Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1872-06-04

boil " ny not CRY OUT lot 4lpt6tlioii q -.-e
Immigration Of tie foreign a5qrert aeo f.osec
ton fF3ni his coIapeti6 toni 40; bis plea i ~
DOcriticef. Foreign operatives una iA30fols -
Invited TO our shores and employed IN an GU ~,
mines and mills. The greatest ceai hela 4. y. T..
1868 there were together about fifteen iniilloi
tons OF anthracite, bituminous and semi- bltoili
nous coal raised from the three dlstflcts O
SchUyikill, Lehfgh and wyoming. ~ ae raising
Of coal throughout the region employed upward
Of thirty-fve thousand men, mostly hedayes o.
wales England and Ireland" Butts suppose thai
all our foreign operatives have been run through
our NATURALIZATION nils s., and heye come ou
IN, why should they OF natiye-born operatives
have a bounty ON their labor becavse they worn
Do tie mills rather than in the fields2 The ruth
is. the operative gets only about Is per cent. OF
the profits Of the manufacturers, and the manu-
facturers hold up the laborers necessities as 9
mask 70 their own extortions,
But suppose the operative must have bounty
or protection to his laborY Who pays itY For
eign nations do not pay it. Our Government
Dies not paysit.g The manufactures docs not pay
IL for he asks the Government TO provide the
bounty. twin tell you. They are the poor boys
deprived Of the means of education, the poor
men, the tOiling millions Of the fields, whom You
see melting under 8 burning sun, and larding
The ground with their dripping sweat They
wear, at double price, the wooden bounty hats
and coats, the bounty cotton dOmestics, the
bounty shoes; whose beasts of burden draw the
bounty pillow with bounty. chains; and at night
thew wrap their weary frames for slumber in
coarse bounty blankets. These are the children
GoYernment, and not only treated with the neg
lecf of political orphans, but they are put under
financial yassaiage to the protected classes. They
are the men who love their country, love its very
earth, for the earta has been their only foster
mother, who has given the breast of nourishment
and life TO them. They are the country strength,
and when the country shouts to them to rally for
its defense, the valleys heaye them up, and the
hills pour them from their loins. And yet the
Government would blind them with its decisions,
and load them with its burdens, and at the same
timehold them until they are sh0rn by the man
hfactureTs OF their golden fleece. The system Of
protectection is the perfection Of political hocus
pocus As said by distinguished statesman:
I sThere is nothing which courts and cabinets
learn so readily as lessons in taxation.p
s ssThe merchant is easy, being sensible he does
not paw them for himself; and the consumer, who
really pays them, oonfounds them with the price
OF the commodity"
Besides, the government depri7es him of the
freedom of making his own contracts. It inter
Fenes as one Of the contracting parties and re-
ouires him TO pay, on an average, fifty per cent
on every dutiable or protected commodity he
may consume. 1t is no answer to say that the
government does not compel him to buy. The
government does know that he is compelled to
have his cotton shirt, his wooden hat and coat his
shoes, his blankets, and his farming implements,
for he cannot make them himself.
The protective system cannot be enforced in
the United States without enormous evils. A
protective tariff in its domestic aspects does not
add q single dollar to the national wealth. IL
ONLY diverts the wealth from one class to another
from one pocket to another, like the same water
flowing in circle.
ing population engaged in manufactures, and
six-sevenths mainly in agriculture. Upon no
sound principle Of political economy can the la.
Dor Of the one-sixth be balanced against the Ia
Dor of the six-sevenths. The manufacturers
cannot consume all the agricultural productions,
cereals staples, and the indefinite variety OF 9TH
er productions of the fields. After the home sup
ply there win be large redundancy. The vol
umes of our agricultural productions are still in
like swollen waves, and are pressing
hard against the tai ff blockades, and VIII soon
er or later burst their way and rush into all the
channels of 8 worldwide commerce. Here we
have the quarter Of a hemisphere, al fat as the
Egyptian Goshen, with commercial outlook
upon the orient and the occident, and with our
volume OF population our country is
assured of an agricultural destiny unsurpassed
by any on the globe. Agriculture is the Samp-
son Of our industries, and although It's seven
locks have been interviewer with the web OF the
New England looms, yet, when it shall awake
from its sleep, it will 60 "away with the pin OF
the beam, and with the web. I"
The grand drift OF American industry is to-
ward agriculture and its handmade commerce.
The vast majority Of our natives and immi-
grants, invited by our vast domain, at first OPP
pOrtunitv spurn precariOus tenancy, and as
o
Once accustomed to the freedom of the fields
and forest, they could never endure the restraints
and mOnOtOny of the mills. When our vast ter
ritory shall be filed and our population shall
roll back on ITSELF and the lands fail in subsist
ence, then we may look abroad through our
and commerce.
