«, ^, Mj, fyxmll Uttivmitg Jiht^tg BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME PROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF m^nvQ M. Sage 1S91 .A.4M13 L.u...m Free-trade folly olin,an? ^^24 031 263 415 The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031263415 FKEE-TRADE FOLLY. ROBERT P. PORTER, Author of " Bread -Winners Abroad," " Tlie West in 1880,' "Proteetion and Free Trade To-day," etc. Let every Protectionist tliroughont this country plant himself firmly on the facts that ail essential objects of consumption affected by the Taiiffkre cheaper and better now than at any period under free trade or a revenue tariff; and that American labor is better paid and the working man and his family in a better coBdition in the United States than in any other country on the globe. First Edition, 50,000 Copies. NEW YORK: J. S. OGILVIE AND COMPANY, SI RosB Strebt. Copyright, 1886. By BOBEBT P. FOBTSB. CONTENTS. PA&S Growing Distrust of Theoretical Political Economy 5 What Practical Men Have Done 6 The Testimony of our Great Statesmen 7 Agriculturists the First Protectionists 9 Professor Sumner's Theories Practically Tested 10 What is a Parasite? 12 Conspirators and Conspiracies 14 A Few Additional Facts on the "Sti'ong Industry " Argument. . 17 The"Frec-trade Shadow Dance 19 Statistical Evidence of the Reality 20 Some Brilliant Examples of the Lurid School 23 The Road of Humanity and Common Sense 24 " Vulgar Persons with lU-regulated Minds" 26 AU-of-us versus a Part 28 The Nation a Living Organism 29 Love of the Repuhlic 30 Always a British Policy 31 The Science of Humanity or the Science of Wealth 33 Relating to Certain Economic Bohemians 34 Effectof the Tariff on Prices 36 Result of Home Competition 39 The Poor Tailor and his Thread 41 Let the Pacts Speak for Themselves 42 Blankets. Glass, and Salt 44 Concerning Sugar at Home and Abroad 47 "Raw Material" and " War Tariff ". 49 Direct Taxation 51 4 CONTENTS. PACE Free-trade Homes .' 56 Decline of British Agriculture 58 The Siul Story of the British Silk ludustry 59 Mr. Bright at Home and Abroad 61 Pauperism in Free-trade Englaud 63 The Stamina of the People Lowered by Free Trade 65 I'mven by British Authorities 67 Ths Murmuring of Musleiing Hosts 69 The Balance-wheel of Free Trade 70 Report of the Royal Commission 73 Present Condition of Ireland. 75 Increase of Wages in Germany under Protection 76 The Facts about Gei-many Corroborated 80 Labor and Wages in Sweden 81 Effect of Protection in France • 83 The American System. '. 85 Reducing the tlost to the Consumer 87 Has It Cost the Farmer Anything? , 89 Is the Tariff Duty a Tax? 90 Mother, Wife, Sister 93 The People's Cause 94 Prices Under a Low and a High Tariff 95 FREE-TRADE FOLLY. GROWING DISTRUST OF THEORETICAL POLITIOAL ECONOMY. The free-trader of the nineteenth century bases bis idea of the proper fiscal policy for a State on the work of the theoretical economist. So long as political economists were scarce it was not such an everlasting job for an ordinary man to elucidate the questions they discussed. Of late years, however, political economists have multiplied at an alaiToing rate. Nor is this the worst^of it. While they have increased eiritiameticaUy, as Malthus would call it, their books have seemingly taken a geometrical turn, until the ordinary man stands appalled at the task of finding out what it all means. The business of the political economist, as near as I can get at it, is first to demolish all the views set forth by the ill-regu- lated minds which preceded him. As a special act of grace, he may here and there discern in other political economists a gleam of sanity; 6ut if he does, he " crooketh them to his own ends," which must need be often eccentric. Having "cleared away the imderbrush," as he calls it, he proceeds upon his own premises to build a superstructure which, like the house of cards of our nursery days, is doomed to fall at the first puflE of wind from the lips of the next political economist. Nor does this statement of the case appear ex- aggerated when a leading political economist is obliged to make the melancholy admission that "the differences that have existed among the most eminent of its professors have proved exceedingly unfavorable to its progress, and have 6 FREE-TRADE FOLLY. generated a disposition to distrust its best-established con- clusions." There can also be no doubt that disputes and di- vergences of opinion among economists have tended to broaden into more fundamental controversy. From "sul- len distrust " the feeling against theoretical political econ- omy has changed to a "tone of more confident contempt." Finally, as Professor Sidgwick of Cambridge University, England, admits: "The great practical success of free trade, which, as I said at the outset, contributed largely to the prestige enjoyed by pohtical economy during its halcyon days in the third quarter of this century, has recently been called into ques- tion by an apparently growing party of practical men; and is certainly rendered dubious through the signal disappoint: ment of Cobden's confident expectations thai the example of England would be speedily followed by the whole civi- lized world." And he mi_ght also have added, through the absolute fail- ure of Cobden's prophecy that free trade would benefit Brit- ish agriculture, when it has in fact ruined it, as it is ruining many branches of the textile industry and numerous other industries, in the carrying on of which Continental skill anA longer hours of labor appear to have surpassed England. It is safe to assume that the theory of political economy is in a far more unsettled condition to-day than it was twenty- five years ago among the majority of educated people in the principal countries of the world. WHAT PEAOTIOAL MEN HAVE DON^. Wnn^E college professors in the United States have been wasting their breath in stormy controversy about the theory of rent, the wage-fund theory, the selfishness of the mythi- cal creature called the consumer or "economic man," and have been very generally prating about the commercial and industrial ruin which the United States now presents to a sympathizing world, and a variety of other valueless dis- cussions, the real man, with his ambitions, his aims and FREE.TBABE FOLLY. 7 desires, has changed this western continent of ours from regions wholly given over to meat and grain to States of diversified industries ; towns that had heretofore been dis- tiibutive points for goods of eastern manufacture changed into centres of productive industry, and distributed the manufactures- of their own furnaces, mills, factories, and workshops. The efiEeot of this change practical men have watched closely^ and, without the aid of college text-bopks on theoretical political economy, were able to discern in it elements of great future wealth to the population of the Mississippi valley. Every blast-furnace, every iron and steel plant, every woollen-mill, every cotton-factory, and every- workshop where skill and ingenuity were required had the effect of promoting the entirety of the Northwest— pf making the industrial organism more complete. Agri" eultm-al life was supplemented with manufacturing life, each stimulating the other. That the result was beneficial to the entire population of these States there can be no sort of doubt. But suppose the practical man had a doubt about the wisdom of his course, to whom would he apply I To the political economists- who are themselves, as we have seen, engaged in violent controversies, and who at this moment are enjoying a sort of metaphorical Donnybrook, in which their own heads receive the hardest knocks ? He would hardly expect help from that quarter. Perhaps from the men who founded the Republic. But here let me warn the reader ; for the moment' he proposes to seek the wisdom of the earlier American statesmen on this subject he must part company with the free-trader or theorist.- He is intolerant on this point. The divergency, therefore, begins here. THE TESTIMONY OF OTJR GREATEST STATESMEN. With the above words of caution, let us see what Franklin said in relation to the benefits of manufactures to agricul- ture, or what the latter-day political economists contemptu- ously torm the " exploded truck-farm argument:" "Evei^ manufacture encouraged in our coimtry makes 8 FRBE-TBADE FOLLT. part of a market for provisions within ourselves, and saves so much money to the country as must otherwise be exported to pay for the manufactures he supplies." Hamilton enjoined his coimtrymen to remember that "there are Uatural causes tending to render the external demand for the surplus of agricultural nations a precarious reliance." Calhoun said: "When our manufactures are grown to a certain proportion, as they wiU under the foster- ing care of the government, the farmer wiU find a ready market for his surplus produce, and, what is of equal conse- quence, a certain and cheap supply for aU his wants." Thomas Jefferson: "We must now place our manufac. turer by the side of the agriculturist. . . . Experience has taught me that manufacturers are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort." President J. Q. Adams: "The great interests of an agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing nation are so linked in union together that no permanent cause, of prosperity to one of them can operate without extending its influence to the others." Andrew Jackson declared we had "too much labor em- ployed in agriculture, and that the channels for labor should be multiplied." He also said: "Upon the success of oiu- manufactures, as the handmaid of agriculture and com- merce, depends in a great measure the independence of our country, and none can feel more sensibly than I do the neces- sity of encouraging them." Webster enunciated the great truth: " Sir, that is the truest American policy which shall most usefully employ American capital and American labor, and best sustain the whole population. With me it is a fun- damental axiom ; it is interwoven with all my opinions, that the great interests of the country are united and inseparable, that agriculture, commerce, and manvifactures will prosper together or languish together." Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Calhofin, Jackson, Webster, and Clay, all proclaimed principles which, in the eyes of the latter-day apostles of free trade, would indicate they had ' ' no minds at all." They, moreover, advocated a policy— -to use the words of a well-known college professor—" to take away FEEE-TBABB FOLLY. 9 one njian's earnings to give them to another;" "to enable one citizen to collect taxes of another;" " to confer a favor on one group of its population by an equivalent oppression exerted on another;" "to produce forced monopolies and distorted industrial relations;" " to introduce that industrial abomination, an industry that does not pay;" "to create parasite industries to live on the exuberant productions of the natural industries." AGRICULTURISTS THE FIRST PROTECTIONISTS. The protective system was founded with the Republic it- self. But who were "the robber manufacturers" of those days ? Well may the Western farmer ask this question ;. and if he is an intelligent man, he will reply by saying, Why, the founders of the Republic were agriculturists Uke my- self. If.it was best for them to be all tillers of the soU to supply the raw material for the rest of the world, why did not the farmers and the planters of the colonial days, who had a clean, white sheet before them, start us with a fiscal policy which would induce riches to flow in this direction and not with a " policy of waste," as the freetraders call it? How could they have been so blind to their own interests? Whoever is familiar with our country's economic and fiscal legislation must concede the following : I. That the great men who formed, advocated, aiid se- cured the adoption of the Federal Constitution, who ruled the country throughout the next generation, and thus laid the foundations of our National policy, were not manufac- turers, nor interested in any form of handicraft, but were, for the most part, connected, directly or indirectly, with the FARMING or PLANTING interest, which was then not merely the dominant but the sole reliance of nine tenths of our people. II. That these great men all but unaninSously suggested and commended the fostering of home manufactures by dis- criminating protective duties on their foreign rivals. IIL That they undoubtedly beUeved that in so doing vith improvement and civilization." "There is no view o^ our tariff controversy," says Mr. Sumner, "which is adequate unless it takes into consideration the world-wide relatfons of commerce." This is true; but we wish to remind Professor Sumner that a view which excludes the progress of this na- tion under the tariff, the value of our home markets, the importance of our manufacturing interests, and the welfare of our working classes, is equally inadequate. Our "eco- nomic philosophy," to be good for anything, must indeed be "as big as our interests and as broad as the field in whicl^ we have to work." Men of far greater ability than Professor Sumner in this direction have shown the folly of attempting to isolate the study of the science of wealth from that of other social phenomena, the metaphysical character of rea- soning such as he indulges in, the abusive preponderance of deduction in his process of research, and the too-abstract way in which his conclusions are conceived and enumerated. If, therefore, "Indian wheat competes with our wheat, and African cotton with our cotton, and Asiatic petroleum with our petroleum," a political economy which is buUt on the theory of a mythical world's market, "no matter how hys- terically it may be advocated, is not big enough for us." The "superstition" that no matter how much wheat and cotton and meat and oil and tobacco is produced, the price wiU remain the same, while the "universal demand" wiU steadily increase, is indeed "a long time out of date" with progressive political economists, while that old absurdity, that it is best to have our workshops in England, France, Grermany, and Belgium, and our farms and plantations on this side of the Atlantic, went down in the ruins of the late Confederacy, and the evidence of this piece of human foUy was destroyed when the Montgomery Constitution was burned. , Even the section of country advocating this policy has seen the folly of its ways, and is starting manufacturing centres alongside of what Prof essor Sumner contemptuously calls " tanicdi-farms." FREE-TBADE} FOLLY, ' 17 FACTS ON THE "STRONG INDUSTRY" ARGUMENTS. Their argument, therefore, that it would pay those en- gaged in the "parasite industries," as Professor Sumner calls them — that is, in the manufacture of iron and steel, and woollens and cottons and silks — to turn their energies to the cultivation of the soil and the production of cereals, for example, has no force because it would be impossible for us to find a market anywhere in the world for a sufficient quantity of cereals with which we could purchase the iron, the steel, the woollens, the cottons, and the silks which we need for consumption. Take, for example, com; the total exports of which from the foundation of the Eepublic to the present time would not amount to as many bushels as the aggregate crop of 1885. I can show any free-trader where every bushel of grain that has been exported from this country since 1860 has gone, the country to which it was exported, and the percentage exported. The largest share, on an average about two thirds, has gone to Great Britain But the demand for cereals in Great Britain is npt unlimited ; neither is the supply limited to the Uiiitcd States. I can show any free-trader where the United Eangdom has ob- tained every bushel of wheat, for instance, since 1836. It has come from the United States, Eussia, Germany, France, Egypt, Turkey, Denmark, ChUi, Austria, Spain, Australia, and British India. True,. we still hold the first position, and Eussia the second. But within eleven years British India and Australia have changed from the thirteenth and twelfth positions in supplying the United Kingdom to the fourth and fifth— from furnishing one tenth of one per cent and ong half of one per cent of that supply respectively, to sup- plying six and a half and three and a half per cent of it respectively. Will theSe countries stop prodiicing wheat if we repeal our customs duties ? I think not. Professor Sumner thinks they wiU. I appeal to any intelligent farmer to decide which supposition is true, and will abide the deci- sion. The first cost of raising wheat in India is less than in the 18 FREE-TBABE FOLLY. , United States, but perhaps not so much less as represented. It has been recently claimed by English authority that wheat can or could be grown in the central provincef^ at from 18 to 21 cents per bushel; this is denied by the chief commissioner of the province, and the first cost in the dis- tricts near the railway is estimated at 35 cents a bushel or $2.80 per quarter. It is safe to assume, in view of these facts, that wheat can be raised in India at a primary cost so low, and in quantities so enormous, that, given a moderate rate of carriage to the coast, the Indian cultivator, whose help costs him but a few cents per day, will be able to compete in Europe with the farmer of America or Canada. Higher rates of carriage may at first prove an obstacle, but this is being rapidly overcome. These are in brief the facts about Indian wheat competition. The advocates of free trade are deducing from these facts that the American farmer must soon compete with the Indian ryot lq wheat-growing, and that by admitting foreign manufactured goods into this country free of duty the American farmer's chances for this probable competition will be improved. Like most free-trade assumptions there is nothing in this imaginary danger. To begin with, such a proposition is not likely to be met with favor by our farmers. It first involves admission into the United States, free of duty, of all agricultural products, including wheat, for food- products and necessities of life could not remain dutiable and manufactured articles free. The market for 94 per cent of the cereals raised by our farmers in the Western and other States would thus be open to foreign competition, and our farmers would be liable to an attack in what I have shown is their strongest and most profitable market. On the other hand, the abandonment of the protective system in manufacturing industries would alike affect dis- astrously the American farmer's interest. First. American laborers and artisans and their families who now make the manufactin-ed goods in the United States purchase American grain and American provisions. FREE-TRADE FOLLY. 19 Second. German or Belgian or British laborers or artisans, who would, under a free-trade system, make the manufac- tured articles for the American farmers, may or probably would be supplied with this cheaper food from India or other lands. Third. The men thus banished from the mine, the furnace or factory in our own country are told by the free-traders to seek the land; in other words, to increase the production of wheat. But the supply of wheat is already superabun- dant, and in the production of it our farmers are said — with some truth, we have seen— to be in danger of being com- pelled to compete with the cheapest labor in the world. The abandonment of pi'otection will in no way help the farmer, as the free-traders claim. It will stop immigration, and hence lessen the ever-increasing demand for food at home, while it wiU leave him in a much worse position than he now is in, in the matter of Indian and Russian competi- tion. In the words of Judge Eelley of Pennsylvania : "The primary want of the American farmer is a quick, remunerative home mai-ket. When our mills, forges, fur- naces, and factories were busy, and our operatives were well paid, we consumed nearly all the cereals we could grow; but with idleness prevailing in industrial centres, with the reduction of wages and the power to consume, and with great branches of industry expelled from the country, we cannot look to an increase in the home demand or the maintenance of past prices." THE FREE-TRADE SHADOW-DANCE. It has been most truly said that the insurmoimtable act that free-ti'aders alwa;ys omit in their gi-and shadow- dance the "world's market," is that the world's mar- ket is not large enough to admit of us dumping into it sufficient of the products of our most ''advantageous industries" to jjay for what we want in return. And even if it were possible for the world's markets to consume all we could produce under such circumstances, we still have 20 FREE-TRABE FOLLY. thp world's tariff. Go to China, and a duty confronts you ; to rapidly disintegrating Turkey, and before you land your goods eight per cent ad valorem is demanded ; to the Fiji Islands and Tasmania, and they demand ten per cent ad valorem; to Newfovmdlaud, Belgium, or Greece, and you must pay twelve per cent; Holland and New Zealand, fifteen per cent; Austria, twenty to twenty -five per cent; Canada, twenty-five to thirty per cent ; Victoria and Cliili, twenty-five per cent; Spain, twenty -four per cent; Portu- gal, twenty -six per cent; Brazil, thirty per cent; and the Argentine Confederation, forty per cent. France, Germany, and Russia are so hedged round with tariffs that the most ardent free-trader would hardly claim im.hounded markets in those countries for American products. And these are the "markets of the world " which free-traders talk so glibly about, but of which they appear to know but little. Our home market is ^he reality — the world's market is the shadow. And this fact is substantiated by the attitude the English free-traders are now forced to take by reason of the utter prostration of their own home market. STATISTICAL EVIDENCE OF THE REALITY. Not only has the development of home manufactures se- cured for the American farmer an assured and constant market for ninety -fbtir per cent of his grain, but it has in- creased the value of his laud and added to the recompense of his labor. "The increase in grain production," says Professor Brewer, an eminent authority on the subject, "since the previous census enumeration is, in part, due to the cultiva- tion of new lands ia the West and Northwest, but more largely due to gain in farming regions already occupied in 1870. The popular belief that the chief increase in produc- tion and the rapid growth of grain exports is due to the cropping of new and cheap lands is not sustained by the census enumeration. The tables of production show that the most of the gain is in the reajions some time in cultiva- FREE-TRADE FOLLY. 