46 sake of Manufacturers, but for the sake of ing that, if every man pursues that course all Productive Labor, should Protection be most conducive to his individual interest, afforded. If I have been intelligible, you the general good will thereby be most cerwill have seen that the purpose and essence tainly and signally promoted. But, to say of Protection is LABOR-SAVING, -the nothing of the glaring exceptions to this making two blades of grass grow instead of law which crowd our statute-books with one. This it does by "planting the Man- injunctions and penalties, we are everyufacturer as nearly as may be by the side where met with pointed contradictions of of the Farmer," as Mr. Jefferson expressed its assumption, which hallows and blesses it, and thereby securing to the latter a the pursuits of the gambler, the distiller, market for which he had looked to Europe and the libertine, making the usurer a in vain. Now, the market of the latter is saint and the swindler a hero. Adam certain as the recurrence of appetite; but Smith himself admits that there are avothat is not all. The Farmer and the Man- cations which enrich the individual but ufacturer, being virtually neighbors, will impoverish the community. So in the interchange their productions directly, or case before us. A B is a farmer in Illiwith but one intermediate, instead of send- nois, and has much grain to sell or exing them reciprocally across half a conti- change for goods. But, while it is demonnent and a broad ocean, through the hands strable that, if all the manufactures conof many holders, until the toll taken out sumed in Illinois were produced there, the by one after another has exceeded what re- price of grain must rise nearly to the mains of the grist. Dear-bought and average of the world, it is equally certain far-fetched" is an old maxim, containing that A B's single act, in buying and consummore essential truth than many a chapter ing American cloth, will not raise the by a modern Professor of Political Econ- price of grain generally, nor of his grain. omy. Under the Protective policy, instead It will not perceptibly affect the price of of having one thousand men making Cloth grain at all. A solemn compact of the in one hemisphere, and an equal number raising Grain in the other, with three thousand factitiously employed in transporting and interchanging these products, we have over two thousand producers of Grain, and as many of Cloth, leaving far too little employment for one thousand in making the exchanges between them. This consequence is inevitable; although the production on either side is not confined to the very choicest locations, the total prod-pieces like a rope of sand. Many a one uct of their labor is twice as much as formerly. In other words, there is a double quantity of food, clothing, and all the necessaries and comforts of life, to be shared among the producers of wealth, simply from the diminution of the number of nonproducers. If all the men now enrolled in Armies and Navies were advantageously employed in Productive Labor, there would doubtless be a larger dividend of comforts and necessaries of life for all, because more to be divided than now and no greater number to receive it; just so in the case before us. Every thousand persons employed in needless Transportation and in factitious Commerce are so many subtracted from the great body of Producers, from the proceeds of whose labor all must be subsisted. The dividend for each must, of course, be governed by the magnitude of the quotient. But, if this be so advantageous, it is queried, why is any legislation necessary? Why would not all voluntarily see and embrace it? I answer, because the apparent individual advantage is often to be pursued by a course directly adverse to the general welfare. We know that Free Trade asserts the contrary of this; maintain whole community to use only American fabrics would have some effect; but this could never be established, or never enforced. A few Free-Traders standing out, selling their grain at any advance which might accrue, and buying "where they could buy cheapest," would induce one after another to look out for No. 1, and let the public interests take care of themselves: so the whole compact would fall to would say, "Why should I aid to keep up the price of Produce? I am only a consumer of it," not realizing or caring for the interest of the community, even though it less palpably involved his own; and that would be an end. Granted that it is desirable to encourage and prefer Home Production and Manufacture, a Tariff is the ob-. vious way, and the only way, in which it can be effectively and certainly accomplished. But why is a Tariff necessary after Manufactures are once established? "You say," says a Free-Trader, "that you can Manufacture cheaper if Protected than we can buy abroad: then why not do it without Protection, and save all trouble?" Let me answer this cavil :— I will suppose that the Manufactures of this Country amount in value to One Hundred Millions of Dollars per annum, and those of Great Britain to Three Hundred Millions. Let us suppose also that, under an efficient Protective Tariff, ours are produced five per cent. cheaper than those of England, and that our own markets are supplied entirely from the Home Product. But at the end of this year, 1843, we,—— concluding that our Manufactures have been protected long enough and ought exported in payment, which has compelled the Banks to contract and deny loans. Still, their obligations must be met; if they cannot make sales, the Sheriff will, and must. It is not merely their surplus, but their whole product, which has been depreciated and made unavailable at a blow. The end is easily foreseen: our Manufacturers become bankrupt and are broken up; their works are brought to a dead stand; the Laborers therein, after spending months in constrained idleness, are driven by famine into the