But not so fast—we have omitted one important element of the calculation. We have yet to see what effect the purchase of her cloth in Europe, as contrasted with its manufacture at home, will have on the price of her Agricultural staples. We have seen already that, in case she is forced to sell a portion of her surplus product in Europe, the price of that surplus must be the price which can be procured for it in England, less the cost of carrying it there. In other words: the average price in England being one dollar and ten cents, and the average cost of bringing it to New York being at least fifty cents and then of transporting it to England at least twenty-five more, the net proceeds to Illinois cannot exceed thirty-five cents per bushel. I need not more than state so obvious a truth as that the price at which the surplus can be sold governs the price of the whole crop; nor, indeed, if it were possible to deny this, would it at all affect the argument. The real question to be determined is, not whether the American or the British manufacturers will furnish the most cloth for the least cash, but which will supply the requisite quantity of Cloth for the least Grain in Illinois. Now we have seen already that the price of Grain at any point where it is readily and largely produced is governed by its nearness to or remoteness from the market to which its surplus tends, and the least favorable market in which any portion of it must be sold. For instance: If Illinois produces a surplus of five million bushels of Grain, and can sell one million of bushels in New York, and two millions in New England, and another million in the West Indies, and for the fifth million is compelled to seek a market in England, and that, being the remotest point at which she sells, and the point most exposed to disadvantageous competition, is naturally the poorest market, that farthest and lowest market to which she sends her surplus will govern, to a great extent if not absolutely, the price she receives for the whole surplus. But, on the other hand, let her Cloths, her wares, be manufactured in her midst, or on the junctions and waterfalls in her vicinity, thus affording an immediate market for her Grain, and now the average price of it rises, by an irresistible law, nearly or quite to the average of the world. Assuming that average to be one dollar, the price in Illinois, making allowance for the fertility and cheapness of her soil, could not fall below an average of seventy-five cents. Indeed, the experience of the periods when her consumption of Grain has been equal to her production, as well as that of other sections where the same has been the case, proves conclusively that the average price of her Wheat would exceed that sum.
We are now ready to calculate the profit and loss. Illinois, under Free Trade, with her “workshops in Europe,” will buy her cloth twenty-five cents per yard cheaper, and thus make a nominal saving of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in her year’s supply; but, she thereby compels herself to pay for it in Wheat at thirty-five instead of seventy-five cents per bushel, or to give over nine and one third bushels of Wheat for every yard under Free Trade, instead of four and a third under a system of Home Production. In other words, while she is making a quarter of a million dollars by buying her Cloth “where she can buy cheapest,” she is losing nearly Two Millions of Dollars on the net product of her Grain. The striking of a balance between her profit and her loss is certainly not a difficult, but rather an unpromising, operation.
Or, let us state the result in another form: She can buy her cloth a little cheaper in England,—Labor being there lower, Machinery more perfect, and Capital more abundant; but, in order to pay for it, she must not merely sell her own products at a correspondingly low price, but enough lower to overcome the cost of transporting them from Illinois to England. She will give the cloth-maker in England less Grain for her Cloth than she would give to the man who made it on her own soil; but for every bushel she sends him in payment for his fabric, she must give two to the wagoner, boatman, shipper, and factor who transport it thither. On the whole product of her industry, two-thirds is tolled out by carriers and bored out by Inspectors, until but a beggarly remnant is left to satisfy the fabricator of her goods.
And here I trust I have made obvious to you the law which dooms an Agricultural Country to inevitable and ruinous disadvantage in exchanging its staples for Manufactures, and involves it in perpetual and increasing debt and dependence. The fact, I early alluded to; is not the reason now apparent? It is not that Agricultural communities are more extravagant or less industrious than those in which Manufactures or Commerce preponderate,—it is because there is an inevitable disadvantage to Agriculture in the very nature of all distant exchanges. Its products are far more perishable than any other; they cannot so well await a future demand; but in their excessive bulk and density is the great evil. We have seen that, while the English Manufacturer can send his fabrics to Illinois for less than five per cent. on their first cost, the Illinois farmer must pay two hundred per cent. on his Grain for its transportation to English consumers. In other words: the English manufacturer need only produce his goods five per cent. below the American to drive the latter out of the Illinois market, the Illinoisan must produce wheat for one-third of its English price in order to compete with the English and Polish grain-grower in Birmingham and Sheffield.
