Friendly sermons to the protectionist manufacturers of the United States

Head One of These Sermons FRIENDLY SERMONS TO THE R0TECTI0N1ST MANUFACTURERS UNITED STATES T . S . MOORE III NEW YORK & LONDON G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS &|)e Jnickcrbocher |}«ss 1886 PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. Relating to Finance, Currency, Banking, etc. HONEST MONEY AND LABOR. An Essay by the Hon. Car( Schurz, Secretary of the Interior. Being No. n of the series of " Economic Monographs." Octavo . . . . . z4 AN ALPHABET IN FINANCE. By Graham McAdam. With introduction by R. R. Bowker. i2mo, cloth . . . $1 25 " This volume has been planned to present in clear and readable shape the first principles or A B C of Financial Science." " It is the kind of book that should be heartily welcomed, as it presents facts and unfailing laws relating to the principles of money, without dictating harsh means to carry out personal views." — Pittsburg Commercial. " If any people of the whole world need to be versed in the science of noney, it is the people of the United States.'*— Louisville Courier-Journal. MONEY AND LEGAL TENDER IN THE UNITED STATES. By Henry R. Linderman, Director of the the United States Mint. i2mo, cloth $1 25 "The various legislative provisions with regard to the coinage of money and the regulation of currency in the United States, are treated in this valuable essay with con- venient brevity, but with great precision and clearness."— A?". Y. Tribune. THE CURRENCY QUESTION from a Southern point of view. Being an argument against the Inflationists and the Supporters of State banks and local money. By Robt. W. Hughes, U. S. Judge. i2mo, cloth $1 25 ** A work of exceptional value, that should find a large circulation "—Hartford Post. LABOR AND CAPITAL, By John B. Jervis. A complete anc comprehensive treatise by the veteran engineer, whose experience of more than half a century has given him exceptional opportunities for arriving at a practical understanding of the questions at issue between employer and employee. i2mo, cloth . . . . $1 25 " His remarks are always opportune as well as pointed, and the terse simplicity of his style evinces the sincerity of his purpose and the lucidity of his mind." — N. Y. Tribune. ECONOMICS; or the Science of Wealth. By Prof. J. M. Sturtevant. A Treatise on Political Economy for the use of High Schools and Colleges, and for the general reader. 121110, . $1 75 * * * " There is nothing vague or uncertain in his (Mr. Sturtevant's) reason- ing. He is comprehensible from beginning to end. As a text-book of political economy, we think it will take precedence of all others.'*— />vy Whig. Mead One of These Sermons Friendly Sermons TO THE Protectionist Manufacturers OP THE UNITED STATES BY J. S. MOORE PUBLISHED FOR THE COUNCIL FOR TARIFF REFORM BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 1886 Press of G. P. Putnam's Sons New York CONTENTS. PAGE Introductory 5 Hard Times 7 Iron 12 The Woolen Trade 17 Hats and Caps 23 The Clothing Industry 28 Silk and Suffering 33 Spool Thread 40 The Taxes on Medicines 44 Wood and Lumber 48 American Shipping 53 Words to Workingmen 57 What Protection has Cost 64 The Labor Troubles 68 The Remedy . . , 75 Aim of the Council for Tariff Reform 80 3 INTRODUCTORY. It is scarcely necessary to say that the fragmentary papers included within these pages are presented rather to stimulate inquiry than to secure conviction. They are the issue of the incisive pen of Mr. J. & Moore, the well- known " Parsee Merchant," and in their original appear- ance in the New York Evening Post attracted considerable attention and incited much useful discussion. The Coun- cil offers no apology for publishing them in this more permanent and convenient form, but rather on behalf of the public returns thanks to Mr. Moore and the Evening Post for the permission to do so. "What the people want in the tariff debate is facts, and here are facts ; what they desire is brevity, and here is brevity ; what they demand is fairness, clearness, abstinence from rose-colors and avoidance of buncombe — and no man who brings to these papers an open mind and candid judgment can fail to be struck with the straightforward character of Mr. Moore's logic, the absence of rhetorical devices, and the quality of everyday common sense which pervades the whole writing. 5 Friendly Sermons. HARD TIMES. To the Protectionist Manufacturers of the United States. Gentlemen : — I really think we have been at cross purposes for the last ten years solely because we have misunderstood each other. Now, I have unswervingly assailed your protection proclivities in numerous letters, articles, and pamphlets. You, on the other hand, have by no means taken kindly to my criticism. I don't com- plain of that. But unfortunately you have had the best of me in this way, namely, that while I have been writing and exposing the folly and hardships of protection, you have steadily pursued your course, and inflicted the hard- ships of which I complained. The time has now come when a change in the political economy of the land is inevitable, and I really think I could be of more real service to you than you imagine. In the first place, I most earnestly disclaim the idea that I am an enemy to home industry. Why, my good pro- tectionist friends, I solemnly declare to you that I would prefer to see this right hand which pens these lines paralyzed before I would see the industries of this coun- try paralyzed through any interference of mine. True, HARD TIMES. you may say, I have no material interests at stake ; but I have a numerous young family who will make this country their home ; and how wicked, how foolish, and how ungrateful should I be, if I should designedly want to injure the industry of the country which is to be the home of my children ! Pray, my good friends, be more charitable in your estimation, and believe me that nothing but the most clear demonstration that a change of our tariff system is the only true policy to revive speedily our industries could induce me to persist in my en- deavors to hasten the change. I intend in a series of letters to demonstrate to you where the protection shoe pinches. I will adduce nothing but facts, and you yourself shall