Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1877-09-29


it done in Pennsylvania? 1t did
indeed act as a stimulus for a while.
The exclusion of foreign hardware
and castings together with the de-
mands of forced railroad system
did for while produce an artificial
demand for Pennsylvania iron, but
it did not last; in the nature of
things it could not last. That very
system which first excited
it very soon destroyed it. 1t lasted
long enough, however, to make
some spectators enormously rich.
1t did more; it attracted to the
Pennsylvania coal and iron mines a
population which Europe was glad
enough to throw upon them-a pop
ulation already habituated to dis
content and turbulence, and, so long
as flush times lasted and employ
ment was abundant, this did very
well but flush times lasted a very
short time. We have said that the
very legislative procedures which
produced this stimulus necessarily
involved the subsequent depression,
and the mOdus OpeTdndi is easily
described. The customers antici-
pated for the iron of Pennsylvania
and the manufactured goods of New
England were the agricultural pop
ulatiOn of the South and West, the
men who are producing the great
staples of American commerce, cot
ton, tobacco, wheat, rice, sugar.
But the protective policy, which we
call rather the obstructivepolicy was
in two ways diminishing the pur-
chasing ability of this population.
First, twas crushing them beneath
an enormous taxation, felt in the
necessity of paying two prices for all
manufactured articles, for their
clothing and implements and house
hold utensils; and second, by the
working of that unfailing law that
a nation which will not import can
not keepupits exports, twas cutting
them off from the best market for
their produce. Hence both the iron
and manufacturing system col
lapsed; there was no trade, there
fore there could be no railway traffic.
Railway building had already been
pushed by artificial stimulus beyond
! the real demands of the nation for
it; that collapsed; iron, that which
was on hand, was sold for less than
the cost of production and its low
price Wonderful to say was quoted
sanargument for protection; manu-
features of all sorts stopped, and
what was the result of all this upon
our social system? Those frightful
disturbances which eliminated in
the strikes and riots of July and
August, of which we have not yet
seen the end. The manufacturing
population swells the hOrdes OF
! trampS who are threatening to be-
come invading hosts in the West
and South like the Cloths and Huns
of old; the railroad operatives have
sullenly returned to their work al
reduced wages, and the hOt-headed
Welshmen, whom protection drew
to the coal and iron regions of Penn
sylvania, are now making a he'll
upon earth of that unhappy State
Pennsylvania has now expert
enced in all stages the influence o.
unnatural stimulantS. First the ar
tificial activity of intOXication, then
reactiOnary prOstratiOn, and now
stimulants being no longer possible
is passing through frightful paroX.
ysm of deIiTilM1 temells. And yet,
if we are to divine the proceedings
of Congress from the preliminary
! discussions in the canvass which is
now going on in Ohio and New
York, there seems but little hope OF
a serious effort for a revision of the
tariff in the next Congress. Ohio is
exclusively occupied with the cur
rency question, and New York with
the conflicting claims to the spOils
OfOffice OfCOnkling and Evarts, Tam,
many and anti-Tammany. None
the less do we adhere to the belief
that the tariff is the master ques.
ton of the day as affecting the pros,
perity ofthecOuntry. Once let com.
merce and traffic recOil from the
pressure, now paralyzing them, OF
our obstructive system, andreviving
trade will attract to itself a currency
of whatsoever kind it may demand
if it needs gold or silver, gold and
silver it will have. These like al
other commodities will follow the
career of renovated commerce they
will not appear at the bidding o
arbitrary legislation.