that no compensatory benefits were obtained to offset these disadvantages.* PRACTICAL RESULTS OF HEAVY DUTY From 1830 to 1842 all railroad iron was admitted to this country free of duty. It was the beginning of our system of railroads and the larger part of all iron imported consisted of rails for these roads. There was a heavy discriminating duty on rolled bar iron from 1818 to 1846 (except during a few months in 1842) of about one hundred per cent. Its effect was neutralized in part by the free admission of railroad iron, which was one form of rolled iron; but so far as it was applied to rolled iron in general, it simply prevented the United States from sharing the benefit of a great improvement in the arts. It had no effect in hastening the use of the puddling and rolling processes in the country.† The folly of the kind of protection that kept a good article out of the country and forced Americans to use a poor article in its place at a high price is shown conclusively and forcibly by the language used by Gallatin in 1831: To persist, in the present state of the manufacture, in that particular competition, and for that purpose to proscribe the foreign rolled iron, is to compel the *Taussig, Tariff History of the United States, pp. 53, 55, 57 et seq. †Taussig, Ibid, p. 127. people for an indefinite time to substitute a dear for a cheap article. It is said that the British iron is generally of inferior quality: this is equally true of a portion of that made in America. In both cases the consumer is the best judge-has an undoubted right to judge for himself. Domestic charcoal iron should confine itself to a competition with the foreign iron made from the same fuel. In 1840 anthracite coal began to be applied in this country to the making of pig iron. This was because of the introduction of the hot blast. About the same time (1842) the tariff imposed heavy duties on all kinds of iron, including railroad iron. Consequently the production of iron increased rapidly through this combination of causes, of which the use of anthracite coal by the hot blast method was enough, without any increase of protection. As Taussig says, "Some part of this great growth was certainly due to the high protection of 1842; but, under any circumstances, the use of anthracite would have given a great stimulus to the iron trade." In other words, protection was unnecessary. The use of anthracite was in itself protection, and all the protection the industry needed or should have received, for this country has a practical monopoly in anthracite. Its use for producing all kinds of iron, pig iron, rolled iron, railroad iron, etc., increased rapidly. It was first used in puddling and reheating about 1845, and in nine years (1856) the production of rolled iron was nearly five hundred thousand tons. Taussig sums up the situation of iron as follows:* The high duty on iron in its various forms between 1832 and 1841, and again in 1842-46, impeded importation, retarded for the United States that cheapening of iron which has been one of the most important factors in the march of improvement in this country, and maintained in existence costly charcoal furnaces long after that method had ceased in Great Britain to be in general use. The first step towards a vigorous and healthy growth of the iron industry was in the use of anthracite in 1840. That step, so far from being promoted by the high duties, was taken in a time when duties were on the point of being reduced to the twenty per cent level. Hardly had it been taken when the high duties of the tariff act of 1842 brought about (not indeed alone, but in conjunction with other causes) a temporary return to the old charcoal process. A number of new charcoal furnaces were built, unsuited to the industry of the time and certain to succumb before long. No better illustration can be given of the fact stated, that protection prevents the introduction of new, improved methods and machines and thereby favors the inefficient. Taussig concludes: *Taussig, Tariff History of the United States, p. 134. On the other hand, the lower duties did not prevent a steady growth in the making of anthracite iron: while the production of railroad iron and of rolled iron in general, also made possible by the use of anthracite, showed a similar steady progress. There is no reason to doubt that, had there been no duty at all, there would yet have been a large production of anthracite pig and rolled iron. Meanwhile the country was rapidly developing and needed much iron. The low duties permitted a large importation of foreign iron, in addition to a large domestic production. The comparative cheapness and abundance of so important an industrial agent could not have operated otherwise than to promote material prosperity.* *P. 135. CHAPTER XVI PROTECTION NOT NECESSARY IN THE PROTECTION RETARDING ADOPTION OF BETTER PROCESSES TANWOOD admits that a considerable part of ST the disadvantage under which American ironmakers labored was due to their neglect to make use of the improved process and the coke fuel that imparted a prodigious stimulus to the English manufacture, while seeking to excuse it by the great distances between the known iron deposits, the coal, and the iron market, the poverty of the ironmakers, and the small scale on which they worked. In other words, ironmaking deserved help (protection) because it was a pauper industry, by which I mean that it was an unprofitable industry. This brings us back to the same old question, whether the money of the people, taken from them through taxation, is to be used to prop up a losing business until that indefinite time that, after more than a century, we have not yet reached, when the business can stand on its own feet, without entailing further hardship on the people. What industry is there that, after protection for a |