judge whether these numerous facts can be assailed. Now, although we dis- agree at present about the desirability of a lower tariff, there are, nevertheless, a few things in the economical question of the day in which we do agree. First We agree that the manufacturing industries of the country have been for four years, and are now, in a very deplorable state. There is no denying this fact. "When, a year ago, the Morrison Tariff bill was up, the great iron industry of Pennsylvania, like the ancient Britons, sent the following groan to the Ways and Means Committee : " With failure upon failure of our most experienced and respected iron-masters announced in the public prints from day to day, with wages of iron- workers necessarily reduced so low that they and their families can scarcely escape destitution and starvation, the American Iron and Steel Association is as- tounded to learn that a reduction of duties on foreign iron is 8 BAUD TIMES. seriously contemplated by the Ways and Means Committee, and it respectfully, through you, protests against such ac- tion." The woolen trade is even in a worse Suaje, and, in fact, there is not a single industry that is really flourishing. Second. We must agree that protection is no panacea for hard times. Four years of experience has proved this. Woolen goods are protected all the way from seventy to one hundred and forty per centum. Bar iron, the commonest kind, at one cent a pound duty, is protect- ed more than fifty per centum. Indeed, our importations of woolens, iron, steel, and other things have fallen off in a most remarkabla degree, and yet our home industry is in a deplorable state. In short, protection, like the false god Baal, will not answer at the very time when he is required to show his potency. You may naturally say to me that England, which has free trade, is as badly off as we are. Well, gentlemen, that does not prove that protection is preferable. Be- sides, it is a most remarkable fact that, with the hard times in England, under free trade, two things have hap- pened. First, pauperism has not only not increased in England during the last three years, but in some large cities has actually decreased ; and secondly, emigration from England has fallen off largely. Now here the reverse is unfortunately the fact. Pauperism and dire distress have increased fearfully during the last three or four years, and not only has immigration fallen off to less than one-fourth, but, what is worse, shiploads of the most industrious classes are leaving us almost daily. You but a2 9 HARD TIMES, too well know that several vessels with emigrants have cleared our ports for Australia, not to seek, as formerly, gold, but to work for a living ; and American workmen are now employed in Scotland, and glad to receive what you have derided as pauper wages. In our large cities begging and pauperism have become a great scandal. Thousands of people in New York and other large cities go about daily from house to house to beg a meal of broken victuals. I regret to have to state these disagreeable facts. But I only do it to prove to you that protection is unable to mitigate this distress, if indeed it is not one of the causes that brought it about. Now, my friends, protection, the way you have enjoyed it for the last sixteen years, must produce several draw- backs. First It induces a vast number of competitors at home in manufacturing. Capital is employed by the unprac- ticed. Goods are produced at high rates because they are protected. The wholesome laws of equity between employer and employe are often rudely broken. The law of gravitation is not more certain than that over-pro- duction is the result of protection. Losses and sacrifices are the consequences ; and then comes the inevitable dry rot, stagnation, no employment, and hard times. Second. The greatest evil you suffer from is that you are so eager for home protection and a home market that you have scarcely any outlet for your manufactured industry, and this is the curse of home protection, and is a drag-chain to your industry. Now I intend to show how the several industries suffer on account of the want of a foreign market. 10 HARD TIMES. I will to-day close my letter by simply summarizing the whole industrial production of the country and the amount of exports. The census of 1870 gives as a sum total of the value of manufactured articles in the United States in one year $4,232,325,000. This amount is, of course, exclusive of cereals, cotton, or any kind of agricultural or mineral production. It simply means manufactured industry. I believe, however, this great production in 1870 has fallen in amount, owing to various causes, at least twenty per centum, and I estimate the value of manufactured ar- ticles in the United States in 1876 atvabout $3,500,000,000. Assuming that to be the amount produced, let us see how much surplus we have exported. Now, our ex- ports during 1876 of manufactured articles amounted to $69,316,383. Supposing this great manufacturing country to require an outlet of only five per centum of the goods it produces, our exports in 1876, setting the production at $3,500,000,000, should have been $175,000,000. In point of fact they were barely $69,500,000. Don't you see, my good friends, how you are crippled, and eventually killed, by the accumulation of this sur- plus which you cannot export ? But in my future letters I will go into details. A long homily to an afflicted and suffering congregation is a double infliction. I hope you will take this first frank epistle into kind consideration until I prepare my second. 