4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that rails have sold for double and even treble tlie natural cost ; 

 but still buyers were forced to buy in the liome markets. And 

 the reduction in duty from $28 to $17 per ton was accomplished 

 only in the teeth of vigorous protestations that it would ruin 

 American mills and workingmen. I say nothing of the effect of 

 this tax on railroad building and operation in rendering transpor- 

 tation scarcer and more expensive. But it is probable that a line 

 of railway with which I am connected would by this time have 

 been completed and have been paying handsomely but for the 

 $300,000 additional expense of construction entailed by the pro- 

 tection tariff. 



Pig-iron enters into articles used in every house and in every 

 business. It is turned into plows, kettles, and stoves, as well as 

 into vast engines, railway material, building material, and fire- 

 arms. Four million and a half tons of this material were made in 

 the United States in 1882 and sold at an average of $22 per ton. 

 In 1880 the market value reached $-10, and in 1886 $17. According 

 to Mr. Wilkeson, this material ought to be marketable at $9 per 

 ton easily, and Mr. Vinton does not think its actual value much 

 more. But making an allowance of $12 per ton as liberal, in fact 

 very liberal, we may say that the people of the United States 

 have paid an unnatural price for this product amounting in all to 

 $45,000,000 in 1882 alone; and, assuming that to have been an 

 average year, we may place the enhanced price of pig-iron to the 

 American people for the past twenty years at the enormous aggre- 

 gate of $900,000,000. 



On lumber it is difficult to make an accurate estimate. But 

 assuming the cut of Michigan in 1880 (4,172,000,000 feet) to have 

 been half the product affected, and to have been enhanced in 

 price to the extent of half the duty, which, in view of the enor- 

 mous forests of Canada, and the great value of our standing pine, 

 is very moderate, the tariff on lumber has cost the people of the 

 United States $8,000,000 per annum. One peculiarity about this 

 tax, or rather levy, is, that it inures to the benefit solely of a few 

 land-owners in Michigan and elsewhere, who were fortunate 

 enough to get the pine-lands when they were worth $2 per acre. 



per ton; making a profit of about $1,158,000 on that item alone of their manufactures. 

 For the making of these rails they paid out in wages $778,075, equal to about 68 per cent 

 of their profits. During the same year the same firm turned out about 30,000 tons of iron 

 and steel beams (used in large buildings, bridges, etc.), at a cost of about $28.02 per ton, 

 and sold them at $66 per ton, through a trust; making a total profit of about $1,150,000, 

 which is 135 per cent, of the total expenses and about seven times the sum paid by them 

 to their labor employed on this product. The exorbitant profit thus made at the expense 

 of the owners and patrons of railways and buildings was rendered possible solely by the 

 h.igh tariff (on rails $17 per ton, or about 75 per cent; on beams, l^ cent per pound, or 

 about 102 per cent).— Abridged from the speech of W. L. Scott, in the House of Repre- 

 sentatives, May 11, 1888. 



