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Its "fostering

of manufacturers than of any other class. Its " influence" strangles more manufacturing industries than it helps. Look at a few figures. In 1881, the total importation of iron was valued at $33,000,000. Of this amount, only $75,000 consisted of goods which are described in the official list as fit for family use. $2,500 worth were used for ship supplies. Chains, to the value of $110,000, might possibly be used by farmers without further manufacture. Railroad bars and supplies amounted to the value of $4,120,000. All the rest, so far as can be ascertained, consisted of articles used exclusively for manufacturing purposes, of the value of over $28,000,000. And, which is the most absurd feature of all, more than $24,000,000 of the whole $33,000,000 were used exclusively in the home manufacture of iron itself! Thus, out of the $12,000,000 taxes laid on imported iron, the iron manufacturers themselves paid about $9,000,000, showing that the tariff did them at least three times as much harm as good. And, reckoning the construction of railroads as a branch of manufacture, as it is, about ninety-nine per cent. of the whole tax on iron was taken from manufacturers of some sort. But, even excluding railroad builders, eighty-five per cent. of the whole tax was paid by manufacturers.

Take steel. It was imported in 1881 to the value of nearly $18,500,000, and paid $9,347,000 for duties. All the articles enumerated in the official list, which could be used for any other than manufacturing purposes, were cutlery, fire-arms, and skates, valued at $3,157,000, and paying a tax of $1,304,000. Thus seven-eighths of the taxes on steel fell upon constructive industry.

Tin paid $4,195,000 in taxes, of which $4,148,000 were paid by tin manufacturers themselves.

Wood paid $1,536,000, of which $1,145,000 fell upon wood manufacturers.

Wool and woolen goods paid $27,285,000 taxes, of which

only $2,673,000 were paid on finished goods, such as carpets, blankets, hosiery, and clothing, ready for actual use. Manufacturers, including tailors, paid about $24,612,000, or over nine-tenths of the whole tax.

Taking these branches of manufacture together (and they are among the most clamorous for "protection "), we find that the total amount of duties imposed upon them for protective purposes, in 1881, was $54,478,878, of which over $50,000,000 were paid by manufacturers themselves, includ ing railroad builders, or nearly $43,300,000, excluding railroad builders. Thus the figures prove the truth of our first statement, that nine-tenths of the burden of protection falls, in the first instance, upon manufacturers and mechanics.

And yet we are constantly told that nothing but this system of taxation keeps these very manufacturers employed, and that, if we cease to heap taxes of forty, fifty, and one hundred per cent. upon the materials which they use in their shops, those shops will instantly close and the whole country go to ruin. Never was greater nonsense offered in the name of argument.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE NECESSARY FOUNDATIONS OF INDIVIDUAL AND NATIONAL WELL-BEING, AND

OF CIVILIZATION.

BY HENRY CAREY BAIRD.*

PERM

ERMIT me to direct your attention this evening to the theme, The Necessary Foundations of Individual and National Well-Being, and of Civilization.

UNSETTLED CONDITION OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.

To hear a certain school of political economists and their followers, here and in England, dogmatically lay down the law, and even insist that the case was closed, one would hardly imagine that their dogmatisms came within a department of knowledge in which nothing whatsoever was placed beyond dispute. But in political economy not even the definition of a single important word-political economy itself, for instance-is settled. In 1844, De Quincey, a believer in Ricardo's Theory of Rent, one of the orthodox principles, said of political economy: "Nothing can be postulated, nothing can be demonstrated, for anarchy even as to the earliest principles is predominant."

Nothing is to be taken for granted. This fact cannot be too distinctly impressed upon your minds and memories. The professors are not even agreed as to whether it is a

*Extract from Lecture delivered before the Brooklyn Revenue Reform Club, February 28, 1883.

science or an art, or a combination of both, or upon the proper and legitimate range of the subject. Therefore is it that they are ab initio morally debarred from the practice of dogmatism; and yet with all of these causes, impelling toward modesty, the average political economist is seemingly more confident in his opinions, and certainly more overbearing and arrogant in the expression of them, than any other manner of man to be found in any community. Among the believers in England in what arrogates to itself the name of free trade-merely free foreign trade-for instance, disbelief in this fetich, is regarded, ipso facto, as an evidence of such ignorance in the disbeliever, that it is considered as useless as it is hopeless to argue the question with him; and he is then and there put down with the expression of opinion that the argument is complete and the question decided, and that he is an ignoramus if he does not know and recognize these facts. It need hardly be urged that this is not the spirit in which to approach the investigation of truth. Indeed, the existence of this spirit is proof conclusive that these philosophers and their followers lack full faith in the truth of the doctrines which they would thus, without reason, force upon the acceptance of mankind.

For myself, coming here as I do, a believer in and a representative of that noblest of all the sciences, the scientia scientiarum, the American, or, if you please, the Pennsylvania System of Social Science, founded by my late kinsman, Henry C. Carey, I have emphatically to say, that I come not as an apologist for protection, or for the science upon which it rests. I stand not on the defensive; but I assume the aggressive. This aggression shall strike at the very roots of the system of political economy, the "dismal science" of Carlyle, or more properly of Robert Southey, upon which is built the huge and arrogant superstructure falsely denomi nated free trade; and I shall do this at the outset of my discourse.

THE PENNSYLVANIA SYSTEM OF SOCIAL SCIENCE.

How is it with the Pennsylvania system? Has it been content with theories based on assumptions, or has it examined facts and analyzed the movements of society, and from these developed laws? It has given us the true law of the occupation of the earth, and that of population, both based upon the observation of facts, the law of value, which latter is not found in the cost of an article, but in that of reproduction, value being a measure of the resistance to be overcome in getting possession of the thing desired. Thus, with all improvements in modes of production, existing things decline in value compared with man, labor becomes more efficient; and a larger proportion of a larger product goes to labor, whose lot thereby becomes in all advancing communities a steadily improving one. This law of distribution is one which introduces both harmony and happiness into the future of the human race.

ASSOCIATION.

But the fundamental law of this system, the one which lies at the basis of all society, the most important condition. governing man, still remains to be stated; and is so selfevident that its statement alone is necessary to carry conviction as to its truth, and its far-reaching effects, to every candid, unbiased, and intelligent mind. "Man, the molecule of society," says Carey, "is the subject of social science. Like all other animals, he requires food and sleep; but his greatest need is that of association with his fellow-men. Born the most helpless of animals, he requires the largest care in infancy. Capable of acquiring the highest degree of knowledge, he is yet destitute of the instinct of the bee, the beaver, and other animals. Dependent for all his knowledge on the experience of himself or others, he needs language for the interchange of thought; and there can be no language without association. Isolate him and he loses the

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