from their youth up. How forcibly Daniel Webster appealed to them to conquer their prejudices!
I have been informed that some people at the North anticipate a scarcity of operatives for newly inaugurated mills in the South, but the idea is new to me. In truth, so highly do I estimate the desirableness of this occupation, especially to the women and girls of these Southern States, that it has always appeared to me that this class of persons, if they understood the matter, would "cry aloud" for the repeal of the duty on imported cotton machinery; not on goods to be made in such mills, but on the machinery with which to make the goods. This duty is thirty-five per cent on the cost of the iron and forty-five per cent on the cost of the steel used in machine construction. Why should our machinists have this great prop to their business, while farmers, miners, and other workers indirectly pay the duties thus imposed? The farmers of the West pay under our system $345,000,000 annually, without any good to anybody. I quote from a remarkable treatise I read some years ago, by Alfred Mongredien, an English writer: "But this is called 'protection!' Phœbus! what a name! Protection for the very few American machine-builders, but destitution for hundreds of thousands of poor women and children who long for work but can not obtain it because the machinists are so much (protected' that would-be mill projectors can not afford the high prices demanded for machines."
Just think of sulphate of quinine! A few years ago it was sold at six dollars per ounce at wholesale. The duty was repealed, and I understand that it can be bought now at some forty-five cents per ounce. Six dollars under protection; forty-five cents with competition open to the world. So with cotton-machinery: $1.92 per spindle in England, $3.30 per spindle at home![1]
- ↑ As I conclude this paper I am handed the inclosed slip, right to the point: "Can not stand Southern Competition.—Baltimore, March 29th. The cotton manufacturers of Baltimore are alarmed at the progress of the South in that branch of the national industry. One of them said to-day: 'We never cared for New England competition; it never cost us a thought. We sold, and still sell, more goods in Boston than we do in Baltimore. But it is the South that is hurting us. Since the opening of the cotton-mills in Atlanta, Ga., and other places in the South, our trade has fallen off twenty-five per cent. It is a mistake to suppose that those cotton-mills are hurting the New England mills. It is Baltimore that is suffering from their competition. They have the advantage of being right at the cotton-fields; they have unlimited water-power, and they have labor as cheap as and even cheaper than we can have it here. The children they employ work seventy-two hours a week, while the law here allows children to work only sixty hours a week. Of that, however, we do not complain, as we would not care to have the children work more than sixty hours.'"The amount invested in cotton manufacture here is about $5,250,000, and the annual product of the mills amounts to $7,250,000. Over 5,000 hands are employed, who receive annually about $1,600,000 in wages. The cotton manufacturers of Baltimore held a meeting last night to discuss the situation."
