built the largest wooden ship the Government ever put afloat, and the largest sailing iron-clad it ever owned. She has her commerce and sympathizes with young San Francisco and our great 322 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 323 commercial metropolis, New York. She was for long years the leading port of entry in the country. She still maintains a respectable direct commerce and imports very largely through New York, for the same reasons that London does through Liverpool, and Paris through Havre. Are you interested in the production of fabrics, whether of silk, wool, flax, or cotton? If so her interests are identical with yours, for she employs as many spindles and looms as any New England State, and their produc- tions are as various and as valuable. Are your interests in the commerce upon the lakes? Then go with me to her beautiful city of Erie and behold how Pennsylvania sympathizes with all your interests there. Are your interests identified with the navigation of the Mississippi and seeking markets for your products at the mouth of that river and on the Gulf? I pray you to i\emember that two of the navigable sources of the American "Father of Waters" take their rise in the bosom of her mountains, and that for many decades her enterprising and industri- ous people have been plucking from her hills bituminous coal and floating it past the coal-fields of Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and other coal-bearing States, to meet that of England in the market of New Orleans and try to drive it thence. Gentlemen from the gold regions, where were the miners trained who first brought to light, with any measure of science and experience, the vast resources in gold and silver-bearing quartz of the Pacific slope ? They went to you from the coal, iron, and zinc mines of Pennsylvania. There they had learned to sink the shaft, run the drift, handle ore, and crush or smelt it. It was experience acquired in her mines that brought out the wealth of California almost as magically as we were taught in childhood to believe that Aladdin's lamp could convert base articles into gold. Nor, sir, are the interests of Pennsylvania at variance with those of the great agricultural States ? Before her Eepresentatives in the two Houses of Congress had united their voices with those of gentlemen from the West to make magnificent land grants for the purpose of con- structing railroads in different directions across the tree- less but luxuriously fertile prairies, Pennsylvania was first among the great agricultural States. And to-day her products of the field, the garden, the orchard, and the 324: FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. dairy equal in value those of any other State. Gentle- men from Ohio, notwithstanding the statement of the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Allison] that you alone manufac- ture Scotch pig-iron and suffer from its importation, as you alone have the black band ore from which it is made, is it not true that when Pennsylvania demands a tariff that will protect the wages of her laborers in the mine, the quarry, and the furnace, she does but defend the interests and rights of your laborers and those of every other iron- bearing State in the Union ? Gentlemen from Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, Pennsylvania is de- nounced because she pleads for a duty on bituminous coal that will enable you to develop your magnificent coal-fields in competition with Nova Scotia. The coal of your tide-water fields is far more available than that of the inland fields of Pennsylvania, which depend on railroads for transportation. On the banks of the James, the Dan, and other navigable rivers, lie coal-beds to within a few hundred feet of which the vessels which are to carry the coal may come, and they lie nearer to the markets of New England than those of your colonial rivals at Nova Scotia; and when you were not here and Virginia and North Carolina were voiceless on this floor, I pleaded with the Thirty-Ninth Congress to retain the duty of $1 25 per ton in order that Virginia and North Carolina, soon to be reconstructed, should be able to pro- duce fuel for New England better and cheaper than Nova Scotia does, and that it should be carried in New England built vessels, so that the thousands of people employed in producing and transporting it should create a mar- ket for the grain of the western farmer and the produc- tions of American workshops. I might, Mr. Chairman, extend the illustration of the identity of the interests of Pennsylvania with those of the people of every other State, but will not detain the committee longer on that subject. In leaving it I however reiterate my assertion that you cannnot strike a blow at her industries without the people of at least half a score of other States feeling it as keenly as she will. She asks no boon from Congress. Her people, whether they depend for subsistence upon their daily toil, or have been so fortunate as to inherit or acquire capital, seek no special privileges from the Gov- ernment. They demand that we shall legislate for the promotion of the equal welfare of all. They know that FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 325 they must share the common fate, and that their prosperity depends upon that of their countrymen at large. PROTECTION CHEAPENS COMMODITIES. Mr. Chairman, many gentlemen have spoken since this bill was made a special order, and a great deal has been said upon the general subject of free trade and protection, and but little about the provisions embodied in the bill before the committee. I am probably expected to pro- ceed at once to reply to the remarks of my colleague on the Committee of Ways and Means, from Iowa [Mr. Alli- son], who has just closed his remarks. But I may as well before proceeding to do so take a shot into the flock generally. The birds have all sung the same song. My colleague has gone more fully into the details of the bill than any of the others. But his statements are all in har- mony with those of the several gentlemen who have given us the doctrines of the chief of the Bureau of Statistics, D. A. Wells, in their own admirable way. I propose to allude to some of their remarks. The gentleman from New York [Mr. Brooks] in open- ing the debate promised to mount a peddler's wagon and ride through the agricultural districts of the country, exhibiting hoes, shovels, axes, chains, knives and forks, cottons, and woolens, and demonstrate to the people the unjust and enormous taxation imposed on them by the existing tariff. If he will redeem this promise, making candid statements of facts to the people, I will con- tribute toward his expenses and pray for the success of his mission. Mr. Brooks, of New York. How much ? Mr. Kdley. I will contribute 25 per cent., and what may be more effective, will try to make an arrangement by which the proprietors of Flagg's Pain Exterminator will give the gentleman a seat in one of their wagons while going through the country. By no other means could he so perfectly demonstrate the fact that duties which are really protective are never a tax, and that pro- tection invariably cheapens commodities. So invariably is this true that protective America, France, and Germany are crowding free-trade England out of the markets of the world with the articles named by the gentleman while pur- chasing from her the materials of which they are made, 326 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. and paying protective duties on every pound of them. This is not mere declamation. It is truth demonstrated by experience.* The starving mechanics of England know it, and have at length succeeded in bringing it officially to the knowledge of Parliament. I have before me the report of a parliamentary commission which proves, that notwithstanding our duties on iron and steel, our knives and forks, horseshoe nails, etc., are crowding England out of general markets, that our hoes, shovels, * A New York correspondent of the Sheffield Independent recently wrote to that paper as follows : " There will be no legislation this session on the tariff, which means no change in actual operation until 1873, at nearest. The opposition, therefore, which Sheffield manufacturers have to encounter from native and protected industry will not be abated for two, if not three years to come. This is not encouraging for such Shef- field trades as the saw trade, for instance, which is now nearly wholly driven from this market. It is no use denying, either, that during the respite which such trades here as the spring knife and table knife trade will have, their opposition icill become more formidable. It is true that the manufacturers of table knives here seem to have gone as low as they can in price, and that Sheffield goods can just, compete and that is all, and more than that no one pretends that American table knife concerns are making money. But there they stand, gigantic establishments, each with its little world of workmen round it, the representatives of much labor and capital invested under legal sanction, and, therefore, claiming tender consideration in any future financial adjustment. The American-made one and two blade pocket knives are beginning to push out similar goods made in Sheffield all over the West and Northwest. They run chiefly on such styles, in one blade, as cost from three to six shillings per dozen in Sheffield, and such two blades as cost from six to ten shillings. In price they are about the same for the same pattern, but in fitting, finish and style, very much superior. The steel used, as a rule, is good, and the blades above complaint. Their patterns are not numer- ous. Indeed, they adopt precisely the same tactics as those used by the table knife manufacturers when they first commenced that competition with Sheffield which has ended, practically, in the transference of that business to this country. They choose a few good popular styles, they invent and use machin- ery for every process possible, they put in good blades, neatly ground, splendid- ly marked, and turn out every knife the precise duplicate of every other. Hence the uniformity, reliability, and general style which is found in no Sheffield goods, except those of standard makers. I regard it as absolutely certain that the Sheffield spring-knife trade has, so far as this market is con- cerned, to pass through precisely the same stages as those through which the table-knife trade has passed. Gradually, the methods used here will push out all medium and common imported goods ; then will come a time of utter stagna- tion and bewilderment among the masters and men usually working for the United States trade; then none but goods with a name will remain saleable here ; and, finally, it is to be hoped, as in the sister business, enterprising manufacturers will arise in Sheffield who, adopting machinery, will speedily regain the lost ground and bring back employment. There is no excuse, however, after past experience, for such a crisis arising. The machinery and processes used here are inexpensive, though effective so effective, indeed, that one of the oldest and most energetic and successful of the Sheffield manufac- turers, after investigating them on the spot here last year, could lay no more consolation to his heart than the old system ' would last his time out.' If the 'trade' would send out, at their expense, two intelligent practical men, and let them spend a month here and probe the subject to the bottom, they could, at an outlay of 150 or .200, save their fellowworkmen from a world of coming want and perplexity. Why not do it?" FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 327 and axes are bought by the people of all her colonies ; and that our locks, sewing-machines, and other produc- tions of iron and steel are underselling hers in the streets of London and Birmingham. Here is the " report from the select committee on scientific instruction, together with the proceedings of the committee, minutes of evi- dence, and appendix," ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 15th July, 1868. It is a ponderous volume and replete with instruction. I find on page 479 a paper handed in by Mr. Field, containing a " list of some articles made in Birmingham and the hardware districts, which are largely replaced in common markets of the world by the productions of other countries." The author states that " this list might be immensely extended by further investigation, which the shortness of time has not permitted." Among the articles enumerated are hoes and I ask the attention of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Brooks] " Hoes : for cotton and other purposes, an article of large con- sumption." On this article the report remarks : " The United States compete with us, for their own use and, to some extent, for export." Then we have the following : "Axes : for felling trees, etc., an article of large consumption. The United States supply our colonies and the world with the best article." Then there are : " Carpenters' broad-axes ; carpenters' and coopers' adzes ; coopers' tools, various sorts ; shoemakers' hammers and tools." With regard to these, " Germany and the United States " are mentioned as the countries " whose products are be- lieved to have replaced those of England." Speaking of cut nails, the report says : " The United States export to South America and our colonies." And, with regard to horseshoe nails, which we protect by a duty of 5 cents per pound, and the manufacture of which under that ample protection has been cheapened and so perfected, that this parliamentary report announces that they exclude the English from common markets, be- cause they are i( Beautifully made by machinery in the United States." 328 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. Mr. Winans. Will the gentleman allow me to ask him a question ? Mr. Kelley. Not at present. I will be glad, when I have got a little further into my subject, to answer, but not at this point. Mr. Winans. My question conies in properly here Mr. Kelley. I will hear the gentleman. Mr. Winans. I understand that the purport of what the gentleman has been reading is to show that the United States, notwithstanding the high tariff Mr. Kelley. I do not yield to the gentleman for a speech. If he has a question to put, let him put it squarely. Mr. Winans. I merely wished to make a preliminary remark. But, without any preliminaries, my question is this: If, under the operation of our tariff) American manu- facturers could compete with British manufacturers in British markets, why should the high tariff be maintained to oppress our own people ? * Mr. Kelley. The gentleman's question will be abun- dantly answered as I proceed. But I may remark here, that, if by protection you secure to your capital and indus- try a certain market, capitalists will invest in the erection of workshops, and purchase of machinery, and by high wages will induce skilled and ingenious workmen to leave their * Such a tariff is the only means of protecting our industries from overthrow by foreign conspirators. The British Government applauds such conspiracies, and the American Government should defend its people against them. Though the following extract from the report of a Parliamentary commission made in 1854 appears on page 41, I cite it here as a conclusive, though not the only answer to the question of Judge Winans : " I believe that the laboring classes generally, in the manufacturing districts of this country, and especially in the iron and coal districts, are very little aware of the extent to which they are often indebted for their being employed at all to the immense losses which, their employers voluntarily incur in bad times, in order to destroy foreign competition, and to gain and keep possession of foreign markets. Authentic instances are well known of employers having, in such times, carried on their work at a loss amounting, in the aggregate, to three or four hundred thousand pounds in the course of as many years. If the efforts of those who en- courage the combinations to restrict the amount of labor, and to produce strikes, were to be successful for any length of time, the great accumulations of capital could no longer be made, which enable a few of the most wealthy capitalists to over- whelm all foreign competition in times of great depression, and thus to clear the way for the whole trade to step in when prices revive, and to carry on a great business before foreign capital can again accumulate to such an extent as to be able to establish a competition in prices with any chance of success. The large capitals of this country are the great instruments of warfare against the competing capitalists of foreign countries, and are the most essential instruments now re- maining by which our manufacturing supremacy can be maintained; the other elements cheap labor, abundance of raw materials, means of communication, and skilled labor being rapidly in process of being realized." FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 329 homes and accept employment on better terms among strangers. Thus, under protection, capital has been in- vested, and skilled laborers gathered, and our inventive genius has improved the methods of production, until we have come to be able to make the articles mentioned in this list cheaper than free-trade England. But withdraw this protection, and you will enable foreigners, with the immense accumulations of capital they possess, to combine and undersell our home manufacturers for a few years, and thus destroy them. The purpose of a protective tariff is that of the fence around an orchard in a district where cattle are permitted to run at large. I believe I have an- swered the question of the gentleman. The gentleman from New York [Mr. Brooks] said that his heart glowed with pride when, in a distant foreign land, he saw a camel robed in American muslin. The value of the kind of muslin used for such a purpose is almost all in the cost of the raw- material ; it is woven of the coarsest yarn. I wish he had been in Abyssinia in 1867 ; how his pulse would have quickened and his heart expanded as he saw that while England was wreathing the latest glory around her brow by moving an army into the heart of Abyssinia for the relief of a few of her subjects, the inge- nuity and protected industry of the United States was from day to day providing that army with water. For proof of this I turn again to the Parliamentary re- port. It says : " Pumps of various sorts largely exported from the United States." To this announcement is added the following note : " an American pump finding water for the Abyssinian expedition." Those pumps, unlike the coarse cotton, the sight of which so rejoiced the gentleman, involved a preponderant percentage of labor labor for the digging and* carrying of the coal, ore, and limestone, and on through successive grades of labor to their completion, so that probably 90 per cent, of their cost was labor. But I submit the list entire for the gentleman's considera- tion: 330 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. Appendix No. 22 to the report from the select Committee on Scien- tific Instruction, together with the proceedings of the committee, minutes of evidence, and appendix. [Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 15th July, 1868.] PAPER HANDED IN BY MR. FIELD. List of some articles made in Birmingham and the hardware district, which are largely replaced in common markets of the world by the productions of other countries : Articles or class of articles. Country whose products are believed to have replaced those of this district, in whole or in part. Carpenters' tools : As hammers, plyers, pincers, compasses, hand and bench vices. Chains : Of light description, where the cost is more in labor than in ma- terial, as halter chains and bow- ties, and such like. Frying-pans of fine finish Wood -handled spades and shovels, an article of very large consumption. Hoes : For cotton and other purposes, an article of large consumption. Axes : For felling trees, etc., an article of large consumption. Carpenters' broadaxes. Carpenters' and coopers' adzes. Coopers' tools, various sorts. Shoemakers' hammers and tools. Machetes : For cutting sugar canes, an im- portant article. Nails : Cut Wrought Point de Paris (wire nails.) Horse-nails Pumps : Of various sorts.. [ Germany chiefly. 5- Germany. France. ( United States exports them to all our colonies. f United States compete with us j for their own use, and, to ( some extent, for export. f United States supply our colo- < nies and the world with the best article. Germany and the United States. [ Believed to be now Germany. f United States export to South { America and our colonies. Belgium. f French and Belgian largely su- 1 persede English, f Beautifully made by machinery { in the United States. Largely exported by United States. NOTE. An American pump finding water for the Abys- sinian expedition. FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 331 LIST. Continued. Article! or class of articles. Country whose products are believed to have replaced those of this district, in whole or in part. Agricultural implements : Plows, cotton-gins, cultivators, kibbling machines, corn-crushers, churns, rice-hullers, mowing-ma- chines, hay rakes. Sewing machines Lamps : For use with petroleum, now an article of very large consump- tion. Lamps for the table Tin-ware : Tinned spoons, cooks' ladles, and various culinary articles of fine manufacture and finish. Locks : Door locks, chest locks, drawer locks, cupboard locks in great variety. Door latches in great variety. Curry-combs Traps : Rat, beaver, and fox Gimlets and augers (twisted)... Brass-foundery, cast : As hinges, brass hooks, and castors, in great variety ; door buttons, sash fasteners, and a great variety of other articles. Brass-foundery, stamped : As curtain pins and bands, cor- nices, gilt beading, and a great variety of other brass-foundery. Needles : An article of large consump- tion. Fish-hooks Guns : A great variety of sporting guna, articles of large consump- tion, 'formerly entirely from Bir- mingham. Breech-loading muskets and re- volver pistols. Many articles similar to these are exported by United States to common markets. United States. The United States petroleum lamps supplant the English in India and China. French even imported to Eng- land. > France. [United States, France, and f Germany. I United States exports to Cana- \ da. United States and France. United States export to Canada, f United States export to Cana- \ da and probably elsewhere. ! These articles in great variety, are now extensively exported from France and Germany. } These articles, in great variety, are now extensively exported from Germany and France. f Mostly Germany, (Rhenish < Prussia,) even imported to ( England, Believed Germany. 5 Now exported largely from Liege, Belgium, and Etienne, France. I United States. 332 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. LIST. Continued. Articles or class of articles. Country whose products are bettered to have replaced those of this district, in whole or in part. Watches and clocks.. Iron Glass: For windows, an article of large consumption; spectacle and all other glass. Table glass Swords Jewelry : Gold, gilt, and fancy steel, in very great variety. Small steel trinkets : As bag and purse clasps, steel buttons, chains, key rings, and other fastenings, and many others in great variety. Leather bags, with clasps, purses, and courier bags, etc. Buttons : Mother of pearl- Horn Porcelain (formerly Minton's of Stoke). Steel buttons (formerly Bolton & Watt's). Florentine or lasting boot-but- tons. Steel pens, pen-holders, brass scales and weights. Iron gas-tubing Elastic belts with metal fasten- ings. Brass chandeliers and gas-fit- tings. Harness buckles and furniture. German-silver spoons, forks, etc. Locks : Beat trunk, door, and cabinet locks. f Switzerland and France import into England, United States, and France. 1 [NOTK. Watches made in the United States interchange- L able, by machinery.] Belgium. I Belgium supplants ours in our [ own colonies. f Believed to be Belgium and \ France. Prussia and Belgium. {France and Germany. These articles are even imported into England. (France and Germany. Many of these even imported into England. f Austria, France, and Russia. We believe about all these 1 articles sold in England are (_ imported. Vienna, imported to England. France, imported to England, f France entirely superseded | English, and imported to ( England largely. (France. Germany. I France. Germany Germany. France and Prussia. [ France, Austria, and Prussia. [ Prussia and France. FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 333 LIST. Continued. Articles or class of articles. Country whose products are believed to have replaced those of this district, in whole or in part. Umbrella furniture Horn Combs Pearl and tortoise shell arti- cles. Iron wire Iron and brass hooks and eyes. Bronzed articles Hollow wares, enameled Optical instruments. Mathematical instruments. Japanned wares Bits and stirrups Coach springs and axle-trees . . Electro-plated wares ; (custo- mers preferring French goods.) Gas-fittings Weighing machines Plumbers' brass-foundery Table glass-ware Door locks Machines for domestic purposes, as sausage machines, coffee-mills, and washing-machines. Nuts and bolts Penknives and scissors Stamped brass ware (certain kinds). American " notions," as buc- kets, clothes-pegs, washing and agricultural machines. Cutlery : In great variety: scissors, light-edge tools, such as chisels, etc. Pins for piano-strings and other small fittings for pianos. Silver wire for binding the bars, strings of pianos, etc. This list might be immensely extended by further investigation, which the shortness of time has not permitted. France and Prussia. Prussia. [ France and Austria. Prussia and Belgium. Prussia and France. Prussia and France. France and Prussia. I France, Austria, and Bavaria, Germany and France. Belgium and France. France. > France. United States. United States. United States. United States. United States. > United States. United States. United States. 1 United Statee. I United States. > Germany. France. THE INTERNAL REVENUE SYSTEM IT IS EXPENSIVE AND INQUISITORIAL, AND SHOULD BE ABOLISHED AT THE EARLIEST POSSIBLE DAY. At a later stage of the debate the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Stevenson] presented bis views on the general subject. 334 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. He had previously denounced the protectionists of the House as a faction, and now deplores the fact that "the beautiful idea," free trade, "cannot be wholly realized until the commercial millennium." He will, however, do all he can to hasten its triumph. In this direction he goes further than Calhoun or any southern leader ever went. His is a manufacturing and agricultural district, yet he not only echoes the demand of the gentleman from the free- trade commercial city of New York for free coal, iron, salt, and lumber, and a general reduction of the tariff', but leaps beyond him, and proposes to give permanence to the system of internal taxes, which was established as a tem- porary war measure, and which costs annually over $8,000,000, maintains an army of tens of thousands of office-holders, and makes inquisition into the private affairs of every citizen, and would simply remove from it " irrita- ting, petty, useless, and vexatious elements." Sir, the gentlenian cannot be ignorant of the fact that every dollar drawn from the people by these taxes is so much added to the cost of the productions of the farm and workshop, and operates as a bonus to the foreign competitors of our farmers and mechanics in common markets. But even this will not content him. He grieves that other and more onerous taxes cannot constitutionally be levied on the farms, workshops, and homes of the people of Ohio and the rest of the country. On this point he gives forth no uncertain sound. He hopes the Constitution will yet be so amended as to constrain every owner of a farm or cross- roads blacksmith's shop to make the acquaintance of a collector of United States taxes. On this point he said : " In fact, I incline to the opinion that one of the errors committed by our forefathers in framing the Constitution and since we have amended it in such material matters lately, we can afford to say that they did commit some errors in framing it was in not permitting direct taxation upon property according to its value. And some day I trust the Constitution will permit the Government to levy taxes upon property according to its value. But until that day, as long as the debt remains a material burden, we must, in my judg- ment, retain the less objectionable and burdensome parts of both systems of taxation." Mr. Stevenson. I want to know whether the gentleman does not consider that the material part of the internal revenue taxes must be continued while the debt remains? Mr. Kelky. No, sir. I believe that if gentlemen will adopt the tariff bill now under consideration, extended as FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 335 is its free list and great as are the reductions in rates of duties, we can take the internal taxes off all but eight articles by a law of this session, and go still further in that direction during the next session. Mr. Stevenson. What articles are they ? Mr. Kelley. I will come to that in the course of my remarks. I have a note of them. While on this subject let me say that I believe further, that in the interest of the farmers of the country we should hasten the day when we can take the tax off distilled spirits. Sir, the West has grain for which she can find no mar- ket. The Governments of Great Britain and France, cooperating with our internal tax system, deprive them of what would be a generous market. Take the tax of 65 cents a gallon off whisky, and the grain now stored in the granaries of the West would be distilled into alcohol and shipped to the countries of South America, the West India Islands, Turkey, and elsewhere.