21 tion, and on lands ranging in value from thirty dollars per acre upward." So the agricultural gain, after all, is not in those States which are given over wholly to agriculture, which is the ideal free-trade condition not only of the South and West, hut of the whole United States. It is not in these States, destitute as they are of diversified industries, that we are to look for increased grain production. Mr. Dodge has shown us that the value of land in States helonging to the piirely agricultural class ranges from about five dollars to ten dollars per acre. No, the great agricultural gain must have been in those States where the value of land, through diversified industry, has been increased; where the average per capita product is greater, higher wages are paid to laborers, and the labor of 1,000,000 men produces $160,000,000 annually more in value than the labor of 2,000,000 men can produce in the same time working in the ideal free-trade State: Value per Acre. New Jersey $65 16 New York 44 41 Pennsylvania 49 30 Maryland 33 33 Ohio 45 97 Value per Acre. Michigan . . .$86 15 Illinois 31 87 Wisconsin 23 80 Indiana 31 11 Iowa 33 93 ♦ In these States, then, which are all more or less manufac- turing States, Professor Brewer tells us to look for the most gain in agricultural production. And in this Professor Brewer is sustained by Mr. Dodge of the Agricultural Department, who has demonstrated sta- tistically that values in agriculture are enhanced by mcrease of non-agricultural population. To test the value of Mr. Dodge's hypothesis, I will divide the States and Territories of the United States into four classes: the first having less than thirty per cent engaged in agriculture ; second, those with thirty and less than fifty per cent; third, those with fifty and less than seventy per cent; and fourth, those having seventy per cent and over, 22 FREE-TBABE FOLLY. being almost exclusively agricultural States. Applying this test to the value of lands, the following result is obtained: Classes. No. States ard Territories. Acres. Value. Value per Acre. Per cent pf work- er.'? ill ng- rieultuie. 1st CIas8 . . 2(1 Class... 3il Class. . . 4lli Class.. 15 13 13 6 77,250,742 118,321,257 237,873,040 108,630,796 .$2,985,641,197 3,430.915,677 3,312,108,970 562,430,842 $38 65 30^55 13 53 5 18 18 42 68 77 The owner of land thus finds a great advantage in the in- crease of the proportion of non-agricultural population. Does the cultivator of the soil obtam an annual product of higher value? The answer is an emphatic aflSrmative in the following statement from the census of 1880 : Classes. No. engaged in Agriculture. Value of Products of Agriculture. ,Value per Capita. Proportion of Workers in qg[ ricuttur'^, per cent. First Class. . Second Class Third Class.. FoiirlU Class 1,060,681 1,566,875 3,017,071 2,024,966 $484,770,797 616,850 959 786,681,430 334,337,751 $457 394 261 . 160 '18''" 43 58 77 There are nearly twice as many agricultural producers in the.foiu-th class as are found in the first, yet the crops of the 1,000,000 are worth much more money than all the re- sults of labor of the 2,000,000 worters. The class that has 58 per cent in agriculture makes $101 per annum more than that which has 77 per cent ; and the class with the lower average of 42 per cent gets $133 above the earnings of that which averages 58 per cent in agriculture. Not only is the land-owner benefited by diversified indus- try by the increase in the value of his land, and the farmer in the increased value of his product, but likewise the laborer ia the rate of his wages. In 1882 the wages of agri- cultural laborers averaged nearly $25 in the first and second class, $19. 50 in the third, and $18.20 in the fourth. The de- mand for wheat and com, beef and pork, the products of FREE-TRADE FOLLY. §3 Ohio, Michigan, rUinois, Wisconsin, and other States of the second class to supply home, Eastern, and foreign markets, brought up the value of farm labor to an equality with wages in the States of the first class. Referring to these tables, Mr. Dodge says: " The influence of manufactures, of mining, of any pro- ductive industries, on local piices, whether of farms, or _ farm products, or farm labor, is plainly traceable in States and in various districts within the States by the furnace- fires, the mines, the factories, that thickly dot the location where high prices for farm labor prevail. The diagrams il- lustrate in a striking manner the operation of what may be deemed a law in industrial economy, and show that the value of farm lands depends more upon the diversification of industry than upon the fertility of the soil', and that the farmer's income is. highest where farmers are fewest." The free-traders propose to increase the nimiber of farmers, decrease the value of land, bring down prices, and reduce wages by making the artisan a faiToer. SOME BRILLIANT EXAMPLES OF THE LURID SCHOOL. I NEXT propose to examine the claims of those who advo- cate this change. Who are they, and from whom do they get then: inspiration ? As a rule they are coUege professors. These professors undoubtedly believe that they have established a series of propositions compelling belief in the doctrine of free trade. It was once an old saying in England that no man dbuld conceive the pitch to which human conceit could soar unless he had served in a light dragoon regiment. One of the more recent and less dogmatic English writers on political economy declares this a mistake. There was a being yet more elate with the sense of superiority over his fellow creatures in the economist who hadBastiat at his finger-ends, and who looked on political economy as a weapon by which he could discomfit political adversaries, and on free trade as a personal triumph, though he had as much claim to re- 24 FREE-TRADE FOLLT. nown for it as a passenger on a Cunard steamer to the fame of Columbus. The American colleges are full of just such inspired beings as here described. They have so repeatedly told the highest intellects of the Republic that if a man has not yet made up his mind on this subject it is because "he has no mind to make up, "that there is a wide-spread conviction in the pub- he mind " that somewhere and somehow in the science of poHtical economy are imbedded principles which establish this theory; that there are definite data in that science from which these conclusions inevitably flow ; that there are cer- tain scientific postulates from which can be unalterably deduced the economic poHcy of free trade." A search for these principles, these definite data and scientific postulates, most thoroughly exposes the shallowness of a school of economists who, though at least twenty-five years behind aidvanced economic thought in England and Germany, have succeeded most admirably in advertising themselves and disseminating their views, for which they could have no claim to origLoality, in the United States. THE KOAD OF HUMANITY AND COMMON-SENSE. There has been during the last twenty-five years a reac- tion against this school of political economists. It has been checked by the facts of to-day. It is now admitted by the most thoughtful students that the earliest economists and their followers regarded man too much as a constant quan- tity, and gave themselves too httle trouble to study his varia- tions. They neglected a large group of facts, and a method of studying facts now seen to be of primary importance. They laid down laws with regard to profits and wages which did not really hold, even for England in their own time. And it is upon this sort of economic reasoning that the lead- ing free-traders of the United States base their constant raids against the tariff and their claims for a hearing. They are at least twenty-five years behind the times, even in Enghsh poMtico-economic thought. While we are having the ' ' wage- FREE-TRADE FOLLY. 25 fund theory" — the pet inhumanity of the older economists — and the trim little maxims about those extremely mythical persons, the "consumer" and the "economic man," dealt , out to us as economic revelation, the new era of political economy has come to Germany, while the sunshine of a more humane doctrine is glimmering through the dense and stem economic fog which has for the last fifty years enveloped British thought. The fact is that recent legislation in Eng- land has undoubtedly unsettled the minds of many. The supposed leaders of economic thought (Gladstone, for exam- ple) have practiced with impunity what they have for years been teaching the people was prohibited by the faith. It has been truly said by a recent British writer on political economy: "Political economy was sent packing when we passed the Irish Land Act." And he might have added, it received a decided snub when the recent Royal Commission on the Depression of Trade was appointed, and it may yet receive a more serious blow should that commission make a fair report. The statistical and historical schools of political economists have their most brilliant thinkers in Germany, though their followers in the Unitftd States rank higher in point of ability and resoai'ch than the second-hand professors and alleged economists who advocate the exploded theories of Cobden and Bright. The old-school political economists began with theories and then searched the earth (take, for example, Malthus) for facts to sustain their position. The special fea- ture of the new school is that it rests on figures which are constantly renewed, and that this repetition supplies a basis always in movement to the inductions drawn by it from the facts. The new school of poUtical economists also contend that a knowledge of history is absolutely necessary to the political economists. This the free-traders discard entirely. The new method takes account of time and place, and of his- torical surroundings, and examines historical developments. The advanced men in the new school maintain that the whole life of the world has necessarily been a series of grand economic experiments, to understand the drift of which the 26 FREE.TRADE FOLLY. experience of States and statistics must be consulted, for they record the present economic life of the world. Knies, the eminent German political economist, lays down with great precision the methods of this school of thinkers. The field of investigation, he says, is the economic life of peoples, and this life is in each case a unity as truly as the life of an individual man. All h priori doctrines, all assump. tions are cast aside by this school. The first thing is to gather facts, and the facts might point one way in the Uni- ted States and another in England ; one way in France and another in Germany. No pretension is made of grand dis- covery of laws whichgovern all countries alike. It has been tersely put by an adherent of this school that they know better than others what they do not know. Would that such light might dawn upon American theoretical free- traders I * Professor Eichard Ely, in his " Past and Present of Politi- cal Economy," in referring to this school, says: "Not the least merit of the younger school consists in this: they have shown that the attempt to construct a purely theoretical .political economy altogether apart from considerations of policy is as vain as the search for the philosopher's stone." It goes still farther on the road of humanity and common- sense, and refuses to acknowledge laissez-faire as an excuse for doing nothing while people starve, nor to allow the aU- sufficiency of competition as a plea for grinding the poor. In it I can recognize, with Professor Ely, " a return to the grand principle of common-sense and Christian precept. Love, generosity, nobUityof character, self-sacrifice, and all that is best and truest in our nature have their place in eco- nomic life." It does not teach that we owe society nothing. "VULQAE PERSONS WITH ILL-EEGULATED MIND." With the great students of social and economic questions in England and Germany taking this advanced ground, the mere theorist will no longer be able to sneer at protection and brush its advocates on one side as vulgar persons with FRnE-TBADE FOLLY. 27 ill regiiidted or uncultivated minds. The call is upon the free-trader. He must debate the question with facts, figures, and history, and no longeSf hide behind theories that rarely or ever come out quj-te right, and rely on prophecies which are never fulfilled. In short, the arguments for or against free trade or protection must rest upon a foundation sup- plied by the records of national progress during the last half-century, and a study of the existing conditions of indus- trial populations. Such records are now made by all Eu- ropean nations, as weU as by the United States, fuUy sup- plying the. requisite information for a scientific study of their industrial condition. Departure from this precise method of investigation can only result in a rehash of the theories of a past age, and involve the student and the legis- lator in a never-ending circle of useless discussion and dan- gerous experiments. But a still more formidable foe to the abstract political economist has arisen in England. I refer to Professor John K. Ingram, LL.D., a man of ripe learning, great ability, and an advanced thinker. In an addi-ess read in 1878 before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, he as- sailed, with great skill and vigor, the curirent political econ- omy on four grounds : First^The attempt to isolate the study of the facts of wealth from that of other social phenomena. /Second— The metaphysical or viciously abstract character of many of the conceptions of the economists. Third— The abusive preponderance of deduction in their process of research ; and, Fourth — The too abstract way in. which their conclusions are conceived and enumerated. Since this address was delivered. Professor Ingram was selected to write the article on political economy for the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," and he may be safely regarded as representing the most advanced thinkers on the subject in England. 28 FREE-TRADE FOLLY. ALL-OFrUS VERSUS A PART. Ex-Gov. Henry M. Hoyt of Pennsylvania, in a book just published has answered the free-trade cry of one part of the community collecting taxes of another so completely that I could add nothing to it, and therefore use his words : "Now, to say that in the United States, grown into a highly diversified organism under the conditions of just and symmetrical development, one part is maintained at the expense of another; that one man 'enjoys 'or can, imder any known economic laws, ' enjoy another fiian's earnings,' is a gross blunder which amounts to an absurdity. The Whole nation, socially, politically, and industrially, is a growth. The society, as an organized unit, discharges func- tions as a whole, and these are other than, and in addition to, the functions discharged by its several parts. The anat- omist, by means of the dissecting-knife, or by chemical analysis, treats separately the different organs of the body to see their mechanical structure, or to learn by observation what operations they actually perform. We thus speak of the gastric juices, the liver, the brains, the heart. Separated from the body, the parts become meaningless; and while they continue to bear the name, they cease to be the thing they were when joined in the vital processes of life and health and growth. We speak of laborers, capitalists, land- lords, producers, and consumers. There are no such people detached from society. " In a proper environment no one part of a true organism _ grows at the expense of another part. The hver cannot complain that it would have less work to do if the stomach did not tax it ; nor could the brain exclaim that its efficiency is reduced by the necessity of sharing nutrition and nerve force with the stomach; nor the stomach rebel and set up for itself because it was compelled to ' share its abundance ' with the heart and the vascular system. All such attempted treatment of the separate parts of a distinct organism is not only negatively useless, but is positively vicious, in suggest- FREE-TRADE FOLLY. 29 ing error, and leads to concliisions which muet he undone and corrected. "We fail to identify the real organism we have in hand, ajid we undertake to deal with the pai"ts as if they were new wholes. "If the United States, under the supposition we have made, would have grown up into an orderly, symmetrical system, with co-ordiuated structure and balanced functions, as must have been the case, then there is demonstrably nothing ia the foreign environment which must have neces- sarily changed it. We have, by restrictions pn fdreign trade, pr-sserved our original and natural condition. We are at least no worse ofiE than if our territory constituted the planet and we had it all to ourselves. Under such a form of growth, to talk about protection— under which we preserved this status — as altering the distribution of property so that one man enjoys another man's earnings, or as enabling one citizen>to collect taxes of another, is a fallacy of the satne kind as the idiotic system of accounts in which the brain shotdd be charged with the earnings of the stomach, or the nervous system be treated as collecting a tax on the digestiye organs. Unquestionably protection, as against free trade, altered the distribution and consumption of property; that is, we produced and consumed different kinds of commodi- ties in a greater variety and in different proportions; but that had no effect to transfer one man's earnings to another. It did not repeal or suspend the great overmastering law of competition." THE NATION A UVING ORGANISM. Every sensible farmer in the land can grasp and under- stand Mr. Hoyt's comparison. This nation is a living organ- ism through diversified industries. We have, as Mi\ Hoyt has pointed out, become evolved into a highly specialized organism, with diflEerential organs and specialized functions. It costs more to be a vertebrate than to be a jelly-fish. The nation must submit to the tax, as the free-trader likes to play on words, of having higher and more numerous sensa- 30 FREE-TRADE FOLLT. tions at the cost of greater expenditure of vital force. But the object of all production is consumption ; the end of all consumption is destruction. The motive of all effort is satis- faction of desires. The possession of these sensations and the ability to gratify them have been the object of its struggles, the test of its civilization, and the end of its existence. In the environ- ment in wliich it found itself, and with the capabilities backed up in its being, the jelly -fish must perish as such, or pass into the perfected organism. The transformation, doubtless, cost something; its energies were taxed in the operation. But it " pays " to be a vertebrate. ' LOVE OF THE REPUBLIC. Havxng examined the credentials of the free-traders, and having established their standing among their own friends both in the United StateSj in England, and in Germany, and having, I beUeve, set forth their weak points, which seem to be their old assumption, that what is true of the individual considerered in his social group is true of him apart from his social group, which is, in fact, an assumption " that a struc- tural part in an organism could perform the same functions as a separate whole which it does when corelated with the other units in an organic whole," which is an assumption that "what is true of hydrogen in the chemist's jar is true of hydrogen in the Atlantic Ocean." It is true that manufac- tures are supported by agriculture and mining, but the manufacturer is not supported by the agriciilturist and miner in the sense of at the expense of — ^by taxation levied one for the other. They are co-workers in one unity. Having es- tabUshed this, I next propose to prove that while protection is important in sustaining this great industrial organism, it is also synonymous to love of country or love of the republic itself. In his exceedingly able address before the American Church Congi-ess at New Haven, last October, General Tre- maine quoted the words of Montesquieu, "that virtue in a repiiblic is a most simple thing; it is a love of the republic.'' niEE-TRABE FOLLY. 81 In what way can that love be better attested than by a steady adherence to a national system which brings pros- perity to the country by developing its productive powers, and which thereby widens the sphere of iisefulness of the inhabitants and secures to them a large share of those things which add to the enjoyment of life and bring into play the highest faculties with which man is endowed? Patriotism, attachment to country, love of the republic, nationality, are jnere sentiments, say the free-traders, which logic ignores entirely. •If all nations should agree to give up this love of country, this sentiment, if you please, which prompts man to " promote the general welfare" of his own country and ' ' secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," and follow the principles of free trade, , it might become beneficial to the human race; but this can never be. There is not, nor never has been, a route of this kind open to the human race. It is therefore foUy and worse than waste of time to discuss abstract theories which have it for a basis. Man will not give up his love of coun- try for any supposed material gain any more than he will reUnquish his love of family. Since the world began he has been, found ready to shed his blood for either; and so it will be through the. long ages to come. To discuss this question with the idea of nationahty left out has always seemed to me supreme foUy. Nothing practical can come of it. The experience of States and nations alone can guide us in the never-ending attempts to elucidate these complex questions. The relative relationship of one nation to another must bo ascertained l&efore it will be safe to establish reciprocal re- lations. ALWAYS A BRITISH POLICY. In the case of the several States which go to make up this Eepublic, the advantage has been great, and the same, I shall show farther along, may be said of the crystallization of the German Empire. But it does not necessarily follow that a similar indiscriminate combination of powerful na- 32 FREE-ritADE FOLLY. tions in different stages of advancement would prove equally beneficial. Indeed, such a combination migHt prove most disastrous to the nation least advanced in manufactures. For this reason, those endowed with the simple virtue of love of the Eepublic would rather shoulder the musket tl^an see the general welfare o^ their country destroyed by free competition with a nation like England, which has flour- ished and grown immensely rich by levying contributions on nations in a less advanced condition which, either through internal dissensions &r weakness, have faUen a prey to her poHcy. And what has that policy been? Always a British policy. Prohibitive tariffs when British manufac- ture was in its primitive condition; the Navigation Act when the mercantile marine had to be increased in order to bid defiance to the Dutch ; the absolute wiping out of our infantile industries under the colonial regime; and a free- trade policy for their destruction after the love of the Ee- pubUc had established the United States. In short, there is nothing to be found in the study of the general political policy of England that bears any resemblance to what theo- retical free-traders call political economy. While preach- ing to us the doctrine which they call the science of political economy, but which is denational in its principle, the Prime Minister of England (Gladstone) coolly r<3legates "economic principles," when they conflict with British legislation, to Jupiter or Saturn. I will ask any of the so-called political economists if they can harmonize recent legislation in Eng- land with the doctrine of laissez-faire which they preach to our college students; and, to be definite, I will mention some of the acts: the Factory Act, 1874; the Factory and Workshop Act, 1S78; the Artisan's Dwelling Act, 1875, and the subsequent Acts of 1879 and 1882; the Public Health Acts; the Suez Canal Shares Act, 1876; the Parcels Post Act, 1882; the City Supply, "Ireland," 1880; the Relief of Distress Act, "Ireland," 1880; the Settled Lands Acts, 1874 and 1883; the Agricultural Holdings Acts, 1875 and 1883; the Electric Lighting Act, 1882: the Alkali Acts, 1874 and 1881; the Pollution of Rivers Act, 1876; the Wild Fowl Preserva- FREE-TRABE FOLLY. 