England furnishes an example of manufactur-
ing necessity. From her statistics it appears
that four-ffths of her population live in cities
and towns. Her one-fifth agricultural labor can
not furnish an exchange in value for the labor
Of the fourffths; hence, she Is cOmpelle TO seek
an exchange for her manufacturing labor
through her commerce. Her commerce is her
lungs; through them she inhales the breezes eff
every sea. Her island is a workshop, and by the
mighty pulsatiOns from her heart OF labor she
sends her manufactures through all the arteries
Of commerce. Her industries were long cursed
with a protective tariff. Through the enlight-
ened statesmanship of her Peels and her Cob
lens her trade was unshackled. Prior to 1892
ler commerce was clogged with thousand
different duties. In 1871 there were ,162 articles
subject to taxation; In 1862, only A articles re-
NAMED subjectto custom duties. Between these
periods her exports rose from FOL, 81, 166 to
e 1856 $40 900. In 1910 her exports had risen to
6 199' $50 So. Her imports had risen to $685.
POI ,493 in 1870. Her shipping vessels increased
from Is, 1923 in 1851 to Y, $50 In 1870. She now
collects duty on only about twelve articles.
She cOncilated France, her hereditary enemy,
with liberal treaty eff commerce.
The Earl of Elgin dictated treaty which
opened the rivers and harbors of China to her
trade. In short, she has wrung the bolts from
the gates of commerce in every nation, created
demand for her merchandise, and uses this de-
mand as mighty lever-pOwer TO raise the price
Of her home labor; and by importatiOns multiply
the home comforts of her people. Every old woman
can now add another spoonful OF tea TO her cup
and another grand humanitarian fact should not
be forgotten that she is superseding the use of
ardent spirits by the use Of one hundred and for
ty-One million pounds Of tea which she annually
imports. Besides, she is laying aside her navy of
old British oak, with which she annihilated the
fleets of France and Spain in the battle of Ira
falgar and is now building her navy with iron
walls, with which her statesmen boast that they
can resist the combined nayies of the world.
English free trade subsidies every nation, and is
of its success. l am no British
and decline to join the paan Of her
poet Thompson
!sRule britannia Britannia rules the wsve"
Yet, if we have TO borrow wisdom from British
statesmen and initiate her present tariff policy
it surely would not be more censurable than to
initiate her old protective system, OF which the
present American tariff is nearly copy. The
American tariff is like mighty sponge applied
to all our industries, except the manufacturing,
to drink up the substance OF the country; and
we have nothing to spare from our internal glut-
tony to build navy and commercial marine Of
competing power and grandeur with that OF En-
gland The principle of protection is vicious and
demoraliZing to the enterprise OF the protected
industry. The early whale fisheries OF England,
France and Holland languished under the boun-
ty system. Secure in the bounty, enterprise
Welded to Incidence. On the contrary, the early
American whalemen, unprotected and unsup-
ported by anything but their own industry and
enterprise penetrated the baunts OF the whales,
and with their harpoons struck as much blubbeT
as their European competitors:
Before our national independence-in 1874 and
l7T6-Massschusetts employed annually one
hundred and eighty-three vessels in the former
wear and one hundred and twenty-One vessels II
the latter. Edmund Burke, in his famous speech
in IVA, adverted to this wonderful display OF
daring notwithstanding testimony so high
and ilIumined with rhetoric so splendid, that
will be pardoned for repeating it,
aWhfle we follow them ameng the trembling
mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating
into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson bay
and Davies straits; while we are looking fol
them beneath the Arctic circle, we hear that they
have pierced into the opposite region OF polal
cold; that they are at the antipOdes, and engaged
under the frozen serpent Of the South. Faux
land island, which is too remote and too romantic
an object for the grasp of national ambition, If
but stage and resting place for their virtuou
industry. Nor is the equinOctial heat more dis
cOuraging to them than the accumulated wlnte
of both poles. We learn that while some Of then
draw the line and strike the harpoon on the c0as
of Africa others run the longitude and pursue
the gigantic game along the coast OF Brazil NJ
sea but what is Vexed with their fisheries. NJ
climate but is witness TO their tolls. Neither thu
perseverance of Holland, nor the activity o
France, nor the dexterous and firm sagaclty Q
English enterprise ever carried this most peril
Gus mode of hardy industry to the extent to which
It has been pursued by this recent people-a PEG
pie who are still in the gristle, and have not mar
dened into man.
These were the men who pursued the whale an'
not the bounty
England defended her protection dogmas TO