Washington telegraph., 1851-03-12
THE TARIFF.


To matters connected with their in
terests, men are usually keenly alive, and
they generally detect and condemn at
once, whatever is prejudcial. This they
10 upon the principle of self-preservation
and protection; and it is strange thot
there Should be any exception to the
uniform influence and operation OF this
rule But unfortunately it is so, and
perhaps i'll nothing is it SO palpable as in
the opposition manifested to the Tariff.
This is partly owing to misconceived
notions on the subject, and partly to the
spiri, of party-to ignorance or to reck-
lessness, which either obscures the truth,
or wlfully dislegards it.
We find III the ~Repnbllc' very
sensible comment upon the course pnrsu
ed by Representatives in Congress in re-
! lation to the protection Of iron, and the
manufactures Of cotton, condemning this
unnatural blindness, and disregard of SELF
interest, which would aggrandize lordly
rival beyond the seas to the injury of our
own citizens. The discrimination made
between competition for safe and a
competition for purchase we think just
one-the article thus continues:
Thr course of another class of Repre-
sentatives appeared to us no less extra
ordinary we mean that which has for
its constituents the growers of cotton
woo.. To them competition for the
22arciSase of their commodity would seem
to be as Indispensable as to the makers
of the roads is competition for the safe of
iron. Nevertheless, with few exceptions,
the whole body of them was found voting
to maintain system which tends TO re-
store to Eng gland her monopoly as a pur-
chaser of cotton. Within the last year
the policy of 1916 has closed mills con-
tanning more than a million of spindles.
and producing more than million of
yards of cloth per day, and it has prevent
ed the bailding of mills, that would have
contained three millions of spindles, max
ing three millions of yards per day; and
thus has the competition for the purchase
Of cotton wool not only been prevented
from increasing, but it has actually and
largely been diminished. Competition
for purchase raises prices; and yet the
consumer of iron, desiring to have cheap
IRON, destroys competition dor its safe.
Competition for sale Cepresses prices and
yet the producer of cotton closes up the
mills a! home that use American cotton
only in order that he may increase the
competition for sale in a market in which
Sufat cotton aud Polish -four constitute
important ingredients III the manufacture
of cloth.
These things strike US as singular, be-
cause they are SO decidedly in opposition
to what would be done by any of these
gentlemen la their individual capacities.
Not one of the Representatives of the
planting States would hesitate to say
that self interest required the maintenance
of competition for the transportation of
cotton, and that it would be highly in-
furious to permit any single combination
of steamboats, to have a monopoly Of the
trade Of his district. Not one of them
but would deprecate being limited to any
single body Of merchants, as the pur
chasers of his commodity, in the ports Of
Charleston, Savannah, or New Orleans,
and yet all unite to prevent the existence
of competition for the supply Of machinery
for the conversion of their cotton into
cloth. The spindle is as necessary to him
as the steamboat; yet he destroys com
petition in the supply Of tie one, while
urging it in the case of the other. Every
man knows that coffee aud sugar are sold
more cheapy where there are two shops
than where there is only one, aud that
grain commands higher price where
there are two mills than where there is
only one;. yet in the case of cotton it is
supposed that prices will be advanced
by means of system that secures the |
control of the whole supply to a single
body of men banded together III Man |
chester.