33 tion Act, 1876; the Destructive Insect Act, 1877; the Seal Fishery Act, 1875; the Employer'.^ Liability Act, 1880; Pay- ment of Wages in the Hosiery Trades Act, 1874; Merchant Seamen, Payment of Wages Act, 1880 ; the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, 1875; the Employers' and Work- men's Act, 1875 ; the Trades Union Act, 1876 ; the Allotment Act, 1872; tha Bank Holiday Act, 1875; the Bills of Sale Acts, 1878 and 1882; the Unseaworthy Ship Acts, 1875, and Mra-chants' Shipping Act, 1876; the Land Law, Ireland, Act, 1881. THE SCIENCK OF HUMANITY, OB OF WEALTH— WmOH? The enactments mentioned in the last chapter are directly -egpnomic: to foster the national vigor; to care for the na- tional administration of capi^ and improve the national resources ; to increase the social well-being of the inhabitants, and to protect the interests of the nation generally. The character of State interference is undoubtedly moral, for the betterment of the people; the economists have abso- lutely failed to lay down any hard and fast rule as to the measure of interference that is wise. When England finds it to her interest to enact a purely protective measure to ac- complish these ends, she sends economic principles flying to Jupiter or to Saturn; and while she does this, the shallow praters about economic principles in this country say that we must not protect our manufactures, and thereby improve the condition of the great organism known as the United States, because it is a policy of waste and is not in accord- ance with economic principles. It has been truly said that manufactories and manufac- turers are the mothers and children of municipal liberty, of intelligence, of the arts and sciences, of internal and external commerce, of navigation and improvements in transport, of civilization and political power. They are the chief means of liberating agriculture from its chains, and of elevating it to a commercial character, and to the degree of art and sci- ence by which, as I have shown by actual figures, the rents, 34 FREE-TllABE FOLLY. farming profits, and wages are increased, and greater value is given to landed property. The free-trader has attributed this civilizing power to foreign trade, and in that he has confounded the mere exchange with the originator. We may, then, in view of all these facts, assuredly hold that for the nation as for the individual "the life is more than meat;" that the quickening of noble and worthy human life among us is an infinitely more important thing than follow- ing the teachings of what is admittedly the science of wealth. The questions which our responsible rulers have daily to face are, What sacrifice of national strength is needed that the nation may continue to exist at all? or, What sacrifice of national wealth may be wise in hope that the national life may be ennobled? ' ' No man Hveth to him- self alone." Private gains, it is true, result to the employer who lengthens the hours of labor. His action is so far eco- nomic and in strict accordance with the free-trader who is continually crying for more things, for more manufactures, for cheapness of production, which alone results in degrada- tion of labor. A degraded population springs up in conse- quence of his continuance in this course, and hence the con- duct is immoral. In the one case the man acts in accordance with the science of wealth ; in the other the State or statesman acts in accordance with the science of humanity, that the national life may be made better. EELATING TO CBETAIN ECONOMIC BOHEML.\NS. Having exposed to some extent the weakness of the theo- retical arguments which free-traders are accustomed to ad- vance in assailing protection, it is next proposed to present facts which sustain the protective side of the question, and which are likely to carry far more weight with practical minds than the assumptions of the school of economists who have appeared as most angry parLisans in American politics, and whose dismal rhetoric is to he met on all sides. "The fact is," says Professor Sumner, " that a column of statistics hardly ever proves anything." FREE.TRADE FOLLY, 35 Yet, strangely enough, if a column of figui-es somewhat distorted will in any way buoy up and sustain a free-trade argument, I have not observed that free-traders are modest enough to adopt Professor Sumner's pi'oposition. There was, for instance, schedule "A," which Morrison and Hurd and Springer and all the great "I ams" of the free-trade party used in their speeches last campaign to show what havoc the "knife of protection" was working among the Western farmers. Let us examine schedule " A." The aim was to show tliat protective duties not only increased the cost of imported articles, but that they also increased the cost of all the arti- cles produced at home, and that to the extent of this in- crease the national resources were impoverished. A column of statistics was produced to show that this loss was annu^ ally about $556,938,637. It was intended to show by these figures that " somewhere between the producer of the protected industry and the con- sumer of his product productive forces are, lost; and that the actual earnings of the latter are by force of the protec- tive statute transferred to the former." jMr. Hoyt, in his recent work, in commenting on this schedule says: "The inference meant to be drawn is, that every individual farmer gets less iron for his wheat under this dispensation ;. that every individual laborer, every preacher or teacher with two dollars in his pocket, is com- pelled to spend them both to procure at home what he could purchase abroad for one dollar ; and that some receiver of fixed income, derived from American enterprise could take the money which he received from American consumers of his service and buy two broadcloth coats instead of one in New Tork." Hurd, in his great free-trade speech, set forth this in most eloquent terms. The whole trouble with these people is, and this I shall show later along by statistics, tha,t they " try to forget that their colleges, banks, railroads, and farms are on the Hudson, the Delaware, and the Mississippi, and not on the Thames, the Seine, and the Congo. They try to ignore the great fact that the earning power by their pos- 36 FliEETRADn F0LL7. sessions is rooted in the industrial American organization. The expenditures of the American farmer and laborer and of every household are made here in our own market on better terms both as to abundance and cheapness than in any market in the world. We have found no commodity which any foreign nation can furnish us at less cost in labor and skiU. We live in one civilization, the people of Germany, of France, of Belgium, of Holland, of Norway, of Sweden, of Denmark, of Eussia, live in another. it may be true, as Mr. Hoyt says, that certain "economic Bohemians" turn their backs on most of their duties to their fellow-citizens, and, having filched all they can of the ad- vantages of hving mider our great co-operative system, would gladly sacrifice the right of the society which has placed in their hands the purchase-money by means of which they supply then- wants ; but the farmers of the great Northwest cannot do this. Their farms are located in the great Mississippi valley, and they cannot move them to the valley of any great river system in Europe. Whatever benefits and develops the natural resources of the great river system of which they have become part and parcel benems them and adds wealth to and improves their social condition. They cannot if they would gather the riches which the soil has given them and betake themselves to Europe to spend it. This the college professor and man who lives on a fixed income can do. He is paid according to the standard of pay in this country, and is annoyed wben stopped at the customs liouse, laden as he is with the products of the cheaper labor of Europe (a labor which exists with different environments), and is asked to contribute his share to the support of the country which protects him. It is right and just that he should do so. EFFECT OF THE TARIFF ON PRICES. I COME now to the direct benefits of a tariff. Let every protectionist throughout this country plant himself firmly FEEE-TRADE FOLLT. 37 on the fact that all essential objects of consumption affected by the tariff are cheaper and better now than at any period .under free-trade or a i-evenue tariff; that the tariff has cheapened the cost of all he uses and all he wears ; that American labor is better paid, and the working man and his family in a better condition than ia any other coun- try on the globe. It is also a fact that the vast bulk ol the productions of the three greatest industries— ii'on and steel, cotton and wool — ^are sold in this coimtry as cheaply as they are in free-trade England. This is in conformity with the law that the greatest cheapening of prices by the establishment of national industry is exhibited in commodities of the highest necessity. In the iron manufacture, the article of nails, the commodity of most imiversal use produced by that industry, has declined, through domestic production, from $6.00 per 100 pounds, in 1864, to $3. 50 'in 1881, and $2.25 in 1885, a cheaper rate than prevails in any country in the world, and enabling us to ex- port, in competiton ^vith England and Australia, to South America, while we send our nail-working machines even to England itself. This is also illustrated in our cotton manu- facture by the reduction of the price of sheetings from 30 cents, in 1814, to 6 J cents in 1843; of prints, from 23.07 cents, in 1685, to 9.15 cents in 1843, and 5 cents in 1883. The same law is illustrated in the worsted manufacture by the reduction of delaines, or a fabric corresponding to it, a domestic commodity consumed by our people in the ratio of nearly two yards for each individual of our population, from 30 cents, in 1835, to 20.06 cents in 1860, and 11.22 cents in 1882. In the woollen industry this law is demonstrated by the fact that the greatest reduc- tion of prices has been in goods of universal consumption, such as flannels, ordinary knit-goods, low and mediiun cloth, and ready-made clothing. The goods, in fact, the demand for which, proceeding from so many millions of our people, sustains the vast scale of production with its resulting econo- mies. Here is a statement furnished by John and James Dobson, 38 FREE-TRADE FOLLY. of Philadelphia, showing the average prices for the various grades of blankets during the years 1860 and 1883: 1860, 13.00, $2.50, $3.25, $3.50, $3; 75, $5.00, $7.50, $8.00, $10.00, and $13.00; 1883, $1.25, $1.80, $1.63i, $2.35, $3.20, $3.75, $5.50,' $5.00, $7.25, and $8.50. The above includes the entire Mne of blankets, from the lowest to the best grades, per pair, standard make, of what are known as plaia Norway blankets. The figures show a decline of 30 to 60 per cent in favor of the protective system, over the "for revenue only," or free-trade system that pre- vailed prior to 1861. The wool used in the manufacture of these blankets is about 6 per cent below the average price in 1860. Other wooUen goods have declined in the same ratio. Coars0 woollen cloths, particularly those used for bKnkets, have had the same relative decMne. Those worth, in 1860, $1.50 per yard are sold to-day for 80 cents to $1.00; and yet the woollen industry of the United States pays 100 per cent more wages to its employees than is paid m Eng- land. Not long since I made a personal examination at a typical woollen-goods estabUshment in Boston. I examined the prices of the whole range of goods, namely, ready-made clothing, adapted to all classes of customers. The proprie- tors of the establishment visited informed me that clothing was 30 to 40 per cent cheaper now than at the period of low- est prices in 1800, in the lowest and cheapest goods the re- ductions of price being considerably gi'eater than this rate. My inquiry was addressed especially to the lowest-priced goods— those supplying the barest necessities of life in ap- parel. Twenty-five thousand pairs of men's winter trousers, made of goods weighing fourteen ounces per yard, were being, made, to be sold at the price of $1.50 per pair; strictly all- wool complete suits were held at $5.50 per suit; good, heavy winter full suits at $6.50 and $7.50; winter overcoats, of sat- inet, at $3.00 each. The prices of good and substantial gar- ments, sufficient to supply a workingman for a year, were as follows: FREE-TRADE FOLLY. 39 A handsome suit for best or Sunday wear |10 00 Working suit 7 00 Extra pair of Trousers 2 00 Overcoat 5 00 Total, $34 00 A workman, earning $2 a day, can thus obtain his cloth- ing for a year by the labor of two weeks. He can do no better than this in England. I have priced hundreds of workingmen's suits, and found .nothing fit to wear for less than $10 or $12. The commonest corduroy trousei-s cost, in England, $2.50, while boots and shoes are more expensive there than in this country. These facts, in regard to our woollen industiy, confute effectually the false statements circulated by those opposed to American industry and American labor, to the effect that the masses of the people of this, country are compelled to pay, as a tax, the duty, not only on imported goods, to the government, but an equivalent amount in increased cost to the American manufacturers for goods made at home. It is also a curious fact that, while the cost of the raw mate- rial, both in the iron and the woollen industry, is higher here than in Great Britain, by the time the product assumes its most highly manufactured condition iA the former in dustry in cutlery, farming instruments, machinery, etc., and in the latter industry, in ready-made clothing,— the cost to the consumer in this country is but slightly, if any, in excess of the cost in free-trade G-reat Britain. Tables bear- ing directly on this point, and showing the prices of neces- sities here and abroad, will be foxmd in the appendix. RESULT OP HOME COMPETITION. An advertisement in a Milwaukee paper attracted con- siderable attention in 1884. In it the advertiser gives side by side the retail price in 1884 of bleached and unbleached cotton cloth, and the jobbing price in 1860, together with 40 FREE-TRADE FOLLY. the retail prices of ticks, printed goods, etc., now, and the job prices in 1860. Below is a summary: Tjr„.^n„., n,%m™.„.,. Jobbing Prices Eetail Prices Bleached Cottons. in iseo. In 1884. New York Mills, 4-4 15* 9i Wamsulta, 4-4 \Z\ 9i TJlicii Nonpareil, 4-4 13 9i Londiile,4-4 llf 8 Hill, 4-4 114 7 Utica, 5-4 15i 13 Utica, 6^ 184 16 Utica, 9-4 r 30 33 Utica, 10-4 33 25 Unbleached Cottons. Atlantic A., 4-4 9 7 Ticks, Pbints, etc. Amoskeag Ticks 16 15 Standard Browu Mills 8f 64 Lancaster Giiigliam 104 74 Prints 94 6 Print Cloths, 64-64 5f 3^ Print Cloths, 56-60 54 2f Middlesex Shawls $7.00 $6.50 I hope that every farmer will study this table carefully. It is in itself a strong argument in favor of the tariff. With- out protection, the British manufacturers, who now boast that with free trade they can close up every cotton-mill in the United States, would have been making these cotton goods instead of American manufacturers, and our farmers would have been compelled to pay much higher prices than they do now. Protection has reduced the price of our silk goods. The Silk Associatiofa ref entiy presented some interesting figures, showing the great decline in prices in the period of 1865 and 1882— that is, from the time of the high tariff. The cost oJE machine twist, it appears, has decreased 66 per cent; fine silk and scarfs, 55 per cent; serges and twilled silks, 63 per cent; handkerchiefs, 62 per cent; ribbons, '54 per cent; laces FREE-TRADE FOLLY. 41 50 per cent; drees goods, 30 to 35 per cent. During the last three years a still further decline has taken place, until silks, as every woman knows, are cheaper here than ever he- fore. WiU any theorist undertake to show that the starting of the silk industry and the employment of 40,000 personti on this side of the Atlantic has had nothing to do with this cheapening of the product to the American consumer ? And it must he rememhered that, estimated on a gold basis, the cost has declined, and that, too, at a greater relative rate than the decrease of the cost of the raw material. THE POOK TAILOR AND HIS THREAT). Peofessoe Sumner has wearied many an audience with that very old story of his about poor tailors and seamstresses of the country maintaining, by the " tax " on Unen thread, the rich monopoUes of New England. He lias, too, inculcated into the minds of the sons of these " robber monopolists " the idea that they have only been able to attend Yale through this system of robbing the poor for the benefit of the rich ; that under free trade ia England linen thread is much cheaper, the tailors are weU-to-do and happy, and Hood's " Song of the Shirt " has no application excepting in protec- tive countries. Having so repeatedly heard this from the truthful Professor of Political Economy of Tale, the public will be surprised to read the following statement from the agents of the Grafton Linen Thread "IVfillB, who have mills also in Johnstone, Scotland: " We may say that owing to fierce competition among do- mestic thread-makers, we sell a large proportion of the pro- duct of our mills at Grafton, Mass., at prices which are as low absolutely as prices obtained in Britain for similar quali- ties made at our mills in Johnstone, Scotland. As the operatives at Grafton receive more than 100 per cent higher wages than the Johnstone workers, and as, according to the best information obtainable, the cost of living at Grafton is less than fifty per cent more than in Johnstone, it requires no aigument to show who receives 1^ major benefit of the 42 FBEE-TRADE FOLLY. protective tariff upon linen thread. Competition has more to do with prices than tariffs have, in this case, and we doubt not in many others." "When will public sentiment rebel against this bad syctem of teaching falsehood to the young men of the United States imder the guise of the science of poMtical economy? When will the fathers of those young men cease to send theii' sons to colleges which are essentially un-American, and in which are taught the exploded theories of pamphleteers whose views have long since been discarded by the advanced think- ers of Europe? LET THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES. The facts and figures prove that home competition has put down prices, and thus immediately benefited the con- sumer. I ask any honest, fair minded reader to glance at the fol- lowing table and then give me his opinion as to whether or not the manufacture, not only of steel-rails, but of pig-iton, bar-iron, and cut-naUs at home, has not benefited the con- sumer? And I am willing to abide by his answer. Pig- Bar- Steel- Cut Pig- Bar- Steel- Cut Years. iron. iron. rails. nails. Teabb. iron. iron. rails. nails. 1874.. .$30i. $67.95 $94:r 13.99 1881.. $25J $58.05 $61 J $3 09 1875. . . 25 60.85 68 3.43 1882... 251 61.41 48i 3.47 1876. . . 22 53.08 59 2.98 1883... 22f 50.30 37f 3 06 1877.. . 18 •45.55 45 2.07 1884... 19J 44.05 30| 2.39 1878. . . 17 44.24 43 2.31 1885 (9 1870. . . 21 51,85 48; 2.69 monllis) 17J 39.37 27J 2.35 1880.. . 38 60. B8 67i 3.68 ■ These are protection prices. The average price of pig-iron was $23; o£ bar-iron, $53; of steel-rails, $53|; and of cut- naUs, $2.99. Below are the average revenue tariff prices: Pig- Bar- Iron- Cut Pig- Bar- Iron Cut yBABS. iron. iron. rails. nails. Years. iron. iron. rails. nails. 1840.. .$37 J $91.66 .... 1854. .$36j $91.33 $80i $4.60 1847.. ■ 30i 86.04 $69 $446 1855. . 27 74.58 631; 4.10 1848.. . 26i 79 83 62J 4 30 1856.. . 27 73.75 64| 3.94 1849.. . 22f 67.50 53| 4.00 1857.. . 26 71.04 64J 3 73 1850.. . 20J 59 54 47| 45 3.63 1858.. . 23 63.29 50 3.50 1851.. ., aif 54.66 3.30 1859.. . 23 60.00 49f 3.96 1853.. • 2^ 58.79 48 3.08 I860.. . 22 58.75 48 3.13 1853.. • 36| 8&.S0 77- 4.50 FREE-TRADE FOLLY. 43 Pig-iron cost during this period $26i; bar-iron, $71.62; steel-rails, $58f ; and cut-nails, $3.87. Taking out the single item of steel- nails, we find the decrease has been from $94i in 1874, to $27i in 1885. How has the farmer been benefited by this? By the steady decline in ths rates of freight, which are cheaper to-day than in G-reat Britain. This table was com- piled by the Hon. Joseph Nimmo, Jr., late Chief of the Bureau of Statistics: Bjlake and canal. Yeabs. Cents. 1868 34.54 18B9 23.12 1870 17.10 1871 20.34 1873 34.50 1873 19.19 1874 14.10 1875 11.43 1876 9.58 By lake and rail. Cents. 39.0 25.0 22.0 25.0 38.0 36.9 16.9 14 6 11.8 By aU rail. Cents. 43.6 35.1 33.3 31.0 33 5 33.3 38.7 34.1 16.5 By lake and canal. Yeabs. Cents. 1877 11.34 1878 9.15 1879 11.60 1880 1881 1883 1883 1884 (Jan. to Sept.) 13.27 8.19 7.89 8.40 6.60 By lake and rail. Cents. 15.8 11.4 13.3 15.7 10.4 10.9 11.5 rail. Cents. 