FOUNDATIONS OF AMERICAN IRON INDUSTRY loi 



taken down or lowered? The answer varies greatly, according 

 to the point of view, or tlie school of economic Ijelief of the 

 individual. It is probably within the bounds to say that 

 the attitude of most manufacturers is one of indifference, 

 except as tariff changes might injuriously affect the general 

 ))usiness situation, now prosperous to a degree never before 

 witnessed in the United States or an}^ other country. A de- 

 fender of the protection system has only to point to the un- 

 exampled activity of the United States, while her great free 

 trade rival is languishing in business depression, to give his 

 answer. The average manufacturer, untrammeled with theo- 

 ries, and seeking only further extension and greater profits 

 in his own business, and with a vivid recollection of the paralyz- 

 ing effect upon trade of efforts at tariff revision in the past,says 

 let wtII enough alone. The student sees inequalities and in- 

 consistencies that call loudly for correction. The alarmist 

 discovers giant trusts fattening upon the protection given 

 them at the public expense. The western farmer would like 

 to get his barbed wire lower. The railroad president wants 

 to buy his steel rails at the price afforded by English and 

 German labor. The eastern merchant or structural mill 

 could often buy its billets from abroad cheaper than at home 

 but for the tariff. The great implement and tool manufac- 

 turers of the west, with expanding export trade, want recip- 

 rocal arrangements with France and other continental coun- 

 tries, and are justly bitter towards the small and highly pro- 

 tected industries of cheap jewelry, knit goods, and the like 

 in the eastern states which have succeeded in blocking the 

 reciprocity treaties in the senate. And so on through the 

 category of varjdng and conflicting interests. 



As to the prospect for a world trade in American iron 

 and steel products, it m.ust be admitted that a few years have 

 wrought a great change, and not in the direction of progress. 

 In 1899 and 1900 American exports of rails, billets, wire, 

 ship plates, and even of pig iron, were on a scale that struck 

 terror to European makers. The United States carried its 

 products to the very centers of production in Great Britain 

 and Germany, underselling them at their doors. Now it 

 is sending abroad nothing but agricultural machinery, machine 



