Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1878-05-18

are disposed to belleVe IN pr0hlblt-
DRY tariffs as protecting manufactur-
ing labor-the palpable fact that
now, for the seventeen years from
1861 to 1873, the protectionists have
carried all their own measures en-
tirely at their own discretion, and
yet manufacturing labor in all
departments has never been so much
depressed as now. No one can say
that protection has not had fair
trial during this period it has been
carried out to an extent which Clay
and Webster, its great advocates,
never dreamed of, and after seven
teen years of full sway those who
were to be favored by it are utterly
PROSTATE; master manufacturers are
selling out and buying bonds, and
the operatives are turning tramps
and learning communism of Megy
| and his French rabble of asSassins
and incendiaries. Surely this shows
there must be something wrong in
the argument for protection, and its
advocates will do well to scrutinize
their mode of reasoning to discover
where the fallacy comes in.
The article from the New York
Evening Post we have already
alluded to gives a narrative of the
action of the tariff on special de-
partment of Industry in all its stages;
first, that of over-stimulus exciting
rapidly increasing production with
large profits and, of course, with the
result of making large fortunes,
then competition with a gradual
diminution of profit, then over-pro-
duction with the disappearance of
profit altogether, and finally the
abandonment of an occupation
which no longer pays, with the un-
fortunate result that bodies of work
men are thrown out of employment
after a series of struggles caused by
reductions of wages. This is the
stage which is reached when the
home market is supplied and for
eign markets are required in which
protection does not help but rather
hinders.
Now, this is history of what has
taken place in every department of
labor for the last seventeen years !;
first unnatural stimulus, then COM
petition, then Over-productiOn, then
diminution of profits and shrinkage
of wages, with the cOncOmetants of
strikes, labor riots, etc, then utter
prOstration and abandonment of
work, with all the decentralization
and social disturbance attendant
upon the existence of large bodies
of unemployed laborers and troubles
such as we passed through last sum-
mer and of which it is to be feared
that we have not seen the end yet.
All these stages of vicious sys-
tenn are capable of being illustrated
with an endless multiplicity of de-
tail, and they will doubtlessly be
the subject of many papers in this
journal, for there are already strong
symptoms that Mr.. Woods tariff
bill will not be passed in the present
session of Congress but at present
we must limit ourselves to one point
of view which has not been touched
upon by the writer in the Post; we
speak of sales abroad experimenting
the insufficient sales at home. 1t
has been a good deal insisted upon
by advocates of the tariff that there
are several manufactured cOmmOd-
tiles which we can sell lower in
foreign markets than European
manufacturers. We doubt our abil-
ity to do so permanently, believing
that the instances in which we have
done so have been cases of "selling
out at cost" by manufacturers who
find that under great depression of
business they can no longer sell at a
profit and want to get quit of their
stock and their business at once.
But suppose it is so, does it not seem
unreasonable to demand the pro-
lection of prohibitory duties in be-
half of goods which can be sold at a
profit without protection 1t seems
a strange demand that American
citizens shall be compelled to pay
five cents a yard for a given fabric
in order that the same manufacture
ers may sell the same fabrics to
foreigners for three. And yet that
is what is done in the few cases in
which our manufacturers have re-
ally undersold competitors in foreign
markets. A friend of ours was
travelling In the Northern States and
Canada last summer and took the
opportunity of watching this matter.
He found that a certain brand of
pocket knives manufactured in New
England was sold in Canada for less
than English knives. It's Canadian
price was a dollar. English knives
had much larger transportation to
pay and passed through more hands
and consequently could not be sold
as cheap; so the Yankee manufac-
turer had the market. The same
knife was sold in New England for
a dollar and a half. 1t could not
fetch that price in Canada, as the
English-made knives would have
updersold it there, but as the English
knife could not be brought into
New England without paying a
heavy duty it could not compete
! with the Yankee knife, and its
maker charged half o dollar more
than it was worth so that we find
ourselves paying a heavy tax in
order that we may give a dollarand
a half for dollar knife while the
foreign purchaser gets it for its true
value, which is one dollar even.