Who does not see that this sending out our great Industrial Interests unarmed and unshielded to battle against the mailclad legions opposed to them in the arena of Trade is to insure their destruction? It were just as wise to say that, because our people are brave, therefore they shall repel any invader without fire-arms, as to say that the restrictions of other nations ought not to be opposed by us because our artisans are skilful and our manufactures have made great advances. The very fact that our manufactures are greatly extended and improved is the strong reason why they should not be exposed to destruction. If they were of no amount or value, their loss would be less disastrous; but now the Five or Six Millions we should make on the cheaper importation of goods would cost us One Hundred Millions in the destruction of Manufacturing Property alone.
Yet this is but an item of our damage. The manufacturing classes feel the first effect of the blow, but it would paralyze every muscle of society. One hundred thousand artisans and laborers, discharged from our ruined factories, after being some time out of employment, at a waste of millions of the National wealth, are at last driven by famine to engage in other avocations,—of course with inferior skill and at an inferior price. The farmer, gardener, grocer, lose them as customers to meet them as rivals. They crowd the labor-markets of those branches of industry which we are still permitted to pursue, just at the time when the demand for their products has fallen off, and the price is rapidly declining. The result is just what we have seen in a former instance: all that any man may make by buying Foreign goods cheap, he loses ten times over by the decline of his own property, product, or labor; while to nine-tenths of the whole people the result is unmixed calamity. The disastrous consequences to a nation of the mere derangement and paralysis of its Industry which must follow the breaking down of any of its great Producing Interests have never yet been sufficiently estimated. Free Trade, indeed, assures us that every person thrown out of employment in one place or capacity has only to choose another; but almost every workingman knows from experience that such is not the fact,—that the loss of situation through the failure of his business is oftener a sore calamity. I know a worthy citizen who spent six years in learning the trade of a hatter, which he had just perfected in 1798, when an immense importation of foreign hats utterly paralyzed the manufacture in this country. He traveled and sought for months, but could find no employment at any price, and at last gave up the pursuit, found work in some other capacity, and has never made a hat since. He lives yet, and now comfortably, for he is industrious and frugal; but the six years he gave to learn his trade were utterly lost to him,—lost for the want of adequate and steady Protection to Home Industry. I insist that the Government has failed of discharging its proper and rightful duty to that citizen and to thousands, and tens of thousands who have suffered from like causes. I insist that, if the Government had permitted without complaint a foreign force to land on our shores and plunder that man’s house of the savings of six years of faithful industry, the neglect of duty would not have been more flagrant. And I firmly believe that the people of this country are One Thousand Millions of Dollars poorer at this moment than they would have been had their entire Productive Industry been constantly protected, on the principles I have laid down, from the formation of the Government till now. The steadiness of employment and of recompense thus secured, the comparative absence of constrained idleness, and the more efficient application of the labor actually performed, would have vastly increased the product,—would have improved and beautified the whole face of the country; and the Moral and Intellectual advantages thence accruing would alone have been inestimable. A season of suspension of labor in a community is usually one of aggravated dissipation, drunkenness, and crime.
But let me more clearly illustrate the effect of foreign competition in raising prices to the consumer. To do this, I will take my own calling for an example, because I understand that best; though any of you can apply the principle to that with which he may be better acquainted. I am a publisher of newspapers, and suppose I afford them at a cheap rate. But the ability to maintain that cheapness is based on the fact that I can certainly sell a large edition daily, so that no part of that edition shall remain a dead loss on my hands. Now, if there were an active and formidable Foreign competition in newspapers,—if the edition which I printed during the night were frequently rendered unsalable by the arrival of a foreign ship freighted with newspapers early in the morning,—the present rates could not be continued: the price must be increased or the quality would decline. I presume this holds equally good of the production of calicoes, glass, and penknives as of newspapers, though it may be somewhat modified by the nature of the article to which it is applied. That it does hold true of sheetings, nails, and thousands of articles, is abundantly notorious.
I have not burdened you with statistics,—you know they are the reliance, the stronghold, of the cause of Protection, and that we can produce them by acres. My aim has been to exhibit not mere collections of facts, however pertinent and forcible, but the laws on which those facts are based,—not the immediate manifestation, but the ever-living necessity from which it springs. The contemplation of these laws assures me that those articles which are supplied to us by Home Production alone are relatively cheaper than those which are rivalled and competed with from abroad. And I am equally confident that the shutting out of Foreign competition from our markets for other articles of general necessity and liberal consumption which can be made here with as little labor as anywhere would be followed by a corresponding result,—a reduction of the price to the consumer at the same time with increased employment and reward to our Producing Classes.
