that during the time covered there has been an almost total revolution in processes, which necessitates larger and results in fewer establishments. But the test of the business, whether it has declined or increased, is seen in the capital and hands employed, the wages paid and the value of the product, which present a most gratifying and encouraging exhibit. In short, during the last forty years-a period of protection-the capital of the heavy or first process iron and steel mills in New England has increased from two millions to twenty-one millions, the employees from thousand to eight thousand, the wages from less than one million to more than four millions and the output from four millions to eighteen millions. If this is "tent folding" and "stealing away," let us have some more of it.

two

If it were possible now to add to this statement the statistics of the various metal manufactures in New England a branch of industry in which this section still leads the whole countryit would be even more conclusively shown that neither the duties on crude material, which Governor Russell thought were in the way of prosperity, nor those on the finished products, which Mr. Hamlin would like to see repealed, have prevented a most extraordinary development and great prosperity. In fact, it is because of these duties that the business has attained such proportions, because they have given prosperity to the whole country and this has made a growing market for the products of all the varied mechanism of New England.

Still, the uninformed say now, as they said ten years ago, that the growth would be vastly greater if New England could avail of its natural opportunity by the sea to buy its raw materials where they can be obtained the cheapest. There are two answers to this: (1) It is only an inference, nobody can prove it; (2) the assurance of a good market is of far more importance than the cost of materials. "Live and let live" is the protective policy. One man's raw material is another man's finished product. Both are entitled to protection according to the degree of their danger from foreign competition. What would it profit New England to get free coal and ore, or free beams and rails and plates, if the producers of those articles in this country should have their business so crippled that they could not buy so many of our looms and the products of our looms, so many of our tacks and screws, so many of our tools and machines, and so many of our watches and chains? It is not patriotism but demagogism which appeals to a section against the country, and we wish the rest of the American people to understand that the men are very few and they look very small in New England who think that this continental nation can be run on any such narrow gauge.

The transit of industries, which has given occasion for this small politics in New England, is one of the most natural things in human experience, and has occurred in all countries and is occurring to-day, without the slightest influence from tariffs. In the great speech which Senator Aldrich of Rhode Island delivered before the Home Market Club in 1891 this fact was most forcibly developed as follows:

Changes in the centres of industrial activity take place from time to time from causes which are well understood. They are not confined to countries that have adopted a protective policy. For instance, similar changes have taken place in the centres of pig iron production in Great Britain. Fifty years ago Wales and the contiguous counties in England, which are now the seat of the various branches of the tinplate industry, produced nearly one-half of the pig iron made in the United Kingdom, while in 1884 the production in the same territory from the local mines was less than one-half of 1 per cent of the total product. Less than fifty years ago the English foundries were large consumers of Scotch pig iron, while to-day Cleveland sends more than 1,000 tons a day to Scotland. A half a century ago the Cleveland district produced less than 1 per cent of the product of Great Britain, while in 1884 it produced nearly one-third of the whole. These changes certainly did not take place on account of the British tariff, and I presume the most radical of our tariff reform friends would hardly suggest that the British Parliament should seek by legislation to restore Wales and Scotland to their ancient supremacy as producers of pig iron.

A similar change is now taking place in the United States in the production of coarse cottons. The value of the cotton manufactures of the Southern States was $16,000,000 in 1880, and $40,000,000 in 1890. A large proportion of this product was of a description of goods not now produced in New England.

What would be thought of a proposition to place all cotton cloths below a certain count, and all cotton yarns below a certain number, upon the free list, in order that the combined experience, capital and skill of New England and Old England might be able to drive the incipient cotton industries of the South out of existence? The case of our tariff reform friends, so far as the crude iron products of New England are concerned, is more indefensible than this suggestion, as they would cripple or destroy an enormous industry already existing in other sections with a

delusive hope of building up one which has never existed here. The farmer in western New York, who has seen the centre of profitable production of wheat move from his midst first to Ohio, then to Illinois, and then to Minnesota and Dakota, would apply in vain to our tariff reform friends for some legislative process by which the profitable growth of wheat on his favorite fields could again be assured.

