The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-02-25
sRxRxx or FEE PRuss.
editorial Opinions ofthe Leading Journals
upon Current Topics Compiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
PENNSYLVANIA.


cloth. producing States or communities, for iu-
stance against the interest of the agricultural
States This is not true. Every community
in the whole nation, taken in its entirety, is
directly and immensely interested in having
our revenue laws reformed according to Geo.
nomical science. For instance, there is no
State in the Union that will be more benefited
in its permanent prosperity by the repeal of
all productive duties than the coal and iron
State of Pennsylvania.
This is easily proved to every candid mind
The communities that nature has more richly
endowed than any other with opportunities
for supplying the world with cheap iron at u
profit to themselves, are precisely those of the
Lehigh, Schuylkill, Lackawanna, and Alle-
ghepy valleys. With the mountains of iron
ore and coal around them, with the indomita-
BILE energy and unequalled ingenuity of Ameri-
can labor and with the rapid accumulations
of capital to which large production must
gradually lead, Pennsylvanians ought soon to
have no rival in the worlds markets for iron
and steel, under a healthy, natural growth of
this great industry. They might ere now
have beaten Great Britain at home, and taken
contracts for iron buildings and steel bars in
London, as Belgians and Prussians have actu-
ally done of late, over the heads of the Scotch
and English furnaces and mills.
A company of capitalists in this city have
erected mills for producing steel rails directly
from their own pig-iron; they own the ore,
the furnaces, and the rolling machinery, all
within easy reach of one another and of coal
mines; and they assure us that they can pro-
duce steel rails, equal to the English iul-
ported rail, at cost to them of tifty-five
dollars in currency ton, even at the present
exorbitant cost of the necessaries of life, and
therefore of labor. Were all protective
duties repealed this company could still pay
their laborers the value of more bread and
meat, better clothing and lodging, and larger
savings than they now make, and sell their
rails at once at fifty dollars ton, with large
profits on their capital and could cheaper the
product every year until they could supply
Belgium and Prussia themselves with rails,
in defiance of European competition. What
hinders them?
Nothing but the short tsighted policy of the
manufacturers themselves, in maintaining
duties which sustain exorbitant prices, and in
restricting the production, in order to pre-
vent prices from falling. The duties can
only be kept up on one article by keep
ing them up on hundreds of others, by
a general conspiracy of manufacturers
Hence general scale of high prices, bur-
sensome to the people at large, and repress-
ing the productive energies of the manu-
featuring industry itself. Give us cheap
rent, cheap fuel, cheap clothing, cheap food,
by repeating the duties on all the necessaries
of life and on all the materials of industry;
and the amount the people will have to ex-
pend for iron and steel, for improvements,
for railroads and machinery, for ships and
houses, will be vastly increased: the demand
will be greater, the production far cheaper,
and the immeasurable resources Pennsylva-
MIA has for supplying coal, iron, and steel
will be developed as never before.
In such state of things the workshops
and mines of Pennsylvania will be one in in
terest with all her other industries; for they
will all grow together. Now the case is arti-
fcially reversed. The mills and mines are
protected" that is, they are paid large
bounties at the expense of the whole mass of
the people. The mill-owners and mine
owners are made into q great aristocracy to
enrich which the farmers, shoemakers, labor
ers and professional men are heavily taxed.
The people are divided in interest,
between the masses, who are oppressed
and burdened, and a few hundred
monopolists, who rule them, tax them,
and fatten on them. Were free trade to ruin
every mill owner, furnace owner and mine
owner in the State, still Pennsylvania would
be the richer for it in five years; for nine
tenths of her people would be relieved from
an imposition which they can poorly bear,
while the other tenth would only lose that to
which they have no right, their artificial
monopoly. But it would not ruin them it
would only compel them to use and drive the
energies they now repress, and to extend to
the utmost the production they now strive to
limit.
Why does not Pennsylvania see this Why
do not the masses of her people see that they
at least are only injured by the monopolies
among them Why do not the monopolists
themselves see that their permanent pros
perity is bound up with free competition and
unlimited production Who is to blame for
this blindness which seems to effect the whole
community?
1t has not always been SO. In 1914, when
Pennsylvania elected Mr.. Polk, free trade was
nobly advocated in many parts of the State.
1t is true that there were complaints, when
the reformed tariff of 1876 was passed by the
casting vote of Pennsylvania in the Senate,
that the canvass had not been open, and that
the voice of the State had been unfairly gained
for free trade. But the result vindic ated the
State from the charge that she had blundered.
After full trial of the new tariff, Pennsyl-
Vania in 1852 again sanctioned it, by the
deliberate support of Mr.. Pierce, who was
an open free-trader, and again, in 1853, she
gave an enormous majority for her own poll
tician, Mr. Buchanan, whose triumph was
Immediately followed by the passage, by his
own party, of the low revenue tariff of March
3, 1857, with its maximum duty of twenty
five per cent. Gd 0dl0rem upon everything
except spirits and wines; and that with the
cheerful acquiescence of Pennsylvania then
richer and more prosperous than she had ever
been under protective policy.
All this is changed; and while every other
part of the Union is rapidly growing in eco-
nomical knowledge, Pennsylvania goes back
ward. All other States are moving rapidly
towards thorough revenue reform, but this
State apparently grows more perverse every
day IN blind adherence to monopoly. Tue