* I have now answered the gentleman as far as I propose to at present. I have, however, not yet done with him. Mr. Stevenson. vThe gentleman is criticising what was drawn out of me by a question from himself. I ask him in fairness to permit me to put a question to him. Mr. Kelley. Well, go on. Mr. Stevenson. I want to know whether the gentleman is not in favor, before reducing the tariff on coal and iron, of taking the internal revenue tax off whisky and abolish- ing the tax on incomes entirely ? Mr. Kelley. I am in favor of abolishing at the earliest possible day a system that makes inquisition into the private affairs of every man and woman in the country, and has cost us for the three last years an average of $8,509,532 77 per annum, and taken probably 10,000 per- sons from industrial employments and fastened them as vampires upon the people. This is what I am in favor of. But I hold the floor for another purpose than a mere con- troversy with the gentleman. Mr. Stevenson. Then the gentleman declines to answer my question. * The tax on spirits not only restricts the market for grain, but taxes the farmer by the addition it makes to the cost of many articles he consumes. It adds about Id cents to the cost of producing an ounce of quinine, and more largely to the cost of chloroform, collodion, and many other drugs, and almost every variety of perfumery. Before it was imposed, we exported such articles to many countries. Now we import them largely. 336 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. Mr. Kelley. I have answered the gentleman's question, and every gentleman present will, I think, say I have answered it frankly. FREE TRADE MEANS LOW WAGES AND A LIMITED MAR- KET FOR GRAIN. Mr. Chairman, I am not specially familiar with the gen- tleman's district. Though I have visited Cincinnati several times and ridden through Hamilton county, I have but few acquaintances within their limits ; yet I know some- thing about them. The last annual report of the Cincin- nati Board of Trade informs us that during the year ending March 31, 1869, there were produced in the gentleman's district and the adjoining one, in about 3000 separate establishments, 187 distinct classes of manufactured articles, of an aggregate value of $104,657,612. The cash" capital invested in these establishments, the report says, is $49,- 824,124, and they give employment to 55,275 hands. Mr. Chairman, I venture the remark that there is not among these 55,275 working people one who will indorse the opinions advanced by the gentleman. Mr. Stevenson. Will the gentleman yield to me for a moment? Mr. Kelley. No, sir ; I must decline. Mr. Stevenson. The gentleman holds the floor without restriction by the courtesy of the House. Mr. Kelley. I will yield further to the gentleman during the course of my remarks, but not at present. Many of the laboring people of his district are immi- grants and know how small are the wages of workmen on the other side of the Atlantic, and the fare on which they live. They know that free trade means low wages. Buy labor where you can buy it cheapest is the cardinal maxim of the free trader. More than 85 per cent, of the cost of every ton of coal, salt, and pig-iron is in the wages of labor, and when the gentleman shall have stricken the duties off these articles, the 1,500,000 people who are now earning good wages in their production must compete with the cheap labor of Turk's Island, England, Wales, and Germany. Thrown out of remunerative employment in the trades to which they have devoted their lives, as they will be, they must compete with workmen in other pur- suits, even though they glut the market and bring down the general rate of wages throughout the land. He who FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC. NEED PROTECTION. 337 advocates protective duties pleads the cause of the Ameri- can laborer. I will not amplify this proposition. I regard it as a truism, and beg leave to illustrate it by inviting the attention of my colleague from Iowa, [Mr. Allison,] and the gentleman from Ohio, to a statement of the wages and subsistence of families of laborers in Europe, on page 179 of the monthly report of the Deputy Special Commissioner of the Eevenue, No. 4 of the series 1869-70. It refers specialty to Germany, and was translated and compiled from Nos. 10-12 of the publications of the Royal Prussian Statistical Bureau, Berlin, 1868. This paper, gentlemen will remark, was not prepared for or by American politicians, or by a faithless officer of this Government, or by any representative of a free trade or protective league. Its facts are most significant. The wheat-growers of Iowa and the West are suffering from the want of a market for their grain. Too large a proportion of our people are raising wheat. We want more miners, railroad men, and mechanics, and our present rates of wages are inducing them to come to us. Nearly half a million people tempted by these wages will come this year. Our working people are free consumers of wheat, beef, pork, and mutton. But could they be, under free trade or reduced duties ? These articles are luxuries rarely enjoyed by the working people of England or the continent, with whom anti- protectionists would compel them to compete. The official paper to which I refer tells us that " rye and potatoes form the chief food of the labor- ing classes ; that the wives and daughters of brick-makers, coal and iron miners, and furnace and rolling-mill men aid them in their rough employments ; that the regular wages of workingmen average in summer and winter from 16-nj to 24 cents per day, and those of females from 8| to 14 j cents per day ; that miners at tunneling are sometimes paid as much as 72 cents (1 thaler) per day, and that a brick-maker, aided by his wife, averages 80 cents per day ; that wages for female labor are more uniform, and that 18 cents per day can be earned by a skillful hand ; that juvenile laborers in factories begin with 48 cents per week for ten hours daily, and rise to 72 cents per week ; that the general average of daily wages is as follows : males, for twelve hours' work per day in the country, 19^ cents ; in cities 24 cents ; and that the wages of master- workmen, overseers, etc., are at least $172 per year." That gentle- 22 338 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. men and their constituents may study this instructive paper I beg leave to submit it to the reporters entire, Wages and subsistence of families of laborers in Europe. GERMANY. Lower Silesia, translated and compiled from No. 10-42 of the pu- blications of the Royal Prussian Statistical Bureau, Berlin, 1868. The regular wages of workingmen average in summer and winter from 16.8 cents to 24 cents (gold) per day ; of females, from 08.4 to 14.4 cents per day, more nearly approaching the higher rate. Dur- ing the short winter days workingmen receive for 8 hours' labor from 10 to 14.4 cents ; the females, 7.2 cents ; while in summer, for 12 to 13 hours' labor the relative wages are from 19.2 to 28.8 cents, and from 14.4 to 19.2 cents, respectively. The wages of those working in the royal forests are so regulated as to average 24 cents per day for males, and 14.4 cents per day for females ; in some mountain countries the latter receive but 12 cents. In larger cities wages rise above these rates, especially for skilled labor. Men working on railroads receive in summer from 28.8 to 36 cents per day ; and women from 16.8 to 26.4 cents. In the larger cities ordinary female help in housekeeping is paid from 24 to 26.4 cents. Work done by the piece or by contract is paid about one-third more than the customary wages. A common laborer expects in contract work from 36 to 48 cents ; at railroad work even more. When work is scarce the wages often fall to about 16.8 cents per day for males, and 9.6 cents for females. Labor is often paid by the hour, at from 01.4 to 3 cents for males, and 0.4 to 2 cents for females ; 2.4 cents per hour are the wages of an able field laborer in the mountains. During the summer especially, opportunities for work are offered to children, who receive from 6.11 to 7.2 cents per day, and in win- ter about 4.8 cents. Wherever the work rises above mere manual labor in a trade or factory, the daily wages of men are from 30 to 48 cents, and often rise to 60 cents. Miners at tunneling are frequently paid 72 cents (1 thaler); in the district of Gorlitz, a brick-maker aided by his wife, averages 80 cents per day ; * in the district of Fauer from $5 76 to $7 20 per week. Skilled workmen of large experience re- ceive from 8360 to $432 per annum. The wages of the molders and * To compete with this " che.ap and nasty " system England employs women, children and infants to make her bricks. ' IN OUR BRICK-FIELDS AND BRICK- YARDS, THERE ARE FROM TWENTY TO THIRTY THOUSAND CHILDREN FROM AS LOW AS 3 AND 4 UP TO 16 AND 17 UNDERGOING A BONDAGE OF TOIL AND A HORROR OP EVIL TRAINING THAT CARRIES PERIL IN IT." The Cry of the Children from the Brick-yards of England. By George Smith. London : 1871, p. 7. "But there are often phases of evil connected with work in brick-yards and clay-yards, generally, which I must not overlook, especially the demoralizing results ever accruing from the mixed employment of the sexes. A flippancy and familiarity of manners with boys and men, grows daily on the young girls. Then, the want of respect and delicacy toward females exhibits itself in every act, word, and look; for the lads grow so precocious, and the girls so coarse in their language and manners from close companionship at work, that in most FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 339 enamelers in iron founderies, of the locksmiths and joiners in ma- chine-works, in piano factories, amount to from 72 cents to $1 08 per day ; the same in manufactories of glass, silverware, watches, and hat factories. The highest wages paid to a very skillful joiner in a pianoforte factory were $12 24 per week. Wages for female labor are more uniform throughout ; 18 cents per day can be earned by a skillful hand, 24 cents per day very rarely. Juvenile laborers in factories begin with wages of 48 cents per week, for 10 hours' work daily, and rise to 72 cents per week. The law prohibits the employment of children under 12 years of age; from 12 to 14 years it permits 6 hours', and from 14 to 16 years, 10 hours' daily labor. The general average of daily wages is as follows : Males, for 12 hours' woifc per day, in the country, 19.2 cents ; in cities 24 cents ; harder labor, 30 cents ; in cities, 36 cents ; skilled labor, 60 cents. The wages of master workmen, overseers, &c., are not included in the above average, but are at least $172 per annum. In regard to the time of work, laborers in factories are employed 11 to 12 hours per day, (exclusive of time for meals ;) where work is continued day and night, the hours for the day are from 6 to 12 a. m., and 1 to 7 p. m. ; for the night, from 7 p. m. to 6 a. m., with hour recess ; in a few districts 10 hours constitute a day's work. In many cloth factories and wool spinneries, males and females work 12 to 13 hours, and some even 16 hours per day. As an ex- ample, a cloth factory employs firemen and machinists 16 hours, spinners and dyers 14 hours, all others 12 hours, exclusive of time for meals. In glass-works, the nature of the work requires from 16 to 18 hours for melters, 13 to 15 hours for blowers ; but then one party rests while the other works. Rye and potatoes form the chief food of the laboring classes. Savings. Although but few workingmen can save any portion of their earn- ings, still there are some who purchase a little piece of land, a house, or a cow, and the latest accounts from fifteen districts in Lower cases, the modesty of female life gradually becomes a byeword instead of a reality, and they sing unblushingly before all, whilst at work, the lewdest and most disgusting songs, till oftentimes stopped short by the entrance of the master or foreman. The overtime work is still more objectionable because boys and girls, men and women, are less under the watchful eye of the master, nor looked upon by the eye of day. All these things, the criminality, levity, coarse phrases, sinful oaths, lewd gestures, and conduct of the adults and youths, exercise a terrible influence for evil on the young children. Hence a generation full of evil phrases, manners, and thoughts is daily growing up in our midst without the knowledge of better things. It is quite common for girls employed in brick-yards to have illegitimate children. Of the thousands whom I have met with, or know as working, I should say that one in every four who had ar- rived at the age of twenty had had an illegitimate child. Several had had three or four, and it is a deplorable fact that as a rule brick manufacturers do not trouble themselves to inquire into the moral character of either women or children, when they employ them. I have found myself often looked upon as an oddity when I have asked, 'is she of good character?' and have been sub- jected to sharp criticism when I have discharged a single woman, because she was palpably enceinte." A JBrickmaster, quoted by Geo. Smith, p. 22. 34:0 FAEMEBS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. Silesia show deposits in savings-banks, from house servants of $428,- 455 ; of apprentices and mechanical workmen of $124,522. No statistics of savings of factory workers were obtained. In some factories the workmen have established savings-banks, some of which have deposits of from $8000 to $10,000. DETAILED STATEMENTS OF THE WAGES AND COST OP LIVING IN DIFFERENT DISTRICTS OF LOWER SILESIA. 1. District of Bolkerihain. The annual expenses of a family of about 5 persons, (3 children,) belonging to the working class, were as follows : Provisions, (per day, 0.144 to 0.168,) per year $60 00 Kent, (8 thalers,) 576 Fuel 60 Clothing, linen, etc 14 40 Furniture, tools, etc 7 20 Taxes -.State 0.72; church 12; commune 36, $1 20 School for 2 children 2 50 3'70 Total , $94 66 The expenses of a laborer's family being 24 to 26.4 cents per day, the earnings should be 28 to 30.8 cents per day, which the head of the family cannot earn. "While his earnings are from 17 to 19 cents, the wife earns 8 to 10 cents, and the children must help as soon as old enough. Miners in this district have 24 to 29 cents daily wages ; factory men from 19 to 29 cents ; mechanics receive 48 to 54 cents per week, besides board ; male house servants $17 to $30, and female $12 per annum, exclusive of board and lodging. 2. District of Landeshut. Expenses of a family : In the country. In a city. Rent per annum $576 $1072 Provisions, (per week, 90 cents,) per annum. 46 80* 56 10 Fuel and light per annum 14 40 16 42 Taxes, etc., per annum 3 60 4 32 Clothing, etc., per annum 856 1000 Other expenses per annum 7 20 8 57 Total $86 32 $106 13 The income of laborers' (weavers') families does generally not reach these amounts. Many are permitted to gather their wood from the royal forests, and spend little for clothing, which they beg from charitable neighbors. A weaver earns here from 48 to 72 cents, $1 and $1 50 per week ; most weavers have 2 looms in opera- tion, and together with their wives earn from $1 50 to $2 16 per week. The average earnings of weavers are given at 96 cents per week, or about $50 per annum. * Per week, $1 08. FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 341 3. District of Hirschberg. The lowest cost of living for a laborer's family is given at $64 80 to $72 per annum, of which are expended for provisions $43 30, for clothing $17, taxes $3 16, fuel $3 60, rent $4, etc. In the summer the wages for 12 hours' daily work, for males, are from 15 to 39 cents ; for females 5 to 17 cents per day ; in winter from 3 to 7 cents less. A male farm hand receives $12 to $22 per year ; a boy $9 to $14 ; a maid-servant $12 to $18 per annum, with board. The annual expenses of a laborer's family, living in a comfortable manner, without luxuries, would be nearly double the amount actu- ally expended above. The following is an estimate : Rent, (one room, alcove, and bed-room,) $ 8 64 Fuel and light '. 14 40 Provisions, (breakfast, coffee ; at noon, pota- toes, dumpling 10 cents ; evening, bread, a little brandy 5 cents ; supper, soup, bread, vegetables 6 cents,) 75 00 Clothing, (husband $6 48, wife $5 76, children $7 20 ; soap 72 cents,) 20 16 Taxes, etc- 216 Schooling of children, (2 cents per week per child,) 3 60 School books 72 To lay by for sickness, etc 8 58 Unforeseen expenses 8 58 Total .$141 84 4. District of Schonau. The ordinary yearly wages, in addition to board, paid to servants in this rural district, were as follows : Man-servant, $14 40 to $21 60 ; boys, $8 64 to $12 96 ; maid-servants, $8 64 to $17 28 ; children's nurses, $5 76 to $12 96. During the harvest the daily wages for 14 hours' work are as fol- lows : Mowers, from 19.2 to 28.8 cents ; laborers, (males,) from 19.2 to 24 cents; females, from 14.4 to 17 cents. In other seasons males receive for 10 hours' daily labor from 14.4 to 19.2 cents, and females 12 to 14.4 cents per day; and in winter males receive 12 cents, and females 7.4 to 9.6 cents. A laborer in the cities receives 24 to 28.8 cents per day ; the " fellows " (journey- men) of trades receive from 60 cents to $1 20 per week, and board. A laborer's family of 5 persons requires for its subsistence during the year the following amount : For provisions, $72 to $85 72 ; rent of 1 room and 3 bedrooms, $4 32; clothing, etc., $10 80; fuel, etc., $3 60 ; taxes, etc., $3 60. Total $108 04. 5. District of Goldberg. The cost of living of a laborer's family, (husband, wife, and two children,) in this district is thus given : Provisions, $75 '60 ; rent, $4 32; fuel, $7 20; clothing. $10 02; fuftiiture, tools, etc., 72 cents; taxes, etc., $2 28. Total, $100 14. In less expensive times provi- sions have been estimated at $20 less. 342 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. In the rural portion men receive 21.6 cents, women 14.4 cents for a day's work ; this average includes higher wages for skilled labor. On a farm a man-servant receives $17 20 per year, in addition to board, etc., which may be estimated at $43 20 ; a maid-servant re- ceives $14 40, besides board. Laborers in stone-quarries earn from 24 to 43.2 cents per day ; in cloth factories 1.8 to 2.2 cents per hour, while the daily wages of carpenters are from 33.6 to 38.4 cents; masons, 33.6 to 45.6 cents ; roof-slaters, 33.6 to 45.6. Shoemakers and tailors receive from 9 to 10 cents, besides their board and lodging, which is valued at 12 cents. 6. District of Loivenberg. The yearly expenses of a family with 3 children are estimated at from $93 60 to $108, namely : j n city. in country. Rent $10 60 $ 4 32 Provisions, ($1 20 per week,) 62 40 55 72 Fuel and light 12 66 10 80 Taxes, school, etc 360 360 Clothing, etc 12 85 12 85 Other expenses 5 76 5 76 87 $93 05 Total ..... , ................... $107 Wages are as follows : Men, day laborers, from 14.4 to 28.8 cents per day ; women 12 to 18 cents per day ; men, with board, 9.6 to 14.4 cents per day ; women, with board, 7.2 to 12 cents per day. From 10 to 14 hours constitute a day's labor ; more hours, and harder work secure higher wages. Male servants per year, $14 40 to $36, and board; female per year, $8 57 to $21 60, and board. Journeymen in trades obtain the following : Wages per week (with board aud lodging). In cities. In the country. Mini- mum. Maxi- mum. Mini- mum. Maxi- mum. Smiths Cents. 54 54 54 54 54 Cents. 72 72 60 72 72 Cents. 42 42 42 30 42 Cents. 72 72 72 60 72 Wheelwrights Shoemakers Tailors Cabinet-makers 7. City of Oreifenberg. The subsistence of a workingman's family, consisting of 5 man, wife, and 3 children is thus given : Income. A mason receives 33.6 cents per day, regular work, 32 weeks in a year $64 52 Weaving or other work, 4 months, at 48 to 60 cents per week, say 8 00 Yearly earnings of, wife 7 20 Total $79 72 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION". 343 A day laborer receives 24 cents per day, or $1 44 per week, regular work 40 weeks $57 60 During the rest of the year he and his wife may earn 14 40 Total $72 00 A carpenter earns a little more than a mason, his chances for winter labor being better. A weaver, working at home, makes less than the day laborer; those in the factory earn per year $72. Expenses of a family. Eent, $8 64; clothing. $1440, (shoes being a large item;) light, $1 44; fuel, $5 04; repairing tools, 72 cents; taxes, $1 44; school for three children, $1 44. Total, $33 12. Provisions. The meals consist of patatoes and bread, their means not being sufficient to allow meat ; potatoes, 20 bushels, $10 08.; bread, (6 cents per day,) $21 90; coffee, (chiccory 4 pounds per day,) $2 88; butter, ( pound per week,) lard, herring, salt, (24 cents per week.) 312 48. Total, $47 26. Aggregate expenses, $80 38. Note. If the work is not regular, the demands of the family must be curtailed, and suffering often takes place. 8. District of Gdrlitz. Here the condition of the laborer appears more comfortable, since work can be found throughout the year. Masons and carpenters earn 36 to 43.4 cents per day ; railroad laborers, 26.4 to 28.8 ; field laborers, 21.6 to 28.8 and females 14.5 to 24 cents. The lowest expenses for a family consisting of 4 or 5 persons are thus computed : Provisions $57 60 to $85 72 Rent, lights, and fuel 11 52 to 2110 Clothing 13 57 to 18 00 Tools, etc 1 44 to 288 School 1 44 to 288 Taxes 72 to 1 44 Total $86 29 to $132 02 By careful inquiries it has been reliably ascertained that a family can earn from $93 60 to $144 a year, so that some lay up small savings. For the city of Gb'rlitz the average income of a laborer's family is estimated at $95 to $144 a year ; the expenses for 4 or 5 persons, from $115 to $172 80, namely : Rent, light, and fuel $22 72 to $32 15 Clothing, etc 14 40 to 21 60 Tools, furniture, etc 1 44 to 5 76 School 4 32 to 504 Provisions 72 00 to 10825 Total $114 88 to $172 80 34-i FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 9. District of Glogau. Farm laborers' income : . Males 6 weeks in harvest, at 30 cents per day.. ..$10 80 14 weeks, (sowing and haymaking,) at 24 cents per day 20 16 15 weeks, fall and spring, at 18 cents per day 16 20 15 weeks, winter, at 14.4 per day 12 96 Total, 50 weeks $60 12 Females 6 weeks, at 12 cents per day (5 days per week) $3 60 14 weeks, at 9.6 cents per day 6 72 15 weeks, at 8.4 per day 6 30 15 weeks, at 7.2 per day 5 40 22 02 Total, 50 weeks $82 14 Expenses of a family with 3 children : 16 sheffels* rye, at $1 32 $21 12 sheffels wheat, at $1 80 3 60 2 sheffels barley, at $1 20 2 40 2 sheffels peas, at $1 44 2 88 2 sheffels millet, at $1 44 2 88 24 bags potatoes, at 38.4 cents 9 22 52 pounds butter, at 19.2 cents 9 98 18 quarts milk, at 24 cents 4 40 Meat, (2 quarters mutton, $3 60, 1 pig, $10 80) 14 40 52 pounds salt, at .024 1 25 Rent, $5 76, light, $1 52 7 28 Fuel, (wood, $9 72, coal, $3 18) 12 90 Clothing 18 72 Taxes, and other expenses. 8 00 Total $119 03 As, according to these statistics a man and wife can earn but $82 14 per year, a deficiency of $36 89 must be made up by the work of the children or by extra labor in the summer, especially at harvest time. In. District of Leignitz. Expenses of a family with three children : Provisions Bread, 1 pound flour per head daily $26 52 Potatoes, bag or 75 pounds per week, at 18 cents 9 36 Barley, 2 sheffels, at 96 cents 96 Peas, 1 sheffel, at $1 08 1 08 Butter, 1 to 1J pound per week, 71 pounds per year, at 19 cents 13 73 Carried over $51 65 * 1 sheffel equals 1-56 bushel, United States. FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 345 Brought over $51 65 Milk, 4 quarts daily, at 4 cents 5 84 Meat, 1 swine for fattening, or 1 pound per week 5 56 Salt, 1 pound per week, at 2.4 cents 1 25- Coffee, chiccory, sugar 4 32 Wheat flour for cake on holidays 1 32 Beer 90 Kent, for a room, a garret-room and small space, per annum 7 20 Light, oil for 26 to 39 weeks, to pound at 6 cents 2 34 Fuel, during 6 winter months 20 cents, summer 10 cents per week 8 00 Clothing Husband : 2 shirts, at 72 cents $1 44 1 pair boots 2 88 Pantaloons, (3 pairs in 2 years) 72 Coat, etc 72 5 76 Wife: 2 chemises $144 1 pair shoes 1 20 Dress, etc 264 5 28 Children : 2 shirts, at 36 cents each. 2 16 3 pairs shoes 2 16 Clothing 2 16 6 48 Soap for washing 1 20 18 72 Tools, for repair of. ^ * ; . 1 43 Taxes income, 72 cents ; communal, .384 cents ; school, including books,$2.556 .....*. 3 60 Total expenses * $112 13 Income of a family with two children : Husband averages 305 days, at 21.6 cents $65 88 Wife averages 250 days, at 10.4 cents 26 00 Oldest child averages 60 days, at 7.2 cents 4 32 Every married workman receives : 1 sheffel wheat $1 80 2 sheffels rye 2 16 2 sheffels barley 1 92 Isheffelpeas 1 08 6 96 He can raise on a patch of land 10 bags pota- toes, valued at 2 88 And glean at harvest 3 sheffels of rye or barley 3 06 For extra work through the year 8 64 Forafatpig 5 76 Total income $123 50 In the city of Leignitz the average expense of a laborer's family is estimated at $141 84 per year. 346 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. TABLE SHOWING THK RATES OP WAGES PAID FOB FACTORY AND OTHER LABOR IN LOWER SILESIA DURING THE YEAR 1868. [Rates expressed in cents, (gold,} United States.] n Vages per day. Males. Females. Children. Bleaching presses : 18 to 36 14 to 18 27 to 33 Manners 36 to 42 48 to 60 24 to 36 Brickyards : 20 to 24 M olders 29 to 39 33 to 48 Contract work 36 to 60 14 to 20 10 to 17 Average summer wages Cane factories : Turners 24 to 42 36 to 66 16 to 18 10 to 18 Engravers 36 to 60 Joiners 48 28 to 42 Chemical works : Average wages 31 24 to 36 8 to 15 4 to 6 Cigar factories : 44 16 to 18 6 to 10 Skilled hands $1 to $2 24 to 40 Box-makers 12 18 to 24 24 to 72 Assorters 72 to $1 08 Packers 36 to 48 $1 50 18 to 36 Dyeing establishments : 20 to 54 14 to 18 24 15 29 to 36 $1 08 Earthenware, etc. : Pottery, molders 60 to 72 24 to 60 14 to 22 Stoneware, ordinary work 18 to 24 24 to 48 .... 24 to 42 Porcelain, glazing makers 30 to 36 30 to 42 18 to 24 .... Gilders .. 36 to 42 12' to 18 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 347 TABLE. Continued. , .1 Vages per day. Males. females. Children. Earthenware, etc. : 48 96 10 to 24 Melters 60 Painters and gilders 40 to 72 18 to 36 Skilled hands 60 to 96 Bottle-makers 48 to 60 24 to 36 12 to 18 12 Flour mills : 22 to 29 Assistant millers 36 to 60 Firemen 24 to 29 Machinists 33 72 24 to 36 Hatters : Ordinary hands 48 to $1 24 to 36 Skilled hands $1 66 to $2 Iron-works : 18 to 28 24 to 60 60 to $1 08 - 42 to 72 12 to 20 52 40 to 72 72 48 36 to 72 Cutters 60 to 72 Lime kilns : Laborers, in winter 20 to 30 24 to 36 Mining : Ordinary labor 18 to 24 12 16 to 20 Miners 48 to 60 36 18 to 42 16 Paper mills : 21 to 48 10 to 24 8 to 16 24 30 36 to 50 36 32 to 58 42 to 48 12 to 24 Railroad-car shop : 40 to 72 36 to 96 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. TABLE. Continued. iVages per day. Males. Females. Children. Railroad-car shop : 42 to $1 08 30 to 60 42 to 60 48 to 72 48 to 96 42 to 66 48 to 66 36 to 60 34 18 to 36 12 to 17 36 60 to 84 24 to 60 12 to 15 Watch-factory workmen .... Saw-mills : 24 to 72 26 to 48 15 36 to 60 48 24 to 42 12 to 30 12 to 24 20 to 42 12 to 18 9 to 12 1 8 to 48 14 to 24 6 to 18 14 to 36 9 to 15 36 to 60 12 to 15 Toy factories : 18 to 36 10 to 24 36 to 48 Sculptors... 36 to ftl 08 The wages of journeymen in the following trades, including board and lodging, are as follows : Per Week. Bakers $0 92 Butchers'.... 72 Smiths 1 08 Tinners 2 52 Wheelwrights 2 16 Furriers 2 1C Saddlers 72 Locksmiths 2 52 Tailors > 2 52 Shoemakers 1 44 Fresco-painters 3 42 Cabinet-makers.. 2 88 to 3 60 Cloth-weavers 1 44 to 2 16 From the reports of the chambers of commerce of Germany the following labor statistics are collected : In the coal mines of Rhenish-Prussia, average daily wages of 3661 laborers, with families of 8572 persons, males $0 64 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 349 Iron foundery, (Duisburg,) average wages per day : Founders $0 65 to $0 72 Other skilled workmen 54 Laborers 43 Machinists and locksmiths 58 In two iron founderies, same district, average daily wages, respectively 58 to 65 Iron-bridge establishment 55 Safe factory, average yearly earnings.. 182 80 Zinc establishments, average wages, first-class hands 94 Second-class hands 72 Other laborers 53 Cotton factories, average wages per hand, in- cluding children 41 Cotton spinning, average wages per hand (mostly young persons) 36 Average weekly wages paid in the coal mines of Plauen, Saxony : To miners P 10 To laborers 1 98 To boys 40 [From report of Chamber of Commerce of Chemnitz for 1868.] SAXONY. TABLE Showing the average Weekly Wages of Labor paid in the district of Chemnitz, Saxony, in the respective Years 1860 and 1864 to 1868. Rates expressed in United States gold values. TRADES. Accordeon-makers Artificial-flower makers.... Bakers Barbers Basket-makers Barrel-makers Beer-brewers Belt-makers, work- 1 era in bronze, / "" Bleachers Bookbinders Brass-founders Brushmakers Bricklayers , Brickmakers Bntchers , Button-makers Card (playing) makers Card (carding) makers Cabinet-makers , Carpenters Cartoon-makers Cigar-makers Chair-frainer Chemical manufacturers- Chimney sweeps Cloth-finishers Cloth-weavers Cloth-shearers Cloth-printers Comb-makers Confectioners $2.16 $3.60 $2.52 $2.52 $2.5'2,$2.52 $1.08 $1.08 $0.96 $0.96 $0.96 $0.96 MALES. I860. 1864. 1665. 1866. 1867. 1368 1.1 IS 1.17 1.80 i.os 2.28 2.04 2.52 1.80 2.52 2.52 1.9.' l.OS 2.88 2.16 2.16 2.64 3.24 2.78 2.16 1.62 1.92 2.37 L'.(4 UK 3.24 1.08 2.16 72 SJ2 3.00 2.52 2. it; 48 1.92 .3.60 2.16 2.S8 2.52 a. 12 2.52| 3.24 2.52 2.33 1.20 2.16 3.24 2.88 3.72J 2.62 2.88 2.16 2.76 2.70 3.24 2.78 2.:;: 2.52 2.16 2.40 72 2>s 2.88 3.24 1.44 2.- 1.44 2.40 1.92 2.8S 2.40 "72 3.24 2.33 2.16 2.88 2.52 2.16 2.79 2.52 2.113 2.52 2.40 72 3.24 2.88 2.8s 3.24 1.44 1.44 3.60 2.88 2.*>4 2.88 8J8 3.24 2.40 88 1.50 2.52 2. it; 4.32 72 2.S* 2.,vS 2.16 3.24 3.24 2.40 2.88 2.40 72 l.-SO FEMALES OR (J) CHILDREN. i860. 1864. 166& 1S66. 1867. j 1868. 1.20 1.08 l.os ae 1.08 1.44 1.20 1.20 1.44 l.OS l.i is 72 1.44 1.08 1.44 72 j '.-. 1.44 1.0.- 1.20 i llfi M S7 1.44 1.08 2.16 190 84 J58 350 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. T A BLE Continued. TRADES. MALES. FEMALES OR (.J) CHILDREN. I860. 1864. 186. 1866. 1867. 1868. I860. 1864. 1866. 1866. 1867. 1868. 2.40 2.16 4.32 2.88 2.88 2.88 5.04 2.88 3.60 2.88 4.32 3.60 5.04 3.60 o'.04 3.60 3.60 5.04 Cotton-spinners 1.08 1.20 1.08 1.80 Day laborers Distillers 1.68 3.18 1.92 3.18 2.04 1 44 2.07 1 44 2.16 1 44 2.34 1 44 Dyers of silk and wool Engravers. File-cutters Fringe-makers Furriers Gardeners Glaziers 1.44 3.96 2.16 1.92 1.56 1.80 1.08 2.16 2.52 1.80 2.88 2.88 2.16 1.80 2.16 1.26 2.88 3.60 2.88 3.60 2.88 2.16 2.42 1.44 2.64 2.88 2.88 3.60 2.88 2.16 2.42 1.44 2.64 2.88 2.88 3.60 2.88 2.16 1.44 2.88 2.12 2.88 3.60 2.88 2.40 3.60 1.44 2.88 2.96 1.44 ... 96 1.02 1.08 1.08 1.08 1.08 3.12 3 24 3 24 3 9 4 2.16 2.40 1.68 1 68 Hatters 1.68 2.16 2.52 3.24 2.16 1.20 2.16 2.34 2.16 3.60 3.24 2.88 1.44 2.16 96 2.88 3.12 2.88 2.16 96 2.52 1.08 2.52 1.08 3.12 Iron and steel workers : > ... Machine-builders Locksmiths 3.12 2.88 3.17 3.60 2.16 4.32 3.24 4.32 2.40 Nailmakers :... 