efforts for legislation which would discriminate against them and in favor of foreigners. So we find in New York, a great tariff convention and a strong industrial league.

The Chicago Inter Ocean, in commenting on the statistics of the census of 1880 relative to the manufactures of leading cities, says:

"It is important as showing the vast extent to which New York City is indebted for its commercial prestige to the fact that it is the centre of American manufactures. The total manufactures of the port of New York proper, including merely those of New York City, Jersey City, and Brooklyn, and excluding those of Paterson, Newark, Elizabeth, Yonkers, and other manufacturing suburbs of New York, are as follows:

"The total imports and exports of merchandise at the "ort of

York for 1880 were as follows:

Imports of merchandise.

Exports of merchandise.

Total....

$459,937,153

385,506,602

$845,443,755

"It appears, therefore, that the annual product of the manufactures of New York City alone exceeds by $30,000,000 its entire imports, though these imports are for distribution over the entire country, and the aggregate annual product of the port of New York very nearly equals its entire imports and exports combined. Indeed, if the two manufacturing suburbs-Newark and Paterson—are included, the total annual product considerably exceeds

the entire imports and exports of that great mart which has been supposed by some to live out of its foreign trade. The fact is that New York, like the rest of the country, is acquiring a volume of business in connection with its manufactures and domestic trade which, in relative importance, rises far above its foreign trade. The entire foreign trade of New York, import and export, probably does not support more than 100,000 out of its 1,250,000 people."

Philadelphia, with her longer established and more varied industries, aggregating $430,000,000, prizes the thrift and wealth they bring her people. It must be borne in mind that manufactures give employ to many more persons than mercantile business of a like amount does, or can.

A careful article in a late International Review shows that in 1850, in nine Western States-Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska-there were 24,921 manufacturing establishments employing 110,501 persons, and producing $146,348,554 worth. In 1880 these had grown to 124,763, employing 755,286 persons, and producing $1,819,588,355 worth. In 1850 the Western States and territories had about 12 per cent. of the total investment of the United States in manufactures; in 1880, over 30 per cent., with 3,500,000 of their 20,000,000 people sustained by manufactures and mechanism, and purchasers of farm products.

An early settler, now owner in a large .ron mill in a Western city, tells of an old and valued friend, a pioneer farmer, who was an earnest and honest free trader, opposed to "monopolists." He came one day for a visit, and they went through the mill together, talked of its product wages market for produce and the like, but no word of protection or free trade. Going back to

the office the visitor sat silent and in absent thought, until he was asked what troubled him. He rose up and said: "I've been a fool on this tariff question all my days, and looking over your mill has let light into my old head. I'll go with you for any fair thing to build more such mills among our farms.”

A protective policy binds together all parts of our country as with hooks of steel, and helps to good work and good will for all.

CHAPTER XIII.

OUR HISTORY TEACHES THE BENEFITS OF PROTECTION.

Our national history teaches the benefits of protection and the perils of free trade. Within three months after his inauguration as our first President, Washington readily signed the first tariff act, "for the encouragement and protection of manufactures." Jefferson and other leading men held like opinions, and Fisher Ames, of Massachusetts, said in Congress, in the debates on the first tariff bill: "The present Constitution was dictated by commercial necessity more than any other cause. The want of an efficient government to secure our manufacturing interest and advance our commerce was long seen by men of judgment and patriots." No marvel in this, since Great Britain constantly crushed our commerce and manufactures by oppressive laws, so long as we were her subject colonies. Yet to-day men in Congress and elsewhere profess to doubt what no man of any party doubted then,-the Constitutional right to enact protective tariff laws, a right maintained by the words and acts of Hamilton, Madison and other framers of our Constitution. Modern free traders claim to know what that instrument means better than its framers. Theorists like Professor Perry arraign the wisdom of these great men, and assert that they established an "utterly false principle" in "national legislation," which has grown "more unjust and

abominable." The protective idea was prominent, too, in the minds of the people. Horace Greeley says (in Political Economy):

"When the Federal Constitution was adopted in 1787, and it was announced that enough States had voted to ratify it, there were instantly great rejoicings in all the seaboard villages, and great processions were formed, wherein the laboring classes appeared parading the hammer and the anvil, crying out, ‘'Protection to American industry!' They had had free trade since the war ended, and they had had enough of markets glutted with foreign goods and no demand for American labor."

He states, also, that when a protective tariff act was passed in 1828, the British vessels in Charleston harbor put their flags at half mast as mourning over a calamity. But the early protective measures were inadequate, although beneficial to some extent.

At the close of the war of 1812 the country was overwhelmed by the enormous importation of cottons and woolens, admitted at a duty of five per cent. ad valorem. Although Great Britain lost heavily by the first importations, she consoled herself for this loss by the prospect of permanently commanding our markets. It was at this very period, namely, on the 9th of April, 1816, that Mr. Brougham remarked in the House of Commons:

"It was well worth while to incur a loss upon the first exportation, in order, by the glut, to stifle in the cradle those infant manufactures in the United States, which the war had forced into existence, contrary to the natural order of things."

Mr. Greeley gives his personal recollections as follows: "My distinct personal recollections on this head go back to the period of industrial derangement, business collapse, and widespread pecuniary ruin, which closely followed the close, in 1815, of our last war with Great Britain. Peace found this country dotted with furnaces and factories, which had suddenly sprung up under the precarious shelter of embargo and war. These-not