Reasons for abandoning the theory of free trade and adopting the principle of protection to American industry

REASONS

FOE ABANDONING THE THEOEY OP

AND

ADOPTING THE PEINCIPLE OF

Addressed to the Farmers and Working Men of the United States.

BY

WILLIAM D. KELLEY, M. C.

REPRINTED FROM THE AUTHOR'S " SPEECHES, ADDRESSES AND LETTERS ON INDUSTRIAL AND

FINANCIAL QUESTIONS."

PHILADELPHIA :

HENRY CAREY BAIRD,

INDUSTRIAL PUBLISHER,
406 WALNUT STREET.

1872.

REASONS FOR ABANDONING THE
THEORY OF FREE TRADE.

IN offering this volume to the puMic it is proper to state
that I make no pretension to a critical knowledge of litera
ture or rhetoric, and that, when preparing the papers it con
tains, I did not suppose they would ever be collected for
republication. They are expressions of opinion called forth
by occasions ; and, as the reader will observe, not unfre-
quently in the excitement of current debate in the National
House of Representatives, or in response to invitations to
address popular assemblies under circumstances that pre
cluded the possibility of reducing them to writing in advance
of their delivery. It is proper also to say that I am not
wholly responsible for their publication in book form, inas
much as they have been collected and annotated in deference
to the judgment and wishes of citizens of different sections
of the country, who, though strangers to each other and en
gaged in pursuits involving apparently conflicting interests,
agreed in persuading me that by this labor I might render a
service to those of my countrymen who are engaged in farm
ing or who depend on their labor for the means of support
ing their children while giving them that measure of educa
tion without which no American citizen should be permitted
to attain maturity.

While I regret some expressions in the colloquial portions
of the Congressional speeches, and would have omitted them
could it have been done without impairing the argument, I
find no reason to question the soundness of my positions.
The theory that labor — the productive exercise of the skill
and muscular power of men who are responsible for the faith
ful and intelligent performance of civic and other duties — is
merely a raw material, and that that nation which pays least
for it is wisest and best governed, is inadmissible in a de
mocracy ; and when we shall determine to starve the bodies
and minds of our operatives in order that we may successfully
compete in common markets with the productions of the
under-paid and poorly-fed peasants of Europe and the pau
pers of England, we shall assail the foundations of a govern-

* This originally appeared as the Introduction to " Speeches, Addresses, and
Letters on Industrial and Financial Questions."

ment which rests upon the intelligence and integrity of its pea-
pie. To defend our country against this result, is the office
of a protective tariff, and for this duty it alone is sufficient.
This was not always my belief. My youthful judgment
was captivated by the plausible but sophistical generalities
by which cosmopolitanism or free trade is advocated, and
my faith in them remained unshaken till events involving
the prostration of our domestic industry, and the credit not
only of cities and States, but of the nation, demonstrated
the insufficiency or falsity of my long and dearly cherished
theories. In 1847, I had seen with gratification the protec
tive tariff of 1842 succeeded by the revenue or free trade tariff
of 1846. To promote this change, I had labored not only with
zeal and industry, but with undoubting faith that experience
would prove its beneficence. A number of remarkable circum
stances conspired to promote the success of the experiment.
The potato rot was creating an unprecedented foreign de
mand for our breadstuffs. It was then ravaging the fields
of England and the continent, having already devastated the
fields, and more than decimated the people of Ireland, who,
to escape starvation, were fleeing en masse to this country.
The gold fields of Australia and California had just been dis
covered, and promised, by increasing the circulating medium
of the world, and concentrating many thousands of emigrants,
who would engage in mining, in countries without agricul
ture or manufactures, to create great markets for our produc
tions of every kind, thus increasing our trade and quickening
every department of industry. Beyond all this, however,
and, as I afterwards came to understand, as a result of the
condemned protective tariff, in conjunction with recent im
provements in our naval architecture, our commercial marine
was growing rapidly, our ship builders were prosperous, and
our ship owners were receiving as compensation for extra
speed a shilling a chest in advance of English freights for
carrying tea from Hong Kong or Canton to London. Each
of these circumstances was a good auguiy for the success of
a tariff for revenue only. Going into effect under such favor
able conditions, it must, I believed, procure for our farmers
cheap foreign fabrics and wares, and secure a constantly in
creasing market for the productions of their farms ; and by
enlarging our share in the carrying trade of the world compel
the rapid construction of ships and steamers, whose employ
ment would increase our receipts of coin and immigrants.
Trade being so nearly free, we must in a few years see the
ships of all nations coming to New York for assorted cargoes,
and our commercial metropolis would then become the finan
cial centre of the world, in which international balances would

be settled. That these were but a small part of the great
results my theories promised will appear to any one who
will refer to the annual reports of the then Secretary of the
Treasury, Robert J. Walker, who was not more sanguine
than I, and whose statements of the general prosperity that
would flow from a revenue tariff were as positive and rose-
tinted as those with which Messrs. Atkinson and Wells now
beguile their followers.

Were we early revenue reformers worshippers at false
shrines, or did the sequel approve our faith? History
answers these questions with emphasis. It needed but a de
cade to demonstrate the folly of attempting to create a mar
ket for our increasing agricultural productions, and to
develop our mining and manufacturing resources by the
application of the beautiful abstractions disseminated by
Free Trade Leagues. It was just ten j^ears after the
substitution of the revenue tariff of 1846 for the protective
tariff of 1842, that the general bankruptcy of the American
people was announced by the almost simultaneous failure of
the Ohio Life and Trust Company, and the Bank of Pennsyl
vania, and the suspension of specie payments by almost
every bank in the country. In that brief period, our
steamers had been supplanted by foreign lines, and our
clipper ships driven from the sea, or restricted to carrying
between our Atlantic and Pacific ports. At the close of
that brief term, the ship-yards of Maine were almost as idle
as they are now when railroads traverse the country in
all directions and compete with ships in carrying even such
bulky commodities as sugar, cotton, and leaf tobacco ;* and
while the families of thousands of unemployed workmen in
our great cities were in want of food, Illinois farmers found
in corn, for which there was no market, the cheapest fuel
they could obtain, though their fields were underlaid by an
inexhaustible deposit of coal that is almost co-extensive
with the State. Capital invested in factories, furnaces,
forges, rolling mills and machinery was idle and unproduc
tive, and there was but a limited home market for cotton or
wool. Taking advantage of this condition of affairs, foreign
dealers put their prices down sufficiently to bankrupt the
cotton States, to induce many of our farmers to give up
sheep raising, and to constrain mair^ thousand immigrants
who could not find employment to return to their native
countries. 1847 had been a good year for farmers, mechanics,
miners and merchants ; but 185T was a good year for sheriffs,

* See figures from the report of Mr. Nimmo, Chief of Tonnage Division, in
aote, page 431.

6

constables and marshals, though few were purchasers at their
sales except mortgagees, judgment creditors, and capitalists
who were able to pay cash at nominal prices for unproductive
establishments, and hold them till happier circumstances
should restore their value.

Not one of the glowing predictions of Political Economy
had been fulfilled, and the surprise with which I contemplated
the contrast presented by the condition of the country with
what it had been at the close of the last period of protection,
amounted to amazement. Nor did my cherished theories
enable me to ascertain the cause of the sudden and general
paralysis, or suggest a remedy for it. Yet I could not
abandon them, for, as their ablest recent American champion,
Mr. Edward Atkinson, of Boston, in his article in the Atlantic
Monthly for October, says of the details of the Revenue Re
form budget, they were " simple, sensible, and right." Was
not each one a truism that might be expressed as a maxim —
an indisputable proposition — the mere statement of which es
tablished its verity ? To prove that they were not responsible
for the prostration of our industries, the want of a market
for our breadstuffs, and the widespread bankruptcy that pre
vailed, required the enunciation of but one of them : CUS
TOMS DUTIES ARE TAXES.* No one can dispute this proposi
tion, for the people pay them, and the Government collects
them, and not only may but should raise its entire revenue
through them. Surely nobody could have the temerity to
assert that an industrious and prosperous people could be re
duced to idleness and bankruptcy by the repeal or reduction
of taxes, and thus charge this national disaster to free trade
and the doctrinaires who had kindly taught us Political
Economy, and induced us to abandon the protective system.
The case was clear. Yet, strange to say, perfect as the de
monstration seemed to be, I was forced by the condition of
the country to doubt and ask myself whether, in some occult
way, the reduction of the rate of duties might not have had
something to do with producing it. The results promised
by the teachers of my cherished science, and those attained
by experiment, were irreconcilable, and I was constrained to
ask myself whether it might not be possible that Political
Economy was not an exact — an absolute — science, the laws
of which were equally applicable to all nations, without re
gard to the conditions and requirements of the people, or
the extent, variety or degree of the development of their re
sources ? It was easier to harbor this doubt than to believe
the alternative, which was, that the Almighty had not put

* See Dr. Bushnell, in note, pages 317, 318.

production, commerce and trade in the United States under
the government of universal and immutable laws, but had
left them to the control of chance. This conclusion being
inadmissible, there was nothing left but to waive the further
consideration of the subject, or to withdraw my theories from
the dazzling light of abstract reason, and examine them
under the shade of present experience.