20.3 17.7 17.3 19.7 14 4 14 6 16.5 9.75 13.0 Quotations are wanting for 1885. It is shown by this table that since 1868, when the statis- tics commence, the freight on wheat from Chicago to New York has steadily and rapidly declined. The railroad com- panies have largely been enabled to reduce their rates of freight because protection, by encoiiraging domestic competition in the manufacture of steel-rails, and in the manufacture of iron and other articles entering into the construction of cars and locomotives, has cheapened, the cost of building and equipping railroads ; and because the use of cheap steel rails, which protection alone had niade possible, has largely increased the caiTying capacity of the railroads without correspondingly adding to their operating expenses. The competition of th'? railroads compelled a reduction of freight rates by lake and canal. Protection, therefore, has not hindered but has greatly helped the farmers to send their products to market. 44 FBEE-TRADE F0LL7. BLANKETS, GLASS, AND SALT. When the Professor tells you that the tarifE doubles the cost of blankets, give him the plain facts : " In order to determine the comparative prices of blankets in England and America, a pair cif five-pound blankets was recently imported by a New England manufacturer at the lowest possible cost. The statement of their cost, duty-paid^ is as follows: • "Cost of 1 pair of blankets received per steamship Batavia: Cost at wbolesale in England ISs. Id., equal to $4 45 Weight duty, 5 pounds at 50c $2 50 Ad valorem do. 35 per cent 1 75 4 25 Custom house fees 65 Total $9 35 " Now, if it were true that the American price of an arti- cle is the English price, plus the duties, such blankets ought to be selling here at $9.35 per pair; but as a matter of fact, American blankets of precisely the same weight and quality are selling at $5.20 per pair, or but 75 cents higher than in England." The argument is constantly used that Americans have to pay from sixty to one hundred per cent more for their plate- glass than if they were permitted to buy it in the cheapest market. The following from the testimony erf N. T. De Pauw is the truth about the plate-glass question: By Commissioner Porter : Question. Since you started the manufacture of plate- glass, has the price of that article increased or decreased? Answer. The price of some sizes is only one third of what it was when we started, and that of others only ono half. In no case is the price over one half. Q. How many hands do you employ? A. In the neighborhood of one thousand; Q. You manufacture practically all the plate-glass manu- factured in this country? FREE-TRAVE TOLLY. 45 A. No, sir. I presume we manufacture about two thirds of aU the plate-glass in the United States. With reference to the tariff upon plate-glass, I can say that, while we have been manufacturing it for the last ten or eleven yeai-s, the importations during that time have been increasing also, the reason of which is that the glass has become so cheap (in comparison with what it was formerly) in consequence of the manufacture of it in this country. Every time in our history when the tariff on salt has been reduced the prices have advanced, except under the tariff of 1857, soon after the passage of which occurred the memora- ble panic of that year, followed by a heavy decline in the prices of almost every kind of commodities. In 1872 Con- gress reduced from twenty-four down to .twelve cents per one hundred pounds the duty on salt in bags, sacks, barrels, or other packages, and from eighteen down to eight cents per one hundred pounds on salt in bulk. Immediately the foreign prices of salt advanced. The rise in prices attracted attention and was felt everywhere in this country. On this subject the report of the New York Chamber of Commerce for the commercial year ending April 30, 1883, said: " The reduction of duty on foreign salt has not had that effect upon the price of salt which was anticipaled by those who advocated the passage of the act. The cost of both fine and ground salt is higher than it was before the duty was reduced, and the importation of fine salt has fallen off slightly from that of 1871." ■ Once in the history of the country we tried free salt, with most ruinous results. This was between 1808 and 1813. Having injured the manufacture in this country to such aia extent that works were abandoned, the forei^ prices were advanced, and when the War of 1812 broke out the foreign supply was cut off altogether. Here is what the Committee on Salt had to say on the subject in their report to the Na- tional Convention for the Protection of American industries, convened in New York April 5, 1S41 : " During the last war with Great Britain this article was sold in quantity in more than one of our States at four dol- lars per' bushel, when, had thei'e existed in those States proper establishments for malting it from sea-water, it 46 FREE-TBABE FOLLY. might have been supplied as low as thirty-five cents per bushel; thus, under the then state of things, one year's sup- ply was equal to eleven years under the other ; or during the three years of such a war the cost of supply might equal that of thirty -three years." And this is the way we secured cheap salt by absolute free trade in the article. Our salt industry, hke all other industries, has increased and flourished under protection, while the price to the con- sumers has steadily declined. In 1830 we produced but 4,500,000 bushels, and the average price was twenty-one cents per bushel; in 1840 the production had increased to over 6,000,000 bushels, and the price was twenty cents per bushel; in 1850 it.had increased to nearly 10,000,000 bushels, and the price advanced to twenty-two cents per bushel; in 1860 the product reached 13,000,000 bushels, and the price receded to eighteen cents per bushel; in 1870 the horiie pro- duction was 18,000,000 bushels, and the price nearly twenty- eight cents, tjie price advancing with the general advance of all coihmodities caused by the war. In 1880 the produc- tion was 30,000,000 bushels, and the price sixteen cents per bushel. Further and permanent cheapness in salt must, therefore, be looked for with a greater development of home manufacture and not by turning thfe industry over to for- eigners. The growth of the Michigan salt industry dm-ing the last twenty-five years of a high protective tariff has been remarkable, and has had much to do with the cheapen- ing of the product to the consumer. In 1860 the total pi'o- duct of that State was only 20,000 bushels. Since then it has steadily grown, receding but onc3, and in 1881 the pro- duct had reached in round figures 14,000,000 bushels, or seven hundredfold. I submit these facts to any intelligent mind not warped by narrow prejudice or vindictive feeling against the flour- ishing manufactures of the Northern States, and I ask which is the wisest way to secure for the people of this Republic cheap salt? ShaU we develop the vast resources of our own States, or shall we choke up these inexhaustible wells of national prosperity and permanent cheapness for a mo- FREETBABE FOLLY. 47 mentary delirium of cheapness and then ruined industries and high foreign prices? OONCBRNING SUGAR AT HOME AND ABROAD. Never was sugar so cheap as at the present time. I fur- nish from a carefully prepared statistical table of the Amer- ican Grocer the price of granulated sugar in December of each year from 1870: 1870, 13 cents; 1871, 12^ cents; 1872, 13f cents; 1873, lOJ cents; 1874, lOf cents; 1875, lOi cents; 1876, 12i cents; 1877, 9i cents; 1878, 8f cents; 1879, 9f cents; 1880, 9i cents; 1881, 9i cents; 1882, 8f cents; 1883, 7| cents; 1884, H cents. Sugar is advertised in the grocers' windows in many qiiarters of our large cities at 6 cents per pound. It is no cheaper in free-trade Great Britain. An EngUsh writer in the Manchester Courier says that free-trade in sugar in Great Britain has thrown 51,000 Enghsh workmen out of a profitable employment, destroyed tbe refining industry, and that, in tlieWest Indian colonies, acapital of $150,000,000, giving employment to 500,000 people, represents practically a dead loss. England buys her sugar already refined from the European nations. The consumer pays as much for it as the consumer in the United States. No one is ben-fited in England, The only recipients of this gift are the foreign capitalists and foreign workers. Shall we go and do hke- wise? The Free-traders will have a hard nut to crack in the fact that in the Boston and New York markets, where, of course, the refined product is sold without any rebate on the taxed raw material, the market price for refined sugar has ranged below the current valines in the London market where the raw material is free. Granulated sugar in the principal article of export, and in the refining of these sugars American refiners are admit- tedly superior to their English rivals both in skill and ma- chinery. Naturally, the American product excels the Brit- ish. This is the case in a nut-sheU: We exported,, in 1885, $16,000,000 worth of refined sugar, mostly to England. The annual consumption of sugar in the United States per 48 FBJBE-TRADE FOLLY. capita is 43 pounds ; of bread, 443 pounds. The annual cost of sugar per capita is $2.58; of bread, $22.10 per capita. With sugar selling at five and six cents retail, I am at a loss to know how it is oppressed by the duty. And if, as would seetn to be the case, sugar is to-day lower in Boston and New York markets than in England under free-trade, I am stUl further at a loss to know how it wiU benefit the con- sumer greatly to take oflE the duty, and thereby destroy an uuportant American industry in wliich $90,000,000 are in- vested, and upon which 300,000 people are dependent for support, to say nothing of the refining industry with its $27,000,000 of capital. Nor does this view of the sugar case contemplate what may yet be done should we continue the duty on sugar, namely, establish in this country the beet- root sugar industry. Are we by any short-sighted policy pre- pared to give up an industry which, if successfully intro- duced into the United States, would, in a few years, supply us with fifty or one hundred milUon pounds of beet-root sugar, and furnish a profitable crop for a million or two acres of land? Do the farmers of America understand that by the use of the strontia process annual dividends as high as 100 per cent have been made in Grerman sugar-mills? In the small country of Belgium, with a population of 5,600,000, the area under beet-root culture has doubled since 1866, and now reaches nearly 90,000 acres, while the product for 1884 was nearly that number of tons. About one ton of sugar is obtained from one acre of beet-root crop. Herr licht, the famous German statistician, furnishes the figvires of the progress of the manufacture of beet sugar in Europe. In 1872 the total production was 1,225,000 tons. In 1883-4 it had reached 2,240,000 tons. Here are the exact figures: Tons Beet-Sugar. ConsTRIEB. 1881-2 . 1883-3 1883-4 (est.) Gcrmnny. 644.7.'<0 848,120 925,000 France 393,2Y0 423.190 450.000 Aiistm-Iliinirary 411.020 473.000 485,000 Russia and Poland 808.780 284.490 300,000 Bclirium 7.S.140 82.720 90,000 Holland and Olber Countries 30,000 35,000 40,000 Totals 1,860,990 2,146,520 2,240,000 FREE TRADE FOLLY. 49 The world consumes annually almost 5,500,000 tons of sugar, and the German Empire produces more than one-sixth of it, or nearly twice as much as Cuba does now, and far more than that island ever did; and this industry was un- known to Germany half a century ago, and assumed no importance until stimulated by government aid by judicious tarifiE. With continued protection the United States is as certain to make itself independent of foreign nations for sugar as Germany. The farmers of the coimtry will de- mand the continuance of this duty— even if the Louisiana planters are blind enough to their own interests to let Free- traders confiscate their capital and demoralize their labor — for it means to American farmers an industry worth from one to two hundred millions of dollars annually. Having presented the above facts, showing the reduction in prices of all the staple articles of consumption by the Pro- tective system, I appeal for its truth to common observation and to all practical men. Let the farmer decide for himself whether he does not buy his iron, his steel, his salt, his sugar, his glass, his crockery, his cotton goods, woollens, and all necessaries of life cheaper than it would have been possible if his workshops had been in Europe. "EAW material" AMD "WAR TARIFF." We are constantly hearing it said by free-traders that crude articles have to bear so much " tax," as they call the duty on these articles, and that the farmer receives little benefit from protection. Free-traders furthermore assert that forty per cent of dutiable imported goods are "crude or partially manu- factured articles," meaning, of course, to infer articles used in the various processes of domestic industry. The follow- ing table shows the absolute falsity of these assertions; 50 FBEE.TRADE FOLLY. ClABSEB. Ad. val. Per cent op bate. total dutt. {a) Articles of food and live animals 44.75 (6) Articles in a cnulo coudiliou wliicli enter into tlie various processes of Uomesllc industry 26.82 (c) Articles wholly or partially manufactured, for use as materials in the mauufaclur- iii<; and mechanic arts 26.48 (S) Articles manufactured, ready for con- sumplibn 47.54 («) Articles for voluntary use, luxuries, etc. . . 48 12 Total 41.61 31.15 6.28 9.73 80,86 21.98 100.00 Here it will be seen that of the duty collected in 1884, 31.15 per cent of it was collected from agricultural products, and more if we add wool, which is classified in Class " B ;" while not more than 15 per cent, even if we include raw wool, are classed by the chief of the Bureau of Statistics, himself a free-trader, as crude or partially manufactured articles used in the various processes of domestic industries. The flings of free-traders about a war tariff are almost beneath notice, especially when a reference to the official reports on commerce and navigation would show the follow- ing steady decrease of the average rate of duty, attributable alike to intelligent reduction in the rates of duty and to the addition from time to time to the free list of all articles that cannot be profitably manufactured in this country: Average ad valorem duty, free and dutiable. 1868... ■. 46.55 1869 44.76 1870 44.91 1871 40 47 1873 37.98 1878 27.88 Average ad valorem duty, free aud dutiable. 1874 28.28 1875 29.30 1876 31.34 1877 29.19 1878 29.01 1879 30.36 Averagead valorem duty, free and dutiable. 1880 29.12 1881 29.78 1882 30 17 1883 30.05 1884 28.50 1885 30.07 There is some difference in an average duty of 46i per cent ad valorem, and an average of 80 per cent ad valorem, but it is difficult to make unreasoning and unfair critics of the tariff system see even this simple proposition. Free-traders repeatedly ask why it is that protectionists shake the "thii-ty millions of laborers of Europe" in our FREE-TRABE FOLLY. 61 face, and tell us that free trade will bring us into competition with thom, and yet, at the same time, allow these laborers to land on our shores, and compete with American labor. The answer to this is, that with the same environments, with the same institutions to bring out their higher man- hood, the citizens of the Republic extend a welcoming hand to the tremendous army of emigrants annually forced hither from fear of starving or becoming paupers in their native land, but we are not willing to extend the same privilege of competition to the thirty millions remaining at home, and thus living in their difEerent surroundings, who have not been educated up to the plane of Americam workmen; who are contented to slave on through life as their ancestors have been before them; who are ch'ained to the forge, the mine, the loom, the despotic ruler, without hope and without a future. DIEEOT TAXATION. The question is frequently asked, and especially by farm- ers, how do free-traders propose to raise the revenue to carry on this government when they have succeeded in reducing the revenue from customs duties to nothing by adding duti- able articles to the free list. The only reply to this question is, by direct taxation. And what does that mean ? It means the transposition of taxation from the wealthy people who live in the large cities along the Atlantic coast, and who consume to-(iaythe largest proporbion of the most highly dutiable' merchandise imported, to the agricultural regions of the country. Free-traders always squirm th6 most when the facts which prove this to be the case are laid before the farmer. This direct taxation could of course only be pro- portioned by population, and in one State, Michigan, some farmers not long since assembled in con\-ention did a little ciphering on this point for themselves, and came to the con- , elusion that in some counties it would be double and oven treble the State, county, school and milnicipal taxation. I have thought it worth while to make a calculation, show- ing exactly what each State and each section of the country 63 FREE-TRADE FOLLT. would have to pay were the system of direct taxation, such as free-traders propose, adopted. In the following table I have extended according to population, as returned by the Tenth Census, the two hundred millions of dollars which is now raised by customs duties, and, side by side, 1 have placed the total State and local taxation of each State of the Union: Total state Total Share of States. and $200,000,000 Local Taxation. Based on Population, Maine $5,183,135 $2,580,000 New Hampshire 2,697.640 1.380.000 Vermont 1,74.5,111 1,340.000 Mussadiusetts 24.326.877 7,120.000 Rliodelslaad 3,693.715 1.100,000 Couueclicut 5,305,739 3,480,000 Total New England States.. . . . 43,010,317 16,000,000 New York 56.393,975 20 280,000 New Jersey 8.958,065 4,.')00.000 Peimsylvauia 28,604.334 17,080,000 Del.-ivvare 604.257 680,000 Maryland 5,437.463 3,720,000 District of Columbia 1,469,254 720.000 Total Middle States 101,466,347 46,880,000 Virginia 4,642.203 6.040,000 West Virginia 2.050.979 2.4S0.00O Norlh Carolina 1,916.133 . 5,580,000 Soiitli Carolina 1.839,983 ,3,900,000 Georcia 3,207,008 6,120.000 Florida 605.180 1,060 0(10 Alabama 2.061.978 ■ 5.040,000 Mississippi 3.384.475 4,500,000 Louisiana 4,395,876 3.740.000 Texas 4.568.716 6,34(1.000 Arkansas 1.839,090 3.200.000 Kcntuclcy 5.201,017 6.580.000 Tennessee 2,788,781 6,140,000 Total Southern States 37,507,417 60,730,000 FREE-TRADE FOLLY. 53 Total State Total Share of States. and 88oo,oao.ooo Local Taxation. Based on Population Ohio 25,756,658 12,740,000 Indiana 10,843,630 7,920,000 Illinois 19,283,413 12.280.000 Michigan 8,627,949 6,520,000 Wisconsin 5,838,325 5,240,000 Iowa 10,261,605 6,460,000 Minnesota 3,713,707 3,100,000 Missouri .-. 10,269,736 8,640,000 Kansas 4,414,821 3,980,000 Nebraska 2,792,480 1,800,000 Colorado 2,152,008 780.000 Nevada 871,673 280,000 Oregon 1,113,942 680,000 California 12,628,005 3,440,000 Total Western States 118,567,952 73,860,000 Arizona 293,036 167,640 Dakota 478.066 565,000 Idaho 195.887 136,898 Montana 383,947 163,000 New Mexico 126.942 508.000 Utah 435.238 602,230 Washington 505,417 314,198 Wyoming 230,228 83,534 Total Territories 2,648,761 2,540,000 I ask any intelligent farmer of the Northwest, or of the South, to examine the above table and decide fojt" himself which section of the United States will be compelled to bear the heaviest burden of this taxation. This is so important a matter that I have made the following summary: Total State Total Share of Sections. and $300,000,000 Local Taxation, Based^on Population. New England States $42,010,217 $16,000,000 Middle States 101,466,347 46,880,000 Soutliern States 37,507,417 60,720.000 Western States 118,567,953 73,860,000 Territories 2,648,761 2,54Q,000 The New England States, with their immense wealth and ability to bear taxation, will have to pay sixteen million dol- lars ctf it only, while their total Stat« and local taxation 54 FEEE-TBADE EOLLT. aggregates forty-two millions of dollars. The Middle States, ■with the large cities of New York, Philadelphia and Balti- moi-e, which now consume such an immense proportion of the high-priced imported goods, will have to pay but forty- six million dollars of this direct taxation under the ideal free-trade system which is to be inaugurated, while their present State and local taxatipn amounts to far more than double this sum, exceeding one hundred million dollars. And now we come to the Southern States— ^the States which have been so bowed down^ so they tell us, with State and local taxation, that, in many of them, they have been unable to pay their just and lawful debts, and are asking Federal aid to educate their ilUterate— to thei section of the country which originated the word repudiation. How will this sec tion be affected ! Virginia will have to pay, in addition to , its present State and local taxation, which is four and one half million dollars, six million dollars of this direct tax. The amount which the States of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi will have to pay under a purely free-trade system, such as most members of Congress coming from the Southern States ad- vocate, will aggregate a sum equivalent to twice the present State and local taxation. How is it to be paid, I ask ; and a fair question, too, is this, when we remember that ever since the war these States have been declaring their inability to pay either the interest or the principal of their debts. Under a system of direct taxation, the taxation of the Southern States, which is now thirty -seven and one- half million dollars, will be increased to nearly one hundred million dollars. The South to-day js least affected by the customs duties of any section of the country. The class of goods the people buy are, as a rule, manufactured at home, and are produced here and sold as cheaply as they can be in any country in the world. The South does not consume to any great extent imported goods, or articles which are increased in value through the imposition of customs duties. The farmers of the great Northwest pay a hberal share of the State and local taxation, and they pay it, as a rule, cheerfully. The most of it goes for purposes which benefit them. E^t, for the education of their children; second, for FREE-TRADE FOLLY. 