11 IRON. To the Protectionist Manufacturers of the United States. Gentlemen : — In accordance with my promise that 1 would show in detail the difficulty that home-protected manufacturers suffer from, which is owing, in my opinion, to the unfortunate tariff, I will to-day go into the iron trade of the country. And first let me say that not only has the Centennial Exhibition proved that American manufacturers can hold their own in producing goods against any foreign man- ufacturers, but it is conceded that in many products the Americans far excel the foreigners ; and iron is pre-emi- nently one of these products. "Well, then, in 1870 this country produced $128,062,627 worth of rolled and forged iron. I have no doubt that the production in 1876 was at least twenty per centum less. Assuming that the production in 1876 was only $100,000,000, let us see how much of this has been ex- ported to foreign countries. I find that the total export of this class of iron in 1876 was as follows : Bar iron $607,921 Boiler plates 5,370 Railroad iron 57,109 Sheet, band, and hoop iron 5,004 Total iron $075,404 If I add stool to this, which was 13,208 The total becomes $088,612 12 IRON. Or about eleven-sixteenths of one per centum of the amount produced. Now England, which, it is true, produces four times as much iron and steel as this country does, exported during the month of May last to foreign countries £2,136,567, or in our money more than $10,683,000. Behold the immense difference ! Behold the reason for the distressing stagna- tion in our iron trade, and the less distress in England ! But there is another feature in the American export trade of iron, and it is this : If it had not been for Canada our total export of iron to the whole world would not have been $71,000. Canada took from us in 1876 $604,492 worth of iron, and all the rest of the world $70,912. Of course this Canada trade is owing to proximity, but it shows one great fact, namely, that our bar-iron manu- facturers could compete with the English in the Canadian market. Now here are Mexico, Chili, Peru, Australia, the East Indies — countries all of which take from England great quantities of iron. How much have we exported to these lands ? Let me show you. In 1876 we exported to Mexico bar iron in value $4,996 Peru None. Chili None. Argentine Eepublic . . . . c None. Australia None. British India None. Now, my good protectionist iron friends, how is it that you exported no iron to these countries, which have 13 IRON. bought so much from England and Belgium? I will tell you. Your unfortunate protection policy in iron has made it necessary that raw wool, copper, jute, hemp, lin- seed, etc., should pay high duties. Now it so happens that the countries above-named chiefly export wool, .cop- per, jute, hemp, and linseed. The United States hav- ing no demand for these products, owing to the high duties, have to-day scarcely any ships either going to or carrying from those lands ; hence, since there is no trade from Mexico, Chili, Argentine, Peru, and the East Indies, there is naturally no trade to those states. Now, sup- pose we had free wool, and our American ships went from New York and Baltimore to the Argentine Republic, for instance, to load wool for New York or Baltimore. We should naturally put something into those ships, and we should put a fair quantity of iron into them, which would find a market in Buenos Ayres or Montevideo. But as your tariff of sixty and seventy per centum on raw wool precludes the idea of getting wool from Buenos Ayres, the idea of Buenos Ayres taking iron from you is precluded as a natural consequence. There is Chili begging you to take her copper, which you so much need ; yet you have virtually prohibited the import of copper by placing a duty of five cents a pound on ingot copper. Chili does not want the " dollars of your sires ; " she wants iron, steel, and other articles which I shall in due course name in my epistles. You, my good protectionist iron friends, have shut out foreign competition in iron at home, and you have most decidedly, by your policy, shut out your iron from going to other countries. Now, you will naturally say — and I 14 IRON. never have seen a protectionist who did not say it — that raw material ought to be free and iron ought to be pro- tected. But the wool-grower in Ohio and the West, and the copper-mine owners of the Hecla and Calumet say : " Why is iron protected ? If iron is to be protected we have a right to see wool and copper protected." And therefore, like so many overgrown ostriches (pray pardon my expression), you put your intellectual heads under your wings and refuse to see the real danger that is threatening you. All your endeavors, all your subsidies to ships and railways, will avail you nothing as long as you proscribe the free exchange of trade. If you want a foreign mar- ket, you must allow a foreign market to sell you goods ; without that you cannot succeed. If you agree to reduce the duty on foreign iron and steel — which no more needs protection against the foreign product than a prize-fighter needs protection for his sacred person in a Quaker meet- ing-house— you will by such a policy relieve the present restriction on foreign wool, copper, jute, and linseed ; a great trade will spring up for these valuable raw mate- rials ; you will have ships loading for all these countries, in order to bring home the raw materials named ; and thereby you will bo enabled to get rid of your surplus iron and steel. The excellency of your iron and steel products will soon assert itself in the remotest corners of the world ; and if the markets of New York, Baltimore, and Boston are crowded with great quantities of raw wool, jute, hemp, linseed, and copper, two things will fol- low : First, our manufacturers of woolens, rope, sail-cloths, linseed-oil, and all kinds of copper merchandise will be IRON. able to compete with the foreigners on an equal footing, owing to the cheaper raw materials ; and secondly, New York, Baltimore, and Boston may in time become the great emporiums for these raw materials, as England is now, and European countries may find it profitable to draw these products from this side of the water. But both events are utterly impossible as long as you keep on your present tariff restrictions. THE WOOLEN TRADE. To the Protectionist Manufacturers of the United States. Gentlemen : — On the scale of progress made in the United States in manufacturing, the woolen trade occu- pies the second highest place. Since 1850 the iron in- dustry of the country has greatly increased. Counting the value of all its productions separately (that is, counting pig iron, bloom, forged, and rolled each as a product), the total value of these products in 1850 was $52,185,347 ; whereas the total in 1870 had increased to the enormous amount of $305,193,347 — or nearly sixfold. The second great increase in our manufactures has been in the department