It is a cardinal maxim among the adherents of free trade

that TWO MARKETS IN WHICH TO BUY AND SELL ARE BETTER

THAN ONE, and I could not dispute it ; but when in the pro
gress of my re-examination, I announced it to an intelligent
protectionist as indisputable, he admitted that it was so.
"But," said he, "where is the evidence that free trade is
the road to two markets for the United States ? " In
endeavoring to answer this question satisfactorily to myself
it became apparent that I had evaded the real point at
issue. Both parties to the controversy agree that two mar
kets are better than one. But the protectionists say, " Do
not risk the loss or diminution of the home market afforded
by our people when fully employed and well paid, by at
tempting to secure another, in a direction where success will
be, to say the least, exceedingly doubtful ; " the free traders
saying, " Court foreign trade by all means, and as you
are sure of the home market, you will thus secure two."
Which are right ? To determine this, we must ascertain
whether trade between nations is reciprocal or nearly so.*
To settle this question, I made a thorough and searching
appeal to the trade statistics of our own and other countries,
and ascertained that the amount of our productions con
sumed by the manufacturing nations of Europe has in no
degree, in any year, depended upon the amount of their pro
ductions consumed by us ; but on the contrary, that they
never took an equal amount, and frequently, when we were
taking most from them, took least of everything but cotton,
which they could not obtain elsewhere, from us. Thus it
had often occurred that when our store-houses were being
gorged with productions of the underpaid workmen of Eng
land, she, taking gold and silver from us, had gone to
Prussia, Germany, Austria, Turkey, and France, who bought
but little from her, and the chief diet of whose laboring
people consisted of rye bread, potatoes and garlic, for her
breadstuffs. This examination further showed that the
amount of breadstuffs England will ever take from us is
measured by the slight deficiency she may expect to experi
ence after having exhausted the markets of those lower priced

* See extract from Kirk's Social Politics, in note, page 186.

countries, whose people are suojects, and whose wages mark
the minimum on which families may subsist. When ^Esop's
stupid dog snapped at the shadow in the water he lost his
bone ; and the investigation convinced me that the attempt
to secure a second market by reducing our customs duties
had destroyed our home market, but opened no other for
any of our productions except gold and silver, and State and
corporate bonds. It had given England, with her low rates
of wages and interest, two markets in which to sell, and by
destroying our home market for grain, an additional one in
which to buy ; but had deprived us of the one on which,
under an adequate system of protection, we could always
depend, as has been shown by the uniform general prosperity
that has prevailed since the Merrill tariff of 1861 went into
effect. Thus it appeared that the fallac3'- was not in the ab
stract proposition which neither party disputed, but in the
assumption that free trade would insure us two markets.

Kindred to the foregoing proposition, and equally unde
niable as an abstract truth, seemed this other : You SHOULD
BUY WHERE YOU CAN BUY CHEAPEST.* Yet we had been doing
this for ten years, and were bankrupt. This condition of affairs
could not, it seemed to me, be the result of reduced rates of
duties, and the payment of reduced prices for what we had
consumed. What process of reasoning could show these
facts to be related as cause and effect ? England could sell
us railroad bars to lay over our wide stretches of limestone
country, and our immense fields of coal and iron, at lower
prices than, in the undeveloped condition of our resources,
and with our higher priced labor and money, we could pro
duce them ; and we had bought our supply from her. With
her accumulated capital, machinery, skilled labor, and her
lower wages, she could also spin and weave cotton and wooi,
and make the cloth into garments cheaper than our country
men could, and we had bought from her our clothes, or the
cloth from which to cut them. So, too, she could sell us
chemicals, prepared drugs, pig-iron, raw steel, and an im
mense number of other commodities for less money than we
could produce them ; and we had gone to her markets and
bought them where we could buy them cheapest. Mean
while, we had mined hundreds of millions of dollars worth of
gold and silver; had raised unprecedented crops of cotton,
tobacco, and breadstuffs ; had produced immense supplies of
naval stores and other exportable commodities ; and had,
withal, issued hundreds of millions of interest-bearing bonds,
by which our future productions and those of our posterity

* See Dr. Bushnell, in notes, pages 285 and 354.

9

were mortgaged. Yet, strange to tell, in spite of the lower
duties paid on our imports, and the lower than American
prices at which we had procured our supplies, we had not
gold and silver enough to serve as a basis for a redeemable
currency, and being, in many instances, unable to pay the
interest on our bonds were sued and sold out by our English
friends, to whom our gold, silver, and bonds had gone. We
were, however, rich in one class of commodities — the produc
tions of the farm. Of these the people of the Western States
had a superabundance. It was, howeA7er, unfortunately, not
possible to make them available, as our English creditors
would not take them even in payment of debts unless we
would, after paying for their transportation to the sea-board,
let them have them at the low prices at which they could
obtain like articles which had been produced by the ill-fed
peasants of Russia, Prussia, Austria, Hungary, and Turkey.
Than to do this it was better for farmers in the extreme
West to let their crops perish on the field.

Our condition was anomalous. There was no element of
wealth, or of the conveniences of life that could be produced
by a reasonable amount of labor outside of the tropics of
which we did not possess greater stores in the form of raw
materials than any other nation ; and of the productions of
the farm our supply was so superabundant that some of us
were, as I have said, using corn for fuel ; yet, our manu
facturing operatives were poor and unemployed, our farmers
were unable to pay for past purchases or fresh supplies, and
our merchants and banks, involved in the common fate, were
unable to meet their obligations. Did this strange ex
perience prove that it is not best to buy where you can buy
cheapest ? No. But it did prove that money-price is not
the test of cheapness ; and that we buy more cheaply, though
the nominal price of each commodit}7 be higher when we buy
what we consume of those who will buy what we produce at
fair prices, than we do when we buy at lower prices for cash,
or on credit, and permit our productions to perish for the
want of a market. Thus did deductions from unquestion
able and present experience demonstrate the fallacy of the
system of "established principles," which I had cherisfied
as a sufficient economic creed.

The terrible ordeal through which the working classes of
England are now passing, is constraining her statesmen and
scholars to bring the prevailing system of Political Economy
to the test of experience, and one of these scholars has been
bold enough to deny not only the policy, but the morality of
the proposition I have just considered. Mr. David Sj'me, in
a well-considered and powerful article on the " Method of Po-

10

litical Economy,- in the Westminster Beview for July, 1871,
which has come under my notice since the foregoing was
written, says :

"A close investigation will, indeed, lead to the conclusion
that the spirit of the moral law is incompatible with the
modern economic doctrine of buying in the cheapest, and
selling in the dearest market. For a scrupulous sense of
duty will often compel a man to act contrary to his own
personal interests. Such a man will conduct himself in his
business relations on the strictest principles of honor and
fair dealing. He will refuse to take an advantage when the
law may permit it, when, by so doing, he might prejudice
the interests of others. He will not take all he can get, and
give as little as he can ; but he will give as much as he can
afford, and take only what is fair and equitable. This is not
Utopianism, but the true spirit of the moral law.

" If, moreover, we consider man in the social state, we shall
find that the individual is bound to recognize the interests
of others as well as his own. He cannot, even if he would,
be guided in his social relations by an exclusive regard for
his own interests. In seeking his own advantage he must
be careful to do nothing that might in any way IDC injurious
to his neighbor. He must not sell a spurious article for a
genuine one, nor a deleterious compound for a wholesome

one. He must not use false labels or unjust weights

Economic science recognizes the existence of the social
state, and the social state presupposes the existence of the
social virtues — honor, honesty, and a regard for the feelings
and rights of others."

