July 29, 1846, the New York Tribune said :

"We believe the change just made entirely wrong-flagrantly, grievously wrong-yet we shall studiously avoid 'panic-making.' When the crisis has been met with manful resolution, we apprehend that there will be quite disaster enough, suffering enough, because of this great national mistake. We fear that thousands upon thousands who would have been steadily employed and comfortably situated, if this bill had not passed, will now be destitute of employment and dependent upon charity for bread."

July 30, 1846, the New York Courier and Enquirer said :

"The country will be flooded with foreign goods, many manufactories will be stopped, and others will work at half price; the home market now being built up will be injured, ruinously low prices of agricultural products will follow, and the day laborer will be required to work for reduced wages. The consequence of such excessive importations will cause a balance of trade against us exceeding the amount of specie within the country, which must be sent abroad, followed, perhaps, by a derangement of our monetary system."

And on the same day the New York Express said :

"Wherever the news will go, it will sound a death-knell in the ear of industry and enterprise. No sadder tidings for many a year have reached all branches of labor, and the outcry, therefore, is general.'

Similar quotations could be made to a great extent, but these must

suffice.

The bill was passed, and went into operation, and the direful prophecies above quoted were fulfilled almost literally.

THE INEVITABLE RESULTS.-The same inevitable results followed, as always before, under free trade or very low duties, though they were postponed for some years by causes which will be referred to presently. It can be stated truthfully, that for some years after the repeal of the Tariff of 1842 there was an apparently increasing prosperity; but the apparent success that seemed to follow the Tariff of 1846 was wholly due to external, adventitious, and unexpected causes. But as soon as these unusual and accidental resources were cut off, then followed the same disastrous results, as always before, under free trade or very low duties. Many industries were destroyed; business was paralyzed; total ruin overtook tens of thousands of the most useful merchants and manufacturers of the country; and armies of toilers were hurled from the factory or the shop into the streets to steal or starve.

Our exports of cotton, rice, tobacco, corn and pork diminished; the demand for ships and for labor fell off, and immigration, which had trebled under the workings of the Tariff of 1842, greatly declined.

THE PROPHECIES FULFILLED.-On December 18, 1854, the New York Tribune published a collection of facts which showed the dreary and prospectively desperate condition of industry and commerce. It showed that the chief industries necessary to the life of the nation were partially or wholly collapsed through the influences and effects of the British free

trade doctrines put into operation here by the Tariff of 1846; that our people had been brought to a condition which in Europe is attendant upon revolution, and that in every occupation and branch of business the depression was so terrible that one-half or more of all employees had been thrown out of employment. It added:

"What a picture is here presented! We have supported European manufacturers and artists and middlemen to the neglect, loss and destruction of our own men of industry and talent, of whatever kind, and that is the sole reason of our difficulty."

One year later, January 15, 1855, the New York Tribune printed the following pathetic article which explains itself: "Who is hungry? Go and see. You that are full-fed and know not what it is to be hungryperhaps never saw a hungry man-go and see. Go and see thousands, men and women, boys and girls, old and young, black and white, of all nations, crowding and jostling each other, almost fighting for a first chance, acting more like hungry wolves than human beings, in a land of plenty, waiting till the food is ready for distribution. Such a scene may be seen every day between eleven and two o'clock around the corner of Orange and Chatham streets, where charity gives a dinner to the poor, and soup and bread to others to carry to their miserable families.

"On Saturday we spent an hour there at the hour of high tide. We have never seen anything like it before. Upward of a thousand people were fed with a plate of soup, a piece of bread and a piece of meat, on the premises, and in all more than sixteen hundred. On the same day one thousand one hundred and thirty portions of soup were dealt out from Stewart's 'soup kitchen,' corner of Reade street and Broadway. At the rooms on Duane street for the relief of the poor, on the same day, they gave food to two thousand two hundred and fifty-six. In the Sixth ward alone over six thousand persons were fed by charity on Saturday, January 13th. And this is only one day in one ward. Meanwhile, scenes of a like nature are being enacted all over the city.

