WALKER'S REPORT 403 



culture, commerce, and manufactures will prosper together, or languish 

 together, and that all legislation is dangerous which proposes to benefit one 

 of these without looking to consequences which may fall on the others." 



When Congress singled out one of these three interests and pen- 

 sioned it, so to speak, and bestowed on it special favor, special 

 privileges, this favored industry, naturally forged ahead of the 

 other two in the race. Congress did not ' ' look to the consequences ' ' 

 which would "fall on the others." Both commerce and agriculture 

 in New England steadily fell further and further behind in the 

 competitive rate. Hence the lopsided growth of the present day, 

 and the belated effort to take out of manufacturing large sums 

 of money and put them back into agriculture. This is not done 

 now as a charity to agriculture, but to obviate the "industrial 

 handicap of dear food" and to establish islands of "stability" in 

 the turbulent industrial sea of foreign wage earners who now com- 

 pose the typical New England community. 



Gallatin's Memorial. Albert Gallatin, writing his Memorial 

 on the Tariff in 1831, paid attention to the various theories of pro- 

 tection promulgated by Hamilton. Speaking of the "home 

 market" for agricultural products, he said that flour prices rose 

 and fell with foreign demand, and not with the growth of domestic 

 manufactures; that the "foreign market," therefore, deserved 

 consideration. Foreign commerce is, he declared, exactly like 

 domestic commerce in principle; unrestricted intercourse between 

 sections is needed. 



Prosperity and high wages he connected in no way with the 

 tariff. Prosperity he attributed to our vast natural resources. On 

 labor he said, "After two centuries of free commerce with Great 

 Britain and fifty years of similar intercourse with the rest of the 

 world, the price of labor continues without alteration to be higher 

 in the United States than in England or any other country." 



Walker's Report. Robert J. Walker, Secretary of the Treasury, 

 made one of the few notable contributions to the tariff discussion, 

 in his Report for December 3, 1845. He foretold with uncanny 

 accuracy the labor difficulties of the factories, particularly the low- 

 wage issue which formed a very unpleasant feature of the New 

 England factory system till the first decade of the twentieth century. 



Secretary Walker reported to Congress in part as follows : 



Labor and Capital. Capital's power over wages. "When the number of 

 manufactures is not great, the power of the system to regulate the wages of 

 labor is inconsiderable; but as the profit of capital invested in manufactures 

 is augmented by the protective tariff, there is a corresponding increase of 

 power, until the control of such capital over the wages of labor becomes irre- 



