THE Chicago Tribune says that railroad on costs $72 per ton, and will last only ten ears, whereas Bessemer steel rail costs 191.25 per ton and only needs to be renewd every fifty years. Steel rail has also the dvantage of greater strength and conseuent safety as well as durability. And yet he Tribune, instead of fostering and proecting the infant manufacture of so desirale an article, would be glad to see all the teel rail mills in the United States bought p and destroyed. We doubt not the steel nakers of Europe would be glad, and even yilling, to pay handsomely to see the Tribune's desires consummated. This proBess of destruction once begun, where will tend? What branch of American indusry would be next demolished?

WILL any of our readers, who are in ossession of the facts, send us a list, and s complete a statement as they are able to nake, of the European manufacturing enterrises which, within ten years past, have, b their knowledge, removed their works, ncluding capital and laborers, from any art of Europe to the United States? Cerain prominent instances of total or partial emoval, like those of the great rival Scotch rms, of J. & P. Coates and of Geo. A. Clark & Co., thread manufacturers, that of he American Lead Pencil Company, and of several watch companies and silk manuacturers, have been mentioned to us.

We

esitate to publish these partial statements, est any statements short of the whole truth nay be assumed to be the whole truth. We are satisfied that the number of foreign manufacturing houses which have removed heir entire factories to this country is very arge. Though this is one of the most important effects of our protective tariff, it is one upon which the Bureau of Revenue at Washington throws no light whatever. We design THE BUREAU of Chicago to superede the defunct Bureau of Mr. Wells, in the dissemination of sound statistical infornation upon revenue questions. If every one who has the knowledge of these facts at command, and into whose hands THE BUREAU may fall, will communicate them co us, we will publish at an early date one of the most interesting exhibits yet given of the effects of protection to industry.

OUR business men and merchants spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year for insurance against fire. And yet fire is a small calamity compared with free trade. The business man whose store, or factory, or dwelling, burns down in prosperous times has no difficulty in raising the means to buy or build another. But the business man whose investments are ruined by free trade finds that all his neighbors are cast down

and prostrated by the same general catas trophe. He wishes his whole property might burn as his only means of getting a half or a third of its value. Is this mere speculation? Read how the blunder of free trade inaugurated in this country in 1816, caused 60,000 workmen to be turned out of employment in 1817, and by 1819 our agriculture was as prostrate as our manufactures, so that Gen. Jackson declared that unless the country turned back promptly from free trade to protection, its working classes would soon be reduced to a level with the paupers of Europe. What is plainer than that if we compete with paupers on even terms, we must take paupers wages? Free trade proposes simply "equal competition of all American producers with all foreign paupers." Turn to the history of the crisis of 1836-41, brought on by four years of the untaxed importation of cheap foreign goods. See the same result produced in 1857 by the low tariff of 1847. In the last instance the crash would have come in '50 to '51, had it not been postponed five years by the great influx of gold from California. Study carefully these three periods. See whether they increased the government revenue or impaired it; whether they lowered permanently the cost of foreign goods or raised it; whether they increased the aggregate of American production, or brought our people by tens of thousands to bankruptcy, charity, and the soup-house?

WHO PAYS THE DUTY ON
LUMBER?

The tariff on lumber operates in much the same way on prices as the tariff on coal, elsewhere explained-the main conditions being the same, i. e., the price of the foreign article is controlled by the American market, and if the article is imported, the duty on the quantity imported is paid by the importer out of what would otherwise be his profits. To illustrate: In 1866, '67, '68, and '69 we received from 500,500,000 to 555,500,000 feet of imported lumber at all ports. The three States of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota alone give an annual product of 3,200,000,000 feet, while the marketed product in all the States is 10,000,000,000 of feet, or twenty-four times the amount of the importation. Now there are those who think that if a pumpkin is brought across the Canada line at Eastport, in Maine, its price regulates the price of pumpkins in California. They will have no exceptions to the rule that the home price is regulated by the foreign. But practical men will see that if the Canadian lumbering districts are only adequate to supply one twenty-fourth of our demand, they only contribute one twenty-fourth of the influences which determine the price. The price depends on

the ratio of the whole supply to the whole demand, not on an insignificant fraction of the whole supply. From 1862 to 1866 lumber was imported under reciprocity without duty. Since that time it has paid towards our revenue $1,500,000 a year. The question arises, "Who paid this sum, the Canadian producers or the American consumers?"

