602 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



on finished fabrics, snch as might allay the fears of those who 

 have been so long sustained by high duties that they dread any 

 change. This is a reasonable method. The matter of importance 

 is that we should be headed in the right direction. The time cov- 

 ered in the process of change may well correspond substantially 

 with the life of the existing machinery which has been put at 

 work at the high cost due to past and present conditions. All the 

 machinery in our textile factories has cost at least fifty per cent 

 if not seventy-five per cent more than that of our competitors in 

 England, France, and Germany, on account of the tax upon mate- 

 rials of which that machinery is made. The life of machinery 

 which is used in modern manufacturing ranges from ten to twenty 

 years, averaging perhaps fifteen years. If the relief could at once 

 be given by a removal of the duties upon crude and partly fin- 

 ished materials, with very moderate reduction on the finished 

 goods, we should probably repeat the experience of Great Britain, 

 and we should find, as Gladstone put it, that " the road to free 

 trade is like the road to virtue ; the first step the most painful, 

 the last step the most profitable." 



The manufacturers of England were formerly so afraid of pau- 

 per labor, so called, that when the proposition for the union of 

 Ireland with England was pending, the purport of which was of 

 course to bring Ireland under the same tariff system as that of 

 England, they sent memorials to Parliament in opposition to the 

 union, on the ground that they would be ruined by the cheap 

 labor of Ireland. Of course, they were disappointed ; they were 

 not obliged to disturb or stop the factories of Lancashire and of 

 Yorkshire, or to move them across the Channel. The manufact- 

 urers of England soon found out that the low-priced labor of 

 people verging on pauperism is the dearest and not the cheapest 

 labor that can be offered. 



I will now close this over-long treatise upon the Method of 

 Tariff Reform by submitting what may be called a practical 

 budget. The figures are based upon the actual accounts of the 

 Treasury of the United States, and upon what is hoped may be 

 the maximum expenditure that will be warranted even by the 

 present Congress. 



First let me call attention to a few facts. Let us suppose that 

 the civil war were ended — I mean the financial war, which will 

 not be ended until the last dollar of debt shall have been paid and 

 the last pension shall have fallen in. There are certain necessary 

 annual appropriations which must be met year by year. How 

 could we meet them with the least interference with the freely 

 chosen pursuits of the people, and yet with due regard to the con- 

 ditions in which we are ? The ordinary expenses consist of, first, 

 the cost of the civil service, legislative, judicial, consular, and the 



