The Sun.
London, England, 1869-02-03 00:00:00

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THE ANNUAL REPOR2S.

REPORT OF TIIE NON. DAVID A. WELLS,
SPECIAL REVENUE 0031M1SSIUNEE.
WHAT IS THE PRESENT CONDITION OF INDUSTRY
—The facts which constitute an answer to this ques-
tion are to a considerable degree contradictory and
paradoxical. On the one hand, there is much that
indicates that the country is rapidly recovering
from the effects of the war, and resuming that won-
derful career of progress and development which
especially characterised its history during the period
embraced in the thirteen years from 1847 to 1860.
On the other hand, there is another class of facts
which as unmistakably indicate the existence of
agencies which tend to arrest *or obstruct national
development, and which foster speculation, idleness,
extravagance of living, discontent with moderate
and slow gains, haste to be rich, and the spirit of
trading as distinguished from the spirit of produc-
tion. Within the last five years more cotton spindle ;
have been put in operation, more iron furnaces
erected, more iron smelted, more bars rolled, more
steel made, more coal and copper mined, more lum-
ber sawed and hewn, more houses and shops con-
structed, more manufactories of different kinds
started, and more petroleum collected, refined,
and exported, than during any equal period in
the history of tha country ; and this increase has
been greater both as regards quality and quantity,
and greater than the legitimate increase to be ex-
pected from the normal increase of wealth and po-
pulation.

EFFECTS OF THE WAR. —lnvestigation shows that
in many departments•of industry the cost of skilled
labour and of raw material in Great Britain and the
United States very closely approximated in 1860.
In 1860 American coarse cottons were obtaining
the command of most extra-European markets.
In 1860, wooden ships, allowing for quality, could
be built cheaper in the United States than in any
other country. In 1860 copper in the pig was ex-
ported from the United States in profitable 301H-
petition with the mines of Cuba and South Ame-
rica ; and evidence has also been presented to the
Commissioner showing that in some instances pig
iron was manufactured with profit at rates far lower
than the average of Europe, while the purchasing
power of the wages paid for the same was consider
ably greater than at present. But the war came,
bringing with it certain inevitable results, and these
results now constitute the per contra upon the na-
tional ledger before referred to. The feature about
them which, in contrast with the facts above cited,
seems contradictory and paradoxical, is that while
our resources as a nation have, on the whole, con-
tinued unimpaired, while we continue to possess
and enjoy the greatest area of fertile territory, the
most unrivalled means of intercommunication, na-
tural or artificial, and the freest and most popular
form of government; while the aggregate annual
products of the soil have continually increased and
not diminished, and those of the anvil, the forge,
the loom, and the spindle have also multiplied, there
is, nevertheless, hardly a single domestic article or
product, agricultural or manufactured, in behalf of
which the claim, either directly or indirectly, has
not been male within the last two years that the
same could be produced to greater advantage or
profit in some other country than the United States;
increased protection even being demanded for oil
paintings, rough building stone, Indian corn, Bibles
and ice—the last to the extent of 15 per cent. gold,
and this claim the Commissioner is obliged to admit
is, to a very great extent, in exact accordance with
the truth. The United States finds itself, there-
fore, in the anomalous position of a great nation,
favoured in many respects as no other nation upon
which the sun shines, unable to exchange its pro-
ducts on terms of equality with the products of
any other country ; the marked exception being
always its product or supplies of the precious
metals.

ADVERSE AGENCIES.—The immediate cause of
the anomalous conditifan of affairs in question must
unquestionably be referred to the greatly increased
cost of nearly all forms of labour and commodities
as compared with the price for the same that pre-
vailed in the decade imme liately preceding the war ;
while these in turn must be regarded as the result-
ant mainly of three agencies growing out of the war,
-viz., irredeemable paper eurretunc.,--stnegua—auid,..;.;,:::::4::t;..,"7l
heavy taxation, and a limited supply of skilled 14-
boar, the last manifesting itself at the present time
in specialties rather than in general.

NATIONAL TAXATION UNDER THE TARIFF.—It is
important to recognize the fact that under the exist-
ing financial conditio❑ of the country, the old-time
issues between the advocates of free trade on the one
hand and protection on the other, have ceased to be
of any real practical importance—inasmuch as in
the arrangement of a tariff with a view to revenue,
the requirements of the Government must certainly,
for the, present, necessitate so high an average of
duties as to afford all that can be reasonably asked
for on the grounds of protection ; and with a given
requirement, moreover, for revenue, in excess of
what can be derived from the taxation under the
tariff of acknowledged luxuries, there would seem
to be no valid objection to distributing the addi-
tional taxation in such a manner as to favour those
branches of industry most exposed to foreign com-
petition.

TILE EXISTING TARIFF.--TIIC avowed object of
the tariff, as revised in 1861, was revenue to pro-
vide for the expenses of a great war. Subordinate
only to this was the other principle of discriminat-
ing duties in favour of domestic or home industry
—a principle which may be considered as the set-
tled policy of the great majority of the American
people, and which, as we have already shown, is
recognized and virtually acted upon by all the lead-
ing commercial nations of Europe. With the ter-
mination of the war, and with accruing receipts
from the tariff in excess of the actual requirement
of the Treasury, the popular tendency as expressed
by legislation, accomplished or projected, has been
to reverse the order of importance of these two
principles, and to make the idea of revenue subor-
dinate to protection rather than protection subor-
dinate to revenue. And in carrying out, further-
more, the idea of protection, but the rule for guid-
ance would appear to have been adopted for legis-
lation, viz. ; the assumption that whatever rate of
duty could be shown to be for the advantage of
any private interest, the same would prove equally
advantageous to the interests of the whole country.
The result has been a tariff based upon small issues
rather than upon any great national principle; a
tariff which is unjust and unequal ; which need-
lessly enhances prices ; which takes far more indi-
rectly from the people than is received into the
Treasury ; which renders an exchange of domestic
for foreign commodities nearly impossible; which
necessitates the continual exportation of obliga-
tions of national indebtedness and of the precious
metals ; and which, while professing to protect Ame-
rican industry, really, in many cases, discriminates

against it.
INDISCRIMINATE PROTECTION A CHARACTERISTIC
OF THE EXISTING TARlFF.—Another characteristic
feature of the existing tariff is that it attempts in-
discriminate or universal protection, an idea which,
if fully carried out, would render all protection a
nullity ; and to the extent to which it is carried out
does more for foreign as compared with domestic
industry than almost any other one agency. The
term raw material is only a relative expression ; so
much so, that it would be difficult to instance any
article, the product of industry, to which it could
whether
eththeer
be absolutely and unqualifiedly applied. H
necessity in the construction of a tariff,
the object aimed at be revenue or protection, of the
;
exercise of discrimination which discrimination, in
order that it may be intelligent, must be based, not
on a consideration singly and separately of the in-
terests involved, but upon a consideration and
disnugesettaohifen thectanr
thedr nl
el
al doctrine
lsew separatenvtew in-
terestssk annv knowledge
p tgh ei
approximates to perfection in at the
the,a tdaegl legislationlree th at it
provides for the greatest good of the greatest
number.

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