and what they would pay were foreign articles admitted free." This is the Cobden Club voice, echoed by Senator and schoolboy alike. From this comes his conclusion that a duty for revenue only, raised on articles we do not produce, may be a necessity, but that a tariff for protection and revenue, raised on articles we import and also make or produce, is a fraud and a robbery of the people. This is assumption, based on assertions which facts repudiate, and which the laws of trade make absurd.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

The philosophy of the whole matter was well given by that great statesman, Alexander Hamilton, in his famous report in 1791, as secretary of the treasury:

"But, though it were true that the immediate and certain effect of a tariff was an increase of price, it is universally true that the contrary is the ultimate effect with every successful manufacture. When a domestic manufacture has attained to perfection, and has engaged in the prosecution of it a competent number of persons, it can be afforded, and accordingly seldom or never fails to be sold cheaper, in process of time, than the foreign article for which it is a substitute. The internal competition which takes place soon does away with everything like monopoly, and by degrees reduces the price of the article to the minimum of a reasonable profit on the capital employed. This accords with the reason of the thing and with experience."

This eminent man had not learned that a tariff is a tax on the consumer! Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Webster, and other great men were in equal ignorance, and so advocated tariffs for protection. That friend. of the people, Abraham Lincoln, declared himself an advocate of a protective tariff. Professor Reuleaux, president of the German Commission at our Centennial Exposition, went home and said: "The present

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condition of American manufactures shows the fallacy of the free trade doctrine that the productions of a country are raised in price by protective duties."

Even if a duty sometimes keeps prices up for a brief time compensations come at once, and lower prices soon follow. Free traders craftily ignore the compensations that they may the more plausibly deny the benefits. Take, for instance, the Brinkerhoff charge that $40,000,000 went into the pockets of our iron makers in 1868, as a result of the "iniquitous tax" imposed on the people by the duty on iron, and grant (what is not true) that the price was raised that amount. Mr. A. S. Hewitt, in his report as United States commissioner, said: "The entire difference in the cost of making iron here and in England is the wages," which he gave as 87 cents to $1.00 per day there and $2.00 here. So we find that the Brinkerhoff $40,000,000 went to the workmen, and the farmers got about $10,000,000 of it.

Napoleon created the best sugar industry in France under a prohibitive embargo. Sugar was high, but it soon fell, and hundreds of thousands of tons of beet sugar are made in France to-day, practically their entire consumption, and it is exported to the London market.

History tells the same story in different countries,— the building up of vast industries, and the cheapening of prices under protective tariffs. In England woolens. formerly had a high tariff, sometimes a prohibition, and the duty on iron was raised a score of times, from $2.50 up to $35 per ton, and woolens and iron grew cheaper all the time. If tariff is a tax, they should have gone up higher than a kite!

It should be borne in mind that the sole aim of cheapness tends to inferiority in quality. The excellence and

taste of French goods sell them everywhere. We have reached a like excellence in some manufactures, and it should be aimed at in all, for the best goods find the best markets. "Cheap and nasty" is the expressive phrase applied to some British products. The London Times says:

"The Americans succeed in supplanting us by novelty of construction and excellency of work. They do not attempt to undersell us in the mere matter of price. Our goods may still be the cheapest, but they are no longer the best; and in the country where an axe, for instance, is an indispensable instrument, the best article is the cheapest, whatever it may cost. Settlers and emigrants soon find this out, and they have found it out to the prejudice of Birmingham trade.

Our American silk goods rival foreign silks in excel-. lence, and begin to surpass them in genuineness-more silk and less dye stuffs.

But have prices in the United States gone up with protective tariffs, or was Hamilton right in saying that the domestic manufacture "seldom or never fails to be sold cheaper in process of time than the foreign article. * * * The internal competition soon does away with monopoly?"

COTTON MANUFACTURES.

In 1860 our cotton manufactures reached $116,000,000 in value. In 1880, with twenty years of stable protection, their value was $192,773,960, employing 175,187 operatives, and paying $42,000,000 wages, at rates forty per cent. higher (see Commercial Bulletin) than in 1860.

The New York Secretary of the Free Trade League asserted, without proof, in Chicago, a few years ago, that spool-cotton was "taxed 52 per cent.," the consumers paying the tax. A reliable correspondent of the

Hartford (Ct.) Post, in 1869, made the following statement in reply,-his simple facts demolishing the assertion. That the case stands now about as then, is proved by the export of our spool cotton to foreign markets, where its superior quality is prized. The Post writer said:

"The average importation of spool-cotton into New York for three consecutive years ending June 30, 1861, was 6,685,200 dozen per annum, and under a duty of 24 per cent. ad valorem, yielded a revenue to the government of $365,063.04 per annum. "The importation of spool-cotton into New York in 1868 was 3,519,573 dozen; duties on the same, $822,276.98.

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We have no data to show the importations of this article into other ports in the country, but will suppose it to be 500,000, or the whole importation of the year to be 4,000,000 dozen; amount of American six-cord thread manufactured in 1868, 2,000,000 dozen; amount of American enameled thread manufactured, 8,000,000 dozen.

"It appears that not less than 14,000,000 dozen spool-cotton will be consumed in this country the present year, more than twothirds of which is of American manufacture.

"Up to a late period the foreign manufacturers controlled the price of thread in our market; at present the American manufacturers control the price.

"For two or three years foreign thread remained steady at $1.10 to $1.15 per dozen; it is now selling at 80 to 90 cents per dozen, a decline in price of 30 cents per dozen in two years, a saving to the consumers of foreign thread of $1,200,000 the present year, while the decline in the price of American spool-cotton, owing to strong competition, has been reduced more than 50 per cent., a still further saving of $2,000,000. The following is a summary of the results of a high duty on spool-cotton. The revenue to the government has been more than doubled; the American manufacture of thread has been largely increased, while the price of labor in these thread mills is still as high as during the war, and the consumers of thread are saving $3,000,000 per annum through the strong competition which has sprung up between the American and foreign manufacturers."

COTTON PIECE GOODS.

Cottons, imported at fifty cents a yard before our mills were built, have been exported at six cents under a high tariff, and of a better quality. The shrewd Chinamen say we use more cotton and less starch than the English in the cloth sent to them. Cotton hosiery was reduced in price nearly one-half from 1860 to 1868. Delaines, formerly imported at thirty-five cents to fifty cents, were made here in 1868 at twenty cents of equal quality.

Our brown, bleached, printed and dyed cottons compete with the English in foreign lands, and the prices are lower under a higher tariff, as the following table shows: *

In view of the fact that some kinds of cotton goods are as low in the United States as anywhere in the world, how foolish the assertion that the normal price of an article is its American price minus the duty! The tariff on standard sheetings is 57 per cent.; this percentage from 8.00 cents (the price above quoted), is 4.50 cents, leaving the alleged foreign price 3.40 cents per yard, or less than half what it is. The tariff on standard cotton is no more a burthen or tax on the home consumer than that on wheat or beef. It is simply a barrier against our market being flooded by English goods sent at less than

*This table, and that on woolens, are from the Boston Commercial Bulletin.