The following is a statement of prices in the Chicago market, the largest lumber market in the country or the world, made up of monthly sales into an annual average, by the President of the Chicago Lumberman's Exchange:

Total feet sold.

389,000,000

1863

$12.75

473,880,000

1864

17.30

647,320,000

1865

13.85

721,105,000

1866

16.80

847,634,000

986,440,000

1868

13.60

991,834,000

1869

11.30

Price in gold. $9.13

8.49

It will be observed that the quantity sold in this market has annually increased from 389,000,000 feet in 1863, to 991,834,000 feet in 1869, and increasing during the years named of reciprocity 251,493,000 feet and those since its abrogation 349,506,000 feet. The average price in currency for the three years ending with reciprocity was $14.63. Since then, under existing tariff, it has been $13.96, a decrease of sixty-seven cents per thousand. The price in 1865, the last year of free duty, was $13.85, while in 1869, with duty, it was $11.30, a decline of $2.55 per thousand since the duty was imposed. The extreme years given of 1863 and 1869, the former under reciprocity and the latter under the tariff, stated in gold, were respectively $9.31 and $8.49, a decline of eightytwo cents per thousand.

Nor is this all. While the fact that there is no increase but a steady diminution in price here under the duty shows that the duty is not paid by our consumers, a rise in average Canadian prices under the duty shows that the tax is paid there, for the average Canadian price is fixed by the American price with duty added. A memorial to Congress for the removal of duties on imported lumber, signed by M. Davis for the petitioners, says:

"At the expiration of the reciprocity treaty, in the spring of 1866, a duty of 20 per cent. ad valorem was imposed on lumber. Contrary to the general expectation that prices in Canada would depreciate, the following figures will show the advance in the chief descriptions of lumber imported from Ottawa. This table was prepared from the books of one of the largest importing houses in the United States.

$3.25 per thousand; to Whitehall, $3.50 per thousand in gold. These rates continue unchanged."

This exhibits the average price for uppers and common in 1865, under freedom from duty, $9.25, and in 1869, under the duty, an average of $10.75 in gold; being an increase of $1.50 per thousand the last year with the tariff over the last year of "free duty," in Canada, against a decrease of $2.55 per thousand, as already stated, for like years in the States.

The free trade organs are fond of asserting that where any part, however small, of a given product, pig iron for instance, or blankets, or lumber is imported, the entire internal product of the country is sold higher by the amount of the tax on the imported article, so that in the case of lumber where $1 of tax is collected by the government, $24 of tax is paid to the manufacturers of lumber, and in the case of pig iron where $1 of tax is paid to the government $40 is paid to the makers of American pig iron. To illustrate the absurdity of this doctrine in all cases, let us apply it to agricultural products. We import from Canada wheat, corn, oats and barley as well as lumber and coal, all paying duties. If the price of all the lumber, coal, salt and pig iron produced in this country is raised by the amount of the tariff then the price of all the wheat, corn, oats, barley and potatoes must be raised by the same invariable law. If so, then the farmers of Illinois get $21,063,200 tariff on their wheat, corn, oats and barley, those of Iowa are increased in like manner by $12,617,250, those of Missouri by $7,861,000, and those of Michigan by $9,713,000! But if the price of wheat, barley, oats, corn and potatoes is not regulated by that of the quantity imported, and if, on the contrary, the insignificant quantity imported is regulated in price by the vastly greater quantity we produce here, the same rule applies to pig iron, lumber, coal and salt, of all of which we produce from ten to fifty times as much as we import.

THE LION IN THE ASS' SKIN.

The old fable of the ass in the lion's skin has recently been eclipsed by a new and original version in the Chicago Evening Post. It has been furnishing its readers for some weeks past with a series of articles entitled "The Farmers and the Monopolists." As long as the writer adheres! to abstract terms and general abuse of American manufacturers, he seems quite at home, but the few attempts at illustrative statistics have been among the most laughable of all the curiosities of free trade literature. The writer has shown conclusively, in his statements on wools and woolens, that he knows less on the question than a young dry goods clerk; but he was evi

Bently saving himself for a grand climax, which duly appeared in his article on "lions Cloth." The customary prelude informs us that "the abomination of our present tariff ystem; its utter inequality and tendency to oppress the hard-working and truly industrious class, who wear clothes for comfort and use, and not for mere show, make up one of the worst characteristics of the monopoly curse." He then proceeds to picture the British lion, indignant that we will no longer purchase his shoddy woolens, kas using his ingenuity and application to Hind some fitting substitute with which to clothe the foolish Yankees.