But, Mr. President, were this only on one side true,—were it certain that the price of the Home product would be permanently higher than that of the Foreign, I should still insist on efficient Protection, and for reasons I have sufficiently shown. Grant that a British cloth costs but $3 per yard, and a corresponding American fabric $4, I still hold that the latter would be decidedly the cheaper for us. The Fuel, Timber, Fruits, Vegetables, &c., which make up so large a share of the cost of the Home product, would be rendered comparatively valueless by having our workshops in Europe. I look not so much to the nominal price as to the comparative facility of payment. And, where cheapness is only to be attained by a depression of the wages of Labor to the neighborhood of the European standard, I prefer that it should be dispensed with. One thing must answer to another; and I hold that the farmers of this country can better afford, as a matter of pecuniary advantage, to pay a good price for manufactured articles than to obtain them lower through the depression and inadequacy of the wages of the artisan and laborer.
You will understand me, then, to be utterly hostile to that idol of Free Trade worship, known as Free or unlimited Competition. The sands of my hour are running low, and I cannot ask time to examine this topic more closely; yet I am confident I could show that this Free Competition is a most delusive and dangerous element of Political Economy. Bear with a brief illustration: At this moment, common shirts are made in London at the incredibly low price of three cents per pair. Should we admit these articles free of duty and buy them because they are so cheap? Free trade says Yes; but I say No! Sound Policy as well as Humanity forbids it. By admitting them, we simply reduce a large and worthy and suffering class of our population from the ability they now possess of procuring a bare subsistence by their labor to unavoidable destitution and pauperism. They must now subsist upon the charity of relatives or of the community,—unless we are ready to adopt the demoniac doctrine of the Free Trade philosopher Malthus, that the dependent Poor ought to be rigorously starved to death. Then what have we gained by getting these articles so exorbitantly cheap? or, rather, what have we not lost? The labor which formerly produced them is mainly struck out of existence; the poor widows and seamstresses among us must still have a subsistence; and the imported garments must be paid for: where are the profits of our speculation?
But even this is not the worst feature of the case. The labor which we have here thrown out of employment by the cheap importation of this article is now ready to be employed again at any price,—if not one that will afford bread and straw, then it must accept one that will produce potatoes and rubbish; and with the product some Free-Trader proceeds to break down the price and destroy the reward of similar labor in some other portion of the earth. And thus each depression of wages produces another, and that a third, and so on, making the circuit of the globe,—the aggravated necessities of the Poor acting and reacting upon each other, increasing the omnipotence of Capital and deepening the dependence of Labor, swelling and pampering a bloated and factitious Commerce, grinding down and grinding down the destitute, until Malthus’s remedy for Poverty shall become a grateful specific, and, amid the splendors and luxuries of an all-devouring Commercial Feudalism, the squalid and famished Millions, its dependants and victims, shall welcome death as a deliverer from their sufferings and despair.
I wish time permitted me to give a hasty glance over the doctrines and teachings of the Free Trade sophists, who esteem themselves the Political Economists, christen their own views liberal and enlightened, and complacently put ours aside as benighted and barbarous. I should delight to show you how they mingle subtle fallacy with obvious truth, how they reason acutely from assumed premises, which, being mistaken or incomplete, lead to false and often absurd conclusions,—how they contradict and confound each other, and often, from Adam Smith, their patriarch, down to McCulloch and Ricardo, either make admissions which undermine their whole fabric, or confess themselves ignorant or in the dark on points the most vital to a correct understanding of the great subject they profess to have reduced to a Science. Yet even Adam Smith himself expressly approves and justifies the British Navigation Act, the most aggressively Protective measure ever enacted,—a measure which, not being understood and seasonably counteracted by other nations, changed for centuries the destinies of the World,—which silently sapped and overthrew the Commercial and Political greatness of Holland,—which silenced the thunder of Van Tromp, and swept the broom from his mast-head. But I must not detain you longer. I do not ask you to judge of this matter by authority, but from facts which come home to your reason and your daily experience. There is not an observing and strong-minded mechanic in our city who could not set any one of these Doctors of the Law right on essential points. I beg you to consider how few great practical Statesmen they have ever been able to win to their standard,—I might almost say none; for Huskisson was but a nominal disciple, and expressly contravened their whole system upon an attempt to apply it to the Corn Laws; and Calhoun is but a Free-Trader by location, and has never yet answered his own powerful arguments in behalf of Protection. On the other hand, we point you to the long array of mighty names which have illustrated the annals of Statesmanship of modern times,—to Chatham, William Pitt, and the Great Frederick of Prussia; to the whole array of memorable French Statesmen, including Napoleon the first of them all; to our own Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison; to our two Clintons, Tompkins, to say nothing of the eagle-eyed and genial-hearted LIVING master-spirit [Henry Clay] of our time. The opinions and the arguments of all these are on record; it is by hearkening to and heeding their counsels that we shall be prepared to walk in the light of experience and look forward to a glorious National destiny. My friends! I dare not detain you longer. I commit to you the cause of the Nation’s Independence, of her Stability and her Prosperity. Guard it wisely and shield it well; for it involves your own happiness and the enduring welfare of your countrymen!
Henry A. Wise
Against Know-Nothingism, Sept. 18, 1852.