55 the making and improving of the public highways— always of great importance to the farmer. How would they feel were they suddenly compelled to pay, in addition to the one hundred and eighteen million dollars which is now their an- nual quota of State and local taxation, seventy -four miUion dollara to support the Government ? Would they pay this seventy-four million dollars cheerfully when they saw that the wealthy New England States paid but sixteen million dollars, and that the Middle States, with relatively a much larger per capita Of wealth, paid but forty-six million dollars for this purpose ? And then this tax would be a most un- equal one. In some counties it would amount to double, and even in some cases five times the amount of the total local taxation. If any farmer who has doubts about this wants to know how much bis particidar county will have to pay of this direct taxation, and will write to me I wiU give him the exact figures, — that is the way to bring the question home to the people. Not long since I showed by way of example that the State and county taxation of Wayne County, Michi- gan, was $367,000 in 1880, and the United States taxation by direct taxation would be over one million dollars, about throe fold the State and county tax combined. It is, farmers, a fact that in some agricultural counties in Michigan such a tax would exceed the State and cotmty tax five-fold. The farmer assessed at ten thousand dollars would have to pay eighty-five dollars a year, and one assessed at twenty thou- sand dollars, one hundred and seventy dollars a year, an , amount about equal to the total store expenditures of many well-to-do farmers. As a rule, the farmer's property is more fairly assessed than the bonds and stocks and other personal property of the dweller in large cities. An increase such as proposed by free-traders, therefore, would bear heaviest in agricultural districts. This should be a very serious ques- tion for farming communities, and one that every farmer should ponder over before he commits himself to such a prop- osition. He should remember that the total State, county, town and school district taxation of the United States ag- gregate annually about three hundred million dollars. The aggregate annual amount collected by import duties averages about two hundred million dollars, or two thirds 56 FBEE-TBADE FOLLY. of the amount of State and local taxation. I have indicated by the above table how this increase of 66 per cent of direct taxation would affect the farmer. Let him decide for him- self as to whether or not it is a system which he cares to adopt. I merely present the facts. It is for him to pass judgment. FREE -TRADE HOMES. While the professors of American colleges are reteiiling at second-hand the 40-year-old exploded arguments of Cobden and Bright, some of the professors in English colleges are visiting the homes of the British workmen and learn- ing something of the fruits of the theoretical doctrines which have been put in practice in England. Professor Dunckley, of Balliol College, has recently been spending much of his time in the homes of workingmen of almost every description— milkmen, cabmen, ordinary day-laborers, smiths, farriers, pianoforte makers, painters, dyers, tailors, shoemstkers, bakers, etc. What does he tell his coimtrymen through the columns of the London Daily Post f Precisely what I have told the readers of my letters on the industrial classes of the Old World.* Wliat is the workingman's home in England like at the present time, according to this Eng- lish investigator ? One picture must suffice. I present it in Professor Dunckley 's own language: "A room, bare of every article of furniture that can pos- sibly be dispensed with, pawned; in plain words 'put away,' as they euphemistically put it; the smallest possible fire burning in the grate, one can hardly imagine so small a fire could keep itself alight, and it always seems to be apologizing for its existence, it is so very small ; three or four children who seem to be all about the same age — they have come so quick, the poor mother pathetically remarks — tumbling about on the floor. And oh, what a world of suffering there is in that poor woman's face as she tells you she owes more than £7 for rent. , But the landlady is very kind — she is a lady.' How clearly does that worn, wan look, that inexpres- * Bread-Winners Abroad : By Robert P. Porter. J. S. Ogilvle & Co., 31 Rose Street, New York. FREE-TRADE FOLLY. 67 sible look about the sunken eyes, tell us of week upon week and month upon month of semi-starvation. ' I must give the children what bread I can get,' she says. No string of words, however sonorous, no phrases, however cleverly, however beautifully put together, could tell the story of her starvation half so eloquently as that single sentence: 'I must give the children what bread I can get.' Then look at the head of the family as he sits crouching over the apolo- getic fire. Hardly thirty yet, and would be strong and hearty if he could only get work and food. Speak to him. No; he's got no work; hasn't had any regular since the be- ginning of the year; done a few odd jobs during the spring and summer [' Hasn't brought me in a shilling these weeks and weeks,' ejaculates the wife]. He's tried a'most every- thing. He's up at 5.30 every morning. He's been every- where a-trying.' " As if by way of consolation, the poor man adds : ' There's thousands a-waUdng about like me.' "You haven't been like this always?" says the British Professor. " ' No, sir,' replied the wife; ' he was earning gopd money when we married; his trade was good then.' " ' What is your trade ?' ' ' ' Making milk cans — the cans that bring the milk to town from the country.' " 'Well, but people must have milk, and the cans must wear out,' urged the Professor. ' How is it that the trado is so bad V "'Why, sir,' said the pale-sunken-eyed man, 'you see they get the cans from abroad now; and in my old shop, where there used to be thirty or forty of us, there aren't more than seven or eight now. ' And the wife strikes in : ' It do seem a shame, sir, that the foreigners should got the money, and we poor English people have to starve.' " This is no imaginary picture. It is the simple truth, and can be verified in every industrial centre in free-trade Eng- land. The whole country is being flooded with an avalanche of foreign goods, made imder all sorts of conditions and at incredibly low, prices. English goods are being driven out of the market, and the English workman has reached the 58 mEE-TRADB FOLLY. condition depicted above. Nor is the trader and importer benefited. At first he supposed he would sell more goods, and, with the greed which characterizes American importers now itching to bring this country into the same deplorable condition, urged the free-trade idea. Let us hear what one of them says, for, in these days of Anglo-mania, an English- man's words should go a long way with our misguided free- trade countrymen: "I get much less profit on the foreign rubbish (as a great deal of it may be called) than I used to do on well-made English goods. Neither do I sell any larger quantity of the foreign to make up for the difference. It is, therefore, a loss to me, a loss to the English makers whose trades are destroyed, a loss to the English workingmen whom the makers can no longer employ, a loss even to the retail customer, who, as a rule, is disappointed with a showy- looking but inferior article — a loss to all round except to the foreigner who alone gets the benefit." And tliis man furthermore declares that his is only a sample of thousands of similar establishments all over the country dealing almost solely in foreign productions because there is no longer a sale for the home-made. Let every workman who reads it ponder over this description of the free-trade homes as given by an English college professor through a great London journal, and then let him ask his wife if he ought to support a party which advocates this ' suicidal doctrine for the United States. It is a fair question, and one he must decide for himself. DECLINE OF BRITISH AGRICULTURE. The decrease in the total number of persons employed in agriculture in the decade ending 1881 was nearly 16 per cent, while the total decrease in 1861 and 1881 was 31 per cent. Thus, whUe there are nearly one-third less persons cultivating the soil than twenty years ago, England is be- coming more and more dependentupon foreign countries for its food. The rapid dwindling of the numbers of the agricidtural population of England may well be looked upon with alarm. In 1831 the agricultural population of the king- dom comprised 20.8 per cent of the total population. In FBEE-TBADM FOLLY. 59 1871 it amounted to only 15.7 per cent, and in 1881 it had fallen to 12.4 per cent. i The above startling facts on the decadence of the agricul- tiu-al population of the kingdom will effectually dispose of Mr. Bright's rant regarding the improvement of the agricul- tural classes in England, and the benefits of free trade to British agriculture. Facts show that the condition of the English laborer has not greatly improved of late years. The same terrible con- ditions of life may be found in the large cities as were found in 1840, and the same conditions may be found in the rural districts. The great daily journals ignore these facts. "What is the use?" they say; "no good can come of pub- lishing them." And so matters grow from bad to worse. Mr. Chamber] aiu has recently been exposing the terrible con- dition of the agricultural laborer, and asking how he can live and maintain his family on 10 shillings a week ($2.40), 7i per cent of which amount (according to the above-named gentleman, who is President of the Local Government Board) is taken from him by the existing unfair system of taxation. THE SAD STORY OF THE BEITISH SILK INDUSTEY. A CABLE despatch, from England gives the following ac- count of the present condition of the silk industry in that happy free-trade land : " There is a fearful condition of distress among the silk operatives of London. They complain that work is virtually at a standstill, owing to the competition of foreigners— especially of the Germans. Their complaint is sustained by official statistics, which show that within th© past twenty- five years the number of operatives has decreased from 90.000 to 3000. The collapse of the trade is represented to be only a question of a few years, unless the government comes to the rescue by laying a duty on manufactured imports. A series of meetings to urge this action is being organized, and several leading Tories have promised to assist the movement." In the most prosperous days, before free trade blighted this 60 FREE-TRADE FOLLY. industry, there were not less than 150,000 persons engaged in the manufacturo of silk goods.in England. At the present time there are not in aU England more than from 50,000 to 60,000 persons so employed. A commission recently ap- pointed by Parliament to ascertain the causes of this decline addi-essed a letter to the Board of Trade of the several silk centres of the country, and received the following repHes : Congleton: " Withdrawal of protection." Coventry: "Free imports of French and German goods, combined with high duties imposed by other countries on our goods." Derby: "Withdrawal of protection." Leek: " Sewing-sUk trade maintained itself." London : ' ' Withdrawal of protection." Macclesfield: "Free importation of French and German goods, especially black silks, velvets and mixed goods." Manchester: "The French Treaty." Middleton: "The French Treaty of 1860, coupled with the adulterated dyes introduced into England." Nottingham : " No decUne, owing to the large increase in the use of silk lace." The replies to the Parliamentary inquiry in relation to the collapse of the British silk industry in the nine principal centres of the trade are brief, direct, and tinged with sad- ness. Are the people engaged in this industry in the city of Philadelphia, in New Jersey, in New York, and the New England States prepared to "withdraw protection," with the prospect of the same result before them ? I think not. The condition of the silk industry in England when that country withdrew protection was similar to the present con- dition of a majority of the principal manufacturing indus- tries of the United States to-day, namely, prosperous, with a good home market to fall back upon. Never was a more wanton and cruel blow aimed at a flourishing industry. In 1857, a few years before the rati- fication of the French treaty, the import of raw silk into England aggregated 12,077,931 pounds. Since then it has dwindled, year by year, as foreign manufactured goods have forced their way free of duty into the home markets, until the last six years it has hardly averaged 3,000,000 FBEE-TRADE FOLLT. 61 pounds per annum, in 1883 being 3,178,393 pounds, and in 1881 as low &s 3,904,180. On the other hand, the imports of manufactured goods have gradually increased in value from $10,000,000 in 18J7.to $103,620,000 in 1883. There can be no question about the truth of all this. I talje the facts and figures direct from the oflQcial blue books of the United Kingdom, and I challenge any and all free- traders, from David A. Wells and Professor Sumner down, to controvert a single fact. Exactly, what has happened to the British silk industry has likewise happened to several other industries of Great Britain, and "would happen to , nearly all the manufacturing industries of this country under even a revenue tariff. In the face of these facts, what reply is heard from those who are willing to risk industrial collapse for what they call an "economical principle ?" Why, simply this, and nothing more: That if our legislators only fbUow their advice some- thing wO happen that has never happened. And with this shadowy assurance they leave the dull and unprofitable arena of facts and figures and history and soar into the thin atmosphere of abstract reasoning, and look with contempt upon the ill-regulated minds composing the Board of Trade of London who could attribute the collapse of the silk in- dustiy tq the " withdrawal of protection." MR. BRIGHT AT HOME AJTO •ABROAD. Not long since Mr. John Bright, of England, wrote a let- ter to a Milwaukee lawyer, Glenway Maxon, which is evi- dently intended for foreign consumption. I propose to show, side by side, how Mr. Bright talks for homo con- sumption when he is addressing .an audience in the midst of the poverty and wretchedness of free-trade Great Brit- ain. Under such environments, Mr. Bright is obHged to confine himself with more exactitude to the facts. He does not tell the wretched dwellers in one room, of Glasgow, about wages doubling. He tells them the truth. Hei-e it is in his own words: 62 FREE-TRADE FOLLY. FoBEiGN Consumption. Letter of John Bright to a Mil- toavkee lawyer, Nov., 1884: In Irelaud, I believe tlie wages of laborers on farms, aud other labor ill proportion, have doubled siuee llie jear 1850. I have no doubt that tlie price of labor ia Ibis country has advanced more tbaij 50 per cent since our free- trade movement commenced, ■while tbe bours of labor have in many trades been reduced. We bave had a long period of com- mercial, manufacturing, and ag- ricullural depression, but our working population bave not materially suttered, and tlieir contenlment has been general and remarliable. At this moment we are suffer- ing less than i.s the case in other countiies, and where any acute suffering exists it is modified by tiie moderate price of food and by tbe greater ease l)y wliich almost all the necessaries of life are obtained. The demands nn otir excbtquer are large, and tlie annual revenue is great, but it presses upon the people with a more greally dimiuislied weigbt tliau in tbe years before "the change from a protection to a free-trade policy. When you adopt a reasonable tariff you will bave less fluctuations in trade and a more steady demand for labor. You bave made the biaclc man free; when will you be wise enough to get free tbe labor of your^'people? Home Constjmttion. Speech of John Briglii, March, 1883, at Glasgow : In tlie city of Glasgow alone, 41,000 out of every 100,000 livein lionies having only one room, and further, 78 per cent, or nearly four flltlis dwell in homes of one or two rooms, and in Scotland nearly one third of the whole people dwell in homes of only one room, and more than two thirds, or 70 per cent, of the peo- ple, of Scotland dwell in homes of not more than two rooms. We find poverl}' and misery. What does it mean, when all these families are living in liomes of one room, to us who bave sev- eral rooms and all the comforts of life? It means more than I can describe and more tlian I will atlempt to enter into; and as need begets need, so poverty and misery beget poverty and misery. And so, in all our gieat towns, and not a Hi lie in our small towns, there is misery and helplessness, much as I have de- scribed. In fact, loolving at the past, to me it is a melancholy tiling to look at; there is much of it which excites in me, not astonishment only, but horror. Tlie fact is, there passes before my eyes a vision of millions of families— not individuals, but families — fathers, mothers, chil- dren — passing, ghastly, sorrow- stricken, in never-ending pro- cession from their cradle to their graves. Yes, when we adopt free trade, or a " reasonable tariff," as you call it, we sliall be on the high road to that condition of affairs which you so truthfully describe, Mr. Bright, when you are talking for home consumption. Tour ability we admit, but you have not the ability to make the American FREE-TBADE FOLLT. 63 workman believe in a policy the real results of which you only speak of at home, where the facts cannot be denied. PAUPERISM IN FREE-TRADE ENGLAND. The school-boards of England have been the means of bringing to light the terrible want and misery with which the whole industrial structure of the country is honey- combed. Last winter, when I was in England, a new problem presented Itself to the British tax-payers. In the great industrial centres of the land children — ^the children of honest British workmen, too— were sent to school to learn the three Rs, and to bm'den their scanty brains with sums and tasks while their stomachs were empty, and their little bodies weakened with disease and want. Shoeless, ragged, and literally starving, these poor children were sent to school. How could they study with the languor of starva- tion ever present ? Many of these Uttle creatures have been known to faint during school hours— indeed, the simplest efforts caused them to collapse. True it is, that, had education not been compulsory, the probability is that England would not just now have been confronted with the difficulty of cheap food for children, It takes a good deal to rouse the English in this direction, for they have become by long usage hardened to sights that would bring the tears of pity and the helping hand in a country like our own. Having gathered up from the gut- ters these tiny waifs and strays to send them to school, it is discovered that they are incapable of learning their les- sons, from the simple need of blood to keep their poor little brains in working order. The penny dinner was the first ventui-e, and in some places in England is working well. The English penny is equal to two cents of our money. To give some idea of the terrible want in British industrial centres, I need only say that even the two-cent dinners failed to reach large numbers of those children, for they had not, and were unable to procure, the the two cents to pay for it. The object these penny dinner committees have in view is to furnish all the work of cooking the dinners free, but that the two cents, or one cent, as the case may be, shall 64 FBEE-TBABE FOLLY. cover the cost of what may be called the raw material for this charitable industry. It is even doubtful if it does that, especially the halfpenny dinner. The truth is, it is thinly- disgxiised charity. The still graver question is how to make the dinners avail^ible for those who could not pay a penny, nor even half a penny— a melancholy fact testified to by every speaker at a recent London meeting. These speakers gave pitiful accounts of children going to school without any breakfast, and in such a condition of physical exhaus- tion as to make' successful study an impossibility. And these are workingmen's children, the offspring of men living under the system of free trade, and in every important manufacturing town in the United Kingdom, for this charit- able organization has branches throughout the country. And this, American workmen, is the race for cheapness! The men in this country who favor this system want you to work for fifty cents a day, that they may squeeze the differ- ence of a good home-dinner and a penny or a halfpenny or a free dinner out of the life-blood of your children, as it is done in free-trade England. It is a heartless system, a wicked system, a system that makes wretched machines of men, women, and children whom Almighty God intended for human beings, with hearts and souls, with love of happy homes and of home comforts. What a spectacle England presents, with her free trade and degradation of labor, with her vast industrial army degenerating physically from the want of proper nourishment, and she making paupers of the rising generation. Over one million of the inhabitants of the United King- dom are paupers, and in London one in ever five of the population dies a pauper. Pauperism and crime annually cost John Bull $82,000,000. The total number of paupers in the principal continental countries is 2,351,000, while theu- population is 187,000,000, ngainst 1,017,000 paupers in the United Kingdom with a population of 35,000,000. Showing 30.6 paupers to the thousand in free-trade Eng- land, and only 12.5 paupers to the thousand in protective continental countries. The cost of pauperism and crime under free ti-ade has steadily increased year by year— increased, too, more rapidly FBES-TBABE FOLLY. 65 than the population. In 1840 the total cost was $30,500,000; it has now reached $82,000,000 annually, The population in 1841 was 26,000,000 ; to-day it is 35,000,000. Said Mr. Joseph Chamberlain of Birmingham: " Never before was the misery of the -very poor more intense, or the conditions of their daily life more hopeless and more depraved." THE STAMINA OF THE PEOPLE LOWERED BY FREE TRADE. A FEW months ago there were laid before the British Par- liament some figures relating to London that, for th« moment, seemed to paralyze those optimistic members who are forever singing of the improvement in the condition of the working classes under their doctrine of free trade. At least, not one had the courage to question the statement or reply. In the first place it was shown that there were in the metropolis fully 60,000 families, each of whom lived in a single room. The effect of this may best be described in the language of Lord Shaftsbury: '" The eflEect of the one-room system, physically and mor- ally, is beyond all description. In the first place, the system always leads to the one-bed system. If you go into these single rooms you may sometimes find two beds, but you will generally find one bed occupied by the whole, family. It is impossible to say how fatal the result is. It is destruct- ive of aU the effects of education, for in such homes the children unlearn everything they have acquired at school during the day." This overcrowding was, moreover, lowering to the stamina of the people. It causes depression, debility and consump- tion. It is furthermore established that in families found living in this way every man and woman lost about twenty days work annually, a loss which can be traced to the shocking condition of their homes. By far the most alarming fact is that 500,000 people, or one-eighth of the inhabitants, belong to the semi-pauper class. The figures collected by the Local Government Board showed that in the last year, with respect to which returns were published, more than one-fifth of the deaths that took place in the metropolis occurred in workhouses and hospitals. 