WHY OUR MANUFACTURERS WANT PROTECTION. 106 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



WHY OUR MANUFACTURERS WANT PROTECTION. 



HPHE following query embodies a difficulty which has puzzled 

 JL many who are unfamiliar with the comprehensive workings of 



our tariff system : 



CHICAGO, June 28, 1875. 

 To the Editor of the Inter-Ocean. 



You say that high Protective duties operate to cheapen the prices of manu- 

 factures. If so, why do our manufacturers want such duties? W. B. TERRY. 



Our manufacturers want Protection, although it operates to re- 

 duce prices, because the practical benefits of Protective duties are 

 found, not so much in diminishing regular importations made by 

 our own merchants, with a full knowledge of the wants of the 

 country, but in securing our ports of entry from being flooded 

 with surpluses forced upon us by foreigners, to relieve their own 

 superabundance and sustain their home prices, or to overwhelm 

 our industries at any temporary sacrifice, that they may command 

 our markets. England, our principal competitor, from whom we 

 have derived, within the last twenty-four fiscal years, 39.391 per 

 cent, of the total value of our imports, can produce a long list of 

 fabrics cheaper than we, on account of her far cheaper labor, much 

 lower interest on money, and immense accumulation of capital, 

 and can undersell our manufacturers on our own soil when she 

 chooses. It invariably happens that her lords of the loom and her 

 earls of the rolling-mill choose to do so whenever the rising pros- 

 perity of our manufacturing enterprises begins to supply the needs 

 of American consumers. Then a vast aggregate of foreign com- 

 modities is ruthlessly thrown upon our well-stocked home markets, 

 at lower and still lower prices, thus ruinously forcing down to that 

 level the selling values of our whole domestic product, even al- 

 though it may be tenfold the quantity of the imported articles. 

 This cheapening process is kept up until our home producers are 



