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VALUE 
 
 PROTECTIVE TARIFF 
 
 THE FARMER. 
 
 JOS. STORY FAY. 
 
 ^^SkCmSET 
 
 GRICuLTURAL 
 
 j\ /'•< n 7 
 
 'OUr^^* 
 
 EXTRACT FROM THE THIRTIETH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 
 SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 WRIGHT & POTTER PRINTING CO., STATE PRINTERS, 
 
 18 Post Office Square. 
 
 1883. 
 

THE VALUE OP A PROTECTIVE TARIFF 
 TO THE FARMER. 
 
 Oentlemen of the State Board of Agriculture of Massachusetts : 
 
 As delegate from the Barnstable Agricultural Society I 
 thank you for the honor you have done me in appointing me 
 to address you on the value of a protective tariff to the 
 farmer. I approach the subject with some diffidence as to 
 my own power of treating the subject to the best advantage, 
 but with not the least doubt as to the soundness of the nega- 
 five position I shall take, and I ask your indulgent atten- 
 tion. I do not propose to detain you with an elaborate 
 essay. I shall only submit to you a few facts and consider- 
 ations that the busiest may have time to think about, and 
 those the least familiar with the subject can understand. 
 We know that all articles raised by the farmer, or coming 
 from the soil, have a ready sale for cash, and that the pro- 
 ducer can at once realize the results of his labor. There 
 are manifold uncertainties in his business, but after all the 
 vicissitudes, beyond those of any other worker in any 
 branch of business in these United States, such as the changes 
 of weather, wet or dry, cold or hot, wind or storm, and 
 worm or blight, the tiller of the soil knows that what he 
 secures will bring him its value in money. His profits, 
 however, even in the best of seasons, and with the largest 
 of crops, are not so great, that it is not desirable that what 
 he receives may avail him to the utmost. The eifect of taxa- 
 tion upon him, therefore, is important : first, as it may affect 
 the cost of what he has raised ; and, second in making the pro- 
 ceeds go as far as possible in supplying his wants or in' adding 
 to his small savings and capital. As things are at present, 
 the fact is, that though he sells for cash, he has to rebate 
 to somebody, at least thirty, if not forty or fifty per cent, 
 of what he receives. I will now proceed to give you a few 
 
4 TALUE OF A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 
 
 figures from a pamphlet issued by the national bureau of 
 statistics. From this it appears, that the value of imports 
 of foreign goods last year, at their cost abroad, amounted to 
 716,000,000 dollars, of which the value of 211,000,000 
 was of free goods ; such as tea, coffee, hides, chemicals, 
 etc., leaving a value of 505,000,000 on which duties were 
 paid to the amount of 21(3,000,000 dollars, an average of 
 42| per cent. Think of adding this amount to the foreign 
 cost, besides freight and other charges ! 
 
 The exports of merchandise during this period were valued 
 at 733,000,000 dollars, of which the value of 552,000,000 
 were the products of agriculture, or seventy-five per cent, of 
 the whole. 
 
 Of the whole amount of exports, only a little over one- 
 eighth, or 103,000,000 worth were manufactures, or less than 
 two per cent, of the total manufacturing product of the country 
 for 1880. And to make up this sum, manufactures of wood 
 (meaning lumber) to the value of 19,000,000, of tobacco, 
 spirits, spirits of turpentine, sugar and molasses, and many 
 such articles have to be included. Now if the duties on the 
 total 716,000,000 of imports, free and dutiable, are 216,- 
 000,000, or an average of thirty per cent, on all, dutiable or 
 free, does not the country have to pay those 216,000,000 
 into the public treasury, in addition to the 733,000,000 
 value of merchandise sent away to buy them, and does not 
 this vast sum come out of the pockets of the consumers, by 
 the increased price of everything they have to buy? And 
 does not the chief burden fall upon agriculture, the most im- 
 portant interest of the nation, and upon agriculturists, who 
 are the largest class, whose products and labor have fur- 
 nished the bulk of those exports? 
 
