CHAPTER XIV THE TARIFF (1815-1818) HE return of the nation to peace in 1815 was THE by no means a return to the thought or to the economic status of the period before the struggle. As a matter of fact, so far as commercial interests were concerned, war began with the embargo of 1807; and for eight years the commerce of New England was compelled to resort to strategy and to violation of the law to maintain such relations abroad as would bring profit. But, even so, it was found necessary to divert large amounts of capital from old occupations to new. While this diversion was supposed to be temporary and more or less limited, a means to prevent loss of interest and perhaps of the capital itself, it was found in the end that such investments as were made could not in the nature of the case be promptly withdrawn, to put back the money into the old channels of trade and commerce. One reason was that the investment had proved in a great many cases to be profitable, so profitable, in fact, that Calhoun asserted in a speech in the House in April, 1816, "he had often heard it said both in and out of Congress that this effect [of the war] alone would indemnify the country for all its losses." 1 Economic conditions during the five years preceding the war operated in a considerable degree to protect such manufactures as sprang up during that period. But added to this condition was the fact that the tariff laws enacted between 1789 and 1812 were in reality protective. Twelve measures of this sort slightly increased the duties on a number of articles. In July, 1812, the existing permanent duties upon goods, wares, and merchandise from foreign countries were doubled, and an additional ten per cent. put upon goods not imported in vessels of the United States; while an added tonnage duty of $1.50 per ton was put upon foreign vessels. These duties were to last during the war and for one year after peace. In 1813 a further imposition of duty on iron, wire, refined sugar, and salt operated to increase the existing protection. Under the stimulus of these acts and these conditions, the amount of capital invested reached, by 1816, probably a hundred million dollars. In cotton manufacturing alone, in 1816, the capital was estimated to be forty million dollars, employing one hundred thousand men, women, and children, with wages reaching 1 Stanwood, Tariff Controversies, I., chap. v.; Calhoun, Works (Crallé's ed.), II., 169. 2 U. S. Statutes at Large, II., 768, III., 35, 49; Niles' Register, IX., 365, 441, publishing in full the report of the committee of commerce and manufactures, February, 1816. fifteen millions yearly, and producing goods worth forty millions. The woollen manufactures absorbed capital amounting to twelve million dollars, employed fifty thousand men, utilized wool worth seven millions, and produced a product valued at nineteen millions. The total product of manufacturing in New England, so early as 1812, had risen to the very respectable figure of fifteen or twenty million dollars per year. Within a radius of thirty miles from Providence, Rhode Island, according to a memorial to Congress in December, 1815, there were one hundred and forty manufacturers of cotton, while Connecticut almost monopolized the making of woollens." During the war these rising manufactures practically monopolized the market for their products in America,' since importation from Europe was at a stand-still, and they prospered accordingly. But peace and the revival of European competition spelled ruin for them, for, while these establishments were multiplying in America, the products of the old manufactories in England were accumulating in their warehouses. One of the first results of peace was the attempt on the part of the English to place this accumulated stock of goods on the market without much consideration of the original cost of the articles, sending them to America at a venture, and disposing of them at auction sales. "It was 1 Another report of the same committee, in Niles' Register, X., 82. 'Annals of Cong., 14 Cong., 1 Sess., 1651. well worth while," said Lord Brougham, in Parliament, in 1816, "to incur a loss upon the first exportation, in order, by a glut, to stifle in the cradle those rising manufactures in the United States which the war had forced into existence, contrary to the natural course of things. The enormous amount of, I believe, eighteen millions worth of goods was exported to North America in one year. The American manufacturer felt at once this competition, in spite of the high duty which the English goods had to pay on entering the American market. The New England capitalist, earlier in the game, might have welcomed these shipments, and would have been glad to relinquish to the Englishmen the whole manufacturing industry, provided the trade of the sea might again go freely in New England bottoms. The longer the development of manufacturing went on in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, the clearer it became that capital could not return to its old channel. Hence petitions for protection to the rising manufactures poured into Congress from the eastern and middle states, and the newspapers devoted much space to the dangers threatening the new industries. So serious was the menace to these large and important interests that the administration and Congress felt compelled to take up in a large way the suggestion of protection for them. Not the least of the converts was Thomas 2 1 Hansard, Parl. Debates, XXXIII., 1099. Jefferson, who had held firmly against manufacturing in the beginning of the government, believing that cities and manufacturing were alike essentially evil. One can scarcely believe that so complete a transformation in his views could take place as would enable him to write: "To be independent for the comforts of life, we must fabricate them ourselves. We must now place the manufacturer by the side of the agriculturalist. . . . Shall we make our own comforts, or go without them, at the will of a foreign nation? He, therefore, who is against domestic manufacture must be for reducing us either to dependence on that foreign nation, or to be clothed in skins and live like wild beasts in dens and caverns. I am not one of these." 2 Madison's annual message of 1815 voiced in similar language his change of views: "Manufacturing industry . . . has made among us a progress and exhibited an efficiency which justify the belief that with a protection not more than is due the enterprising citizens whose interests are now at stake, it will become at an early date not only safe against occasional competition from abroad, but a source of domestic wealth and even of external commerce.' "3 Secretary Dallas, of the treasury, in obedience to a 1 Jefferson, Works (Federal ed.), IV., 85, 87 n, 449, 469. 2 Ibid., XI., 502 et seq. Another form of this letter is given in Niles' Register, IX., 451. 3 Richardson, Messages and Papers, I., 567. |