Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1890 — SUMMERING UP THE TARIFF DISCUSSION. [ARTICLE]

SUMMERING UP THE TARIFF DISCUSSION.

The v-'vy able discussion of the the ; tariff qua,,tmn T -~ that batreffiitinned iu ’ho .North An-orients .if; view si;;C ‘ Jnr-r::y, find A s L'.T the ablest ;ui voices of P: cd-ctA'ii and Free Titr to, >Oll boti» rides of the A*...antic, have tnlitn j-mi,. is summed op in the July tm tidier. by; Alia lew \'.'ifi:; GgH-S —Ad-:- c.-l-i>r- :* m hi an u f oyt 11 o iLaiM. AjiihMitirnJns;!Pittsbuig. -His’Article is rich :u fact and imsSt v.v •1c in CTgfP meut. ilolotv we give one or two ex'ravti: " --HOY/ PliOTKCnuti DEVELOPED AND SUSTAINS. It may be assumed that all parties in this country desire the United Mute-- to continue as she is—tin* ynAtr-st* nmmi fact firing Datum hi the \v rid; and also thm there is no objection to Colonel Breckinridge’s position, that its manufacturers must necessarily continue to receive incidental Protection. The practical question, therefore, resolves itself to this: Has the ittfriutile stage of put manufacturing system passed? Has it reached ’the full stature of maturity? Are we prepared to let down the bars and stand exposed sgaibst foreign manufactures? These am legitimate questions. To the college professor and the student in his closet it may weli appear that a nation which manufactures more tons of steel than Great Britain and almost as much pig iron, and which furnishes so great a proportion of the woolens, silks nn i cottons consumed by it, has outgrown the necessity for further Protection. One cun quite understand that this should appear _reasonable. Let us consider it. Jt is thirty years since the Civil "WmlT rendered it necessary greatly to increase duties upon imports. Up to that time and during the struggle, as I have shown, the country was dangerously depend sl * ent upon foreign supplies for articles essential to its preservation. This i* a fast country, and we ex-

fipct.mnch to be accomplished in lliirty yeat6; bikl we ask if this j long period ia- not quite sufficient to develop manufactures to their utmost possible efficiency.?? Is it an easy matter, then, to mtrodue j and establish in a new country an important branch of industry?j What has been our experience? We will take the vital article of steel. When the duty upon steel j was raised to a point which j tempted capital to engage in the experiment of making crucible steel in this country, Mr. James Park, of Pittsburgh, became the pioneer in the experiment. His repeated trips to Europe to secure skilled workmen, the enormous prices which he had to pay to induce them to leave their homes, and the grave financial and other difficulties which he encountered and surmounted, render the life of this man memorable. Even after i he had succeeded in making good j steel, it was years before be could : induce consumers- to fairly try the ; home made article. The effort so introduce Bessemer steel in the United States is nothing but a Yecord of disaster for many years. The first attempt at Milwaukee ruined the pioneers. The works at Troy were sold for not many more hundreds of thousands of dollars than millions had been spent upon them. The Freedom Iron Company, of Pennsylvania, bankrupted itself in trying to introduce the process. The Vulcan steel rail mills, at St. Louis, were twice sold by the sheriff. The steel rail works at Joliet were also sold by the same official. The Pennsylvania Steel Company became embarrassed, but fortunately received aid to the extent of $600,000 from the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Even , the great Bethlehem Steel Company had to mortgage its plant. These efforts began in ] 860, and all took place previous to the year 1873. It was not until that year that there was made as much as ono hundred thousand tons of steel in all this country. Up to 1881 there never was a year during which the United States made a million tons. In that year the industry can be said to have taken firm root. The Bessemer steel manufacture was, therefore, successfully introduced only after many years of effort and after millions of dollars had been lost. Now, this was only nine years ago. How has the rate of duty kept pace with this development? By successive reductions 10 per hen t. of flint upon rails has already- been - taken off, and the bill now pending in Congress fixes the future" rate at something less than one half of the original duty imposed. Thus do we march through temporary shielding and protective care to such development as enables duties to be lessened from time to time. . Let us take another; instance — a very important one —that of plate glass, in which the nation has made its most triumphant iiulnsin recent y cms. "It is’twenty-one. years since its manufacture was begun, upon a small swale, in This country, in New Al.-any, lud., seveml hundreds of til.)mauds.of dollars, were, sunibln the experiment, which failed. A ••'cop'd ' attempt at Crystal City, ended in a filial sale of the TTTTTf To SIT TPuiuj capitalists. - Work a wore built in~L hi’svilie, jay., in 1872, and in Jefferson,.lnch, iu 187 b, but both proved failures tiuaHciH.ilv. During ail these years from 1869 io 187 b, there,was nothing but failure’Tor the pioneers, although glass then sold as high as $2.50 per square foot. A reduction of the Tariff upon plate glass at this point must have indefinitely postponed future attempts. Fortunately, the Tariff was not disturbed. The price still seemed tempting, and in 1882, ten years after the first trial, the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Works were erected. Success came at last. It is only through such struggles as these that a new branch of manufacturing is successfully established in a new country. To day there are eight companies making plate glass in the United States, and the total production of last year amounted to something over nine millions of square feet. -The importations were nearly six millions of square feet ui 188 S. Thus Protection in America'means something quite different from Protection in Bfitain. So far from the manufactures of plate glass being a monopoly, as the growing of cereals was under English Protection, overproduction is threatened here, as in every branch of manufacturing. Seven.new works are t»9ing built with great rapidity. Wfieu- finished America will be able to supply fifteen millions of square feet of glass per annum. The price last year fell in extreme cases to fifty-mne cents per foot This was an article which, as has been seen, cost $2.5(1 before the United States entered the field. Protection has about done its work

