84 RAILROAD IRON THE TARIFF TRANSPORTATION. 



are large consumers of steel rails, yet they asked a duty of two 

 cents per pound, equal to $44.80 per ton, on the imported rail, and 

 offered the following reasons in support of their appeal : 



Immediately before the construction of the first steel-rail manufactory in this 

 country, foreign makers charged $150 per ton (equal then to $225 currency) for 

 steel rails. As American works were built, foreign skilled labor introduced, 

 home labor instructed, and domestic irons, clays, ganister and spiegel (after many 

 and expensive trials) found to produce excellent rails, the price of the foreign 

 article was gradually lowered, until it. now (1870) stands at less than $79 per ton 

 in gold, or $96.38 currency. Now that several millions of dollars have been ex 

 pended in machinery, furnaces, and experiments in perfecting the process of 

 manufacture in this country, and numbers of our own citizens are dependent upon 

 it for support, the business is threatened with annihilation by the pressure of En 

 glish and Prussian makers. We, as users of steel rails, and transporters of the 

 food and material for American manufacturers and their numerous employees 

 and skilled laborers, do not desire to be dependent exclusively upon the foreign 

 supply, and therefore join in asking that, instead of the present ad valorem duty, 

 a specific duty of two cents per pound be placed upon this article, being the rate 

 fixed by a bill which passed the Senate Jan. 31, 1867, and of a bill which was re 

 ported to the House by the Committee of Ways and Means during the same year. 



The eminent railroad managers, signers of the above memorial, 

 represented about half the total length of all the railroad tracks in 

 the United States, or some 26,449 miles. Now, if the inevitable 

 effect of a high tariff is to increase the price of the dutied article, 

 whether it be imported or home-made, as Free Traders assert, is 

 it supposable that these experts in railway management, who annu 

 ally had to buy and pay for thousands upon thousands of tons of 

 steel rails, were ignorant of the fact? How could they have 

 avoided knowledge of a fact with which they were brought in con 

 stant contact ? With such premises, we are driven to the prepos 

 terous conclusion that more than ninety of the most experienced, 

 sagacious and influential railroad men in this country deliberately 

 appealed to Congress to so legislate as needlessly to increase the 

 pecuniary outlay of their several companies in extending or in re 

 laying their lines of track. What possible inducement could these 

 memorialists have had thus literally to throw away money ? When 

 have railroad corporations been solicitous to be taxed and to pay 

 taxes ? Who ever yet saw such a spectacle ? The very idea is 

 absurd. It is incredible, because it is false. The memorialists 

 knew perfectly well what they were about. They were after cheaper 

 rails. Moreover, they were aware that the way to that end was 