The device is soon found, and, with one stroke of this versatile pen, we have the British lion arrayed in heavy fabric known as "lions cloth," and made "of the hair of dogs, calves, cows, the softer hair from the hides of horses ;" and we may add, still better, from that of the historic ass, as being at once longer and stronger than that of its occidental rivals. It only remains to find some means of smuggling this heroic cloth into the United States. The lion's eye, always alert to find flaws in the revenue laws of all nations but its own, discovers a small hole in our tariff on woolens and similar goods. The law provides that goods made from wool of sheep, alpaca goat, or other like animals, shall pay a certain duty. "Surely," reasons the lion, the barking dog, the neighing horse, and the braying ass, can, by no fair legal interpretation be called like the sheep and goat;" and, therefore, exclaims the delighted Post, fortunately it escapes, as by a miracle, the heavy double duty. And hence farmers, and other industrious families, can have a rather cheap, warm article of clothing for winter. "It is very cheap. A yard costs in England seventy-two cents, and weighs two pounds.' Unfortunately, the writer, having told us what the cloth costs in England, by a common infirmity of Free Traders, forgets to tell us just what it sells for in the West, and how it compares in quality and price with the tariff-enhanced woolens for which it is such a providential substitute.

He turns from the only point of any interest or importance to us, to pounce upon Mr. Hooper, of Boston, who "actually included this poor lions cloth in a duty of fifty cents per pound, or thirty-five per cent. ad valorem," by simply leaving out the word "like," in the bill reported by the Committee of Ways and Means. Had this bill passed, he fears it would effectually have stopped the hole through which the lordly monarch now creeps, and have proved prohibitory, because, as he figures, it would have subjected this cloth to a tariff of $1.254 per yard.

Now, here is a case worth observing one of the Free Trader's own choosing.

We have an article made doubly cheap by using material far less valuable than wool, and by robbing the laborers of honest wages. It miraculously escapes in toto this

abominable, unjust, iniquitous, and accursed tariff," which, as Professor Perry, Commissioner Wells, and all the British attorneys, have so loudly told us, is the great cause of the "artificial and exorbi-, tantly high prices" of staple goods. It lies' on the merchant's counter, side by side. with the competing western-made woolens, enhanced in cost by higher raw material, and threefold higher wages, and a tariff which the Post estimates at something like 285 per cent." Fortunately, we had an opportunity to test this where farmers trade, the very class to whom the Post directs its shallow, unpatriotic sophisms.

66

"We

We visited a flourishing store in one of our largest inland cities, which can secure goods as cheaply as Chicago. The merchant knew just what we meant by lions cloth. He explained how it was of two kinds, single and double-faced, and that the latter was decidedly heavier and better than the other. On weighing a piece of the better quality we found it weighed, as stated, two pounds to the yard, double width. But the questions of durability and cheapness are of more importance than mere weight. "Do the farmers and workingmen buy this cloth, and how do they like it?" have sold it to them for cloaks and overcoats mainly, but they don't like it. After a little, it cracks open and falls to pieces. There is no wear in it. We were deceived, for it looked like warm, substantial goods." On inquiring the price, we found that this better quality retailed last winter for $3 a yard, the wholesale merchant in New York charging $2.25 for it, although he purchased it for somewhat less in the auction room. But the question for us is, what did the farmer pay? Any Free Trader in argument would assume that goods cost us in the West, duty free, no more than in England, with fair profits and freights added. Thus, the Chicago Tribune says that woolen blankets are made in England for 25 cents a pound, and could be sold, under free trade, at 30 cents in the United States. Here is a good test of their theory. Cloth, which retails at a profit in England of 73 cents, gold, was sold last winter to our farmers, nearly duty free, for $2.25 gold. On examining the cloth, we found it was made by weaving coarse hair filling into a cheap cotton warp. It is weak, rotten, worthless-just such cheap goods as England is famous for making, with which to undersell honest manufacturers, instead of being adapted to "the hard-working, industrious class, who wear clothes for comfort and use, and not for mere show." It is a crime and an insult to sell such

