PROTECTION IN THE UNITED STATES.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 16, Issue 900, 23 December 1870, Page 2

PROTECTION IN THE UNITED STATES.

[evening news.] We beg attention to an extract or two from the Pall Mall Budget, reproduced by a correspondent in the last number of the Welliugton Independent to hand, on the evil effects of protection on manufactures in the United States. Of the American tariff, the Pall Mall Budget says :—"The present tariff is intended to protect manufactories, or nearly so. Mr Wells has clearly shown that the end aimed at is simply unattainable. You cannot give an indiscriminate protection to all manufacturing industry. In order to benefit one trade, by raising the price of the commodities which it produces, you mast inevitably injure some other trade. It is pointing out the unintended and unexpected advantages which the tariff confers on one industry at the expense of another that Mr Wells excels. In a country in which manufactories are of old standing, one trade sometimes acquires a sort of conventional claim to be considered preeminently national, and thus, according to protectionist ideas, has a title to be protected at all risks. But this is not the case in the United States. All manufactures are new. None has any right of ascendancy over another. The theory, therefore, being once accepted that private industry ought to be encouraged by the State, or, as Mr Wells justly puts it, that the State should enter into partnership with the private trader, it becomes a duty from which there is no escape to give a definite share of encouragement to every single braneh of production. What Mr Wells has proved is that this is simply impossible, and he has proved it without appealing for a raiment either to general principles or to abstract propositions. We select, for the exquisite simplicity of the absurdity exposed, the account given by the Commissioner of the effects of protective duties, intended to be impartial, on the various classes of producers engaged in the manufactare of leather." Now, this a mode of reasoning that ought to satisfy the most fastidious of the Auckland protectionists, and we shall be glad to hear what they have to say in reply to it: —" The excellence and cheapness of the boots and shoes made for the ordinary wear of the American laboring classes, have often been pointed out by travellers. The business is very extensive, and it is one which brings out all the, best qualities of the skilful American, workman. Of the trades contributing to the manufacture of boots and shoes the first in order is, of course, that of the tanner. Tanning is an industry for which the Americans have unrivalled facilities, for the bark of the hemlock, a tree con*, fined to North America, supplies them with the best tanning agent known to the world, and enables the tanner to conduct his process with a rapidity, cheapness, and innoctiousness which cannot be matched beyond the United Sfates. Last, of all comes the producer of the raw material of leather, the farmer or grazier who breeds the cattle that yield the The intention of the authors of the tariff was to. protect all these three industries* those of the boot manufacturer, of the tanner, and of the grazier, exactly alike. The foreign importer of boots and shoes* of tanned leather, and of hides, is discouraged by nearly prohibitory duties. The exact result is that the protection given to the American producer of hidea* has nearly ruined the other two trades. The hides of Plate and of Great Britain, and Ireland, are kept out to such an ex-i tent, that the tanner caunot get raw skins sufficient to fill his tan-pits, and the boot manufacturers cannot obtain leather enough to work up into boots and shoes. The most skilled industries are absolutely sacrificed to the least skilled." Another illustration of the working of protection in the United States is the following :—-r" For the encouragement of American copper mining and copper smelting, a duty of 45, per cent, was imposed on all manufactures of which copper constitutes a chief component. This description includes an article known as. •Dutch metal,' which is largely used by paperhangers and oilier dealers \a, decorative work as a substitute for gold leaf. Dutch metal cannot be made i,n to? materials a,re nearlv w^thless %

and the whole price represents the labor of beating them out, a process which therefore demands the cheap labor never found in the United States. The effect therefore of the duty has been to run up the price of Dutch metal to somethiug not yery far short of the gold leaf which it was invented to replace The paperhangers cannot under these circumstances sell their goods, owing to the high price and the difficulty of making the consumer understand why they charge so much for them. Here, then, we have the paperhangers injured by an attempt to gain an advantage to a totally unconnected industry,—the copper miners. We may add that the duty on copper has also .caused universal distress among the copper smelters, whom there was every desire to protect." Facts like these need no «i imment. They are their own best comment on the evil effects of protection.