"We must become manufacturers, as well as producers from the soil, and build up eities and towns of muuufacturers and operatives who will purchase our meat and our bread, without the deduction of high transportation, and sell to us shoes and clothing and, if needs be, wines and cigars, without the addition of transportion and the protits of importers and one or more middle merchants. Thus we will keep our coin at home and be independent of other nations. Otherwise we must necessarily become, as a people, what an improvident farmer becomes, who sells his grain at low prices to pay, at high prices, for the comforts and luxuries of life."

JAMES M. COOPER, of Pittsburgh, writes

that:

"The farmer, miner, mechanic, laborer and manufacturer are all wedded to the same destiny, and the interests of all must flourish or languish together, as the wisdom of our law. givers shall or shall not afford adequate protection to American industry."

Men of America, choose between the words of these great Americans and the British cry of free trade.

Farmers, mechanics, mauufacturers, there is uo conflict of interest between you. Each for all, all for each," is the divine law, in political economy, as well as in ethics or religion.

The permaneat success of one branch of industry is only secured by the prosperity of all.

RESOLUTIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR CONGRESS.

Mr. HEWITT, Commissioner to the Paris Ex position, sent by our Government to examine iron and steel matters, says the difference in cost of iron making here and in England is the wages, which are more than double here; and in other manufactures we find from best authority, the difference is from 25 to 75 per cent. But the assertion is made, that, considering cost of living in our country, the English and European workmen are as well off as here.

When we find as many children in our poorhouses as in our schools, when the tide of immigration, made up of working people coming here to better their condition, ceases, when one in twenty of our people are paupers, these assertions may be correct. Now, the working people of our country know they are not, as is seen by their resolve passed in Philadelphia by the National Labor Congress, representing 500,000 workers, in August last:

"Whereas, The price of American labor is above the wages paid for labor in other countries; and

Whereas, The products of the cheaper labor of foreign countries, when imported into the United States, compete with the productions of American labor in our home markets, to the manifest injury of our workingmen, thereby decreasing enterprise, industrial independence and diversity of employments, and tending to degrade our labor and force down the wages of American workingmen to the level of ill-paid millions of Europe; therefore, be it

"Resolved, That we demand such adjustment

of the duties on all commodities produced by the labor of foreign countries as will adequately protect American labor, and restrain the excessive importation of manufactures from abroad, while we have the raw material, the skill and the ability to produce the same commodities in our own country."

WHAT BRITISH FREE TRADE MEANS.

In a speech in the House of Lords, Lord GODERICH said: "Other nations knew, as well as the noble lord opposite, and those who acted with him, that what we (the English) meant by free trade, was nothing more nor less than

by means of the great advantages we enjoyed, to get the monopoly of all their markets for our manufactures, and to prevent them, one and all, from ever becoming manufacturing nations."

The policy that France acted on was that of encouraging its native manufactures, and it was a wise policy; because, if it were freely to admit our manufactures, it would speedily be reduced to an agricultural nation, and therefore a poor nation, as all must be that depend exclusively upon agriculture."

So we learn from this precious revelation, that "British free trade" REALLY MEANS THE MONOPOLY OF ALL MARKETS, AND THE BREAKING DOWN OF ALL MANUFACTURES, EXCEPT THEIR OWN. This English nobleman has at least the merit of frankue:s

Lord Brougham, in the House of Commons, made the benevolent statement that "England could afford to bear some loss on the export of ber goods, for the purpose of destroying foreign manufactures in their cradle."

WHO PAYS?

It is no part of my intent or wish to make wholesale charges against believers in free trade; but who lead and furnish the "sinews of war" for this movement? Let us see. Of the $42,000 raised in May, 1869, for the Free Trade League in New York, as given by themselves, we find contributors as follows: A. B. Sands & Co., drug importers, relatives of the London bankers-Baring Brothers, $6,257; H. Marshall, Treasurer of the League, agent of Black Ball line of Liverpool packets, foreign banker, $5,500; Grinnell, Minturn & Co., Minturn brother-in-law to Baring, $3.800; Messrs. Pell, Liverpool and London Globe Insurance Co., $842; Naylor & Co., English steel house, $500; Mall & Co., importers, Mall, Belgian Consul, $500; George Ward, banker, agent Baring Brothers, $500, and so on through, $30,000 paid by men closely linked with foreign interests. These men are simply taking shrewd care of themselves and their kin, that is all.