 In the old days of nullification, when there was much 
 strife and much intelligent discussion upon the elFect of for- 
 eign imposts, when laid for protection, Mr. McDuffie of 
 South Carolina maintained the theory, the duties at that time 
 being on the average forty per cent, upon goods imported 
 from England, that if he sent 100 bales of cotton there to be 
 sold, ordering the returns in goods, when they arrived, he 
 had to give the United States government 40 bales more to 
 pay the duty on the clothing, hats, shoes and blankets in 
 
VALUE OF A PKOTECTIVE TARIFF. 5 
 
 which he had ordered the proceeds of the 100 bales to be 
 invested, thus making the 100 bales worth of goods cost him 
 140 bales of cotton . And this was no fallacy. It was true 
 then, and it is true to-day. If I send 100 barrels of cran- 
 berries from my Cape Cod place, or you 100 barrels of apples 
 from your inland farm to England, and bring l:)ack dutiable 
 goods in exchange, w^e must have the proceeds of 43 barrels 
 more in our pockets to pay the government for the duties on 
 the goods. Even if we ordered the amount in trees, or 
 plants, or seeds of any kind, paying a duty of twenty per 
 cent., it would be 20 barrels on a hundred, and does this pro- 
 tect us? The total amount of value of seeds imported last 
 year was $1,465,170.18, paying duties $281,038.84. There 
 is not only no protection to us in this, but actually a barrier 
 in the way of introducing improved seeds and plants into 
 the country, only to increase the surplus in the public treas- 
 ury at our expense, to be squandered at Washington. If it 
 be said that you and I will bring home gold for our apples 
 or cranberries, we cannot buy at home what we need with- 
 out its cost being increased by the duties the importer has 
 to pay on it, be it silk or merino dresses for our wives and 
 daughters, coats and hats for ourselves, or steel ploughs or 
 trace and log chains for our farms. You cannot escape the 
 .fact that you buy a great deal less for your money at home 
 than abroad, and while the price of what you raise aikl sell is 
 fixed by what it is worth in the foreign market, the price of 
 all you want to buy here of foreign make, is fixed here, and 
 the cost is increased l)y the duty, averaging nearly forty-three 
 per cent. That a tax increases the price of goods is illustrated 
 by the fact that common whiskey, worth 25 cents a gallon, is 
 increased by the dut}^ of 90 cents to the market value of 
 $1.15, and the same is the efiect on the price of tobacco. 
 This increase of price by the tax, which is here clear and 
 palpable, will apply, though less apparently, to all the lirti- 
 cles imported from abroad, be they sugar (three cents a 
 pound), or salt, clothing, hats or blankets, iron or steel, or 
 manufactures thereof. There is no doubt that the prices of 
 the same class of goods made at home are enhanced in 
 equal ratio to the foreign goods which compete w^ith them. 
 If any man tells you that our protected manufacturer makes 
 
6 VALUE OF A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 
 
 goods cheaper than they are made abroad, ask him then, 
 why he does not sell them at a price at which they can be 
 shipped to South America, India or China, to compete with 
 those same foreign goods sent to those markets from Eng- 
 land, Germany and France? Why must our exports be 
 mainly agricultural, if our manufacturers can afford goods 
 cheaper than the foreigner? In addition to the 216,000,- 
 000 of dollars duties collected on foreign imports, there are 
 155,000,000 of internal revenue taxes collected, of which 
 whiskey and tobacco, the products of agriculture, pay a 
 large part. Of course these are luxuries, and we are not 
 obliged to use them, but it makes in all a total burden of 
 366,000,000 dollars to fall upon somebody, and it cannot 
 be a good thing. The principle is wrong to gather up this 
 vast sum, to distribute it again, who knows where? It may 
 be said that, if these 350 to 400,000,000 dollars a year 
 (the latter is Mr. Folger's estimate for the current year) 
 are gathered in taxes, the amount is all spent at home, and 
 that the country is not the poorer for it. 
 
 Suppose this is admitted, does it not make considerable 
 odds to whom the money goes, for it does not get back to 
 those who contribute it? It goes from your pockets, first, 
 to a standing army of tax gatherers, and what is left, to 
 those whose coffers are already full. Do you know a farmer 
 who has become a millionaire by farming? You may count 
 them by dozens among those whose occupations and business 
 are protected, but not among the farmers ! The president 
 of the Singer Sewing Machine Company lately died, leaving 
 a dozen or more millions of dollars made from a business 
 eminently protected, and from machines mainly distributed 
 and sold among the working-people of this country. 
 From the increased cost by duties on steel, and other causes 
 involved in protection, these machines are too dear for prof- 
 itable export; but how is this met? These capitalists build 
 an immense factory in Glasgow, where, untrammelled by 
 tariff, and by using foreign labor, they can supply machines 
 to foreign work-people at one-half or two-thirds of the cost 
 of the protected machines which you have to buy. But for 
 the duty, you could import a Singer, or other sewing machine, 
 at two-thirds of the price exacted from yoii here, or les§, 
 
