116 COMMERCE AND EXCHANGE 



by American manufacturing concerns and the unusual dominance 

 they are acquiring in the domestic market. 



Manufactures Forty Years Ago and To-day 



This movement, taken as a whole, is of recent origin. Before the 

 Civil War manufacturers had very restricted control over the move- 

 ments of internal commerce. There was no need for them to show 

 special enterprise in securing supplies of raw materials, for the seller 

 of the crude bounties of nature pursued the buyer. In the finished 

 products market, articles imported from foreign countries controlled, 

 and the autocrats of commerce, if there were any, were the great 

 importers, the so-called " merchant princes." The home manu- 

 facturers started with the humble role of supplying the lower grade 

 of products. Prejudice was still strong against home-made style 

 goods and much of the product of American factories went on to 

 the market anonymously or under misleading trade-marks to be 

 sold as imported goods. 



The change of forty years has greatly altered the position of the 

 manufacturer in the distribution of mercantile power. In the major- 

 ity of modern national economies we find the most progressive indus- 

 trial group to be the manufactures; the least so, the extractive or 

 raw material industries, while the mutually accommodative ele- 

 ment is the mercantile. It is not difficult to mention some of the 

 causes of the increased power of manufactures in this country. 

 Manufacture, including railroad transportation, since the internal 

 economy of a railroad resembles a manufacturing rather than a 

 mercantile concern, possesses the advantage of being that form of 

 industry which best utilizes inanimate forces in a country where 

 power is cheap, and best allows an accurate division of labor in a 

 country where labor is expensive. It has enjoyed the special advan- 

 tage in this country of a high general average of intelligence and an 

 unusual mobility of labor. There has been the negative advantage 

 of entire absence of prejudice against machinery and the positive 

 advantage of the unusual mechanical ability which characterizes 

 Americans. When we couple with this the protective tariff, which 

 has insured a large and profitable market and made all other forms 

 of industry pay tribute to manufacturing, it can be readily under- 

 stood that our manufactures have resulted in recent years in an 

 enormous production of wealth, a portion of which has sought 

 investment in promising types of industrial enterprise under the 

 direct control of the parent concerns. 



Not only wealth, but capable men of constructive genius, have 

 been produced in this branch of industry. In manufacturing, the 

 applications of science are so numerous and convincing as strongly to 



