SERVICES TO THE CAUSE OF THE PROTECTION OF HOME INDUSTRY.
Zachariah Chandler as a Republican Senator was a thorough Whig in
both his advocacy of an enlightened national system of Internal
Improvements and his constant and efficient championship of the cause
of the Protection of American Industries. It has been justly said that
"the Great West of to-day owes its unequaled growth and progress, its
population, productiveness and wealth, primarily, to the framers of the
federal constitution, by which its development was rendered possible,
but more immediately and palpably to the sagacity and statesmanship
of Jefferson, the purchaser of Louisiana; to the genius of Fitch and
Fulton, the projector and achiever, respectively, of steam navigation;
to De Witt Clinton, the early, unswerving and successful champion
of artificial inland navigation; and to Henry Clay, the eminent,
eloquent, and effective champion of the diversification of our national
industry through the Protection of Home Manufactures." No man knew
better or acknowledged more fully the truth of this analysis than
Mr. Chandler. His own State abounded with evidences of its justice,
and his firm faith in the protective principle was also strengthened
by the teachings of his practical mercantile experience and by his
general commercial sagacity. No State presents to-day more abundant
proofs of the beneficence of "the American system" than Michigan, and
no personal contributions to the protection of its interests and the
diversification of its industries equaled those given on every possible
occasion by Mr. Chandler throughout his prolonged Senatorial service.
Political economy has been well defined as "the science of labor-saving
applied to the action of communities, its aim being to save labor
from waste, from misapplication, and from loss through constrained
idleness." The objects of Protection are the ennobling of labor and
the enhancing of its productiveness, and its method is interdicting
an unwholesome competition which looks no farther than securing mere
cheapness of production at whatever cost of human energy, comfort
and enlightenment. There has never been an intelligent and sincere
protectionist without a thorough faith in the vast importance and
inherent nobility of Labor. On this as on all great questions Mr.
Chandler's convictions were radical, and he was right fundamentally.
He had been himself a laborer. The store, the farm, the factory, the
work-shop, are all one in this--their duties are labor. Mr. Chandler
knew the worth of free labor. He had witnessed its seed-planting and
wonderful fruitage of development in Michigan, and he honored the
strong, hardy, intelligent and self-reliant race who were the laborers
there, and of whom he was one. He had early opportunity to make this
plain in the Senate. Hammond of South Carolina, a true representative
of that turbulent, rebellious State and of the embodied insolence of
its master class and of the man-owner's contempt for free labor, made
at this time his notorious "mud-sill" speech. "There must be laborers
in every community, a low, degenerate class, who hew the wood and
draw the water, ... the mud-sills of society, in effect they are
slaves;" this was its idea. It was a frank avowal of the estimate put
by the slaveholding oligarchy upon the Northern laborers, upon the men
who have made this country what it is. Mr. Chandler was then young
in the Senate, and had spoken but rarely, but to this insult to his
constituency he was quick to reply. In his speech of March 12, 1858,
the first in which he addressed the Senate at any length, he said:
It is an attack upon my constituents. Under the Senator's version,
under his exposition of slavery, nine-tenths of the people of
the North are or have been at some time slaves; for nine-tenths
of the people of the North have at some time been hirelings and
laborers. We do not feel degraded by being laborers. We believe it
to be respectable.... Travel on any road in the State of Michigan,
and you will find flourishing farms on almost every 160 acres,
with comfortable dwellings, and a high state of improvement and
cultivation.... You will find the owners of these farms with four
or five sons of their neighboring farmers hired out by the day
or the month or the year.... These young men go to service or
labor until they get money enough to buy a farm; then they, too,
become the employers of labor.... These men are never degraded by
labor.... They are the foundations of society there. Some of these
men who are at work by the month during the summer on farms are in
the Legislature making laws for us in the winter.
There was more of it to the same effect--honest, indignant words in
defense of free Northern labor, and in eulogy of the men who toiled.
And the tone of these portions of the speech was wholesomely defiant,
without a shade of truckling to Southern insolence. Nine years later,
in discussing proposed tariff amendments in 1867, Mr. Chandler said
in the Senate, "I thank God we are able to pay good prices to our
laborers." These utterances indicate the vein in which he always made
his voice heard and influence felt whenever the interests and rights of
labor were challenged either by speech or attempted legislation.