And here is the answer to that scintillation of Free Trade wisdom which flashes out in wonder that Manufactures are eternally and especially in want of Protection, while Agriculture and Commerce need none. The assumption is false in any sense,—our Commerce and Navigation cannot live without Protection,—never did live so,—but let that pass. It is the interest of the whole country which demands that that portion of its Industry which is most exposed to ruinous foreign rivalry should be cherished and sustained. The wheat-grower, the grazier, is protected by ocean and land; by the fact that no foreign article can be introduced to rival his except at a cost for transportation of some thirty to one hundred per cent. on its value; while our Manufactures can be inundated by foreign competition at a cost of some two to ten per cent. It is the grain-grower, the cattle-raiser, who is protected by a duty on Foreign Manufactures, quite as much as the spinner or shoemaker. He who talks of Manufactures being protected and nothing else, might just as sensibly complain that we fortify Boston and New York and not Pittsburg and Cincinnati.
Again: You see here our answer to those philosophers who modestly tell us that their views are liberal and enlightened, while ours are benighted, selfish, and un-Christian. They tell us that the foreign factory-laborer is anxious to exchange with us the fruits of his labor,—that he asks us to give him of our surplus of grain for the cloth that he is ready to make cheaper than we can now get it, while we have a superabundance of bread. Now, putting for the present out of the question the fact that, though our Tariff were abolished, his could remain,—that neither England, nor France, nor any great manufacturing country, would receive our Grain untaxed though we offered so to take their goods,—especially the fact that they never did so take of us while we were freely taking of them,—we say to them, “Sirs, we are willing to take Cloth of you for Grain; but why prefer to trade at a ruinous disadvantage to both? Why should there be half the diameter of the earth between him who makes coats and him who makes bread, the one for the other? We are willing to give you bread for clothes; but we are not willing to pay two-thirds of our bread as the cost of transporting the other third to you, because we sincerely believe it needless and greatly to our disadvantage. We are willing to work for and buy of you, but not to support the useless and crippling activity of a falsely directed Commerce; not to contribute by our sweat to the luxury of your nobles, the power of your kings. But come to us, you who are honest, peaceable, and industrious; bring hither your machinery, or, if that is not yours, bring out your sinews; and we will aid you to reproduce the implements of your skill. We will give you more bread for your cloth here than you can possibly earn for it where you are, if you will but come among us and aid us to sustain the policy that secures steady employment and a fair reward to Home Industry. We will no longer aid to prolong your existence in a state of semi-starvation where you are; but we are ready to share with you our Plenty and our Freedom here.” Such is the answer which the friends of Protection make to the demand and the imputation; judge ye whether our policy be indeed selfish, un-Christian, and insane.
I proceed now to set forth my
Proposition IV. That Equilibrium between Agriculture, Manufactures and Commerce, which we need, can only be maintained by means of Protective Duties.
