COMMON SENSE AND THE TARIFF QUESTION. 453 



chanic arts, we have been unable even to retain our home market 

 for domestic manufactures, and have been cut off from any con- 

 siderable share in the supply of other countries. 



In a rough and ready way, it may *be said that the cost of ma- 

 terials, in all the staple products of machinery or in manufactured 

 goods, ranges from one half to three quarters the entire cost of 

 the finished product. If the price of these materials is kept even 

 ten per cent higher in this country than it is in others, then of 

 course all profit may be cut off by that disparity, and, in spite of 

 vain attempts to put on compensating duties, that art languishes, 

 and we protect the foreigner rather than the American. 



It will be remembered that no heavy stocks of food, fiber, or 

 fabrics are now carried anywhere in the world, beyond the prob- 

 able consumption of a single year or less. Hence it follows that, 

 in respect to the import of materials which enter into the processes 

 of our own work, whatever the price may be in any given year, 

 whether high or low, if through our high tariff' the consumers are 

 subjected to a higher price than our competitors abroad, our in- 

 dustry languishes and foreign industry is protected. 



I have said that there are two parties, each earnestly claiming 

 to promote domestic industry. On the one side we find the Re- 

 publican party advocating privation of foreign imports, without 

 regard to the uses for which such articles are required, in order 

 to protect the few specific branches of industry in which we do 

 not yet excel other nations. On the other side we find the Demo- 

 cratic party advocating the protection of the domestic industry of 

 all alike, by exempting from taxation every article which is neces- 

 sary in the processes of domestic industry that we can procure in 

 any other country in exchange for the excess of our cotton, corn, 

 wheat, and other commodities, which, even at the highest wages 

 obtained anywhere in the world, are yet produced at the lowest 

 cost. 



Such is the position of the question on which every voter will 

 be called to decide in exerting his influence and in choosing whom 

 he will support. 



Such were the exact conditions in Great Britain in 1840, only 

 worse, because the natural resources of Great Britain, both in re- 

 spect to agriculture and mining, are so much less than our own. 



The first measures of relief from taxation in Great Britain 

 were practically instituted by Huskisson in 1824, when wool and 

 some other crude materials were in part or wholly relieved from 

 duties. The effect of this change, especially upon the product of 

 domestic wool in Great Britain, was very beneficial ; relief from 

 duty gave the manufacturers of Great Britain the opportunity to 

 buy all the wool which they would require for any kind of work, 

 and the consequence was, that the demand for British wool in- 