1.08 3'.96 2.52 1.20 2.52 3.96 2.40 96 2.88 4 1? 2.40 - 96 2.88 2.40 1.08 3.60 2.40 1.08 4.32 4.32 Screw-makers Loom-builders Millers 2.16 2.05 2.88 2.15 2.52 1.92 2.52 1.92 2.52 1.92 2.52 1.92 1.26 1.44 1.44 1.44 1.80 1.44 Mining: 4.32 5.04 4.68 4.68 2.52 2-52 2.30 2.16 1.80 3.60 1.06 2.50 3.60 1.92 2.88 3.60 1.04 72 2.04 2.40 3.24 72 2.16 2.40 3.24 96 2.28 2.40 3.60 96 2.40 2.40 3.60 96 96 96 2.88 1.92 1.68 2.88 2.88 5.04 3.60 7.20 2.16 2.88 1.44 1.08 2.40 2.88 2.88 1.68 2.16 2.40 2.88 Oil-cloth makers Potters Printers : Compositors J24 ... J30 1.08 84 2.16 1.80 1.20 1.20 1.80 3.96 2.16 3.36 1.98 1.20 1.08 96 2.62 1.08 2.16 1.08 96 2.52 1.80 1.44 1.44 2.12 3.96 2.64 3.36 2.16 1.68 1.20 1-08 2.88 1.08 2.52 96 96 2.52 1.92 1.68 2.88 2.52 3.96 2.64 5.76 2.16 2.88 1.08 96 2.4C 2.16 2.28 1.44 2.16 2.16 2.52 96 96 2.70 1.92 1.68 2.88 2.52 216 2.88 1.08 96 2.40 2.16 2.40 1.68 2.16 2.16 2.52 96 96 2.88 1.92 1.68 2.88 6.48 2.16 2.88 1.08 1.08 2.40 2.40 2.52 1.68 2.16 2.40 2.70 Saw-mill laborers Slaters Shoemakers Shoemakers' tools Soap-makers Stocking-weavers (ma- ) chine) J '" Stonemasons Stonecutters Tailors Tanners ... Tapestry-makers Watchmakers Wheelwrights "eo 1.08 "is V.08 "is V.08 "is V.08 "(50 Vos "eo V.20 Wire-cloth makers Weavers (silk) 2.52 2.16 2,88 2.88 2.16 3.24 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 351 My colleague [Mr. Townsend] hands me a letter con- taining a statement of American wages in some of the same branches of labor. That gentleman may contrast them with the wages of Germany, as set forth by the Statistical Bureau of Prussia, I will also hand the letter to the reporters : PH66 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. same trades do. They will not even be content to get meat once a week, as the workmen of England are; and if they be not, work must stop. And I ask gentlemen from the grain country what they suppose these people will do with themselves when the fire has gone out in the forge and furnace, and the loom and spindle stand still, and the salt-kettle rusts, and there is no work in the coal mine because the manufactures that made a market for it have been transferred to foreign countries in which wages are low and where the "working people live on rye and potatoes " ? Thank God, we cannot doom them to this fate. The homestead law is their protection. In a cabin on ICO acres of public land they can raise wheat, potatoes, and a few sheep and pigs ; the old-fashioned spinning-wheel and loom, easily made by skilled mechanics, will convert their home-grown wool into fabrics, and they can thus live till wiser legislators succeed us and reanimate the general industries of the country by restoring the protective sys- tem now in force. Is theirs the true remedy ? Is free trade a specific for all or any of our ills? No, sir, it is sheer quackery, char- latanism. The only cure for the evil of which western grain-growers complain, is to increase the number of con- sumers and relatively decrease the number of growers of wheat and corn ; raise, if possible, the wages of workmen so as to make mechanical employments attractive ; say to the farmers' sons, " There is work and good wages for you in the machine-shop,' the forge, the furnace, or the mill ; " say to the men whose capital is unproductive on farms, " Build mills, sink shafts to the coal-bed which underlies your farm : avail yourselves of the limestone quarry and the ore-bed, whether of iron, lead, copper, zinc, or nickel ; employ your industry and capital so that it shall be pro- fitable to you, your country, and mankind ; " and in a little while you will cheapen iron and steel and make an adequate market for all the grain of the country. The gentleman's remedy is the theory of the homeopathic physician, that like cures like, which though it may be correct in physics, is not an approved maxim in social science. Mr. Allison. I would like the gentleman to state how long it will be before that happy period will arrive ? Mr. Kelley. Well, sir, I cannot tell exactly. It will FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 367 depend upon the degree of promptness with which the remedy is applied. But if the Clerk will do me the kind- ness to give me a little rest by reading a letter from an Irish patriot, one who knew England's tenderness for her laboring people experimentally at home in Ireland, and who laid one of his limbs away in the service of our coun- try during the war, and now lives in Quincy, Illinois, I will endeavor to give the gentleman some idea. The Clerk read as follows : " We have a population of 35,000 or 40,000, and our citizens are just commencing to awake to the necessity of encouraging local manufacturing. We have 2 paper mills, 10 flour mills, 5 tobacco factories; sales $1.300,000; 9 machine-shops; sales $1,050,000; 5 machine founderies ; 5 stove founderies turned out last year 36,400 stoves, amounting to $473.200 cash sales ; 2 boiler shops, turning out $216,000 per year ; 15 wagon and plow shops, with a capital of $260,000 ; 4 planing mills, capital $180.000 ; 14 manufacturers of saddles arid harness, capital $233,400 ; and numerous others too tedious to mention. There is a company at present engaged in boring for coal, with fine prospects of success. If we can only get coal here manufacturing will spring up all around us. I have thought some of organizing a stock company to build factories and supply funds to encourage skilled workmen to enter into what is called the cooperative system. I shall shortly test the matter to see if it can be made to work. "If the friends of protection can hold their own till after the tak- ing of the census the crisis will be passed, for that will show such progress in the material wealth of the nation that it will require a bold man indeed to attack our system of labor. It is useless for us to talk of competing with England while she keeps as many of her people in her poor-houses as she does in her public schools a country that expends seven-eighths more to keep up her poor- houses than she does to support her schools. England and Scot- land have a population of 24,599.277, for the education of which she has 14,591 schools, with 12,832 teachers, costing annually $4,212,500, while she expends for her poor-houses annually $32,595,000. Com- pare her with Illinois, a State sixty years ago in possession of the savages, but now possessing a population of about 2,500,000, with 11,000 schools and 20,000 teachers, costing $6,500,000 annually, more than 50 per cent, greater than England, with a population ten times larger than us. The free-trader says that pauperism is grow- ing less in England under her free-trade system ; but I find, from Purdy's Report in 1866, she had 842,860 ; and I see by the Ameri- can Cyclopedia of 1868 for that year 1,034,832 paupers are reported. These are facts for the American people to profit by. It is reported that there are now in London more than 80,000 skilled workmen out of employment. We hear much about English liberty, but I have been of the opinion that the kind of liberty they are enjoying is that the wolf accords the lamb, or the strong the weak in all nations a liberty which, I trust, will never find a place among our institutions. 368 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. "The sympathizers or advocates of this English system say that free trade will give us a market for our surplus produce in Europe. But I find the more we ship the less we receive. In 1868 we ex- ported to England 4,414,230 hundred weight of wheat, receiving therefor $17,952,850 ; in 1869, for the same period, 7,938,818 hun- dred weight, receiving therefrom only $17,740.770, or $211,000 less than we received for half the amount the previous year. If we were to change our policy, and instead of sending our wheat to England induce those 80,000 skilled workmen to come to us we would not then be compelled to look to England for a market. They will be compelled to come to us for our cotton and tobacco ; but there is no need of us going to them for manufactured goods. We can take their surplus labor, transfer it to this country, which would ulti- mately tend to the welfare of both, and thereby accomplish more than the sentimental philanthropists of Europe and America can ever do by preaching ' free trade.' We are influenced too much by the polical economists of Europe, who write to tickle the fancy of the wealthy few without any regard to the rights of the laboring millions." Mr. Kelley. I desire in this connection, and before turning to other topics, to present a brief extract from a speech made in the United States Senate by the experi- enced merchant and enligtened statesman who represents New Jersey in that body, Hon. Alexander G. Cattell. In the course of his remarks on the 22d of January, 1867, he said : " But, Mr. President, the harmony of interests which exists between agriculture and manufactures, and the truth of the position I have taken, are clearly shown by actual results. I am sure the Senate will excuse me if I draw an illustration from personal ob- servation in my own mercantile life. Twenty years ago last autumn I embarked in the trade in breadstuff's in the city of Philadelphia. At that time, and for some succeeding years, the entire volume of my business was made up of consignments of agricultural pro- ducts from the valleys of the Susquehanna. the Juniata, and the Lehigh. I have not the figures at command, but I am sure I speak within bounds when I say that my own house and the four or five others doing business from the same points must have received from this quarter 4,000,000 to 5,000,000 bushels of cereals per annum. Philadelphia is still the natural market for the surplus product of this territory, but for some years past there have not been consignments enough received from that entire section to realize commissions sufficient to pay the salary of a receiving clerk. "Do you ask, has production fallen off"? I answer, no ; on the contrary, it has increased, but the whole line of these valleys has been dotted with furnaces and forges, and rolling-mills and saw-mills and factories and workshops, filled with operatives, and the con- sumer of agricultural products has been brought to the farmer's doors. He now finds a readier market for his products at home at prices equal to those ruling on the sea-board, of which he avails FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 369 himself and thus saves all the cost of transportation and factorage, equal at average prices to about 20 per cent. Nay, more, sir, my own firm has frequently within the past few years sold and shipped to the millers in one of these valleys, that in which the iron interest has been most developed, the Lehigh, wheat drawn from Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa to supply the deficiency in the con- sumptive want. And these products of the prairies of the West were sold, too, at a price far in excess of what could have been realized by exportation to any country on the face of the globe. As a consequence of this state of things land has risen in value through all this section, and farms that could have been bought fifteen or twenty years ago at $40 or $59 p er acre are now saleable at $150 or $200 per acre. Villages have grown to be towns, and towns have grown to be cities, agriculture and manufactures have clasped hands and prosperity reigns." PROTECTION STIMULATES IMMIGRATION. Sir, the gentleman from Iowa asked how long it would take if we shut up our machine-shops and mills, and closed our coal-mines, to turn 100,000 men into agricul- turists. It would take one season. Mr, Allison. Oh no; that was not my question. Mr. Kelley. That was what I was stating when you interrupted me. Mr. Allison. I wanted to know how long it would be before iron and steel would be produced at a cheaper rate than it is now imported. That was my question. Mr. Kelley. I do not think I said cheaper than it is now imported, but cheaper than it can then be imported. As the price goes down here it is going up in England; and under the present duty we will soon be able to supply our own demand, and meet England in common markets at equal prices. Sir, I want to show gentlemen from the West what effect the tariff has on immigration. I have before me the tariffs from the organization of the Govern- ment down to the present time, given in ad valorem per- centages, and a statement of the number of immigrants that arrived in each year, from 1856 to 1869 inclusive. By comparing them I find that whenever our duties have been low immigration has fallen off, and whenever our duties have been high the volume of immigration has increased. This seems to be a fixed law. Both papers are taken from the immaculate report of David A. Wells, Special Commissioner of Internal Revenue, and I therefore present them with some hesi- tancy, and with the remark that if they are incorrect it is not my fault. 24 370 FAEMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. I find by these tables that in the nine years from 1856 to 1864, inclusive, we received 1,403,497 immigrants; and in the four years of the protective tariff, of which so many gentlemen from the West whose States are not overcrowded complain, we have received 1,514,816, or over 111,000 more in the four years of protection than in the nine preceding years of free trade and low tariff. But I had better let the statement speak for itself. In intro- ducing it Mr. Wells says : " The following is a revised and the most accurate attainable statement of the course of alien immigration into the United States since and including the year 1856 : 1856 200,436 1857 251,306 1858 123,126 1859 121,282 1860 153,640 1861 , 91,920 1862 91,987 1863 176,282 1864 193,418 1865 248,120 1866 318,554 1867 298,358 1868 297,215 1869 352,569 Total in fourteen years 2,918,213 " Total from July 1, 1865, to June 30, 1869, five years, 1,514,816." In 1856 the rate of duty on the aggregate of our im- ports was 20.3, and the number of immigrants were 200,- 436 ; in 1859 the rate of duties had been reduced to 14.6, and the number of immigrants fell to 121,282. In 1861, by the Acts of March 2, August 5, and December 24, the rate of duties was further reduced to 11.2. This broke the camel's back. So many men were thrown out of em- ployment and wages sunk so low that none but agricultur- ists could come to us with any prospect of improving their condition, and immigration sunk to a point lower than it had been since the ever-to-be-remembered free- trade crisis of 1837-40. In 1861 but 91,920 immi- grants arrived, and the depression continued through 1862, during which the number of immigrants was but 91,987. By the Act of July 14, 1862, the duties were raised, so that in 1863 they were up to 23.7, and the FARMEKS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 371 immigration nearly equaled that of the two preceding years, having gone up 176,282. By the several Acts of 1864, 1865, and 1866 the duties were so increased, that they averaged on the importations of 1866 40.2 per cent., and immigration went up to 318,554. Last year, when the West was further oppressed by the increase of duties on wool and copper, they averaged 41.2, and the number of immigrants went up to 352,569 ; and the commissioners of immigration assure us that this year the number will exceed 400,000. It is thus historically demonstrated that precisely as we make our duties protective of high wages for labor, do we bring skilled workmen from Germany, Belgium, France, and England to work in our mines, forges, furnaces, roll- ing-mills, cotton and woolen factories, and create a home market for the grain of Iowa, Illinois, and other States, whose farmers complain that they have no market for their crops. SKILLED WORKMEN THE MOST VALUABLE COMMODITY WE CAN IMPORT. Mr. Schenck. We have free trade in men. Mr. Kelley. The chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means suggests in this connection that we have free trade in men. Yes, men are on the free list. They cost us not even freight. Yet how they swell the revenues and help to pay the debt of the country ! They are raised from helpless infancy, through tender childhood, and trained to skilled labor in youth in other lands, and in manhood, allured by higher wages and freer institutions, they come to us and are welcomed to citizenship. In this way we have maintained a balance of trade that has ena- bled us to resist without bankruptcy the ordinary com- mercial balance that has been so heavily against us. We promote free trade in men, and it is the only free trade I am prepared to promote. FRENCH FREE TRAD The French tariff is as inimical to us as that of England. It is replete with prohibitory duties and absolute prohibi- tions. Yet France is spoken of by the English journals and in the rhapsodies of gentlemen as a free trade nation. Why, sir, on every article mentioned in the French tariff, unless it is absolutely free, the duty is so much if imported in French vessels, and so much more if imported in vessels 372 FAEMEES, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PEOTECTION. of other nations. Every head of a column of the rates of duty established by the French tariff shows that you can- not import dutiable articles into France at the same rate in the vessel of another nation that you can in a French one. They read thus : Articles. General tariff. Import tariff in treaty with Great Britain and other countries. Imports. In French and treaty vessels. In other vessels. In French vessels. In other vessels. Mr. Allison. Are you in favor of that rule? Mr. Kelley. I am. Mr. Allison. So am I. Mr. Kelley. I am in favor of imposing duties so as to discriminate in favor of American shipping. I am for every form of protection to American industry and enter- prise. In the French tariff tobacco is classed as a colonial pro- duct, and its importation on private account is prohibited. It is a Government monopoly. American-grown tobacco, even in the leaf, is admitted into France only when the colonial supply fails ; and then if it is carried in other than a French vessel it is made to pay an extra duty of nearly one cent on the pound, which is imposed in order to tax foreign shipping.. The gentleman from Iowa objects to the schedule under which duties are to be assessed under the committee's bill, and especially to that of sugar. Let me invite his atten- tion to some of the provisions of the French tariff on su- gar : Sugar from other than French possessions ; sugar similar to refined powdered, above No. 20, from foreign countries, etc. ; and sugar, refined, from other possessions, are prohibited. Thus all sugars refined or advanced in other than French possessions are prohibited, as is also molasses. Mr. Schenck. That has built up their beet-sugar manu- facture. Mr. Kelley. Yes ; and it is an industry we can and should build up in the West by adequately protective duties, I FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 373 want to run cursorily through this French tariff. The im- portation of cast-iron into France is prohibited. W rough t- iron in plates is prohibited. Manufactures of iron of certain kinds are prohibited. All chemical products not enume- rated are prohibited. All extracts of dye-woods are pro- hibited. Dye-woods are admitted free ; but if American or other labor has been expended in making extracts from dye-woods the extracts are prohibited. Gentlemen of the free trade school generally and the gentlemen from New York [Mr. Brooks] and from Iowa [Mr. Allison] assail vehemently, and, as I think, most unfairly, the iron sche- dule and duties on steel proposed by the committee's bill. How differently France estimates the importance of these vital industries. Her tariff prohibits all manufactures of zinc and other metals not specially named and the follow- ing articles of iron and steel, in the production of which we excel both her and England in quality and cheapness : " Castings, not polished : chairs for railroads, plates, etc., cast in open air ; cylindric tubes, plain or grooved columns, gas-retorts, etc., and other articles without ornament or finish ; hollow-ware not included above ; castings, polished or turned ; the same, tinned, varnished, etc. ; household utensils and other articles not enumerated, of iron or sheet-iron, polished or painted ; same, enam- eled or varnished ; all articles of steel ; iron, blacksmiths' work ; locksmiths' work; nails, by machine ; nails, by hand; wood-screws, bolts, screw-nuts." France prohibits and excludes these articles that her poorly paid workmen may be protected against the pro- ductions of those of Belgium and Germany, who receive even less than they. All tissues of cotton, except nankeens, the produce of India, lace, manufactured by hand or other- wise, and tulle, with lace-work, are also prohibited. Cotton and woolen yarns are also prohibited by the general tariff, though admitted at high and most scientifically rated pro- tective duties from England under the import tariff treaty with that country. Yes, sir, if you spin our cotton into yarn, or weave it into a tissue or fabric, it is excluded from the broad empire of France. If you carry it there raw, with no labor in it save that of the slave or the freedman, you can take it in, but as yarn or a tissue it is prohibited. THE PURPOSE OF THE FREE LIST. The committee in proposing the extended free list em- 374 FAEMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. braced in the second section of the bill hoped to accomplish two important objects, one of which was to promote direct commerce between us and those non-manufacturing coun- tries which require the productions of our shops and mills, and whose raw materials we require ; and the other was to give our manufacturers and mechanics, free of duty, those essentials which France, England, and Belgium admit free. A majority of the committee believe that the adop- tion of this will do much to revive our commerce, and not only quicken established industries, but lead to the intro- duction of new ones, and thus increase the market for the productions of the farm and reduce the cost and price of a large range of manufactured goods. We think it is sound policy to let raw materials that Ave cannot produce in free, and collect our revenue from articles in the production of which much labor has been expended. This is the theory of the bill we reported. It has the sanction of the sagacity and expedience of France and England, and was framed regardless of the teachings of mere theorists and schoolmen. DUTIES ON WOOL AND WOOLENS. Mr. Chairman, although I had made some preparation for its illustration, I had not expected to go into so general a discussion of the effect of protection upon the interests of the farmer. The wide range the discussion has taken must be my apology for presenting one other view of the subject. The gentleman from Iowa told us that the wool interest is suffering from the excessive duties imposed on woolen cloths by the existing tariff, and that the committee proposes to continue them. Sir, I may be very dull, but after hearing the gentleman it still seems to me that the wool interest must have been benefited by the bill increasing the duties on wool and woolens. "We certainly have more people wearing wool now than we had in 1860. We have, as I have shown, received over 2,000,000 immigrants since then, and our natural increase is at least 1,000,000 per annum ; yet I find by the thirteenth report of the commis- sioners of her Britannic Majesty's customs that the declared value of woolen manufactures exported to the United States was, in 1860, 3,414,050, while in 1868, nearly a decade thereafter, it was 3,658,432 an increase of but 234,382 in eight years. Who has grown the wool that clothes our increased FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 375 population? Our freedmen now wear ordinary woolen clothes. The "poor whites " of the South now wear what they call "store goods," but to which they were unused before the rebellion. The cold Northwest, whose people wear woolen goods all the year, has increased its popula- tion so largely that it is demanding enlarged representa- tion on this floor without waiting for the census. Our wool-wearing population has nearly doubled ; yet the amount of wool imported is scarcely greater than it was eight years ago. Where does the wool come from ? Does it drop gently from, the heavens, like the dew, or is it grown upon the sheep of western and southern farmers? THE WAY TO REDUCE THE TAXES. Sir, I am as anxious to reduce taxes as rapidly as it can be done consistently with the maintenance of the public credit and the gradual extinguishment of the debt as any man on this floor. I do not make this declaration now for the first time. On the 31st of January, 1866, I saw that, the war being over, the freedmen must be provided with the means of making a living by other labor than that of the plantation hand ; that the women of the South must have employment; that there must be a diversifi- cation of our industry; that the Northwest would be shut out from her markets if she did not diversify her in- dustries ; and in the course of some remarks I made that day in favor of remitting taxes, both internal and external, I described the bill now under consideration. In stating how I would reduce the burdens of the people, I said : " I have never been able to believe that a national debt is a na- tional blessing. I have seen how good might be interwoven with or educed from evil, or how a great evil might, under certain conditions, be turned to good account ; but beyond this I have never been able to regard debt, individual or national, as a blessing. It may be that, as in the inscrutable providence of God it required nearly five years of war to extirpate the national crime of slavery, and anguish and grief found their way to nearly every hearth-side in the country be- , fore we would recognize the manhood of the race we had so long op- pressed, it was also necessary that we should be involved in a debt of unparalleled magnitude that we might be compelled to avail our- selves of the wealth that lies so freely around us, and by opening markets for well-rewarded industry make our land, what in theory it has ever been, the refuge of the oppressed of all climes. England, if supreme selfishness be consistent with sagacity, has been emi- nently sagacious in preventing us from becoming a manufacturing people ; for with our enterprise, our ingenuity, our freer institutions, the extent of our country, the cheapness of our land, the diversity 376 FAEMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. of our resources, the grandeur of our seas, lakes, and rivers, we should long ago have been able to offer her best workmen such in- ducements as would have brought them by millions to help bear our burdens and fight our battles. We can thus raise the standard of British and continental wages and protect American workmen against ill-paid competition. This we must do if we mean to main- tain the national honor. The fields now under culture, the houses now existing, the mines now being worked, the men we now employ, cannot pay our debt. To meet its annual interest by taxing our present population and developed resources would be to continue an ever-enduring burden. " The principal of the debt must be paid ; but as it was contracted for posterity its extinguishment should not impoverish those who sustained the burdens of the war. I am not anxious to reduce the total of our debt, and would in this respect follow the example of England, and as its amount has been fixed, would not for the present trouble myself about its aggregate except to prevent its increase. My anxiety is that the taxes it involves shall be as little oppressive as possible, and be so adjusted that while defending our industry against foreign assault, they may add nothing to the cost of those necessaries of life which we cannot produce, and for which we must therefore look to other lands. The raw materials entering into our manufac- tures^ which we are yet unable to produce, but on ivhich ive unwisely impose duties, I would put into the free list ivith tea, coffee, and other such purely foreign essentials of life, and luould impose duties on commodities that compete with American productions, so as to pro- tect every feeble or infant branch of industry and quicken those that are robust. I would thus cheapen the elements of life and enable those whose capital is embarked in any branch of production to offer such ivages to the skilled workmen of all lands as would steadily and rapidly increase our numbers, and, as is always the case in the neighborhood of growing cities or toions of considerable extent, in- crease the return for farm labor ; this policy would open new mines and quarries, build new furnaces, forges, and factories, and rapidly increase the taxable property and taxable inhabitants of the country. " Let us pursue for twenty years the sound national policy of pro- tection, and we will double our population and more than quadruple our capital and reduce our indebtedness per capita and per acre to little more than a nominal sum. Thus each man can ' without moneys ' pay the bulk of his portion of the debt by blessing others with the ability to bear an honorable burden." My views on these points have undergone no change, and I cannot more aptly describe the bill before the com- mittee, in general terms, than I thus did more than four years ago. THE DEFECTS OF THE PRESENT TARIFF, AND THE REMEDIES SUGGESTED BY THE NEW BILL. "Why not maintain the existing tariff, and wherein does the bill submitted by the Committee of Ways and Means differ from it ? Several gentlemen have propounded these FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 377 questions, and I now propose to answer them briefly and rapidly. The existing law is crude and contains many incongruous provisions. It is not in accord with the theory of the free-trader or the protectionist. It imposes the heaviest duties on articles of common consumption that we cannot produce. Thus, on chalk, not a cubic inch of which has, so far as I have heard, been discovered in our country, it impo- ses a duty of 833 J per cent. It is bought at from 75 cents to $1 50 per ton, and the duty is $10. This onerous duty is not protective. We have no chalk-fields, and produce no substitute for it. It is therefore simply a tax, and one that everybody feels ; the boy at his game of marbles, or before the blackboard in school, the housewife when she cleans her silver or britannia ware, and the farmer in the cost of putty for his windows. The new bill puts chalk on the free list. Mr. Allison. Have we not increased the duty on putty, which enters into use in the house of every citizen in the land? Mr. Kelley. Yes, sir ; and why did we do it ? All our western farmers are raising wheat, and many of them can find no market for their crop, and this bill, it is hoped, will, if it become a law, induce some of them to produce other things. We import immense amounts of linseed and castor-oil, and the majority of the committee hoped that by raising the duty on these oils, and those which may be substituted for them, it would induce some of them to raise flax and manufacture the oil. Again, we import great quantities of goods made of flax and substitutes for it, and we hoped that better duties on the oil and on these fabrics might lead to the establishment of linen and other mills in the interior. And as linseed-oil is the ingredient of chief value in putty, we raised the duty on it to correspond with that on oil. We hope thus to secure to every citizen good and cheap putty, made of free chalk and American-grown oil. THE ALLEGATION THAT WE PROTECT OUR MANUFACTURES BY DUTIES AVERAGING FORTY PER CENT. IS NOT TRUE. Mr. Chairman, I desire to call attention to the unfair- ness, unintentional of course, of the statement of the gen- tleman from New York [Mr. Brooks] that the existing tariff gives protection equal to an average of 41.2 per 378 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION". cent. That is the percentage of duties on the aggregate of our imports, and he will hardly claim that the duty of over 833 per cent, on chalk is protective of any of our industries. Again, \ve collect a duty of 300 per cent, on pepper. Why should black pepper pay 300 per cent ? Do we grow it anywhere in this country ? Is this duty protective of any of our industries ? You pay 5 cents a pound for pepper and the tariff imposes a duty of 15 cents, gold, equal to 300 per cent., and the gentleman includes this in his average of protective duties. Do we grow cloves or clove-stems in any part of the country ? Is the duty on them protective ? It is on cloves 355 per cent, and on clove-stems 386 per cent., and yet the gentleman also in- cludes these with his protective duties. I think gentlemen perceive by this time what I meant when I said that many of the provisions of the present tariff are incongruous. While many of them are high enough for protection they are countervailed by higher duties on raw materials that we cannot produce, and which rival nations admit free or under very low duties. I shall not attempt to bring all such incongruities to the attention of the committee, but beg leave to allude to a few more. On cayenne pepper, the duty is 303 per cent. ; on allspice, 376| per cent. ; on nutmegs, 188J per cent. ; on crude camphor, 113 per cent.; on saltpetre, 77f per cent. ; on varnish gums, none of which are produced in this country, 80 per cent. ; on tea, the farmer's and laborer's refreshing drink, 78 J per cent. ; on coffee, 47J per cent. I could largely extend this list of duties, each of which is a tax on some article of common consumption not produced in the country, and to that extent a bonus to our competitors. I am in favor of making all such articles free ; and the committee has reduced the duties on them or put them on the free list. When these provisions shall be enacted into law the gentleman from New York can calculate the per- centage and find that our duties will compare favorably with those imposed by any manufacturing nation except England ; whose brief trial of free trade has cost her her supremacy.