of woolen products. In 1850 the total value produced was $43,207,345 ; whereas in 1870 that value was $155,405,358 — an increase of more than three hundred and fifty per centum. I am bound to say that no industrial country in the world can show a similar result in a space of twenty years. The mighty increase of this industry proves several important points : First, it proves the capacity and adaptability of the country to be- come the greatest head-quarters for woolen goods in the world; second, it proves the spirit of enterprise in the American people to be unsurpassed — nay, unequaled — by any other nation ; and last, it shows that we have the greatest market for consuming woolen goods in the world. i7 THE WOOLEN TRADE. That the production of woolen goods in 1870 has "been less than in 1870, in value at least, if not in quantity, there can be no doubt. As a rule, I believe the reduc- tion in value to have been twenty per centum ; and as- suming that to be a fair calculation we must have pro- duced in 1876 about $134,000,000 worth of woolen manu- factures. Now, my good friends, I exceedingly regret to tell the world what is but too well known in the woolen trade, that, if we except the cases of a handful of million- naires, the great bulk of the woolen manufacturing indus- try is rotten to the core. Losses, mortgages, foreclos- ures, and bankruptcies are unfortunately the order of the day, and have been during the last four years in this enormous industry. Now, my dear protectionist friends, you cannot " shake your gory locks " at free trade, as I will tell you how much the woolen fabrics amounted to which we imported in 1876, and how much duty was paid on them. The total importation of woolen manufactured goods (ex- clusive of raw material, of course,) was $47,676,065. The duty paid thereon was $27,856,382, or nearly sixty per centum ; hundreds of articles (chief among which are common blankets, which pay a duty of some one hun- dred and twenty -five per centum), flannels, heavy pilot and beaver cloth, and other goods paying nearly one hundred per centum, while others are entirely prohibited. But what I want to show you is this, that our woolen manu- facturers had about sixty-six per centum of the home market entirely to themselves, owing to the prohibitory duties, and the other thirty-four per centum was pro- tected by a duty of nearly sixty per centum on the aver- age. How, then, does it happen that woolen manufactur- 18 THE WOOLEN TRADE. ing is in such a distressing state ? Above all, yon mnst concede that a tariff which is two-thirds entirely pro- hibitory, and the other third of which gives a protection of sixty per centum, was incapable of keeping the woolen industry from ruin. In short, if a high tariff — nay, a two-thirds prohibitory tariff — is the most wholesome policy that a government can devise to make industries flourish, why in the world is this great woolen industry in such a pitiful plight ? And if, on the other hand, it is proved that this economic policy does not prevent ruin and bankruptcies, why in the world is it persisted in ? Now, let me come to the real facts — the sources of all the ruin which has befallen the woolen industry of this country. First I find that the average duty on raw wool, re- duced to ad valorem, has been in 1876 as follows : On class 1, clothing wool, about fifty-one per centum ; on class 2, combing wool, about forty-three per centum ; on class 3, carpet wool, about twenty-six per centum. The duty on dyestuffs used in the woolen trade was about thirty per centum. Second. Look at the enormous competition. It is but natural that the enterprising men who engineered through Congress a woolen tariff which is two-thirds prohibitory and one-third restrictive by a sixty per centum duty, should have induced an immense amount of capital to be employed in such an industry. The widows' and orphans' money, trust money, and foolish people's money has been for years employed in this great mirage of industrial de- ception, and failures have been the result. The great woolen structures went down like the Eoyal George, — -in 19 THE WOOLEN TRADE. calm water, by its own top-heaviness. It is too well known that the woolen trade was rotten before the panic of 1873. Third. The great woolen industry of this country has no outlet for its surplus. In 1876 the total exports of woolen manufactures were $685,828, which is about one- half of one per centum of the production. It is worthy of note that the Dominion of Canada and the provinces took $590,720 worth of woolen goods from us, and all the rest of the world $95,108 worth. This is a melancholy picture ; but, alas ! let me show you a still more melan- choly one. In 1870 we produced $21,761,573 worth of carpets. Now, how much carpet, my good protectionist friends, do you think we exported in 1876? Exactly 8,315 yards, valued at $6,586 ! This is so great an anom- aly that I must give you in detail our foreign carpet customers : To China we exported .... 50 yards, value $58 To Germany 190 " 200 To Quebec and Ontario. . . 6,595 " 4,980 To British Guiana 30 " 30 To Venezuela 1,450 " 1,318 Total 8,315 yards, value $6,586 Can a great industry flourish — nay, can it be even healthy — if it carries these leprous spots about its body ? The woolen industry of this country cannot be healthy as long as it has to pay duties on its raw materials and djestuffe, as long as it has no outlet for its surplus, and, above all, as long as it has not to fight against a whole- 20 THE WOOLEN TRADE. some foreign competition. Take free wool and free dye- stuffs and reduce the duties on foreign woolen fabrics to a revenue duty of twenty or twenty-five per centum, and you will find that all the tottering and rotten woolen manufacturers will cease to exist. You will find that the solid, healthy, scientific manufacturers of woolens will nourish ; and further, you will find that by such means you will get a foreign market for the surplus of woolens manufactured at home. But my woolen protectionist friends may say to me, "By doing so we will reduce wages and have pauper labor." Now we have heard enough of this Bobespierre argument about cutting off the wages of the virtuous working classes. Come, my friends, and I will show you by