conquest of foreign markets. An export trade established before the civil war reached in 1860 almost $11,000,000. It did not touch those figures again until 1878, nor did it greatly exceed them until 1896, when the value of cotton goods exported was almost $17,000,000. Since then the increase of the trade has been rapid. In 1903 the value of cotton goods exported exceeded $32,000,000. It was smaller in 1904, owing to the abnormal price of raw cotton, which caused a demoralization in this branch of the textile industry throughout the world. The accompanying table shows the progress made by this industry during the last thirty years under a policy of uninterrupted protection, for the Wilson tariff of 1894, harmful to other manufactures, did not materially reduce the protective duties on cotton fabrics. The voyage of the woolen industry has been through seas much more stormy than those over which the cotton manufacturers have passed. The difficulties which have beset it have arisen largely by reason of the complication of protection of wool with protection of wool manufactures. The growers of wool have rightfully contended that they were as deserving of the fostering care of government as were the users of their product. The concession of their contention has resulted, naturally and inevitably, in the requirement of a duty on finished goods which seems excessive to those who are not aware of the peculiar circumstances of the case, and which has made the wool and woolen schedule of the tariff the vulnerable point always chosen by the opponents of protection as the best for an attack and the easiest to carry by assault. There have consequently been many interruptions and variations in the policy of protection, which have prevented the full and healthy development of the industry. At one time, in 1846, a blow was given to the manufacturers by a tariff law which levied no higher duty on finished goods than on raw wool. At another time, under the WilsonGorman act of 1894, the woolgrower was struck by a provision making wool duty free. Yet in spite of opposition and of a vacillating policy the woolen industry has grown to large proportions, taking advantage of favoring laws to increase and gain strength, enduring adverse legislation as best it might, and holding itself ready to make a forward step again when conditions should permit. Although the inherent difficulties and the artificial difficulties resulting from the lack of a continuous and consistent policy have prevented the full development of the industry, and, in consequence, that unimpeded home competition which would bring prices down strictly to the level of the foreign article, yet the difference in price is not great. Upon many varieties of goods the price of American fabrics is as low as that of European fabrics of the same quality plus a rate of duty not higher than the average of a "revenue tariff." Protection has not placed the manufacturers of wool in a position so favorable as that of the manufacturers of cotton, but under the present tariff they are making good progress, and if the policy be continued they will be able to intrench themselves strongly in the home market, to the great advantage of American woolgrowers in a steady demand for their product at reasonable prices, and of 200,000 wage-earners in continuous and remunerative employment, as well as of the whole American people in an abundant supply of honest goods at fair prices. The main facts relating to the woolen and worsted industry and to the allied manufacture of hosiery and knit goods, covering the ascertainment at the last three censuses, are presented in the following table: It is not generally realized that under the operation of a protective tariff the United States has risen almost if not quite to the first rank among the silk manufacturing countries of the world. The census returns in 1900 showed that in that year the value of the silk manufacture of France was $122,000,000 and that of the United States $92,000,000, and the rate of progress in this country was and is such that in all probability the relative positions of the two countries have been reversed and that this country now leads in this important manufacture. In In 1870 exactly two-thirds, in value, of the American consumption of silk manufactures was of foreign importation. that year the total value of silk goods imported and produced at home was $36,418,995, of which only $12,210,662 was domestic. In 1900 the value of such goods consumed in the United States had increased almost fourfold and amounted to $133,807,184, of which four-fifths ($107,003,650), was of home manufacture. The value of imported silk manufactures increased less than $2,500,000 in the intervening thirty years; the value of the domestic manufactures increased from $12,200,000 to $107,000,000. The protective tariff created this industry in the United States at the same time that free trade killed the same industry in Great Britain. Fifty years ago the silk manufacturer of England was great and prosperous. The British census of 1851 showed that there were 117,000 hands employed in the Kingdom in the silk mills. Even in 1879 it employed more than 40,000 hands. The system of free imports has rendered it almost extinct. The value of goods produced in 1900 was but $15,000,000-less than one-sixth that of this country. The destruction of this industry by invited foreign competition is one of the chief points in Mr. Chamberlain's indictment of the free-trade policy. The beginning of a protective system for the silk manufacture was made in the tariff of 1864, but the excessive internal taxation during and subsequent to the war, the disorganization of labor, and the diversion of capital to more pressing needs prevented the introduction of the manufacture on a large scale. Indeed, although the percentage of growth of the industry between 1870 and 1880 was large, it was not until the tariff act of 1883 adjusted the rates in a satisfactory manner, making raw silk free and allowing an adequate protection on manufactured goods, that the industry began to assume large proportions. It will be seen from the following table that it gave employment in 1900 to more than 65,000 employees who earned wages of nearly $21,000,000. The table corresponds to those already given for the other industries. The protective system is establishing the flax, hemp, and jute industries. As compared with cotton, wool, and silk they are still of secondary importance, but are destined, if the policy be continued, to a large growth. What it Means to Labor. In the aggregate these several branches of the textile industry employed, in 1900, no less than 661,451 hands, who earned in wages the sum of $209,022,447, and the 4,312 establishments reported produced goods of the value of $931,494,566. The number of hands employed exceeded by more than 100,000 the total population in 1900 of St. Louis, of Boston, or of Baltimore. But it is always to be borne in mind, first, that on the average each wageearner provides bread and meat, clothing, and lodging for not less than two persons besides himself; and, secondly, that their wages reach an ever-widening circle of persons engaged in other occupations-grocers, dry goods merchants, carpenters, and the like in the first instance, railroads and their employees, farmers and planters, and an infinite number of others all the way between the first and the last. What It Means to the Farmer. It is a most serious mistake to suppose that the effect of prosperity or of depression in the manufacturing, particularly in the textile, industry is limited to those employed in the mills and to their employers, or even to the communities and States in which the mills are located. The manufacturing communities in this country are wholly dependent upon the agricultural regions for their food. New England, for example, does not raise enough of any single article of food to supply its own people. Of the two staples, breadstuffs and meat, it does not raise the one-hundredth part of its need. It is therefore vitally important to the farmers of the West that the mill hands shall be steadily employed and that their wages shall be sufficient to enable them to purchase freely. Reduce the tariff, introduce foreign goods instead of domestic, diminish the demand for the products of our own mills, cut wages, close the mills or put them on short time, and you deal a blow directly at the great agricultural regions of the country. You restrict the consuming power of a community-including the wives and children of the operatives-almost equal in numbers to the population of Chicago, and you gain nothing in the form of a foreign outlet for your grain and your meat. The history of the textile manufacture in brief is this: A great industry has been built up by means of a protective tariff; two-thirds of a million of hands have employment in the factories; the country has become almost independent of a foreign supply of textile goods; the growth of the industry has been accompanied by a steady and in the aggregate a great decline in prices, so that to-day the clothing of the people is not only cheap but nearly or quite as cheap, quality considered, as that of any other nation; and in no branch of the industry is there a monopoly "trust" or the suspicion of a monopoly. No great fortunes have been built up in the textile manufacture. The conquest of the home market will be followed, if the wise policy be continued, by an entrance into foreign markets, and by the leadership of the United States in all departments of this industry. Class appeals are dishonest; * they calculate to separate those who should be united, for our economic interests are common and indivisible.-Maj. McKinley to Commercial Traveling Men's Republican Club, September 26, 1896. Arraying labor against capital is a public calamity and an irreparable injury to both.-Maj. McKinley to Commercial Traveling Men's Republican Club, September 26, 1896. The only antitrust law on the Federal Statute books bears the name of a Republican Senator. The law creating an Interstate Commerce Commission bears the name of another Republican Senator and all the law is being enforced by a Republican President. —Hon, E. L. Hamilton, in Congress, April 14, 1904. The textile industries of the United States at decennial periods 1850 to 1900. 1870 956 140,706,291 135,369 39,044,132 1880 756 1890 905 1900 1,055 208,280,346 174,659 42,040,510 102,206,347 192,090,110 Silk manufac ture........ Dyeing and finishing tex Cotton production and manufacturing in the United States, also imports and exports of cotton manufactures. [From the Statistical Abstract of the United States.] Relative Price of Cotton and Cotton Goods, 1880 to 1903-A Greater Fall in the Finished Goods than in the Material from Which They Were Manufactured. This table gives the production and average annual price of raw cotton and the wholesale price of various grades of cotton goods in the New York market in each year since 1880. It will be seen that while the price of raw cotton in 1903 was practically the same as that of the earlier part of the period, the price of manufactures is in every instance materially lower than at that time, the reduction in price of the goods being in most cases about 25 per cent., showing that the competition among the home producers has steadily reduced prices. Production and average prices of middling cotton, and the staple manufactures of cotton, in the New York market each year, from 1866 to 1903. b Including 1881 and since, the price of standard drillings are net; raw cotton prices are also net for the entire period. Protection has already made us the richest and strongest nation on earth, and under a properly restricted immigration will bring to us much that is most valuable in the population of other lands. -Senator Hoar, in the American Economist, By the policy of fostering American industries the development of our manufacturing interests have been secured; the inventive genius of our people has found a field; American labor has become the best paid, and consequently our laborers the best housed, clothed, and fed; and the wonderful development and progress in this country in all that makes a people great, have elicited the admiration of the civilized world.-Senator Cullom, in the American Economist. As a result in a large degree of our protective tariff system the United States has become one of the foremost nations of the world.-Hon, S. M. Cullom. |