New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-06-12

magnificent legacy OF Experience ana SKILL ii"'is
this we might in time, were they All s"ePV away,
reoreate most of our worldly possessions; deprived
~ il we could scarcely. and with great ulnculty,
preserve our bare lives. Toe teemng mlllohs OF
China are constantly near the brink OF staIVatoh''
which many of them daily overpass; less l appre-
ond bceause of the density of their population than
Of the rudeness and neficency of their laOorsavlng
dcvices On the other hand, so prodigious has been
fine progress of invention in Europe that the steam
engines of Great Britain alone have been estimated
~ equivalent in force if not in productive capacity,
~ Six Hundred Millions of men. Cheap beyond COM
harrison as is the labor of Eastern Asia the machin-
ery of Great Britain completes with 1t IN ITS own
markets rivals it, underses its products at the very
doors of the producers dvests them of employment
and dooms them to die of famine. In my early BOY
hood Chinese cotton fabrics known as Nankins &C.
we're extensively worn, even by the poor IN new
England but that trade was destroyed by bflush
and American power-lOoms nearly half century
ago; and now the peasantry of China ana lhui" are
largely clad in the products of those looms Cotton
grown in India is extensively shipped 10 Engahu,
there spun and woven, returned IN the shape Oh
fabrics 10 India and thore worn all but exclusively
NV those among whom il was grown, who would
GLADLY have spun and woven it for sXpence sterling
Der DAYS work yet who paid the cost of two journeys
around the Cape of Good Hope, that of the British
manufacture the interest its value durngits long
absence and the profits of several mercantile trans
fcrs and yet were supplied with it in the market of
India at lower cash prices than her own looms could
afford.
Now would not have had India rest content ever
more with her rude, inefficient, antiquated hand
looms and for their sake exclude the cheaper fabrics
of the Occident but could have had say in effect
to her spinners and weavers: Purchase and import
or rival and surpass the British machinery, and &C
"0uire the skill needed to work it; meantime, the
duties on imported fabrics, whether British or
" other shall be fixed so that you cannot be under
" sold and driven from the home market while you
are making the requisite experiments and Efforts
would have done this had been in power in India,
in the interest primarily of my own country and her
people, but ultimately in that of Labor every where
and the permanent well-being of the whole human
race
In the infancy of country there were those VINO
honestly believed and argued that she should sedu-
lousy eschew all species Of Manufactures and devote
her industry wholly TO Agriculture the nobler,
more heathful, more nvigorating pursuit, and that
which would most surely conserve the virtues and the
liberties of her peoples This in practice would have
constrained people to cling to the coast OF the At
lantc and the valleys of the navigabe rivers which
pay tribute to that ocean. True, they would have
ultimately constructed canals and railroads reaching
out into the broad West But the cost of transporting
grain and other bulky staples thence to Europe IN
such enormous quantities as would have been re-
quired to pay for all the wares and fabrics we re-
quire would have eaten up threefOurths Of the pro-
ceeds and kept the growers poor and in debt ever
more. Were our workshops in Europe (as Hamil-
toms antagonists contended that they should be and
remain) we could not have sold abroad staples
of Food and Clothing in the requisite quantities, but
must have lived in rude poverty indefinitely. That
our people are ingenious and energetic, is undOubted
but they would have found it no easy to make
brick without straw than did the ISraelites in their
Egyptian captivity. No great invention ever yet
sprang fularmed from the brain of its author; a
general rule, none but weaver invents OF improves
loom; and nearly every machine Of great value is
the product of lof successive inventions by
nearly so many different labOrers thereon. Those |
countries only which cherish and delight in labor
saving devices have added aught Of moment TO the |
worlds inestimable aggregate thereof. Europe could
not now afford for billion of dollars to lose the in
yentions aud improvements in machinery for which |
she is indebted to America, and the great mass of |
which, in ali human probability, would never have |
been, had the policy of buying from Europe every |
article of manufacture, which marked and fitted the
era of our colonial dependence been persevered in to
this day.
Our oldest manufactures are naturally our cheapest
and best Europe cannot rival our Axes AIDES, and
other Edge Tools; nor she surpass. either in |
quality or cheapness, the Spades and ShOves extern
sively made by one Massachusetts, family through
out the last fifty years. Cut Nails are an American
idea and no other nation yet makes them so cheapy
or half so abundantly We have begun, after many
years trying. to make Wrought Nails also by
machinery and will naturally keep the lead in this
department also have heard that the Screw Anger
yberey the cost If borinp holes in timbeTs was re-
d1ced more than half is a Connecticut invention,
and never patented though its value to mechanics
defes computation. The Planning Machine, the
innumerabe Reape1s and Mowers, the Sewing
Machine and ever so many kindred trophies of !
Yankee genius for invention have enriched not our
country ouly but the civilized world And, az the
Cotton Gin would surely not have been invented
here had not the Cotton culture preceded and re-
CURED it, 50 the arts in the prosecution OF which
other American inventions called into being
had to be previously known and practiced among us,
OF the world must have waited indefinitely for the
triumphs they melted We are, l rejoice TO learn,
on the eve of similar stride in the production of all
forms Of Wrought or Malleable Iron, through
Pennsylvania invention whereby the expensive pro-
cess known rs Pudding is to he superseded or I'M
mensely reduced in cost and thousand other bene-
fcent applications Of inventive genius TO the cheap
eninp Of processes the increase of products on
the point Of practical realization NOman can truth
fully suggest an article which, having formerly been
wholly imported has since, through Protection,
been so naturalized on our soil that it is now pro-
duced here nearly to the extent of satisfying our own
wants. vet which nowcOsts ourpeople more thanltdd
when we procured il from abroad. And the area
wbereon such achievements are possible Is by no
means fully occupied. We shall yet make our own
Crockery and finer kinds of Pottery which We still