as far as large plates are concerned, the duty upon which could already bo safely reduced. THE BUGABOO OF MONOPOLY There remains the charge of monopoly. As I have explained, the only Protection known to Mr. Gladstone constituted a monopoly. B e has no experience of any other. He is to be excused. But what shall be said of Messrs. Mills and Breckenridge? What would Mr. Gladstone say to these gentlemen if they told him of a monopoly into which every dollar of the capital of the world is frfee to enter? —a monopoly in which many of the leading manufactureres of Mr. Gladstone’s country are busily engaged—the Clarks and the Coates, of Paisley; the Nairas, of Kirkcaldy; the Salks, of Saltaire; the Sandersons, of Shefield; the Kerrs, of Glasgow- the Barbours, of Belfast, and scores of others; a monopoly free to all, without regard to citizenship or residence; amonopoly to which there is no limit; a monopoly in which one hundred and forty-seven new and iniportant competing -manufacturing ftsT tablishments are under construction to-day in one section alooe, that the South, so ably represented by these writers! My capital is wholly invested in manufacturing, and if there be any monopoly in the entire domain, I should like to discover -it If unusual profits are being made, in any branch of manufacturing, why do not Mr. Mills and those who think with him invest and share these grand returns, and by so doing strike down the “monopoly?” T here is no branch of man ut'acturing into which they cannot put SIOO or $100,000; the shares of silk and glass and wool and iron and steel concerns are freely bought and sold in the open market. Those who believe that any industry gives its owners great profits have only to select the industry and idlest. Into the woolen industry, for instance, investors today can enter for much less than its present owners did. In TbaT of spleudid opporininD ties for investment are surely at hand. In the iron find steel branch, with which I aru familiar, any citizen of the United States who has SIOO can become part owner fo-ixibrrbw; he can purchase the shares of almost all the steel concerns at much less than the capital actually invested. The shares of the Illinois Steel Company, the Bethlehem Company, Pennsylvania Steel Company, the Cambria Copipuny, the Troy Company, as a rule, do not command in the market the actual number of dollars invested. But I must not be understood as advising any one to invest too largely upon the theory that the returns will meet his expectations. The charge that manufactures in America are monopolies is without foundation, although it may still pass current in a rural community when delivered from the stump in Texas. I should like" to ’'be presentrMo - see Mr. Gladstone’s ex.iressive face, and hear his iy-q 1 -c, if these gentlemen ever spike to him of “a monopoly” free •ai i That word “mono polyd!•>■;• i vice .iio longer; our friends ban 'lter try Mrs. Malaprop’s burn,, us “allegory” at, once. I t wcml.i ap ly just as well, and have the advantage of .being. "hew. ‘