statistics the relation that wages in the woolen trade holds to the value of production. In 1870 there was produced of what is termed woolen goods proper (exclusive of worsted goods) $151,208,106 worth. The cost of the material of this was $93,406,884, and the wages paid were $26,648,272. The consequence is that every dollar's worth of woolen goods represents less than eighteen cents' worth of labor. Since 1870 the wages in the woolen industry have been reduced fully thirty per centum, and, consequently, every dollar's worth of woolen production represents now only thirteen cents of wages. If, therefore, the wages in the United States in this indus- try were double that of Great Britain — and I believe they are the same now there as here — that would prove only that, if our woolen manufacturers had raw materials and dyestuffs free, England would be better off by six and a half cents on the dollar. At the most extreme showing, 21 THE WOOLEN TRADE. then, the plea of protecting the American hands is good for only six and a half cents in the dollar. But it is used to justify the imposition of duties ranging from sixty to a hundred and twenty-five per centum ! Can my friends, the protectionist woolen manufacturers, deny these facts ? In conclusion, I will say that I would not wish to see foreign woolen fabrics entirely free, for two reasons : First, the transition would be too great all at once ; and, second, I would like to see some revenue come from that source. But I do say that unless we have free wool, free dye stuffs, and a twenty or twenty-five per centum duty on manufactured woolens, the woolen industry of this country must remain in a state of leprosy. HATS AND CAPS. To the Protectionist Manufacturers of the United States. Gentlemen : — In my last two letters on the folly of a protective tariff I have chosen two giant stars, Iron and Woolens, for our contemplation. They resemble very much the planets Jupiter and Saturn in their lack of a life-giving, wholesome atmosphere, grand and glorious as they may appear from a distance, surrounded by celestial brightness and mysterious halos. But giant stars have satellites that revolve around them, and, by analogy, your giant iron and woolen industries have also satellites whose destinies are affected by the great bodies, a part of whose system they are. Let me to-day take a woolen satellite, which we will call hats and caps manufactured out of wool. Now, my good protectionist friends, I find that this hat and cap satellite is by no means a contemptible orb. Let me show you its dimensions and importance. In 1870 our country could show the following statistics in this in- dustry : Total production of hats and caps, value $24,848,167 Materials used, value $12,262,107 Wages paid 6,574,490 Total wages and materials $18,836,597 Gr^s profit in 1870 $6,011,570 Or about twenty-four and a quarter per centum on the amount produced. 23 IIATti AND CAPS. Now, my good friends, let us see what this industry was, and what it yielded in 1860, which was a year mem- orable for the lowest tariff this country has had during the present century : Total production, value $16,937,782 Material used, value $8,252,380 Wages paid 3,815,824 Total material and wages $12,068,204 Gross profit in 1860 $4,869,578 Or about twenty-eight and a half per centum on the amount produced, and four and a quarter per centum more than in 1870. These figures show that a protective tariff of from sixty to eighty per centum on woolen hats and caps in 1870 gave the protected manufacturer four and a quarter per centum less profit than an almost free tariff. But in what a deplorable state this hat and cap in- dustry is now, and has been during the last four years, let the many bankruptcies and the thousands of idle workingmen in this trade testify. It would be a sicken- ing task to show by statistics the present distress of this great industry. Yet, strange to say, the hat and cap manufacturers of the United States have the whole home market almost to themselves. Let me fortify this asser- tion. In 1876 the importation of hats and caps into the United States makes the following showing : Total amount imported and withdrawn, $13,642.41 ; on this trfl&re was paid a duty of $8,726.27, which is equal in average to about sixty-four per centum. 24 HATS AND GAPS. Well, then, the greatest object of protection, which is to keep foreign competition out, has in this instance been accomplished. We produce $24,000,000, or say even only $20,000,000 worth of hats and caps, and we import only $13,642 worth. This being an undeniable fact, how is it that the hat and cap industry is now in so deplorable a state here ? Surely heads have got to be covered, and a hat or cap is a necessary article of clothing. But, my good protectionist friends, the curse of protection, the subtle poison of this infernal lotos- flower, is asserting its power on the protected hat and cap industry. In the first place, the material used in the manufacture of hats and caps is subject to an outrageous protective duty. Let me show you : Wool is subject to a duty of from thirty-four to seventy- five per centum ; * hatters' furs, twenty per centum ad valorem; silk for lining, sixty per centum; leather for binding, thirty-five per centum ; cloth for caps, all the way from fifty to eighty per centum. The very thread caps are sewed with is subject to seventy-five per centum duty. How is it possible for an industry to flourish that has such an incubus to carry on the outset? In the second place, as I have already intimated in a former letter in a general way, the very alluring fact of a protection on hats and caps, which amounts to from sixty to eighty per centum, has caused that unwholesome home * The actual duty collected on raw wool of the first class in 1876 was 53.88, 43.38, 42.63, 34.08, 76.77, 61.89 and 68 per centum. EATS AND (JAPS. competition which, like irresistible weeds, is choking an otherwise healthy crop. In the third and last place, this industry has no outlet. If in 1870 the production of hats and caps was even only $20,000,000, what amount of surplus stock did this indus- try export ? Behold the truth ! We exported in 1876 exactly $198,618 worth, or less than one per centum on the amount produced. Now, supposing