EXPENSIVE MANAGEMENT. 427 



There are two reasons why this expensive manage 

 ment should continue. First, the mills are nearly all 

 joint-stock concerns, and it is not in the nature of things, 

 as a general rule, that a manager, who has at most only 

 a small share in a business, should as earnestly seek after 

 improved and economical processes as if the whole pro 

 fit of such improvements were to come to himself and 

 his few partners. Besides, protecting duties remove the 

 stimulus to such improvements as would naturally 

 cheapen the manufacture. At present the Lowell mills 

 divide something less than ten per cent, while the import 

 duty, charges and commissions, add fifty per cent to the 

 price of English manufactured goods, before they can 

 compete with them in the American market. So long 

 as the other States consent to pay this fifty per cent 

 higher price for manufactured goods than the same can 

 be had for in Liverpool, so long they contribute not 

 merely to pay a somewhat higher wage to the farmers 

 daughters who work in the mills, and raise the price 

 also of all other labour in the country, but they encourage 

 also a more expensive system of manufacture than would 

 be adopted were the mill-owners left to their own wits, 

 and to that natural protection only which nearness to 

 the home markets gives them. 



On the last removal of protection in England, four years 

 ago, from an important branch of manufacture carried 

 on in the county of Durham, a friend of mine, who is the 

 managing partner of a large establishment, employing a 

 capital of 250,000, and a large number of men, became 

 greatly alarmed, as all in his trade were at the prospects 

 before them. He had always been eager after improve 

 ments, had been constantly at the head of his trade during 

 protection times, but now it was necessary to do something 

 more. Continental makers poured in their accumulated 

 stocks at low prices, to which he and others were obliged 

 to come down. The first thing was a reduction of 