It this can be done consistently with our country's good, all well; but it is a little singular that these gentlemen, of foreign connections are so much more solicitous for American interests than men of wealth not thus linked with British movements and ideas. The London Mining Journal says: "If this League succeeds in the United States we may hope for a very large trade with that country.”

It recalls the days of 1846, when men in Glasgow and Manchester subscribed $100,000 to lower our tariff, and some of them were foolish enough afterward to say they more than got their money back by breaking down our factories, and then selling us goods at their own prices.

ures are confined to coal and salt and iron and wool rather than to silk, spices, flax, and tin. Tin is used in every habitation of the land. It is the poor man's plate; it is to be found on every breakfast table and in every kitchen and dairy, and in the hand of every child. We hear no complaint of the duty upon that. Silk in some form enters into the dress of every woman, and flax forms part of the dress of almost everybody, and yet we hear no complaint of the duty on either silk or flax. The pepper which stands on our tables side by side with the salt is taxed, without complaint, at 288 per cent, and other important spices even higher. Now, why have we heard no whisper against the duty on those articles? I ask gentlemen to ponder that question and to take time to answer it. I will give my answer, and gentlemen cau consider whether it is the true one or not. The reason of the difference I think is found in the fact that we produce in this country coal, salt, irou, and wool so as to establish a market price to which, the imported article must conform; while of tin, spices, flax, and silk we either produce nothing or our production is not such as to establish the price or to compete with the imported articles. Hence, upon the former articles the duty falls on the importer; upon the latter, on the consumer. The one paid by the British producer makes him grumble, the other paid by ourselves he regards with indifference."

THE REAL POINT AT ISSUE

Is the possession of the American market, and the struggle is between the domestic and the foreign producer. The latter annually watches with jealousy all legislation tending to foster a competing hou e industry. When there is no such competing home industry he looks upon our tariff as a burden imposed upon ourselves, in which he has no share. Hence, he seeks to persuade us that coal and iron and salt and wool should be admitted to our market in free competition with the same articles of our own production; and is quite content to let us tax his tin and spices and flax and 'silk, with which we are unable to compete. He has the market for these articles and can fix his own price upon them..

IS THE TARIFF A TAX?

A tariff is a sum of money exacted from the importation of foreign merchandise. It is a duty, not a tax, a burden in rem and not in personam, enforced when necessary by a proceeding against the property itself. Тахев, duties, imposts, and excises," is the language of the Constitution, never tautological. But it is assumed that the importer, in turn, exacts it from the citizen to whom he sells; or, to state the proposition differently, that the tariff invariably and necessarily forms a part of the price and is paid by the consumer. Aud it is insisted that the price of all like articles of domestic production is equally enhanced as a necessary effect of the tariff; that the duty of $125 per ton on bituminous coal, for instance, increases the price just so much to the consumers not only of the 100,000 tons imported from England and the 230,000 from Nova Scotia, but of the 4,000,000, tons from the mines of the United States; and it is further argued that while the Government receives but $412,500 duty on the coal imported, the American miners receive on their produc

It

tion $5,000,000, and that it all comes from the hard-used, over-taxed consumers. This has been asserted so often, with respect especially to coal, salt, iron and wool, that a belief has resulted from the continued reiteration. would follow, then, as a corollary, that no duty should be imposed upon these articles, or indeed upon any others that compete with the growth or production of our own country.

If this doctrine is true of these articles, it is true of all others; for example of butter cheese, potatoes, and wheat. The duty on butter and cheese is 4 cents per pound, on potatoes 25 cents per bushel, and on wheat 20 cents per bushel. Now, will any man be bold enough or reckless enough to assert that the duty of four cents per pound upon butter enhances to the consumers by so much the price not only of the 6,650,000 pounds imported from Canada, but also of the entire produce of our own dairies; or that the like duty of 4 cents per pound on cheese adds 4 cents per pound to the consumption prices of American cheese as well as of the 1,500,000 pounds imported from Canada, the 1,175,000 pounds from France, and the 250,000 pounds from England; or that the duty of 20 cents per bushel on wheat adds that sum or any sum to the price either of American wheat, or of the 1,500,000 bushels imported from Canada; or lastly that the duty of 25 ccrts per bushel on potatoes is an addition of 25 cents a bushel to the market price of out whole potato crop, as well as of the 170,000 bushels imported from Nova Scotia? The folly of such an assertion would be so apparent as to impose upon nobody; it would be a subject of universal ridicule.

