AMERICAN POTTERY. 



therefore, that, the more commodities are moved to and fro, the 

 lower will be the prices, and the more extensive the commerce : 

 in other phrase, take the manufacturer away from the side of the 

 consumer; interpose three or four thousand miles between the two j 

 increase the number of middlemen and the demand for the ma- 

 chinery of transportation : at once you will set in motion a series of 

 causes that tend inevitably to cheapness. That is the milk in 

 the Free Trade cocoanut. In its last analysis, British Free Trade 

 means that the United Kingdom with its vast mercantile navy, its 

 numerous insurance companies, its extensive network of branch 

 houses, agents, factors, and banking facilities, its astute devices of 

 consular action and of diplomatic manipulation, and its prodi- 

 gious resources for manufacturing shall become a sort of commer- 

 cial sponge to soak up the profits of the world's exchanges. The 

 threat, "to unroof the potteries in Trenton, and destroy the plant 

 of capital there," represents the spirit of that so-called Free Trade 

 which would crush out the reproductive arts in every rival country, 

 merely in order to give Great Britain more markets in which to sell 

 her finished products. 



A gentleman in Philadelphia Horace J. Smith, Esq. who has 

 made a special study of the pottery industry in this country, sends 

 us the following statement : 



Crockery manufacturers have already so cheapened their processes, under the 

 stimulus of a home competition, as not only to drive English goods of the lowest 

 grades entirely out of the market, (viz : yellow and Rockingham,) but they have . 

 almost entirely shut out the next better grade (the C. C. or cream- colored) from 

 importation. They are successfully competing with the best English manufac- 

 turers for the American demand for white stone-ware, as well in price as in 

 quality ; so that, with the maintenance of Protection for one decade longer, we 

 may hope to attain complete commercial independence of England in this re- 

 spect. The manufacture of porcelain, too, which is the finest product of the 

 ceramic art, has already taken root in the United States ; and in the near future 

 we may expect that neither ware from "China," nor " Delft" from Holland, nor 

 even " Queensware " from monarchical England, will find a place in American 

 homes. 



Closer relation between the consumer and the crockery manufacturer has so 

 forced itself upon the latter as a necessity for his prosperity, that it is in con- 

 templation to establish potteries either in Chicago or Milwaukee, or in both. As 

 an additional inducement, the ground for a factory has been offered as a gra- 

 tuity to an enterprising Eastern manufacturer, provided he will establish himself 

 at Milwaukee. Whichever point is selected whether one of the two named, 