The tariff controversy in the United States dates back half a
century. This republic in its colonial days was agricultural. There
were no mines nor manufactures. Each house did its own spinning and
weaving. There were small shops for the making and repairing of a
few articles, and luxuries and fine goods for the rich were imported
from the factories of Europe. The great labor-saving appliances of
the nineteenth century did not exist even in imagination. The water
power of the country was unused and its boundless wealth of minerals
unknown. The people were farmers or traders. For them the government
was founded, and apparently there was no contemplation of anything
beyond. It was years before a change came, but, once begun, it hurried
with rapid stride, until to-day more than one-twentieth of the entire
population of the United States are engaged in manufacturing, as many
more are employed in occupations connected with and dependent upon such
enterprises, and the capital invested in productive industries exceeds
by millions of dollars the entire national debt.
These changes as they progressed made new demands upon the government.
After the development of the steam engine, and after later inventions
and contrivances had cheapened the production of cotton, woolen and
other goods, household spinning-wheels and looms were silent, and
the United States imported nearly every manufactured article needed
by its people, sending out in return the products of its farms and
plantations, its tobacco, cotton and grain. Year after year this
draining process went on, the manufacturing towns of Europe growing
great and prosperous, the United States widening and increasing in
population, but adding little to its wealth. The mill-owners of
Europe bought their cotton in South Carolina or Georgia, transported
it across the Atlantic, made it into cloths, and returned them to
New York or Charleston. The American purchaser paid the cost of both
transportations, the cost and profit of manufacture abroad, all the
profits of middle-men who handled the goods, and all the cost of
exchanges. By this process America toiled, while England and the other
manufacturing States of Europe reaped the harvest. Thoughtful people,
knowing that capital employed in production feeds, clothes and lodges
the industrious workman, adds to the wealth of the nation, adds to its
strength, adds to its power of resistance, and lessens the individual
burden of taxation, and comprehending the inevitable result of the
drain in progress, asked, Is there no way of preventing this? They
saw the raw material produced in bountiful profusion, saw the water
power of the country running away to the sea unvexed by use, and
naturally asked, Is it not possible to bring the miners and smelters,
the founders, machinists and laborers, the mechanic and manufacturer
of every description, here, to place them beside the raw material, to
utilize this wasted power, and to save the losses and attrition that
are impoverishing the country? When these thoughts took shape in the
active brains of Americans, the change began. Mills and factories
sprang up by the water-courses. Tall chimneys, clouds of smoke and
glowing furnaces came after. Thus American manufacturing was born.
But as the first mills and factories were established, these
discoveries were made: In building a mill in England the laborers and
mechanics could be hired at wages from twenty to forty per cent. lower
than prevailed on this continent. The cost of machinery, most of it
being brought from Europe, was also greater. Foreign manufacturers
could hire their capital from the immense reservoir of Europe, where
it had been accumulating for centuries, at from four to six per
cent. interest. Here the borrower must pay eight or ten per cent. or
even higher. There was another and even graver matter presented to
the consideration of the pioneer manufacturer. Labor in Europe was
cheap--so cheap that, combined with abundant capital and low interest,
it enabled the foreign manufacturer to pay two ocean transportations
and yet undersell an American competitor at the very door of his own
mill. Should the American mechanic be asked to toil for the pauper
wages of Europe? Should it be the policy of this government to gather
about its factories the hungry-eyed, ill-clad, impoverished, ignorant
and hopeless crowds which are found in the manufacturing towns of the
old world? Could American institutions endure this? Where the people
are all agriculturists, except under very extraordinary circumstances
they need never want for food, and such circumstances are rarely
chargeable to misgovernment or to bad laws. The farming classes are
widely scattered; they are conservative and self-reliant, not given
to mobs and outbreaks, nor to obeying the will of self-constituted
leaders as do men gathered in great masses. But the men of mills
and shops and factories, unless they are well paid, must suffer;
and when they suffer their discontent threatens society itself.
Despotic governments may apply the gag of a bayonet or the silence of
a musket ball, but this is not possible in a republic resting upon
the uncompelled support of all the people. Plainly, if a government,
constituted as is this, is to be preserved, the mechanics, the laborers
in mills and mines, in shops and factories, must be paid enough to
support themselves and their families in comfort, to educate their
children and to permit the thrifty to make savings. If the time ever
comes when the millions of American workers upon whose assent this
government exists are reduced to the condition of the pauper labor
of Europe, this republic and its golden promises of freedom will
most certainly ignobly perish from the face of the earth. From such
circumstances and ideas as these sprang the doctrine, accepted by
almost all of the earlier statesmen of the republic, that the revenue
system of the United States must be so modeled as to stimulate domestic
manufactures, protect them from ruinous foreign competition, and
promote that diversification of industry which is so essential to the
prosperity and independence of free labor.