It was not easy to abandon opinions I had cherished
through so many years, and in which my faith had been so
implicit, but it was still more difficult to accept the oppo
site system, that of protection, which I had so often de
nounced as false, selfish, and exclusive. Nor did I do this
hastily: more than two years had been devoted to the
writings of the ablest advocates of both systems, and still I
halted between them. Meanwhile, it became apparent to
me, not only that Political Economy was not a science, but
that it was impossible to frame a system of abstract economic
propositions which would be universally applicable and bene
ficent ; and, further, that the same principles could not be
applied beneficially to England and the United States. The
conditions of the two nations are not the same, but are in
striking contrast. England is a small island, but the United
States embraces almost the entire available territory of a
continent. The former is burdened by an excess of popula
tion, and vexed by the question as to how she shall dispose

11

of the excess ; but our great need is industrious people, and
with us the question is how can we increase immigration. She
has to import food for half her people, and her foreign trade
is to her what seed-time and harvest are to the countries from
which she procures the breadstuifs she requires but cannot
produce ; but were they on our soil, we could feed ten times
the number of her whole people ; and even while I write, the
merchants of Minnesota, Iowa, and other northwestern States
are suffering financial embarrassment because the farmers
they supply cannot find a market for their crops. She is
dependent on foreign countries for most of the raw mate
rials she consumes ; but we have within our limits exhaust-
less stores of every variety not dependent upon tropical heat
for their production. Her resources are ascertained and
developed ; but ours await development, and in regions, any
one of which is larger than all western Europe, including
the British Islands, await definite ascertainment. Her popu
lation is compacted within narrow limits, and her railroads are.
completed and paid for; but our people are settled sparsely
over half a continent, and most of our system of roads, for
which the capital is yet to be produced, is to be constructed.
The charges for transportation within her circumscribed and
populous limits are very light ; but over our extended and
thinly-settled country they are necessarily heavy. Her facto
ries were erected and supplied with machinery while she main
tained the most rigid sj^stem of protection the world has
ever seen ; but ours are to be built as experiments in the
face of threatened free trade which would involve a more
unequal competition than any against which she defended
hers by protective duties and absolute prohibitions. Her
average rate of interest is 3 per cent, per annum ; but ours
is never less than 6 per cent, per annum, and in large sec
tions of the country is often 3 percent, per month. The great
body of her laborers, even since the recent extension of the
suffrage, are subjects without civic duties ; but ours are citi
zens, and liable to such duties. She pays the daily wages of
her workmen with shillings ; but we pay ours with dollars
worth four shillings each, and give many classes of them
more dollars than she does shillings : It is, therefore, impos
sible that the same economic polity can be applied with equal
advantage to countries whose condition presents so many
and such important contrasts.

Ten years under a tariff which levied the lowest rates of
duties consistent with the purpose of raising by imports the
amount of revenue required by the current expenses of the
government, sufficed to destroy the industries and credit of
the American Deople. The immense advantages England

12

possesses in manufactures and trade have enabled her to with
stand the untoward influence of free trade for a longer period
than we were able to ; but at the end of a quarter of a cen-
tmy it has become apparent that even the mistress of the seas
and the work-shop of the world cannot, at less cost than the
loss of national prestige and threatened revolution, throw
her ports open to unrestricted competition. The effect on
England of the abandonment of the protective system does
not exhibit itself in wide-spread bankruptcy as it did with
us. The enormous accumulations of capital held by her
privileged classes have prevented this. It is, however, ob
servable in the disappearance of the small farmer, and of the
small work-shop that in more prosperous times would have
expanded into a factory ; in the concentration of land and
machinery in the hands of a constantly diminishing number
of persons ; and in the rapidly increasing destitution, idle
ness, intemperance, and despair of her laboring classes.*

In the course of his admirable sermon before the Univer
sity of Oxford, December 20th, 1868, Rev. Brooke Lambert
said : " The severance between the rich and the poor is to me
an even sadder thing than the wretched state of the labor
market. . I can fancy a remedy possible for the one, I can
foresee no remedy for the other. The gap between them
seems widening every day, as trade and land fall into the
hands of large capitalists, who absorb all smaller concerns,
all smaller holdings." And BlackwoocVs Magazine for April,
1810, in an article entitled "The State, the Poor, and the
Country," says : " The lamentable depression of trade, and
consequent want of employment which have recently prevailed,
have now reached a most serious magnitude in many of the
larger towns, and most of all in London and its far-spreading
suburbs. The intensity of the distress in the metropolitan
districts has not been equalled in recent times. And the
break-down of our Poor-law system, despite all efforts of
voluntary associations, has been appalling in its results.
Not a week passes without several cases of 'deaths from
starvation,' duly attested by the verdict of coroners' in
quests, where the medical and other evidence reveals an
amount of unaided wretchedness and starvation, which one
would suppose impossible in a civilized country. Men,
women and children dying from sheer famine in the heart
of the wealthiest city in the world ! "

The extracts from the works of Sir John Byles, Sir
Edward Sullivan, Professor Kirk, Messrs. Grant, Patterson,
Smith, Hoyle, and other recent British writers, which will
be found in notes throughout this volume, more than con-

* See extracts, Appendix, pp. 29-32.

13

firm this statement. Sir Edward Sullivan admonishes the
governing classes that if they do not wish to reduce England
to the condition of a manufacturing country without work
shops or skilled workmen, they must protect native industry
sufficiently to restore the home market for cotton fabrics,
which has fallen off 35 per cent., by reason of the fact that the
enforced idleness of masses of the working people has de
prived them of the ability to consume this indispensable ele
ment of comfortable attire ; and Mr. Hoyle produces from
official statistics the figures to prove the startling statement.

Nor can the British Government longer close its eyes to
this distress and continue to assert that THE LAW OF SUPPLY
AND DEMAND is the heaven-appointed and all-sufficient regu
lator of societary movements. It is even now feebly attempt
ing to regulate both supply and demand by its own action.
To this end Earl Granville, Foreign Secretary, as early as
the 14th of April, 1870. addressed a circular dispatch to the
Governors of British Colonies, from which I take the follow
ing paragraph :

" The distress prevailing among the laboring classes in
many parts of the United Kingdom has directed public
attention to the question of Emigration as a means of relief.
It has been urged on Her Majesty's Government that while
there are in this country large numbers of well-conducted,
industrious laborers, for whom no emplo3Tment can be found,
there exists in most of the colonies a more extensive demand
for labor than the laboring class on the spot can supply.
The result of emigration would, therefore, it is said, be
equally advantageous to the emigrant and the colonies — to
the former, by placing him in a position to earn an indepen
dence ; to the latter, by supplying a want that retards their
progress and prosperity. Under the circumstances, Her
Majest}7's Government is anxious to be furnished with your
opinion as to the prospects which the colon}" under your
government holds out to emigrants, both of the agricultural
and the artisan class.

" The points on which we should be specially desirous of
receiving information are : the classes of laborers whose
labor is most in demand in the colony under your govern
ment ; the numbers for whom employment could be found ;
the probable wages they would earn ; whether married men
with families could obtain wages to enable them to support
their families, and house accommodation for their shelter;
what assistance or facilities would be provided to pass the
emigrants to the districts where their labor is in demand ;
and whether any pecuniary assistance would be granted

14

either toward their passages, or toward providing depots
and subsistence on their first arrival, or toward sending
them up to the country."

That England will soon so far modify her revenue system
as to re-adopt many of the distinctive features of the Pro
tective System, I confidently predict. Not that I credit her
privileged classes with quick or enlarged sympathy with the
laboring classes, but because I know that they have always
had sufficient tact to avert popular outbreak by timely con
cession. And though I remember how the people of Ireland
and Orissa were permitted to starve, I still believe that
the consumers of England will consent to pay duties on
such goods as compete with English labor in the home mar
ket, and relieve from taxation the tea, coffee, sugar, currants,
raisins, tobacco, and spirits of the laboring classes, rather
than incur the risk of widespread famine in London, Lanca
shire, and other great industrial centres of the country. But,
were they capable of the fatuity of withholding their consent,
the question has passed from their decision. Their last con
cession to the popular will, the extension of the suffrage,
makes this one inevitable. The article in Blackwood, alread}r
referred to, thus defines the position of the question :

"A new power has been introduced into our political sys
tem, new forces are at work within the pale of the Constitu
tion. The Government has become National in the fullest
sense of the word ; and with the change a new breath of life
is stirring society. New views are rapidly forming ; new
hopes and aspirations are entering into the heart of the
masses. The rule of the middle classes established by the
Reform Bill of 1 832, has come to an end ; and the doctrines
Which regulated the legislation of that period are now being
tested and considered from a different, indeed opposite point
of view.

" For nearly forty years the prime object of our legis
lation has been the interests of the Consumers ; now, we
shall soon have the masses advocating their own interests as
Producers. What is more, the State has now become simply
the nation itself, acting through a chosen body of adminis
trators ; and it is easy to discern that under the new regime
the Government will be called upon to adopt a very different
policy in domestic affairs from that represented by the prin
ciple of the Whigs and doctrinaires, which has been para
mount since 1832. That principle well suited the interests
of the wealthy and comparatively fortunate classes, who
needed no help from the State, yet who got all they asked
for, by the abolition of all custom duties which shackled
their business. But will that principle keep its ground now
that the weaker classes also have a voice in the Government ?