that this industry had only a five per centum surplus, which it was absolutely necessary to get rid of : then in 1870 there would have been $800,000 worth of hats and caps, old stock, left on hand ; and as this surplus remains on hand year after year, owing to fresh accumulations, there can be no doubt that the trade is cursed with $5,000,000 or even $7,000,000 worth of this unsalable surplus, which has as surely a baneful influence on the hat and cap in- dustry of the country as a drought has on crops in gen- eral, or the army worm on growing cotton. Surely, my good friends, there can be but one remedy, and that is a just revision of the tariff. You need cheap materials out of which to produce cheap hats and caps ; a revision of the tariff alone will give them to you. You want to have less cut-throat competition at home, and to assert the power of skill, sound capital, energy, and enterprise ; a lower duty on foreign caps and hats can alone weed out the rank wild growth that is choking your industry at home. You want foreign markets wherein to dispose of your surplus ; a freer exchange of commodities — free wool, free copper, free hemp and jute, free linseed, free drugs 26 HATS AND GAPS. and free dyestuffs — will open to you the markets of the East Indies, Australia, Chili, Peru, Montevideo, Buenos Ayres, and a dozen other great and small countries, where you will be able to send your surplus hats and caps. By allowing the industries of other countries to come to your county, you will be able to export your labor, for the export of industry is, after all, only the export of labor. 27 THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY. To the Protectionist Manufacturers of the United States. Gentlemen : — Few persons probably are aware of the magnitude of the clothing manufacture of this country. Just let me give an outline of this giant trade. In 1870 there was manufactured in the United States the follow- ing amount of wearing apparel : Men's clothing, valued at.. 1147,650,378 Boys' clothing, " 1,009,875 Women's apparel, " 12,900,583 Grand total $161,560,836 The population of the United States in 1870 was 38,588,371, which gave barely $4.20 worth of clothing per capita to the population. I assume therefore, inasmuch as we have now at least forty-three millions of popula- tion, that, notwithstanding the great fall in price of cloth- ing, the production must still be $160,000,000 in value. What a gigantic trade ! In 1870 this trade employed 119,824 hands, all told. It paid no less than $33,060,535 wages. A trade so enormous as this proves beyond a doubt that this industry has attained a perfection that proba- bly cannot be surpassed ; and I appeal to all people who 28 THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY. have traveled much abroad whether my deduction can- not be borne out. It is an undoubted fact that there is not a nation on the globe that has so high an average of cost for clothing, and is, I may say, so suitably clothed and dressed, as the people of the United States. I wish, my good protectionist friends, I could proclaim the prosperity of the clothing trade with the same assur- ance that I proclaim its efficiency. Failures and bank- ruptcies in the clothing trade are of almost daily occur- rence. Semi-starvation among the votaries of the needle and sewing-machine is a painful fact. Now, is all this distress owing to the panic of 1873, to the failure of Jay Cooke & Company, and to the collapse of the Northern Pacific Railroad? I only ask the question. If by answering this question in the affirmative we could feed only a few thousand starving tailors and tailoresses, I would be the first to say yes, and blush the next moment for having proclaimed an untruth. But as telling a lie will feed no one, I am bound to say that the distress in the clothing trade is as intimately connected with our Machiavelian tariff as is an egg with an omelet. In the first place, let me see how much of our surplus wearing apparel we exported in 1876. I find that the to- tal amount of wearing apparel exported in that year was $579,595, which, on a production of say only $160,000,000, is about 35-100 per centum, or a little more than one- third of one per centum on the gross production. In fact, little as I know practically of this trade, it appears to me that the waste cuttings of the immense quantity of material used must have amounted in value, when 29 THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY. sold to make shoddy, to more than the whole export trade of the wearing apparel industry. Secondly, I find by comparison a remarkably stern accuser of the tariff of 1876. In looking at the census of 1860 I find that the total production of wearing apparel in that year amounted to $88,011,594, or not a great deal more than half the amount we produce now, yet, strange to say, this country exported in 1860, $525,175 worth of wearing apparel, or only $54,000 worth less than in 1876. In other words, while this industry has doubled its production, it has remained almost at a standstill in its export of the product. England, France, Germany, and even Switzerland, are yearly increasing their exports in wearing apparel. The best customers for ready-made clothing are Australia, New Zealand, the Cape colony, Chili, Peru, the Argentine Republic, Can- ada, Newfoundland, and Mexico. Now, why do not our great manufacturers of wearing apparel, producing $160,000,000 worth of this product, export clothing to the countries I have just named ? That our clothing industry produces the best and most suitable articles is conceded by all the world. When, years ago, poor Mr. Greeley was hard pressed about the duty on pig iron, he took refuge in the most original exclamation that was ever made. He said : " If producing pig iron is so profitable, why don't free- traders make pig iron ? Can't we persuade, beg, force, or shame free-traders into making pig iron ; why don't you do it?" I am tempted to use this original language of a truly .'50 THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY. great man, unfortunately wrong in economic questions. I might say to the clothing industry, in the language of Greeley, u Can't we persuade, beg, force, or shame you into exporting clothing to