The first tariff measure (passed by the First Congress and approved by
George Washington) imposed but low duties, but in some of its details
practically recognized the protective principle, and in its preamble
declared one of its purposes to be "the protection and encouragement
of Domestic Manufacture." From 1807 to 1815 the United States was in a
great degree driven from the ocean. A part of that time it was involved
in a war with Great Britain, with an embargo laid upon its ports.
During these years the home manufacturer had no foreign competition
to fear, and factories sprang up to meet the local demands, drawing
about them laborers and their families, making a quick market for
the productions of the soil, and placing consumer and producer side
by side. But this was the result of accident and not of deliberate
policy. The scene changed when the raising of the embargo brought into
the country a flood of manufactured articles representing cheap labor,
cheap interest and cheap capital. Then came the demand for the levying
of such duties on the products of foreign labor as would protect the
American manufacturer and enable him to pay a suitable compensation
to the American workman. The first response to this was the tariff of
1816, justly styled "The Planters' and Farmers' Tariff," because it
gave protection to coarser commodities which least required it, and
withheld it from those articles in whose production others were to
be used. Eight years afterward came a third tariff varying little in
its general features, but with rates of duties slightly increased.
Four years later (in 1828) was enacted the first thoroughly American
protective tariff, but it was soon destroyed by the act of July 12,
1832 (the outcome of the Nullification controversy), which completely
abolished its protective features. Within a few months, through the
exertions of Mr. Clay, this measure was modified by what was known
as the compromise tariff act, which continued in force until the
passage of the protective tariff of 1842. This was in time displaced
by the free-trade tariff, which went into force four years later, in
June, 1847. It was followed in 1861 (March 23) by the Morrill tariff,
a thoroughly protective measure, which with some modifications yet
remains on the statute books.
In 1816, notwithstanding it had just emerged from war, the country's
industrial condition was at least hopeful, but the consequences of
the tariff of that year promptly manifested themselves. The American
manufacturer was undersold at the door of his mill by the foreigner;
factories closed, wages shrunk and the demand for labor diminished.
Prices of all kinds of planter's and farmer's produce declined in
turn, and to industrial prostration was speedily added agricultural
depression. Henry Clay pronounced the seven years preceding 1824 the
most disastrous this nation had ever known. But almost from the moment
of its passage the country felt the impetus of the protective tariff of
1828. Furnace doors were thrown open; foundries were built; the cobwebs
that had gathered about factory machinery disappeared in the whir of
busy wheels; labor came again into demand; immigration increased; the
products of farms and plantations brought good prices; and the public
revenue grew until the national debt was extinguished. Prosperity thus
became universal throughout the land. When this protective tariff of
1828 gave way to the gradual reductions in duties of the compromise
measure of 1832, there followed a repetition of the scenes that
succeeded the tariff of 1816. From 1837 to 1842 mills and furnaces were
closed, wages were reduced, laborers sought in vain for employment, the
poor-houses were filled and manufacturers, farmers and planters became
bankrupts together. Even the public treasury was unable to borrow at
home as small a sum as $1,000,000 at any rate of interest, and the
great banking houses of Europe refused it credit, so that it was forced
to the humiliation of selling its securities at ruinous discounts. The
passage of the protective tariff of 1842 marks the date of another
business revival. Old mines were re-worked and new ones were opened.
Mill-fires were re-lighted and new mills sprang up in all directions.
Money became abundant, and public and private incomes exceeded all
precedent. Farmers and planters secured easy markets and ample prices
for their produce, and laborers' homes grew bright with plenty. Then
came the Free-Trade tariff of 1846 and the commercial decadence which
culminated in the disasters of 1857. California and its gold delayed
the catastrophe but could not avert it. From the moment of the repeal
of the protective tariff, the inflow of British iron and cloth began
and the receding tide carried back American gold, impoverishing
the country. Industry was stricken to the earth, and day by day
saw the dependence of the United States on foreign markets growing
until when the crash came it was complete. The vast flood of gold
from California had gone into European vaults and in its stead could
only be shown receipts for foreign goods consumed and the wrecks of
American industries. The Morrill tariff was followed by an unparalleled
mercantile and manufacturing development, which not even the disastrous
effects of an inflated currency (in 1873-76) could more than briefly
check.
Mr. Chandler, who knew well these facts, and had learned "the American
doctrine" in the days of Clay, had taken his seat in the Senate when
the crash of 1857 came, and was active in demanding and shaping that
revolution in the revenue system which has made the United States one
of the great manufacturing nations of the world. He was an ardent
champion of the Morrill tariff (of 1861), and aided materially in
perfecting its details, watching with special vigilance those of
its provisions which affected the vast interests of the Northwest.
