Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1890-04-04
THE STEEL RAIL INFANT.
LOUD WALLS ABOUT PRETENDED
DANGER TO THE INDUSTRY.

Copious Shedding of Useless Tears-Some
Interesting Information Concerning the
Equality of Prices in England aud the
United States.
A protectionist trade paper of New
York city, The American Metal Market,
scores the steel rail makers for whimper-
ing over arumored intention to reduce the
| tariff on rails from the present duty of
S17.92 per ton to $40 per ton, and tells
them that they can get along perfectly
well SO long as their protection is not
less than that on pig iron.
The rumor alluded to has since been
| denied, but setting it on foot has served
the useful purpose of calling attention
| to the rank absurdity as well as injustice
of this duty, since our mills have long
| since demonstrated their ability to COM
pete with foreign makers on even terms,
| whenever they can obtain raw material
as cheaply; their true interest living,
therefore, in free ore and pig iron, rather
| than in higher but ineffective duties on
rails
So long as the business of making rails
was hedged about by patents as well as
tariff laws, it remained an absolute mo-
nopoly in the hands of the few who con-
trolled the patents and who, being shield
ed by these from domestic competition
and by high tariff from foreign com
petition, grew fat on the excessive prices
which they compelled the American pub
hc to pay for their product. The spoil
thus accumulated still acts in their hands
as club with which to retain the manu-
facture within the old ring by force; but
the possibility of home competition as
soon as the essential patents expired
quickly reduced the blackmail margin;
so that for some years past the difference
in selling price between the finished rails
and that of the material used has been no
greater in America than in England.
The hackneyed plea that the tariff is
maintained primarily for the benefit of
workingmen, and that a cut in wages
must follow any reduction of duties, is
even less excuSable in this branch of the
iron industry than i'll any other. Not
only is the wage cost per ton no higher
at home than abroad (as is the case in so
many branches of manufacturing, where
high wages being paid for more efficient
work really results in cheap labor, but it
Is no secret that even the daily wages at
American mills are a tribe less than at
foreign ones.
OF the two concerns whose managers
made the loudest outcry the other day
"a u a.
ing that 1t would necessitate lower wages
TO save the princely dividends from any
shrinkage, that at Scranton has repeat
edly OF late years exported rails TO
Canada in competition with Great Brit
ain, and could undoubtedly have ex-
tended the business much further had
they not been given by governmental
generosity q more profitable field to work
at home. The owners of these works.
as well as of that other sturdy beggar
whose lamentations were likewise SO
piteous at even a hint of danger to the
S1792 duty-the Carnegie aggregation
of mines at Pittsburg-are also large
owners of ore and coal lands, which fact
may cloud their eyes to the truth recog.
nlzed by Maj. Bent, of the Pennsylvania
Steel company, that what the rail max
ing industry proper needs is not high
tariffs, but cheap materials.
In the present state of the market the
pig iron and spiegel which go to make
ton of rails cost about S26 in England,
but are worth S3S in the United States,
owing chiefly to the necessity of impor-
ting most of our spiegel, and the price of
| rails In both countries is about S35. 1t
Is seldom that so exact a parity has ex-
isted,. and 1t Is now due in great measure
to the wider prosperity enjoyed by Eng
land at present as consequence of its
broader markets; but it vividIy illustrates
how absurd is even $40 duty. Even
when the two markets were furthest
apart of recent years, rails bringing only
$50 in England against over $50 in Amer
lea, the foreign makers got their material
for Sl2, while domestic ones had to pay
| not less than $50; the owners of the com
plete natural monopoly vested in mines be-
ing able to exact from the comparatively
open industry of manufacture the full
amount of the tax that the latter was
enabled, under the shield of the tariff. t.
levy on the people.
At first sight ii would appear that only
the superstition born of degrading de-
pendence upon government pap had led
these manufacturers To plead for reten-
| ton of their swaddling clothes rather
| than to insist upon being given free ma
terials with which to challenge the world.
When we reject, however, that So many
| of these iron lords who talk of cutting
down wages at the same moment that
| they are lavishing wealth on their per
sonal enjoyment are owners of mines as
well as mills; that it may easily pay them
| to run the one on small margin for the
| sake of the enormous profits to be taken
out of the other. and that, although the
| plunder Is not very great at the moment,
| they may be looking forward to change
in prices with the determination that
whatever befalls they shall not suffer,
we may give them credit for more
shrewdness than appears on the surface.
| The thing most to be wondered at is
that other rail manufacturers who have
not the cream of the trade in the owner
ship of raw material should submit to
having their business limited by tariff
out of which they no longer get any.
thing; and perhaps even more that there
should still be any workingmen that are
deluded into believing that tariff of
| $17.92 ton is needed to maintain wages
in an industry where the total cost of
i transforming raw material into finished