PRODUCTION AND FREE TRADE. 51 



effect will the stoppage have upon farmers in his neighborhood, 

 and particularly upon those from whom he has been accus- 

 tomed to derive his supply of wool? Finally, will not the mill- 

 owner, after such a disheartening experience, feel averse to risking 

 what remains of his capital in some other branch of manufacture ? 

 While, therefore, it is plain that no portion of our country could be 

 benefited by the stopping of our factories, it is equally plain that the 

 factories might by losses be forced to stop, and that the means of 

 the proprietors, having taken the form of buildings, machinery and 

 other fixed capital, could not be withdrawn to be invested where 

 it would pay better, but would remain, for the most part, idle and 

 profitless. A complete illustration of these conditions is to be 

 found to-day throughout the West in the numerous flax mills, 

 which can not be operated without loss, and which can not be sold 

 at any price. These unremunerative flax mills are monuments 

 of the baleful influences of that provision of the act of June 6, 

 1872, which removed all duty from jute butts, and thus adopted 

 the principle of Free Trade regarding that article. Does it pay our 

 farmers better under that regime to produce flax ? Has not almost 

 every flax grower experienced the blighting force of that Free Trade 

 legislation ? 



The same class of injuries was extensively inflicted upon our 

 people through the tariff of 1846, which substituted the policy of 

 partial Free Trade for the policy of Protection to home industry. 

 That act, although passed in July, did not go into operation until 

 December. About three and and a half years afterward, or on 

 May 15, 1850, Samuel Calvin, a representative in Congress from 

 Pennsylvania, made the following undisputed statement on the 

 floor of the House : 



The coal mines of our State, in which millions of capital have been invested, 

 have been rendered unproductive, unprofitable. Some have been sold by the 

 sheriff, others abandoned to dilapidation and ruin, I am informed that the sher- 

 iff is the only man now making money in the great coal fi 'elds of Schuylkill 

 County; and that the population of that county has been red^tced about 4,000 

 within the last twelve or fourteen months. A large portion of our numerous iron 

 establishments throughout the State, I would say the larger portion of them, have 

 been broken up, sold by the sheriff, or have suspended ; and the little remnant are 

 now sending up their daily petitions to us to save them from the ruin that must 

 speedily overwhelm them also. 



On August 12, 1850, Joseph Casey, another Representative from 



