Bedford inquirer. [volume] (Bedford, Pa.) 1857-1884, 1866-01-12

BY HoRAcE aREELY.


The purpose of political economy is the
increase at once of individual, national, and
general wealth. Whatever renders human
labor more effective that is, more produc-
tive-ministers to this end To lure a larg-
er and still larger proportion Of the human
family from idleness to industry, from squal-
or to comfort, such is the aim of the true
economist.
Diversity Of pursuits Is an incxorable con-
dition of our thrift and prosperity. Aeon
munity exclusively engaged numbering,
mining, fishing, grain-growing, or anything
else, viii have no employment for large pro
portion of its children who win grow up
idle, unskilled and dependent. The child
reared in daily contact with the diversified
and complex operations of county like the
Middlesex of Massachusetts or of Alleghe-
ny of Pennsylvania, can hardly ia i to be
more efficient in after life than if acquainted
only with the rude cultivation Of a sea is
land, or the silk manufacture of a Spital-
fields or Lyons Industry is the chief edu-
cation of majority Of our race, who rank
higher or lower in the scale Of being as its
processes wherewith they are familiar more
or less varied and perfect.
Protection has been prejudiced in the eyes
of thousands by being invoked TAT least, its
opponents so say) to achieve impossible
ties-to insure the growing of pine-apples
in Greenland or the breeding Of reindeer at
Timbuctoo Political economy and common
sense alike condemn such absurdities as the
attempt to make a business of extracting
sunbeams from cucumbers or boil tea-ket-
tie with the heat latent in snowballs. Show
US that Nature fortids the prosecution of
any pursuit in this or that region-that an
article, staple, or fabric can only be there
produced at cost of double or treble the
labor required for its production elsewhere
aud we agree that it is not there proper
subject for Protection Rest assured that
we have considered our ground, and are nei-
ther madmen nor IDIOTS None are more
averse than we to superseding good and
cheap articles by rivals at once inferior and
more costly: and none more readily than we
to agree and insist that raw materials and
bulky staples should be gathered from all
quarters and subjected only to light revenue
duties, if to any at all
Wherein, then, do we differ from our ad-
versaries, the so called Free-Traders /? l
answer
l. We insist that the money price at tohich
an arttt}r Is sold affords no absolute criterion
Of its cost. For instance: the State of Iowa
buys cloth and sells grain. Let us suppose
that, with our factories and workshops in
Europe, the average prices obtained by her
farmers should be fifty cents per bushe for
wheat and twenty-five for Indian corn, while
they bought their fabrics of Europe at pri-
ces indicated by the retailing Of goods sati-
nets at one dollar per yard. Now let us
suppose protective tariff imposed which
should levy duty of fifty cents per yard on
manufacture for our consumption to this
country, and in part to Iowa and its vicinity
thus creating and maintaining an adequate
home market for our breadstuffs, thereby
raising the price of grain in Iowa to one
dollar per bushel for wheat and fifty cents
for corn; while the home made satinets are
retaled for one dollar and twenty-five cents
per yard Is it not plain that the Iowa
farmers obtain their fabrics really cheaper,
though nominally dearer than before? that
each farmers surplus of wheat or corn will
buy him more cloth at the enhanced than it
did at the lower price? And does the cir
cumstance that the former is termed artii-
cial. the latter natural, make any essential
difference.
But why is the homemade cloth really
cheaper to the farmer than its foreign rival,
though it is possible to sell him the latter at
lower money price? answer-Because
the fabrication of his cloth in Europe neces-
states the expectation of his grain, and the
consequent graduation of its price by that
ruling in Europe, deducting from his re-
turns the cost of the transporting it thither.
Let us suppose that Iowa grows mainly
wheat for sale, and must send the larger
portion of her surplus across the Atlantic
to find consumers, selling it in Birmingham
or Sheffield at two dollars per bushel, where
of one dollar and fifty cents is absorbed in
the cost and charges of transmission Of
course, her farmers can receive, in the ay-
erage. but fifty cents per bushel. But trans
fer the production of her fabrics from Eu-
rope to America, and much of it to Iowa or
its vicinity, and now the price of grain in
Iowa rises by law inexorable as that eff
gravitation. It is no longer depressed by
the necessity of finding market for good
part of it four thousand miles away, but ris-
es to a far higher level. And not only is
wheat dearer to the farmer, though cheaper
to the manufacturer, than it was, but the
farmer now finds ready market for fruit,
| vegetables, hay, etc, which he could scarce
| ly sell at any price so long as our people $
productive energies were devoted to agricul-
ture alone.
II. What we seek by Protection is to
shorten the distance which separates farm
ers from manufacturers, and thereby dimin-
ish the too heavy cost Of exchanging their
products respectively If a thousand farm
ers growing grain in Iowa and a thousand
manufacturers making wares and fabrics in
| England. exchange their products across
[