VALUE OF A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 7 
 
 As the thing stands now, with all the large sewing-machine 
 factories in the country, making millions of machines yearly, 
 you furnished for export in 1881, a greater value of fresh 
 and dried apples than was the amount of value of those ma- 
 chines sent abroad in that year. The same facts apply to 
 watches, an article of so large demand and use, and in the 
 manufacture of which the Americans claim the pre-eminence. 
 It is fifty years since the duties on imports were laid in a 
 way to foster and protect " our infant manufactures." To- 
 day the duties are heavier, when we boast of American skill 
 and the perfection of American machinery, than they were at 
 the start, and now when its products amount to $5,369,579,- 
 191 per annum. 
 
 Twenty-two years ago, a sweeping tariff and an excise 
 law were enacted as a war measure to sustain the credit of 
 the country, and to meet the expenses of the contest for the 
 Union, taxing almost everything to the utmost, and thus 
 neutralizing, in many cases, the effect of the very protection 
 desired, but putting an immense burden upon all. With all 
 its crudities and inconsistencies and faults that tariff has never 
 been materially changed. Indeed, some classes of manufac- 
 turers are clamoring for an increase, while some have actually 
 obtained it, that these " infant" productions may make more 
 millionaires. As for example : the only manufacturer of large 
 plate glass such as we see in shop windows, demands a pro- 
 tection of one hundred and twenty-one per cent., and he 
 lives in Indiana, beyond the Alleghany Mountains. This duty 
 prohibits those who use it from getting supplies from abroad, 
 where it is much cheaper. You were willing to sustain the 
 burden of war, in whatever shape it came, but does not the 
 peace of seventeen years' standing call for a relaxation, 
 when at the present rates of revenue, there will be no public 
 debt in twenty years, and nothing on which to base the 
 security of the national banking system, by which you have 
 a sound paper currency ? What country has a better credit 
 than ours, and can it be made better by unreasonable and 
 grinding taxation, enriching the few at the expense of the 
 many ? 
 
 See, too, the temptations, with the overflowing treasury, 
 to corrupt schemes, useless expenditures and extravagant 
 
8 VALUE OF A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 
 
 constructions, if not to fraud and stealing ! And what pro- 
 tection does the farmer get ? You and I know very well 
 that so long as we raise more than can be consumed at home, 
 and have to seek a foreign market for our surplus, no farm 
 productions can be imported to compete with us ; hence, even 
 with the low rates of duty on cereals and the like (not over 
 twenty per cent.), none can ever come in, except from an 
 entire failure of crops with us, and a famine were threatened. 
 And if foreign markets must be had to take our hundreds of 
 millions worth of produce, and if we must t:ike such prices 
 as they can afford to give us, ought we not to have the privi- 
 lege of buying, with the proceeds of what we ship, the cheap 
 o-oods which they have to sell, rather than be forced by 
 almost, or quite, prohibitory duties, to buy of our protected 
 manufacturers at nearly double prices? If we could take 
 more of their goods in return, and get them home, with a 
 moderate revenue duty, would not foreign nations be able 
 to buy more largely of us, and at better prices? Would 
 they not be better customers to us if we did not exclude 
 their products, and if they could sell us more, not having 
 to pay us in hard cash for what they are obliged to take from 
 us? In 1881, they had to pay us in gold a balance of nine- 
 ty-oue millions of dollars, seriously disturbing the finances 
 of Europe. 
 