66 FBEE-TBABE FOLLY. CJan anything be more terrible than this ? One out of every five of those we meet in the busy throng which circles the streets of the world's great metropolis dies a pauper. Yes, one out of five ! But -under the glorious system of free trade we are told England has prospered as no other nation has. That she has increased in wealth, extended her commerce, increased the wages of those who toil, cheapened their loaf and im- proved their condition. Let me continue with these appalling statistics. It has been proved in the East End that about one-fifth of the chil- dren went to school without having any breakfast, while "penny dinners" had failed because the poorer children could not procure the necessary money (two cents, United States money). The average wages of these classes were from $3.40 to $3.90 a week, and much of this sum is spent in rent. If such a deplorable showing as the above is possible in the metropoHs of this protective country, or in the great industrial city of Philadelphia, it is time the exhibit was made. If one in five of the population of the large cities of this country die paupers, and if one-fifth of our children go to school every day without their breakfasts, it is time that the system which makes such a terrible condition of affairs possible was abolished. Free-traders who want to bring about this conditi9n of affairs in the United States by refus- ing longer to protect our producers, and thus compel om* American workmen to work for three and four dollars a week, are persistently proclaiming about the terrible con- dition of the working classes here. Every now and then we are treated with the revenue reformer's cant about the fluctuation of wages here and the steadiness of wages in England. They do not tell us, however, that the steadiness in England is due wholly to the fact that wages are now on the starvation line— one notch lower and starvation or pau- perism is the lot of the laborer, for in the richest city of the kingdom the bones of one out of every five of those who die are consigned to a pauper's grave. In noisome cellar-dwell- ings, in tenements crumbling to decay and saturated with filth, amid squalor and privation, men, women, and children FBEE-TBADE FOLI^Y. 67 ■who have to work for their bread, live huddled together, occupying, as I have shown, less actual space than they would be entitled to if dead. Moreover, disease is sapping the physical and mental vigor of the worker, and every succeeding generation of people thus housed and fed is less fitted for laborious exertion. In a speech before the Eighty Club in London, the Eight Honorable Joseph Chamberlain, who champions the cause of the masses in England, said: " Tens of thousands of house- holds do not know the luxury of milk. Children are stunt- ing their growth and dulling their intellects for want of proper nourishment and proper food and the houses of the poor are so scanty and insufScient that the most horrible immorality prevails, which seldom comes to the surface, but which is known, to those who move among the poor." PROVEN BY BEITISH AUTHOEITIES. The account of my Lye Waste experience was assailed right and left by free-traders in the United States. Copies of the New York Tribune containing it and other letters of a similar character were sent over to the London newspapers in hopes that the facts might be contradicted. But to no purpose. The most shocking accounts of wretchedness among the industrial classes in England and Wales have been indorsed by the London Standard (Dec. 36, 1882), the London Daily News (March 6, 1883), and the London Telegraphf a few weeks later, in an article, ' ' Chained to the Forge ;" by the Christian Million (Nov. 32, Nov. 29, Dec. 6, and Dec. 13), an illustrated paper, whose artist followqd me, as the com- missioners of the London dailies, had done before, illustrat- ing with his pencil the industrial misery so deep and dread- ful that the most graphic pen can but faintly convey the depths of sorrow that I had imperfectiy endeavored to describe. Agam, within a few miles of the region thus described, I reiterated on a public platform every fact as published in America (Leamington, Nov. 10, 1883). Were the facts challenged? No ! Voices from the audience said the half of what existed had not been told. One speaker declared : eS FREE-TRADE FOLLY. "There are more than 100,000 of the 400,000 population of Birmingham living in back courts, and the condition of the houses, if they might be called houses, in those courts— [A voice : ' Pigsties'] — was simply shocking. I trust that what has fallen from Mr. Porter, the noble chairman, and the hon- orable member for North Staffordshire will go to the public. In two hours we have had laid before us a mass of informa- tion ; and if we could, during the winter, by agitation, lec- tures, interviews, pamphlets, disseminate these a,nd other facts amongst the people of England, we shall find this to be the one question. The views we have espoused in endeavor- ing to confute the Cobden Club have been more advanced in this afternoon than at any meeting I have had the honor to attend." Every year the gulf that separates the rich and the poor in England deepens and broadens. Sir Edward Sullivan, in a recent book " Free-trade Bubbles," thus attacks the pohcy that has brought ruin to a once flourishing industry : "Listen. Supposing you and other high-priests of free trade could detect in America or France the same percent- ages of crime,- of pauperism, of drunkenness, especially amongst women, that exist in England ; if you saw one in every five of the population toeing the Une of pauperism; if you could see an increasing inequaUty in the distribution of wealth; the centraMzation of land and capital into fewer hands; the extinction of smaU proprietors and small indus- tries; land going out of cultivation or relapsing into pasture'; the marked deterioration in the quality of our manufactured goods ; large capitahsts and large works swallowing up small capitalists and small works, and destroying the field for in- dividual exertion; if you saw many industries that were formerly strong now weak and seeking other lands; if, finally, you saw a whole province, like Ireland, with 6,000,000 inhabitants, so impoverished, so poverty-stricken, that every principle that has hitherto been esteemed all over the world as absolutely indispensable to the progress and happiness of mankind has had to be thrown overboard in order to keep the social and political body and soul together; if, I ask you, you and your friends had seen all this, or a half of it, or a hundredth part of it, in protectionist France, FREE.TBADE FOLLT. 69 or protectionist America, would you not, I say, have im- proved the occasion and read them a homily on the curse of protection?" THE MUEMUEINQ OF MUSTERING HOSTS. Free-traders in the United States affect not to see the dissatisfaction among the working classes of England. The operatives of Lancashire and Yorkshire understand how they have been robbed by foreign competition. They have watched the great industrial progress of the United States, of France, and of Germany under protection ; and they know that it has been more marked during the last twenty years than that of Great Britain. The most dangerous of England's continental competitors in the textile industries may be found at Lille, Roubaix, Tourcoing, Eouen, and St. Etienne, in France ; and Orefeld, Aachen, and Chemnitz, in Grermany. The Ehenish and Westphalian coal and iron districts, with such works as those of Essen and Dortmund, and those at Scraing, Belgium, can produce iron and steel as cheaply as England can, and the certainty of a home market 'gives these protective countries the advantage in the contest for foreign trade. In view of this,, you will not be surprised when I tell you that I have found shoddy manu- facturers from Batley and Dewsbury established in Aachen, Prussia; Lancashire and Scottish spinners in Eouen; Leir cestershire hosiery manufacturers in Saxony; Yorkshire wool-combing establishments in Eheims; Dundee jute-mills in Dunkerque; 'all-wool stuff manufacturers in the vicinity of Eoubaix ; English iron and steel mills in Belgium, and English woollen mills in HoUand. In stiU further proof of this, I quote the following from the Glasgow Mail, Oct! 31, 1885: " English raUs and railway plant are becoming less and less of a necessity to other nations every day. Our manu- facturees are struggling to keep their miUs open, while in Belgium and Austria the nulls are busy, Austrian manu- facturers especially being kept hard at work in executing the large orders of the Austro-Hungarian railway authori- ties. The chief Belgian makers have orders to keep them going for six months, and this drain on their manufacturing 70 FBEE-TRADE FOLLT. resources ■will soon be augmented, for the Victorian Gov- ernment require more than 40,000 tons of rails, and in pur- suance of the recent ' colonial policy to get the best and cheapest material, a large share of the contract will cer- tainly go to Belgium. In recent contracts for rolling-stock, the independence of Great Britain is even more marked. The Adriatic and Mediterranean railway companies have been empowered to expend $3,000,000 in rolling-stock, but have decided to restrict the contracts to Italian works. The contracts for locomotives for the Eoumelian railways have gone almost entirely to Austrian and Prussian builders. The German exportation of locomotives and rolling-stock last year was thirty per cent greater than- the year before, and this year it is predicted that another great increase wiU be recorded. So general is this new tendency of growing countries to manufacture for themselves, so completely are the industrial conditions of the world being transformed, that English manufacturers wiU have to choose between be- ing content to supply England and, in a degree. Colonial needs, or taking serious measures to compete more effec- tually with their new rivals abroad." Nor is this all. The Eoyal Commission states that evi- dence has been laid before them by the North of England Manufacturers' Association that, whUe in 1871-75 £27,500,000 worth of iron was manufactured in the district, the value of the same production in 1881-85 was only £15,600,000. The association complains that protection exists in some of the colonies, and proposes a federation, with th6 import duties aboUshed. The Tin Plate Manufacturers' Association report that while trade has increased in volume it has, on the whole, been unprofitable. A syndicate of manufacturers have agreed to cut down production twenty-five per cent. The British Sugar Refiners' Association report extreme de- pression, attributable to foreign export bounties. THE BALANCE-WHEEL OF FEEE TRADE. Mh. Hewitt and Mr. Morrison are forever talking about the balance-wheel of free trade. ' ' Get down, " they say, ' ' to a soMd basis. It is this artificial basis which plays havoc with your industries. In England, under free trade, there are ao FREE-TRADE FOLLY. 71 _such sudden changes from prosperity to ^depression." Let us see. Take, for example, the ship-building industry. In 1883 the United Kingdom built 1,350,000 tons; in 1884 that output sank to 750,000 tons; in 1885 to 54,000 tons. Is it possible to point to anything equal to this in the United States imder a protective pohcy ? Here is what ,the Glasgow Mail says of the condition of the laboring classes of the Clyde: " How do the unemployed keep themselves alive during months of enforced idleness? is a question that is in the mouth of every one acquainted with the terrible and long- continued depression that has been resting on the industries on our river for the last two or three years. One yard has been totally closed for months past, a large majority of those who have anything to do have about one third or one fourth the number of workmen capable of being employed when business is brisk. - Only two yards — Messrs. John Elder & Co. and Messrs. Napier & Sons, Govan— have any- thing like a fair complement of work on hand, and, as a consequence of this st^te of matters, some thousands of men have been walking about our streets now for months on end unable to get a job of any kind. Pale-faced many of them, ' anxious-browed all of them, and seeing Mttle or nothing to lead them to hope for a bettering of things, or to help them to tide over the quickly advancing winter, which always brings additional suffering , and privations to the homes of the poor. 'How do they live?' Well, some people would say, if they imderstood all, that the idle workmen don't live at all, literally they feed upon the husks which the swine do eat. Their children have to beg, many of them, for their food, and any residenter in the neighborhood will tell you about the. Uttle hungry-looking creatures that tap at the door after dark — because begging is an infringement of the police act— and solicit 'a bit of bread for supper,' and it brings a lump to one's throat to see how the teeth of 'one of these hungry little ones close over a piece of warm buttered toast from the tea-table." Let us see how the balance-wheel of free trade steadies and prevents the sudden fall of production in England, and how protection permits the American producer to rush rap- idly down to ruin, especially in the production of steel: 72 FBEE-TBADE FOLLY. Production of Steel Production of Steel in United States, in United Kingdom, Net Tons. Gross Tons. 1881 1,330,302 1,441,719 1882 1,438,155 1,673,649 1883 ; 1,286,554 1,553,380 1884 1,116,621 1,299,676 1885 1,074,607 1,099,000 I have not the exact figures for the United Eingdom for 1885, though a London journal says: "Nevertheless, the production of steel will be found, when the figures are pub- lished, to have declined by about 200,000 tons." Taking the highest year, 1882, we find that the decline in the production of steel in protective United States has averaged annually for the last three years 121,182 net tons, while the decline in the production of steel in free-trade Great Britain has aver- aged annually for the last three years 191,324 gross tons. In England the output dechned from 1,673,649 tons in 1882 to 1,099,000 tons in 1885, a decrease 'of 574,649 gross tons. In the United States the, decline was from 1,438,155 net tons in 1882 to 1, 074, 607, a decrease of 363, 548 net tons! The change, therefore, in the United States in t£e steel industry has neither been so violent nor so great, either actually or rela- ^tively. Thus the facts prove that the "balance-wheel" of free trade is, like all other free-trade assumptions, based on no tangible facts. REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION. The first report of the Royal Commission appointed to in- quire into the depression of trade and industry has just reached me. It is a volume of about two hundred and fifty pages, and contains the answers to a circtdar addressed to chambers of commerce in the United Kiagdom. The replies of these commercial and industrial associations indicate a unanimity of opinion that the terrible condition of affairs in the United Kingdom have been brought about by foreign tariffs, on the one hand, and free imports on the other. In proof of this I need only quote some of the answers sent by these chambers of commerce to the circulars of the Eoyal Commission: Aberdeen: "Depression largely due to high foreign tar- iEEs." FBEE-TEADE FOLLY. 73 Bamsley: "Foreign tariffs at the bottom of all our troubles." Batley : ' ' Affected very injuriously and very considerably by foreign tariffs." Belfast : "Foreign competition and foreign tariffs." Birmingham : " Foreign competition in neutral markets. Foreign import duties on home manufactured goods ex- ported abroad." Birstall (near Leeds): "Increased hostile tariffs on our manufactured goods exported, and the competition of for- eign mauufacturers in our home m.arkets." Cardiff: "Foreign tariffs have materially affected our iron and steel trades." Cleckheaton : " Foreign tariffs are decidedly injurious to the trade of this district." Dewsbury : "Foreign tariffs have greatly injured our trade." Dublin: "The depression of trade is, to a great extent, caused by the levying of high duties on goods exported from the United Kingdom." Dudley: "Trade is greatly restricted and returns dimin- ished by adverse foreign tariffs." Dundee : " The imposition of very high tariffs on goods of British origin by the countries on the Continent of Europe ; also, the duties imposed upon these goods in the United States." Exeter: "Decline of the paper trade is due to foreign competition." Greenock : " Foreign tariffs and export bounties." Halifax : " Trade seriously affected by foreign tariffs," Hartlepool .- " Foreign tariffs and countries have undoubt- edly injured our trade in certain branches." Heckmondvdke : "Foreign tariffs have undoubtedly in- juriously affected the trade of this district." Huddersfleld : " The protective tariffs of other, countries, and even of our own colonies, have much to do with the present depression. Their effect is most seriously felt on low goods'." Hull: "Bounties, subsidies on foreign flags, etc." ieeds .- ' ' Foreign tariff? have seriously injured the traders of this district," 74 FREE-TRADE FOLLY. Leith: " The present depression arises from over-produc- tion, foreign competition, and the system of foreign tariffs and bounties." Liverpool : "If hostile tariffs were ameliorated, and more especially foreign bounties abolished, the increase in our in- dustry would be great." Macclesfield: "The free admission of adulterated goods from abroad." Manchester: "Foreign tariffs are the bane of our exist- ence. Had we free trade pure and simple we could hold our own against all comers." Morley : " Protective and hostile tariffs of other countries, and especially our own colonies, have much to do with the present depression." NewarTc-orirTrent : "Foreign tariffs, to a great extent, es- pecially in cases where they have been recently increased, and bounties given." North Shields and Tynemouth : ' ' Foreign tariffs and com- petition are both felt opppressive." , North Staffordshire : ' ' Foreign tariffs to a serious extent. " Ossett : ' ' The trade of our town and country generally would be greatly improved if the foreign tariffs were re- moved, or a corresponding duty imposed upon such manu- factured goods as are imported from any foreign country." Salt Chamber of Commerce: "Prohibition duties in for- eign countries, competition on the part of foreign countries, salt being imported into England and our colonies." Southampton : " Foreign duties." South of Scotland Chamber of Commerce: " Foreign tar- iffs affect our trade prejudicially." Sunderland ; ' ' Foreign tariffs affect glass and bottle trade adversely." WaJcefield : " Increasing foreign competition." Wolverhampton: "Foreign competition one of the main causes of the altered condition of trade." Worcester : Gloves and porcelain are directly affected by foreign competition and tariffs. " The testimony here is direct and impossible of miscon- struction. Foreign tariffs and the free importation of goods from foreign countries is in every instance given as the cause of the yidespread industrial distress in England, Every FUEM-TBABE POLLY. 75 chamber of commerce answering the Royal Commissioners' circular is obliged to aidmit it. Let any sensible man read these petitions for free trade which come from all the in- dustrial centres of the United Kingdom, and contrast it with the twaddle of free-traders to the effect that England is anx- ious for foreign nations to continue their tariffs that in some mysterious way she may be benefited. The men who be- lieve such a doctrine ought to blush at their own credulity, while the men who do not believe it, but preach it, should be ashamed to meet the eyes of honest men. IRELAND'S PRESENT CONDITION. Ieelanp's present condition is due to the fact that, instead of being allowed to develop her own resources, she has been compelled by the British Government to buy what she wants of England. Ireland has iron and coal resources of her own, but England has never allowed her to develop them. Moreover, she used to manufacture cotton and woollen goods, hardware, flannel blankets and sUks, but, being new indus- tries, the goods produced were neither as cheap nor as good as those of England. Protection, said the English, is a sys- tem of waste. Protection, gravely says that British echo in this country. Professor Sumner, is a system of waste. The English applied their principles to Ireland. Professor Sum- ner would like to apply his principles tp the United States. You shall not be such fools, said the English economists, as to waste your time and money in manufacturing these arti- cles which we can produce so much more cheaply than you can. Buy from us, and by so much you will be the richer; and Ireland was compelled to adopt the free-trade system, which was not a system of waste, and now Irishmen exclaim, " Ireland, with five millions of inhabitants, with unequalled natural advantages of climate, soil, rivers, harbors; with coal and iron and inexhaustible quantities of peat ; the finest grazing and dairy country in the world, that once supported a population of eight millions, and exported grain and coal and manufactured goods— look at her now ! Her land is not one third cultivated; she has neither domestic industries nor foreign trade; her millions of acres of waste and cultiva- ble lands; her ruined commerce and manufactures; her 76 FREE-TBABE FOLLY. houses uninhabited, her villages deserted; her cattle and sheep rapidly diminishing; discontent, insubordination, in- security and crime stalking undisturbed through the coun- try ; her people crying for work and wages, and idle, rag- ged, pauper stricken, deriving a wretched existence from half cultivated lands ; iiying from the country hke Lot from the cities of the plain! She toils not, neither does she sow; she neither grows nor works nor buys — she goes without." Yet protection, which might have developed all these re- sources, and made Ireland a living organism, a nationaUty, is a protection of waste, and had it been apphed, as I yet hope to God that it will be, to that downtrodden country, and she had prospered under it as she has become degraded under free trade. Professor Sumner would have the un- blushing effrontery to proclaim that her prosperity would have "been greater under a system of free trade. Here is an illustration of free trade that is enough to stir' the heart of every patriotic Irishmen and Irish- American in the world. A decrease in population of three millions ! Euined indus- tries, deserted villages, pauperism and general wretchedness brought about by the policy of Great Britain. I am glad to see that great Irish -American leaders are taking up this phase of the tariff question in the United States, and are telling us of the rotten wheels that once turned mills on the rivers of Ireland, of the beautiful harbors of that once busy island now empty of Irish ships, and are warning their hearers of the extent to which the Democratic party in this country has committed itself to a doctrine essentially British. INCREASE OF WAGES IN GERMANY UNDER PROTECTION. The free-traders are constantly asking the question, " How is it that wages are higher- in England under free trade than in Germany under protection ?" And protectionists seem to lack the courage or the abiUtyto answer this question in the shortest and most direct way, namely, that they are not. The wbrkingman, since Germany has returned to protection, is better off in that country than in England. After a disastrous attempt to establish free trade, the Ger- man Empire in 1880 was obliged to return to protection. I FBEE-TBABE FOLLY. 