Commercial Effects of Auctions i8i 



sent off. to anticipate such orders, and supply the market before 

 the goods on account of such orders" reached this country.^® 



Custom house practices, as well as the ease of concealment, 

 made it impossible to determine what proportion of imported 

 goods were handled on foreign account. It was, in 1817, "sup- 

 posed that more than one-half of the goods subject to ad valorem 

 duties, . . . imported into the United States" were "entered 

 by . . . the mere representatives of the owners of the goods. "'^*' 

 In 1819 an estimate, based upon "a careful examination of the 

 weekly abstracts of merchandise entered at the custom house in 

 New York" was that three-fourths of the importations were on 

 foreign account.*'^ The New York Mercantile Society in a peti- 

 tion to Congress in 1820 stated that the proportion ranged 

 between two-thirds and three-fourths, and of dry goods from 

 England. Scotland and Ireland four-fifths."- In 1824 it was 

 claimed it could be "substantiated by a reference to official papers, 

 that about three-fourths of all British and French goods imported 

 into New York" were on foreign account.'''^ 



COMMERCIAL EFFECTS OF THE AUCTIONS. 

 It has been shown above that the auction system tended to 

 reduce the efficiency of the protective tariff ; this fact gave 

 auctions a political importance as well as economic and fiscal ; 

 the resulting legislative campaign against auctions is treated in 

 later paragraphs. The auction system prodviced some important 

 commercial effects. Auctions facilitated the introduction of new 

 foreign and domestic products ; goods were forced on the market 

 by rank price-cutting and in time the prejudices that opposed their 

 introduction and advancement were overcome ; this was true 

 both of foreign and domestic goods.*'* The auctions were a 

 solvent and revolutionary factor that broke down the too staid 



'' Niles, 27 : 289. 



""Annals of Congress, 15th Congress, ist session, 51. 



^ Niles, 18: 300. 



'^' Annals of Congress, i6th Congress, 2d session, 1653. 



*^ Niles, 27 : 273. See similar and more detailed estimates in Niles, 27 : 

 289 (1825), and Niles, 34: 106 (1828), and Bolles, I, 445 (1840), citing 

 IngersoU's Minority Report, April 4, 1844, No. 306, 28th Congress, ist 

 session. 



"^Annals of Congress, i6th Congress, 2d session, 1531. 



