RAILROAD IRON-THE TARIFF TRANSPORTATION. 87 



came back with British lenses before his eyes, and never since 

 has been able to see any American manufacturer except through 

 their distorting medium. Yet the original judgment of Mr. Wells 

 is fully supported and vindicated by the present state of the facts. 

 He declared in 1867 that the welfare of the higher grades or quali- 

 ties of steel was involved in a maintenance of highly Protective 

 duties. Now, that very class of steel is now quoted in New York 

 at the following prices : American, 14^ to 15^ cents per pound 

 in currency ; English, 17^ cents gold. Here is another example 

 of the cheapening effects of Protection to home industry. Of 

 course, when steel is so reduced in price, iron must be still lower; 

 hence we are able to say that iron rails are now selling at $45, cur- 

 rency, per ton ; and that no foreign rails can be imported to com- 

 pete with these figures. Our Protective system, in less than four- 

 teen years, has made us independent of European sources for our 

 supply of railroad iron, and equally independent as regards steel 

 rails. To-day we can build railroads cheaper with home-made steel 

 rails than some years ago we. could with imported iron rails. How, 

 then, can road-bed, rails and rolling stock be so swollen in cost by 

 a high tariff as to make cheap transportation an impossible thing ? 



Increased cost in production, it may be worth while to relate, 

 is not, as Free Traders dogmatically assert, an inseparable adjunct 

 of our Protective system. The lowest average price at which for- 

 eign rails, of iron, were ever before now sold in the American mar- 

 ket was $44 per ton, during the first seven months of 1861. That 

 wa,s in gold. If, as is the fashion, we reduce the present currency 

 price of American rails, or $45 per ton, to equivalent coin, 

 at the prevailing quotation of 114 for gold, we shall have $39.46 

 as the result, or $4.54 per ton lower than the lowest price of for- 

 eign rails ever before reached. Yet we are told, with an immense 

 expenditure of emphasis, that our Protective system is a device to 

 plunder the masses of the people, and especially Western farmers, 

 in the spurious name of industrial development; and that the 

 tariff duties on the materials which enter into the construction of 

 railroads are so extravagantly high that freights and fares are forced 

 to be raised in proportion. For all that, the proofs of the allega- 

 tion are as hard to find as the traditional needle in the traditional 

 haystack. 



It needs to be noticed that while cost in production has receded 