15

Will they not maintain that they, as an integral part of the
nation, have a claim to be fully considered in the policy of
the Government ; and that, if they can point out any system
of governmental action which will benefit them, without
doing injustice to the rest of the community, no doctrinaire
limitations upon the actions of the State shall be allowed to
stand in the way? The maxims of the Liberals, which have
been predominant since 1832, will be thrown into the crucible
and tried anew. Already in vague murmurs, which ere long
will become distinct and earnest speech, the masses are be
ginning to say that the principles which have been in vogue
during the rule of the middle classes will not suit them.
' Our interests,' they say, ' are those of Producers, not of
Consumers.

" ' We also are poor, and you are wealthy; we are weak,
and you are strong ; with us employment is a far more pre
carious thing than it is with you, and we have but small
earnings to fall back upon when out of work. State help,
though not needful to the middle classes, is needed at times
by us ; and we shall never rest contented until that principle
is acknowledged and properly applied.' "

The government cannot long refuse to listen to this de
mand, which no longer comes from the laboring classes alone,
but is enforced by many such writers as those to whom I am
indebted for many of my most instructive notes, and now by
Blackwood, the Quarterly Reviews, and other great organs
of opinion. That school of political economists who pro
pound free trade as the result of their system is finding less
favor with the thinkers of England than heretofore. They
discover that it is not producing the results it promised, but
other and very different ones, and are demanding that it be
tested by the inductive system, and proven by the facts of
experience. It has become clear to many of them that
under its influence the working people are not prosperous
or contented ; that the home market for some of their great
staples diminishes steadily ; and that in spite of Government
assurances that British trade increases, it is stationary, if
not absolutely diminishing. Discarding statements prepared
by skilful statistical jugglers like Mr. Wells, our late Com
missioner of Revenue, they are comparing and analyzing re
sults for themselves, and have thus detected the fraudulent
practices by which they have been deceived. The last trick
British statistics have been made to play was by her Majesty's
Commissioners of Customs, who, to prove the steady in
crease of trade, proclaimed with much triumph that the ex
ports during 1870 were 11 per cent, greater than they were
in 1868. This cheering result, which, isolated from the gen
eral facts to which it is related, is true, is made to prove^the

16

steady increase of trade by a device that would do no dis
credit to the cunning and audacity of our great statistical
manipulator. This is the process by which it is done.
The French array moved toward the German frontier about
the 15th of July, 1870, and at the close of the year the war
was at its height, promising not only to be of long dura
tion, but threatening to involve all Europe. It caused a
general suspension of the industries of France and Germany,
whose wares and fabrics were crowding those of England
out of so many markets, or the employment of their opera
tives in the production of arms and munitions of war. It
also gave England an immense market for these. But what
was, perhaps, more important than all this, it caused the
withdrawal of the commercial marine of those countries from
the ocean, and gave the ships and shops of England a mo
nopoly of the carrying and foreign trade of the world. Her
trade could not fail to be exceptionally large that year, as
owing to the war having extended far into it, and been pro
longed by the folly of the Commune it will be this year.
The Commissioners of Customs prove the virtues of free
trade by contrasting the exports of this exceptional year
with those of 1868, in which they were lower than they have
been since 1865. The following official figures will suffice to
show that the exports from Great Britain for the last four
years, including 1870, which was so exceptionally large, have
on the average been less than during 1866 by the consider
able sum of more than $6,700,000 per annum:

1866. Total value of British Exports £188,917,536

1867. " " " 181,183,971

1868. " " " 179,463,644

1869. " " « 189,953,957

1870. « " « 199,649,938

The reader who will add the value of the four years, '67-70,
and divide the result by four, and compare the figures thus
obtained with the total exports of 1866, will ascertain pre
cisely how rapidly and steadily the trade of Great Britain
increases.

Mr. Syme, in the course of his article in the Westminster
Review, to which I have referred, says : " Political Economy
exhibits no sign of progressiveness. Instead of discoveries,
of which we have had none of any consequence since
Adam Smith's time, we have had endless disputation and
setting up of dogmas. Whatever progress may have been
made in other sciences during the last century, there has
been none in this. The most elementary principles are
still matters of dispute. The doctrine of free trade, for
instance, which is looked upon as the crowning triumph
of Political Economy, is still very far from being uni
versally recognized. Even in England, after twenty years'

17

trial under most favorable circumstances, free trade has
been put upon its defence. We make no progress, and
from the very nature of our method of investigation, we can
make none. The Political Economist observes phenomena
with a foregone conclusion as to their cause. His method,
in fact, is the method of the savage. The phenomena of
nature, the thunder, the lightning, or the earthquake, strike
the savage with awe and wonder ; but he only looks within
himself for an explanation of these phenomena. To him,
therefore, the forces of nature are only the efforts of beings
like himself, great and powerful, no doubt, but with good
and evil propensities, and subject to every human caprice.
Like the Political Economist, he works within the vicious
circle of his own feelings, and he cannot comprehend, any
more than the savage, how he can discover the laws which
regulate the phenomena which he sees around him. The
savage would reduce the Divine mind to the dimensions of
the human ; the Political Economist would reduce the human
mind to the dimensions of his ideal.

" Our conclusion is, that the inductive method is alone
applicable to the investigation of economic science, and that
we shall never be able to make any solid progress so long
as we continue to follow the & priori method — a method
which has not aided, but clogged and fettered us in the pur
suit of truth, and which is utterly alien to the spirit of mod
ern scientific inquiry."

For the edification of those who may be incredulous as to
free trade being on its defence in England, Mr. Syme refers
(to Professor Bonamy Price's arraignment of it in the Con
temporary Review of February, 1871.*

The London Quarterly Review for July [1871], contains
a spirited article on " Economical Fallacies and Labor Uto
pias," in which it handles with great freedom " the school of
political economists now in the ascendant." The date at
which it was published proves that the author could not
have seen the article entitled " Free Trade — Revenue Re
form," in our Atlantic for October, yet he says : " There is
an utopianism which counts its chickens before they are
hatched, nay, cackles over chickens it expects to hatch from
eggs that are addled." Referring to Mr. John Stuart Mill,
who, had the Atlantic's article been anonymous, might, from
the freedom with which it disposes of existing relations and
interests, well have been suspected of its authorship, the
Quarterly proceeds to s&y :

" If Mr. Mill, the recognized leader of that school, is to be
designated as an economical 'enthusiast,' or perhaps more

* See also remarks of Sir John Byles and Mr. R. H. Patterson, in notes,
pages 199 and 200; and also of Sir Edward Sullivan, in note, pages 378, 379.
2

18

properly as the founder and propagator o^ economical en
thusiasm, he has earned that designation more by the exces
sive exercise of the dialectical than of the imaginative faculty,
and does not so much body forth to himself the forms of
things unknown, as suggest to his disciples revolutions, un
realized even in imagination, of all existing relations between
classes and sexes, as logically admissible, and not to be
set aside as practically chimerical without actual experiment.
His enthusiasm is the speculative passion of starting ever
fresh game in the wide field of abstract social possibilities —
philosophically indifferent to all objections drawn from the
actual conditions of men, women, or things in the concrete.
Mr. Mill would be very capable, like Condorcet, of deriving
from the doctrine of human perfectibility the inference that
there was no demonstrable reason why the duration of human
life might not be prolonged indefinitely by discoveries (here
after to be made) in h}rgiene. And to all objections drawn
from universal human experience of the growth and decay
of vital power within a limited period, it would be quite in
the character of his mind and temper to reply calmly that
the life of inan, like the genius of woman, had not hitherto
been developed under such conditions as to draw out its
capabilities to the full extent. Like Condorcet, too, while
dealing perturbation all around him, Mr. Mill is impertur
bable, and might be described as lie was, as ' un mouton en
rage — un Volcan convert de neige I ' "

It was the opinion of the great Bonaparte, that Political
Economy would grind empires to powder, though they were
made of adamant. The British Government is proving the
excellence of his judgment, and schoolmen and theorists are
industriously laboring to induce the American people to
confirm it by even a grander illustration. This pretended
science which, Mr. Mill says, "necessarily reasons from as
sumptions, and not from facts," is sedulously and devoutly
taught at Yale, and most of our leading colleges. It is for
tunate that the intimate relations of many of the students
with the industries and people of the country render the
scholasticisms of their teachers harmless ; and in parting
from them, they sometimes throw back upon them the
terrible results of experience, as their reply to the weary
chapters of deductions from assumptions with which they
have been tortured. How boldly and aptly, yet respectfully
this may be done, was shown by Mr. Orville Justus Bliss,
of Chicago, at Yale's last commencement. A leading scholar
of his class, he had been selected to deliver the Valedictory,
in the course of which he said :

"A cry for relief has gone forth, and refuses to be hushed.

