THE TARIFF AND THE WOOLEN INDUSTRY.' By THOMAS WALKER PAGE. Ever since 1816 the rate of our import duties on woolen goods has been based on two suppositions: First, that the manufacture of wool is an industry essential to the welfare of this country; and second, that foreign manufacturers have certain advantages that render it impossible for our manufacturers to compete with them on equal terms. No less an advocate of free trade than Thomas Jefferson admitted and gave currency to the first of these suppositions. In a letter to Benjamin Austin dated January 9, 1816, he wrote: * * * * * You tell me I am quoted by those who wish to continue our dependence on England for manufactures. There was a time when I might have been so quoted with more candor, but within the 30 years which have since elapsed how are circumstances changed. We have experienced what we did not then believe, that there exists both profligacy and power enough to exclude us from the field of interchange with other nations; that to be independent for the comforts of life we must fabricate them ourselves. We must now place the manufacturer by the side of the agriculturist. * He therefore who is now against domestic manufacture must be for reducing us to dependence on that foreign nation, or to be clothed in skins, and to live like wild beasts in dens and caverns. I am not one of these; experience has taught me that manufactures are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort. * * * * * Of course, since the date of this letter conditions have greatly changed. It may even be doubted whether there now exist "both profligacy and power enough to exclude us from the field of interchange with other nations"; and even if they do exist, no country can afford to maintain an industrial policy based on the very remote possibility of a complete cessation of foreign trade. Nevertheless, Jefferson's belief that the cloth industry should be maintained still prevails, prevails indeed so widely that no political party would knowingly adopt measures leading to the overthrow of wool manufacturing. It is not necessary here to seek the grounds for the continuance of this belief. An obvious and for the present a sufficient explanation of it lies in the enormous growth the industry has attained and the wide and varied interests concerned in its prosperity. Its employees are reckoned in the hundreds of thousands, the invested capital in the hundreds of millions, and the annual output of the factories working in whole or in part with wool is valued at approximately three-quarters of a billion of dollars. If serious disaster should come upon such an industry, no field of business in the country This article was prepared not for publication but for use before a club interested in economics at the university where it was read. We are glad to have obtained the consent of Prof. Page to present the article in the Bulletin. It is of great interest to all those associated with the industry as an able, well-considered presentation of the subject from a Democrat who had participated in the inquiry of the Tariff Board. Of course it is possible that manufacturers would not concur in all of the conclusions of Prof. Page, but the Bulletin, on behalf of the association, welcomes the article for its manifest sincerity. Only good can result from a free and fair discussion of the subject along the lines followed by this scholarly writer. (Editor of the Bulletin.) |