Does Protection Protect An Examination Of The Effects Of Different Form Of Tariff Upon American Industry PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1871 edition. Excerpt: ...30 per cent., while in this country it had scarcely been reduced at all. The natural tendency of the simpler manufactured products is to lower prices, as new inventions, and methods, and increased skill, are applied. "Protection" arrested that steady improvement here, by paying our iron-makers well for sticking to the old methods. It held up the price of iron, while in other countries it was being rapidly reduced. Hence the increased importations in spite of the increased duty. But other countries, having cheaper material, could sell manufactured products cheaper. Hence, in spite of increased duties, the finished products of iron came in from abroad more largely under the tariff of 1828 than before, and more largely in its last year than in its first. At the time, this was well understood. The tariff which Mr. Carey and other gentlemen, who do not allow facts to bother them, so greatly admire, seemed to some of the iron-workers of that day a nuisance. Upward of three hundred mechanics of Philadelphia, employed in the various branches of the iron manufacture, petitioned Congress in 1831, representing that the high duties on bar-iron, imposed by the act of 1828, were extremely unfavorable to the manufacturing of hardware, blacksmiths'-work, and chain cables, "which last could now be imported cheaper than the rods out of which they were made," and a committee reported that relief could be afforded only by a reduction of the duties on raw iron. This little incident tells us the same story that the statistics have told--how the producers quietly went on in their old methods, and pocketed high prices, while the manufacturer, for want of raw material at reasonable rates, was forced to face a greatly-increased importation of...