He believed in the largest possible application of the protective
principle, and favored aiding every American producer and every
American manufacturer who could complain on valid grounds of foreign
competition. Every demand for protection, which gave reasonable promise
of increasing the yield of any staple or of developing a new industry,
received his energetic support. To any revenue measure or proposition,
which seemed to him calculated to advance foreign at the expense of
American interests, he was uncompromisingly hostile. The abrogation of
the Reciprocity treaty with Canada he labored most assiduously to bring
about, and he resisted with all his characteristic pertinacity each
successive effort to restore a compact which imposed such heavy burdens
upon the lumbermen, salt manufacturers, and farmers of the Northwest.
Throughout his Senatorial term all measures affecting duties in
any form or proposing any modification in their schedules found him
alert, well-informed, and determined to maintain the protective policy
against any assault.[12] Very much the greater, and undoubtedly the
most effective, part of his labors for an American tariff was put
forth in committee-rooms and in the earnest use of argument and
influence with fellow-Congressmen; he relied much more upon this work
than upon speech-making for results--and results he always ranked far
above display or mere publicity. Still he spoke not unfrequently on
tariff questions, and a few quotations will illustrate satisfactorily
his positions and methods. This passage shows how radical was his
protectionism:
This nation to-day should be an exporter of iron instead of an
importer. There is no valid reason why we should buy one single
pound of iron from any other nation on the globe. Our mountains
are filled with the purest ores on the face of the earth.... If I
had my way I would absolutely prohibit the introduction of foreign
iron.
The context does not sustain an absolutely literal construction of the
last sentence. Mr. Chandler had seen Michigan when its copper mines
were unworked, its limitless riches of iron undiscovered, its salt
deposits unknown, and its pine forests unfelled. He had seen these
industries passing through various stages of prosperity and disaster
as they were affected by prevailing tariffs, now shielded by a wise
policy of protection and now at the mercy of foreign producers, who at
times (to use their own admission) "voluntarily incur immense losses
in order to destroy American competition and to gain and keep control
of American markets." He saw these industries grow from nothing,
until the annual yield of Michigan's copper mines became 20,266 tons,
of its iron mines 1,125,231 tons, and of its salt wells 1,885,884
barrels, and until its lumber product expanded to the enormous total of
2,700,000,000 feet in one season. They thus became powerful interests,
employing a great host of laborers and offering support to thousands
of families. These facts and the tone of what Mr. Chandler said on
kindred topics make it plain that by the absolute prohibition of the
introduction of foreign iron he meant not an embargo, but the affording
of such ample protection to the iron industries of the entire country
as would make it impossible for the products of foreign cheap labor to
compete in its markets with those of American labor, and as would make
the United States a seller and not a buyer of iron and its wares.
With all his earnestness as a protectionist, he kept the interests
of labor predominant in his consideration of this subject. For
instance, in some remarks upon the lumber tariff, he said: "It is
perfectly well known that the great value of lumber is in the labor
and the transportation, and while we in the United States are paying
our laborers (in lumber) $2 a day, they are in the British Provinces
paying but from 75 cents to $1 per day." And he steadily voted for
such protection of the lumber trade as would enable producers engaged
in that business to pay large wages, and opposed every suggestion
which looked to impoverishing or pauperizing the American artisan. He
uniformly upheld American industry and labor of every kind against
the competition of the world. He felt that the highest civilization
can only be secured through that policy of industrial diversification
which brings consumer and producer side by side, and he favored giving
it the widest possible scope. He frequently declared, "I cannot vote
to discriminate against any particular branch," and he firmly believed
in protecting everything his country could produce. His vigilance in
caring for all interests and his grasp of the practical details of
tariff legislation will appear from one or two brief citations from
speeches made in 1867 on proposed modifications of the Morrill tariff.
The duty on pig-metal was then $9 per ton, and it was proposed in the
new bill to admit scrap-iron on the payment of a duty of $3. On this
proposition Mr. Chandler said:
The effect of this tariff will be to admit all the rails in the
world into the United States at a duty of $3 a ton. We will
become the recipients of all the scrap-iron in the world.... And
the effect will be to put out every blast furnace in the United
States, and stop the mining in every mountain in the country....
