The Aberdeen examiner. [volume] (Aberdeen, Miss.) 1866-current, 1883-05-17
EDITORIAL MATTER,
From Tri- Weekly issues OF Friday Il Monday
A Protective Tariff that Cannot
Protect.
THE IRON PROBLEM.

THE IRON PROBLEM.
Under no scheme Of protection
that can be worked or woven into
tariff Legislation can the iron indus
tries of the Middle, Eastern and North
ern States hope to live and prosper.
1t is fight against nature and all of
natures laws, and in such unequal
battle they must inevitably go down.
If foreign competition alone was to
be challenged and encountered there
would be prospect for favorable
outcome, but the great mistake of
these people is that they are fortify-
ing against outside pigmies while
opposing giants already possess the
citadel and are impregnably lodged.
1t was said upon the floor of the
Senate last winter that iron could not
be made in the North Atlantic and
Lake Shore States for less than $24
a ton, yet at the same time Georgia
and Alabama reluctantly conceded
their ability to produce tin the
comparative infancy of their estab-
lishments-at from $13 to S16, while
the furnaces of the two Virginias and
the Carolinas will soon be able to
supply the market at nearly the same
low rates.
This great difference in cost is due
in the first place to the fact that while
the older States have exhausted their
surface supply and are delving at vast
expense in the bowels of the noun
tains, the Southern miners find their
ores upon the surface in huge masses
that require little more labor or skill
to seperate them from kindred bulks-
than is needed to blast rock in the
quarry. In the second place, while
many of the Northern ores are remote
from the coal and limestone required
for theirreduction, ,necessitating heavy
expenditure in massing the three
items at the furnace, the Southern
miners find all the items of iron pro-
duction continuously located and in
inexhaustible supply.
| Now, if iron can be made in the
South at SIG per ton while it costs
$24 per ton in the North, the South
ern miners enter the market with 8
difference in their favor of SO per ton
which assures handsome profit with
out reference to tariff protection
while the Northern furnace must rely
alone for profit upon tariff duty
which gives as an extra bonus
profit upon proft-his Southern
neighbors as much per ton as he re-
ceives.
The output of the American mines
so enormous now, must be increased
more than hundred per cent. wlthiI
the next five or six years if all the
furnaces now at work remain in bias
and mining development progresses
in the South in proportion to the
increase of her transportation facili
ties.
Now is it possible for consumption
to keep pace with this vast increase
of supply? That is the question thai
suggests itself to every close observer
of events. Iron men in the East are
even now demanding cheaper work
of their employees on the ground o
reduced demand, and yet each weel
chronicles the opening of virgin mines
of ore contiguous to coal and lime
stone in the South. If the mines are
all worked through the summer the
market will be over-stocked, if no
actually gorged-the Eastern minel
cannot sell at less than cost of pro
duction and will not part with hi'
iron at cost unless it be to save his
business from absolute ruin. On the
other hand, the Southern miner car
capture and hold the market by sell
ing iron for less money than his
Eastern compeer pays for labor anc
coal, and yet make handsome profits
Can anyone doubt the outcome o.
this fierce American competition ol
doubt that it will in few years result
in the transfer of the iron-producing
interest almost entirely and bodily
to the virgin mines,upon the principle
of "the survival of the fttest"?
American competition and not the
"pauper labor of Europe'is the actua
skeleton in the closet of the Eastern
and North Western iron makers, anC
in the near future there will be as
little demand for protective tariff
on the mart of iron nroduc ers. as there