19

We cannot always ignore these men. Neither can we for
ever satisfy them by quoting Adam Smith. Suppose some
wise individual should stand with a copy of * The Wealth
of Nations ' in his hand before a mob of London bread-
rioters, and begin to read the chapter on wages ; would they
all go off rejoicing in the beauties of the science, and con
vinced that they were happy ? Political Economy has had
ample trial in England. A mill agent recently said, ' I re
gard my work people just as I regard my machinery. So
long as they can do my work for what I choose to pay them,
I keep them, getting out of them all I can. When my
machines get old and useless, I reject them, and get new ;
and these people are part of my machinery.' Is not that a
sufficiently rigorous application of the law of demand and
supply ? And it describes the whole factory system in Eng
land, up to the time when the agitators took it in hand.
What it has done for England, I need not repeat. Suffice it
to say, that Political Economy, as a solution of this question,
is a disastrous failure."

And again : " The poor cannot help themselves. They
are tied hand and foot with an enslaving destitution. We
say : ' It is a free country ; let every one make of himself as
much as he can.' We challenge one and all to an unbounded
competition. But to these people the seeming fairness is
mockery. It rivals the brave boy who first takes a good
long start, and then turns around and offers to race with you
to the next corner. The child of the laborer may lift him
self from his degradation, and become a power for good.
But there must be some measure of intelligence, to serve as
a basis upon which to build. They must be made to feel
that society is their friend, not an enem}^, whose prosperity
is their defeat. What, then, is the laying of a cable, or the
spanning of a continent? What beauty do they find in
literature, what exaltation in science — I had almost said,
what solace in religion ? Not in the name of an endangered
society, imminent as its peril is ; not in the interests of great
money-wielders, plainly as those interests point to educated
labor, do I plead the cause of these people ; but because
they are part of our common humanity, and have a right to
partake of our common, intellectual, aesthetic, and social
delight."

I have said that I believe England will soon readopt many
of the distinctive principles of the protective system. Un
less we determine otherwise, she must do this soon. Hei
newly enfranchised producers will demand it, and the action
of her colonies will impart vehemence to the demand. Pro
tection is a settled principle with the governments of Vic

20

toria, New South Wales, Queensland, and other Australian
colonies. Speaking of this, together with the fact that they
are establishing Customs Unions on the principle of the
Zollverein, Charles Wentworth Dilke, in his Greater Britain,
'says : " It is a common doctrine in the colonies of England
that a nation cannot be called 'independent' if it has to cry
out to another for supplies of necessaries ; that true national
existence is first attained when the county becomes capable
of supplying to its own citizens those goods without which
they cannot exist in the state of comfort they have already
reached. Political is apt to follow on commercial depen
dency, they say." After a somewhat glowing portrayal of
the moral beauty of cosmopolitanism or free trade, Mr.
Dilke, recurring to the colonies, says : " On the other hand,
it may be argued that if every State consults the good of its
own citizens, we shall, by the action of all nations, obtain
the desired happiness of the whole world, and this with
rapidity, from the reason that every country understands
its own interests better than it does those of its neighbor.
As a rule, the colonists hold that they should not protect
themselves against the sister colonies, but only against the
outer world ; and while I was in Melbourne an arrangement
was made with respect to the border trade between Victoria
and New South Wales; but this is at present (1868) the
only step that has been taken toward inter-colonial Free
Trade."

The British Government cannot, without our consent, main
tain its present revenue system for five years more. But we
may enable it to postpone the change a few years longer,
inasmuch as by maintaining our workshops in England
rather than in the United States, we can soothe popular
discontent by giving employment to her hundreds of thou
sands of unemployed workers. This would also not only
increase her foreign trade, but by enabling those who are
now idle and requiring support to earn wages and purchase
supplies, would, till we should again reach bankruptcy, re
vive her home market.* To repeal or reduce our protective
duties, while our people are burdened by the annual levy of
more than $100,000,000 of internal taxes, is the only method
by which the languishing trade and industry of England
can be materially invigorated under her present free trade
revenue sj^stem.f Should the American people conclude that
cheap goods for cash constitute the chief end of men and na
tions, and that their interests will be best served by having

* See extract from Ryland's Iron Trade Circular, in note, page 405.
f See extract from Our National Rcsour-+€», and how they are Wasted, by
Wm. Hoyle, page 103.

21

their ores smelted, and their pig-iron, railroad bars, Besse
mer and cast-steel, chemicals, cotton and woolen goods, and
other wares and fabrics, made in foreign lands by people whose
food is raised by the ill-fed peasants of Russia, Prussia, Aus
tria, and Turkey, the discontented artisans of England will
probably be pacified, and the emigration of her skilled work
men to this country be arrested for a decade. What the
farmers of the Mississippi Valley would do with their crops
meanwhile, is a question worthy of their consideration.

But I may remark that it was the consideration of the
question, Where shall the farmers of America find a steady
and remunerative market for their crops ? that confirmed my
adherence to protection. The circumstances were these : In
1859, during the period of doubt heretofore referred to, I
sought the privilege of renewing a neglected intimacy with
Henry C. Carey, to whom I have since gone, and never in
vain, when troubled by doubt on any economic question.
Hitherto, our intercourse had been that of earnest adherents
of conflicting systems, but henceforth it was to be that of
friends in council, or rather of teacher and pupil. I already
recognized the fact that with their surplus capital, immense
sums of which are invested in our bonds and those of other
nations which pay as high rates of interest as we do, it was
always possible for English manufacturers, in ever}r depart
ment of production, to'combine, and by selling their goods,
for a season or two, in this one of their many markets, at
rates slightly below their actual cost, to destroy their Ameri
can rivals, whose capital was not often adequate to the de
mands of their business, and who, when compelled to borrow,
were subject to high rates of interest.* And I also knew that
the workingmen of this country could not maintain homes
and rear and educate families on such wages as those of
other countries were compelled to receive. But the question
that gave me difficulty was (for such I mistakenly supposed
must be a result of protection), why should the farmer be
taxed to defend the manufacturer and his employees against
such conspiracies, and this inevitable, though fatal, competi
tion ? This apparent conflict of interest it was at which I
halted, and the service Mr. Carey rendered me was that of
showing me that no such conflict existed ; but that, on the
contrary, the prosperity of the American farmer did then, and
always must, depend on the steady employment of the Ameri
can miner, artisan, and laborer, at such wages as would enable
them and their families to be free consumers of the produc
tions of the field, the orchard, and the dairy. With the clear

* See extract from Report of Parliamentary Commission, in note, page 328.

22

perception of this truth, that, at least in the United States,
the prosperity of the farmer is dependent on that of the manu
facturer, and the prosperity of the manufacturer equally de
pendent on that of the farmer ; and that, in so far there was
no conflict, but an absolute harmony of interests between
them, I became a protectionist. My last doubt had been re
moved, for I now saw that the Protective System was not
chargeable with the selfish exclusiveness I had ascribed to
it, but was, in fact, the truest and most beneficent cosmo
politanism ; nay, more, that it was essential to the enjoy
ment of absolutely free trade by the American people.

Let me hastily demonstrate the truth of these proposi
tions. Trade is most free when there is an active and
remunerative demand for all the commodities that can be
produced ; and this is when the people are so generally em
ployed in remunerative pursuits that the number steadily
increases of those who, by their earnings, can, while supply
ing themselves and families with the average necessaries
and conveniences provided by modern civilization, accumu
late sufficient capital to enable them to change their busi
ness, or vicinage, as inclination, health, or circumstances may
dictate. In other words, trade is most free when the great
est number of people are able to buy or sell, to work or rest,
to spend money in travel, or for a coveted luxury — or
to deposit the amount required for this in a savings bank, or
purchase therewith an interest-bearing bond. The authors
from whose works most of the notes by which I have en
forced the doctrines of my addresses and letters have been
taken, prove that the number of the people of England, Ire
land, Scotland, and Wales who enjoy these conditions, is
steadily diminishing ; that there are more than a million in
habitants of these countries who are vagrants, and more than
another million who are paupers; and that this is not because
they were born to pauperism and vagrancy, but because, at
least in a large majority of cases, they cannot get work
whereby they may earn the means of independent subsist
ence.* As freedom from customs duties does not establish
free trade, it has not enabled them to sell or buy freely. On
the other hand, the farmers of Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska,
Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas find that there is such a
surplus of food in the world that their trade is greatly re
stricted. Having all raised grain and live stock, there is no
chance for commerce between them, and though we are im
porting vastly more foreign goods than ever before, they can-

* See statements of Grant, Sullivan, Kirk, Hoyle, R. Dudley Baxter, Smith,
and Patterson, in notes, pages 24-5, 195-7, 267-9, 338-9, and 422.