66 The cry of hard times reaches us from every part of the country. The making of roads is stopped, factories are closed and houses and ships are no longer being built. Factory hands, road makers, carpenters, bricklayers and laborers are idle, and paralysis is rapidly embracing every pursuit in the country. The cause of all this stoppage of circulation is to be found in the steady outflow of gold to pay foreign laborers for the cloth, the shoes, the iron and the other things that could be produced by American labor, but which cannot be so produced under our present revenue system. The convulsion would have come upon us sooner but for the extraordinary demand in Europe for breadstuffs, growing out of huge famines and big wars, and but for the dazzling and magnificent discovery of gold mines in California, by which hard money, sufficient to buy an empire, has been called into existence and exported to Europe. If we could stop the import of the foreign articles, the gold would cease to flow out to pay for them, and money would then again become more abundant, labor would then again be in demand, shoes, clothing and other commodi

ties would then again be in demand, and men would then cease to starve in the streets of our towns and cities. If it be not stopped the gold must continue to go abroad, and employment must become from day to day more scare, until where there are now many thousands we shall see tens of thousands of men everywhere crying: 'Give me work! Only give me work! Make your own terms-my wife and children have nothing to eat!'"

But the Democracy was still in power, and was so infatuated with British free trade that, notwithstanding the fearful state of things just described, it would not stop the import of foreign made goods that our people might have work, nor the flow of gold to Europe to pay for them. The condition of the country went from bad to worse until the frightful culmination was reached in the panic of 1857, which will be discussed further on.

IN 1849 PRESIDENT ZACHARY TAYLOR succeeded Mr. Polk, and in his first annual message, December, 1849, referring to insufficient revenue under the Tariff of 1846, said:

I recommend a revision of the exisiting tariff, and its adjustment on a basis which may augment the revenue. I do not doubt the right or duty of Congress to encourage domestic industry. I look to the wisdom and patriotism of Congress for the adoption of a system which may place home labor, at last, on a sure and permanent footing, and, by due encouragement of manufactures, give new and increased stimulus to agriculture and promote the developement of our vast resources and the extension of our commerce.

1850.-VICE-PRESIDENT FILMORE was the successor of Mr. Taylor, who lived but a few months as President.

Hear what he had to say in his annual message in December, 1851, concerning the results flowing from the repeal of the Tariff of 1842. Said he "The value of our exports of bread-stuffs and provisions, which it was supposed the incentive of a low tariff and large importations from abroad would have greatly augmented, has fallen from $68,000,000 in 1847, to $21,000,000 in 1851, with almost a certainty of a still further reduction in 1852. The policy which dictated a low rate of duties on foreign merchandise, it was thought by those who established it, would tend to benefit the farming population of this country by increasing the demand and raising the price of our agricultural products in foreign markets. The foregoing facts, however, seem to show, incontestibly, that no such result has followed the adoption of this policy."

THE REASON FOR THIS FREE TRADE POLICY.-The action of Mr. Polk and his administration in causing the repeal of the Protective Tariff of 1842, and substituting therefor the Free Trade Tariff of 1846, is so incomprehensible to Americans of the present day that it may be helpful and advantageous to us to find and understand the reason that led them to do as they did in this respect.

Robert J. Walker, of Mississippi, was Mr. Polk's Secretary of the Treasury, and probably the ablest thinker and writer on the free trade side this country has ever produced.

The South under slavery was irrevocably committed to free trade, and Walker was selected as its leading advocate. Cotton was king and demanded an economical system based upon agricultural pursuits only. Walker wrote a long and very elaborate report, in which he boldly proclaimed the new doctrine that was to govern the nation from that time; and its leading thought or principle was contained in the following extract: "We have more fertile lands than any other nation; can raise a greater variety of products, and, it may be said, could feed and clothe the people of nearly all the world. Agriculture is our chief employment. It is best adapted to our situation. We can raise a larger surplus of agricultural products, and a greater variety than almost any other nation, and at cheaper rates. Remove then from agriculture all our restrictions, and by its own unfettered power it will break down all foreign restrictions, and, ours being removed, would feed the hungry and clothe the poor of our fellowmen, through all the densely peopled nations of the world."