Western wilderness, or into less productive and less congenial vocations; their acquired skill and dexterity, as well as a portion of their time, are a dead loss to themselves and the community; and we commence the slow and toilsome process of rebuilding and rearranging our industry on the one-sided or Agricultural basis. Such is the process which we have undergone twice already. How many repetitions shall satisfy us? now to go alone,-repeal absolutely our | a limited pressure. The foreign influx has Tariff, and commit our great interests created a scarcity of money as well as a thoroughly to the guidance of "Free plethora of goods. Specie has largely been Trade.' Well: at this very time the British Manufacturers, on making up the account and review of their year's business, find that they have manufactured goods costing them Three Hundred Millions, as aforesaid, and have sold to just about that amount, leaving a residue or surplus on hand of Fifteen or Twenty Millions' worth. These are to be sold; and their net proceeds will constitute the interest on their capital and the profit on their year's business. But where shall they be sold? If crowded on the Home or their established Foreign Markets, they will glut and depress those markets, causing a general decline of prices and a heavy loss, not merely on this quantity of goods, but on the whole of their next year's business. They know better than to do any such thing. Instead of it, they say, "Here is the American Market just thrown open to us by a repeal of their Tariff: let us send thither our surplus, and sell it for what it will fetch." They ship it over accordingly, and in two or three weeks it is rattling off through our auction stores, at prices first five, then ten, fifteen, twenty, and down to thirty per cent. below our previous rates. Every jobber and dealer is tickled with the idea of buying goods of novel patterns so wonderfully cheap; and the sale proceeds briskly, though, at constantly declining prices, till the whole stock is disposed of and our market is gorged to repletion. Now, the British manufacturers may not have received for the whole Twenty Millions' worth of Goods over Fourteen or Fifteen Millions; but what of it? Whatever it may be is clear profit on their year's business in cash or its full equivalent. All their established markets are kept clear and eager; and they can now go on vigorously and profitably with the business of the new year. But more: they have crippled an active and growing rival; they have opened a new market, which shall erelong be theirs also. Let us now look at our side of the question: The American Manufacturers have also a stock of goods on hand, and they come into our market to dispose of them. But they suddenly find that market forestalled and depressed by rival fabrics of attractive novelty, and selling in profusion at prices which rapidly run down to twenty-five per cent. below cost. What are they to do? They cannot force sales at any price not utterly ruinous; there is no demand at any rate. They cannot retaliate upon England the mischief they must suffer,-her Tariff forbids; and the other markets of the world are fully supplied, and will bear but Now, will any man gravely argue that we have made Five or Six Millions by this cheap purchase of British goods,-by "buying where we could buy cheapest?" Will he not see that, though the price was low, the cost is very great? But the apparent saving is doubly deceptive; for the British manufacturers, having utterly crushed their American rivals by one or two oper ations of this kind, soon find here a mar ket, not for a beggarly surplus of Fifteen or Twenty Millions, but they have now a demand for the amount of our whole con sumption, which, making allowance f our diminished ability to pay, would prol ably still reach Fifty Millions per annum. This increased demand would soon produce activity and buoyancy in the general market; and now the foreign Manufacturers would say in their consultations, "We have sold some millions' worth of goods to America for less than cost, in order to obtain control of that market; now we have it, and must retrieve our losses," and they would retrieve them, with interest. They would have a perfect right to do so. I hope no man has understood me as implying any infringement of the dictates of honesty on their part, still less of the laws of trade. They have a perfect right to sell goods in our markets on such terms as we prescribe and they can afford; it is we, who set up our own vital interests to be bowled down by their rivalry, who are alone to be blamed. Who does not see that this sending out our great Industrial Interests unarmed and unshielded to battle against the mailclad legions opposed to them in the arena of Trade is to insure their destruction? It were just as wise to say that, because our causes. I insist that, if the Government had permitted without complaint a foreign force to land on our shores and plunder that man's house of the savings of six years of faithful industry, the neglect of duty would not have been more flagrant. And I firmly believe that the people of this country are One Thousand Millions of Dollars poorer at this moment than they would have been had their entire Productive Industry been constantly protected, on the principles I have laid down, from the formation of the Government till now. The steadiness of employment and of recompense thus secured, the comparative absence of constrained idleness, and the more efficient application of the labor actually performed, would have vastly increased the product,-would have improved and beautified the whole face of the country; and the Moral and Intellectual advantages thence accruing would alone have been inestimable. A season of suspension of labor in a community is usually one of aggravated dissipation, drunkenness, and crime. people are brave, therefore they shall repel | discharging its