23

not find a market for their productions at prices that will re
imburse the cost of production. These States abound in the
ores of iron, copper, lead, zinc, nickel, and other metals, and
in fuel and water-power. They all raise wool, some of them
cotton, and Arkansas is a natural silk field, in every quarter
of which the mulberry tree is indigenous ; but these exhaust-
less stores of the elements of wealth, and the forces whereby
they may be utilized, have been neglected. Had they been
largely appropriated, there would be no glut in the grain
markets of these States. Trade throughout their limits would
be both free and active. Many of the vagrants and paupers
of England have the skill to mine and smelt ores; to convert
them into wares ; to spin wool, cotton, and silk — weave them
into fabrics, and color them with exquisite skill and taste.
Can we not, in lieu of homesteads, offer such of their skilled
countrymen as still have the ability to come, steady work at
such generous wages as will tempt a million or two of them
— miners, smelters, engineers, machinists, spinners, weavers,
dyers, and other classes of artisans — to come and open the
mines of those States, build and work furnaces, forges,
rolling-mills, and factories ? This would not only give their
farmers free trade, but by building up towns, and requiring
local railroads, quadruple the price of every acre the}'- own.*
This can only be done by putting Protection on the founda
tion of a settled policy, for who will invest capital in mines, mills,
or furnaces to stand idle while we go abroad for our wares
and fabrics ? Or why should intelligent artisans come here to
be idle, or work for such wages as they can earn at home ? The
farmer should have a liberal price for his grain, but to live
well and enjoy free trade he must let others live, not
grudging the laborer generous wages for his work, or with
holding from enterprise and capital just guarantees of a fair
return for their efforts at developing the resources of a new
country. Could a million of English people, the adults
being, not farmers but miners, smelters, machinists, engine
builders, spinners, weavers, dyers, and artisans generalty,
be induced to settle in the States I have named, and pursue
their respective callings, the glut in the grain market would
soon disappear, and the freest trade would prevail between
them and the farmers. By the pre-emption and homestead
laws, we are tempting agricultural immigrants to come by
tens of thousands annually to increase our production of
grain and live stock. Protection to high wages is needed
to bring other classes. The homestead on which nothing
marketable can be raised will prove but a poor boon to the

* See notes, pages 202 and 360-1.

24

immigrant. And by promoting the immigration of arti
sans, we should render to the impoverished masses of England
the highest service. By making prosperous American citi
zens of a million of them, we should improve the chances in
life of those who remained behind. The prosperity that would
result from the infusion of such an immigration into even the
remotely interior States I have named, would quicken the
trade of England ; for a prosperous people always consume
freely, irrespective of the money price of commodities. They
will not only satisfy their wants, but gratify their desires ;
and our importations are always largest when, under pro
tective duties, our labor and machinery are most fully em
ployed. The present is a striking illustration of this fact.

The existing tariff is highly protective. With a larger
free list of raw materials than ever before, the rate of duty
averages, I believe, about 40 per cent. ; yet, our imports are
vastly in excess of any former year. How are we to account
for this paradox? Thus: We are prosperous, and a pros
perous people will gratify their desires. The value of our
foreign imports during the last fiscal year was nearly 22 per
cent, greater than those of any preceding one. In the year
ending June 30th, 1866, they amounted to $444,811,066, but
did not attain this magnitude again till that which ended with
June, 1871, during which they exceeded it by nearly $100,000,-
000, having been $541,493,776. This increased importation
of foreign goods surprises no intelligent protectionist. It but
confirms his theory that protection is the pathway to free
trade : that a well protected and generous home market is
the only basis on which extended foreign trade can be main
tained.* When, as is the case at present, customs duties
are so adjusted as to countervail the lower rates of wages
and interest prevailing in competing countries, increased
importations do not come as they would under free trade,
to undermine and destroy our industries, but to supplement
them. Our productive power increases more rapidly than
our imports, and we are producing each year a greater per
centage of our total consumption. But rapid as is the in
crease of our productive power, such is our general pros
perity that our ability to purchase and consume tasks it to
its utmost in all departments save that of farming. This
is shown by the fact that in those departments in which our
production has increased most steadily and rapidly, the
home demand is so active and remunerative that it saves us
from sending so many of our goods as we did in less pros
perous seasons to foreign markets for sale in competition

* See note, page 10.

25

with the cheaper goods of Germany and England. If readers
desire proof that such is the case, they will find it on page
125, of the July number of the North American Review,
where Mr. Wells enumerates a number of articles of waich
we export less than we did in I860, and points to that fact
as evidence of declining prosperity. Every reader will
recognize the fact that our production of each of the articles
named by him has increased in a ratio exceeding that of our
increase of population, and see that the circumstance from
which the writer cunningly suggests our failing condition,
is pregnant proof of our increased prosperity, our power to
purchase and consume more than ever before. I may re
mark, in passing, that this is but a fair illustration of the
unscrupulous ingenuity that has characterized the writings
of Mr. Wells since his return from England.

Without free access to our markets, England cannot find
employment for her people or capital; but as our tariff, by
defending the home market, invites enterprise, her capital
and people can find profitable employment in developing our
resources, and both are coming.* Thus reinforced, we are
producing such a proportion of our own wares and fabrics,
including those consumed by the cotton planters and tobacco
growers of the South, that we can afford to receive in luxu
ries, or such necessaries as we need in excess of our capacity
to produce, part of the proceeds of those special agricultural
supplies which Europe takes from us because they cannot be
obtained elsewhere. This must be the solution of the para
dox, for while augmenting our imports so largely, wb
are producing not only vastly more iron, steel, lead,
copper, zinc, and the infinite variety of utilities into which
they may be converted ; of cotton, woollen, silk, and flax
goods ; of chemicals, clocks, watches, jewelry, and works of
art, than ever before; but of "dwelling-houses, cooking-
stoves, furnaces, pumps, carriages, harnesses, tin-ware,
agricultural tools, books, hats, clothing, wheat, flour, cheese,
steamboats, cars, locomotives, bricks, coal oil, fire engines,
furniture, marble-work, mattresses, printing-presses, wooden-
ware, newspapers," and a thousand other things, which, it
is falsely said, " cannot be imported to any great extent,
under any circumstances," and the production of which gives
"to the farmer by far the largest market for his produce."
So great indeed is the prosperit}^ of all classes, save those
farmers who have gone beyond the reach of a market, that
Mr. Atkinson, in his onslaught on Protection in the Atlantic
Monthly, is constrained to acknowledge that : " At the pres
ent time this country is so vigorous, and production so
great, that a vicious currency and an enormous tariff simply

* See note from Kirk, page 389.

26

appear to create uneasiness, but do not seriously impede
prosperity."

To have withheld such an admission, damaging as it is to
the author's argument, would have been still more damaging.
It gives an aspect of fairness and candor to an article that
is essentially ingenious and disengenuous ; and had it not
been made, each intelligent reader would recall the prosper
ous condition of the country as a sufficient reply to his sug
gestions : For our general prosperity is not known and felt
by ourselves only, but by the British people and government.
The Commissioners of Customs state that the amount of the
manufactures of Great Britain, taken by the United States
during 1870, was £28,335,394, adding that this is "the
largest sum ever reached in any j'ear, with the exception of
the very prosperous year of 1866, when the values were £28,-
499,514, and exceeding the value of the exports of I860,
the 3rear before the American war, by six millions, or nearly
31 per cent." It is not unworthy of note that the only year
in which our British imports exceeded those of last year was
one of extreme protection, and that in each they exceeded
by more than 31 per cent, those of the last year of free
trade, or a revenue tariff. A leading English journal, over
looking the fact that the amount had ever been exceeded,
says : " The United States have long been the best customers
the British manufacturers have had throughout the world, and
last year their pre-eminence is more marked than ever."

Thus does current experience attest the mutual dependence
Gf the American farmer and manufacturer, and prove that for
them the protective system is the only road to really Free
Trade. That at so late a day, as it did, it should have re
quired Mr. Carey to convince me of these truths, illustrates
the almost absolute dominion long cherished abstractions
obtain over the minds of men ; for no fact in our history is
established by more abounding proof than the dependence
of our farmers on a home market capable of consuming more
than 90 per cent, of the annual crop of the country. It is
proven anew by each year's experience, and strikingly illus
trated by the statistics and general results of each of the
alternating periods of Protective and Revenue Tariffs. A
thorough examination of these results will, I am persuaded,
convince any candid mind that a rigid S3'stem of Protection
must, for many years, be the paramount political necessity
of the farmers of the United States.

