Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1890-04-12

4
Are No Longer Needed-Prices in That
Country Are Higher Than Here-The
Mine Owners Get the Profits
The strikes among British coal miners.
which have just begun. at once offer
valuable testimony to the prosperity of
the foreign iron and coal industries under
1ree trade, as compared with the stagna-
ton Ill this country that has been caused
by the restrictive tariff, and furnish the
New England manufacturers who are
pleading for little relief from present
duties with valuable argument, by de-
monstrating that no such reaction in
prices abroad is to be found as should
lead the pennsylvania monopolists to be
at all umorous about granting the very
sllGht sop asked for. Small as this is.
however, being only a reduction or crude
IRON that would be utterly inadequate to
making an effective competition between
foreign iron and the product of domestic
mines, 1t is well understood that the
ways and means committee will refuse
10 relax any OF the present duties, al
though these have become entirely pro-
hlbltVe as the result of important
changes IN the character of the business.
During the past year the iron market
has assumed most unprecedented shane.
and one which superficiallv bears ont a
part of the protectionist contention: but
al the same time it does away with all
need OF further protection. even from a
Protectionist standpoint. Our labor being
SO much cheaper than foreign labor, by
reason of superior efficiency. we have
always been able to compete with FOREIGN
manufacturers on even terms, despite
dearer material, in highly finished forms
of iron and steel.
For some years back our imports of
these were comparatively small, but up
to very recent period the domestic
price of pig iron was maintained to lust
a little less than it would cost to imoort
foreign pig with duty added, and the
manufacturing industries which furnish
the consumption of pig iron were com
PEELED to pay about 81 a ton-the amount
of duty-more than they would have
had to do but for the tariff, their own
trade and consequently their power of
consumption being thereby lessened to
at least proportional degree.
Makers OF pig iron on their part, al
though enabled by the tariff to charge
high prices for their product, the de-
mand for which was necessarily smaller
on that account, were forced to paw cor
respondingly high prices for their ma
eerlaI. ihe large percentage of waste
mineral carried in iron ore as a rule for
oids ITS being transported long distances.
| except when-as in the case of the rich
Lake Superior or Lake Champlain ores
IL isneariy pure metal; and consequently
each district of iron production is to
great extent dependent upon local sup-
plies solely. Furnaces, being human
handlwork. are susceptible of indefinite
multiplication and in many sections have
been erected injudiciously and out of
| proportion 10 the neighboring ore SUD-
plies, which are the product of nature,
anu, therefore, an absolutely limited
monopoly.
| " heneVer furnaces We're MANY in
| proportlou to the ore within reach. as
| throughout the east was the case, the cost
OF the latter was enhanced to the full ex
tent of the tariff on pig iron, the latter op
Grating, not as an encouragement to man
| ufacturers, but as a bounty to the owner
ship of mines. When furnaces were COM
| paratlvely few, as Is even yet the case in
the south, the advantage in the division
of tariff spoils lay with the furnacemen.
A knowledge of this fact caused an eager
scramble to utilize the mineral wealth of
the south almost as soon as the recon
structlon period was fairly past and the
tears of further political troubles there
were removed; and the first comers.
hampered as they were with the expen-
slve labor that low daily wages produced
yet amassed wealth nearly as fast as had
| those who had skinned the cream of
eastern iron deposits before these had
acquired an excessive value through the
| imposition of protective tariff. But
there was no market whatever for raw
iron III the south, and the new supplies.
sent northward and eastward. found
only customers whose operations were
30 shackied by tariff exactions that they
had not the ability to absorb an extra
quantity of iron except at lower figures.
Prices therefore steadily fell, not as a
result OF an improvement in processes
| stimulated 10y beneficent system of
protection, but simply because the ac-
| tIvlties of the American people had been
so limited and constrained through tariff
| laws, the masses had been robbed of SO
| large part of their earnings, that they
had not the money to pay, or rather the
goods to exchange, for more iron at the
| old prices. Latterly. therefore, we have
seen American iron prices no higher
| than foreign ones, even with a total
elimination of either duties OF freights
| from the comparison.
1t is true that foreign prices are con-
| siderably higher now than they were two
years ago, as a result of the great expan-
| sion of trade which has been enjoyed by
those countries whose industries were not
| repressed by governmental interference
| Making due allowance for this, it has vet
| been conclusively demonstrated by the
steady increasing of new enterprises at
| the low average values of the past three
years, that the real cost to make iron is
no greater in this country than any where
else; that when artificially high prices
prevailed it was not the manufacturers
| who We're benefited at the expense of the
| rest of the nation, but only the mine
IOWhefs, WHOSE power OF leVylnS TOLL upon
the whole people has alone been restricted
| by the recent decline; and, further that
| if we were to wipe out all tariff on iron,
and thus abolish even the slight existing
margin that still keeps us out of the
| worlds market, the iron industry proper,
instead of being destroyed, would gain
| by complete freedom of action Just as it
| has by the partial freedom which came
| through the opening up of southern ore
deposits, and that the monopoly interest