proper and rightful duty to any invader without fire-arms, as to say that citizen and to thousands, and tens of that the restrictions of other nations ought thousands who have suffered from like not to be opposed by us because our artisans are skilful and our manufactures have made great advances. The very fact that our manufactures are greatly extended and improved is the strong reason why they should not be exposed to destruction. If they were of no amount or value, their loss would be less disastrous; but now the Five or Six Millions we should make on the cheaper importation of goods would cost us One Hundred Millions in the destruction of Manufacturing Property alone. Yet this is but an item of our damage. The manufacturing classes feel the first effect of the blow, but it would paralyze every muscle of society. One hundred thousand artisans and laborers, discharged from our ruined factories, after being some time out of employment, at a waste of millions of the National wealth, are at last driven by famine to engage in other avocations, of course with inferior skill and at an inferior price. The farmer, gardener, grocer, lose them as customers to meet them as rivals. They crowd the labor-markets of those branches of industry which we are still permitted to pursue, just But let me more clearly illustrate the at the time when the demand for their pro- effect of foreign competition in raising ducts has fallen off, and the price is rapidly prices to the consumer. To do this, I will declining. The result is just what we have take my own calling for an example, beseen in a former instance: all that any cause I understand that best; though any man may make by buying Foreign goods of you can apply the principle to that with cheap, he loses ten times over by the de- which he may be better acquainted. I am cline of his own property, product, or la- a publisher of newspapers, and suppose I bor; while to nine-tenths of the whole afford them at a cheap rate. But the abilpeople the result is unmixed calamity. ity to maintain that cheapness is based on The disastrous consequences to a nation of the fact that I can certainly sell a large the mere derangement and paralysis of its edition daily, so that no part of that edition Industry which must follow the breaking shall remain a dead loss on my hands. down of any of its great Producing Inter- Now, if there were an active and formidests have never yet been sufficiently esti- able Foreign competition in newspapers, mated. Free Trade, indeed, assures us if the edition which I printed during the that every person thrown out of employ-night were frequently rendered unsalable by ment in one place or capacity has only to the arrival of a foreign ship freighted with choose another; but almost every working newspapers early in the morning, the preman knows from experience that such is sent rates could not be continued: the price not the fact, that the loss of situation must be increased or the quality would dethrough the failure of his business is often-cline. I presume this holds equally good er a sore calamity. I know a worthy citizen who spent six years in learning the trade of a hatter, which he had just perfected in 1798, when an immense importation of foreign hats utterly paralyzed the manufacture in this country. He traveled and sought for months, but could find no employment at any price, and at last gave up the pursuit, found work in some other capacity, and has never made a hat since. He lives yet, and now comfortably, for he is industrious and frugal; but the six years he gave to learn his trade were utterly lost to him,-lost for the want of adequate and steady Protection to Home Industry. I insist that the Government has failed of of the production of calicoes, glass, and penknives as of newspapers, though it may be somewhat modified by the nature of the article to which it is applied. That it does hold true of sheetings, nails, and thousands of articles, is abundantly notorious. I have not burdened you with statistics, --you know they are the reliance, the stronghold, of the cause of Protection, and that we can produce them by acres. My aim has been to exhibit not mere collections of facts, however pertinent and forcible, but the laws on which those facts are based,not the immediate manifestation, but the ever-living necessity from which it springs. The contemplation of these laws assures now to go alone,-repeal absolutely our a limited pressure. The foreign influx has Tariff, and commit our great interests created a scarcity of money as well as a thoroughly to the guidance of "Free plethora of goods. Specie has largely been Trade." Well: at this very time the exported in payment, which has compelled British Manufacturers, on making up the the Banks to contract and deny loans. account and review of their year's business, Still, their obligations must be met; if they find that they have manufactured goods cannot make sales, the Sheriff will, and costing them Three Hundred Millions, as must. It is not merely their surplus, but aforesaid, and have sold to just about that their whole product, which has been de amount, leaving a residue or surplus on preciated and made unavailable at a blow. hand of Fifteen or Twenty Millions' worth. The end is easily foreseen: our Manufac These are to be sold; and their net pro- turers become bankrupt and are broken ceeds will constitute the interest on their up; their works are brought to a dead capital and the profit on their year's busi- stand; the Laborers therein, after spendness. But where shall they be sold? If ing months in constrained idleness, are crowded on the Home or their established driven by famine into the Western wilderForeign Markets, they will glut and de- ness, or into less productive and less conpress those markets, causing a general de- genial vocations; their acquired skill and cline of prices and a heavy loss, not mere- dexterity, as well