With all his earnestness as a protectionist, he kept the interests of labor predominant in his consideration of this subject. For instance, in some remarks upon the lumber tariff, he said: "It is perfectly well known that the great value of lumber is in the labor and the transportation, and while we in the United States are paying our laborers (in lumber) $2 a day, they are in the British Provinces paying but from 75 cents to $1 per day." And he steadily voted for such protection of the lumber trade as would enable producers engaged in that business to pay large wages, and opposed every suggestion which looked to impoverishing or pauperizing the American artisan. He uniformly upheld American industry and labor of every kind against the competition of the world. He felt that the highest civilization can only be secured through that policy of industrial diversification which brings consumer and producer side by side, and he favored giving it the widest possible scope. He frequently declared, "I cannot vote to discriminate against any particular branch," and he firmly believed in protecting everything his country could produce. His vigilance in caring for all interests and his grasp of the practical details of tariff legislation will appear from one or two brief citations from speeches made in 1867 on proposed modifications of the Morrill tariff. The duty on pig-metal was then $9 per ton, and it was proposed in the new bill to admit scrap-iron on the payment of a duty of $3. On this proposition Mr. Chandler said:
The effect of this tariff will be to admit all the rails in the world into the United States at a duty of $3 a ton. We will become the recipients of all the scrap-iron in the world.... And the effect will be to put out every blast furnace in the United States, and stop the mining in every mountain in the country.... The expense of re-rolling bars is only about $30 a ton. You admit scrap-iron at this nominal duty, and the result will be to utterly destroy the revenue you now receive from iron—you will import nothing but at the duty of $3 per ton. This scrap-iron is worth two or three times as much as pig-metal. Pig-metal has to be puddled once. It costs to-day $28 per ton to put pig-metal into scrap, and yet you put a duty of $9 per ton on pig-metal and propose a mere nominal duty of $3 per ton on scrap.... This is absolutely abandoning the whole iron interests of the United States, save and excepting the rolling-mills.... The State of Pennsylvania takes about 300,000 tons of Lake Superior ore to mix with her inferior ore, and transports it by water 700 or 800 miles, and afterward by land carriage—a very expensive carriage—from 50 to 300 miles. This ore is mixed with the Pennsylvania ores, and transported then a long distance at very great expense. The demand for pig-iron is for rolling.... Calling material nothing, it costs the manufacturers $60 per ton of scrap-iron to take the ore and the coal from the mine and deliver at the works, every cent of which is labor.... There are in the world 100,000 miles of railroads, of which 36,000 are in the United States, and 64,000 in the rest of the world. These railroads are laid, on an average, with rails weighing 56 pounds to the yard, and use 49,000 tons net to the mile. This gives the 64,000 miles abroad 3,136,000 tons of iron. This has to be re-rolled on an average once in ten years; consequently one-tenth of this amount is let loose upon some country every year in the shape of scrap-iron. That would make the amount of railroad scrap alone 313,600 tons per annum, which it is proposed to admit at a duty of $3 a ton, and which it costs to-day $60 a ton to put in the form of scrap in the United States. This is Free Trade in the broadest sense. It is worse than that.... It will build up rolling-mills, but it will break down every forge in the United States.... It will stop our mines in Michigan that yield ores richer than any other in the world.... It will make this country the entrepôt for the scrap-iron of the world.
He would not build up the rolling-mill at the expense of the mine and the blast-furnace. He would not build up one industry upon the ruins of any other. His many speeches and his more numerous votes in the Senate all indicated the same clear purpose to avoid discrimination against home interests where possible, and to protect everything American against everything of foreign production.
One phase of this many-sided question which made a deep impression upon Mr. Chandler remains to be mentioned. In common with all thoughtful Americans, during the course of the rebellion he realized the priceless value of the large-brained, energetic and highly-skilled American mechanic. He had marked these men in every brigade, upon every field of the war, enabling commanders to overcome obstacles which without them would have been insurmountable. He had seen mills and factories and shops pouring into the storehouses of the government the multitudinous articles without which a successful prosecution of the war would have been impossible, and that, too, with a rapidity which was as amazing as it was unexampled. He was from his early manhood a strong protectionist. But when he realized what the American working-men had done for the country and for freedom, and how its protected trades had served the government in its hour of trial, he was still more confirmed in the wisdom of the system which fosters American industry and secures to the country the priceless heritage of prosperous and intelligent laborers and mechanics.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] The following letter is written by a gentleman thoroughly familiar with the history of tariff legislation at Washington for many years:
WASHINGTON, D. C., Jan. 5, 1880.
Some eight years ago, when a serious reduction in the copper tariff was proposed, I know that Mr. Chandler rendered valuable aid in bringing the facts before the Senate in his clear, terse way—going straight to the mark. Then, as always in practical matters, his prompt manner, his business knowledge, and his immense power of will made him the man to be called on, and he ever responded to the call, and had a power wonderful indeed to "push things." When the act to reduce internal revenue taxes—which had passed the House almost unanimously, and had been perfected by the mutual labors of Congressional committees and representative business men—was before the Senate for final action in March, 1868, an effort was made by Senator Fessenden, of Maine, to add to it as a "rider" a clause affecting the copper tariff, which would surely have delayed if not defeated the measure. Senator Chandler spoke ten minutes, putting concentrated power in his words, and showing the great importance of passing the act and the needless mischief that must come of saddling it with another question. He succeeded in defeating the Fessenden amendment, the act passed without it, and it reduced the annual burden of internal revenue taxation some $60,000,000 (all this internal).
The Senator's views on tariff legislation were broad and comprehensive, recognizing the interdependence of all branches of industry and the importance of such action as should bear with equal justice on all: knowing no East, nor West, nor South—no petty and narrow jealousy between farmer and merchant and manufacturer—but seeking the wise care and healthy growth o£ a varied home industry all over the land.
On these subjects he showed practical sagacity and the same moral courage and bold vigor that marked his great efforts for freedom and justice to all in the last and grandest year, which so nobly closed a public career which will live and grow in the minds of future generations. Very truly yours,