77 spent a portion of 1883 in Germany, and opportunity was afforded to observe the results of four years of protection. The places which I visited covered the industrial regions of the entire empire. The tour included the woollen region in the vicinity of Aix-la-Ohapelle, the silk region of Crefeld, the textile industries surroiuidlng Elberfeld and Barmen, the iron and coal regions centered around Dusseldorf and Dort- mand, including Duisburg, Essen, Hamm, Bochum, Ams- borg, and Muhlheim; further northwest to Bielefeld, the cen- tre of the linen industry; the great commercial towns of the north ; thence to Hanover, Berlin, into the cotton and mining regions of Saxony, including Dresden, Freiberg, Chemnitz, Zwickan, Annaburg, etc. ; thence to Leipsic, through the mining districts of the Hartz Mountains; back to Cologne; up the Rhine to Frankfort ; all through the manufacturing regions o£ Alsace-Lorraine; south to MiUhausen, besides a score of other places less noted as manufacturing towns. In the course of this tour I covered the principal coal, iron, steel, mining, cotton, woollen, worsted, silk, and flax indus- tries of the Empire, and after this investigation am prepared to establish the facts of the industrial progress of Germany since the Government abandoned the policy of free trade and returned to protection. Wages have increased ; hundreds of thousands of the un- employed have been given profitable work; old blast fur- naces, which had become moss-grown under free trade, have been relighted ; new ones have been built ; others are to-day in course of construction ; silent spindles are humming again ; looms covered with dust and cobwebs are once more clatter- ing ; old mills have been reopened, and new ones have been built, and English firms have found it profitable to move to Germany and give employment to hundreds of the weavers and spinners who, under free trade, had nearly starved on black bread and horse-flesh. In the great iron and coal centres of Prussia house rent is less than half what it is in the coal and iron regions of Wales and Scotland, while wages, owing to the recent increase, are about the same as they are in Great Britain. Wages in free-trade Germany were undoubtedly lower than in free-trade England ; but see how wages have, increased in German iron- works and ma- chine shops ia five years of protection: 78 FBEE-TBADE FOLLY. INCREASE IN WAGES IN GEBMAN mON-WORKS AND MACHINE-SHOPS. Increase per Increase per Increase per All Works. cent from cent from cent from 1879 to 1888. 1879 to 1883. 1879 to 1884. Number employed 35.2 33.9 33.3 Totalwages 43.0 57.3 53.1 Wages per employe 13.4 17.4 14.3 Iron and Steel-Works. Number employed 33.5 36.9 36.3 Totalwages 39.4 50.4 41.4 Wages per employe 13.9 18.5 11.8 Machine Shops. Number employed 39.3 50.9 53.9 Totalwages 48.3 73.6 83.0 Wages per employe . . . '. 14.6 15.0 19.3 The above is an official statement prepared with the great- est care by the Iron and Steel Association of the Empire. It includes 350 firms, and represents a capital of $262,000,000, and employs 235,000 men. In 1879, the same Association reports 320 firms, emplojring 151,000 persons. In 1884, the same works gave employment to 201,888 workmen, showing an increase of 38 per cent of the niunber employed, under protection, wMle the total monthly wages paid had. increased 52 per cent. I have yet to find the free-trader who can ex- plain away these facts. What is true of the coal and iron and steel industry of Germany is equally true of the woollen, the cotton, the sUk, and the linen industry, though in these industries I have not such complete returns. Wages have risen, there has been a greater demand for labor; manufac- turers have made more profit, and the benefits resulting from the tariflE are undeniable. I cannot, however, refrain from giving one more illustration of how protection works in Germany. When England held possession of the German market under the favorite policy of free trade, she annually imported into the Empire about half a million of woollen felt hats. With the aid of the protective tariff of 1879, the manufacture of hats in Berlin has developed to an enor- mously important interest. The German manufacturers have not only driven the English goods almost entirely out of the country, the number of hats imported in 1883 being only 89,000, but they have also managed to obtain for them- selves a position of repute in foreign countries. Still more remarkable is the fact that they have been able to do this FBEE-TBADE FOLLY. 79 and yet increase the pay of the men and women employed in the hat factories to rates equivalent to those paid in Eng- land. United States Consul Lincoln, of Aix-la-Chapelle, says that the "workmen earn in Germany from, twenty to ts^enty- five marks ($5 to $6) a week; women half this amount. The rate of wages paid for hat-making in Manchester, according to the Board of Trade report of the kingdom for 1883, page 41, is, for men $6 per week, and $3 per week for women. Here is an instance in which wages in a certain industry are the same in England as on the continent; in which protec- tion has reversed the condition o^ things by taking an in- dustry from a free-trade country and giving it to a protec- tion country ; in which protection, far from increasing the cost of the article to the consumer, has reduced it; and in which protection has increased also the export trade. The history of the linen industry of Germany and Great Britain forms rather a romantic episode, and one which is not without its attraction to those people who never tire of dwelling on that alluring vision, "The World's Market." Germany once controlled the linen markets of the world. Great Britain wrested them from her, and Glasgow, Dundee, Belfast, and Manchester got the lion's share. Bohemia and Belgium seized the remainder. To Germany remained nothing- but a home market, made profitable by protection; Half a century has elapsed, and during this time Great Britain has been browsing in the rich fields of the "World's Market." Let English authorities tell the result: "During the last twenty years of this century the linen industry of Germany has increased 300 per cent." — Mulhall. " During the last twenty years the linen industry of Great Britain has decreased 18 per cent." — Nineteenth Century, June, 1883. "During the last twenty years the exports of Unen goods from Germany have increased." — British Blue Book. " During the last ten years the exports of linen and yam from England have decreased steadily every year, until they are less than half what they were a decade ago." — British Statistical Abstract, 1882. "The shares of the leading German flax-mills at 5i?Iefel4 are 30 ^d 22 per cent above par," 8© FEEE-TBADE FOLLY. " The shares of the ten principal flax-mills of Belfast are 68 per cent below par." — Nineteenth Century. "Germany at the present time gives employment to 200,000 persons in this industry, and Great Britain to 150,000 persons." — Census of the Bespective Countries for 1881. THE FACTS ABOUT GERMANY COEEOBOEATED. Since the publication of my letters on Germany, I have been honored by the most savage attacks from the very high-priests of free trade in the United States itself. It is cheering, therefore, to find, just as I am going to press with this pamphlet, that my position is sustained by Mr. George Strachey, her Majesty's charge d'affaires at Dresden, in a recent report on the effects of the German Customs Tariff Eeform of 1879, and on the revision of 1885. This report has just reached me in the London Time^. Mr. Strachey is a free-trader of the most advanced type, but he is obliged to admit that there is no change in the popular sentiment in regard to protection; and in this he absolutely contradicts the stories which free-traders have told in the United States, that there was a probability of Germany returning to free trade. Mr. Strachey says: " A survey of manufactures and trade will probably be thought to have estabUshed that no single answeu can be given to the inqmry how far has the industry of the German Empire been helped or hurt by. protection! Far from the facts and opinions collected being susceptible of reduction to a single focus, it is scarcely possible to generalize for each division, or even for each order of industry. "If it be asked what signs there are in Germany of that incipient free-trade reaction which some of our politicians contrive to discern on the continent of Europe, especially in the particular countries most wedded to protection, there can be no hesitation in replying there are none. The politi- cal constellations of the empire, the highest personal influ- ences, the most powerful industrial and commercial forces, some of the principal press energies, all are on the side of the existing system. The behef is widely diffused that the tariff reform of 1879 saved Germany from a great ruin, and that the empire is now on the road to industrial greatness, FBEE-TBABE FOLLY. 81 perhaps to the succession of that hegemony which Great Britain, it is thought, now with difficulty holds in. her hands. Protection is in the national air, and it will not be dissipated by foreign arguments, however accurately de- duced from the axioms of scientific doctrine." The above, coming as it does from an English authority, disposes of the criticisms, which, in effect, were that Ger- many was beginning to see that protection did not pay. None of the other facts presented about Germany have been answered in any way. LABOR AND WAGES IN SWEDEN. The miners in Sweden are generally paid either by the day or by the piece, according to the length of the level dug in a given time, and with a due regard for the greater or less resistance of the earth. The salary for the day of twelve hours varies between 35 cents and 70 cents, according to the skiU of the worker. In the districts of Dannemora and Kopparberg, for example, the rate of remuneration by the piece is from 30 cents to 30 cents per four feet of level bored, and from 95 cents to $1.15 for the ore extracted and con- ducted to the surface. The powders, explosives, and repair- ing of the tools are furnished by the workers when they work by contract, andJ)y the proprietors when the work is done by the day. Women and children are employed to prepare and purify the ore. They earn thus from 20 cents to 30 cents per ton. In the blast-furnace workers earn by the piece about 40 cents per day; the wood-cutters from 20 cents to 30 cents, according to the season. Some owners of blast-furnaces are proprietors of forests, and employ countrymen to prepare the charcoal necessary for the, furnace. The proprietors of the furnace furnish, in this case, to the worker a house, a field, and certain natural produce, in return for which the workman has to furnish a certain number of days of work per month gratuitously, and which constitute a sort of rent under form of payment in kind. The interest of metallurgy, properly speaking, has the nearly general custom in Sweden of paying its workers by the piece, and lodging not only the foreman, but aU the good 82 FBEE-TBADE F0LL7. workers who compose the personnel of each mill or factory. The former receive, further, fuel gratis, and have the right of enjoyment of a little meadow, or a little piece of ground to cultivate vegetables. Their average pay at the present time ranges from 30 cents to 50 cents per day. At Sandvik (district of Gefleborg) the good smiths, smiths' strikers, and founders receive, in all seasons, from 45 cents to 85 cents per day of eleven or twelve hours, but they can increase their wages by working by the job. The less skUled workers earn from 40 cents to 65 cents per day. Both are lodged gratis, but not fed. The extra hands are paid 40 cents to 65 cents per day in summer and from 30 cents to 40 cents per day in winter. They are not lodged. The workers have not fixed days of rest, but they easily obtain leave for their particular affairs. Their work generally lasts from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., with the ordinary time' of stopping for meals. A great part of the work is done by the system of relays. The foremen only are en- gaged by the year. The other workers can quit the factory at will and be dismissed the same. At Eskilstuna the most expert workers earn from 50 cents to 75 cents per day of twelve hours, inferior hands only making from 30 cents to 40 cents per day the whole season. If the workers are boarded and lodged the salaries undergo a great reduction, and axe paid by the week. The custom- ary holidays are left to the workers, but when they work . by the week the employers exact of them at least fifty weeks of work in the year. The workers working by the week contract for engagements. The good workers in the iron works of Arboga (district of Westmoreland) are paid at the rate of 50 cents to 60 cents per day of eleven hours. They are lodged !ree, with Shed, cellar, about fifty-four cubic feet of wood for fuel, and suf- ficient land to plant four and a half bushels of potatoes. They receive, further, the medical assistance and medicine gratis. In case of sickness the company allows a sum of 15 cents per day; in ease of death, it gives the widow $7 for funeral expenses; $2.50 to the husband in case of the death of his wif^; $1.75 to the parents in case of the death of their child, The mediocre workers of the same factory FBEBTRADE FOLLY. 83 also have a right to the clivers aids which have. been enu- merated, but they only receive 45 cents per day. If any one has doubts of the narrow margin of the Swed- ish worker's budget, these figures ought to dispel them; They are far more effective than wage-tables, because an attempt has been made to explain the environments. EFFECT OF PKOTECTION IN FRANCE. Perhaps the experience of France, a nation that has steadily adhered to protection, may add to the evidence already given in favor of unwavering adherence to the pro- tective policy. At any rate, her experiences are interesting and instructive to students of the tariff. At the beginning of this century France found herself ex- hausted by bloody wars of about twenty years' duration, and for two years afterwards devoured by hostile armies and subjected to an enormous contribution. To all appear- ances she was crushed. In three years she recovered from her suffering and was among the most prosperous nations in Europe. ' ' And whence has this mighty change arisen ?" inquired an eminent writer of over half a century ago. And the reply came promptly: "She fostered and pro- tected the industries of her subjects. This is the only genuine source of wealth. She submitted in some cases to pay higher prices for inferior articles in the incipiency of her establish- ments than she could purchase the finished articles from abroad. The consequence of this sound pohcy was that in a short space of time her own manufactures arrived at perfec- tion and were sold cheaper than the foreign." Over half a century ago, in a valuable work under the title "De I'lndustrie Francaise," the celebrated political economist, Chaptal, said: - " Should we then have abandoned theseattempts atmanu- facturing superiority? No; we should persist and carry our own labor to perfection. Such is the course we have pursued, and such is the skill to which we have arrived that our industry has already excited the jealousy of that nation from which we have derived it," What has been the result of this policy to France ? 84 FBES:-TJRAD1! FOLLY. In 1812, by four branches, the cotton, linen, woollen, and leather, Great Britain gained a clear profit of $315,000,000 (see Colquhoun, "Wealth, Power, and Eesources of Great Britain," page 91). At that time, according to Mulhall (see "Progress of Nations," page 245), the manufacturing in- dustry of France did not, in its entirety, amount to more than $30,000,000, of which silk stood for one-half. Accord- ing to the same authority, it now exceeds $2,080,000,000, classified as follows : Operatitbs. Prodccts. Textile factories 770,000 $685,000,000 Flourmills 120,000 400,000,000 Clothing 156,000 260,000,000 Shoes and leatlier 300,000 180,000,000 Soap, candles, etc 100,000 150,000,000 , Sugar and liquors 70,000 130.000.000 Furniture, jewelry, etc 90,000 95,000.000 Metals and minerals 330,000 180,000,000 Total. 1,986,000 $3,080,000,000 Textile fabrics, which now employ about 3000 steam engines, 10,000,000 spindles, and nearly 800,000 operatives in France, have almost trebled since England abolished custom-house duties in 1842, the total product of France then being $275,000,000 against about $700,000,000 at the present time. Is it possible for free-traders to explain satisfactorily the decline of the woollen and worsted industry in England, and its increase of 270 per cent in thirty years in protective France ? The decay of the silk industry to one third its former pro- portions in England, and its increase of 200 per cent in the last thirty years in France ? The obliteration of the cotton industry since 1850 in some parts of Great Britain, and its increase of 80 per cent during the same time in France ? The decline of the Hnen industry in England and Ireland and its increase in France ? The decline of the hand-made lace trade ia Great Britain, and its increase of 130 per cent in France ? A second time in this century France passed through an exhausting war, and a second time paid an enormous con- tribution to the victors." Yet, to use the words of an Eng- lish writer, " France, under protection,' is better off than FBEE.TBADS FOLLY. 85 England under free trade." All who wiU may see that countries like the Unitpd States and France not only prosper under protection, but can easily bear calamities which would crush England as long as she keeps her present poUcy. THE AMERICAN SYSTEM. Without going farther into the economic history of Exiropean countries to chronicle the failure of the doctrine of free trade, I will examine for a moment the marvellous achievements of industry created by the foresight and power of wise governments of which our own coxmtry affords the most brilliant example. The architects of the Union began prudently to develop trade and industry by import duties. Until we reached the tariff of 1846 the statutes are a succes- sion of imposts, prompted by the spirit which originally enacted the American tariff. The low tariff of 1857 preceded by a few months the great commercial and industrial revulsion of the atoae year. Gold had been driven out of the country, industries had been ruined, importations had become excessive, and eleven years of approximate free trade brought upon us universal finan- cial ruin. In 1861 the MorrUl tariff was enacted, and for nearly a quarter of a centiiry the country has progressed and pros- pered under it, and at the same time passed through the greatest civil war of modern times. It is practically this law, revised by the tariff commission, and reduced by the law of 18 S3, that we are now asked by free-traders to abolish altogether, or modify by horizontal reduction, or adjust for revenue exclusively. There is room for further revision, but it ought to be done by intelligent and friendly hands, and after a careful and calm inquiry into the industrial needs of the country. Under the present tariff law we have grown from a purely agrictdtural country largely dependent upon Europe for our manufactures, to a nation, teeming with important indus- tries. During twenty years of protection we have added 20,000,000 to our population; the number of our cities and towns (with over 8000 inhabitants) has actually doubled — from 141 to 286. The population of our cities has more than doubled 86 ffRBE-TBABE FOLLY. —5, 000, 000 in 1860 to upwards of 11, 000, 000 in 1880. The im- portant industries have developed in ;tJie same proportions. The annual product of our coal mines has increased from 14,000,000 tons in 1860 to 96,000,000— or nearly sevenfold. Our iron mines in 1860 produced 900,000 tons of ore, but the stimulus of protection has brought up the annual yield to nearly nine times that amount, or 8,000,000 tons. The various metal industries of the country were in 1860 em- ploying about 53,000 hands, consuming $100,000,000 worth of material, and producing $180,000,000 worth of annual pro- duct. To-day these same industries give employment to .300,000 hands, consume $880,000,000 worth of material, and produce every year $600,000,000 in value of manufactured goods. In 1860 about 130,000 persons were engaged in in- dustries relating to wood and its manufactures; to-day 340,000 are so engaged, while the value of the annual prod- uct has increased threefold, exceeding now $500,000,000. A judicious tariff has increased the number employed in the woollen industry from 60,000 to over 160,000, whUe the value of the yearly product of our home miUs has risen from $80,000,000 to $270,000,000. In the cotton industry, need I say that we have practically robbed England of 55,000,000 customers, increased the number employed in our mills to 300,000 persons, and, in the last two decades, doubled the value of the product. Imports of cotton goods have stead- ily declined from 227,000,000 yards in 1860 to 23,000,000 yards in 1881, while export reached, the same year, 150,000,000 yards.' A more remarkable progress has been made in the silk industry, which, before the Morrill tariff, gave employment to 5000 persons; in 1880 it employed over 30,000— a sixfold iacrease.