as a portion of their time, ly on this quantity of goods, but on the are a dead loss to themselves and the comwhole of their next year's business. They munity; and we commence the slow and know better than to do any such thing. toilsome process of rebuilding and rearInstead of it, they say, Here is the ranging our industry on the one-sided or American Market just thrown open to us Agricultural basis. Such is the process by a repeal of their Tariff: let us send which we have undergone twice already. thither our surplus, and sell it for what it How many repetitions shall satisfy us? will fetch." They ship it over accordingly, and in two or three weeks it is rattling off through our auction stores, at prices first five, then ten, fifteen, twenty, and down to thirty per cent. below our previous rates. Every jobber and dealer is tickled with the idea of buying goods of novel patterns so wonderfully cheap; and the sale proceeds briskly, though, at constantly declining prices, till the whole stock is disposed of and our market is gorged to repletion. Now, will any man gravely argue that we have made Five or Six Millions by this cheap purchase of British goods,-by "buy. ing where we could buy cheapest?" Will he not see that, though the price was low, the cost is very great? But the apparent saving is doubly deceptive; for the British manufacturers, having utterly crushed their American rivals by one or two oper ations of this kind, soon find here a mar ket, not for a beggarly surplus of Fifteen or Twenty Millions, but they have now a Now, the British manufacturers may not demand for the amount of our whole con have received for the whole Twenty Mil-sumption, which, making allowance f lions' worth of Goods over Fourteen or Fifteen Millions; but what of it? Whatever it may be is clear profit on their year's business in cash or its full equivalent. All their established markets are kept clear and eager; and they can now go on vigorously and profitably with the business of the new year. But more: they have crippled an active and growing rival; they have opened a new market, which shall erelong be theirs also. Let us now look at our side of the ques tion: The American Manufacturers have also a stock of goods on hand, and they come into our market to dispose of them. But they suddenly find that market forestalled and depressed by rival fabrics of attractive novelty, and selling in profusion at prices which rapidly run down to twenty-five per cent. below cost. What are they to do? They cannot force sales at any price not utterly ruinous; there is no demand at any rate. They cannot retaliate upon England the mischief they must suffer,-her Tariff forbids; and the other markets of the world are fully supplied, and will bear but our diminished ability to pay, would prol ably still reach Fifty Millions per annum This increased demand would soon pro duce activity and buoyancy in the genera market; and now the foreign Manufac turers would say in their consultation "We have sold some millions' worth goods to America for less than cost, order to obtain control of that marke now we have it, and must retrieve o losses," and they would retrieve the with interest. They would have a perfe right to do so. I hope no man has und stood me as implying any infringement the dictates of honesty on their part, s less of the laws of trade. They have a p fect right to sell goods in our markets such terms as we prescribe and they afford; it is we, who set up our own v interests to be bowled down by their riv ry, who are alone to be blamed. Who does not see that this sending our great Ind Interests unar and unshields ainst the m clad legions In the a of Trade is ction? were just cause wente are rave, therefore they shall repel discharging its prover and rightña” duty to Ler without fire-arms, as to say that citizen and to thousan is, and tens of interestrictions of other nations ought thousands who have sulored trom Ike no: 6 e suposed by us because our arti- causes. I insist that, if the Government en dregim and our manufactures have had permitted without complaint a fore gu maie geat avances. The very fact that force to land on our shores and plunder var namulactures are greatly extended and that man's house of the savings of six mproved 3 the ring reason why they years of faithful industry, the neglect of Shu B E IDed to destruction. If duty would not have been more flagrant, They were of 10 amount or value, their And I firmly believe that the people of A Wild » Beastrous; but now the this country are One Thousand Millions of Fraris lions we should make on Dollars poorer at this moment than they de deuer morton of goods would would have been had their entire Produc ces is he Huntres in the de- tive Industry been constantly protected, on saciono Luna Property alone. the principles I have laid down, from the Is tus & it a se of our damage. formation of the Government till now. The The Barng ses feel the first steadiness of employment and of recom sfez o be wow me would paralyze pense thus secured, the comparative ab- SINCE I WIDET. One hundred sence of constrained idleness, and the more CONSUMI STIGNE BIG borers, discharged effcient application of the labor actually ma ar fillet, istmes, after being some performed, would have vastly increased head emoment, at a waste of mil- the product,-would have improved and Que a the Nation: wealth, are at last beautified the whole face of the country; me to engage in other and the Moral and Intellectual advantages SVCI-E CUTE with inferior skill thence accruing would alone have been 21 meter price. The farmer, inestimable. A season of suspension of I met we them as customers to labor in a community is usually one of agmet hem a rivals. They crowd the la- gravated dissipation, drunkenness, and VOTE 4. La branches of industry crime. CIFAC permitted to pursue, just meet the demand for their pro effect of foreign competition in raising 1 I |