THE TARIFF NOT SECTIONAL OR PARTIAL IN ITS OPERATIONS.

A few days ago a gentleman from Illinois (Mr. MARSHALL), my associate on the Committee of Ways and Means, introduced into the House a resolution denunciatory, among other things, of a tariff "levied to foster and enrich one section of our country at the expense of others, or to foster and enrich one class of citizens at the expense of others." While it is not asserted that the present tarift is of this character, yet if that was not the import of the resolutions they have no meaning; they are idle abstractions. The tariff was so long and so persistently represented by a certain school of politicians as an ingenious device to enrich New England, especially Massachusetts, at the expense of the rest of the country, and particularly of the South, that a great many people believed it. Many still believe it. To their minds it is simply a villainous Yankee contrivance to tax the whole country, especially the Southern people.

The constant reiteration of this idea for many years, and in every form, accustomed the people of that region to consider themselves greatly oppressed, and to look upon secession and disunion as the only means of relief. This kind of agitation had been used in 1862, and before to unsettle South Carolina and involve her in nullification. It had much to do in fomenting the late rebellion. And I admonish those gentlemen here and elsewhere, who are scattering the same fire-brands over the West, whether for partisan or personal ends, to beware lest they kindle a tire as destructive to themselves and their region as that which has so recently desolated the South.

It is true that New England has engaged very largely and successfully in manufactures. In some branches she is unrivalled. Her cơtton manufacture has attained to such excellence that the London Times refers to the "superiority of American minufactures " as among the obstacles to the prosperity of English cotton-looms; and for years our fabrics have enjoyed such pre eminence in India that both Great Britain and Germany have resorted to counterfeiting our trade-marks to gain admission into that market. But it is no dispar. agement to New England to affirm that she is not the only or the principal seat of manufac tures in the country. However it may have been 40 years ago, or 25 years ago, it is not so now. Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati are literally vast workshops, in which are produced almost every conceivable requisite for health and sickness, business, pleasure, and comfort, peace and war; while scattered over the middle States, the West, and the South are a multitude of establishments, some large, others smil, employing thousands of people, and all busy in fashioning raw materials into forms adapted to the supply of human wants.

At the woolen exhibition of 1868 in Chicago there were represented nearly 30 different milis in Illinois alone. The surrounding States of Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and others were not unrepresented. During the last summer there was held in Cincinnati an exbibition of textile fabrics for the West and South, at which were displayed fabrics in great variety from, I be lieve, every western State, including Califor nia and the Territory of Utah, from Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, in the South. It is now full 50 years since the Edinburgh Review propounded the famous question, "Who sleeps in American blankets?" Now comparatively few in this country sleep in any but American; and the blank. ets of the Pacific coast and the cotton blankets of Georgia are unrivaled in commerce. Flannels of superior texture and quality are sold in the bazaars of this city woven in the mills of central Iowa, and the dress silks of New Jersey compete in excellence with the silks of Lyons. This list of successtul manu facture might be extended to the watches of Elgin and Waltham, better, I am reliably informed, than any foreign time-keepers of similar construction and price; and in fact indefinitely, and into almost every branch of industry.

Let it not be supposed, however, that these results have been reached without great effort and sacrifice. The history of American manufactures is a dreary narrative of bold, unaided endeavors by men who had little else than skill and a purpose; of costly but useless experiment; of discouragement, disappointment, failure repeated and disastrous; of penury, want, and suffering. And when success crowned the work, the community at large were benefited rather than they whose genius and patient toil had accomplished it. A popular clamor is attempted against the men engaged in this kind of production. They are represented as monopolists with overgrown fortunes, acquiring fabulous wealth at the expense of those who purchase and use their products.

Mr. Chairman, it happened about two years ago that I went on a special mission to the

State of New Hampshire, for the purpose of instructing, or rather of disinstructing her people concerning certain heresies which our friends on the other side had been attempting industriously to inculcate. I saw the people in their various avocations, and I came back instructed. I made the acquaintance of these monopolists, of whom we have heard so much. I saw them at work in the manufacture of wool and cotton and iron; in building the famous Concord wagons, found in all parts of the country, even in the canons of the Rocky mountains; in dragging the mountain birches from the cliffs and crumbling them into shoepegs, mesurel by the bushel and sold by tae barrel. I saw women engaged in the finer and nicer process of manufacture, while men were employed in the heavier and coarser; I saw them at their work cheerful and industrious; I saw them as they went, and I saw them on their return; and always the same cheerful and buoyant spirit.

