RAILROAD IRON THE TARIFF -TRANSPORTATION. 



in the United States it has advanced in Great Britain that cen- 

 tral seat of Free Trade propagandised, plainly showing that the 

 system of tariff adopted there does not necessarily promote cheap- 

 ness, nor prove a safeguard against a considerable rise in prices. 

 For many years her cheap labor operated with all the force and 

 effect of a Protective tariff. Now that her labor is becoming dear 

 as compared with that of various European countries, she encoun- 

 ters many of the difficulties that would beset the United States 

 under her system of duties. Never before has her manufacturing 

 ascendancy been in such mortal peril as it is to-day; and bank- 

 ruptcy of great iron establishments is assuming an alarming extent 

 and frequency. 



The following statement from the editorial columns of the Phila- 

 delphia North American, May 28, 1874, illustrates the independ- 

 ence achieved by this country in the manufacture of Bessemer 

 steel rails. 



Large orders for steel rails have been taken by the Chicago and Joliet rolling 

 mills, amounting to seventy-five thousand tons, at forty per cent, less than the 

 ruling rate of 1873, and twenty-five per cent, less than the current rate for for- 

 eign rails. They are for the Rock Island, Alton, Illinois Central, Michigan 

 Central, and the Central Pacific, and Union Pacific, and are to replace old iron 

 rails. 



On inquiry at the proper quarters, we find the above statement 

 to be correct, with the exception that the Chicago and Northwestern 

 Road should have been included in the list. These facts speak 

 trumpet-tongued of the cheapening tendencies and effects of 

 Protective duties. Transportation is in process of being cheapened 

 by our tariff system, which has fostered the manufacture of steel 

 rails upon American soil, multiplied rolling mills, led to import- 

 ant improvements in mechanical appliances, energized home 

 competition, brought down prices, and given the domestic market 

 to the domestic producer. If in all these years we had had the 

 kind of tariff which Free Traders extol, our railroads would now 

 be at the mercy of foreign high prices, and might be paying the 

 English for steel rails $120, gold, per ton, delivered in New York 

 as one Western road actually is, in fulfillment of an old contract. 