- The impoi-tation of silk goods has remained stationary since 1860, at about $30,000,000, the production of our own nulls increasing from $6,000,000 in 1860 to over $40,000,000 in 1880. The manufacture of pottery, stone-ware, and glass em- ployed 12,000 in 1860 against 35,000 now. The chemical in- dustry was in its infancy thirty years ago — 6000 persons were engaged it; to-day there are five times that number, or 30,000. Our 30,000 miles of railroads of those times will ex- ceed 120,000 miles at the close of the present year— a mile- age equal to the railway mileage of the rest of the world. FBEE-TBADE FOLLY. 87 REDUCING THE COST TO THE CONSUMER. And this enormous increase in manufacturing, in internal improvements, and home trade has been followed by a steady decrease in the price of manufactured articles to the con- sumer, and of the cost of transportation to the manufacturer and trader. The opening Of our own coal mines has reduced the price of coal in the United States to less per ton at the .mines than the cost in Grreat Britain; and, owing to the low rates of freight, to less per ton at same distance from the mine. A policy of protection has reduced the cost of iroh and steel. In 1864, when our first Bessemer Steel Works were under- taken, American railroad mariagers were paying from $80 to $100 per ton for English steel rails delivered at English sea- ports. In 1877, ten years after American mills were pre- pared to manufacture steel rails to fill orders, the price of their rails had been reduced to $40 per ton ; in 1882, notwith- standing th© extraordinary demand for steel rails, caused by the boom and appreciation in values of the raw material from which they axe manufactured, the average price throughout the year was only $48.50 per ton. On the 1st of January, 1883, the price had fallen to $40 a toii, and on the 1st of January, 1884, it was $35 a ton; in July, 1884, it was $30; in 1885, it was $27.50. It has reduced the cost of freight from an average per ton, per mUe, on the principal lines, f rom»one cent, seventy inills in 1873, to one cent, seven mills in 1880 ; and to-day oflScial statistics show that railway transportation is cheaper in the United States than in any other country of the world. The same is true in regard to passenger traffic. It has reduced the cost of our wooUen goods. In 1860 we imported nearly one third of the wooUen goods used in this country ; now we import a little more than one tenth. The imports, exclusive of clothing, and the home product, according to the census, compare thus : I860 1880 Manufactured 80, 734, 606 367, 253, 913 Imported 87,986,945 31,834,547 Total supply 118,671,551 399.087,460 If the manufacture had not grown, could we now buy over |SOOjOOO,000 without raising prices abi^oad ? Or could we 88 FREE-TRADE FOLLY. now buy one third the quantity consumed, as we did in 1860, before the present woollen schedule went into force, without, paying high prices ? It has reduced the price of wool, because it has increased the production from 60,000,000 pounds to 325,000,000 pounds. It has reduced the price of our cotton goods so rapidly to the consumer, that many grades are cheaper here than in England. In two classes of goods which have only been made in this country for two or three years, the cost of mak- ing has beeen reduced from 33 to 50 per cent in that line, and the actual cost of the goods to the consumer has been reduced in that time from 25 to 30 per cent.. Common grades of goods, owing to home competition, have fallen in price below the English price, especially when the relative quality is considered. With protective barriers to aid them, England's rivals have been making greater progress than England. The con- sumption of England's goods no longer grows at its old pace, the population of the centre of the cotton industry remains stationary, while the condition of the operatives in Man- chester and Salford grows worse and worse. In 1842 Great Britain consumed about 1,375,000 bales of cotton; the con- tinent of Europe 816,000 bales, and the United State, 325,000 bales. To-day Great Britain's annual consumption is 3,395,-, 000 bales; the continent of Europe has increased to an an- nual consumption of 3)038,000 bales; and the United States to 2,230,000 bales, averaging 440 pounds per bale. Thus, un- der a protective policy, the European continent and the United States have increased their annual consumption of ^cotton from 1,141,000 bales in 1842, to 5,268,000 bales at the pi'esent time, while Great Britain has increased from 1,375,- 000 bales in 1842 to 3,395,000 at the present time, an increase of 2,020,000 bales, against an increase of 4,125,000 bales for the projective continent of Europe and the United States. Without going into the question as to whether or not a protective policy benefited England, we are confronted with the important fact that since 1842 the consumption of raw cotton in protective countries has grown at a much more rapid rate than in free-trade England; under the influence of protection other countries have made greater progress. Th« American system which we are asked to aboli^ has FBEE-TRABE F0LL7. 89 thus called into existence these vast manufacturing interests, brought into play the ingenuity and mechanical invention of the country, and fii-mly established in the republic a class of well-paid intelligent artisans. So important have these in- dustries become, and so much better paid are American workmen than those of any other country, that hundreds of steamships annually enter our ports laden with men, women and children anxious to partake of the benefits of the policy that has induced wealth to flow in this direction. These vessels return empty of human fi'eight. HAS IT COST THE FARMER ANYTHING? But we are told that this industrial progress has been made at the cost of the agricultural interests Of the country j that the manufacturer has ' ' robbed " the farmer. I have shown this assertion to be so false that, were it not echoed and re-echoed through the land by leading free-traders, one would hesitate' to deny that which bears on its face the im- print of falsehood. Manufacturers have only followed closely along the Hne of agriculture, strengthening and supple- menting it. The number of farms has doubled — 3,000, OOO'in 1860 to 4,000,000 in 1880; their value has increased in that period from $6,000,000,000 to over $10,000,000,000. The pro- duction of cereals has increased under protection from 1,230,000,000 bushels in 1860 to 2,700,000,000 bushels in 1880, an increase of over one hundred per cent.' The value of live stock has risen from $1,000,000,000 in 1860 to $1,500,000,000 in 1880, while the annual procJucts of the farm have reached $3,000,000,000. The number of sheep, owing to the duty on wool, has more than doubled— 22,000,000 in 1860 to over 50,- 000,000 at the present time. The home products of wool has increased from 60,000,000 to 325,000,000 poimds. The number of persons returned as employed in the gainful occupations has increased in the last ten years from 12,500,000 to 17,500,- 000, the rate of increase being in excess of that of the entire population, the former being nearly forty per cent, while the latter has slightly exceeded thirty per cent. On the other hand, under free trade in England, the gainful occupations have decreased and agriculture has declined. Every farmer, every workingman, and every practical business man can read and understand the effect of the pro- 90 FREE-TRADE FOLLT. tective industry on the farmers' interests. "Repeal your protective system," says the free-trader, addressing the American farmer; "buy British goods at a less price than you pay for American goods, and you will become rich and prosperous. Under the American system you are being ' robbed.' " What are the facts? The farmer certainly shows satisfactory progress in cereal productions during this quarter of a century of " robbery." Total Cereal Pro- Percentage of Percentage Amt per Capita Decade Ending duction in U. S. increase since of Increase of total Popula- Bushels. 1850. by Decades, tion— Bushels. 1880 2,697,963,456 211.0 94.5 53.79 1870 /1,387,299453 59.9 12.0 35.98 1860 1,239,039.947 42.8 42.0 39.40 1850 867,453,967 .... 37.40 An increase of nearly one hundred per cent in the princi- pal products. Manufactures have done no better than this. Free-traders attributed this immense increase in agri- cultural products to the cultivation of new land. IS THE TARIFF DUTY A TAX? Nothing can be more false than the claim of the free-trade press and the free-trade orators, that duty is a "tax" that comes out of the farmers and artisans of the country. By far the greater portion of the revenue collected on importa- tions is the toll paid by people of other countries for the ad- mission of their goods, the difference in the retail price of goods in a partially free-trade country like England and the United States rarely approaching the amount of duty. I was assured by a score of 'manufacturers, when travel- ling in Lancashire and Yorkshire last year, that the recent increase in French tariff came out of their pockets and not the consumers in France; that they were compelled to sell their goods in France at the same price as before the in- crease of duty. In Germany I found precisely the same state of things, and British firms who had moved there ad- mitted to me that they were selling their goods, made by Ger- man hands on German soil, as cheap, and in some instances cheaper, than the same class of goods were produced in Leeds, Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfleld, Dewsbiu-y, and Batley. "What injury could the tariff possibly have done the con- sumer in Germany or in France? It simply permitted the FREE-TBABE FOLLY. 91 producer to make the goods in those countries instead of in a foreign land. As proof of this in our own country, glance over the ex- ports, from the United States to foreign countries, of our manufactured commodities. We are sending to other na- tions yearly our agricultural implements, including fa;nning- mDls, horse-powers, mowers and reapers, ploughs, cultiva- tors, shovels, forks, hoes, etc. ; carriages, carts, cotton goods, raUroad cars, locomotive engines, watches, clocks, glass and glassware, hats, caps, boots, shoes, wearing ap- parel, machinery, cutlery, edged tools, ffles, saws, fire-arms,, nails, India-rubber goods, jewelry, lamps, saddlery, harness, organs, pianos, paper, stationery, printing presses, sewing machines, household goods, woodwork, tinware, and scales. On this point says Mr. Dudley: " As a rule, men do not export goods to another country to be sold at a loss, and when you see a manufacturer sending his goods to a foreign country for a succession of years it is fair to presume that he does it because he can get more there than he ceui at hoine ; in other words, they are cheaper here than in the foreign country to which they are exported." To introduce the system proposed by the so-called revenue reformer is to break down our home market in favor of Great Britain. It would close our mUls and furnaces and throw htuidreds of thousands out of work. England would buy no more of our farmers — she only buys now what she is obliged to buy, and she only buys of us because it is the most convenient and cheapest market. • There is no greater foUy in the world than this talk of giving up our home in- dustry in hope of replacing it by foreign trade. Suppose, for example, we can buy an article costing $100 here for |95 abroad. The consmner makes $5, but the nation loses in net income $95. It is not true that if the nation gains an equal amount of foreign trade to the home trade that it has lost it will be as well off as before. It must gain double the amount of lost trade. Thus, should England succeed in displacing us in manufacture of metals, cotton, and woollen goods, we should lose an an- nual product or net income of from $800,000,000 to $900,- 000 000, and to compensate us for that loss we should have to increase our foreign trade about $1,800,000,000, 98 FBEE-TBADE FOLLY. Under free trade the farmer would get no better price for his grain; the standard of living would come down, and with it values and wages ; our annual per capita con- sumption of food products (now greater than any coun- try) would fall with it in prices; in.sfact, the story of Hol- land and Germany would be repeated on an infinitely larger scale, fingland alone would be benefited (she would buy our wheat at a less price and make more money on the labor of her people). The repeal of our tariff system and the destruction of our manufactories would check the industrial decline of England. \ To bring this about she can afford to spend money to es- tablish Cobden Clubs, engage writers, and circulate books in the United States. MOTHER, WIFE, SISTER. And now a word for woman. In European countries she has to bear the double burden of motherhood and labor. Statistics will help us here a little. The census of free-trade England shows that 65,000 women are engaged in coal- mining, clay-working and the manufacture of iron and steel. Of the 6,373,367 persons returned in 1881 as engaged in in- dustrial pursuits in England and Wales, 1,578,189 were women. Of the 3,837,113 so returned in the United States only 631,988 were women. Of this number the manufacture of tobacco, boots and shoes, clothing, woollen and worsted, cotton and silk goods, hosiery, millinery, carpets, fancy boxes, hats and caps, printing, bookbinding, and canning fruit employ about 460,000, and the miscellaneous industries the remainder. But few are engaged in out-door manual labor. At present we are not obliged to graduate our gii-ls and our future mothers as fillers of blast furnaces and makers of brick. The competition with the laborers of Europe has not yet compelled our women to work at the anvil and the smithy fire. The labor of women in the United States has not yet been degraded, because men who bow down and worship the god of cheapness demand it; so long as the labor of our country is protected, so long and no longer will the head of the family be able to earn enough money to support his wife and children. In Europe the degradation of woman is complete. I have FREE-TRABE FOLLY. 93 seen her around the pit mouth, at the forge, and barefooted in the brickyards of " Merrie Englaad," filling blast furnaces and tending coke ovens in "Sunny France." I have sadly watched her bearing the heat and burden of the day in the fields of the "Fatherland," and in Austria-Hungary doing the work of man and beast on the farm and in the mine. I have seen women emerge from the coal pits of "busy Bel- gium," where httle girls and young women graduate under- ground as hewers of coal and drawers of carts, for it is no uncommon thing in Europe to hitch women and dogs to- gether that manufacturing may be done cheaply. Aged, bent and sunburned, I have seen woman, with rope over shoulder, toiling on the banks of canals and dykes in pic- turesque Holland. Having witnessed all this, I was yet surprised to find in a city so beautiful and seemingly so rich and prosperous as Stockholm, in Sweden, women stUl more debased. In Stockholm she is almost exclusively employed as hodcarrier and bricklayer's assistant. She carries bricks, mixes mortar, and in . short does all the heavy work about the building. At the dinner hour you see groups of women sitting on the piles of wood and stone eating their frugal repast. They wear a short gown, coming a trifle below the knees, their home-knitted woollen stockings and wooden shoes. Over their heads a kerchief is tightly tied. 'Those engaged mixing mortar and tending plasterers wear aprons. They are paid for a day of hard work of this toil, lasting twelve hours, the munificent sum of one kroner (equivalent to 36.8 cents). Women sweep the streets, haul the rubbish, drag hand-carts up the hills and over the cobblestones, un- load bricks at the quays, attend to the parks, do the garden- ing and row the numerous ferries which aboimd at Stock- holm. The entire dairy business of the city is in their hands, and here they take the place of horses and dogs, carrying on their shoulders the heavy cans of milk from door to door. When American women, and I include here women from all countries who have become part of the Republic, are thus abased, and not until then, shall we be able to build and to manufacture as cheaply as Europe; and when that day comes, and I hope it never will during my hfe, or when protection ceases to prove a barrier between European and American labor, than I shall say let us abolish it. 94 FBEE-TBADE FOLLT. THE .people's cause. OuK own experience, as I have shown, vindicates the policy of protection; its strength lies in the prosperity it has given the nation ; in the great industrial cities it has built up; in the prosperous and diversified industries it has founded; in the profitable home market it has given our farmers ; in the varied employment it has given the men and youths of the country; in the homes and profitable work it has offered our kin beyond the sea. In all that goes to make a nation strong and prosperous ; in aU that goes to make a country great and independent; in all that goes to broaden the horizon of the laborer, in- crease his earnings, cheapen the cost of what he buys, and improve his condition, — ^in all this lies the strength of the pro- tective system. Firm in the convictions of our leading thinkers, deeply seated in the experience of- the country, strong in the hearts of the majority of the people, and laden with evidences of its rich fruit, it is not likely that the American system, shaped by the same hands that built the Republic, is to be wiped out for a system which, in the earlier days of our national existence, was known as the "Colonial Policy," and to-day as the " Manchester School," or "Free Trade." The cause of protection is the people's cause ; it afEects the vast masses of the people, and they must and will under- stand it. Ifc cannot alone be studied in the lecture-room. It can be studied in the hght of the experiences of other nations, and in the experience of our own country. In this way I have attempted to present the facts, which must speak for themselves. As an inquirer after the truth, I have travelled thousands of nules through the industrial regions of Europe and our own country, and in this spirit of inquiry, and with no pretensions to political economy, I submit this httle volume, earnestly believing with Henry Clay, that "the cause is the cause of the country, and it must and will pre- vail. It is founded on the interests and' affections of the people. It is as native as the granite deeply embosomed in our moimtains." APPENDIX. PRICES UNDER A LOW AND A HIGH TARIFF. The following table compares the prices of certain articles in 1860, under a low tariff, with the prices in 1884 under a high tariff: Fair Middlesex bed-blanlcets, net, wholesale Norway plain, all-wool bed-blankets, wholesale Made-up horse-blanket, burlap-lined, wholesale Samples fancy cassimeres, 27 in. wide, wholesale Standard sheetings Standard dnllings N. Y. Mills bleached shirtings Cohoes and Merrimac prints 64x64 print cloth 4-4 heavy brown sheeting 4-4 bleached sheeting 4-4 common bleached sheeting Best ticking Lining, colored cambrics Ginghams , Standard prints.. Good twilled flannels (wool) Good Kentucky jeans Men^s rubber boots, per pair ; ' Boys' rubber boots, per pair Women's rubber boots, per pair Men's OTershoes, per pair Women's overshoes, per pair MeQ's best calf machine-sewed boots, per pair Men's best calf pegged-bdots, per pair Men's good common calf pegged-boots, per pair Men's best calf machine-sewed congress and Balmoral, per pair Men's good common pegged congress and Balmoral, per pair '. ■ Men's good common low-cut shoes, per pair Men's carpet slippers, per pair Women's best kid and goat boots, per pair Women's best serge congress, per pair Women's grain pegged Polish boots, per pair Women's serge slippers, per pair Boys' good kid brogans, per pair Misses' best kid or goat Poiish, per pair Misses' good common button, per pair Children's cheap shoes, per pair Fitchburg all-wool cassimeres, 27 in. wide, wholesale, per yard Hall and Frost cassimeres, 27 in. wide, average, whole- sale, per yard Fancy cassimeres, 27 in. wide, wholesale, per yard $2.7500 4.0000 8.0000 .6300 .0873 .0892 .1550 .0931 .0544 .0850 .1250 .0950 .1700 .0650 .1050 .0850 .3600 .8750 3.6000 2.4000 1.7500 .8000 .6000 4.0000 3.0000 2.5000 3.5000 1.6000 1.1700 .5000 2.0000 1.2500 .8730 .5000 .8000 1.5000 .7500 .2500 1.0500 .5100 .6500 Let every workingman who is too sensible to believe the assumption of free-traders, that a tariff increases the price APPMNDIX. of necessaries, study the above table. I could increase this list of articles largely, thus show±ag that the cost of very many goods has been reduced under a high tariil. HAEDWAEE. Abtici.es. A::es, No. 2, perdoz Augers, cast steel, per doz •! Auger-bits, per doz Chisels, socket-framing, per doz, j Hatchets, shinglitig, per doz Pick-axes, best assorted, per doz Saws, hand, 36 in., perdoz ] Saws, cross-cut, each -< Planes, jack, 18 in., 2J4 double-iron, per doz — Brass rocking-cocks, jl in., per doz Brass butts, middle pairs, per doz Cast butts, loose pairs, per doz Strap hinges, light pairs, per doz Plate hinges, per cwt. . , Wrougbt-iron hasp and staples, 8 in., per doz. . Carriage bolts, best, 3 by 3 1 6, -per gross Curry combs, 6 bars open. No. 1, per doz Brick trowels, 10!^ in., perdoz Anvils, steel face, per lb Iron squares, 18x12, per doz ; Fry pans, iron, tinned. No. 3, per doz Coffee mills, box square, No. 1, each Enamelled kettles, 4 qts., Haslin's, each Cast-steel shears, trimming, common, 8 in., per doz Shovels, No. 2, square, per doz Door knobs, mineral, per doz '. Door knobs, porcelain, per doz j in store. American Price in store. reduced to U. S. Currency. 89.00 $9.50 lin., 4.48 lin., 5.76 2 in.. 12.00 , 1 in., 11.52 Hin., 4.48 iiin., 3.00 lin. 3.72 lin., 5.76 2 in.,. 7.00 a in., 8.64 No. 2, 6.00 No. 2, 5.25 7.00 9.00 com., 6.00 com., 5.00 best, 13.48 gobd, 15.00 4 ft., 2.36 .4 ft., 2.00 4Uft., 2.60 4«ft., 2.25 5 ft., 3.12 5 ft., 250 15.00 10.20 6.00 7.00 2 in., 1.48 .72 3x3, 1.24 1.00 6 in., 1.48 1.00 $6 and 7.00 $6.16 and 7.28 .72 .65 2.12 1.57 2.48 .90 8.24 7.60 .08 ■08J4 4.48 5.25 4.48 4.25 .84 .67 .66 .50 6.00 4.20 7.48 5.00 2.48 1.00 white, 3.00 white, 3.25 black, 3.72 jet, 4.50 EETAIL PEICES. Articles. Trace chains, such as are used by ploughmen and with heavy harness, per pair Ditto, per lb Horseshoes, machine-made, per cwt . . . Ditto, per lb Horseshoes, either hand- or machine- 1 made, set of 4 f Log chains for heavy dragging, per lb. . English Price in store, reduced to U. S. Currency. 85c. to 97c. 8o. $3.40 to $4.37. 3c. to 4c. 85c., 91c., and 97c. 6o. to 8e. American Price in store. 65c. to $1.25. lOo. J .$6.60 to $6.72. , 6c. to 7o. • machine-made, 47c., 57c., and 65e. hand-made, $1.00. So.