REVERTING TO HISTORIC PARALLELS.

In 1824 the effort was still being made in Europe as it had long been in Great Britain to prevent the distribution of information and the knowledge of inventions in manufacturing. It had been a penal offence in the early part of the century, prior to 1824, and even I believe up to 1842, to take drawings or examples of many kinds of machinery out of Great Britain. True, the iron industry and the textile manufacture already existed in this country in very considerable development and, as Hamilton in 1791 and Webster in 1820 proved, on a very solid basis, having become established as infant manufactures during the colonial period in spite of the efforts of Great Britain to suppress them; but it was held that they required a certain Edition: current; Page: [51] so-called “reasonable measure of Protection” by way of duties on foreign imports of fabrics of like kinds, in order to offset the lower wages which prevailed in other countries; it being then erroneously assumed that the cost of labor per unit of product might be measured or established by reference to the rates of wages. That error in regard to the relation of rates of wages to the cost of labor still prevails.

There has been much discussion about promoting diversity of occupation or employment under a protective tariff. A very slight investigation proves that the effect of a protective tariff, so far as it is operative, has been rather to restrict than to promote diversity of employment.

All the more conspicuous and important arts in whose behalf it has been mainly advocated were well established in the United States long before Hamilton’s tariff, even in the colonies before the Revolution. The cotton industry came later, even before the invention of the cotton gin in this country, an invention which would naturally have led to the establishment of spinning and weaving here whether there had been any Protection or not. Hamilton himself advocated a remission of the duty of three cents a pound upon cotton in 1791, in order to promote the more rapid development of the cotton manufacture in this country where it was already established.

No art of any conspicuous importance, requiring skill, aptitude, and intelligence in their application to machinery, has yet been established in this country merely as a result of the adoption of a high tariff. It is possible that there are some minor branches of industry of which the corresponding import has been cut off by almost prohibitive duties which may have been brought here in consequence; but no distinct branch of manufacturing of any relative Edition: current; Page: [52] or considerable importance has ever been added to the occupations before existing here, under any tariff imposing high rates of duty.

There is a natural diversity of occupation which establishes itself. Its course may be traced throughout this country itself, in which we have the widest application of absolute Free Trade among the largest number of persons who were ever permitted to enjoy the privilege. It will be observed that the more free the conditions, the more fully each section adapts itself to its own work; but nevertheless in every State there exists a certain ratio of occupations, more manufacturing in the East, more agriculture in the West and South.

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