OF AMERICA. 1 5 



States' manufactures are not so much higher than tliose of 

 the foreigner as we make out. But, if so, why keep up such 

 heavy import duties ? And again, if so, how is it that, in 

 spite of those heavy duties, foreign goods can still afford 

 (see p. 9) to come in? The Western farmer might say, 

 "Come, I do not mind paying lo per cent, dearer to you 

 than to the foreigner. Reduce the import duties therefore 

 from an average of 42^ per cent, to 10 per cent. If your 

 prices are, as you say, moderate, surely, with a bonus of i o 

 per cent, besides freight and charges, you can withstand 

 foreign competition ! But if not, and if the condition of 

 your existence as manufacturers is an import duty of 42I 

 per cent., which means that we farmers, as a class, are to 

 subscribe out of our earnings $400,000,000 a year to keep 

 you gentlemen of the East pegging away at a losing busi- 

 ness, we protest against it. It is paying far too dear ' for a 

 whistle.' We will withdraw from a game in which we are to 

 find the stakes (and heavy ones too) for others to win, and 

 we will go in for buying where we can buy cheapest." 



It should further be observed that the more freight the 

 Western farmer has to pay to get his produce delivered into 

 the European markets, the smaller the net residue that 

 comes to him; for the European buyers' prices include 

 freight. Cheap freights from America to Europe, therefore, 

 mean large profits to the farmer, and dear freights small 

 profits. But as the enormous American import duties 

 prevent heavy and bulky goods, such as iron, coal, «Sic., 

 from being freely sent from Europe to the United States, 

 and as ships must make a certain amount of freight on the 

 round or cease running, what happens ? They make up for 

 getting little or no freight from Europe to America, by 

 charging nearly double freight on the cotton, grain, and 

 other farmer's produce which they convey from America to 

 Europe. This surcharge of freight from, to compensate for 

 the absence of freight to, American ports, amounts in the 

 aggregate to a very large sum, which comes out of the pocket 

 of the Western farmers, and constitutes another heavy burden 

 inflicted on them by the present oppressive tariff. 



