The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-06-03
Demooraoy-Nevv VS.. Old.

From the Tribune.
The World sums up sweeping argumen
against what we call protection to home indus
try as follows
"The industries which produce commodities
for expectation deserve as much encourage
ment (and no more) than those which produce
commodities for domestic use. The ultimate
aim of both is precisely the same, namely, to
supply articles for the home market. Certain
industries export only because they can inn
port; they transmute their products into other
goods by commerce, as different industries
Iransmute raw materials into other goods by
manufacture. In both cases alike, domestic
industries supply the domestic market; and
Justice REQUIRES that the race between these
competing domestic industries should be equal.
The industries that can supply the cheapest
goods are fairly entitled to the market, and IL is
that they should have it, 1t is not, as the pro-
tectionists are never weary OF asserting COM
petition between native and foreign Industry,
but between rival domestic industries which
seek, by different methods, to furnish the home
market with the same kinds OF goods; 'Protec-
tlon,' therefore, is merely discrimination
against the home industries which produce the
cheapest goods. We. should be glad TO see the
TTiblne's reply to this argument"
The IriJuneS reply to "this argument
must already be familiar to the World. If
ever proposition was demonstrated, we hold
this to be-The apparent cheapness of i'm
ported wares and fabrics is fictitious unreal
delusive, being accompanied by great dimi-
mutton if not absolute destruction of value in
the articles whereby the domestic wares and
fabrics would be paid for. Thus, we have seen
in Iowa City, when that city was the capital of
the State long strings of farmers wagons piled
high with Indian corn which the growers were
vaihly trying to sell at fifteen cents per bushel
of shelled grain That same corn, we are as
sure as we are of our own existence would
then and there have been worth at least my
centssper bushel, had the metals, wares, and
fabrics required and consumed westward of the
river Wabash been mainly produced at the
nearest points where ore, coal, water-pOwer,
etc., invited their production.
The economic truth here indicated is all
pervading. We have helped burn wood, which
had no commercial value, into charcoal, within
ten miles of the present manufacturing cities
of Manchester and Nashua, N. H. The char
coal, when sold for the most it would fetch, did
not pay fifty cents per day for the work neces-
sarily required to produce it, there being then
but a few 6shermen's huts where Lowell and
Manchester now are and perhaps two stores
and a mill where Nashua is. To-day, wood
growing on that very ground where we made
charcoal (and it is too rocky and sterile for
| any other use) must be worth SO per cord as
it grows, finding an ample market at the
neighboring seats of manufacture. In other
words-A hundred cords of wood as it grows
| will now buy more iron, cloth, or wares than
ten thousand cords of just such wood could
] be sold for while we kept our workshops IN
Europe So Of the apples which we helped