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CHAPTER IX

THE TARIFF OF 1870

Gen. Robert C. Schenck [O.] Introduces in the House a Bill "To Amend Existing Laws Relating to the Duty on Imports"-Debate: Protectionists, William D. Kelley [Pa.], Horace Maynard [Tenn.], Gen. Schenck; Anti-Protectionists, James Brooks [N. Y.], William B. Allison [Ia.], Samuel S. Marshall [Ia.], James J. Winans [O.], Gen. James A. Garfield [O.]-Bill Is Passed-Subsequent Acts of Congress Providing for Further Reduction-Debate in the House [1872] Between Samuel Shellabarger [O.], Protectionist, and Job E. Stevenson [0.],

Anti-Protectionist.

F

ROM 1857 down to the close of the Civil War the tariff question was agitated only when urgent calls for money for the prosecution of the war came up. In 1861 a bill introduced by Justin S. Morrill [Vt.] was passed, raising the tariff of 1857 one-third. This tariff remained in force only a few months. During the following years of the war the need of additional revenue caused measure after measure, revising the tariff upward, to be adopted, and it was inevitable that some protective duties should creep in.

On February 1, 1870, Robert C. Schenck [O.] introduced in the House of Representatives a bill "to amend existing laws relating to the duty on imports." It was discussed at great length throughout the session, and its provisions were finally incorporated in a bill to reduce internal revenue. The new measure became a law on July 14, 1870. Most of the protective features of the existing tariff were retained, though about 130 articles were added to the free list, and the duties on tea, coffee, sugar, spices, and pig-iron were reduced. The real burden of the war tariff was hardly lightened, as the high duties on the necessaries of life still remained.

In the debate in the House on the tariff bill leading

speakers in favor of the principle of protection were: William D. Kelley [Pa.], Horace Maynard [Tenn.], and General Schenck. Among the important anti-protectionists were: James Brooks [N. Y.], William B. Allison [Ia.], Samuel S. Marshall [Ia.], James J. Winans, [O.], and James A. Garfield [0.].

THE SCHENCK BILL

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 3-APRIL 1, 1870

MR. BROOKS.-I do not doubt that every gentleman who now listens to the sound of my voice is abstractly for free trade, if free trade could be realized. It is the nature of man to desire the greatest freedom of intercourse, not only with his own countrymen, but with all mankind. God, who has given man dominion over fish and fowl and all living creatures in the earth, instituted no geographical or political boundaries, and He doubtless intended all to commune together as brethren in the freest intercourse and trade. He has given us different climes for different productions, and different races of men, all wonderfully fitted for their varied work of production, and all created profitably to interchange that production; whether from the sea or the soil, whether from the plow, the loom, the forge, or the anvil; whether the work of the muscle or the brain. He has planted us all upon the earth and commanded us to love one another, and not to destroy each other, neither by the sword nor the cannon, nor by what is as fatal to human happiness, by conflicting, damaging, or destructive tariffs that violate all his commands. While, and when, we have struck off the manacles of chattel slavery from 4,000,000 of men, and poured out our blood like water therefor, we have been all that while as ingloriously riveting the chains of monopoly slavery upon 36,000,000 other men in the tyrannical restraints we have imposed upon their personal liberty in trade, commerce, and intercourse; and thus what we gained in the world's estimation by the one great act we lose in the greater crime. Man's audacity, however, on the tower of Babel, inflicted upon him a confusion of languages and of tongues, and hence divided. men into States or kingdoms, and with them, as punishments, have come tariffs, or supposed necessities for tariffs to support conflicting governments. In the conflict of these tariffs it has been a struggle among nations to lay countervailing duties, the

one to damage the other, or to outcheat each other in intercourse and trade. This has been the policy of nations for years and years. But now, England and France, especially England, have rapidly retraced their fatal steps, while for nine long years we have been piling up tariff upon tariff. And this country has become now the most tariffed, the most taxed, and in that respect the most accursed nation upon earth. While God has done everything in this vast Republic of ours to bless us, man seems to be doing his utmost to counteract the Almighty will.

What, Mr. Chairman, more beautiful spectacle exists now than that of free trade in our own country, from the rockbound shores of Passamaquoddy in the East to the Golden Gate or Puget sound of the West? But how much more beautiful would be that spectacle, if on that long line of imaginary boundary from Miramichi on the East to the straits of Fuca on the West, among that broad-spread English-speaking people, there were but one law for customs, one rule of duties, one universal free trade. On our Atlantic coast, just beyond the waters of Maine, are two valuable islands-Nova Scotia and Prince Edward's. Both of them produce articles which are desirable and necessary for the food and comfort of our country, more especially for the poorer classes of our people-fish of almost all kinds in teeming abundance, potatoes, cheaper than the duties we impose upon them imported, oats, the best in the world, and coal, practically nearer to New England than from the mines of Pennsylvania or Maryland. We might have free trade with both these islands, but it is forbidden by our laws, and we compel the inhabitants there to turn their potatoes into pork, when on the sea coast we are suffering for the supply, and this pork, thus made, goes to Europe, there to come into competition with the pork of our Western States. These islands need and demand our breadstuffs, our cottons, and other manufactures, our boots and shoes, and leather, but we take from them little or nothing wherewith to pay for them, and so turn the whole trade over to England.