The expense of re-rolling bars is only about $30 a ton. You
admit scrap-iron at this nominal duty, and the result will be to
utterly destroy the revenue you now receive from iron--you will
import nothing but at the duty of $3 per ton. This scrap-iron is
worth two or three times as much as pig-metal. Pig-metal has to
be puddled once. It costs to-day $28 per ton to put pig-metal
into scrap, and yet you put a duty of $9 per ton on pig-metal
and propose a mere nominal duty of $3 per ton on scrap.... This
is absolutely abandoning the whole iron interests of the United
States, save and excepting the rolling-mills.... The State of
Pennsylvania takes about 300,000 tons of Lake Superior ore to mix
with her inferior ore, and transports it by water 700 or 800 miles,
and afterward by land carriage--a very expensive carriage--from
50 to 300 miles. This ore is mixed with the Pennsylvania ores,
and transported then a long distance at very great expense. The
demand for pig-iron is for rolling.... Calling material nothing,
it costs the manufacturers $60 per ton of scrap-iron to take the
ore and the coal from the mine and deliver at the works, every
cent of which is labor.... There are in the world 100,000 miles of
railroads, of which 36,000 are in the United States, and 64,000 in
the rest of the world. These railroads are laid, on an average,
with rails weighing 56 pounds to the yard, and use 49,000 tons
net to the mile. This gives the 64,000 miles abroad 3,136,000
tons of iron. This has to be re-rolled on an average once in ten
years; consequently one-tenth of this amount is let loose upon some
country every year in the shape of scrap-iron. That would make the
amount of railroad scrap alone 313,600 tons per annum, which it is
proposed to admit at a duty of $3 a ton, and which it costs to-day
$60 a ton to put in the form of scrap in the United States. This
is Free Trade in the broadest sense. It is worse than that.... It
will build up rolling-mills, but it will break down every forge
in the United States.... It will stop our mines in Michigan that
yield ores richer than any other in the world.... It will make this
country the _entrepôt_ for the scrap-iron of the world.
He would not build up the rolling-mill at the expense of the mine and
the blast-furnace. He would not build up one industry upon the ruins of
any other. His many speeches and his more numerous votes in the Senate
all indicated the same clear purpose to avoid discrimination against
home interests where possible, and to protect everything American
against everything of foreign production.
One phase of this many-sided question which made a deep impression upon
Mr. Chandler remains to be mentioned. In common with all thoughtful
Americans, during the course of the rebellion he realized the priceless
value of the large-brained, energetic and highly-skilled American
mechanic. He had marked these men in every brigade, upon every field of
the war, enabling commanders to overcome obstacles which without them
would have been insurmountable. He had seen mills and factories and
shops pouring into the storehouses of the government the multitudinous
articles without which a successful prosecution of the war would
have been impossible, and that, too, with a rapidity which was as
amazing as it was unexampled. He was from his early manhood a strong
protectionist. But when he realized what the American working-men had
done for the country and for freedom, and how its protected trades had
served the government in its hour of trial, he was still more confirmed
in the wisdom of the system which fosters American industry and secures
to the country the priceless heritage of prosperous and intelligent
laborers and mechanics.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] The following letter is written by a gentleman thoroughly familiar
with the history of tariff legislation at Washington for many years:
WASHINGTON, D. C., Jan. 5, 1880.
Some eight years ago, when a serious reduction in the copper tariff was
proposed, I know that Mr. Chandler rendered valuable aid in bringing
the facts before the Senate in his clear, terse way--going straight
to the mark. Then, as always in practical matters, his prompt manner,
his business knowledge, and his immense power of will made him the man
to be called on, and he ever responded to the call, and had a power
wonderful indeed to "push things." When the act to reduce internal
revenue taxes--which had passed the House almost unanimously, and had
been perfected by the mutual labors of Congressional committees and
representative business men--was before the Senate for final action in
March, 1868, an effort was made by Senator Fessenden, of Maine, to add
to it as a "rider" a clause affecting the copper tariff, which would
surely have delayed if not defeated the measure. Senator Chandler spoke
ten minutes, putting concentrated power in his words, and showing the
great importance of passing the act and the needless mischief that must
come of saddling it with another question. He succeeded in defeating
the Fessenden amendment, the act passed without it, and it reduced the
annual burden of internal revenue taxation some $60,000,000 (all this
internal).
The Senator's views on tariff legislation were broad and comprehensive,
recognizing the interdependence of all branches of industry and the
importance of such action as should bear with equal justice on all:
knowing no East, nor West, nor South--no petty and narrow jealousy
between farmer and merchant and manufacturer--but seeking the wise care
and healthy growth o£ a varied home industry all over the land.
On these subjects he showed practical sagacity and the same moral
courage and bold vigor that marked his great efforts for freedom and
justice to all in the last and grandest year, which so nobly closed
a public career which will live and grow in the minds of future
generations. Very truly yours,
GILES B. STEBBINS.