The Home Market of Most Value.

The home market is therefore more important to us than the foreign; and the more we stimulate it and increase it the better it is for the agricultural as well as every other interest in the country. Protection does this: it sustains the manufactories, thereby making a market for the farmers. It even does more, for it encourages new enterprises. But for our protective tariff we should not have had the silk manufacture. The 10,400 persons in the State of New Jersey engaged in this business are all fed by our farmers. The nation is benefited as well. It gives employment to our people, and the profits to the manufacturers on the 13,000,000dols in value of silk goods produced yearly are saved here; that is, whatever they make is made in this country, and goes towards the increasing wealth of the nation; and the capital thus saved or accumulated here is employed in developing the country and its numerous resources and industries. One manufacturer in the silk business at Paterson, in New Jersey, is said to have made a million of dollars. I am informed he has invested all this money, whatever it may be, in the town where he lives, in building houses and other improvements. Now who is injured by this? Not the people, because the duty on silk is just the same now that it was when imposed years ago as a mere revenue duty; for silk goods are cheaper at the present time than they were when the duty was imposed; the fact in this, as in many other instances of production, being that there is a reduction in price of the goods produced by reason of domestic competition. Steel rails a few years ago, and before we began to manufacture them, cost us in England 140dol. per ton. We are now manufacturing them here for 60dol., and within the past two years the price has been 40dol. per ton. So with cotton fabrics; they are cheaper than ever they were—indeed, so cheap that they are sending them to England by the million of yards, and competing with you in your own market. It is no page 5 answer to say of some of these commodities—steel rails, for instance—that they are cheaper in England than they are in America. So far as the mills are concerned, this at the present time may be true; but it is not so with regard to cotton goods, watches, clocks, and many other kinds of protected goods which we are sending to your market; the are cheaper here, and cheaper when exported to England than those which you manufacture; hence we are competing with you in your own market. And with regard: to steel rails, everyone knows that, if we were to stop manufacturing them and to rely upon you for what we require, the price in England would not remain where it is, but would immediately advance to an extent probably more than the difference now existing between the price hero and in England, so that the end would be that we should have to pay you more than we are now paying for those made here. This is the natural consequence of trade, and follows just as surely as the night follows the day. You may ask why, if we can produce cotton fabrics, edge-tools, clocks, and watches cheaper than you, we require I protection for these commodities, &c. My answer is that it is quite probable that in some particular descriptions of cotton fabrics and manufactured products we cannot compete, and require protection to enable us to work up to the production of them; but in those branches where we can compete and are competing we require protection to keep our market steady and to maintain the domestic competition. It is a fact in the commercial world, of which we do not require an example, that foreign competitors, when there are no impediments will, in order to disturb markets and break down competition, sometimes combine to flood the foreign market. They will sell without profit to accomplish their purpose, in the hope that in the end, with the confusion in business and destruction in trade, and breaking down domestic competition, they can make up more than they lose. I myself have known a foreign manufacturer to sell his goods in America for a less price than you could buy them in England, and for less than he was selling the same kind of goods for there. While Consul at Liverpool, numerous instances came to my knowledge in which there were two prices—one for the goods to be consumed in England, and another and lower price for those that were to go abroad, and the manufacturer's profits were made up on j the average price of the goods sold at home and those sold abroad. There is gambling in trade as well as in stocks. Our tariff checks if it does not entirely prevent this, at least so far as foreign competition is concerned, and enables our small capitalists freely to enter, with their limited means, our markets and become domestic competitors where they would not—indeed dare not—if exposed to the large foreign capitalists. It is our policy to encourage these and all such, for everyone who starts in this way helps to cheapen the article produced, while he increases our home market for our agricultural products, and assists in creating and accumulating capital here at home, and in this way in increasing our national wealth.