WHAT PROTECTION HAS DONE FOR AMERICA.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1188, 5 December 1884, Page 3

WHAT PROTECTION HAS DONE FOR AMERICA.

The state of trade in the United States is so bad, notwithstanding a more than usually abundant ham at, that it can scarcely fail to communicate a strong impetus to the Fieetrade movement, which is rapidly gaining ground in the Western Stab-s. Manufacturers, especially those whose industries are heavily protected, are shutting down their mills. In Pensylvania half the ironworks and glass factories have been closed. Tbe Edgar Steel Company which employs 5,000 men, has given notice to its operatives that they must either accept a reduction of wages, or the works will be stopped. In Pittsburg the great manufacturing centre of the State, there are, it is estimated, as many as 4,000 tenements which have been vacated by their recent occupants, owing to their inability to pay rent for them. So great, indeed, is the poverty, and so urgent tbe distress which prevails in that city, that at the close of the financial half year the poorhouae officials had pretty '-■ ell exhausted the sum appropriated for the relief of the destitute during tbe current twelve months, leaving the second halt of the year unprovided for. The depression in tbe steel and iron trade has become almost chronic. Eleven years ago Mr Powell, superintendenfof the Clifton Ironworks, declared that “ the entire rolling-mill, nail factory, and foundry interest of the West were completely paralysed and rendered unproductive." In nine years, he said, Protection had augmented the cost of production 60 per cent. ; not only so, bnt it had increased importations,and had permanently enfeebled the industry. At that time fully one-third of tbe American furnacr-s were out of blast; and in tbe following "ear, i e., in 1874, the trade journal of the Iron and Steel Manafactuiers’ Association announced that half a million of workmen were out of employment, 200,000 of whom were iron-workers, coal, and o e miners, and mechanics and laborers connected with this branch of industry. In March, 1876. the president of the Iron end Steel Asssocia'i n of Peusylvania addressed a memorial to Congress, in which he state I that “one-half the f triiaces and rolling-mills of the country were standing idle” that iron-master after iron-master was failing; and that the wages of ironworkers were neces-arily reduced so low that they and their famili-s could scarcely escape destitution and starvation.” Eight years previously, the Hen. John Covude, one of the protectionists representatives of Pennsylvania in Congres-, had publicly declared that “ American workmen weie in deepeer distress than ever before in the history of the o Uutry j” and since then, writes Mr T G.Sheartnan, in the September number of the North American Review, “we have gone thconch still more distressing and disastrous periods, lasting from 1873 {0 4878, and from 1882 to 18 4, until to-day multitudes of protected American miners arid mechanics are working for 50c orßoo (2s to 3s 4d) a dav, without steady employment at those rates. The average rate of wages in American cotton mills, in proportion to the number of hours of work, is actually - less than it is England, and in many large branches of pro ec edindu-tiy the rate of wag' a has fallen almost to the starvation point.” In fact, Americm man .- facturera are simply repeating the unhapov exeriencj of the Mother Country fro o ISIS to 1846, while her principal industries were under the ban and blight of Protection.

As a matter of course, the depress'd spoken of above has ha I a most injurious effect on the retail trade of the United Stats, where the failures during the first six months of the present year have been abnormally numerous, while those of (iivat Britain for the same period have been only 2,368, as c unpared with 6,062 for the first half of ISSO. Several town and country banks in America have succume'el to the pressure of th * times; an 1 the u Hapsrnf a great manufacturing linn like that if Stafford and ; Co., who have b en lo i >g money hy their cotton m’lls at Fall Hirer and Rliole Island for the last two years, and of lhe house of burger, Hurlhit, and Livingston- an old augar-retining firm in New York, was expected to be followed by the fall of many other establishments of equal niagnitude! But the most alarming feature of the commercial and manufacturin ■ c isis in the United Sates is the probability of its being followed by a serious oalami-y in the gram trade. For," while it is stat' d that wheat is cheaper in Chicago than it has been for a quarter of a century past, it is also cheaper in England than it has been fir the last hundred years, (n the former market it is 22 cents a bushel less-than it was a twelvemonth ago ; and we read of a railroad car of winter wheat somewhat out of cond’timi, having been sold at 45 cents per bushel From this had to be deducted 35 cents fur freight, leaving 10 cents (or 5 1) for the grower, out of which he had to pay commission and other incidental expenses. And for the time to come. American wheat will be exposed year by year to an increasingly ac'ive competition with that of In ia, where wheat can be grown, us has been shown by Dr Hunter, at Is 6d a bushel where there are thousand" of square miles of fertile soil, which .would be speedily brought under cultivation if the native farmer could calculate upon from 16s to 18s per quarter for his produce. Let the cry of agricultural distre-s once be raised in the Central and Western States of America, and the p°ople of that country will make short work with the tariff. Already, an we learn from the letter of Mr 1 Book Walter, of Springfield, Ohio, , manufacturer ; of agricultural machinery, . published jn the Pall Mall Gazette, tjie Ffe'atradh' doctrine has rooted itself so deeply'in the popular min I in that part of ; the Union- “that whole communities are already as much for Freetrade as Great Britain herself, TW“ are at least 24,000,000 of "the population engaged in agricultural pursuits, ho tells us, and for every LIO inveensiin manufactures, them am I/X) in-

vested--in laud, wliile the mau)st#y..oJLthe, railways which cost L 1,400,006 000 sterling, is the traffic in grain Hence, when the battle comes to he fought oat, there will he on immense preponderane a of strength arrayed on the side of commercial freedom. At present it appears, the American farmers are taxe 1 to the ext nt of L 120,000,000 a-year in order to provide the protected industries with L70,1)00,000, and it is suggested that it would be better to pension off the whole of the privileged manufacturers and their workmen than to submit to the existing sytem of spoliation. —Argus. *