100 A PROTECTIVE TARIFF AND EXPORTS. 



manufactures but little advanced beyond raw materials. Even of 

 the remaining $154,010,935 of exports, a considerable portion 

 stands for like products, as $3,285,210 for naval stores, and $21,- 

 353,721 for timber, lumber, masts, spars, staves, and other forms 

 of wood, only $1,882,767 of the sum representing furniture, and 

 $1,772,410 other manufactures. These facts show that our manufac- 

 turing industry, notwithstanding its great development in recent 

 years, is still merely in its infancy, and needs the fostering en- 

 couragement of Protective legislation. 



The United States are extensive exporters of food and of raw 

 materials. These are mainly taken by the great manufacturing 

 nations of Europe, which are extensive exporters of finished pro- 

 ducts. Much of our foreign trade is imbued with the policy of 

 "selling a rabbit's skin for a sixpence, and buying back the tail 

 for a shilling." This false mode of exchanges can be superseded 

 only by the multiplication of the arts and the sciences upon our own 

 soil. To accomplish such result, the constant aim should be to 

 bring the loom and the anvil everywhere into close neighborhood 

 to the plow and the harrow; for then alone can we consume our 

 own food and reproduce our own raw materials, exporting the sur- 

 plus in its highest forms. Then alone can labor find steady em- 

 ployment in its various departments, all aptitudes be set at work, 

 and the productive forces kept fully occupied ; for laboring 

 power, of whatever kind, like time, unless utilized at the very mo- 

 ment of existence, drifts unproductively into the past, and is lost 

 beyond recall, the country and the man both being poorer by 

 what might have been produced by the use of the power. It is the 

 province of a high Protective tariff to aid in creating and in main- 

 taining those conditions which result in regular employment for 

 all, and the highest measure of production and consumption, 

 whose other name is general prosperity. These preliminary obser- 

 vations are essential to a thorough understanding of the subject. 



Two sets of agencies, co-operative in this country, under a sys- 

 tem of Protection to home industry, enable our manufacturers to 

 export their finished products, thus overmastering the competition 

 of cheap labor in foreign countries. These agencies are : 



(i) Superiority of make, as regards both material and work- 

 manship, and complete adaptability to intended uses, causing the 