A more recent and if possible more forcible illustration of this economic change is seen to-day in the very midst of what the New England agitators think is the most favored iron region in this country. The 1902 Directory of the Iron and Steel Works of the United States contains what it calls a "graveyard list" and it occupies 17 pages. It embraces 61 furnaces, 118 rolling mills, Bessemer steel plants, open-hearth steel plants, crucible steel plants, and plants equipped for the manufacture of steel by special processes, and 5 forges and bloomaries. Very few of these plants will ever again have their fires started. Practically all of them are dead for all time. This mortality list is the largest ever before compiled for the same period of time, less than four years. It shows that fortunes are not made by all who embark in the iron business, but are often lost. The Directory says:

There are some branches of the domestic iron trade which are either dying out or are making no progress. Only one of the Catalan forges is active, the Standish works in Clinton County, New York, and only 8 pig and scrap iron bloomaries are left. Only one Clapp-Griffiths converter is left, and it has been idle for several years. There are to-day only 55 charcoal furnaces in the whole country, against 79 in 1898, and the annual capacity of the furnaces of to-day is in round numbers 250,000 tons less than that of the furnaces of 1898. Our crucible steel industry bas made but little progress for many years.

Of course the explanation of this is the wonderful transformation which has taken place as the result of invention and discovery. It does not show that the iron and steel business of the country is declining any more than the abandonment of bog iron furnaces and St. Albans rolling mills in New England shows that this section plays no part in this age of steel. The world never before has seen the time when the production and uses of iron and steel were so great as now, and with vast new steel shipyards in Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and with thousands of New Englanders interested as stockholders in the largest steel works of the interior and the West, this section seems likely to hold its own, not only in production and utilization, but also in profit.

As for the Babcock bill, it is apparently as dead as the use that was attempted to be made of it in the Massachusetts Legislature. Mr. De Armond of Missouri says that when the Committee on Ways and Means voted as to whether or not it should be reported, even Mr. Babcock himself voted against it. So far as it is an expression in favor of tariff revision by the next Congress and of the removal of duties which may be safely dispensed with, and of a purpose to correct and restrain the evils of monopoly, it may have served a useful purpose, but when the tariff is revised the best science resulting from experience will be brought to bear and no industry will be punished for having become successful.

THE COAL STRIKE LESSON.

[American Manufacturer.]

An eye of special discernment is not required to observe that the strike of the coal miners of the anthracite districts has reached the stage of danger. The danger reaches not only to the men themselves but spreads to points not originally included in the strike movement. Unavoidably the crisis strikes the leaders of the suspension of work scheme for it forms their weighing in the balance. If they are not found wanting the majority of the people of the United States will receive a sur

In

has been greatly exaggerated. Plainly
the miners have been deluded. Strikes
are not the weapons by which economic
grievances are remedied or wrongs,
fancied or real, righted. Strikes may,
and often do, accomplish much for the
strike director, but they never have and
seldom will, accomplish good for the
permanent benefit of the miners.
the present strike, even if the issue is
decided in favor of the men in the end,
the permanent benefit will be found on
the side of the strike leaders. There are
many methods of dealing with the prob-
lem of work and wages and the relations
of employer and employee, but annual
and biennial strikes are not among the

prise. The strike in itself, standing recognized rational methods. The strike

may have been a good working method in other times, long since past, but this is not the age in which to even hope for advantages through the medium of idle men and starving women and children.

alone, apart from all other considerations, was an injury to the miners. It is not sufficient to assert that the men decided in favor of the strike themselves. Under given circumstances more intelligent men than the anthracite miners have been duped into accepting false or exaggerated descriptions of their rights and privileges. It is undeniable that the miners of the anthracite districts have grievances in common with the miners of the bituminous regions, but it is also undeniable that the magnitude of these grievances at £15,000,000.

Ir is stated that the long drouth in New South Wales has been

broken. There have been seven dry years, and the losses in stock from this cause since 1899 are estimated

"THE THREE R'S:" RETALIATION, REVISION OR RECIPROCITY — WHICH ?

BY CHARLES P. HARRIS.

When the French statesman, Count Montesquieu, put on record, over a century and a half ago, the action taken by his country in reference to reciprocal trade with other nations, he announced a principle which was practically a new departure in the policy of nations. At that ly impaired if the members of the Sen