New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1852-04-24
WHY CHANGE THE TARIFF !

detail, of our fiscal and commercial regula-
tions. They are anxious to concede some
thing for peace sake, and therefore would
like an agreement for stability on the basis
of the present Tariff as a half-and-hal
measure, neither consistently affirming the
doctrines of Protection nor those of Free
Trade, but embodying something of each.
We answer that we cannot acquiesce in
the present Tariff as fnality, for the fol-
lowing among other reasons.
l. Because under its auspices the Coun-
try is now sinking rapidly and very deeply
in debt. Our easy Money Market, caused
by the present choice of our foreign credit
ors to invest their balances here rather than
draw them in specie, Qrom which they could
only obtain lower interest in Europe than
they are now securing here by investment in
Public Stocks, Railroad Bonds, Mortgages,
&C. are subecting US to the payment OF
heavy sums annually in interest and expos
ing US to the chances, the almost certainty,
of a terrible revulsion. If we should go on
fifty years as we are now going, the Com
mercial and Feudal Aristocracy of Europe
would at the end be receiving incomes
from this country hardly less gigantic than
those they now draw from the over-taxed,
bayonet- governed, priest-ridden, pauper-
lied Millions of Europe. But the present
system cannot work smoothly for fifty
years, nor anything near it. 1t tends di-
rectly to descriptions, commissions, explo-
sions; and a commercial crisis or panic, no
matter where it may begin, will be sure to
fall with double force and desolating conse
quences here. Unless we mean to sail
blindly and passively into the very jaws of
destruction, we must prepare for a storm.
2. Because our present Tariff is power
fully adverse in its operation to the due de-
velopment and diversihcation of our Ma
tional Industry. 1t has already crushed
the production of Raw Silk in this country
and nearly paralyzed the Silk Manufacture,
both so vigorous and hopeful but few
yeafs ago. No country in the world is bet
ter adapted by nature to the growth and
manufacture of Silk than large portions of
our own; our consumption of Silk is i'm
mense and rapidly extending, and the La
Dor required in this branch of industry may
in great part be performed by aged, de-
crepit persons and young children, who are
now reluctantly idle and burthensome be-
cause they can find nothing to do. We
might produce Thirty Millions worth of
Silk per annum without diminishing the
production of our present staples to one
half that extent. BY naturalizingthe Silk
Culture and Manufacture, we should insure
the training of tens of thousands of child
rem to industry, efficiency and virtue, who,
in its absence, will grow up to Incidence,
incapacity, restitution and vice. And this
is but one among many branches of indus
try, now foreign to us, which true and
bene6cent National Policy would natural
ize, nurture and develop on our own soil,
to the signal and lasting advantage of every
department of Productive Labor. Our
cities are full of young women, unemployed
or most meagerly paid, who would find
abundant work and good wages if our
Tariff were so adjusted as to secure the
production at home of articles now lavisbly
imported, which might be made here as
cheaply THAT is, with as little labor as
anywhere else.
We do not speak from theory but from
experience. The Tariff of 1912 gave i'm
mediate employment and good wages to
thousands after thousands of workmen in
vocations previously unknown here or al
most deserted. We speak not now of the
| production OF Iron and Fabrics, to which
the term Manufactures is most commonly
though inaccurately restricted. The pro-
duction of Glass, Starch, Cutlery, Pins,
Pipes, and an infnity of articles which up
to that time had been mainly imported,
opened new avenues to independence to
laborers who for months had done little or
nothing. The dressing of Furs for Hat
ters' use, was one of many branches of
business substantially created in this c1un-
try by that Tariff. Since Its overt row,
the tendency has been exactly the othes