goods to a workingman at any price. While it has some claim to mere show," it has neither comfort nor use in its make-up While in this store, a worthy Baptist clergyman came in, from his home, in a prosperous farming community, a few miles out. He had purchased an overcoat from this very piece, last winter, and hence was a more competent witness than the theoretical editor of the Evening Post. He said he bought it in January last. After a little the nap peeled off, it pulled off, it pulled apart wherever any wear came upon it, and was the meanest piece of shoddy he ever saw. Side by side, with this rotten British goods, lie the strong and genuine fabrics of our Western looms, which will wear for years without a rent, selling for not one penny higher, than this trash sold for. Two dollars will buy a larger surface, and tenfold more wear, in Western woolens, than three dollars purchased of “this poor lions cloth" last winter.

We have taken up this case, partly because it was chosen by a Free Trader to advocate his cause, and partly because it shows some simple facts of value to the farmers which Free Traders always ignore. -Note these points:

1. What goods can be made for in England is no criterion of what they would be sold for in this country under free trade: lions cloth 73 cents in England, and $2.25, gold, to the Western farmer.

2. Note the falsehood of the constant assertion, that the tariff enhances the price of staple woolen goods. Western goods of pure wool are sold cheaper to Western farmers than British shoddy under free

trade.

3. Observe the farmer's account in the two cases. When he pays $2.25 a yard for lions cloth, he buys so much labor, food and raw material of a nation that wants none of his wool and little of his labor or food; while $1.52 in gold is paid as a useless tax to useless middle-men. When he wants a Western overcoat, he finds that fifteen pounds of wool in his lumber wagon will exchange for as much cloth, of vastly superion quality, as thirty pounds bought of British shoddy under free trade. He has no useless taxes to pay to middle-men, and has a factory village to feed in the bargain.

4. If this lions cloth had paid the alleged duty of $1.25 per yard, and 72 cents to the manufacturer, it would have left sufficient profits for the middle-men at the prices it has brought in the West.

We sincerely hope Mr. Hooper's amend ment may succeed, and that it may prove prohibitory to this sham cloth, which belongs,

with shoddy, in the land that invent

ed it. After laboring to perpetuate this swindle on-Western farmers, and abuse of honest

| Western manufacturers, the Post piously concludes by saying: "The salvation of the public morals, as well as the interests of the public at large, and the cause of commer? cial justice, unite in demanding a reform o the tariff system, by which a people are firs cheated and then oppressed."

THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLE-
MENT OF IRELAND.*

This book, of which we are glad to wel come a second and enlarged edition, tell one of the strangest stories in all history and, when we say that it accounts for the present condition of Ireland with a clear ness displayed by no other work, it is the same as saying that it throws light on ond of the darkest and most serious problems o modern society, for the condition of Ireland is actually putting in peril at this momen. the dearest interests of both England and America. The "Curse of Cromwell," i

short, has lighted on and followed over the earth not only the Celts, whom he sought to extirpate, but the Anglo-Saxons, whom he sought to serve.

Mr. Prendergast was five years ago ap pointed, with Dr. Russell, the President of. Maynooth College, on a commission to ex amine the great body of historical paper known as the Carte Collection, and deposit, ed in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The Carte Collection contains the Ormonde Papers, or letters and documents, public and private, connected with the governmen of Ireland during the Duke of Ormonde'. connection with it, from 1641 down to hi death in 1688, with the exception of te: years, from 1650 to 1660, passed in exil, with the king. From the Restoration unti his death, Ormonde was in effect Lor Lieutenant of Ireland, and was the recip ient of all the petitions, plaints, and remon strances presented by those whom the wars confiscations, and settlements of the Com monwealth had wronged. With the aid of this collection, and of various family paper never before examined, Mr. Prendergass. has been able to set before us, with curiou and instructive minuteness, the real nature and results of the great social and politica revolution known as the Cromwellian settle ment of Ireland.

were

The war in Ireland, begun by Cromwel in 1649, was ended in 1653. The Irish put down much as the Indians on the Western plains are now put down, by wholes sale massacre and by the destruction of their crops and cattle. During the last two years, their resistance consisted simply o guerrilla warfare, in which, owing to the nature of the country, they were very suc

"THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT OF IRE LAND. By John Prendergast, Barrister at Law. Second edition, enlarged. London: Longmans, 1870