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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ests of hundreds of merchants have been 

 ruthlessly sacrificed to serve those of two 

 or three men ! 



To his essay proper, Captain Codman 

 adds a review of the plans for reviving our 

 carrying-trade put forth by Senator Blaine 

 and Secretary Sherman. The pith of the 

 Captain's argument comes out in the fol- 

 lowing paragraph in the review of Senator 

 Blaine: "He tells us how Germany has 

 prospered. She has increased her tonnage 

 from 166,000 to 950,000 tons in twenty 

 years, while ours has decreased in that 

 time until it has nearly gone out of sight. 

 Her increase has chiefly been in iron screw- 

 steamships. Where did Germany get those 

 steamships with which she has taken away 

 from us our carrying-trade? She bought 

 them. Why did she buy them ? Because 

 she could buy them cheaper than she could 

 build them. Why did she not wait, as we 

 are doing, until they could be built cheaper 

 than they could be bought? Because, in 

 the mean time, England, or some other na- 

 tion who could buy them, would have the 

 carrying - trade. Who has prevented us 

 from imitating Germany ; in fact, from main- 

 taining our carrying-trade, which she has 

 taken from us ? Who, but Mr. Blaine and 

 his school of protectionists, who have re- 

 versed the fable of the dog in the manger ; 

 for the horse has forced the dog to eat his 

 hay ? " 



Though Captain Codman strongly urges 

 the adoption by Congress of the twenty-first 

 section of Mr. Wood's late tariff bill, he 

 insists that very much more than this is 

 necessary to place our carrying-trade in a 

 healthy position. We not only need the 

 freedom to buy ships where we can get 

 them best and cheapest, but we also need 

 maritime laws that will place us on an 

 ecpaality with our most favored rivals. 



In his essay on " Labor-making Machin- 

 ery," Mr. Powers combats the frequently 

 advanced notion that machinery displaces 

 the workman and renders employment 

 scarce. He insists, on the contrary, that 

 it has been in all cases a great benefit to 

 the laborer, and has multiplied his oppor- 

 tunities of labor, and made his employment 

 steadier. The results of his study of the 

 question he sums up as follows : 1. Ma- 

 chinery has reduced the cost of food, or at 



least prevented its rising with the increase 

 of population, and has also reduced the cost 

 of clothing and other manufactured goods, 

 conferring two benefits upon the laboring 

 classes. 2. The introduction of machinery 

 has increased the demand for labor. The 

 result has been the increase of the number 

 of persons employed in excess of the in- 

 crease of population, and an increase in the 

 rates of wages beyond the increase in the 

 cost of living. 3. Machinery has effected 

 'a marked reduction in the length of the 

 working-day, and has reduced the amount 

 of muscular exertion requisite in many 

 branches of industry. 4. In so far as ma- 

 chinery has conferred less benefit on Amer- 

 ican laborers than might have been antici- 

 pated, it is attributable chiefly to the fact 

 that European laborers have poured into 

 this country in a flood, especially since 

 1845, since which time the greatest ad- 

 vances in the introduction of machinery 

 have been made. 



The third of these pamphlets is a re- 

 print of a letter by Mr. Tylor to the Lon- 

 don " Economist," in which he points out a 

 curious and unsuspected effect of the Amer- 

 ican tariff. He maintains that, besides the 

 result which a high protective tariff has in 

 increasing the prices of those things pro- 

 tected, it has also the effect of lowering the 

 prices of those things that do not come with- 

 in its scope. By comparison of the prices 

 of wheat, cotton, and oil through a number 

 of years, he shows that, in consequence of 

 our tariff, Englishmen have been able to 

 procure these indispensable articles from 

 us for considerably less than they could 

 have done in a condition of free exchange. 

 " Wheat," he says, " which had averaged 

 fifty-two shillings per quarter for eighteen 

 years in the several markets of Great Brit- 

 ain, in consequence of the American sup- 

 ply has only averaged forty-eight shillings 

 from 18*74 to 1879, and yet these have been 

 years of European scarcity. . . . Merchants 

 were surprised, for no one reckoned upon 

 the effect of the American import duties 

 (when limiting import from Europe) in de- 

 pressing the price of their exports. They 

 had calculated, in the usual way, that, with 

 an increased food-demand of eighty per 

 cent, from Europe, there should certainly 

 be a great advance in price, instead of 



