32 THE FARMERS' WOOL AND IRON QUESTIONS. 



American wool against common English bar iron. These two 

 periods are peculiarly apt for contrast. They each embody three 

 years just before a panic, a year with a panic, and a year after the 

 panic. Moreover, each term embraces a nearly corresponding 

 number of months during which, from different causes, the price 

 of iron was exceptionally high. In the Free Trade period, the 

 cause was inexorable extortion on the part of foreign manufactu- 

 rers, who, after having taken advantage of the low tariff of 1846 

 to prostrate and bankrupt our iron industries, by the means of 

 cheaper and still cheaper prices, until competition had been de- 

 stroyed, then took a monopoly control of our markets, and ad- 

 vanced their rates to exorbitant figures on immense importations, 

 thus reimbursing themselves for their losses, besides pocketing 

 large profits. This was the process: English bar iron sold at 

 $75@8o per ton in New York, in 1846, under a duty of $25 per 

 ton ; but, when that duty was reduced to 30 per cent, ad valorem, 

 the price gradually fell to $33. 50(0141, in 1851, from which point 

 it rose to $62.50(0)77.50, in 1854^ with 'an import value in that 

 year, retained for home consumption, vastly larger than it had 

 been in 1846 or in 1851. On the other hand, the cause of the 

 very high prices for English iron in 1872 and 1873 was tne coa ^ 

 troubles in Great Britain, doubling the price, coupled with exten- 

 sively successful strikes by laborers for higher wages, thus greatly 

 increasing cost of production. The result appears very decidedly 

 in the declared values of our imports, which are the real market 

 values in the foreign port of shipment. In the fiscal year 1870 we 

 imported from England 101,642,373 pounds of bar iron, at an 

 invoice value of $1,808,825, equal to 1.77.96 cents per pound, or 

 $39.86.2981 per ton. In the fiscal year 1872 we imported 149,- 

 503,607 pounds, at an invoice value of $3,166,636, equal to 2.11.81 

 cents per pound, or $47.44.5442 per ton. In the fiscal year 1873 

 we imported 92,796,789 pounds, at an invoice value of $2,867,850, 

 equal to 3.09.05 cents per pound, or $69.22.6361 per ton. Here 

 we find an increase in 1872 of 19.02 per cent, in invoice value 

 over what it was in 1870; of 45.91 per cent, in 1873 over what it 

 was in 1872; and of 73.66 per cent, in 1873 over what it was in 

 1870. Such were the advances in price made by the manufactu- 

 rers to their regular customers in the foreign market of produc- 

 tion, before a cent could be added for transportation, insurance, 