 And now, to make some specific points upon protection, 
 let us look at the article of salt, on which a duty of about 
 eight cents a bushel, or forty-six per cent, is levied, and for 
 what ? To protect those who own the salt-wells of Western 
 New York, Michigan, and Virginia. Do you ever buy their 
 salt? No! You must use the foreign article, because the 
 Western is too dear, and must pay also heavy transportation 
 charges. Theirs is a monopoly, and they combine to pro- 
 duce as much, and only as much, as they can sell at protected 
 prices, and should they have a surplus, send it to Canada and 
 take what they can get for it, rather than make a concession 
 to us, or to those who, at the West, are obliged to have it for 
 packing purposes. It is the principle on which the Dutch 
 used to act in burning the surplus nutmegs to keep up prices. 
 There are other things worked in the same way, and notably 
 among them are the copper products of Lake Superior. The 
 
VALUE OF A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 9 
 
 mining companies sell all the copper they can at about 
 eighteen cents a pound to the consumers in the country, and 
 the surplus that cannot be used here is sold to go abroad, or 
 sent there to a market where it is worth, at the outside, 15| 
 cents for the best. Last year the exports of copper, out of 
 a product of 27,275 tons, or fifty-four and one-half millions 
 of pounds, worth nearly ten millions of dollars, were 3,340,531 
 pounds, at a home value of 171 cents a pound, amounting to 
 $565,295; and the imports were 744,566 pounds, costing 
 abroad 12| cents a pound, and amounting in value to $90,945, 
 which paid a duty of five cents a pound. This is about the 
 loss that the copper miner makes on his surplus after selling 
 you all he can at 18 cents a pound, and it shows plainly that 
 a protective tariff gives him a monopoly and forces the peo- 
 ple of this country to pay several cents a pound more for all 
 the copper they use than any other people in the world. 
 
 Where is the sense of it, except to fill the pockets of a 
 few owners of copper mines? These do not need it as 
 protection, for they can produce it as cheaply as it can be 
 produced anywhere else. One mine alone (the Calumet 
 and Hecla) has paid to its owners, in about twenty years, 
 dividends to the amount of over twenty-one and one-half 
 millions dollars, with several millions surplus on hand, on an 
 original investment of $200,000. Can any such profits as 
 this be shown in agriculture? Suppose, for a moment, that 
 one of our neighbors should discover the most valuable cop- 
 per mine in the world on his farm, should we not think it 
 hard, if, in addition, Congress should pass a law making the 
 rest of us (who get no bounty for raising corn or pork) paj'" 
 him a bonus of five cents a pound on his product? And 
 yet, this is practically done for the copper miners. The price 
 of five cents a pound is added to the fifty millions of pounds 
 mined and used in this country, and we farmers pay our full 
 share of it. And as though this were not enough, that they 
 should have n fall monopoly, an almost prohibitory duty was 
 laid upon copper ore, and the business of Smelting it not 
 only was actually destroyed, but also the foreign commerce 
 based upon it. Formerly ships loaded with American goods 
 sailed from Boston to Chili, and in return brought back cop- 
 per ore, which was smelted at Point Shirley, East Boston, 
 
10 VALUE OF A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 
 
 with American coal and by American labor. Now, the 
 whole is a thing of the past, — taxed out of existence. The 
 decay of American shipping is not a matter of wonder 
 when such one-sided legislation can prevail and pass Avithout 
 protest or complaint. 
 
 But to recur to the salt tax. Wlien it was first imposed 
 it was partly with a view to revenue, as salt, a necessity of 
 life, has always been a favorite subject for monopoly and im- 
 post, and partly to protect the salt-makers on our coast. 
 These, before the Western salt springs were worked, covered 
 our sea-shores with thousands of acres of salt pans, making 
 salt by solar evaporation. Now there is not an acre of them, 
 and what good to us, or to anybody, is a protective tax on 
 salt? 
 
 We will now look at wool as a protected article, as that 
 is one of our farm products. Did you ever hear of a pound 
 of wool raised in the United States, east of the Rocky 
 Mountains, that was sold at twelve cents a pound or under, 
 or even at sixteen cents or less? Yet wool of this character, 
 long and coarse, coming from Asia, Africa, South America 
 and Mexico, at a cost of twelve cents or less a pound, pays 
 a duty of three cents a pound, and if only one mill over 
 that, up to twenty cents, a duty of six cents a pound. Now 
 the American wool-grower needs no protection from such 
 wool as this ! Yet this class pays sometimes, 7,500,000 
 dollars a year, into our over-flowing public treasury. It is 
 used for carpets, blankets, flannels and other coarse goods, 
 that our laboring classes need to use, and enhances to that 
 extent the cost of them. And then what is the result to 
 our "infant manufactures?" They must be protected 
 against the foreign goods made in England and Germany, 
 out of this same coarse wool, rendered more costly to our 
 own manufacturers by the duty I have named, and so the 
 cheap carpets, blankets and clothing which come from abroad, 
 must pay a still heavier proportionate duty. The impost 
 on low-priced blankets is eighty-five per cent, (almost or 
 quite prohibitory) , and the American working-man must pay 
 one dollar and eighty-five cents for what the English laborer 
 pays but a dollar. The duties on the finer qualities of wool 
 are much higher, and in spite of them, large quantities are 
 