You will have seen that the object we seek is not to make our country a Manufacturer for other nations, but for herself,—not to make her the baker and brewer and tailor of other people, but of her own household. If I understand at all the first rudiments of National Economy, it is best for each and all nations that each should mainly fabricate for itself, freely purchasing of others all such staples as its own soil or climate proves ungenial to. We appreciate quite as well as our opponents the impolicy of attempting to grow coffee in Greenland or glaciers in Malabar,—to extract blood from a turnip or sunbeams from cucumbers. A vast deal of wit has been expended on our stupidity by our acuter adversaries, but it has been quite thrown away, except as it has excited the hollow laughter of the ignorant as well as thoughtless. All this, however sharply pushed, falls wide of our true position. To all the fine words we hear about “the impossibility of counteracting the laws of Nature,” “Trade Regulating itself,” &c., &c., we bow with due deference, and wait for the sage to resume his argument. What we do affirm is this, that it is best for every nation to make at home all those articles of its own consumption that can just as well—that is, with nearly or quite as little labor—be made there as anywhere else. We say it is not wise, it is not well, to send to France for boots, to Germany for hose, to England for knives and forks, and so on; because the real cost of them would be less,—even though the nominal price should be slightly more,—if we made them in our own country; while the facility of paying for them would be much greater. We do not object to the occasional importation of choice articles to operate as specimens and incentives to our own artisans to improve the quality and finish of their workmanship,—where the home competition does not avail to bring the process to its perfection, as it often will. In such cases, the rich and luxurious will usually be the buyers of these choice articles, and can afford to pay a good duty. There are gentlemen of extra polish in our cities and villages who think no coat good enough for them which is not woven in an English loom,—no boot adequately transparent which has not been fashioned by a Parisian master. I quarrel not with their taste: I only say that, since the Government must have Revenue and the American artisan should have Protection, I am glad it is so fixed that these gentlemen shall contribute handsomely to the former, and gratify their aspirations with the least possible detriment to the latter. It does not invalidate the fact nor the efficiency of Protection that foreign competition with American workmanship is not entirely shut out. It is the general result which is important, and not the exception. Now, he who can seriously contend, as some have seemed to do, that Protective Duties do not aid and extend the domestic production of the articles so protected might as well undertake to argue the sun out of the heavens at mid-day. All experience, all common sense, condemn him. Do we not know that our Manufactures first shot up under the stringent Protection of the Embargo and War? that they withered and crumbled under the comparative Free Trade of the few succeeding years? that they were revived and extended by the Tariffs of 1824 and ’28? Do we not know that Germany, crippled by British policy, which inundated her with goods yet excluded her grain and timber, was driven, years since, to the establishment of her “Zoll-Verein” or Tariff Union,—a measure of careful and stringent Protection, under which Manufactures have grown up and flourished through all her many States? She has adhered steadily, firmly, to her Protective Policy, while we have faltered and oscillated; and what is the result? She has created and established her Manufactures; and in doing so has vastly increased her wealth and augmented the reward of her industry. Her public sentiment, as expressed through its thousand channels, is almost unanimous in favor of the Protective Policy; and now, when England, finding at length that her cupidity has overreached itself,—that she cannot supply the Germans with clothes refuse to buy their bread,—talks of relaxing her Corn-Laws in order to coax back her ancient and profitable customer, the answer is, “No; it is now too late. We have built up Home Manufactures in repelling your rapacity,—we cannot destroy them at your caprice. What guarantee have we that, should we accede to your terms, you would not return again to your policy of taking all and giving none so soon as our factories had crumbled into ruin? Besides, we have found that we can make cheaper—really cheaper—than we were able to buy,—can pay better wages to our laborers, and secure a better and steadier market for our products. We are content to abide in the position to which you have driven us. Pass on!”
But this is not the sentiment of Germany alone. All Europe acts on the principle of self-protection; because all Europe sees its benefits. The British journals complain that, though they have made a show of relaxation in their own Tariff, and their Premier has made a Free Trade speech in Parliament, the chaff has caught no birds; but six hostile Tariffs—all Protective in their character, and all aimed at the supremacy of British Manufactures—were enacted within the year 1842. And thus, while schoolmen plausibly talk of the adoption and spread of Free Trade principles, and their rapid advances to speedy ascendency, the practical man knows that the truth is otherwise, and that many years must elapse before the great Colossus of Manufacturing monopoly will find another Portugal to drain of her life-blood under the delusive pretence of a commercial reciprocity. And, while Britain continues to pour forth her specious treatises on Political Economy, proving Protection a mistake and an impossibility through her Parliamentary Reports and Speeches in Praise of Free Trade, the shrewd statesmen of other nations humor the joke with all possible gravity, and pass it on to the next neighbor; yet all the time take care of their own interests, just as though Adam Smith had never speculated nor Peel soberly expatiated on the blessings of Free Trade, looking round occasionally with a curious interest to see whether anybody was really taken in by it.