The article is made from a bark obtained chiefly in Peru, and which European as well as American manufacturers import free. The rate of production is very variable, and hence the price of quinine varies chiefly according to the price of the bark. Under the various duties above named, the following was the range of prices for twenty-five years: In 1860 " In 1857 it sold as high as $2.00 and as low as $1.40 per oz. ་་ In 1862 In 1881 In short, in each year it varied in price, by an amount several times greater than the duty, which variation, therefore, could not have been an effect of the duty. In 1877, when the special agitation was raised against the duty as a "tax on invalids," the quinine was selling for $4.12 per ounce in London, which was $2.59 higher than it had sold for in London one year previously. On this cry the duty was repealed. Four years after its repeal quinine sold as high as $3.25 and as low as $1.90, which was seventy cents higher than it had sold for when under a duty in 1860. The price on both sides of the ocean rose and fell chiefly with the price of the bark. The effect of the withdrawal of the duty was that the American manufacturers, who had imported 6,389,378 pounds of bark for manufacture in 1878, imported only 3,639,315 pounds in 1883, and afterward a continually diminishing quantity. Meanwhile our importation of the sulphate of quinine rose at the following rates, our American invalids being each year more dependent on the imported article: In short the repeal of the duty, exactly as in the case of the repeal of the English duties on breadstuffs, while it makes no permanent change in the price of the breadstuffs, operates effectually to transfer the seat of production from the home country to the foreign. 237. The Salt Industry as Related to the Tariff.—The manufacture of salt in the United States depends largely on protective legislation by Congress, and by the several States for its existence; yet its history is full of proofs that thus to protect the domestic manufacture cheapens the supply, and that a repeal of the duties only raises the price of salt abroad instead of reducing it at home. Every State in the Union, and probably every country on the globe, contains the means of making salt. In 1880, out of a total consumption of 521 pounds per capita for the American people, 19 pounds were foreign salt imported, 33 pounds were domestic, of which 9.7 pounds were produced in New York, 3.46 pounds in Virginia, 2.95 pounds in Ohio, 13.87 pounds in Michigan, and 3.20 pounds in all other parts of the United States. The following diagrams exhibit the expansion in the production relatively to the importation in forty years. In the fifty years ending in 1880, the supply of domestic salt increased by 14.1 pounds per capita, the supply of foreign salt diminished 3.8 pounds per capita, and the total supply of salt increased by 10.25 pounds per capita. The price of domestic salt during this period declined in about the ratio of its increased abundance per capita, viz., from 21 cents per bushel to 163 cents, while the average foreign invoice value per bushel declined only from 12 cents per bushel in 1830, to 10 cents per bushel in 1880. So much foreign salt can be brought in ballast, free of freight, to the United States, that ocean transportation adds little or nothing to the cost of foreign salt. On March 3, 1807, a duty of twenty cents per bushel which had existed since 1800 was repealed. The country enjoyed the benefits of free salt, at $2 per bushel!* In 1809, and later, after the war of 1812-15 set in, it rose to $4 per bushel. During neither of these periods would the cost of production have exceeded thirty-five cents per bushel, if the interval of free trade in salt had not destroyed the domestic establishments. The cost of salt, for the three years of war, was thus made equivalent to what an equal supply for thirty-three years would have cost, had proper establishments for making salt been maintained. † In Texas and Louisiana are some of the finest beds of mineral salt in the United States, wherein salt can be obtained with fewer hours of labor per bushel than at any of the foreign salt producing points, but not at so low a money price. The South, being always most dependent on the foreign supply for salt, expected to get cheap salt through a secession from the Union in 1860, as one of the economic advantages of that undertaking. Practically, however, the war of 1861 to 1865, and the blockade of the Confederate ports, gave the Southern States so vigorous a protective policy that the salt manufacture at the Grand Saline in Texas alone soon employed 3,000 men. As in 1807 to 1815, so again in the Southern States in 1861-5, the cost of four years of salt certainly exceeded any sum that thirty years of salt supply could have cost, under