* * " The operatives have seen other classes of the community profiting by this policy and increasing in wealth, whilst they have been going steadily down hill : they have seen the operatives of Belgium, France, Germnny, Switzerland, America advance in prosperity, in intelligence, in technical education, far more FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 379 DUTIES WHICH NEED READJUSTMENT. Another serious fault of the existing law is that so many of its duties are ad valorem. Dishonest men take advantage of this and have goods invoiced below the proper value, and thus not only defraud the Government, but do wrong to both the home manufacturer and the honest importer. This system of duties has much to do with the decline of American commerce. The large temptation to defraud the Government by undervaluation has caused great houses abroad to establish agencies here and to refuse to sell directly to an American purchaser. This is so with all the Sheffield steel-makers and most of the continental silk houses. In this way the frauds of the steel-makers and silk manufacturers have been enormous, amounting to many millions of dollars. The new bill substitutes specific duties wherever it is practicable. The duties now collected on alcoholic preparations, and those in the production of which spirits are used, such as quinine, chloroform, collodion, etc., are now much too high, having been adjusted to the tax of $2 per gallon on distilled spirits. The new bill adjusts them to the lower tax now collected. Many of the existing duties are so high as to defeat all their legitimate objects and deprive the Government of all revenue. This is especially true of spices. It was in evidence from many sources that these are imported into New York or San Francisco and immediately shipped in under a closely Protective Policy, than they have done under what is called Free Trade. They find that far from having maintained the lead that they had twenty years ago, in a vast number of manufactures, they have lost it, and been distanced by those whom their advisers told them were withering under the cold shade of protection. " Twenty years ago free trade was the cure propounded for all the diseases the country suffered from ; want of work, pauperism, crime, drunkenness, ignorance, were all to diminish under the new era ; they have all increased ; when we look at the result of the cure we have tried, can it be a matter of surprise if many of us still prefer the disease ! We are told free trade principles are spreading; why, in Prussia, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, the idea even of opening their ports and markets, and inviting competition with their own industrial popula- tion, has never yet been mooted ; whilst in America, the operative's paradise, the duties on many British manufactures have been doubled during the last few years, and France, the promised land of free trade, is already trying to withdraw the nominal facilities doled out to us in the commercial treaty. The only man in France who is at heart a free trader, is the Emperor himself. Is this hopeful for the operative classes in England? Does the direction of public opinion in one single country on this subject afford the slightest hope th;it any one of them will admit our manufactures duty free ? On the contrary, protection to native industry is more firmly established as a great universal rule of internal polity than any other, and wherever democratic principles extend this principle will intensify." Sir Edward Sullivan, FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. bond to the British provinces, whence they are smuggled back. The bill of the committee proposes such reductions of the duties as will probably give the Government a handsome revenue while cheapening them to the consumer. The value to the country of the changes proposed can- not fail to be very great. THE PRESENT LAW SHOULD BE REVISED, NOT OVERTHROWN. Would that I could impress upon the House my esti- mate of the value to the country of these proposed changes. I am discussing the bill in no spirit of partisanship. In urging its acceptance I am pleading the cause of the farmer and laborer, as I conscientiously believe that it will, if adopted, increase the purchasing power, the exchangeable value of every bushel of grain grown and hour of labor performed in our country. I have no general condemna- tion for the existing law. It needs revision, but should not be overthrown. As a revenue measure it has ex- ceeded the anticipations of its friends and the most earnest friends of the Government. It yielded for the year end- ing June 30, 1867, $176,417,810 ; for that ending June 30, 1868, $164,464,599 56; and for that ending June 30, 1869, $180,084,456 63 ; and no preceding tariff produced results comparable to these. And, sir, notwithstanding its faults it has been of great value as a protective measure. By its protective in- fluence it has added much to the power of the country and the prosperity of the people. Under it our production of pig-iron has, as I have already shown, been more than doubled, and its production has been extended into new and large fields in States where it was previously unknown. Thus has increased value been given to all the land in those States ; the increase being equal to the addition of the value of the mineral lauds to that of the agricultural surface ; and more than that, it has provided a market in the neighborhood of each furnace, in which articles can be sold which would not bear transportation to distant points or foreign lands. The farmers of Iowa and Minnesota now produce for sale little of anything else than wheat and wool for exportation to the seaboard States. When manu- factories are built or mines opened, villages spring up and create a market for roots, as potatoes and turnips, the pro- ductions of the garden and the orchard, and for hay, by wh ich the western farmer will be relieved from the necessity of FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 381 growing successive crops of wheat to the exhaustion of the soil. These villages also afford a market for lamb, veal, eggs, and all the thousand things that come in as subsidiary sources of income even to those who farm on a great scale. Thus have many farmers felt the protective influence of the existing tariff, as well as in the stimulus it has given to immigration, and the addition of the mine- ral to the agricultural value of immense bodies of land in almost every State ; and while endeavoring to improve it I renew my protest against its repeal or overthrow. THE CAREFUL CONSIDERATION THAT HAS BEEN BESTOWED UPON THE BILL BY THE COMMITTEE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, your Committee of Ways and Means have devoted the earnest labor of a year to the consideration of the revision of the tariff, a duty you committed to them by special resolution of the House. In the discharge of that duty we have traveled in great part at our own proper cost, relieved largely by the hospitality of railroad, steamship, and other transportation companies, from the rocky coasts of Massa- chusetts, and the waters of its bay, along the long coast of California and Oregon, and over the beautiful waters of Puget Sound, the Willamette and the Columbia rivers ; we have listened to merchants, manufacturers, farmers, and men of enterprise, representing all the interests of every section of the country ; and we have been in all respects painstaking and deliberate in our efforts to ascertain how the existing provisions of the tariff can be so modified as to yield the Government adequate revenue, lighten the burdens of the people, and stimulate all their industries with equal hand. And I conscientiously believe that if the bill we have reported should be adopted without an amendment, except those the committee is prepared to suggest, its quickening influence would be felt in every department of the productive and commercial industries of the country. It would do much to revivify the lan- guishing shipping interest. It would give new and grander proportions to the market for your agricultural products. It would maintain in a healthy condition your manufac- turing and mechanical establishments, and it would say to capitalists here and abroad, " The protective policy of the country is confirmed ; you may safely embark in new enter- prises and develop new elements of the illimitable store and varieties of wealth now lying dormant within the country." 382 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. HOW IT WILL STIMULATE THE SHIPPING INTEREST. Do gentlemen ask how it will quicken commerce ? Let them turn to its free list. Our commerce is now with manufacturing nations inhabiting the grain-growing and metalliferous regions of Europe. They produce every- thing we do except cotton, rice, tobacco, and petroleum ; other than these they want but little from us, unless war or drought or excessive rain prevails over so large a section as to materially diminish the grain crop. We should cultivate an exchange of products with the non- manufacturing tropical or semi-tropical countries. We want their gums, spices, barks, ivory, dye-woods, drugs, and other productions which they would gladly exchange for our grain, spirits, cotton fabrics, axes, hoes, shovels, and an infinite variety of our productions. These coun- tries are our natural markets, but we have excluded our- selves from them by those provisions of our tariff laws which impose duties on their exports which we need as raw materials. All other manufacturing countries admit their productions free, while we impose duties on them which, as I have shown, are taxes upon ourselves in their consumption. But this does a further wrong to the ship- ping interest in this wise : the London merchant gets their productions in exchange for the shoddy cloth, low-grade iron, and general "Brumagen" wares of England, and imports them free of duty. He ships them to us in Eng- lish steamers, and adds freight to his many other profits. This trade of right belongs to us, and under the commit- tee's bill we will enjoy it. Let me illustrate by a single example. The cost of saltpetre is a question of importance to every railroad builder, quarryman, and miner, and we ought to import the raw material for it from two countries remote from each other and manufacture it more cheaply than we now import it through London from India. The duties on this article are higher than they should be, and so appor- tioned as to discriminate against our labor. That on the crude article is 25 per cent, higher than that on the par- tially refined, and is at the rate of 77 per cent. They are as follows : on partially refined saltpetre, 2 cents per pound; on crude, 2 \ cents, and on refined, 3 cents. The new bill removes the discrimination against ourselves and makes but two grades of duty. It reduces that on the crude article to 1| cent, and on the refined to 2| cents. FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 383 But while thus reducing the duty on this important art- icle the bill of the committee invites the establishment of its cheaper manufacture in our midst and the employ- ment of many ships in bringing us the raw material in equal proportions from Peru and Germany. If gentlemen will examine the free list they will find that it embraces muriate of potassa and nitrate of soda. The latter is a natural product of Peru, and the former of Germany, and from 1000 tons of each we can produce 1000 tons of saltpetre cheaper than we can import it from India. This would double the tonnage required for the carrying of this article. I have thus presented to the committee but one of many illustrations with which I might detain them of the influence the bill will if it be- comes a law exercise upon our commerce. STEEL AD VALOREM. I have said that one of the defects of the present law is its frequent application of ad valorems, which open the door to great frauds. I turn for an illustration to what seems to be a favorite topic of the gentleman from Iowa, [Mr. Allison] the article of steel. The gentleman said the duty on steel in ingots, bars, sheets, and wire above a certain thickness is 2 cents, and that we had raised it to 3 cents, while reducing the duty a little on less im- portant classes of steel. Let me state the case fairly. The present duty on ingots, bars, sheet, and wire not less than one quarter of an inch in diameter, valued at 7 cents per pound or less, is 2J cents per pound ; value 7 and not above 11 cents per pound, 3 cents per pound ; valued above 11 cents per pound, 3| cents per pound and 10 per cent, ad valorem. The gentlemen attempted to discredit the evi- dence which proves the magnitude of the frauds which have been persistently perpetrated by the Sheffield steel makers for the last twenty years under this system ; but the Secretary of the treasury is acting upon it, and is largely increasing the revenues of the country from steel by requiring it to be honestly invoiced. Much evidence, confirmed by the admission of one of the firms engaged in it, establishes the fact that a combi- nation has existed among these wealthy Englishmen to sell no steel to Americans in England, but to send it to agents in this country for sale, and to so undervalue it that that which should pay 3 J cents and 10 per cent, ad valorem has, to the extent* of 9 pounds out of every 10, 334 FARMEKS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. been brought in at 3 cents, and by the same fraudulent device and conspiracy the greater part of that which was subject to a duty of 3 cents has corne in at 2J. Thus the Government has been defrauded of many mil- lions of revenue. Now, what has the committee done in the premises ? "We have agreed to put all steel that which was below and that which was above, that which paid 2J cents a pound and that which paid 5J cents a pound, or 3J cents and 10 per cent, ad valorem under a duty of 3J cents per pound. We had importers and manufacturers of steel and experts before us, and they agreed that there was no conceivable test by which ex- aminers and inspectors of customs could distinguish be- tween steel worth from 4 to 7 cents and that worth more than 11 cents a pound ; so that though we may by the proposed change for a brief time do some injustice to those who use low-priced steel and those who produce high qualities of steel, we have made a single duty, which will give us the revenue honestly due and enable our steel manufacturers to live and extend their works. In my recent remarks on Mr. Wells' report I quoted the language of the senior partner of a steel-making firm in Sheffield, England, in which he admitted the fact of undervaluation, and declared that while the law remains as it is the Government will be defrauded and cannot pre- vent it. Thus the honest men among the English steel- makers implore us to close the door against fraud in which they must participate, or surrender our market to their less honest neighbors. Yet, for our well-devised effort to do justice to the Government and honest importers, we are denounced as taxing the people to build up monopolies! The gentleman from Iowa will I am sure pardon me for correcting a statement of his, on which he amplified somewhat to-day touching steel- manufacturing in Pitts- burg. The statement he read yesterday was not that her steel-makers were able to compete with England in 1859; it was that steel-making in that city first became an assur- ed success in that year. Her enterprising men of capital had been for many years and with great loss renewing the yet fruitless experiment. Man after man and firm after firm had failed. Steel- works depreciated in value and new firms bought the stock and premises of old ones at reduced values, till, in 1859, "an assured success was attained." This was the phrase the gentleman from Iowa used yesterday when he had the paper before him. FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 385 STEPHEN COLWELL. I am quite sure that the gentleman from Iowa would not intentionally misstate a fact. Nobody values him more highly than I do. He is as earnest on his side of this great question as I am on mine, and we are both of a temperament that re- quires us to have the figures before us to prevent a certain measure of exaggeration in our statements. There is, how- ever, one point on which I am disposed to quarrel with him, and that is that he should have assumed to have found an ally in my venerable friend, Stephen Colwell, and by a perversion of his language made him seem to plead against protection for American labor when the very words he quoted were written in its behalf. Sir, Stephen Colwell's life has been devoted to his country. It has been a life- long labor of love with him to promote the development of her vast stores of wealth and the prosperity of her farmers and laborers. He was the friend and companion of Frederick List, the founder of the German Zollverein, who was for a few years an exile from his native land and a dweller in the then undeveloped coal regions of Penn- sylvania. After his death Mr. Colwell collected his writ- ings and found pleasure in editing them ; he has also writ- ten and published much in defence of protection as a sure means of promoting national greatness, cheap commodities, and the prosperity of the people ; and I confess that I was both astonished and grieved that a portion of an art- icle of Mr. Colwell's demanding the repeal of internal taxes, and showing that they are a bonus to foreign manu- facturers and a burden upon our home producers, should be quoted by the gentleman from Iowa against the tariff bill, and to prove that protective duties add to the cost of commodities. I know my friend did not think of the wrong he was doing, but it is not just to my venerable friend, whose life is drawing to a close, that his language should be thus perverted before the nation whose interests he has done so much to promote. THE CLASSIFICATION OF IRON NOT NEW. But the gentleman from Iowa asks why the classification of iron found in the bill was adopted by the committee. I will tell him why. Sir, so far as the classification of iron has been modified, and the changes are but few, we adopted the expressed opinion of the Senate and a former Com- mittee of Ways and Means. 25 3S6 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. The Senate of the United States, on the 31st of January, 1867, passed a tariff bill. On the 18th of February of that year the Committee of Ways and Means reported it to this House with certain amendments ; and your commit- tee, finding a classification indorsed by the Senate and former Committee of Ways and Means, followed it, except where they thought change necessary or judicious. This is the classification of which the gentleman complains as novel and artful. I am too weary, and too much exhausted, and your patience is too far gone for me to proceed further with the discussion at present. There are points I would like to consider ; but I must draw rapidly to a conclusion. PROOF THAT PROTECTION CHEAPENS GOODS. The gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Kerr], speaking of my argument on Bessemer rails, said that as America pro- duced but 30,000 tons per annum, the establishment of her works could have had no influence upon the price of English rails, because the quantity produced was relatively so small. I propose to illustrate the fallacy of that argu- ment by the contents of the little box I hold in my hand. So long as America was unprepared to make Bessemer steel no Englishman would sell a ton of rails for less than $150. I have told the story to the committee once, and will not now repeat the details. But when in 1865 the works of Griswold & Co.. at Troy, New York, and the Freedom Works, at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, were ready to deliver Bessemer rails, Englishmen who had been swear- ing that they could not sell them at less than $150 a ton immediately offered them at $130. And when our works increased from two to six they dropped their price down to $100, and if necessary they will drop it to $50, or until they force the owners of our establishments to abandon the production and apply their premises and ma- chinery to some other use. Their policy is to crowd out our works ; or, as Lord Brougham advised in 1815, just after the close of our war, " to spend any amount of money to strangle in the cradle the infant industries, the exigencies of the war had called into existence in the United States." They will spend any amount of money to crowd out these five or six Bessemer rail-works, and then put the price up to figures that will be satisfactory to themselves. I said I would illustrate the argument by the contents FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 387 of a small box I hold in my hand. It contains a few very small articles and specimens of the material of which they are made. They are gas-tips of a kind that till quite lately were made exclusively in Germany. They then sold in our market at from $6 to $12 per gross. I cannot tell you whether this afforded so grand a profit as Bessemer rails did at $150 gold per ton. But, as recent events prove, it must have paid splendidly. Since the close of the war there has been found in the interior of Tennessee a deposit of talc, of which these are specimens [holding up small pieces]. This is carried not in foreign ships, but by our transportation companies, to Boston, giving busi- ness to our railroad companies between the heart of Tennessee and Massachusetts. There Yankee ingenuity converts the talc into gas-tips such as the Germans make, which will not corrode, and for which they had the mo- nopoly of our market. These American men have em- barked a large capital in this enterprise, and employ many people in Tennessee and Massachusetts. They are busy making these little gas-tips and creating a market for western grain, and converting newly-arrived laborers from Europe into well-paid American workingmen. What effect has their enterprise had on the price of por- celain gas-tips? The German manufacturers who could not sell them for less than $6 to $12 a gross, now suddenly drop their price and are flooding the market with them at $2 a gross. At this price they will soon destroy their Yankee rival and regain their old monopoly. Now* are we wrong when we say that if anybody makes a profit out of us we prefer that it shall be those who feed on American wheat, wear American wool, give good wages to American workmen, and pay American taxes, are, in a word, Americans ? The little gas-tip illustrates the truth that American competition cheapens small foreign com- modities quite as well as the weightier article of steel rails. SILK POPLINS. Cases of this kind are continually occurring. Let me tell you of another from away up in the mountain coun- ties of New York, at Schoharie. A quiet, unpretending citizen, seeing^ that there were a large number of unem- ployed girls in and about the village, made the experiment of manufacturing an article in great demand for ladies' dresses, known as silk poplins. He equaled the foreign 388 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. goods in quality, was underselling them, and to the extent of .his capacity to produce was driving them out of the market, when by a change in the wool tariff the duty on his goods was unintentionally reduced, and the foreigners have him at a disadvantage; and if we do not pass this bill, or give him other relief, he must close his factory, lose the capital he has invested in it, and scatter the formerly idle girls he now employs at good wages. These are the facts of the case. The wool bill, in order to let coarse woolen goods in at a low rate, provides that when they are over a certain number of ounces to the square yard they shall come in at 40 per cent. Poplins are in considerable part of silk ; they are finer and more valuable than any heavy woolen goods, but the silk adds to their weight, and it has been held that the duty on them has been reduced from 60 to 40 per cent. Unless the re- lief proposed in this bill be given, Mr. Baar is likely to be ruined and his factory closed. TIN AND NICKEL.. The present law puts a duty of 15 per cent, on tin in pigs or bars. We produce no tin, though I believe they have recently discovered a bed of ore in California, and it is thought to exist in Missouri. I hope it does, and that both deposits may soon be developed. We cannot make tin-plates by reason of the duties on block tin and palm- oil. This bill of the committee proposes to put palm-oil, an African product, and block tin on the free list; .so that we may begin the manufacture of sheet-tin, for which we export annually $8,000,000 in gold. While we have no well-ascertained deposits of tin ore the country abounds in deposits of nickel. Missouri, Ken- tucky, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Con- necticut have large deposits of it ; yet when the law of 1861 was passed its manufacture had not been attempted ; and a duty of 15 per cent., the same as that on block tin, was put on nickel. Our bill proposes to enable the men of Missouri to work the vast deposits of mine La Motte ; the men of Kentucky to work the large deposits in that State, and the people of Connecticut to establish nickel works in the immediate vicinity of their great factories of Britannia and other white-metal wares by putting the same rate of duty on nickel that we have on copper, zinc, lead, iron, and other metals. FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 389 THE EFFECT OF PROTECTING NICKEL. Now let me show you what will be the effect of this measure. I hold in my hand a letter from Evans & Askin, the great nickel manufacturers of England. They tell us how they will punish us if we increase the tariff on nickel ; and I hope you will join me in invoking their punishment. But let them speak for themselves, as they do in this letter. It reads thus : BIRMINGHAM, March 18, 1868. DEAR SIR : Although it is now some time since we had the pleasure of corresponding we hear from time to time of the progress you are making in the nickel trade in America, and we trust you find the business a renuinerative and successful one. We hear that attempts are being made to influence Congress to increase largely the import duties on refined nickel, and although perhaps we might at first regret that the duties should be raised, we are not quite sure it would not ultimately be to our advantage; for, if the duties are so raised as to render the import of nickel al- most prohibitory we shall at once adopt measures to send out one of the junior members of our firm and erect a nickel refinery in the States. In fact, from the large quantities of nicket and cobalt ores offered to us by mine La Motte, the Haley Smelting Company, and several others, we are almost disposed to do so at once, as we think it might answer our purpose better than forwarding the refined article from this country. We are not, of course, selfish enough to wish a monopoly of the nickel trade in America, but we hope and intend to have a share of it, either by shipment to or refining in the States. Should we decide upon erecting works in your country may we reckon on any supply of ore from your mine, in addition to other sources ? We are. dear sir, yours, faithfully, EVANS & ASKIN. Mr. JOSEPH WHARTON. Let them come on with their skilled nickel-makers ; let them bring their capital by millions ; let them, if they can, bring 100,000 people to consume the grain of Missouri ; and we will give them all welcome.