Now, if the numerous articles of production of those islands were introduced into this country free, they would enable the mechanics and laborers of New England to live from ten to fifteen per cent. cheaper than they now do. The herring of these waters are largely in demand for the colored population of the South, but our enormous duties forbid their extensive use. Mackerel are much in demand for the West, but few can afford to pay the duties and buy. Thus man fights with Provi

dence or the laws of Providence by damaging statutes of his own, and thus the farmer of the South and West is shut off from the valuable fisheries of the East.

In our high protective, or prohibitory, tariff on wool we look only at the surface of things, forgetful of the great fact that the manufacturers of cloth need wool from all parts of the earth-from Germany, from Australia, from South Africa, as well as Buenos Ayres and Montevideo, and that when they are limited to the one producing market of wool there can be little or no variety in these manufactures, and, consequently, less production and less demand even for our own American wool. The European has open to him wool of every fiber or texture; the American, only his own. Hence, we have overstocked the market with our own lines of production but left it free for such as demand a finer, or a more varied, or, in some cases, a cheaper article than our own. We have nearly lost our commerce with South Africa, Australia, and La Plata; and France and England have taken it. To try to raise a sheep, or an extra hide, in Vermont or Michigan, we have driven the white sails of our merchantmen from those seas.

The cold, green hills of Vermont could not compete-God forbids it with the plains of La Plata or the savannas of Africa; and what we have seen in England and in France and in Belgium we see here now, high wool at home under a low tariff and low wool under a high tariff. While the price of Ohio wool before the high tariff of 1867 was from 54 to 51 cents a pound, it is now down to from 43 to 45 cents. And why is this? It is because the wool raisers of the world have been unnaturally driven from our markets to England, France, Belgium, Germany, and have there glutted those markets, with the millions of pounds we once brought here in our ships, and there, using and mixing the best adapted of the raw materials to the textures they would work, the softer and finer Buenos Ayres and German with the coarser or rougher wools of the world, they have commanded the markets elsewhere, and, in some degree, our own. What our farmers were supposed to gain by a heavy prohibitory tariff upon their wools they have lost in the reduced price of wool in Europe-a price so reduced there as to underbid even the prohibitive protection we gave in 1867 to our woolen manufactures.

On all articles imported into the United States in 1869 the percentage of revenue on the values imported was 41.02 per cent. But what do you think the percentage is on the British importations? While Britain, with a less population than ours,

imports about four times as much as we do, and exports annually about four times as much as we do, the proportion of revenue raised by the British tariff on all imported articles is only 75% per cent. against the 41.02 per cent. of ours. Such are the contrasts of a free trade with our slave trade! Such is the strange, anomalous exhibit of a monarchy and a republic! Such the contrasting picture of the life of a subject and a citizen!

Under this presentation of facts which I have been making, Mr. Chairman, can any one doubt that it is our duty, our immediate duty, to revise forthwith the whole of our customhouse system? Our commerce in our own ships' bottoms has perished; our farmers are dissatisfied; our woolen manufacturers bitterly complain; and we are all of us taxed to death. Well, what would you do? perhaps I am asked. I would take off the duty on coal. I would make it free here as it is elsewhere. I would take off the duty on manufactured lumber and on salt. I would lower the duties on lead and copper, and would reduce the duty on pig iron to $3 per ton.

I would have timber, unmanufactured timber, free-as free as it is in almost all the countries of the world. Timber seems to be an indispensable necessity, and I would not believe men could well live without it if I had not seen them try. God has blessed a large part of our country with the finest timber in the world, and it abounds now in Washington Territory as it once abounded in Maine. But He has given us mighty prairies and uncovered mountains as well as mighty forests. From Chicago, in Illinois, to the Sierra Nevada, on the Pacific slope, there is not timber enough to house the human beings now there, to say nothing of the great hive on the way. Prairie after prairie, in Illinois, in Iowa, in Nebraska, and elsewhere, nude, naked, proclaims the indispensable necessity of timber, while, from peak to peak of the Rocky Mountains, there is the same proclamation, "no wood." And now what are we doing in our strange, unnatural, God-defying tariff? We are actually giving a heavy premium, at this very moment, to the people of Michigan and Maine for the spoliation of their forests, instead of giving them a bounty, as we should, for their protection. Far wiser would. it be for us to give 25 per cent. protection to every man who would plant a tree and never use his axe upon the forest than to give a bounty as we do for the destruction of those forests.

I say nothing here in all this of the wrong and injustice in depriving the poor man of the East and center of the cheapest

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