Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1852-1859, 1858-09-27


necessity for vital emendation of our tariff
system, is gathering momentum every day; and
by the assembling of the next session of Con-
gress, will bear down, with the weight of an ava
lanche upon the present administration. Asevere
course OF phlebotomyis oftentimes both neces-
sarY and Beneficial for healthy as well as sick
people, There were great many people who,
all the while they were getting along any way
toleEably comfortable in life never choseor cared
to look into the practical operations of our tar
ia system. But now that they find the fire in
their FORCES gone out, the blasts in the furnaces
no longer blown. Why then they wake up to the
dire prostration which an important part of
the interests of the country have undergone
from the miserable tinkering at the protective
defences of our tariff system. We think that
in all probability, the tariff of 40, assessing as
itdid, so many Prohibitory valuations upon some
articles, was not the best standard ever devised,
but what ever faults it may have had, they were
like the failings of Goldsmith's school master,
which, it will be remembered, always cleaned to
virtues side.n Theschedule was too thoroughly
American, if such thing can be, and we think
it can; that is, was too much on the shot house"
plan of raising everything yourself, whether or
no the surroundings of climate, aud location
&c were congenial We believe in Mr..
Madison's idea, as expressed in the debates
on that subject, as we find them reported
in Benton's Abridgement-tha tariffs were
meant first for revenue purposes, and next for
adequate encouragement toour home industry
When we have the raw materials in so great
abundance in so many departments of manufac-
ture, we must contriye some way to bring out
that atentwealth, or else it is so much dead capi
talon our hands, provided, always, ne do notseek
to develope these elements at the expense of the
consumer. It is the consumers interest that is
always to be looked to in organizing any branch
of industry, and anything that initiates against
that, will, and ofright ought to, go down. Butthe
great mistake has been made, we modestly sug-
gest, in suppOsing that the consumer has of
necessity to be arrayed against the producer or
the factor or anybody else Give the consumer
the ''portion of goods that falleth to him." in
the way of either immediate protection or.in-
direct results from protection. It is hard
thing to make subject that is notyisible, in all
its phases, just at once, either popular OF i'm
pressive. People are so prone TO always look
only at the side rightnext them that they but too
often forget that there is indeed another side at
all. Agricultural men seem oftentimes totally
obliHious of the fact that a division of labor is
necessary to keep any one branch in healthy
condition; in other words, they seem to forget
that were our factories and workshops all closed,
all the people now employed in them would be
forced back upon mans first occupation-viz
tillage of the soil. Nothing is palmer than that
were such the case, the price of everything that
the ground produces would in a little while fall
far enough below the standard at which labor is
either remuneratiye OF endurable. Thus we
may reason from particular to a general line
of policy, and show that no nation can be
healthy or in the genuine channel of civilization
that does not extend adequate protection to each
and all of its various interests.
The most noticeable defect, and tits so be-
cause of its great prominence, in our tariff sys-
TEN, is the miserable and languishing condition
of the Iron interest. We may say that Iron is
our forts-that, Us Dr. Plummer said in the
grafton which we published, we are great on
Iron-that is, that we have it in inexhaustible
profnsion, in its raw or undeveloped state
When in such condition of things, its manu-
facture languishes, that there is q "screw loose
somewhere, is us evident as axiom itself How
far the general prostration of the Iron interest
is attributable to the deranged business of the
country, we could not undertake to say-but
certain is, there is an inherent rotteness in the
system which, even under existing circumstau.
ces, encourages or even tolerates the importa-
ton of foreign Iron in such inordinate quaint.
ties as the tables show to be now in vogue
Whilst thousands of our fellow countrymen,
wOrkmen in iron, are resorting to every shift to
hold ont in the hopes of better time, whilst
many of them are suffering almost for the bare
necessities of life, our government is ordering
and receiviug hundreds and thousands oft tons OF
foreign iron from Wales to conduct water to the
capital Of the country.
We are glad to seeso many of the Democrat.
reprints yielding their columns to the swelling
words of the people on this subject, and espe,
c1ally are we. glad to see the tone of one or two
of them in this state.
A correspondent of tho Richmond Enquirer,
in viewing the state of the Iron interest consid-
ers the doctrine of free trade, and asks:
Where did-it ever exist! Surely not in
England, now the great advocate of the system,
because she is the great manufacturer of the