* By increasing the duty on nickel from 15 to 40 per cent, mine La Motte will Capital owned in this country is seeking investment in America. Our capitalists are lending largely to the United States, and enabling workmen to do that in the country to which they have emigrated which was wont to be done in this country. If labor in this land keeps the incubus of which we have spoken still hanging on its neck, it is perfectly certain that it will not be able to compete with younger nations in their ports; and accumulated wealth, as capital is, really will find its way out of the country. Keep up an expenditure of one hundred and fifty millions a year, at the same time lessen production, and it will follow, with unerring sureness, that we shall be left dying of starva- tion in the rear of other peoples. The ruin of a nation is not a result which shows itself all at once. It is the issue generally of a comparatively slow pro- cess ; but it is not the less surely, because it is slowly, that a people who send off their most industrious workmen to -increase the forces of other nations who are already competing with them for the world's trade, do come to ruin by such a course. It should not be forgotten that just the more favorable the conditions of lal'or are in the countries to which we send out our workmen, just ?o much the sooner will our adversity come to us from their competition. Social Politict : Kirk. 390 FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. thus become a great manufacturing centre, and there will be a new market, not dependent on long lines of railroad or ocean transportation, for the grain and wool of the valley of the Mississippi. Now, Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, I plead with the gentlemen of the committee to forget their sectional feel- ings, to put aside party strife, to remember that the glory and the power of their country depend on the prosperity, intelligence, and inspiring hopes of the laboring people and their children. I beg them, as I know they all love their country, to stand by her industries, and to aid the poor and oppressed laborers of other lands to escape from a diet of " rye and potatoes," to a land of free schools and liberal wages, in which the daily fare of the family will be of wheat, mutton, beef, or pork, with the vegetables and fruits of all the States of our broad and then assuredly prosperous country. APPENDIX. THE TARIFFS OF THE UNITED STATES. STATEMENT Showing the revenue collected each year, from 1789 to 1868, the amount of dutiable imports and free goods imported annually, and the average rate of duty on im- ports annually. It was one of the appendices of the last annual report of the Special Commissioner of the Revenue. It is very suggestive, and to those who remember the financial condition of the country from 1837 to 1842, and from 1856 to 1861, the price of grain and the suffering endured by the laboring people at all commercial and manufac- turing centres during those periods, will prove conclusive on many points : DATES. TARIFFS. CUSTOMS. IMPORTS. a, " ajsregate. FREE. DUTIABLE. TOTAL. From March 4, 1789, to Dec. 31, 1790 Aug. 10 .. 1791 March 3.. Spirits 1792 May 2 ^General 1793 1794 June 7. ...'General 1795 Jan. 29... Supplementary. 1796 $4,399,473 09 3,443,070 85 4,255,306 56 4,801,065 28 6,588,461 26 6,567,987 94 $52,200,000 31,500,000 31,100,000 34,600,000 69,756,268 81,436,164 75,379.406 68,551,700 79,069,148 91,252,768 111,363.511 76,333,333 64,666,666 85,000,000 120,600,000 129,410,000 138,500,000 66,990,000 59,400,000 85,400,000 63,400,000 77,030,000 '.... 9 9 * 16 16 10 3 12 25 ""- 1797 March 3.. 1798 1799 1800 March 13 1801 1802 General Sugar and wines 7,549,649 65 7,106,061 93 6,610,449 81 9,080,932 73 10,750,778 93 12,458,235 74 10,479,417 61 11,098,565 33 12,936,487 04 14,667,698 17 15,845,521 61 16,363,550 58 7,296,020 58 8,583,309 31 13,313,222 73 8,958,777 53 1803 1804 March 26 1805 March 27 1806 1807 1808 1809 Mediterranean fund Light money.... 1810 1811 1812 July 1.... War, double du- ties FARMERS, MECHANICS, ETC., NEED PROTECTION. 391 TABLE Continued. DATES. 1813 July 13... 1814 1815 1816 April 27.. 1817 1818 April 20.. 1819 March 3.. 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824 May 22... 1825 1826 1827 1828 May 19... 1829 TARIFFS. Salt Min. for protec tioa Iron and alum Wines General rise Min. extended.. 1830 May 20.. 1831 1832 July 14... 1833 March 2. 1834 1836 1836 1837 1838 1839 1840 1841 Sept. 11... 1842 Aug. 30... 1843 1844 1845 1846 Aug 6.... 1847 1848 1849 1850 1851 1852 1853 ...... 1854 1855 1856 1857 March 3.. 1S58 1859 1860 Coffee, tea, mo- lasses Modifications... Compromise Free list tax General rise Revenue tariff.. General (Mar. 2) 1861 -(Aug. 5V (Dec. 24 J 1862 July 14.. 1863 March 3. 1864 June 30.. 1865 March 3. ("Mar. 141 1866^ May 16 V (july28J 1867 March 2.. 1868 1869 Feb. 24... General , General . 49,056,398 00 69.059.642 00 02,316!l53 00 84,928,260 00 79,046,630 00 Wool and wool- lens [176,417,811 00 |t64,464,599 56 Copperincreas'd:i80,048.426 63 CUSTOMS. IMPORTS. FRBg. i DUTIABLE. \ TOTAL. $13,224,624 25 5,998.772 08| 7,282,942 22 36,306,874 88 26,283,348 49 17,176,385. 00 20,283,608 76 15,006,612 15 18,475,703 57 24,066,066 43 22,402,024 29 25,486,817 86 31,653,871 50 26,033,861 97 27,948,956 57 29,951,251 90 27,688,701 11 28,389,505 05 36,596,118 19 29,341,175 65 i$22.005,000 .... 12.965,000 .... 13,041,274 .... 147,103,0001 ... 99.250,000 .... 121,750,000 .... 87,125,000 .... 74,450,000 .... $10,082,313 $52,503,411 1 62,585,72435.6 7,298,708i 75,242,833! 83,241,54131.7 J28.9 9,048,288! 68,530,979) 77,579,26732.7 128.8 TO K*3O T*T>' P*7 nCft ft*)* Of\ K.Af\ rW\T o-r - !- a 12,563.773| 67,985,234 80,549,007 37.5 J31.6 10,947,510 85,392,565 96,340,07637.1 132.8 12,567,769' 72,406,70*! S4,974,477i34.6 30.7 11,855,104! 67,628,964! 79,484.068141.3 35.1 12,379,176' 76,130,618 8S.509,824|39.3 33.8 11,805,501 ~ 12,746,245 62,687,026! 74,492.527144.3 37.1 58,130,675.! 70,876,9: ',920)48.8 u 13.456,625 89,734,499;103,191,124!49,-266i33.8 129 24,177,578 52| 32,447,950| 75,670,361jl08,118,31li31.9 18,960,705 96 25,890,726 66 30,818,327 67 18,134,131 01 19,702,825 45 25,554,533 96 15,104,790 63 19,919,492 1 16,662,746 84 10,208,000 43 29,236,357 38 30,952,416 21 26,712,668 00 23,747,865 00 31,757,071 00 28,346,739 00 39,668,686 00 49,017,568 00 47,339,326 00 58,931,865 00 64,224,190 00 53,025,794 00 64,022,863 00 63,875,905 00 41,789,621 00 49,565,824 00 53,187,511 00 68,393,180, 58,128,1521126,521 ,332:32.6 77,940,493' 7l,955.249|149,895,742i36.0 172 92,056,481i 97,923,554 189,980,035j31.6 'l6.2 69,250,031 71,739,186!l40,989,217J25.3 il24 60,860,005 62,857,3991113,717,HHS37;8 |17 3 76,401,792! 85,690,340ilfi2,092.132:29.9 ilo.8 57,196,204| 49,945,315|107,141,nl9;30.4 114.1 66,019,731! 61,926,446il27,946,177;322 156 30,627,486! 69,534,601 i 100,1 62,0*7 23.1 16.6 35,574,584 29,179,2151 64,753,799 I 35.7 lft.7 24,766,881 83,668,154!lOS,435,035la5.1 J26.9 22,147,840! 95,106,724J117,254,564;32.5 26.4 24,767,730! 96,924,0581121,691,797 26 V 21.9 41,772,636;i04,773,002il46,.T45,638 22V2 |16.2 22,7 1 6,665 132,282,325jl 54,99<*,92S 24 20.4 22,377,614ll25,479,774ll47,a57,439 23 119.2 22,710,382 155,427 ,936!l78,138,31S'25.2 122.3 25,106,587:i91,118,345l216,224,932;26 22.6 29,692,934,183,252,508 1 212,945,44226 22.2 31,383,534,236,595,113 267,978,647 ! 25 22 33,285,82l!271,276,560 304,562,381:23.5 21.1 40,090,a36'221,378,184 261,468,520 23 56,955,706i257,684,236 314,639,942 25 66,729,3061294,160,835 360,890,141 213 80,319,275 202,293,875:282,613,150|20 79,721,116,259,047,014338,768,13019 90,841,749:279,872,327 362,166,254 [ 19 39,582,186 00 *134,559,196 218,180,191 352,739,387 18.1 < 20.3 20.3 17.7 14.8 14.6 14.7 11.2 *91,603,491 183,843,458 275,446,939 26.7 17.7 44,826,629 208,093,891|252,919,920 33.2 23.7 54,244,183 275,320,951I32,565,134 I 37 .2 31 54,329,588 194,226,064J248,555,652!43.7 (34.2 69,728,618:375,783,640 445,512,158 47.06 40.2 39,105,708 372,627.601 411,733.309 47.34|42 8 29,804,147 343,605,301 373,409,448:47 86,44 41,179,172 395,847,369i437 ,026,541 45.4841 .2 * In thene amounts are included imports into the southern ports during the war, from which DO Terenue wai derived, namely, in 1861, $17,069,234 ; in 1462, (90,789 ; and in 1864, $2120. THE VALUE OF AN INEXPOETABLE CUEEENCY. SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF EEPRESENTATIVES, JUNE STH, 1870. The House being in session Mr. Kelley said : The fifteen minutes allotted me will not be sufficient to enable me to examine in detail the bill before the House. But I beg leave to offer a few general suggestions on the subject. In the first place, permit me to say that the South and West need and ought to have increased bank- ing facilities and more bank currency. The Southern States have, if my memory is not at fault, but about two per cent., and the Southwestern States but about two and three-quarters per cent, of the national banking capital. They are entitled to more; and, in my judgment, it would be vastly to the benefit of the country if tney could have considerably more. Banks are found to be a convenience in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere, and their increase would promote the convenience of the people of the West- ern and Southern States. They would facilitate the development of the country, and promote its local trade and the forwarding of the crops. If the bill before the House contained but the first section, providing for the creation of $95,000,000 of banking capital in addition to the amount the country now possesses, with provisions subjecting it to the general banking law, and requiring it to have as its basis a deposit of the bonds of the Govern- ment now extant or those hereafter to be issued, and limit- ing its distribution to those States which have not a proper proportion, I would vote for it. But I cannot sustain this bill; it proposes to construct an inverted pyramid ; and I do not believe a thing of that form can be made to stand. The base ought to be broader than the apex and not narrower. The bill proposes to withdraw from the existing reserve of the banks the three per cent, certificates held by them- and nearly fifty million 392 VALUE OF AN INEXI'ORTABLE CURRENCY. 393 dollars of greenbacks, and to issue $95,000,000 more national bank notes. This in itself would be a perceptible contraction. But the new banks in cities are required to hold a reserve equal to twenty-five per cent, of their cir- culation, and in the country fifteen per cent. These must necessarily consist of greenbacks. The effect would there- fore be a contraction that would be felt by every bank and business man in the country. Now, let me say with emphasis, in reply to gentlemen who maintain the opposite theory, that contraction is not the road to resumption, but rather to bankruptcy. Every $100,000 of your currency that you contract restrains the business, retards the development of the resources and diminishes the profits of the country. Gentlemen ask, how will you achieve resumption if you permit an expan- sion of bank paper ? Sir, I do not wish to attempt the impossible. I am not anxious to resume specie payments until the commercial relations of our country shall have improved. Few greater misfortunes could happen us than that under some impulse we should attempt resumption before the balance of trade shall be in favor of our country and large amounts of our bonds shall have been brought home from abroad. We owe $1,000,000,000 of overdue debt to Europe. It is not overdue from the Government, but from the people of the country. Our five-twenty bonds have not yet ma- tured. But if we should resume specie payments, and tempt the caprice or the cupidity of bankers, merchants, or manufacturers abroad to bring us to bankruptcy, all they would have to do would be to send ten, fifteen or twenty million dollars of bonds home, to be sold at market rates, by which they would make a profit on their original invest- ment and draw the purchase-money from us in gold. Sir, in view of our vast foreign indebtedness, our safety is in the fact that we conduct our domestic exchanges with a non-exportable currency. The gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Ingersoll] reminded us this morning of the fact that in 1857, when our banks were on a specie basis and con- ducted their business by specie payments, the draft of $7,- 000,000 of gold for Europe was the proximate cause of the great financial crisis of that year. And if, with our immense debt abroad and the balance of trade against us heavily as it is, we were to resume, the unexpected draft by our creditors of from seven to ten million dollars would 394: VALUE OF AX INEXl'ORTABLE CURRENCY. bring us to suspension and widespread commercial bank- ruptcy.* Let me contrast the financial history of 1866 with that of 1857. In 1866 gold did not enter into our currency ; it was a commodity. We were using a kind of money which you could not, according to the idea of the gentle- man from Ohio [Mr. Garfield], put into the melting pot and after heating it to red heat find that it retained its original value. We were dealing exclusively with paper money. The precious metals constituted no part of our circulating medium. Yet in the month of May in that year England drew from us more than three times the sum that had produced the suspension in 1857. She took from us in the month of May, 1866, $23,744,194 ; in June, $15,890,956 more; arid in July, $5,821,459 more. Yet we sustained the draft in three successive months one quarter of the year 1866 of $45,456,609 in gold, and it created not a ripple in our immense, complicated and profitable domestic trade.f No bank failed, no leading house suspended, no railroad company was embarrassed. The business of the country went on growing and prosper- ing as though no collapse had occurred in England, and no draft had been made on us. Why was it ? It was, as I have said, because our money was non-exportable ; and unable to cripple us by contracting our currency, our creditor satisfied himself with taking a supply of one of the productions of the country. It was, as the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Garfield], the learned chairman of the committee, has said, because our money is as national as our flag. It is money wherever that flag floats supreme ; it is money for all the purposes of the countless domestic exchanges between our citizens over all our broad land and in no other. Mr. Grarfield, of Ohio. How is it when it floats on the sea? Mr. Kettey. It is still money. When it floats under our flag on the sea it settles the seamen's wages and the pay of the officers. Beyond the sea, in foreign lands, it fortunately is not money: but, sir, when have we had such a long and un- broken career of prosperity in business as since we adopted this non-exportable currency ? When we were paying specie we had, at almost regular intervals of about seven * This would have been accomplished, beyond a peradventurc, within the sixty days immediately following the utterance of these words, by reason of a net loss of the precious metals, by export, in July 1870, of $17,313,763 conse- quent upon the declaration of war between France and (ierimmy. f See statement in regard to the exports of the precious metals for the fiscal year 1870-71, note, p. 132, ante. VALUE OF AX IXEXPORTABLE CUREEXCY. 395 years, crises that extended from one end of the country to the other, prostrating every branch of our internal trade and productive industry, and affecting our foreign com- merce. These financial revulsions were brought about whenever the debtor nation needed money, as was the case in 1857. So it would be again with $1,000,000,000 of over-due indebtedness and the balance of trade heavily against us every year, if we should be tempted or forced by artificial means into the resumption of specie payments. Eesurnption, under existing circumstances, would be sheer madness. It would doom many of the enterprising men of this generation who by their energy are adding to the wealth and power of the country to struggle for the re- mainder of their lives in poverty, or to escape from har- assing creditors through the provisions of the bankrupt law. I arn not an expansionist, but I do not fear a slight ex- pansion. The volume of currency does not, as is so often asserted, regulate the price of commodities. We have as much currency to-day as we had in 1866. It is true that some compound-interest notes were then held by the banks as reserve ; it is true that more of the three per cent, cer- tificates were then held as reserve, which have been ex- tinguished. But let me also call attention to the fact that during last year and the latter part of the preceding year and the months that have passed of the present year, our receipt of foreign gold has increased, our production has been large, and the shipments of specie have been much, diminished ; and that as this also enters into the bank reserve we have probably as great or a greater volume of currency than we had in 1866. But how have prices been affected ? Are they as high as they then were ? No, sir. I ask gentlemen from the West how the price of wheat compares to-day with the price in 1866 ? I ask gentlemen from New England how the prices of cotton and woolen goods compare with those of 1866 ? You can now buy cotton and woolen goods of almost every form and character for currency at as low prices as you could buy them for gold in 1860, and for much less than you could in 1866. You can buy wheat at prices corresponding with those of the period before the war. But in 1866 wheat commanded double its present price ; and the special Commissioner of Revenue delighted in holding up the high price of cotton and woolen goods and attributing it to the expanded condition of the 396 VALUE OF AN IXEXPORTABLE CURRENCY. currency. It was also the delight of Secretary McCullough to set forth in his annual reports the effect of the inflated currency upon the prices of various commodities. Therp is scarcely an American product save beef and pork that is not as cheap now as it was in 1860, and which is not vastly lower in price than it was under the same volume of currency in 1866, and the price of beef and pork comes down each year, as the destruction the war made of breed- ing stock is repaired. I hope that this bill will be recommitted, with instruc- tions to the committee to report a bill extending the banking system through the South and West, to the extent of from seventy-five to ninety million dollars, under the general provisions of the banking law, and providing that the bonds deposited as the basis of the circulation shall be those already in existence or hereafter to be issued by the Government. I believe such a measure would stimulate every industry, and that with such a measure carried out, some of the banks east of the Hudson might be willing to surrender either their charters or their currency. It would accomplish at any rate an equalization of banking facilities without a sudden or .violent disturbance. It could injure no section of the country ; it would benefit all its parts and people. Sir, look at the present condition of California. I hold her up as an illustration of the point I am making, that an adequate volume of currency is essential to the employ- ment of the people and the development of the country. With all the resources of that region, the like of which are not to be found upon the face of the earth, her working- people, to the number of thousands, are idle. They con- gregate in the streets of San Francisco and other cities in want and idleness. Why ? Not because there are not adequate and profitable fields for their employment, but because there is not currenc} 7 " enough in California, which rejects paper money, to enable men of enterprise to engage in new undertakings. Using nothing but gold as a cur- rency, they restrain in equal degree their enterprise and the development of the resources of their State. As well might gentlemen maintain that no more than a fixed number of pound weights or yard sticks should be used as that no more than a fixed number of dollars should be permitted to exist. Each of them is but a convenient instrument of trade, for the want of an adequate supply of which the public must suffer. JUDGE KELLEY'S ACCEPTANCE OF THE NOMINATION FOR CONGRESS. Ox Saturday, July 2d,1870, Messrs. James Niell/VVilliam Sellers, A. M. Eastwick, John Dobson, A. Hanline, B. T. Roberts, and William Matthews, the committee appointed at the late Republican Con- gressional Convention of the Fourth District, visited Judge Kelley at his residence, and informed him of his renomination to Congress. Mr. Niell, Chairman of the committee, addressed him as follows : " We meet you to discharge a duty committed to us by the Con- vention of Congressional Delegates of the Fourth District, held June 15, that of tendering to you (now for the sixth time) the nomination as their representative in Congress, and also of presenting a series of resolutions, which not only convey the high estimate your consti- tuents put upon your public services, but endorse the manly position assumed by you in your letter of March 8th, now known through- out the country.* " In making you this tender we frankly confess to have been gov- erned by selfish motives. To decline it, we are well aware, would be to secure to yourself more ease, larger remuneration for your valu- able labors, as well as exemption from a thousand perplexities incident to your present position, but for your constituents it would be an irreparable loss. To you they look, as heretofore, for * The letter referred to was a protest against certain evils which from long practice had the apparent sanction of law. Its substance is contained in the following extract : " If, therefore, the acceptance of a reuomination is to be understood as imply- ing a willingness on my part to be longer regarded as an employment agent, I must beg leave to decline the honor, grateful as I would be to receive it freed from this condition, and tendered in so complimentary a manner. I assure you, my dear sirs, I appreciate most profoundly the honor done me by your letter. I regard the frequent re-election of a citizen to Congress by the people among whom his life has passed as intrinsically the highest honor that can be conferred under our Government, and would be willing to make great personal sacrifices to be its recipient. Permit me, therefore, to suggest that it may be possible that the Republican voters of the Fourth district, having had this great and growing evil brought to their attention, will condemn and endeavor to ex- tirpate it. This could be done by electing a nominating convention which would approve a proper civil service bill, and instruct the candidate nominated to make its principles his rule of action if elected ; or would adopt a resolution deprecating the interference of Representatives in the selection of subordinate employes in the public offices and workshops. If this can be done, and the Representative can be permitted to devote his time to the study of the important questions now at issue, and the support of the great interests at stake, I will waive all personal objections, and gratefully comply with your request by placing myself in your hands as a candidate for renomination." 397 398 JUDGE KELLEY'S ACCEPTANCE. the successful defence of that system of protection to American in- dustry which has made your district one of the most prosperous in the country. We regard the next Congress as among the most im- portant ever held, when great questions- of national policy will be discussed and settled, and your services having been of the highest value in the past, they will be more so in the immediate future. " You were never so well qualified to grapple with the difficulties before us as now ; you never occupied a prouder position than now ; and we never needed you more than at present. As Mr. Lincoln said to the people on his second election, so we say to you we have no disposition to trade horses in the middle of the stream ; and when you have borne your burden to the other shore, we have no disposi- tion to trade even there. We hope, therefore, you will accept the nomination, pledging ourselves to use our best efforts to give you a triumphant return to your seat in Congress." Judge Kelley said in reply: Mr, Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee : Permit me to thank you for the generous expressions you have been pleased to use toward me in performing the duty con- fided to you by the convention. You but do me justice in assuming that if I could have retired from public life at the close of the present Congress, without ingratitude or indif- ference to the wishes of a constituency that, through more than twenty-seven years has, by its many expressions of confidence, sustained me in the discharge of the duties of high public trusts, I would gladly have done so. It seemed to me to be a fitting time to retire. But I should indeed be wanting in sensibility were I not profoundly gratified by the manner in which my renomination was made, and by the unanimous adoption by the convention of the resolution approving the position I assumed in my letter of March 8th. While, therefore, I cannot say that I gladly accept the honor you tender me, I would be wanting in candor if I did not assure you that I do it with just pride and a renewed determination to prove myself worthy of the confidence of so generous a constituency. The decade with which I entered Congress has been well rounded. The momentous issues which then over- shadowed the country have been settled. The Union, cemented by the blood of thousands of the country's bravest and best men, remains united and indivisible. They who were then slaves now enjoy the rights and exercise the prerogatives of citizenship. The importance of this change is not generally appreciated. Good men hail its accom- plishment as a grand act of justice, and economical science will soon establish its value as a measure of policy. Slavery JUDGE KELLEY'S ACCEPTANCE. 399 excluded free paid labor from the fields and mines of the South, to which freedom welcomes them, and, by the com- plete enfranchisement of the slaves, several hundred thou- sand votes have been added to those of the producing classes, by which they may so much the better guard their rights in legislative halls. The workingmen of the coun- try will appreciate the importance of this change in the near future. New issues have arisen, and they are almost as grave as were those we have thus happily settled. The great ques- tion with which we have to deal is not a national but an international one. The parties are not to be summoned by bugle call, or marched to the music of the rolling drum and ear-piercing fife. Their movements will be determined by the average rates of wages for labor, and the measure of education and chances in life offered to the children of laborers. The historian of the current decade will dwell less- upon armies, navies, and ministerial changes, than upon the apportionment of taxes and impost duties, the ebb and flow of immigration, and the relative develop- ment of the mineral resources of the countries of which he shall write. The contest is for the commercial inde- pendence of the United States or the supremacy of England. The imminent question for the statesman is how to cheapen all that contributes to the support of human life, while enhancing the value of life by increasing the rewards of labor. This will, in my judgment, be best accomplished by that nation which, by the well-paid labor of its people produces most of its supplies from raw materials found within its limits ; or which, in the language of a quaint old English writer, " sets at work all the poor of the country with the growth of its own lands." Controlled by this theory, I have labored to reduce the schedule of internal taxes with which our in- dustry, enterprise and capital are burdened; to reduce the duties on tea, coffee and spices, which we all consume but none produce, and to put on the free list every species of raw material for manufactures which we do not produce. Much of this has been done. The Senate is still engaged upon the bill, but it has gone far enough to justify me in assuring you that you will, by the legislation of this ses- sion, be relieved of at least $70,000,000 of taxes * * The bill, as it was adopted, repeals taxes which yielded over $80,000,000 revenue during their last year. 400 JUDGE KELLF.Y'S ACCEPTANCE. The recent experience of England is giving new and startling confirmation to the theories I maintain. Till within a quarter of a century she was the most protective of nations, and enjoyed the proud titles of " Mistress of the Sea," and " Workshop of the World." Keeping her people employed on her raw material, she found in every land a market for her coal, limestone, iron ore, wool, and the labor that had wrought them into articles of utility. But capti- vated by the glittering sophisms of free traders, she re- pealed her protective duties, and subjected her industries to competition with those of France, Belgium, Prussia and Austria, whose workmen are paid little more than half the wages received even by the underpaid British artizan. The experiment has been fatal to many of her industries. Observe this pile of recent books and pamphlets, each of which bears the imprint of London or Manchester. They are eight distinct and intelligent protests against a system which, in twenty-five years, has reduced England from her commanding position to that of a mere carrier, and exporter of skilled workmen, raw wool, and coal, and manufactures but little advanced, such as yarn and pig-iron. There are men who would force free trade upon this country, and compel our mechanics to compete with those whose inade- quate wages have enabled their employers to undermine almost every branch of industry in England, low as her wages are in comparison with those received by the Amer- ican workman. I cannot refrain from detaining you by citing brief passages from two of these books. Sir Edward Sullivan, in his "Protection to Native Industry," published in February last, says : " France, Belgium, Switzerland, Prussia and America have in- creased materially in wealth and prosperity during the last twenty years : capital has flowed steadily and with increased rapidity into them ; new manufactures have sprung up. existing industries have increased, trade has flourished, speculation and enterprise have taken the place of apathy and want of confidence. All this has taken place under a system of rigid protection. During the same period England, under a half and half system of free trade, has also in- creased her commerce, but not in any degree in the same proportion. Our industries are everywhere depressed ; many of them have left us, or are fast doing so ; trade and manufactures that we once mo- nopolized, are springing up elsewhere under the fostering care of protection; the confidence of our manufacturers is shaken; a spirit of discontent and uneasiness depresses the operative. Now, is this decline of manufacturing prosperity in England, as compared with the increasing prosperity of manufacturing industries throughout the rest of Europe and America, a natural consequence of the spread JUDGE KELLEY'S ACCEPTANCE. 