a diversification of industries arrived at, during peace, by tariff duties. Indeed, the inability of the Southern States to supply themselves promptly with salt, quinine, iron and steel ware, and clothing, were among the chief material causes of their overthrow in the military struggle. Protection to the salt manufacture, by tariff duties, has been offset by State taxes on the product, in a degree that is not usually allowed for. Thus, from 1813 to 1830, though the duty was twenty cents per bushel, the State of New York, where alone the manufacture had got a start, levied a tax of twelve and one-half cents per bushel, thus reducing the protection to seven and onehalf cents. In 1830 the duty was reduced to fifteen cents per bushel, leaving a protection of only two and one-half cents, and from 1832 to 1834 the State tax was two and one-half cents higher than the duty, thus virtually fining the domestic producers two *Bishop's "History of American Manufactures." + Report of Committee on Salt to National Convention for Protection of American Interests, held at New York, April 5, 1841. THE MICHIGAN COMPETITION. 695 and one-half cents per bushel, relatively to their foreign competitors, for doing business in New York, instead of abroad. In 1834, the duty having fallen to 9.4 cents per bushel, the State tax was reduced to six cents, and in 1841, under the further decline of the duty, the protection was only 1.6 cent per bushel. The highly protective tariff of 1842 laid a duty of eight cents per bushel, which in 1846 was reduced to twenty per cent., equal to 2.43 cents per bushel, and the state reduced its tax to one cent per bushel, where it still remains. Hence, for ten years ending in 1857, the protection to the New York salt-makers was only 1.43 cents per bushel, and under the reduction in 1857 the protection fell to three-fifths of a cent per bushel. In 1861-2 the duties were raised to from ten to thirteen cents per bushel. In 1872 these rates were reduced to from 4 to 6 cents per bushel. Meanwhile the legislature of Michigan, in 1859, offered a bounty of ten cents per bushel, for all salt over the first 5,000 bushels produced from water obtained by boring wells in Michigan. Though the tariff protection was then only 1 cent per bushel, capital rushed into the manufacture at a rate that soon compelled the State to repeal the tax. The production, beginning in 1860 with 2,360 bushels, rose in 1881 to 13,751,495 bushels, which about equalled the entire consumption of foreign salt in either 1860 or 1880. The only special advantages enjoyed by Michigan over many of the other States lay in the temporary offer of the bounty, and the cheap supply of sawdust, fuel, and lumber for barrelling, furnished by the vast lumber manufacture in conjunction with which the salt manufacture is carried on. In the competition thus set on foot between the Michigan salt producers and the importers of foreign salt, the Michigan salt has steadily declined from a price equal to the invoice price of the foreign salt, plus the duty, down to a price actually lower in some years than the invoice (foreign) price of the imported salt free of duty. The diagram shows the prices. Here it is evident that the Michigan prices for the five years, 1877 to 1881 inclusive, are on a level with the foreign invoice prices without duty from 1868 to 1872, and are from twenty to twenty-four cents per barrel lower than the foreign invoice price from 1872 to 1876 inclusive. But the striking fact shown by this diagram is that the reduction of from four to six cents per bushel (sixteen to twenty-four cents per barrel), made in our import duty in 1872, sent the foreign invoice price of salt up by from twenty to twenty-four cents per barrel, or by exactly the duty.* 10 Years AC Price received by foreign salt p Miohis Producers after paying duty 1870 130 2 2 88 F 2 2 3 00 If there were any class of cases in which Mr. Mill's theory would apply, that protective duties on imports would make themselves felt in the increased prices of exports, and would therefore, operate in part to tax foreigners on our exports, and in part to lessen our exports, such an effect might be expected in the case of the import duty on salt acting on our export of butter. Under the tariff of 1851, with a duty of only 1.5 cent per bushel on salt, the country exported less butter in five years, than when the duty in 1862 was made twenty-four cents per 100 pounds it exported in one year, viz., the year 1863. In fifteen years, from 1846 to 1862, of virtual free trade in salt, the * David H. Mason, of Chicago, a most accurate economic expert, says (“Report of Tariff Commission," p. 1205): "The reduced duty went into operation August 1, 1872. Let it be noticed that the foreign producers, who always take whatever profit circumstances will permit them to |