162 Tj^AysACTio.rs of the Amepicax Lxstitute. 



than it was for 1860. Most evidentl3% tlie great cause of the 

 present depression is excessive home production. In 1860, the 

 annual vahie of our domestic wool manutactures was $68,865,963. 

 In 1868, it had risen to $175,000,000, an increase in eiglit years of 

 $106,134,037. It is a pregnant and important fact that our statistic 

 . returns show similar results in regard to the growth of wool during 

 the period under consideration. With a production that lias increased 

 in eight years 150 per cent, while our population has advanced only 

 thirty per cent, can we wonder that the market is depressed? The 

 wonder, as it seems to me, is that the business is not utterly prostrate. 



It has often been asserted that the depressed condition of the wool 

 industry is due to the present high tariff on wool and woolens. The 

 facts and figures just adduced show how baseless this allegation is. 

 That beneficent law, so far from having an injurious effect on this 

 great national interest, may rather be said to have saved it from des- 

 truction. I have already referred to the agency of the cotton famine in 

 stimulating elsewhere the growing and the manufacture of wool. It 

 led to over-production in other countries, as well as in our own. For 

 several years past the stock of merino wools — those wools which 

 chiefly compete with the American product — has been unprecedently 

 large in the foreign market, and has sold at prices ruinously low. 



Had our own wool-growers not been defended against this outside 

 surplus, by an increased duty, millions upon millions of their sheep 

 must have gone to the shambles, and their business would have been 

 ruined. It would be a satisfaction to many, if those persons who 

 .ascribe to the tariff the present low prices of American wool, will 

 just point out how those prices would have been rmserl by the intro- 

 duction of that foreign surplus at a lower rate of duty. 



So, too, of manufactures. When the war ended, the goverment 

 ceased to buy, and, having on its hands a vast accumulation of army 

 clothing, threw it on the market at rates that were extremely low. 

 Since that time, also, the surplus of foreign manufactures, offered at 

 low prices, has helped to weigh down our market. In this crisis, 

 what but the increased duty on foreign goods has saved our manufac- 

 turers from a general overthrow ? AVill not some one show us in 

 what way the reduction of those duties, and the flood of foreign 

 goods which would inevitably have deluged our over-stocked market, 

 could have helped the American producer ? Until questions like 

 these are satisfactorily answered by the opponent of the law, his 

 positions and assertions must be regarded as of small account. 