I saw their children on the way to school, decently clad, with satchel and shining morning face, and school-house that might well pass for a temple or a palace. I saw then at church; I saw them at political meetingspeople of the highest self-respect, and not deficient in intelligence and cultivation, raised by honest labor far above the hard conditions of poverty, the hardest of which, according to the satirist, is the ridiculous shifts necessary to mike the two ends inect. These were the monopolists of the country, the people who live by manufactures and work by machinery! There were other monopolists. I remember a young man, not 30 years of age, receiving a salary greater than is paid to us as members of Congress. He was at the head of a large calico printing establishment, which by his genius he was able to organize and keep in operation. This was one of God's monopolists, endowed by his Maker with a cunning brain to understand things beyond the reach of other men. His talents here found employment, profitable to himself and useful to the world.

While the Committee of Ways and Means were conducting their examination in Boston the last season, some pains was taken to ascertain the profits upon capital employed in manufactures there in the neighboring region, where the received opinion is that such capital has enjoyed the largest returns. For this purpose a number of witnesses were examined, men of great experience and high social position. Their testimony was, that taking a series of years together, the aggregate of capital invested in manufacturing enterprises of the different kinds had not yielded a return exceeding the lawful rate of interest; while upon manufacturing carried on upon borrowed money there had been no profit. Now compare this with the profits of banking, with the enormous mercantile incomes annually reported for taxation, reaching in some instances to millions, and we see how unfounded is the invidious clamor raised in the name of free trade and iu the interest of those very bankers and merchants who have grown opulent by dealing in foreign exchange and imported merchandise.

THE EFFECT OF THE PROTECTIVE POLICY IN THE SOUTH.

But it is especially as the representative of a Southern constituency that I advocate the

policy of protecting and fostering our manufactures. The opposite doctrine had prevailed for a whole generation prior to the war; and during the war we experienced the bitter consequences Isolated from the rest of the world, seaward by the blockade and landward by the military lines, we endured privationS altogether incredible and difficult to appreciate. With 3,000 miles of sea-coast, and naval stores and material in abundance, we had neither ships nor seamen. With an unsimited

supply of cotton, and wool, and hides, and oak bark, and falling waters, we had neither shirts, nor coats, nor blankets, nor shoes. But for the household industry prevalent in the South beyond other parts of the land, not a few would have been reduced to stark nakedness. Many ladies spun and wove the material for their own dresses and for the clothing of their families; professional gentlemen mace and mended shoes for their own and their neighbors' children.

re

This lesson is not likely to be unheeded by the South. Already the effects of protection are felt upon all her industries. Old works have been revived and paired, and many new ones have sprung up. The fabrication of cotton and woolen goods has been greatly stimulated; al: o the produetion of coal, salt, iron, copper, zine, lumber, and naval stores. Some of our spindles and looms have distanced competition from foreign or Northern rivals. And but a few years will elapse, with the same ercouragement and protection we now enjoy, before the South will export largely both of her testile fabrics and of the products of her mines, advanced to a condition for immediate use-articles which hitherto she has been accustomed to receive either from foreign countries or from the manufacturing districts of our own country.

The influence of a diversified industry bas been benign upon our great staples of cotton, tobacco, rice and sugar. Less labor has been engaged formerly in their cultivation, less capital employed, but more profitably; a larger return for smaller crops. Three million bales of cotton in 1869, at 25 cents, for instance, realize 50 per cert. more than 5.000,000 in 1860, at 10 cents; while the work of growing and handling is 50 per cent. less. The state of the coiton trade will appear more exactly from the following table, compiled from the Custom-house returns:

18.8..

1860..

COTTON EXPORTED.

Pounds. Bales. Value. .786,600.776 1,966,502 $195,962,197 ....722,618,929 1,06,547 187,762,477 It is further shown by the statistics of manufacture, that in 1869, there were spun in the United States 434,293,883 pounds, equal to 1,085,784 bales of 400 pounds each; so that at present we export something less than 2,000,000 bales, and consume something more than 1,000,000. Assuming as correct the figures giv n the other evening by the gentleman from Alabama, (Mr. Buckley,) the cotton spun in the United States, in 1869, amounted in value, after coming from the spindle, to $260,576,329. The value of the cotton crop for 1869 may be stated then, as follows: