New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1851-02-04
The Lessons OF Experience.

enced by hobbies or party prepossesslons'
denied or doubted the fact that the years Of
most Efficient Protection 10 our Home Indus
try hare been the gears Of our greatest and
most solid National prosperity. However
our Walkers and Calhouns may have SEEM
ed to prove that the fact ought not to have
been so, they could not seriously and plau-
sibly deny that it ,cas so. General stag
nation and distress, unemployed or unre-
warded Labor, Inadequate and dwindling
Revenue and impaired Public Credit, Agri-
culture without Markets and even paralyzed
Commerce have repeatedly besought relief
in times of low imposts by the imposition
of higher and more Protective Duties, but
none of these ever went before Congress
to say, There are great distress and pros
tration in the Country caused by the ex-
istence of Protective Tariff, wherefore
we pray you to repeal it," The memo
rails of the merchants, mechanics, artisans
and laborers of New ork, Boston, Balti-
more, &c. to the First Congress under the
Federal Constitution unitedly testify that
Commerce as we'll as Labor had been
brought to the brink of destruction by the
seven years of absolute Free Trade which
succeeded the Revolutionary War, and
that Tariff was vitality needed to secure
due employment and reward to each. So
in all later times when cry has gone up
to Congress for higher Duties, it has been
based upon and has appealed to actual dis
asters, losses and sufferings consequent on
the absence or inadequacy of the existing
Import Duties. But when the evil had
been removed by a change of policy-when
public attention had been comparatively
withdrawn from the subject-then came
the fallacious theorists and overturned and
FILTERED away the bulwark of the Nations
prosperity, bu. they could not deny the ex-
istence of that prosperity. No man will
even now pretend that the Tariff of 1928
was whitfield down in 1925, so as to sink
gradually to twenty per cent. in 1912, be-
cause the Country was even alleged to be
unpresperous or its Industry depressed and
paralyzed. So again in 1916. The exist
ence of general thrift and activity was ad
mitted, even by those who flashed before
the Nations eyes the most intoxicating
prospects of wealth to be acquired by
abolishing all Protective Duties and at
tempting to grasp the carrying and bar
gaining of the whole world.
Let it not be forgotten that the statistics
of our National Industry show an immense
and increasing progress in production and
thrift under the influence of the Tariff OF
1912. We were persuaded to give up tho
Protective Tariff Of 1912, not on the as
sumption that we were then unprosperous,
but in order that we might become more
prosperous. Have the promises of Walk
er's Report been realized Have they not.
on the contrary, been signally dissipated!
Our deserted and silent Cotton Factories.
Iron Furnaces, &c. with their thousands on
thousands of idle or unproftably employed
and meagerly rewarded operatives, show
immense losses not to these only, but also
to the farmers whose products they liber-
ally' consumed and paid for, and the tailors.
shoemakers, hatters, &c. whom they large
" and profitably employed while they had
the means-but who has made what these
have lost by the Tariff Of l846l Cotton,
under the impulse Of two short crops In
succession, is for the present high, and To-
bacco sympathizes with it; but what other
product of Agriculture-what single pro-
duct of Free Labor-sympathises with
theml Look at the present pnces cur
rent of Wheat and Corn. in the face OF
their free admission into British ports,
which was to do so much more for our
farmers than any Tariff Calculate what
Wheat must be worth in Wisconsin and
Iowa. if its price were wholly governed
bv the pulsations of the London Corn Ex-
change.
Mr.. HENRY C. CAREY has recently
completed general survey Of the past and
present condition of our National Industry.
under the title of "I'he Prospect: AgT'-
cultural, Manufacturing, Commercial and
Financial; at the opening of the Year
1851" It is printed in the January and
February Nos. of Col. ]. S. SINNERS
Pillow, Loom and Anvil"-a work which
richly deserves a generous support IRON al
interested in our National Prosperity-sna