But, waiving historical or statistical proof, I propose to
test the correctness of this proposition by existing facts.
The price of grain is not satisfactory to our farmers, and, as
I have more than once suggested, is not sufficient to cover
the cost of production and transportation to the seaboard

27

of the crops of the trans-Mississippi States. Is this the result
of an unusually fruitful year ? By no means. For the yield
per acre throughout the country has been considerably below
the general average. It is because too large a proportion of
our people are engaged in producing grain, and have, in a
year in which the foreign demand is exceptionally large,
produced it in excess of the world's demand. The leaders
of the corn market of England watch the progress of the
crops of the Continent as closely as they do those of the
British Islands, inasmuch as they usually draw thence from
90 to 95 per cent, of the annual deficiency. And their ad
vices for this year are as follows, as I learn from one of their
organs, published September llth: " The great deficiency in
the area under wheat on the Continent (in France and Ger
many), as reported by us in May last, could not fail to show
a very large falling off in their crop as compared with 1868
and 1869, and hence, instead of being liberal exporters of
grain as formerly, they will require to import freely during
the year. Our late advices from Russia confirm previous
estimates in regard to their crops, viz. : that their surplus
of wheat will be 10 per cent, less than last year." If, under
these circumstances, there be no market for our crop, when
and where may we expect to find one ? Certainly the near
future does not promise a European one ; for the war be
tween France and Germany has terminated, and the peasants
of both of those countries are preparing their fields for the
production of the usual amount of grain for the English
market in 1872. Nor is the remoter prospect more promis
ing. The increase of the population of Europe is scarcely
appreciable. But her capitalists adopt improved methods
of production, and the rapid extension of her railroad sys
tem is bringing her interior grain fields into cheaper and
more rapid communication with her capitals and seaports.
Under these circumstances, to anticipate a steady and re
munerative trans-Atlantic market for our grain would be
absurd. And what is the outlook at home ? For the far
mers of the remote interior it is even more gloomy. *0ur
laws offer sublime inducements to the peasantry of the
world to come and increase our production of grain. To
every one who will do this, they offer with citizenship and
free schools a farm without money and without price ; and
constantly increasing tens of thousands of them are accepting
the offer annually. I do not think it would be an exaggera
tion to place the number of new farms that will be pre
pared for crops this year, in the six States I have heretofore
named, at one hundred thousand. Who are to consume
their productions ?

Says Professor Kirk, in his admirable essays on " Social

28

Politics in Great Britain and Ireland:" " There are above
70,000 souls in the east end of London who must emigrate

speedily or die Above 25,000 of these are workmen

more or less skilled in engineer and shipbuilding occupa«
tions. These are not shepherds, nor are they ploughmen,
nor will they ever be to any great extent one or the other.
They are mechanics, and will be so go where they may. In
the vast hives of industry in Lancashire there are a greater

'"number who must emigrate or die Not one is either

pastoral or agricultural, and few are likely ever to be either."

Some of these, he tells, are able to get off " to Massachu
setts to find full occupation in cotton." Charity is sending
others, and the Government transporting as many as it can
to its North American provinces. Can we not prove our
cosmopolitanism, and our desire that all men may trade
freely, by giving 150,000 skilled workmen of London and
Lancashire the guarantee of steady work at generous wages,
and so open a way for the employment of those who, for the
want of passage money, must otherwise die, as BlacTcwood
says, "from sheer famine in the heart of the wealthiest city
of the world ? " What a market would they and their fami
lies create for farm products in all their varieties, and how
immensely and rapidly would the application of their skill
and industry to our undeveloped resources increase the gen
eral wealth of the country !

Let the report of our high wages, with assurances that these
shall be protected by law, be made in all the great industrial
centres of Great Britain, France, Belgium, and Germany,
as the freedom of our public lands has been in the pastoral
and agricultural districts, and our farmers will not long
want a market. But this involves the maintenance of a
rigid and generous system of Protection. In the ad
dresses and letters, which compose this volume, the reader
will find little else than the application of the principles
here enunciated to questions of policy as they have arisen
since the suppression of the rebellion.

In advocating such a system of Protection as would en
able our miners and manufacturers to pay wages sufficiently
liberal to induce skilled workmen to immigrate and enable
them to become liberal consumers, I have believed that I was
asserting and defending the right of the American farmer to
a market — a remunerative market — for his crops. Should
this volume convince any number of my countrymen of the
correctness of these views, it will vindicate the judgment of
those who persuaded me to prepare it for publication, and
gratify the most ardent wish of

THE AUTHOR.

PHILADELPHIA,

November 1st, 18U.

29

APPENDIX.

(Extracts referred to on page, 12.)

LET us for a moment think what are the conditions of our poor to-day. Apart
•from the question of our agricultural population, whose almost hopeless lot is best
told by the simple fact, that in many places the luxury of meat t« comparatively
unknown; apart from the questions of special emergency, such as the cotton
famine, or the East End Emigration Society, which has been brought into exis^
tence for the purpose of relieving the great mass of destitution and poverty in
that neighborhood ; apart from all such special and exceptional cases, we have
the general sense of depression and want everywhere spread around us. It is
not necessary to dwell on the scenes of human misery, where wholesale suicides
or cruel murders mark the profound despair of those who lay trembling on the
confines of want. It is equally unnecessary to recall those verdicts that appear
time after time at coroner's inquests under the simple but expressive phraseology
— " Death from Starvation." It is not necessary to recall these things, because
the newspaper press of the country drives these truths home without stint and
without compromise ; but it may be important to remember that the individual
oases, which thus come to the surface, are known only by accident, and that the
great mass of misery that suffers and dies, — dies and tells no tale. Occasionally
and by accident the curtain is drawn on one side, and we see into the midst of
the life of poverty that surrounds us; and we then know by the glance thus
afforded us, what the general life must be ; wasted by poverty, decimated by
fever, shattered by want ; and it thus rises before us, in the full force of its ap
peal to that sense of human sympathy which is common to us all. But the
general acceptance of the positions here stated will be aided by a few facts. Let
us see what the barometer of pauperism has to tell us. Our pauper population
in 1866, was 920,344; in 1867, 958,824; in 1868, 1,034,823; a'nd the number is
still increasing; yet these numbers show that our pauper population has in
creased 114,479 persons in two years, or at the rate of more than 1000 per week. —
Home Politics, by Daniel Grant, p. 3. London, 1870.

We are told that our manufacturing industries, far from being ruined, are
prosperous. It is true they are not yet ruined, but many are more depressed
than they have ever before been. Very many of them are sick — very sick ; far
more so than those unacquainted with them have any idea of, and a few years
more of such depression will see many of them in extremis. There are ma,ny
who argue that our manufacturers would at once give up manufacturing if it did
not pay; and no doubt it is a very natural assumption, that if a manufacturer
continues his business it is a proof he is making money by it; but it is
very often the case that he continues to manufacture only because he cannot
afford to stop. They little know how many manufacturers continue to struggle
on in business merely because they do not know how to get out of it. A man
with twenty, thirty, fifty, or a hundred thousand pounds sunk in works and ma
chinery cannot give up business without ruin. The causes that diminish the
demand for his Droduce diminish also the value of his plant; his capital and in
terest are imperilled at the same time and by the same cause. It is not to be
expected, it is not in the nature of Englishmen, that he should at once throw up
the sponge, and declare himself beat ; he will continue to tread the mill though

30

he gets nothing for it ; he will struggle on for years, losing steadily, perhapa,
but yet hopeful of a change. Millions of manufacturing capital are in that con
dition in England at present. Capitalists continue to employ their capital in
manufacturing industries because it is already invested in them ; but in many
cases it is earning no profit, and in others diminishing year by year.

It takes some time to scatter the wealth of England. The growth of half a
century of industrial success is not kicked over in a day. Moreover, it is only
now, only within the last three years, that the foreign producers have acquired
the skill and capital and machinery that enable them really to press us out of
our own markets. The shadow has been coming over us for many years, but it
is only just now we are beginning to feel the substance ; their progress corres
ponds with our decline. A great manufacturing nation like England does not
suddenly collapse and give place to another; her industries are slowly, bit by
bit, replaced by those of other countries ; the process is gradual, and we are
undergoing it at present. The difference between England and her young manu
facturing rivals is simple, but alarming. France, Austria, Prussia, Belgium,
Switzerland, have increased their export trade and their home consumption :
England has increased her export trade, but her home consumption has fallen
away, in the matter of cotton alone, 35 per cent, in three years !

In the present condition of manufacturing industries it is foolish to tell the
operative class to attribute the prosperity to Free Trade; they are not prosper
ous; it is a mockery to tell them to thank God for a full stomach, when they are
empty ! they are not well off; never has starvation, pauperism, crime, discon
tent, been so plentiful in the manufacturing districts — never since England has
been a manufacturing country has every industry great or small been so com
pletely depressed, nerer has work been so impossible to find, never have the
means and savings of the working classes been at so low an ebb.

We have had periods when some two or three of the great industries were de
pressed, but health still remained in a number of small ones : now the depres
sion is universal; the only industry in tne country that is really flourishing is
that of the machine makers, turning out spinning and weaving machinery for
foreign countries ! Many of these works are going night and day.