This was the foundation-stone of the Tariff of 1846; as, in this country, agriculture must always be the basis of every free trade system. Like all free trade arguments it is made up of assumptions; but "free trade is the science of assumption." (Kelley.) Whenever or wherever any such economical system has been tried, it has invariably failed, and its fallacies and assumptions have been made apparent.

Though the English statesmen were very anxious to have us adopt the Walker's free trade policy, they knew it was wrong in principle and could not long succeed. One of their ablest leaders in Parliament, referring to a protective policy that France had adopted, said: "The policy that France acts on is that of encouraging its native manufactures, and it is a wise policy; for if she were freely to admit our manufactures, it would speedily reduce her to an agricultural nation, and therefore a poor nation, as all nations must be that depend exclusively upon agriculture." (Lord Goderich.)

WALKER'S THEORY ANSWERED.-The answers to this theory of Mr. Walker and the free traders were set forth with exceeding clearness; for they were based upon absolute knowledge and practical experience, and the doctrines contained in them, protectionists say, have never failed, when they have been given a fair and honorable test.

They are substantially as follows:

First. That the value of any product is made up almost entirely of the wages paid to produce it.

Second. That that is the best policy that brings to the laborer the best possible returns for his labor.

Third. That the average wages of labor in the United States are from two to four times greater than in European countries.

Fourth. That it would be extremely foolish to adopt any system that would reduce the wage of our laborers to the level of the European wages.

Fifth. That this whole theory of Walker was based upon two assumptions: first, that agriculture could do what he claimed for it; and second.

that (assuming the first assumption to be true), because it could do what he claimed, therefore it would do so; they also said that, with the whole country cleared and under cultivation, if the whole productive industry of the country were employed in producing the articles we sell abroad, which are mainly breadstuffs and provisions, cotton, rice and tobacco, we should produce a much larger quantity than we could sell; foreign markets would soon be glutted with these articles; the price of them would fall; the labor that produced them would, as a matter of course, receive less wages than now; the only stopping point in the decline of wages would be the starving point, and the inevitable result would be a forced equality of wages between this country and European countries.

Sixth. That a protective tariff is a necessity in this country to give variety to production, a home market, and high wages to labor.

1852.-THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION in 1852 reaffirmed its former doctrine respecting protection and free trade.

DEMOCRATIC RULE CONTINUED, but free trade prevailed; the Democrats remained in power, and its low tariff policy continued till 1857, though the usual evil results were greatly modified and postponed, as already stated, by a very unusual and accidental series of events, which occurred about as follows:

1.—THE MEXICAN WAR.-Very soon after the passage of the Tariff Act of 1846, war was declared by our government against Mexico. Our supply of arms and of the numerous munitions of war was very scanty, and new supplies had to be created, and paid for. This of itself put in circulation in the nation considerably more than $100,000,000.

2.-FAMINE IN IRELAND.-Close upon the payment to our people of this great sum followed that well-known and terrible famine in Ireland, when so many thousands suffered and perished from starvation. This demand called for and obtained our entire surplus of flour, grain, potatoes and many other things, and left heavy payments of money therefor, which went largely to our agricultural population.

3.—CALIFORNIA GOLD.—1849 brought to our people the discovery of those amazingly rich deposits of gold in California, the output of gold averaging for ten years from 1849 not less than $55,000,000 per year. Many ships were required to transport great numbers of men as well as large supplies of food for the gold-hunters; and for a time the California business increased the demand for labor and for our agricultural products.

4.-EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS.-About the same time (1848–51) those violent revolutions broke out in many European countries, which most severely tested the regular authorities of those nations in putting down the revolutions, and almost completely paralyzed their agricultural and manufacturing industries.

These events caused an immense demand upon our country, particularly for our agricultural products; gave us increased prices for them, and brought large sums of money from those countries to pay for them; and, of course, this money was widely distributed, and tended to make the times apparently prosperous.