401 of capital and communication, or is it the result of our throwing open our ports to foreign competition, removing all protection from our native industries, and bringing into competition with our extra- vagant workmen and dear labor the cheaper productions of more economical communities ? " In this book, " Home Politics, or the Growth of Trade, considered in its Eelations to Labor, Pauperism, and Emi- gration," which appeared in March last, Mr. Daniel Grant in confirmation of Sir Edward's allegations, says : " At the outset of this book the question was asked, ' How are the people to find work and food ?' And this question is forced upward from the condition in which England stands to-day. We have an enormous pauper population, and a population still greater just above pauperism. We have an export trade that is stationary ; a limitation in the demand for labor through the introduction of machinery ; a decrease of employment through the force of foreign competition ; and, to intensify all these, we have a population whose increase is at least six hundred per day. How are these conditions to be dealt with ? It is idle and weak to speak of the great wealth of England as a panacea for our present evils, while starvation exists in our streets, and pauperism and destitution threaten to overwhelm us. The weight of our present position is beginning to produce its natural effect, and men who are usually removed from the impulses which guide public life, are looking around them and saying ' Where is this to end ?' It is known that manufacturers are wasting the fortunes which they had amassed in the past, in the endeavor to keep on their mills at half time. It is known that every kind and every class of employment are not only filled to overflowing, but the ap- plicants are hopeless in their endeavors to obtain work. In the streets of London men are to be found by thousands, who are ready to toil and cannot find the work to do, and as week passes week fresh circumstances continually crop up, showing that underneath all this there are states of destitution still more terrible ; and it is thus that the question comes fairly home, how is this to end ? " So regardless of the rights of our laboring people are the free-traders, or revenue reformers, as they call them- selves in this country, that, in full view of the effect of free trade upon the laboring classes of England, they would prostrate flourishing and leading industries by repealing the duties on coal, salt, lumber, pig-iron, etc. They would do this, they say, to give the workman cheap coal, salt, and other commodities. To the unemployed workman whose rent is due, and who has not the means to buy a meal, it is of not much importance whether the price of a ton of coal or salt is a few cents more or less. What he wants is steady work and fair wages. Without these his life is a waste and his family a burden, though he loves them ever so tenderly. 26 402 JUDGE KELLEY'S ACCEPTANCE. Let me, as an illustration, consider the coal question for a moment. We have more coal than all other civilized nations combined. Its measures stretch across the conti- nent from Ehode Island and North Carolina to Mount Diablo, near the Bay of San Francisco, and around the ex- tended shores of Puget Sound. It also abounds in the British Provinces on both coasts. Its production and transportation are among the great industries of our country, and give em- ployment to many thousands of men and support to their families and the villages in which they dwell. They feed on American grain and meat, and are clad in American wool, spun and woven by American labor. Their product is carried over our railroads and canals, and when trans- ported by sea, gives employment to American-built vessels. There is a duty of $1.25 per ton on foreign coal imported into this country. The wages paid in the British Provinces do not equal ours by one half, nor are the provinces bur- dened by our war debt and taxes ; and we derive every year about $500,000 duty in gold from the importation of foreign coal. It is mined by men who feed on provin- cial grain, and wear English cloth, hats, and shoes, and is brought to our ports by vessels built with the cheap labor of the Provinces. What benefit could possibly accrue to any of our laboring people by removing the duty on coal, stimulating its importation, and robbing the treasury of half a million dollars annually ? I freely confess that I am too dull to see it. But I detain you too long. As I have said, I accept with pride the nomination you so handsomely tender me, and pledge myself to continued endeavors to prove myself worthy of the confidence you and those you represent so generously bestow. LETTEE ON THE CHINESE QUESTION. JOHN C. LIBE, ESQ., Recording Secretary of Science Council of the Order of United American Mechanics : Dear Sir: Your favor covering the circular which you inform me you were instructed by your Council to trans- mit to me, with the request that I would " favor the mem- bers of the Council with my views upon the questions embodied therein," is at hand. It is to be regretted that neither your note nor the circular propounds a question. The latter, however, embraces the preamble and resolutions adopted by the Council on the 5th of July last, which have reference to a question of great public and private interest. Having bestowed much consideration upon the subject to which they relate, I am grateful to the members of your Council for the opportunity thus afforded me of expressing my views thereon to so numerous and intelligent a body of my fellow-citizens as the members of the Order of United American Mechanics. The preamble and resolutions assert that " a movement has been inaugurated in neighboring States to introduce Chinese labor on an extensive scale into this country, and that such movement, if successful, must operate to the great disadvantage of the American mechanic and labor- ing man," and that "the time has arrived" when the members of your order should "use every exertion and exercise all the influence in their power to prevent the carrying out of this iniquitous and unjust measure." These propositions, I believe, involve the questions on which you request an expression of my views. It is proper that, before proceeding to the consideration of details, I should say that I believe that humanity and the true interests of all the people of our broad, richly endowed and diversified, but thinly settled country, re- 403 404: LETTER OX THE CHINESE QUESTION. quire us to welcome such of the people of all other coun- tries as may, in pursuance of their own choice, come to dwell among us, adopt our language and habits, and help us to develop our dormant resources and maintain our republican institutions. But this proposition, broad as it is, does not cover those who may be brought hither by force or decoyed by false representation, for the purpose of being used, without regard to their rights or those of the people at large. For instance, it does not embrace such as may be found to have been brought as slaves were in the early days of the Republic from Africa, or coolies were from India prior to the Act of February 19, 1862, entitled " An Act to pro- hibit the coolie trade by American citizens in American vessels," the text of which may be found on page 145 of 2d Brightly 's Digest. Though but a new member at the date of its passage by the House of Representatives, it was my privi- lege to co-operate with its distinguished author, the late Hon. T. Dawes Eliot, in procuring the enactment of this humane law. Nor, again, does my proposition apply to those who, being ignorant of our language and of the ordinary rate of wages paid for labor and the cost of living in this country, are seduced into coming here under a contract for years of labor for wages which, though in advance of those they might earn at home, are insufficient for the support of an American mechanic and the maintenance of his children while obtaining the education due to them in our common schools. Our laws should secure to the victims of such wrongs the amplest means of redress, and, at least, enable them to return to their native land at the cost of the wrong-doer. The coolie trade was suppressed by law because it was a system of violence and robbery ; and as the system by which Koopmanschap and others are attempting to induce hordes of Chinese laborers to come to this country, under contract to work for wages upon which they cannot live as American workingmen should live, is an organized system of deception and fraud, it should be reprobated by our laws as sternly as the other has been. You will observe that my opposition to organized efforts to stimulate Chinese emigration to this country is not based on hostility to the Chinese, but that it arises from their ignorance of the value and current price of the services they contract to render, of the habits of our work- LETTER ON THE CHINESE QUESTION. 405 ing people, and of the general cost of living in this coun- try ; and that, coming as mere sojourners, to return at the expiration of a contract, they will be unencumbered by the expense of a family, or civic or social duties, and can afford to work for wages that will not enable an American citizen to maintain a home and educate his children as republican institutions require. The constant aim of American statesmanship should be to secure to labor such a share of its production as may enable each laborer to make provision for age or adversity. Our country is so broad, and embraces such an infinite variety of soil, climate and resources that, had we the population and skill to convert every description of our raw material and avail ourselves of the diversities of our soil and climate, we might supply our own wants and maintain a rate of wages independent of those of other countries. But so long as part of our workshops are beyond the seas, and we depend on foreign shops for a large part of our manu- factured goods, our rates of wages must be affected by those of other countries.* Chinese wages are, I believe, lower than those paid in any other civilized country. American wages are the highest, and the two rates cannot be maintained in the same community. The attempt on an extended scale to commingle them would be as disastrous to the capital as it would to the labor of the country. It would unsettle prices and cause anarchy in trade. A little reflection will satisfy any experienced business man on this point, as the * How thoroughly British capitalists understand the effect of our higher wages upon the prices of commodities, and the inadequacy of the existing tariff, especially on iron, to counter-balance this difference, is shown by the following extract from Ryland'a Iron Trade Circular (Birmingham, England), of July 1st, 1871 : " Notwithstanding the efforts which many of our foreign customers are mak- ing to develop their own iron trade, we as yet do not seem to suffer. The most important of these efforts is that made by the United States of America. We have often called attention to the remarkable development of the American iron trade, and the possibility of the people of that great country supplying them- selves entirely with their own iron. America teems with the raw material, and it only waits the hand of man to dig the ore, to smelt and puddle the iron, and to turn it into all the varieties of the finished article. So far America, no doubt, could supply the world with the whole of its requirements, and could thus close the English trade altogether. But as long as the labor market in the United States remains in its present condition, so long will the English iron trade maintain its hold upon that country. American capitalists are not at all nnxious to invest in the iron trade, notwithstanding its strong protective tariff,* and while labor forms ninety per cent, of every ton of manufactured iron, and when this item is of far greater value in the States than it is in our own country, it is quite impossible for the Americans to compete with us even with such a highly protective tariff as they now enjoy." 406 LETTER ON THE CHINESE QUESTION. employer who paid Chinese wages could always undersell those in the same business who sought to enable their workmen to live as American citizens should live, by pay- ing them our customary wages for their work. Sir Edward Sullivan, in his recent noble appeal for the working people of England, entitled " Protection to Native Industry," says : "Wages in France, Belgium, Prussia, Austria, and Switzerland are from thirty to fifty per cent, lower than in England ; rent, clothing, food, beer, taxes and general charges are all in the same proportion ; the habits of the people are economical in the extreme ; the manufacturers have as much capital, science and enterprise, and the operatives as much skill and intelligence and technical educa- tion and industry as we have ; they get their raw materials very nearly at the same price as we do. The question is, Can our manufacturers, with higher wages, higher rates and taxes, higher general charges, and our operatives, with dearer food, dearer clo- thing, dearer house rent and extravagant habits, produce as cheaply as they can?" Let us press Sir Edward's point a little further, and apply it to the question under consideration. A report just made to the Treasury Department, by Mr. Edward Young, Chief of the Bureau of Statistics, shows that English wages are as far below ours as those of conti- nental States are below those of England. The report appears to have been compiled from ample data and with great care, and makes due allowance for the difference between gold and our currency and the number of hours of labor required for a week's pay. Without detaining you with too many examples, let me say that this official report shows that operatives in cotton mills in the New England and Middle States, exclusive of overseers, receive 89.9 per cent, more than in England, and that in the case of overseers the excess is 74.3 per cent. The comparison of the wages paid in woolen mills is made from a wider field, as this branch of industry is grow- ing rapidly in the West. It embraces the mills of Vir- ginia, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Kansas, as well as those of the Middle and New England States, and shows that the " average advance of wages paid in the United States in 1869 over those of England in 1867-68 (both in gold) was 24.36 per cent." The rates paid in American paper mills, including those to boys and females, as ascertained from the mills of New England, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illi- nois and Wisconsin, are 82 per cent, greater than in Eng- LETTER ON THE CHINESE QUESTION. 407 land. And, as the last illustration drawn from Mr. Young's report with which I will detain you, workmen in iron founderies and in machine shops throughout New Eng- land, the Middle and Western States, and California receive for their labor 86 per cent, more than is paid in England. Thus it appears that though the average English opera- tive receives for his work nearly double the wages paid his continental competitor, he gets on an average little more than half as much as he would for the same work in this country. The welfare of our country, both present and ultimate, requires the maintenance of our scale of wages, and its advance whenever and wherever it is prac- ticable. But how is this to be accomplished ? How can the present rates be defended against competition with the productions of the underpaid laborers of England and the continent? I believe that a protective tariff is the only possible defence of our rate of wages. While the underpaid labor is performed in foreign countries, we may defend the wages of the American mechanic against competition by imposing upon its productions, when im- ported into this country, duties equal to the difference between our wages and the lowest rates paid in competing countries. An adequately protective tariff is the American work- man's sole defence against ruinous competition by the un- derpaid workmen of foreign countries. But if French, , Belgian, German, Austrian or English mechanics could be brought to this country under contract to work for three, five or seven years for such wages as they receive at home, how could the wages of the American workman be de- fended against the destructive competition ? I freely ad- mit that I cannot see how it might be done. Can you or any member of your council show me ? No tariff or other law can protect wages against home competition, and I am, therefore, opposed to permitting the importation of men who have contracted to work in our midst for a term of years at such wages as are paid in China, Austria, Bel- gium, Germany or England. The prevalence of such a system would, as your resolutions assert, "greatly reduce the pay for skilled labor, and thereby lessen the family comforts of the great body of the American people." " Buy where you can buy cheapest," is a cardinal maxim of free traders and revenue reformers. It is plausible, but 408 LETTER OX THE CHINESE QUESTION. delusive. If applied to labor, it would bring Chinese workmen to us by the million. Yet the free trade agita- tors, both in and out of Congress, when vindicating this maxim, assert that the tariff which protects his wages and his chances for steady work, injures the workingman by increasing the price of the commodities he consumes. They also say that in addition to cheapening what he con- sumes, the laborer's market would be increased by a re- duction of his wages, as we could then increase our com- merce and ship our goods to foreign countries in compe- tition with European manufacturers. To the thoughtless and inexperienced this is all very plausible. But with your experience and observation, you must perceive that to reduce the price of our goods low enough to accom- plish this would require us to reduce our wages below the English standard, as the cheaper labor of France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany and Austria is restricting her ex- ports and driving the productions of England out of com- mon markets. " Buy where you can buy the cheapest," the only doctrine by which the employment of coolie labor in this country can be justified, is not only ruining the working people of England, but uprooting many of her industries which were believed to be established on impregnable foundations, and thus involving the laborer and capitalist in a common ruin. To attain cheapness she repealed, not only the duties imposed on food, but those which protected her labor against the competition of the lower wages of the continent. She entered enthusiasti- cally upon the experiment of free trade, and has persisted in it for about a quarter of a century. What has been the result of this race for cheap labor and cheap goods ? Its consequences have been such as I hope our country may long escape. British exports are not only stationary, but declining, and poverty and pauperism have increased so rapidly that the people of Great Britain are no longer able to consume their own productions as freely as they formerly could, and the demand for labor falls off under the double influence of both declining export trade and home consumption.* * A correspondent of the N. Y. Tribune writing from London, March llth, 1871. said: " It is stated that M. Thiers declined M. Bismarck's proposals for a treaty of commerce between France and Germany on the ground ' that France would be compelled to restore the equilibrium of her finances by a high tariff.' In making this declaration, the distinguished French statesman was not only foreshadow- LETTER ON THE CHINESE QUESTION. 409 In his recent work, "Home Politics, or the Growth of Trade Considered in its Relation to Labor, Pauperism and Emigration," Mr. Daniel Grant demonstrates the correct- ness of these assertions by presenting from the highest offi- cial sources the number of England's paupers, and the value of her exports for the three latest years for which the figures had been compiled. They are as follows : Paupers. Exports. 1866 920,344 188.917,536 1867 958.824 181.183,971 1868 1,004,823 1 79,463,644 ing a commercial policy in harmony with his antecedents as a strong Protectio- nist, but one absolutely forced upon his country by the exigencies of her position. To obtain the revenue which France now finds herself compelled to raise, she must resort to the most stringent measures; and there is no form of impost at once so productive and so little burdensome to the mass of the people as a high tariff. The remark is trite; but no man feels an indirect tax as he does a direct one. A moderate, or even a considerable enhancement in the price of various commodities, will be borne with far more patience than a house, property, or income-tax, which must be paid, at stated intervals, in hard cash. "It is a curious fact; but, when France has reversed her commercial policy, as she proposes to do, England will be the only great manufacturing country in Europe I might say in the world which still adheres to Free Trade. Even her own colonies those at least, in which the people are allowed self-govern- raent, such as Canada and Australia have deliberately adopted a Protective Tariff. As to England herself, she has now tried Free Trade for several years, and with what result? In the opinion of Cobden and the Manchester school of political economists, it was to be a panacea for every ill. The loom was to be ever busy ; the workshop ever full ! Well ! such an utter prostration of business as has existed in this country for the last five years has not been known since 1840. It is true this state of things cannot be exclusively attributed to Free Trade. But if Free Trade be not altogether responsible for the stagnation of business, it has certainly not in any way modified, but, on the contrary, in a considerable degree intensified the distress which has arisen from it. Numerous branches of industry have been seriously affected, while some, like the paper and silk manufactures, have been all but completely ruined by the present com- mercial policy of Great Britain. The cheapness of labor on the continent not- ably in Belgium has induced English capitalists in many instances to enter into contracts with firms there to execute orders for machinery and iron work of all kinds, both of which have hitherto been specialties of this country. In some cases, indeed, iron manufacturers have closed their factories here and esta- blished others in Belgium, simply on account of the difference in the price of labor. Not only the locomotives, but a very considerable portion of the other rolling-stock of English railways, is now manufactured in that country or in Denmark. The very cars on the Brixton and Kensington Tramway, by which I travel daily, have with the exception of the pattern cars, which were built in New York been made in Copenhagen. And it is a fact within my know- ledge that the contract for the whole of the wood-work on the new St. Thomas's Hospital was executed in Norway ; even the window-sashes and frames were fitted and put together there, and sent over finished and ready to be inserted in the brick-work. " The middle, or trading, class is not altogether dissatisfied with the present state of things. So long as they can buy and sell, they care not whose labor has prepared the article for the market, whether the article be domestic or for- eign. But this narrow, short-sighted policy would, if persisted in, ultimately defeat itself. At present, there is an enormous amount of accumulated wealth in England, and the evil of the mass of non-workers (for pauperism is fright- fully on the increase), who have to be supported by the workers, is only partially felt by the community at large ; and scarcely at all by the law- making class." 410 LETTER ON THE CHINESE QUESTION. After commenting upon the fact that more than one thousand paupers are each week added to the already ter- rible list, Mr. Grant says : " Even this large increase does not indicate the exact extent of poverty it points to the still wider field of misery that exists among the classes from which pauperism is fed. Let any one think what is the state of destitution through which a man passes before he is willing to accept relief and allow himself to be branded as a pauper. Those who know the working classes best know the pro- found abhorrence they entertain of the workhouse. Any privation, any sorrow, any destitution rather than that ; and the natural in- ference is that the pressure of want is not only severe, but has been long enough sustained to have swept away all articles of clothing, as well as all household goods, before the sufferers bend to their fate." Thus deplorable has been the effect upon the laboring classes of England of the determination of her people to accept the glittering fallacies of the free trade school of economists, and buy labor and its products where they can buy them cheapest. Let us now glance for a moment at the effect it has had upon capital invested in special in- dustries. It was soon discovered that the surface ores of the copper mines of Peru, which are dug by peons an- other name for slaves were cheaper than those of the deep mines of Cornwall and Devonshire. These latter, with all their machinery, have consequently been abandoned, and such of the miners employed in them as had saved suffi- cient to pay their passage have emigrated, and the balance with their families have gone to the workhouse. The ma- nufacture of silk had made prosperous towns of Coventry and Macclesfield, but Lyons and Paris could undersell them, and regardless of the interests of their toiling coun- trymen, "the nobility and gentry" of England, looking only to the interests of the consumer, bought where they could buy cheapest, and the silk-mills of Coventry and Macclesfield, with their expensive machinery, became worthless, and many of the people who had found employ- ment in them went to the workhouse also. I could refer to scores of such instances, but they will occur to your own mind, and I will proceed to an illustration of a more general character. Having heard that the home consumption of British cottons had, within a few years, fallen off thirty-five per cent., I wrote to a friend who has resided in England for some years to learn whether the statement was based on a mere estimate or was an ascertained fact. I could, not LETTER ON THE CHINESE QUESTION". 411 credit the assertion. My correspondent, however, sent me copies of elaborate tables from a paper prepared and read before the Manchester Statistical Society by Mr. Eli- jah Helms, which was printed by the society. By com- paring the home consumption of British cottons during the years 1866-7-8 with that during 1859-60-61, Mr. Helms shows that the decrease in that brief period had been equal to 211,933,000 pounds of raw cotton, or thirty- five per cent. I have also before me an able pamphlet, by a Cotton Manufacturer, entitled "An Inquiry into the Cause of the long-continued Depression of the Cotton Trade," which was published in London and Manchester in the latter part of last year, in which the fact is again proven. After spreading before his readers a large array of official figures the author says : " The case stands as follows : Our entire exports of cotton goods to all countries have increased six per cent. ; to India they have de- creased thirteen per cent.; to the four principal continental coun- tries they have increased forty-five per cent. ; while the imports from these four countries have fallen off two and a half per cent. At the same time our home trade, which should have been our prin- cipal support, has fallen off thirty-five per cent." The facts I have thus hastily thrown together address themselves not only to the artisan and laborer, but to the farmer and him whose capital is employed in any branch of productive industry. What each wants is a steady and remunerative market for that which he has to sell, and this cannot be had when that great mass of consumers who live by toil are compelled, as they are in other coun- tries, to labor for the least amount of compensation that will serve to keep body and soul together, without an as- piration or a hope that is to be realized this side of the grave. No amount of foreign trade would compensate the farmers and manufacturers of the United States for the curtailment of their home market that would inevi- tably follow the reduction of our wages even to the Eng- lish standard. To whose industry, enterprise or capital can the more than one million English paupers give pro- fitable employment? Or, who can sell his goods to that more numerous class from which Mr. Grant says "pauper- ism is fed," and who are selling " all articles of clothing, as well as household goods " in the vain hope of escaping the workhouse ? Do you think that they know much about the color and quality of American wheat, or even 412 LETTER OX THE CHINESE QUESTION. of the flavor of the beef or mutton of "Merrie England," or are liberal patrons of any branch of industry ? The apostles of free trade regard the value of a nation's exports as the test of its prosperity. They worship for- eign trade and commerce. From this test I dissent. That nation is most truly prosperous which has fewest paupers, the freest domestic commerce, and whose people are able to enjoy most largely the comforts and luxuries of life as the rewards of their labor, even though it have no foreign trade. To pro- mote foreign trade free traders would cheapen goods, although it is apparent that to cheapen them sufficiently to enable us to take her customers from England, and so increase our trade, we must reduce our wages to a point below those she pays, as we must underbid her in order to induce them to buy from us. Eegarding protec- tive duties as an obstruction to commerce, they resist their enactment and strive to repeal or reduce those imposed by existing laws, although to effect either their repeal or re- duction would inevitably compel a general reduction of the rate of wages ; for were we to repeal the duties which now defend and protect the wages of the American me- chanic, and secure to him our generous home market for his labor, our stores and warehouses would soon be gorged with the cheaper productions of the ill-paid labor of Europe, and the proprietors of our mines, mills, factories and workshops would be forced, by the want of a market for their higher priced goods, to discharge their hands and close their establishments. Nothing can be clearer than this. And in three years from our abandonment of the protective system the workingmen of the country would suffer again the agonies endured in 1837, and 1857, and British statesmen would be able, as they then were, to com- ment upon the depression of American labor, and show that poverty and pauperism were increasing as rapidly in the industrial centres of the United States as they now are in those of England. Indeed, such action on our part would be an unspeakable blessing to England. It would revive her trade and some of the leading branches of her languishing industry. She has natural advantages, which counterbalance the lower wages of the continent in the production of many articles, among which I may name salt, coal, pig and bar iron, rails, both of iron and Besse- mer steel, cast steel, and iron steamships, with all of which she would supply our market in the absence of protective LETTER OX THE CHINESE QUESTION. 