Subscriber.
Answer.—“Tin plates” are plates of sheet-iron or soft steel, coated with tin, used chiefly for making household and dairy utensils, and for cans of all sorts. “Terne plates” are iron or soft steel sheets, coated with mixed lead and tin, used for roofing and similar purposes. About 95 to 98 per cent of these products are iron or steel, the tin and lead coating constituting the remaining 2 to 5 per cent. Soft steel is used chiefly now, because the quality required can be made cheaper than in iron, is more homogeneous and solid, and less liable to blister in the tinning processes. The association above named claims that the British plates imported to this country are “of poor quality, meanly coated, and, if low priced, are wasteful in the end.” That if home manufacture of such plates were encouraged by as heavy a tariff as is put upon other forms of finished iron—say 50 per cent, instead of only 15 to 30 per cent, as at present—American competition would act in this case as it has done in other classes of “protected industry,” to improve the qualities and ultimately to reduce the actual cost of the goods. But it is not only in these respects that it would benefit the country, says this association, but in bringing out the buried resources of our own mines and increasing the home market for American goods and American labor. The extra cost of American labor is, after all, accounted for mainly by the better manner of living of American laborers; their earnings are distributed among the American consumers of their wares, instead of being sent abroad to pay foreign laborers, while the native products utilized are so much clear gain. The tin, a small percentage of the sheets as above shown, would be imported to this country directly from Australia or the Dutch East Indies and “Straits Settlements,” but aside from this the materials used would be American products. In 1882 there were 480,596,480 pounds of British tin and terne plates sold in the United States, valued at $18,000,000 at Liverpool, and costing about $2,000,000 more for transportation. For this tin the American consumers paid about $30,000,000. To produce this in the United States would cost about as follows:
| Tin (to be Imported), lbs | 25,000,000 |
| Tallow, home product, lbs | 10,000,000 |
| Sulphuric acid, lbs | 30,000,000 |
| Lead, lbs | 5,000,000 |
| Iron ore, tons | 850,000 |
| Limestone, tons | 300,000 |
| Coal, tons | 1,500,000 |
| Pig iron, tons | 300,000 |
| Charcoal, bu | 5,000,000 |
| Labor | $12,000,000 |
| Interest on $30,000,000, capital invested in machinery | 1,800,000 |
| Cost of repairs | 1,000,000 |
| Oils and lubricants | 100,000 |
| Insurance and taxes | 1,000,000 |
The whole of this amount, excepting the cost of the 25,000,000 pounds of tin ore, or “block tin,” would be produced and the money involved kept at home. Such is the substance of the arguments used by the American Tinned Plate Association to induce Congress to increase the tariff on “tin and terne plates.”
DEATH RATE OF CITIES.
New Orleans, La.
Will you state the death rate in the principal cities of America and Europe?
E. C.
Answer.—The following represents the number of deaths per annum in the United States out of 1,000 inhabitants, according to the census of 1879: New York, 25.82; Boston, 19.80; Philadelphia, 17.20; Chicago, 17.20; St. Louis, 18.19; New Orleans, 21.60. The deaths per 1,000 in the following European cities were as follows: London, 22.83; Berlin, 27.81; Paris, 22.04.