THE EFFECTS OF PROTECTION. 13 



the farmer. In return, lie gets the " home market " ; but, inas- 

 much as he gets precisely the same for his grain, whether it is sent 

 to Liverpool or to Pittsburg for consumption, this does not seem 

 quite compensatory. 



As might be expected, the manufacturing interests make a 

 better showing than the agricultural. Yet even in this favored 

 branch of business the percentage of increase in 1850 and 1860 is 

 greater than that between 18 GO and 1880 ; if the rate shown in the 

 former period had been maintained, the manufactured products 

 for 1880 would have been greater in value than it is shown to be 

 by the census by about a billion dollars. It will be observed that 

 these figures are based upon the products of the census years 1860 

 and 1880, and, as the year of 1860 was one of great depression and 

 that of 1880 of great prosperity, the facts are more strongly in 

 favor of the low-tariff period than is indicated on the face of the 

 figures. Thus, though the manufacturing interest is supposed to 

 be the particular beneficiary of j^rotection, it, too, shoulders some 

 of the burdens of the tariff ; and the New York " Evening Post " 

 publishes a list of two hundred manufacturers who favor a reduc- 

 tion. Some industries, such as ship-building, have been nearly 

 destroyed by the high tariff on everything which goes into a ship, 

 and while in 1860 there were twenty ship-yards about New York, 

 there is hardly one left. So with many manufacturers of hard- 

 ware, which is made altogether too expensive to be readily mar- 

 ketable, by reason of the high cost of the material of which it 

 is made.* And countless derangements and dislocations of indus- 

 try might be instanced as manifestly due to the tariff'. The loss 

 of the carrying-trade has perhaps been sufficiently dwelt upon, 

 but it is still somewhat startling to be brought face to face with 

 the fact that, while in 1860 our ocean marine equaled England's, 

 it at present is about seven per cent of that great country's, and 

 is yearly decreasing. It is calculated that nearly four billion 

 dollars have been paid out on American ocean freights since the 

 war, of which the Americans have got very little. Not only have 

 we lost the carrying-trade, which was rapidly falling into our 



* In the "New York Times" of July 18, 1888, Mr. Frank Wilkeson makes a remark- 

 able showing of the effect of the tariff on iron- and steel-making. He computes that pig- 

 iron ought to be produced in Alabama and on the southern shore of Lake Erie at $Y per 

 ton cheaper than anywhere else in the woi'ld, and with no reduction of wages whatever. 

 (Moreover, he takes no account of natural gas.) He claims that iron is now made in Ohio 

 and Alabama for little more than that amount, and that the duty of $7 per ton has simply 

 enabled furnaces to stay in Pennsylvania, where every element of cost is very great except 

 the cost of labor, and that the manufacture of iron is thus unnaturally expensive and profit- 

 less to everybody. Pig-iron has within eight years sold for |40 per ton, and manufacturers 

 claim that it costs them $15. Mr. Wilkeson says, "The iron-works which will inevitably 

 be built on the shores of Lake Erie will bankrupt every blast-furnace and rolling-mill in 

 Europe." But not so long as a high tariff and combinations protect every manner of ex- 

 travagance. 