413 duties and the venerable law which prohibits the grant- ing of an American register to a foreign-built vessel. But you may ask what has all this to do with the ques- tion upon which Science Council directed you to request an expression of my views ? A moment's reflection will show you its pertinence. The danger you would ward off is the competition of underpaid labor ; and if it be true that low wages, even in distant countries, against which a protective tariff can defend you, may in theevent of the with- drawal of such defence by Congress, overwhelm and destroy you, how much more destructive would be the effect of the importation of hordes of men bound by contract to work in your midst at Chinese, French, Belgian, Ger- man, Austrian or English wages ? If once established in your midst, no law could protect you against their compe- tition ; and I assure you and the members of your council that I have too just a sense of the rights and dignity of labor, and have toiled too long and hard to secure com- pensation even to the slave for his work in the shop, or cotton, sugar, or rice field, to permit myself to approve of such an arrangement, let it promise what incidental advan- tages it may. In conclusion, permit me to say again that I am not op- posed to the voluntary immigration of the people of China into this country. If left to their own impulses, and to pay the cost of the voyage, those only will corne who are of the better class and have by energy and thrift been able to accumulate a sum sufficient to bring them here and start them in their new home ; but under a system by whicli each man's passage is paid and his subsistence while here assured, we shall probably get the most abject and possibly only the most degraded denizens of the populous cities of China. Those who come voluntarily and at their own cost will take an interest in their adopted country and its in- stitutions, acquire our language, and adopt our habits. Such an immigration would, like that from other countries, stimulate our general industries while increasing our pro- ductive power ; it would, by peopling our vast territories that now lie waste and unproductive, enhance the demand for labor by increasing our home market and the carrying trade in which so much of our capital and so many of our people are engaged. But it may do more than this. It is in the power of the Chinese to establish new and profita- ble industries among us. Let me mention two, the intro- 414 LETTER ON THE CHINESE QUESTION. duction of which would injure none of us but benefit all. I allude to tea and silk. For tea we send abroad about $10,000,000 annually, and for silk, about $20,000,000. We produce no tea, and are but experimenting in the produc- tion of raw silk, of which we import $2,500,000 per annum for the use of our infant silk manufactories at Paterson, Hartford, and Philadelphia, in some of which I may remark, machinery is now used that was once profita- bly employed in Coventry and Macclesfield. We have immense natural fields for the cultivation of both tea and silk besides those of California and Arkansas, and the Chinese, the earliest and most successful cultivators of both, would benefit us immensely by transferring their experi- ence and patient industry to our country. I would not, therefore, exclude them by legal enactment. But to protect the right even of foreigners to fair wages for work done in this country, and to avert the dangers threatened to American mechanics by the importation of hordes of coolies, I would provide by statute that any con- tract made in a foreign country by which a person propos- ing to emigrate to any State or territory within the United States shall bind himself to labor for any term of years or months, at a rate of wages specified therein, shall be null and void. Believing that a law embodying these provisions will be enacted by Congress at its next session, I remain, Yours, very truly, WM. D. KELLEY. PHILADELPHIA, August 22, 1870. CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION AND INTER- NATIONAL EXPOSITION. SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY IOTH, 1871. The House having under consideration the bill (H. R. No. 1478) to provide for celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of Ameri- can independence by holding an international exhibition of arts, manufactures, and products of the soil and mine, iu the city of Philadelphia and State of Pennsylvania, in the year 1876 Mr. Kelley said : Mr. Speaker : This bill has been treated by its oppo- nents as though its object were a purely local one. It is not so. The city of Philadelphia, the State of Pennsyl- vania, and the Franklin Institute of Pennsylvania origi- nated the movement for the centennial celebration of the Declaration of Independence, and are willing to take, under the auspices of the Government of the United States, the responsibility of its preparation and manage- ment. And to that end the bill does little more than ordain that such a celebration shall be had at Philadelphia, and provide for the appointment by the President of one com- missioner from each State and Territory upon the nomina- tion of the Governor thereof. The proposed exhibition is to celebrate events that are not merely of national but of world-wide interest. It is to commemorate not a da} T , but an epoch in universal his- tory ; not an event, but a series of events that occurred in rapid succession, gave birth to republican liberty, and organized a nation that stands to-day, when measured by the number of its population, the extent and geographi- cal position of its territory, the intelligence and enterprise of its people, and the variety and volume of its resources and productions first and proudest, though but an infant among the nations of the world. London and Paris were venerable cities when the American continent was discov- ered, and this bill proposes to invite the people of London, 415 416 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. \ Paris, and the world at large to behold the results of one century of republican liberty in a country, whose people are the offspring of those of every land and clime, and to challenge them to present the best results of their genius, experience, and labor in comparison with those of this young and heterogeneous but free people. The proposed celebration, sir, will prove to be of national importance by its relation to the business of the country. I hold in my hand one of the most instructive politico-econo- mic works of the last year. " Home Politics ; or, the Growth of Trade considered in its Eelation to Labor, Pau- perism, and Emigration," by Daniel Grant, published in London. I request the attention of the House to a pas- sage from this work with respect to the influence of the first and second expositions on the trade of England. It is as follows : " In an early part of this chapter it was pointed out that the per- sonal knowledge of buyer and seller forms an important link in the growth of trade, and in one sense the first exhibition aided this. Men who for years had known each other by name came to know each other as a matter of fact, and thus built up relations that pro- duced a mutual good. The mere prestige of the ' world's bazaar ' brought men from every quarter of the habitable world, and they carried away with them to their distant homes the memory of Eng- lish productions, that bore fruit then and has borne fruit since. At the time, among the whole of our manufacturers, it was recognized as an unchallengable fact that the exhibition had stimulated trade, that orders were plentiful, and that its success was great. " The statistics do more than bear this point out ; the bound in our exports is both clear and decisive. It will be necessary to notice here that the direct results of the exhibition would not be manifest until the year after it closed, and would most probably ex- tend twelve months beyond. The exhibition did not close until the end of the year ; the orders given during the time would be delivered partly in the year 1851, and partly in 1852, and the return orders some months later, so that the effects would appear in the following years. The statistics here given show very markedly the growth of our exports at the particular epochs. " Our exports in 1851, were 74,448,722, in 1852, 78,076,854, and in 1853, 98,933,780 ; showing an advance in the two years of 24,485,050. " The same results are apparent in the two years after our second exhibition. "Our exports in 1862. were 123,992,264 ; in 1863, 146,602,342 ; and in 1864, 160,444,053 ; showing an advance in the two years of 36,456,789." No one can consider these figures and the reflections of Mr. Grant without conceding that such an exhibition, held CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. 417 in one of our great cities, would largely expand the trade of the entire country, and would attract an enormous flow of immigration, especially of skilled mechanics, artists, and men of enterprise whose capital though too limited to pro- duce a competence in Europe, might enable them to amass fortunes in this country of cheap land and undeveloped resources. The question, therefore, is one of national importance, and should not be treated as a local one, because it is pro- posed that the commemorative exhibition shall be held in the city in which the events which it is to commemorate occurred. I regret exceedingly that the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Cleveland] is not in his seat. He pro- posed to hold such a celebration in New York, and, in sup- port of his strange proposition, invited the attention of the House to the fact that for forty years New York has had an association for the promotion of the mechanic arts, known as the American Institute. Sir, forty-five years ago, I was a copy-reader in a printing office, and I remem- ber well that among the copy which most puzzled me was that of Dr. Jones, who was then at the head of the Patent Office and editor of the journal of the Franklin Institute, an institution which had then been publishing its proceed- ings for several years. This was five years before the or- ganization of the American Institute. The Franklin In- stitute of Pennsylvania hailed the organization of and has rejoiced in the prosperity of the American Institute, and recognizes it as its most successful offspring and as one of its most influential co-workers in developing our manufac- turing and mining resources and promoting the general interests of our country. The gentleman from New York [Mr. Brooks], in oppos- ing the bill, spoke of the inconsequential character of the preamble and resolutions. Eegarding the proposed expo- sition as a commemoration only of the Declaration of In- dependence, he said that document had nothing to do with the progress of manufactures and the arts. In this opin- ion he dissents from that of Thomas Jefferson, as he will discover by turning to volume one of Jefferson's Works, page 129. He will there find that Mr. Jefferson assigns the attempt by England to suppress manufactures and pre- vent their establishment as a potent cause of the revolt of the Colonies. He says : " That to heighten still the idea of parliamentary justice, and to 27 418 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. show with what moderation they are like to exercise power where themselves are to feel no part of its weight, we take leave to men- tion to his Majesty certain other acts of the British Parliament by which we were prohibited from manufacturing for our own use the articles we raise on our own lands with our own labor. By an act fassed in the fifth year of the reign of his late Majesty, King George L, an American subject is forbidden to make a hat for himself of the fur which he has taken perhaps on his own soil ; an instance of despotism to which no parallel can be produced in the most arbi- trary ages of British history. By one other act, passed in ihe twenty-third year of the same reign, the iron which we make we are forbidden to manufacture ; and heavy as that article is, and neces- sary in every branch of husbandry, besides commission and insur- ance, we are to pay freight for it to Great Britain, and freight for it back again, for the purpose of supporting, not men, but machines, in the island of Great Britain.''* That gentlemen may perceive how well founded these complaints of the colonists were, let me quote a portion of the two laws to which Mr. Jefferson refers. I might cite many kindred acts, but parts of these will suffice. Let me read the fourth section of chapter twenty-two of the fifth year (1732) of George II. It is as follows : " Whereas the art and mystery of making hats in Great Britain hath arrived to great perfection, and considerable quantities of hats manufactured in this kingdom have heretofore been exported to his Majesty's plantations or Colonies in America, who have been wholly supplied with hats from Great Britain ; and whereas great quanti- ties of hats have of late years been made, and the said manufacture is daily increasing in the British plantations in America, and is from thence exported to foreign markets, which were heretofore supplied from Great Britain, and the hat-makers in the said plantations take many apprentices for small terms, to the discouragement of the said trade, and debasing the said manufacture ; wherefore, for pre- venting the said ill practices for the future, and for promoting and encouraging the trade of making hats in Great Britain, " Be it enacted bytheking's most excellent majesty, by and iviththe advice and consent of the Lords spiritual and temporal and Com- mons in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, That from and after the 29th day of September, A. D. 1732, no hats or felts whatsoever, dyed or undyed, finished or unfin- ished, shall be shipped, laden, or put on board any ship, or vessel in any place or ports within any of the British plantations, upon any pretence whatsoever, by any person or persons whatsoever; and also, that no hats or felts, either dyed or undyed, finished or unfin- ished, shall be laden upon any horse, cart, or other carriage, to the intent or purpose to be exported, transported, shipped off, carried, or conveyed out of any of the said British plantations to any other of the British plantations, or to any other place whatsoever, by any person or persons whatsoever." * See Jefferson's letter of January 9, 1816 ante, page 51. CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. 419 The ninth and tenth sections of the other act referred to, chapter twenty-eight of the twenty-third year (1750) of George II., are as follows : " IX. That from and after the 24th day of June, 1750, no mill or other engine for slitting or rolling of iron, or any plating forge to work with a tilt-hammer, or any furnace for making steel, shall be erected, or after such erection, continued in any of his Majesty's colonies in America ; and if any person or persons shall erect, or cause to be erected, or after such erection continue, or cause to be continued, in any of the said Colonies, any such mill, engine, forge, or furnace, every person or persons so offending shall, for every such mill, en- gine, forge, or furnace, forfeit the sum of 200 of lawful money of Great Britain. " X. And it is hereby further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That every such mill, engine, forge, 348,824 111,200 1,316,374 2,681,502 1,001,994 709,886 182,380 827,031 18,206,062 429,288 6,728,516 3,226,851 $7,724,809 150,657 2,703,148 4,182,050 3,004,189 116,340 587,776 532,067 2,014,058 2,103,884 83,922 7,397,636 601,452 3,004,873 896,284 10,707,008 4,180,643 1,691,401 3,476,454 3,877,180 5,295,072 4,8*5,593 1,560,643 3,'265,S07 1,515,476 4,605,312 5,000,000 876,434 6,301,397 2,444,000 893,161 431,800 3,216,410 5,591,832 1,833,316 1,451,804 671,000 1,625,981 19,581,374 930,755 11,204,802 4,952,904 Brick-makers ..... Bread, cake, ice- cream, etc Blacksmiths Brass founderies.. Carriages " (children's) Confectionery Cabinet-makers... Clothing Carpenters and Carpenters Cotton-mills Drugs and chemi- cals Founderies (iron). Glass-works Machinists Machinery and Plumbers & gas- fitters Painters Pianos Paints, lead and linseed oil Patent medicines Planing-mills Bashes, doors, and blinds Sewing-machines. Soap and candles. Sugar refiners .... Tinsmiths Woolen-mills Tarns All others Total 74,203,904 18,161 131,360,33413,421 $205,564,238 31,582 46,317 ,14,803 4,741 26,617,077 43,314; 8,742:2,615' 25,618,949 88,631 i23,545 7,356 $52,236,026 82,910,7(H | 147,12U,704 49,708,169 104,543.217 11183,618,873 $251,663,921 An abstract from the manufacturing returns of Philadelphia, as received from the assistant mar- shals correspondence not completed respectfully furnished for the information of Hon. William D. Kelley, U. 8. House of Representatives. FRANCIS A. WALKER, Superintendent Census. * I have not adopted a classification. F. A. W. 426 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. anything like that amount. But, assuming that they will, we appropriated the same sum to send a few articles to the Paris Exposition.* Here we invite the people of every State and Territory to present in brilliant array among and in comparison with the best productions of other countries their best productions of field, mine, workshop, or studio. And the appropriation is asked for the benefit of the people of the more remote and poorer States, to whose borders many an immigrant would be at- tracted by a generous exhibition of the many and various elements of wealth, in which every part of the country abounds in such marvelous profusion. * These provisions were stricken from the bill. The II. S. Government is not to be responsible for any part of the cost of the exhibition. DOMINICA. SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OP KEPRESENTATIVES JANUARY 27, 1871. The house having under consideration the joint resolution (S. R. No. 262) authorizing the appointment of commissioners in relation to the republic of Dominica Mr. Kelley said: Mr. Speaker: The desire of President Grant to ac- quire direct trade with and a footing upon San Domingo, the richest of the West India islands, is inspired by a keen perception of the commercial requirements of the country, and sanctioned by the action of Washington and his most illustrious successors in the presidental office. On the 14th of October, 1789, less than six months after his inaugura- tion, Washington addressed an autograph letter to Mr. Gouverneur Morris, who was then representing us in Europe, in which he said : " Let it be strongly impressed on your mind that the privilege of carrying our productions in our own vessels to their islands, and bringing in return the productions of those islands to our ports and markets, is regarded here as of the greatest importance." Time and observation increased Washington's apprecia- tion of the importance of this trade to our country. He adhered to the point with the tenacity which characterizes the efforts of President Grant. And in his letter of in- structions to Mr. Jay, our minister to England, nearly five years after his letter to Mr. Morris, in May, 1794, he said : " If to the actual footing of our commerce and navigation in the British European dominions could be added the privilege of carrying directly from the United States to the British West Indies, in our bottoms generally, or of certain specified burdens, the articles which by the act of Parliament, (28 Geo. III., chap. 6.) may be carried thither in British bottoms, and of bringing others thence directly to 427 428 DOMINICA. the United States in American bottoms, this would afford an accept- able basis of treaty for a term not exceeding fifteen years." It was not, however, permitted the Father of his Country to secure to its people this important commercial privilege, even as to a few articles and in vessels of limited tonnage. Presidents Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams made the same object a leading feature of their respective administrations, but with like want of suc- cess. It is possible that the younger Adams might have suc- ceeded but for the fact that what Washington and the others had sued for as a privilege he demanded as a right. By thus placing the negotiation upon a new footing he failed as the others had done. At the end of more than forty years, however, President Jackson succeeded in accomplishing this most desirable object ; and to his administration be- longs the glory of its consummation and the immense and/ immediate expansion of our commerce that ensued. Let me pause for a moment to ask why the fathers of the country were so anxious for the privilege of direct trade with the West Indies, and why the European powers who had dominion over the archipelago so persistently re- fused to accord us the privilege of direct communication with our neighbors, of whose productions we have ever been such large consumers ? It was because those Govern- ments saw, as clearly as the statesmen of our country, the importance to the American Eepublic of unrestricted trade with the islands of the Caribbean sea, whose waters wash our shores. The fathers of the country having been forced into armed rebellion by the restrictions imposed by Great Britain upon the development of our natural resources and manufacturing and commercial power, had learned that international trade conducted exclusively along parallels of latitude, and between nations producing the same com- modities, could not be generally profitable to the people of both countries, and must, if left to the government of the laws of trade, uninfluenced by a tariff of compensatory duties, be ultimately beneficial only to those countries whose mines had been opened, industries established, tools and machinery paid for, by past profits, and who, with skilled and disciplined laborers and artisans, were also in the enjoyment of capital ; and must prevent or restrict the progress in the arts of the younger competitor, whose DOMINICA. 429 mines were to be opened, factories built, machinery ac- quired, industries organized; and all this with inadequate capital, as was the case with the United States. The only commerce in which our fathers could hope to engage with advantage was with non-manufacturing and tropical countries, from which they could obtain those articles of food and raw material for manufacture which we do not produce, and whose people would require the pro- ductions of the fields and workshops of our colder country. To prevent the young Republic from carrying to and from the West Indies was to deprive it of the power to establish a commercial marine, such as might provide and man a navy in time of war ; and to add to the price of tropical food and raw material its people might require for con- sumption as food or in the arts the cost of transportation, first to the mother country and thence to our ports, with profits and commissions to foreign merchants and bankers. Hence it was that every American patriot saw that direct and even unrestricted trade with the West India islands would be a blessing to the country, and every European statesman perceived with equal clearness that our maritime and manufacturing power must be greatly restricted, and we continue to be producers of raw materials only, so long as this boon could be withheld from us. Nor, sir, are these considerations less potent to-day than they were in the infancy of the country. The treachery of our great commercial rival has swept that part of our commercial marine which was engaged in foreign com- merce from the sea, and her ships are largely engaged in bringing the productions of the West Indies to our ports. Meanwhile the export duties laid by the Governments of the islands, including the Dominican republic, upon ma- hogany, fustic, logwood, satin-wood, lance-wood, coffee, cocoa, and other articles, and the import duties which, al- though they do not compete with our industries, but enter into our food or are consumed in our manufactures, we absurdly impose upon them, are taxes upon our industry, handicapping it in its race with the manufacturing nations of Europe. The fathers also saw the incompatibility of maintaining, under the simple Government they had founded, a large standing army and navy. They perceived the necessity of preparing for war in time of peace, but they felt them- selves unable to bear the cost, and clearly perceived the 430 DOMINICA. danger to republican institutions of maintaining great armies or a great navy during peace, and wisely determined to rely upon the militia for the exigencies of war. As to land forces, there was no difficulty in executing this purpose ; but if they were to rely upon the people for ships, officers, and sailors in war, they must establish and maintain a commerce sufficiently extended to make ships profitable and create a constantly augmenting commercial marine. Looking at our extended coast, they saw that if we were to be prepared to defend it and to maintain our flag upon the sea we must have ship-yards at many points along the coast, skill and capital to use them to advantage, and the trade in which to profitably engage the vessels they would construct. They believed in the constitutional right to promote these great national objects by special legislation, and did it promptly and successfully. Denied the privi- lege of trading with the West Indies they secured to American built ships, owned by American citizens domi- ciled within the country, the entire carry ing- trade between the ports of the United States by the provisions of the act of September 1, 1789, for regulating the coasting trade, and for other purposes. This beneficent act, preceding which but ten laws had been signed by Washington, and which British ship- builders are imploring us to repeal, limits the carrying be- tween any ports of the United States to vessels bearing an American register, and denies such register to any vessel not built within the States, and belonging wholly to a citizen or citizens thereof, and, by section five, denies any part of our domestic carrying-trade even to a "ship or vessel owned in whole or in part by any citizen of the United States usually residing in any foreign country, unless he be an agent for or a partner in some house or copartnership consisting of citizens of the United States actually carrying on trade in the said States." We have to thank the prescience which ordained these wise provisions in the earliest days of our national ex- istence for the magnificent results achieved upon the ocean and lakes by our Navy in the war of 1812, for the com- manding proportions our commercial marine had assumed when the unhappy rebellion enabled England to drive it from the sea, and for the ability of our merchants to fur- nish the Government promptly with adequate transporta- tion for troops and munitions of war and to maintain a DOMINICA. 431 substantial blockade of more than two thousand miles of coast.* The acquisition of San Domingo would bring the terri- tory of that republic within the influence of this venera- ble and wholesome law, and thus do more to stimulate ship- building and expand the commerce of the country than could be done by giving effect to the wisest suggestions upon the subject that have been brought before the House by bill or report since the close of the rebellion. No gentleman who has not given special attention to this question can have any idea of the proportion our trade with the West India islands bears to our entire foreign commerce. Whether tested by the amount we import from each country, or by the total of our imports and ex- ports to and from each country, our trade with the West India islands stands second; that with the United King- doms of England, Scotland, and Ireland alone exceeding it. It is true that our exports to France exceed our ex- ports to the West Indies ; but our imports from the islands are more than fifty per cent, in advance of those from France. The countries having dominion over these islands are careful to so regulate their trade that while the American people may be the chief consumers of the raw materials produced by their colonies, their own fields, fac- tories and workshops, and not ours, shall supply them with cereals and the productions of agricultural and manu- * The wisdom of this law is receiving a new illustration : notwithstanding the immense amount of cotton and other bulky products, formerly dependent on water transportation that are now carried by rail, and our exclusion by England's protective system of subsidies, from equal chances in foreign commerce, ship building and the production of marine enginery are reviving. In his report to the Secretary of the Treasury, January 10th, 1871, Mr. Joseph Nimmo, jr., Chief of Tonnage Division, says : " Our coastwise, or home commerce, is confined exclusively to American vessels by the law of 1817, [which renews and extends the provisions of the act of 1789] a similiar policy in regard to home commerce being maintained by almost every other commercial nation on the globe. In this branch of our shipping we enjoy a fair degree of prosperity, and to-day our coastwise marine is larger and more prosperous than that of any other nation. Our entire steam tonnage, embracing the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the Mississippi river and its tributaries, and the northern lakes, exceeds the total steam marine of Great Britain, home and for- eign combined." The facts reported by Mr. Nimmo show that protection by inducing the rapid development of our resources, and quickening and augmenting our home trade, has increased the demand for tonnage. Under the lowest rate of duties we have had since July, 1812, the tonnage built in each year, as appears by his report, was as follows : In 1857, 182,841 ; in 1858, 145,827 ; in 1859, 75,081 ; in 1860, 115,841. While under the highest tariff we have ever had, the tonnage built in each year has been as follows: in 1S67, 196,343; in 1868, 196,962; in 1869, 164,388; in 1870, 185,851. Average under the low tariff 129,897i tons, under the high tariff, 185, 886 tons. 432 DOMINICA. facturing skill and industry. In order that gentlemen may have the subject fairly and fully before them, I pre- sent a statement of the commerce of the United States with all other countries for the year ending June 30, 1870, as shown by the report of the Secretary of the Treasury on commerce and navigation. It is as follows. Countries. Imports. Exports. Total. $147,352,493 $262,288,129 $409,640,622 7,444,304 8,283,207 15,727,511 Ireland 247,075 8,593,531 8,840,606 West Indies 71,620,106 35,075,591 106,695,697 48,087,410 54,834,609 102,922,019 Mexico, Central and South America.. Hamburg, Bremen, Prussia, and North Germany.... ..... . 