VALUE OF A PEOTECTIYE TARIFF. 11 
 
 imported, because we do not raise enough to supply the de- 
 mand for our woollen mills which are heavily protected on 
 the goods they make. You can buy nothing made of wool 
 for your personal or domestic use, that does not pay a duty 
 of at least fifty per cent. 
 
 How can we make money and become millionaires, or 
 how can our farm hands alibrd to work for the wages we can 
 afford to pay, when the cost of everything is enhanced by 
 needless and cumulative taxation? Take the fine wool that 
 is r^dsed in New England, if it has ever been increased in 
 price by the duty of ten and twelve cents a pound imposed 
 upon foreign wool of the same class, adding that much to the 
 cost of the domestic manufactured goods, it is but a drop in 
 the bucket, compared to the amount of tax you have to pay, 
 directly or indirectly, on all that you wear or use, except 
 tea and coffee, and some few other articles, and among them 
 eggs and feathers, which are duty free. 
 
 Raw hides come in duty free to the amount of 27,500,000 
 dollars ; the cattle growers and slaughterers do not ask pro- 
 tection ; the leather trade flourishes, and we get our shoes, 
 harnesses and the like, by so much the cheaper. This rule 
 or policy could be extended much to our advantage. Then 
 look at steel. A duty of three cents a pound is levied on 
 the greater part of the large quantity imported. Some classes 
 pay more, but none less than two and a quarter cents a pound. 
 You well know how much this article enters into the cost of 
 your implements, and of the machinery which makes so many 
 of the articles necessary to you. 
 
 Again, let me ask, how then has protection helped the 
 farmer? In answering this question, let me call your atten- 
 tion to a point worthy of note and of thought, made by Mr. 
 Carlisle of Kentucky, in a speech in Congress last year. 
 The protection of the tariff" is given under the specious and 
 attractive cry of protecting American labor against the pau- 
 per labor of Europe, but where does this come in? I cannot 
 see, when we are forced to send, as has been done for two 
 years past, an average of 650,000,000 dollars' vvortli of 
 produce a year across the ocean, to be sold in competition 
 with the poorest and meanest paid labor in the world, 
 that of Russian peasants, and of the half-staryed and half- 
 
12 VALUE OF A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 
 
 naked Hindoos ! While tlie manufactnrers, furnace men, 
 iron and machine makers and miners are protected ao:ainst 
 the well-paid artisans and skilled Uiborers of I^ngland, 
 France and Germany, whose wages have been shown to be 
 as high as those in this country, the agriculturist has to 
 compete with the lowest grade of labor on earth, and with- 
 out the privilege of reciprocity. If it be said that you have 
 a better home market for what you raise ; on the other hand 
 it must be admitted, that a very large amount of your sur- 
 plus productions, amounting to 552,000,000 dollars last 
 year, and in 1881 to 730,000,000, would have been lost en- 
 tirely but for the foreign market. 
 
 You do not dispose of all you can at high prices, as do 
 the salt-makers and copper-miners, and sell the surplus only 
 at a sacrifice. It is one price for all. Is it not due, then, 
 to this iinmense interest that some attention should be given 
 to build up and improve this foreign market, rather than to 
 spend all legislative efibrt in raising higher barriers to keep 
 our produce at home? 
 
 The protective system has not worked so well that you 
 find a home market for all that is raised, and the market 
 you have to seek abroad is not replaced or made needless by 
 the one it is attempted to build up at home. The last cen- 
 sus shows that there were employed in the manufacturing 
 establishments of the United States 2,738,895 men, women 
 and children, or a little over five per cent, of the whole popu- 
 lation, and the profits earned upon the products of their 
 labor by the manufacturers, in the year 1880, were $1,024,- 
 801,847, or over one thousand millions of dollars. If these 
 are " infant manufactures," the profits are surely not infan- 
 tile. 
 