Australia, New Zealand, and all the other countries named ? " Alas ! there is great reason why this industry cannot export. First They are restricted to use chiefly home-made cloth when there is foreign cloth for clothing wanted abroad, and the home-made cloth is, owing to the tariff, forty or fifty per centum dearer than a similar fabric abroad. Second. The silk linings are charged with sixty per cen- tum duty ; the velvet with sixty per centum ; the silk thread with forty per centum ; spool thread with seventy- five per centum ; alpaca lining with seventy per centum ; linen with forty per centum ; and foreign cloth with from sixty to eighty per centum. In fact, the very needles with which the clothing is sown pay a duty of twenty-five per centum. How in the world can we look for an ex- port trade in this industry which is so frightfully handi- capped ? If we had free raw wool, and any thing like a low duty on woolen fabrics, we could easily import raw wool from Australia, New Zealand, and the Cape, and give in exchange our ready-made clothing. Thus we would promote a double trade of export and import. But the tariff says to Australia what an ancient lazy philosopher said to the bee : " I don't want thy honey, and I don't want thy sting. — We don't want your wool, and we don't want you to buy our clothing." But one great fact has fully been proven, and that is, that the isola- tion in our export trade for manufactured industries has THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY. not prevented a nation of more than forty millions of people from increasing in starvation, pauperism, strikes, and bankruptcies. Nor will any true and steady allevia- tion of the evil be felt until this isolation is broken, and broken it can be only by a proper revision of the present tariff. 32 SILK AND SUFFERING. To the Silk Association of America. Allow me, gentlemen, to remind you of a very pleasant annual dinner that took place at Deimonico's on the 12th of May, 1875. Your vice-president, Mr. Dale, made a very glowing little speech. In fact, after so fine a din- ner, consisting of some fifteen courses, supplemented with the choicest wines, the menu printed on American home- made silk, nothing but silk-velvet words could possibly be expected. Among other good and true things your vice- president said was the following : "Notwithstanding the harsh and bitter expressions some- times employed by our public men and writers in opposing the principles of protection to home labor, I think we can see a growing sentiment in favor of it, which, it is to be hoped, will continue until it crystallizes into a national policy which seems to be dictated by the very nature and character of our institu- tions." Two years after this well-delivered sentence, when the crystallization of sixty per centum protection is still in full operation, we find that lauded silk industry in a state of anarchy, and its working hands a general disor- ganized band of strikers — the very emblems of pauper laborers. But the vice-president, after quoting French history of 1597, once more comes home to the native soil "b2 33 tilLK AND SUFFERING. and native protection, which he maintains is absolute- ly necessary for the philanthropic purpose of elevating home labor in general and silk labor in particular. He said : ce We, as a nation, have a larger proportion of that class of labor than any other. It is represented in our social system by a stratum above the lower classes, and merging by taste and fair education into the higher walks of life. It is to this class of labor that the silk industry gives a remunerative em- ployment more largely than any other, and in a corresponding degree adds to the wealth of the nation." Now I most respectfully beg your association in gene- ral, and your vice-president in particular, to look at the following picture, copied verbatim from the New-York Times of the 17th of August, 1877 : " About one hundred of the striking silk- weavers lately employed at Messrs. J. N. Stearns & Co.'s manufactory, on Forty-second Street and Third Avenue, held a meeting yester- day afternoon on First Avenue, near Forty-first Street, to de- vise measures for ending the unpleasant situation they have been placed in by the late reduction of their wages. A large number of these operatives were trained weavers, who learned their trade in mills at Manchester and other manufacturing towns in England, and they were induced to come to this country by the representations of Messrs. Stearns' agents that they would receive steady employment and fair wages. They feel much mortified at the successive reductions of their wages, and say they wish they were back in the old country, or somewhere else out of New York. They say while house rent, provisions, and nearly all the necessaries of life are nearly as 34 SILK AND SUFFERING. high as they were three or four years ago, the wages of the operatives have been steadily reduced, until they find it bare- ly possible to make a living. They are aware, they admit, that the times are very dull, and that business of nearly all kinds is much depressed, but they think an unfair discrimi- nation has been made against their class, to which they are unwilling to submit. After some discussion as to the best course to pursue, a committee of ten was appointed to wait on the proprietors and ascertain whether it would not be possible to effect a compromise. The deputation found Mr. Stearns at the factory, and after representing to him the impossibility of making a decent support out of the terms to which their pay had been reduced, they asked if he would not reconsider the matter and restore their old wages, or at least meet the weavers ' halfway. ' He told the girls that he could not make an advance of one cent, and he advised them, during these hard times, to rent a tenement-house in common and all live together. " ' What shall we buy the furniture with .?' they asked. "'Oh, you can do without furniture. You will have to live on the floor awhile.' He also told them that if they were not satisfied with their pay, they could go to Paterson and see if they could do any better. " When the committee returned to the meeting and re- ported their lack of success, the girls gave vent to some very bitter