The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-05-30
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SOUTHERN INDUSTRIES,

SOUTHERN INDUSTRIES.
The News will never be able to fairly and
intellgently discuss the question of protection
to American industries until it is willing to
fairly state the position of protectionists, and
has something like connected idea of what it
claims as the merits of free trade. 1t persist
emily insists that protectionists are endeavor-
ing to reverse the laws of nature as much as
it would be to try to raise bananas in Green
land, whereas protection, intelligently admin
istered as it has been, is aimed to
and does encourage the development
Of the country's natural resources. Without
protection the iron industry Of this country
was crippled and retarded and iron and its
products were imported from 'where we could
buy it cheapest" but at figures that would
now be deemed extortionate. The expert
ment Of protection was tried, and with what
results everybody, save possibly the News,
understands. One protected item in this
branch Of industry may be mentioned. There
was time when America imported steel rail
way bars at about $160 in gold per ton. They
now are made and sold in this country
at about $2S per ton. The declaration of the
News that the products of protected 'monop-
olies' may "cost all consumers ten times the
nominal price of the article" whatever that
may mean, is arrant nonsense as demonstrate
ed by the instance noted above, and ten thou
sand others in every branch Of trade and
manufacture. The price Of every protected"
article of manufacture has fallen from 10 to
IS per cent.-a result, we maintain, Of
the operation of the tariff in encour-
aging home manufacture and the inevitable
competition brought about. This result,
disputed. The News errs, Intentionally Or
ignorantly, when it says that the iron indus
try of the South has struggled into existence
under test of free trade The fact that iron
and cotton mills have succeeded in Alabama
and Georgia only proves the claim of protec
tionists, that a protective tariff stimulates
manufactures everywhere and does more than
aught else to encourage many to engage
in manufacture, to the everlasting over
throw of monopoly. The very same
laws that have dotted Pennsylvania,
and the North in general, with mills Of every
description, have operated to bring about the
same results in the South, proving to any in
telligence that the idea Of protected monopo-
lies is bugaboo of the imagination. The
protective tariff that encourages monopoly
in the iron mills in Pennsylvania "encour-
ages monopoly" in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Missouri, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama.
And what then becomes of monopoly" but
that it disappears, as it has disappeared by the
establishment of iron mills in all those States
honorable enough to admit this, and if not
honorable enough, should be too intelligent
to stultify themselves by denying it. 1t is a
pitiful exhibition of sectional prejudice that
rails against protection for the East, and is
only equaled by the stupidity which follows
by admitting that under this same protection
the industries of the South "are coming, and
coming to stay" Exactly; they are coming
to stay, and have been encouraged to come
and to stay, just AS the mills of the North
have come to stay, and to save tvs people
from the necessity of paying foreigners the
prices paid before protection made them free