Weekly commercial herald. (Vicksburg, Miss.) 1884-18??, 1885-12-18

Putting the Screws to the AmerI.
can Consumers.
On the 18th Of November. Mr.
Joseph Chamberlain made a speech al
Birmingham in support Of the Liberal
candidates for Parliament, in the
course Of which be analysed the dog
mas Of "free trade" which Lord Sails
bury had ~expounded a few days before
to the South London Conservatives.
incidentally he let out a secret which
Will excite some wonder on this side
OF the water. Mr.. Chamberlain. dur
ing his business career, was a manu-.
facturer of screws. His success in
this line of trade was due in large part,
he said, to an American patent. The
screw-making machines which he
used were In use also In America and
on the continent Of Europe, but he
was able to export screws to all those
countries, Notwithstanding the lower
rates of wages paid in France, Ger
many, and Russia. The secret, which
he casually dropped, was this--we
quote from the Standards report of
the speech:
Eat that time the Americans put a
duty of 100 per cent. on screws. and
in spite of that his firm sent these ar
ticles to America in large quantities.
The result was that the American
manufacturers came over here and
said: w are making 100 per cent. on
capital; if you continue to send screws
to America we shall, of course, be Oh
liged to reduce our prices. That will
shut you out, but it will reduce our
profits, which will not be good for
either of us. Let us, therefore, make
a bargain; We will pay you so much a
year to sit still. and not send a screw
to America Well, they did it, and
his firm received a handsome income
for years from the American manu-
facturers. protected, as they were, by
the folly and stupidity Of protectionist
legislation, to sit still, and not send
screws to America"
So the cat is out Of the bag-that is,
n additional cat. An American
company has a patent monopoly for
making screws. Not satisfied with
this, it gets a duty Of 100 per cent to
keep out ~foreign-made screws. The
foreigner still sends screws to our
market in spite Of the duty. So the
American company agree to pay him a
yearly bonus not to send screws here,
but to leave them in undisturbed pos
session of their spiders web, to work
their will upon all the carpenters and
house-builders in the United States.
The bonus paid to MI. Chamber
lain by the American Screw
Company of Providence, r. l., of course
came out Of the worEmen who paid for
these indispensable tools of industry,
and the net result was extolled as
protection to home labor. Mr..
Chamberlain went on to say that.
after paying him this bonus for some
years, the American Screw Company
became greedy, went to Congress, and
got the duty raised to a still higher
figure, and, thus effectually shutting
him out, they were enabled to discon.
tinue the subsidy. We suppose that
they were enabled to secure the in
creased duty by electing and maintain
ing a Senator of the United States,
for it was a common Jest in
W S1ington some years ago that New
England was represented in the Senate
by ten Senators, one print mill, and
one screw company. The existing
duties on crews are as follows: On
all crews two inches or over in length,
s cents per pound one inch and less
than two inches in length, 5 cents per
pound over one-half inch and less
than n inch in length, 10 cents per
one.half inch and less in
length. IL cents ner nound