 It is well, then, to look at these things squarely and fairly, 
 and ask how much good does the farmer derive from the 
 tremendous import tax of 216,000,000 dollars paid last 
 yeiir? For it must be borne in mind, that if by this tax the 
 price of foreign goods imported is raised from thirty to fifty 
 per cent., the^domestic article is not sold any cheaper for the 
 same quality. As a rule the selling price of home manu- 
 factures is fixed at little, if any, below that at which the im- 
 porter offers to sell you his duty-paid goods. I could go 
 
VALUE OF A PEOTECTIVE TARIFF. 13 
 
 on almost endlessly to illustrate the hardships of a system 
 that, in many cases, is like the tax on mortgages, a double 
 exaction, but this is not the time nor the place to exhaust 
 the subject. 
 
 What I have said may open a fresh line of thought to 
 you, and raise many important questions in your minds. 
 Perhaps none will be more pertinent than to ask, such being 
 the state of things, what have our senators and representa- 
 tives in Conofress been about, that these abuses have now 
 gone on these many years, without protest or remonstrance 
 on their part, nay, even with apologies and defence? 
 They may think only of the wealthy iron companies, the 
 machine makers, the cotton and woollen manufacturers, of 
 those who have their capital in mines, in banks, and in land- 
 grant railroads, but not of you. Perhaps they do not know 
 enough ; perhaps they owe their election to the men who 
 rally their work-people to the polls on the cry that the 
 protection to their business is in danger, and that the wages 
 of their operatives are threatened, and that the mills must 
 close. They say nothing about the fear for their own large 
 dividends and immense profits, but strive to leave all the 
 burdens upon the shoulders of the agriculturist. 
 
 Much, very much more, could be said; much about the 
 dwarfing of our commerce and the decline of shipping ; for 
 none can say, when eighty-four and a half per cent, or nearly 
 seventeeu-twentieths of our foreign commerce is done under 
 foreign flags, and when the stars and stripes have almost dis- 
 appeared from the ocean, that protection and navigation laws 
 have promoted our growth and prosperity in this direction. 
 It is, however, enough in itself to awaken our serious reflec- 
 tion to repeat, that the exports of agricultural products from 
 the United States were last year 552,000,000 dollars, forming 
 seventy-five per cent, of the whole ; that the returns of these 
 exports in foreign goods paid a taxof 216,000,000 dollars, and 
 that the surplus revenue from all sources, applied to the 
 premature payment of the public debt, over and above all 
 the extravagance of expenditure at Washington, was 145,- 
 000,000 dollars. 
 
 W^hy should this tremendous sum be exacted annually 
 from the hard-working people of this country? Who grow 
 
14 VALUE OF A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 
 
 rich by it ? Look around you and you will see that it is not 
 the farmer. You may not feel any particular pinch, it 
 operates so insidiously, this indirect mode of taxation, but 
 do you grow rich? Do you even make a good living out of 
 it? Those who gather the spoils will appear if you look at 
 the large dividends of the various classes of manufacturers and 
 machinists, and implement makers, and miners, and while 
 only 5| per cent of our population is engaged in these pur- 
 suits, look at their profits, look at their accumulations in the 
 way of " plant " or investment, constantly adding mill to mill, 
 shop to shop, furnace to furnace, rolling-mill to rolling-mill, 
 out of their profits, besides the regular dividends. Look at 
 the large establishments built in this State by the accumula- 
 tions acquired by protection, which gives to certain classes a 
 practical monopoly and large assured profits. Look at the 
 large mills and factories all over this great Commonwealth, 
 see how they grow — while farms dwindle and diminish in 
 value. In a late debate in the United States Senate, a state- 
 ment was read from the "Hartford Courant,"of the dividends 
 and the prices of the stock of some of the manufacturing 
 companies in Connecticut, and among them, the Southington 
 Cutlery Company, whose cash dividends, the last year, were 
 twenty and a half per cent. Mr. Piatt explained that these 
 dividends were declared on their nominal capital, but their real 
 capital was, in many instances, several times as much. An 
 unfortunate explanation or admission, for whence came this 
 " real capital," but from accumulated profits put into the busi- 
 ness (and into increased buildings and machinery piled up) , in 
 addition to large semi-annual dividends ? And so it is in old 
 Massachusetts ! No wonder that our young people leave the 
 farm for the lighter work and greater emoluments of pro- 
 tected industry ! After all I have stated, I would not be 
 understood as advising, even if the«people were agreed upon 
 it, any sudden, radical change. It should be gradual, but it 
 should be begun, I would not hastily impinge upon what 
 may almost be considered vested rights. However good 
 the principle of free trade may be, " buying where we can 
 buy cheapest, and selling whore we can sell dearest," we 
 have been so long building up another system, that to stop 
 it suddenly would be ruinous to all ; but now we are so 
 
