52 PRODUCTION AND FREE TRADE. 



Pennsylvania, made a speech on the floor of the House. The facts 

 stated in the extract below have never been contradicted : 



In the year 1846 there were employed in the State three hundred furnaces, 

 with a capital of $12,000,000, producing annually up to 1847, 389,850 tons of 

 pig metal. This was about the time the tariff of 1846 was enacted and was 

 about to go into operation. In the two years succeeding that period 1848 and 

 1849 the amount of iron produced had fallen from nearly 400,000 tons to about 

 250,000 tons ; and at the close of the present year it will have fallen down below 

 200,000 tons. Take in connection with this an additional fact : The whole his 

 tory of the manufacture of iron in Pennsylvania shows that in a period of seventy- 

 five years there have been erected 500 furnaces ; and out of them 177 failures, or 

 where they have been closed and sold out by the sheriff. Out of this 177 fail 

 ures, one hundred and twenty-four of them have occurred since the passage of the 

 tariff of 1846. Again, out of the three hundred blast furnaces in full operation 

 when the tariff of 1846 was enacted into a law, one hundred and fifty, or fully 

 one-half, had stopped several months ago, and fully fifty more of those remaining 

 are preparing to go out of blast zvith the end of the present season. 



It will be remarked that all these iron works were in successful operation, and 

 that a profitable market existed under the operation of the tariff of 1842, and that, 

 so far from any of them going out of blast, new ones were constantly springing 

 into existence. The business was gradually rising into importance, and the con 

 sumption rapidly increasing. It was affording constant and profitable employ 

 ment to the industrious and toiling laborer. But the protecting and fostering 

 hand of the Government is removed, and we find in this brief period the disas 

 trous change that has occurred. 



Here, under an elaborate system of non-Protective duties, such 

 as Free Traders consider desirable, we find the stoppage of a mul 

 titude of industries, with absolute loss of power to transfer the in 

 vestments to any other branch of manufacture. Not only had the 

 capital embarked in these coal mines and these furnaces become 

 unproductive it was crippled, prostrate, perishing. Whom did it 

 pay better to produce under that regime ? Certainly not the far 

 mers; for they lost a regular market for a considerable part of 

 their annual surplus, when thousands upon thousands of laborers 

 lost employment and wages. How could any class of producers 

 be rendered more active or prosperous by a scheme of legislation 

 which sounded a death-knell in the ear of industry and enterprise? 

 What benefit could accrue to the people at large from an act of 

 Congress which resulted in depriving vast numbers of work, and 

 reduced the pay of nearly all the rest ? 



The real question involved in the Protective policy is the ques 

 tion of employment and wages ; it does not turn upon the relative 