expressions and resolved to continue the strike. They say they have offers of assistance from the operatives of Pa- terson, and though the latter are on very low wages they can still do something for their fellow-laborers in New York." When a hundred girls are told to hire a tenement- room, and to sleep on the floor awhile without furniture, 35 SILK AND BUFFERING. by one of the largest branches of this association, it seems scarcely in harmony with the vice-president's boast that the silk industry, above all others, strives to raise the social condition of its work-people above the lower classes, and merge them by taste and fair educa- tion into the higher walks of life. To huddle up a hun- dred females in a large tenement, without furniture, on the bare floor, is scarcely equivalent to raising them from the lower classes. In short, it is pure and simple pauper lodgings ; nay, it is worse, for paupers are fur- nished with straw mattresses. And in order to elevate our labor, especially in the silk industry, so that a number of young girls can sleep on the bare floor, it is above all necessary to tax foreign silk sixty per centum. In the event of getting say seventy-five per centum duty on the silk, the female operatives would have a further chance to advance in the scale of social position. The next step will be to tell them to hire a few railway cattle-trucks and stand up in them like home-protected cattle. In short, there is no sacrifice that these home-protected laborers are not expected to make, so long as the sacred tariff is not attacked. But, my worthy friends, whom do you really think to blind ? Have you not proclaimed it in your factories, in highways and byways, that the silk industry pays pauper wages ? Is it in order to pay pauper wages that you de- mand a protection of sixty per centum on silks? You dare not allege, after all the exposures that have been made, that your industry pays any other but pauper wages. Now, my worthy friends, your trouble is not high-priced labor, nor is it the raw material, as you have 36 SILK AND SUFFERING. that free. Your trouble is that you are infants indeed in the trade. You waste perhaps fifteen or twenty per cen- tum more than the well-organized factories in Lyons. The silk labor in France is an institution which has grown up during three or four centuries. Every branch — and there are many of them — is perfect in its own way, while every one of your branches is faulty. Here is the real trouble, and it may take you a hundred years to attain that proficiency in economy of manufacturing that the French have got through the gradual crustation of ages. You are exactly like the Chinese mechanic who copied a steam-engine, but made the pistons, etc., all stationary, and when the engine refused to move, he exclaimed to his English beholders : " Me can makee he, but me can- not makee he walkee." Now, you can make silks perhaps as good as the French, but you cannot make them for the same price, and if the price of your pauper labor was half what it is now you could not do it. You want economical crusta- tion ; and you modestly want the people to tax them- selves sixty per centum on their silks in order that you may attain a proficiency which may take forty or fifty, if not one hundred, years to accomplish. When the Morrison Tariff bill proposed a reduction of the silk duties from sixty per centum to forty per centum, your association, with Mr. Dale at its head, came before the Ways and Means Committee. It displayed samples of beautiful home-made silks, and impressed that com- mittee above all with the statement that a reduction of duties would involve pauper wages to the silk operatives. Well, the tariff bill failed. You still have sixty per cen- 37 SILK AND SUFFERING. turn protection. But let me ask you most respectfully and honestly, are you or are you not paying pauper- wages to your employes? Did the operatives tell the truth, or was it an untruth, when they informed a Tribune reporter that " before " the proposed reduction the wages were as follows : A dyer earned $9.00 a week ; a spinner $6.00 a week ; and female operatives from $3.00 to $5.50 a week. And these wages it was proposed to reduce twenty- five per centum. Now, under the wages just mentioned without the reduction, a man, his wife, and a girl four- teen years old would earn : The man, a spinner $6 00 The woman, the highest wages 5 50 The girl, the highest wages 3 00 Total $14 50 Mr. Osterhaus, our consul at Lyons, asserts officially that a man, his wife, and a girl fourteen years old easily earn $10 gold a week in Lyons, which is equivalent to $10.50 of our money, and the difference of wages is there- fore about forty per centum in favor of America, while the rent alone is more than double in the United States what it is in France, and all necessaries are here propor- tionately higher. But if you reduce these wages twenty-five per centum, it follows that the family of a man, his wife, and girl fourteen years old, would only earn in Patersor. $10.88 currency, or thirty-eight cents more than in Lyons. Let me ask you a plain question. If you come next time before the Committee of Ways and Means with the 38 SILK AND SUFFERING. traditional bundle of highly finished silks, wrapped in the well-known brown-paper parcel, will your eloquent vice- president again plead his cause with the aristocratic wages paid to the employes in the silk industry? Or will you have the honesty to declare the fact that your working men and women, under a sixty per centum pro- tection, receive, and have to live, or rather starve, on pauper wages ? 39 SPOOL THREAD. To the Protectionist Manufacturers of the United Stoics. No one is disposed to doubt that the all-absorbing political question of the new administration is the paci- fication of the South. As that question is now happily approaching a satisfactory solution, it may perhaps not be amiss to point out to the President that the economic slavery question of the whole country cries out aloud for emancipation. The situation can be summed up in a few sentences : First The trade, industry, and commerce of the coun- try are totally prostrated. Second. The revenue from imports has fallen off as fol- lows : 1870, duties collected $191,221,768 1871, 1872, 1