57,430,749 27,397,958 28,688,550 42,747,854 86,119,299 70,145,812 Dominion of Canada and other British possessions in North America China 41,089,801 14,628,487 26,849,324 9,040,066 67,939,125 23,668,553 Spain 3,638,345 9,782,403 13,420,748 Italy 6,641,664 6,474,653 13,116,317 British East Indies 10,050,834 243,648 10,294,482 Belgium 3,141,074 7,055,634 10,196,708 Holland 1,344,922* 6,399,835 7,744,757 Spanish possessions not named above. 6,685,686 1,581,637 221,799 4,194,360 6,907,485 5,775,997 4,183,365 1,529,714 5,713,079 Gibraltar 48,535 4,071,293 4,119,828 278,964 3,466,575 3,745,539 Turkey 678,718 2,578,314 3,257,032 British possessions in Africa 1,836,070 1,378,691 3,214,761 Dutch East Indies 2,550,692 158,636 2,709,328 Sandwich Islands 1,144,248 868,416 2,012,664 371,409 1,208,697 1,580,106 303,997 1,565,963 1,869,960 Sweden and Norway 1,180,741 105,532 1,286,273 French possessions not above named. 200,929 104,605 377,667 154,442 578,596 259,047 British possessions not named above. Portuguese possessions do. do. 191,378 42,477 80,001 64,237 200,816 255,715 243,293 80,001 All other countries and ports 798,913 1,017,016 1,815,929 Total.... $462.377,587 $529.519.302 $991,896.889 EFFECT OF THE ACQUISITION" UPON SLAVERY. Some of my friends who remember the energy with which I have hitherto opposed the acquisition of southern territory may deem me inconsistent in advocating earnestly, as I do, the acquisition of San Domingo; but if they will listen for a moment they will, I think, perceive that I could DOMINICA. 433 not maintain my consistency and do otherwise. Believing, as I have long done, that commerce, to be generally and enduringly profitable to both parties, must cross parallels of latitude and not run upon them, I have believed that it would add to the completeness of our country to acquire tropical or semi-tropical territory with the people of which we might exchange, under our own revenue system, with- out the interposition of duties, the products of our northern fields and workshops for the many commodities which they produce but which we cannot, and of which we are large consumers. But, sir, notwithstanding these convictions, and the fact that T was a member of the Democratic party, I opposed the annexation of Texas, was hostile to the armed occupation of Yucatan, as suggested by President Polk in his message of April 29, 1848, and regarded the Ostend manifesto and other efforts to acquire Cuba, as out- rages upon humanity and our republican institutions. I did not stop to consider the constitutionality of these measures. They were projected in pursuance of prece- dents which, though confessedly indefensible on constitu- tional grounds, had vindicated themselves to the judgment of the country, the acquisition of the Louisiana territory and the Floridas. My hostility to them did not, there- fore, rest on constitutional scruples, but upon the fact that they were efforts to extend the area of slavery and to perpetuate that accursed institution. They were all favorite measures of the Democratic party, whose degene- rate leaders array themselves against the acquisition of San Domingo, and have resisted with all their power the ordering of a commission to inquire into the propriety of accepting dominion over it. Absurdly I had almost said impiously they claim to be the successors of Jefferson and Jackson, but do not believe in the expansion of our country and its manifest destiny. They are purblind and without faith in the capacity of man for self-government, and I apprehend that they and I have changed grounds on this question for the same reason. They resist the acqui- sition of San Domingo because it will extend the area of freedom and give republican institutions, common schools, a free press, our laws, language, literature, and all the appliances of modern civilization to a tropical people, most of whom are of African descent, while I give it my sup- port for this as chief among a thousand reasons, each one of which is, in my judgment, conclusive. 28 431 DOMINICA. The people of the United States have waded through a sea of blood and encumbered themselves and their poster- ity with mountains of debt in abolishing human slavery and making our institutions throughout our broad limits homo- geneous and harmonious with the fundamental principles that underlie them. And yet, sir, we are to-day the sup- port and buttress of slavery wherever it exists upon the continent or islands of America, as we must continue to be until we shall acquire tropical territory, on which to grow coffee and sugar, and tobacco equal to that of Cuba. By the acquisition of San Domingo, and by no other peaceable means, we can overthrow both slavery and Spanish supre- macy in Cuba, for we consume fully seventy per cent, of her exports, every pound of which might be produced by free labor in San Domingo. Few gentlemen have probably considered the question in this connection, and I beg leave to invite attention to a few facts illustrative of its importance. But before doing so, permit me to suggest that San Domingo pro- duces large-grained white coffee equal to that of Java, and vastly superior to the green coffee of Brazil, with sugars, molasses, and melada equal in quality to those of Cuba, and tobacco which compares favorably with the best smoking tobacco from the finest fields of that island ; and that were the production of these articles stimulated by the sense of security that would be imparted by our acquisition of her territory and by the admission of her productions to our ports free of duty, it would cause the transfer of the American and other foreign capital now employed in Cuba to San Domingo, and thereby people the latter and increase her productions and de- prive Cuba of the power to support the Spanish army, which holds her in subjection, or to make the con- tributions toward the support of the Spanish monarchy, which now regards her as its most profitable appendage. Cuba owes its commercial importance to the tact that San Domingo has been distracted and desolated by war and oppression from the year of its discovery to the pre- sent date. Hispaniola, as San Domingo was first called, was once the most fertile, most highly cultivated, and most productive of all the West India islands; but she has relapsed into a wilderness and would present to the enterprise that would seek her fields, under the sense of se- curity imparted by American law and administration, as DOMIXICA. 435 fertile and virgin a soil as she did to the followers of Co- lumbus nearly four centuries ago. The population of the entire island in 1492-93 was be- lieved to exceed a million, but such were the cruelty and rapacity of the Spaniards that an enumeration made in 1507 showed that the native population had been reduced by the exhausting labors demanded from the enslaved natives in the unventilated gold mines, and the barba- rous means by which their labor was enforced, to sixty thousand. Another enumeration, made by an officer known as the distributor of Indians, in 1514, showed that the number had been reduced to fourteen thousand ; and the history of the island from these early dates to the close of the war between Hayti and Dominica is but a continuous story of wrong, outrage, and desolation. After consulting the best authorities to which I have access, I estimate the entire population of the island at this time at from one million to twelve hundred thousand, of which number not more than twenty per cent, are within the limits of San Domingo. The natives welcomed Columbus on his return from Spain with presents, consisting chiefly of great quantities of gold, and in the course of his progress through the is- land, in 1495, in grateful return he imposed tribute on all of them above the age of fourteen, requiring each one to pay quarterly a certain quantity of gold or twenty -five pounds of cotton. It is recorded by Captain James Bir- ney, in his History of the Buccaneers of America, that to prevent evasion of paying this tribute Columbus caused "rings or tokens to be produced, in the nature of re- ceipts, which were given to the islanders on their paying the tribute, and any islander found without such a mark in his possession was deemed not to have paid, and was proceeded against." In a recent conversation with an intelligent merchant of Philadelphia, who has spent many years in Cuba and San Domingo, I said to him. " What would be the effect of American occupation of San Domingo, or its acquisi- tion by us, upon the productions and commerce of the is- land ? " To which he replied : " In five years from the occurrence of such an event San Do- mingo will have resumed her former station among the producing and commercial countries of the world, and will have become the wealthiest and most prosperous island in the Archipelago. Under such new circumstances it will far exceed the Cuba of to-day. San 436 DOMINICA. Domingo is in my judgment worth five times what Cuba is worth. Prior to the revolution of 1789 and 1790, San Domingo was the wealthiest American colonial possession owned by any nation. The French part was immensely prosperous, although the French had kept it but a few years. I have not the figures at hand, but, having examined them, assure yon that the exports of coffee, tobacco, sugar, indigo, cocoa, and other productions sustain my assertion. The Spanish side was also very prosperous. In fact, the whole is- land was in a prosperous condition, and the mines were yielding large quantities of gold. Since the revolution of 1790, when the blacks expelled the French from San Domingo, the condition of the country has retrograded, and very little progress has since been made in Hayti." In view of these facts we may certainly regard the soil of Dominica as virgin, and by embracing it under our jurisdiction do for the wealth and commerce of the world what Columbus and their Catholic majesties might have done could they have -jfounded a liberal republic whose affairs should be so administered as to promote the wel- fare of all the inhabitants of the island. The march of our prosperity has marked and measured the prosperity of the ruling classes in Cuba. In 1820 she produced but fifty thousand tons of sugar, and in 1868, to meet our increased wants, she produced nine hundred thousand tons. The increase has always been in propor- tion to the increasing market our country afforded. It was to supply our market that she maintained the slave trade with Africa, and still patronizes the equally inhuman and murderous traffic in coolies. Enriched by our patro- nage she employs to-day both of these execrable agencies in our service. Let me prove this. She ships her sugar in the following proportions: seventy per cent, directly to the United States ; twenty-two per cent, to Great Bri- tain direct, and to Falmouth or a market ; two per cent, to Spain, (a large estimate); and six per cent, to other countries of Europe and to South America. I have said, sir, that Cuba has maintained and does maintain the slave trade and the coolie trade in order to supply our wants. More and worse than this, prior to 1861 she imported her victims chiefly under our flag, though our law declared the slave trade to be piracy. Spain had bound herself by treaty with England to abo- lish the slave trade, for doing which she received what she deemed ample compensation ; yet slaves continued to be introduced clandestinely under the Spanish flag, under the administration of every captain general ; but the favorite flag of the slave-trader was the stars and stripes, because DOMINICA. 437 vessels bearing it were exempt from search by British cruisers on the coast of Africa. The execution of the slave-trader, Gordon, at New York, in 1861, put a stop to the use of our flag to cover this unholy traffic. Since then comparatively few slaves have been introduced into Cuba, but the number of coolies imported annually has greatly increased. OUR RESPONSIBILITY, AND HOW WE MAY AVOID IT. Such are our responsibilities; and it is now in our power to control the whole subject, not by ravishing Na- both's vineyard, but by confirming his title thereto and enabling him to enjoy in serene confidence his vine and fig-tree. The duty of two cents a pound imposed by our laws on raw sugar with those on molasses, melada, tobacco, and other productions common to both islands would make it so much more profitable to produce them in San Domingo than in Cuba that the Spanish despots and native slaveholders who govern that island would have no need for new victims, but would find a steadily diminishing market for the crops grown by those they now hold in bondage. The duties on imports from Cuba into this country dur- ing the fiscal year ending June 30, 1870, all of which could have been raised by free labor in San Domingo, amounted to $32,268,750, and the value of the imports were $52,964,225. This statement embraces only sugar, molas- ses, melada, tobacco, and cigars, which, though the princi- pal, are not our only imports from Cuba. The whole could have been grown in San Domingo, together with immense quantities of coffee, cocoa,, indigo, and the valu- able woods of the island. The following table shows the amount of each of the commodities named that we imported from Cuba during the last fiscal year, the value thereof, and the duty to which they were subject at three cents per pound of sugar, eight cents per gallon on .molasses, and three cents per pound on melada : Quantity. Value. Duty. Sugar, Ibs . . . . 801,633,343 $38,086,448 824,049,000 Molasses, gals. 45,084,152 9,696,783 3,606,732 Melada, Ibs. . . 35,828,771 1,247,249 1,074,863 Tobacco and cigars 3,933,745 3,538,155 $52,964,225 $32,268,750 438 DOMINICA. I need not further elaborate this point to merchant or philanthropist, for every man who will dispassionately consider the facts presented will admit that, were San Domingo free, and her people strengthened by the sense of security that would be derived from American protection against Haytian or other invasion, and were her savannas and hill-sides cultivated, as they then might be, with modern appliances and American energy, slavery would cease to be valuable to Cuba, and Spain would be divested of interest in her as a colony. This is the age of commerce, and the laws of trade are. invincible. By accepting San Domingo we can peaceably emancipate the whole archipelago, and secure to those of our people whose constitution fits them for tropical homes possession and the peaceable enjoyment of the most productive island of the world. EXTENT TO WHICH WE SUPPORT SLAVERY IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES. I have said that, notwithstanding the sacrifices we made in abolishing slavery, we are its support and buttress through- out the world. We cannot ascertain precisely the total amount of slave products imported into this country dur- ing the last fiscal year, but I find enough in the four lead- ing articles mentioned, together with coffee, to demonstrate the truth of my proposition, and to show, by the amount of duties collected from these articles, that if we could pro- duce them within the limits of our revenue system, as San Domingo would be if accepted by us, we could overthrow slavery on every island of the archipelago, and so far im- pair its value in Brazil as to make emancipation probable. The value of slave-grown productions imported from Cuba, Porto Eico, and Brazil during that year was $79,414,049, being seventeen per cent, of the entire imports of the country, and the amount of duties on them $45,930,374, or nearly twenty-four per cent, of the total duties collected for the year. The following statement exhibits the amount and value of the articles named which we imported from slave-labor countries during the last fiscal year, and the amount of duties collected thereon. Of those from Cuba, which I have already given in detail, I refer but to the value and amount of duties: DOMINICA. 439 Cuba: Value. Duty. Total $52,964,225 $32,268,750 Porto Rico : Sugar, Ibs 130,706,182 6,081,072 3,921,185 Molasses, gals 7,119,928 2,046,172 569,594 Brazil: Coffee, Ibs 183,413456 18,322,580 9,170,672 $79,414,049 845,930,201 As I have said, Mr. Speaker, San Domingo is capable of producing an equal amount of all the commodities em- braced in this statement ; and she can do this without im- pairing her capacity to export mahogany, satin, and other woods for furniture, indigo, and a considerable list of dye- woods. That portion of the island which belongs to the Dominican Republic could support a population of five million people and an immense export trade, yet the ex- ports of the entire island, embracing Hayti and San Do- mingo, to this country for the last year were but $979,655 of which $419,700, or about four-ninths, came to us in foreign vessels. The people of Dominica are not only with- out machinery, but without the simplest tools for agriculture or the arts. There is not an iron plow within the limits of the republic nor the simplest form of a saw-mill, though among the leading exports are mahogany, lignum-vita?, fustic, logwood, lance, satin, and other woods ; and it is impossible to estimate what would be the value and extent of the productions of the country under the application of modern improvements in science, agricultural machinery, and the processes for manufacturing sugar and reducing fine woods to slab and veneer, or the stimulus that would be given to American ship-building, the production of agricultural and other implements, and to our carrying trade and commerce, by the development of the resources of this island by American intelligence and enterprise. FALSE POSITION OF THE DEMOCRACY ON THIS SUBJECT. Those who lead the Democratic party and claim to have inherited the patriotism and wisdom of Jefferson and Jack- son cannot see that any advantage is to result to the country from the acquisition of San Domingo. They can- not even tolerate inquiry into the propriety thereof. They dread territorial expansion, and would rather let our ocean 440 DOMINICA. commerce perish and the country remain tributary to Spain and Brazil than incur the risk of accepting San Domingo from a people who seek peace and security by adopting our institutions and identifying their for- tunes and fate with ours. Could anything be more absurd than the pretentious claim of these timid and purblind beings to be inspired by the spirit of Jefferson and Jackson ? There was never a day in the life of the Democratic party, before slavery was abolished, on which it would not gladly have availed itself of an opportunity to secure un- restricted and direct trade with the West India islands, and to plant upon the grandest of them an outpost of our country as a matter of convenience and safety in time of war. Worthy and respected as was General Lewis Cass, he was never regarded as among the far-sighted and courageous leaders of his party. There were always those who would gladly have elevated him to the Presidency, yet few regarded him as preeminently qualified to lead public opinion or shape the destinies of a nation. He was characterized by a broad measure of good practical sense, but not by keen foresight ; yet he foresaw more of the re- sults of the last quarter of a century than these men, who have lived through it and witnessed all its stirring events, are even now able to see. The influence that steam was to exercise in ocean com- merce and naval warfare had been but dimly foreshadowed in 1848; yet, on the 10th of May, in that year, General Cass addressed the Senate of the United States in support of Mr. Folk's proposition to take armed occupation of Yucatan, in order, as was their theory, to prevent England from getting possession thereof, and to countervail her in- fluence in setting up the Mosquito king. There had then been no contest between Ericsson's Monitor and the Merri- mac. France and England had no navy of ponderous iron ships. The bulky commerce of the world was still carried in wooden vessels, under sail. Yet General Cass foresaw what, as I have said, the blind leaders of the Democratic party are incapable of perceiving to-day. They have not yet discovered that depots for fuel are a paramount ne- cessity for commercial nations, and that without them steam navigation must be circumscribed and inefficient ; but in the speech to which I have referred General Casa said : DOMINICA. 441 " The application of steam-power to armed vessels has introduced an improvement which may occasion an entire change in naval war- fare. It is difficult to foresee its consequences, or the effect it may hereafter produce. One thing, however, is certain, that armed steam vessels, of a size and draught suitable to the navigation they are designed to encounter, will take a decisive part in naval operations. Depots for fuel become, therefore, of paramount necessity for com- mercial nations. Without them their steam navigation will be circumscribed and inefficient. With them, to furnish the supplies required to vessels as they call for them, the world may be circum- navigated, and steam-power everywhere used. Now, sir, we have no places of deposit anywhere but at home, and England has them everywhere. She has selected her positions for that purpose with that foresight which marks her character, and she will keep them at all times supplied with abundance of necessary fuel. The advan- tages she will derive from this system of policy are sufficiently obvious, and we must depend upon our energy to meet them as best we can when the proper time cornes." Mr. Speaker, the acquisition of San Domingo would not only increase our ocean commerce and enable us to rely mainly upon a volunteer navy for war purposes, but it would give us such a depot and coaling station as could be established on no other island in the Caribbean sea. The Bay of Samana is unequaled in extent, beauty, and safety, and if we may rely on the report of General McClellan, the hills around it are filled with coal suitable for the pur- poses of the workshop and the generation of steam, and crowned with wood fit for naval purposes. Man's ex- perience discloses no want for which nature has not made ample provision ; and the Bay of Samana, in its extent and safety and the mineral deposits and forests of timber which surround it, seems to have been preordained for a great naval station, and one, too, that would give the nation to which it might belong control of the passages through the archipelago, of our southern coast and of the shores of Central and the northern part of South America. The scheme of the pro-slavery Democracy of 1848 for the armed occupation of Yucatan having failed, and the necessity for a station for supplies and repairs having pressed itself upon the attention of successive Administra- tions, President Pierce ordered then Captain since General George B. McClellan to repair to the Dominican republic, inquire into and report upon the fitness of its bays and harbors for such a station. A copy of his report is before me. It is dated August 27, 1854. He says he found three good harbors, of which Samana was the best, the others 442 DOMINICA. being Mansanilla and Ocoa. He found excellent oak and yellow pine fit for use in naval construction, and palm and other trees adequate for the construction of durable wharves in a tropical sea. One of these, the name of which escaped his memory before he made his report, he learned was peculiarly free from liability to attack by worms, the special foe to timber when exposed to salt water at tropical temperature. He also found bituminous coal in many places, and certifies that specimens thereof that had been exposed to the weather for three years burned well.* As to the fitness of Samana for such a station, he says : " The best harbors in the republic of Dominica are those of Sa- mana, Mansanilla, and Ocoa. " Ocoa, nearly in the middle of the southern coast of the island, is entirely out of the usual track of navigation, and commands nothing. Mansanilla, on the northern coast, about two-thirds of its length to the westward, is too far from the Mona passage, is somewhat out of the way from the passage between Cuba and Hayti, and is badly situated with regard to the line of reefs extending eastward from the Inagua islands, besides having dangerous reefs near its entrance. " The harbor of Samana is almost directly in the route of all vessels using the Mona passage, and gives complete command of that very important thoroughfare, which is the most safely approached, and most advantageous in its position with regard to the Spanish main and Caribbean sea of all the frequented passages. " Having reason to believe that it possessed all the requisite pro- perties, and great advantages over the others with regard to health and defense, I devoted all my time and attention to its examination. The bay of Samana, extending some thirty miles from east to west, and from nine to twelve north and south, is formed by the narrow peninsula of the same name. The entrance for vessels drawing more than eight feet is contracted into two thousand yards by a broad coral reef extending from the southern shore of the bay. At the north point of the reef are five keys, the largest containing about one hundred acres, the smallest a mere sand-bank ; the passage for vessels lies between the most northern key and the peninsula. The largest ships of the line can enter this bay with the utmost ease, and find secure anchorage within, entirely out of cannon range from vessels outside the keys. " The anchorages and small harbors on the northern side of the bay near the entrance are very good, and have excellent holding- ground. The only objection to this bay arises from the rareness of land breezes at certain seasons of the year at least ; so that it is diffi- cult for large vessels to sail out, as the channel is somewhat narrow for them to beat through. This difficulty can be remedied by the use of a steam tug, by kedging, or warping. Were the channel well buoyed out,' it is probable that a ship of the line could, in case of necessity, beat out. With respect to steamers, there is no obstacle * This coal must have been carried there, as subsequent examination dis- proves the existence of a natural deposit thereof DOMINICA. 443 in the way of their entering or leaving at any time in the day or night. The peninsula of Saraana is almost an island ; for at its base the land is low and swampy, much cut up by inlets, and overgrown with mangrove bushes. The approach from the mainland is for a league and a half over a narrow, winding path, practicable for only one man at a time, partly under water to the armpits, and in many places overhead in mud and water on either side. " The peninsula itself is high and broken ; the hills ranging from a few hundred to two thousand feet in altitude, exceedingly steep, very irregular in direction, and interspersed with narrow, sloping valleys, the whole covered with a dense growth of underbush, vines, and timber. It is well watered by small mountain streams. The predominant rock is a limestone, generally porous, but often occur- ring of such a quality as to form a good building-stone in that climate, and in localities convenient for working." But General McClellan's report is not the only evidence furnished by Democratic Administrations while statesmen of sagacity were at the head of that party of the wisdom and patriotism of President Grant's effort to acquire San Domingo. It apears that Yucatan was not sufficient to satisfy the ambitious desires of Mr. Polk and his adminis- tration. In February, 1845, he sent Mr. John Hogan as " the special agent and commissioner of the United States to the island of San Domingo or Hayti." The duties en- joined on him were "particularly to inquire into and re- port upon the present condition, capacity, and resources of the new republic of Dominica." Mr. Hogan having per- formed his duties made a much more elaborate and in- telligent report than General McClellan submitted to President Pierce, nine years later. Let me quote his de- scription of the island and its probable future relation to the international affairs of the world. In opening his re- port he said : " The island known under the several names of Hispaniola, San Domingo, and Hayti is, as is well known, in extent among the largest, and in fertility of soil, character, and quantity of its productions, one of the most important of the islands of the West Indies. The central position which it occupies in that archipelago, separated from Cuba by a channel of only forty miles, intermediate between Jamaica on the west and Porto Rico on the east, its vicinity to the com- mercial ports of the United States; the provinces of Honduras and Yucatan, and what has been long known as the Spanish main of South America, confer upon it a political importance second only to its commercial. In the hands of a powerful and enterprising nation its influence would be felt in all the ramifications of human concerns. " This island is again peculiar from the number and capacity of its harbors. The entire coast is studded with deep and valuable ports, and intersected with rivers penetratin