400 TAXATION PROBLEMS 



Hamilton's Report is generally quoted by the friends of pro- 

 tection as the mighty bulwark of their faith. It is an able summary 

 of the arguments both for and against protection, Hamilton's own 

 conclusions being for protection. He takes for granted that manu- 

 factures are needed (to furnish a home market, and for other rea- 

 sons) ; he assumes that protection is needed in order to have manu- 

 factures because foreign governments were using bounties, etc., 

 and because of (1) the scarcity of labor, (2) the dearness of labor, 

 and (3) the want of capital. He does, however, refer to the many 

 towns "of size," as indicating a growing supply of labor; his list 

 of successful manufactures has just been given above, indicating 

 that without government aid manufacturing was thriving. Look- 

 ing into the future workings of protection, he emphasized these 

 two points, namely, 



(1) Utilization of women and child labor; 



(2) Utilization of immigrants. 



"But there are," says Hamilton, "circumstances which have been 

 already noticed with another view, that materially diminish every- 

 where the effect of scarcity of hands. These circumstances are: 

 the great use which can be made of women and children . . . 

 lastly, the attraction of foreign immigrants ... It is a natural 

 inference from the experience we have already had, that as soon 

 as the United States shall present the countenance of a serious 

 prosecution of manufactures, as soon as foreign artists shall be 

 made sensible that the state of things here affords a moral certainty 

 of employment and encouragement, competent numbers of Euro- 

 pean workmen will transplant themselves effectually to insure the 

 success of our design." 



Hamilton's forecast of the future was correct, for these two 

 things happened women and child labor was utilized, and immi- 

 grants did flock to the factories. The statistics gathered after 

 nearly a hundred years of protection to manufactures tell the 

 story. The platform adopted by one of the major political parties 

 in 1912 reaffirmed its belief in the protective tariff policy, crediting 

 this policy with protecting our workmen against (1) local compe- 

 tition, (2) foreign. But the statistics, quoted below, do not reveal 

 this American workman in these protected factories (unless the 

 word American workman means women and children) ; neither do 

 they reveal absence of competition by the foreign laborer (but 

 rather the success of the "foreigner" in driving the "American 

 workman" out of the factory). 



