Clarksville chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1857-1865, 1860-06-08
The Tobacco and Iron Interest Of
Kentucky and Tennessee.

DIR. johnson, the very ehcient senator from the
Paducah district introduced into the last Legisla-
ture series of resolutions upon the subject of To-
bacco calling the attention of the federal power to
the onerous burthens which this one article of Amer
lean production has so long felt without an effort
the part of the treaty making power to correct or
TO mitigate it.
The tobacco trade is at this time very much de-
pressed and an inquiry into the cause of it, togeth
er with such other facts as lie in the way will be
fitting employment for the tobacco planters and all
others interested in the traffic.
The British tariff sseventy- cents per pound,
or seventy-seven dollars for 100 pounds, or, in 9TH
er words a hogshead of tobacco weighing sixteen
hundred pounds, and costing in this country about
$780, has to pay England in the form Of duty or tax
hcelve hundred and hrtytiro dollars, before 1t can
be sold in any OF the English markets. the govern
ment realizing an annual income Of twenty y-three mil
lions of dollars from tobacco alone,
In France the tobacco trade is in the hands Of the
Regio, a company of six persons, to whom the gov
ernment farms the privilege of selling tobacco exclu
siyely, and realizes the immense of thirty-fve
millions of dollars per annum.
In Austria, the tariff amounts to nearly eleven mill
lions. In Spain to six millions. In Prussia and the
lesser German and Italian States and IN Russia the
annual duties is forty-three millions, making one
hundred and eighteen millions of dollars which
the article of tobacco alone pays to foreign gov
ernments.
By referring to the cycopcdia of commerce. 1t
viii be seen that the whole crop Of tobacco for the
year 1858, brought TO the planter $l7 009, 767and
this seventeen millions Of dollars worth Of tobacco
sent abroad, is taxed the monstrous sum Of one
hundred and eighteen million dollars or seven
times the value Of the whole tobacco crop raised in
the United States Tobacco comprises the one
eleventh of all our exports, and yet it pays in the
form of tax seventyseven millions of dollars more
than everything else put together, exported from
ard fhtaat tava
the South would soon be depopulated, and would
again become a wilderness-or if flour and corn
and beef and pork and lard were thus taxed, how
much of feither ould be raised fer exportation2
The Southern States pay almost nothing in the
way of commercial tax, whilst the Northern, or
manufacturing States, protected by home tariff
of thirty per cent and yet the tobacco planters in
three or four States made to pay one hundred
and eighteen millions of dollars outof one hundred
and sixty millions which is the whole sum the world
claims off our commerce for the privilege Of selling
our products in their markets. We have been so
long the sport of politicians and ricksters and sold
and resod at every revision of the tariff that its in
vain for the tobacco planter to look to the treaty
making power for relief unless they take steps to
demand redress of their wrongs. President max
ing is the only employment of Congress from one
election TO the next and this state of things will
continue unless the people rise in their power and
demand that tobacco shall be placed upon the re-
cprocity footing in the next adjustment of the tariff
with foreign nations; and if these will not relax
their policy, then let US demahd countervailing
duties, Interpretations until they do change
their policy. BY counteryai.;ng duties is meant
paying them back ia their coin. Let us increase
our tariff ON iron, silks, wine, brandy, silver and
gold ware &C., &c, to the same rate which they are
charging tobacco; and the tariff on tobacco will
be reduced in twelve months. And in addition to |
the increase of its consumption in England, Ireland
aud txrrtI To
the whole of the British possessions in India, where
there is not sold one pound Of tobacco, and where
opium is exclusively used, among population Of
six hundred millions Of people.
The iron interest would be put on its legs again |
by this movement. 1t is known to some of your
readers that out OF fifty furnaces that were in blast
four years ago on the Cumberland and Tennessee
rivers, only seven in operation the others
are abandoned, and going to decay, and most of
their owners ruined in fortune, are dragging out
their lives in poverty. A counterVailing tariff OF
ten thousand dollars ton pig iron, and twenty
on bar iron, would set every furnace in blaze that
is now abandoned and build as many more; and
it would do even more than this; it would reduce
the tariff on tobacco before another crop could be
raised and sold. And when this is done, then we
can afford to reduce the tariff on iron to five dol
lars ton for pig and ten for bar iron, or to pre-
tective standard merely and, as our manufacturers
get able to compete with the cheap labor and capital
of England, reduce it still lower to any point, in
fact that it would bear, so as to extend adequate
protection and nothing more.
A great English statesman once said, speaking of
iron, that "the man who discovered iron and its
uses, deserves to be called the friend of man and
the father of plenty" No nation ever did prosper
that failed to extend all necessary encouragement
this great element of civilization happiness and
plenty So that while we are looking to what is
due to tobacco we should also look to the iron in
hos, Lao
terests.--Lou Courier.