VALUE OF A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 15 
 
 large and independent a nation, ought we not to rise above 
 a one-sided system, and gradually, at least, amend it? 
 Ought we not to ask that some of the hardships and inequal- 
 ities and much double taxing, the protection so called which 
 does not protect, should be looked into and dealt with wisely 
 and in a statesmanlike manner and corrected? 
 
 Is not the present tariff too much adapted to hold up (not 
 to build up, for they are nlready built) certain classes at the 
 expense of the farmer? Must there not be something wrong 
 when everybody else gets rich, while this, numerically the 
 largest class, grows poorer? Why must a revenue of four 
 hundred millions of dollars be collected, when only eighty, 
 or at most one hundred millions, are required to maintain our 
 national credit, pay our interest, and extinguish gradually 
 the public debt, and as much more for the economical 
 administration of the government? Why should not the 
 farmers demand, and the demand be yielded to, that 
 economy and simplicity shall be the rule of the government, 
 as it is in their own households, and a lio;hter weio-ht of 
 duties and taxes be imposed upon them? 
 
 Suppcose our iron and machine makers, miners, manufac- 
 turers and railroad men should grow rich less rapidly than for 
 the last twenty years, would it be any evil? W^ould not a 
 return to simple, republican, purer and calmer ways, with 
 less feverish excitement, less of luxury and show, be a pub- 
 lic and national advantage ? 
 
 I may be told that Congress is now at work in this direction. 
 I hope it may be so, but there are those who know better 
 than I, who say it is a sham and a delusion ; that they are 
 not honest and sincere, or in earnest ; that they are only do- 
 ing as those " that keep the word of promise to our ear, and 
 break it to our hope." If so, they are playing a very dan- 
 gerous game. 
 
 It is commonly said, and with much truth, that we inherit 
 our opinions on religion, politics and finance. I confess that 
 I inherited, or imbibed early, a conviction that protection 
 was needful to our progress and prosperity as a nation. 
 Experience and observation have satisfied me that it was. a 
 mistake, or if it was correct, that we have got beyond the 
 period when it was needed, . With our vast heritao;e of free 
 
16 VALUE OF A PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 
 
 lands and a virgin soil, I feel that it had been better for us 
 to have trusted to our own unaided efforts and our natural 
 progress, rather than to have fostered special industries, and 
 to have built up privileged classes, an aristocracy of wealth, 
 as objectionable as an aristocracy of land. 
 
 The facts satisfy me that I was mistaken, and that the 
 freest commerce possible with the nations of the world, 
 would have given us, in the long run, the largest benefits as 
 a people. We do not ask for a tariff or Chinese wall of 
 prohibition between the other thirty-seven States of the 
 Union and ourselves, and the principle of free commercial 
 intercourse which we have with them would have applied 
 equally, and would have worked as well with foreign coun- 
 tries. We should be laughed at if we were to ask Congress 
 to protect us against Western grain, pork, butter, apples, 
 and the like, but we know well that they are brought to the 
 doors of our manufacturing neighbors, and that they will 
 pay no more for our products than for them. We even 
 know that Western produce goes to depress the value of 
 what we raise. 
 
 In spite of this, however, let our aim be to extend our 
 markets, while we lighten the burdens of taxation, and 
 thus cheapen the cost of our living, and of production. 
 Let us approach the subject, not in the spirit of partisan- 
 ship or sectionalism, but as patriots, and intelligent, thinking 
 men. 
 
 Let us try to cast aside prejudice and inherited notions 
 and look at the things around us by the light of facts, and 
 broaden our views, and endeavor to bring it about that there 
 shall be no favored classes, but that we shall all stand on 
 the broad platform of equal rights, equal burdens, equal 
 privileges. 
 
.^^' 
 
 pp. 
 

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