Now many persons doubt this distress, deny it altogether, and appeal to the
Board of Trade returns and to the dicta of certain retired manufacturers, who,
having invested the wealth acquired in former years, and being released from
the anxieties and dangers of declining trade, can now, without danger, afford to
indulge their commercial theories without injuring their pockets.

The manufacturing districts are depressed as they never have been before, and
any one who will visit them may see by evidence that cannot lie, by smokeless
chimneys, by closed shops, by crowded poorhouses and glutted jails, by crowds
of squalid idlers, that the distress is real. Take the one simple fact that the con
.sumption of cotton goods in England has fallen off 35 per cent, in three years
Can any fact afford stronger proof of the poverty and depression of our opera
tive classes ? Cotton constitutes the greater proportion of the clothing of the
lower orders ; when, therefore, the consumption of cotton falls away, it is proof
positive that the working classes are taking less clothing. — Sullivan's Protection
to Native Industry. London, 1870. Am. Ed., p. 17.

How effectively the diversification of our industries and the better wages pro
tective duties enable us to pay for labor is doing this, is thus shown by Professor
Kirk of Edinburgh. His figures also prove that British emigrants are no longer
chiefly agricultural laborers, but skilled atisans. He says :

" So long as there is inhabitable surface on the earth not yet occupied, it is
probable we shall have emigration. This abstract thought, however, has very
li tie to do with the actual facts of emigration as it now goes on. It is, as we
liave seen, a great delusion for men to think that our emigrants are going away
from us because there is no room for them in their native land. It is a still
greater delusion to imagine that it is a relief to those who remain behind to be
quit of those who go. If our readers will give us a little careful attention, we
may be able to make the truth clear as to our situation in this important
matter.

" In 1815, the total emigration from the United Kingdom was 2081 — in 1866, it
had risen to 204,882. That is such an increase as may well arrest the attention of

31

all who feel interested in their country. There were higher years than 1866;
but these had to do with the gold fever, and need not be taken into account in
our present paper. In 1852, for example, the number of emigrants rose to
368,764 ; but 87,881 of these went to Australia and New Zealand. It is to the
steady flow of nearly 200,000 persons a year, as reached from the small begin
ning — 2081 in 1815 — that it is interesting to turn attention.

" And yet it is far more interesting to consider the destination of these emi
grants. The number from 1815 gives a grand total of 6,106,392 persons, and of
these no less than 5,044,809 went to North America. Large as the Australian and
New Zealand exodus has been, it had reached only 929,181 in 1866 ; that is, it
had not reached one million when the American had gone beyond five. It is
important, too, to notice that by far the largest number of our emigrants to
America go to the United States. In 1866, those to the 'colonies ' were 13,255,
while to the States they reached the high number of 161,000. It is therefore
very clear that it is with America we have specially to do in considering the
bearings of this vast and growing emigration. The States of America are not
now a new country. They begin to have all the characteristics of an old estab
lished nation, especially in their northern and eastern portions. New England
is a well-peopled region of the world ; and, to as great an extent as Old Eng
land, it may be regarded as a manufacturing country, and certainly not a land
remaining to be occupied. An emigration from Britain to these States is not a
going forth to subdue the wilds of the earth's surface, but to increase the popu
lation of large manufacturing centres.

"This leads us, however, to notice further, the nationality of the emigrants
going from us. Up to 1847, the emigration was from Ireland in a very much
larger proportion than from the rest of the Empire. During the following eight
years the flow from Ireland became comparatively low, though it still 'keeps up
to a high rate. The emigration from Scotland was next in importance to that
of Ireland, when the extent of our population is taken into account. England,
with six times as many people as Scotland, sent but few emigrants till of late
years. The Irish emigration was so great, that in 1851 the census revealed a
deficiency in the population amounting to 2,555,720. That is, had Ireland had
no emigration in the ten years previous to 1851, she would have had 2.555,720
more than were actually in the island. In 1861, there had been a positive de
crease of 751,251, instead of an increase of a much larger figure, and it is anti
cipated that there will be a still more important decrease in 1871. In 1851, but
more so in 1861, Scotland was found to be affected in a somewhat similar way,
though not to the extent of producing an actual decrease in the number of peo
ple. Instead of an increase of twelve or thirteen per cent., as was in former
decades, there was only one of six per cent, from 1851 to 1861. The rate of in
crease in England and Wales had not been sensibly affected. Now the chief
stream of emigration is flowing from England. In the first or winter quarter
of the year 1869, the emigration was 2702 Scotch, 9800 Irish, and 11,000 Eng
lish. It need not be told any one who thinks and reads at all on the subject
that it is now in England almost exclusively we have excitement in connection
with emigration. And we may assuredly calculate that the census of 1871, and
far more fully that of 1881, if matters go on as now, will reveal a decrease in
the population south of the Tweed.

"What is the great relation in which these three kingdoms stand to each other and
mankind? Ireland is agricultural and pastoral; so is Scotland to a great ex
tent; England is the workshop for these and for the world. There is a small
manufacturing power in Ireland, a much greater in Scotland, but by far the
greatest of all in England. This explains how emigration did not set in on
England or on Scotland, as it has done on Ireland. It also explains why it did
not until now affect England as it has affected Scotland. A pastoral people are
the first to emigrate in the course of nature. An agricultural people are the
next in order. From a land like this a manufacturing people would never emi
grate if matters were right. The climate and mineral store of this country are
such that no other country can at present compete with it in manufacturing
power, if the natural course of things were followed. Even our shepherds have
an immense advantage at home, and our farmers have a still greater advantage,
but our manufacturers have so great facilities as can scarcely at present be
equalled. It is, consequently, matter of extreme interest when we find that

32

England is emigrating. It introduces us to the mining, mechanical, and manu
facturing character of our emigrants now. There are above 70,000 souls in the
east end of London who must emigrate speedily or die. They are being shipped
off as fast as charity and Government can transport them to North America.
Above 25,000 of these are workmen more or less skilled in engineer and ship
building occupations. These are not shepherds, nor are they ploughmen, nor
will they ever be to any great extent one or the other. They are mechanics, and
will be so go where they may. In the vast hives of industry in Lancashire there
are a greater number who must emigrate or die. These are getting off as fast as
they possibly can to Massachusetts to find full occupation in cotton. Not one
is either pastoral or agricultural, and few are likely ever to be either. Irish
men and Scotchmen can be anything, but not so Englishmen, and they will not
need to be anything in the world but what they have been. Their skill is too
valuable to be sent to the backwoods when abundance of rough hands are there
already, and skilled men are needed to make a great country fit to manufacture
for itself. Till within the last four years our emigrants were chiefly pastoral
and agricultural, now they are chiefly mining, mechanical, and manufacturing.
It is to this that we feel it of such importance to call attention. Our position as
a nation depends to a great extent, upon our usefulness to the world in a
mechanical and manufacturing line. Commerce has its being in the fact that
one nation is so situated that it excels in one thing while another excels in
another. It is in the exchange of produce that all trade lies, and such exchange
clearly depends on the excelling we have mentioned. If this nation loses its
excellence in manufacturing power, it loses its only possible share in the ex
change of the world, and its commerce dies.

" We must also look at the effect of emigration on the character of the popu
lation left behind. How do the Emigration Commissioners account for the vast
deficiencies in the population of Ireland ? More than two millions and a half
of deficiency was double the emigration, but it was accounted for by the fact
that th-9 young men and women had gone off to such a degree that marriages and
births had fallen off sufficiently to account for all. ' The proportion of persons
between the ages of twenty and thirty-five,' in the ordinary settled course of
society, is about twenty-five per cent. — that proportion among emigrants is above
fifty-two per cent. This is not the only matter of consideration at this point.
Miss Rye, in a letter to the Times, some months since, said : 'I will not, I
dare not, spend my time in passing bad people from one port to another.' And
'bad people' cannot, as a rule, pass themselves; they have generally no incli
nation to do so. No doubt bad enough people go, but that is not the rule. We
dare not now send our criminals abroad, nor dare we send our paupers, nor
should we be allowed to send any class unfit to support themselves. It is the best
of our mechanical and manufacturing hands that are now going, and they are
leaving the proportion of those who burden society largely increased.' " — Kirk:
Social Politics in Great Britain and Ireland, page 112. London and Glasgow,
1870.

14 DAY USE

RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED

202
LOAN PERIOD 1
HOME USE

DEPARTMENT

Libror

ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS

••m0n!' "">4n5

>cc

>ccks to the Circulation Desk
ys pricj tc clu«} d3to

DUE AS STAMPED BELOW

NOV 2

.

ClKCULMION IPEPT,

FORM NO DO* *n DIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
>D6, 60m, 1 783 BERKELEY, CA 94720