Taking the whole external trade of the United Kingdom during the period in question, viewing it from a rational consideration of the facts and circumstances existing at the time, we find a steady and constant increase up to 1846, which continued from that time until 1860. An analysis of Table No. 8 shows the following result when considered in percentages :

The percentages given above represent the increase during the fourteen years before the adoption of free trade and the fourteen years which followed. During the whole of the first period there was a slight decline in prices; while in the years following the adoption of free trade, there was an advance in prices. During the latter period the building of railroads and steamships, and the increased supply of the precious metals, brought about an activity in business, to which the improvement in foreign trade of Great Britain may be attributed, together with one other fact of great importance. By the low tariff adopted in the United States in 1846, an unusual expansion of the exports of British manufactures occurred to that country.

That it was the reduction of duties in the United States and other countries which contributed to the expansion of English trade, the people of those countries well knew from the depressed and crippled condition of their industries when subjected to English competition, although it has been constantly urged that the increase of exports which took place was due to the free trade measures adopted by the British parliament.

A fuller discussion of the effect of the low tariff of 1846 will be given in connection with the treatment of the tariff question in the United States. The purpose of Mr. Cobden and his associates was in part being accomplished by the surrender of the markets of the United States to British manufactures.

Industrial

progress tection

under pro

Contem

English

The foregoing facts and figures, compiled from the most reliable authorities, ought, for themselves, to be sufficient proof of the steady growth of English industry during the period in which the policy of protection was maintained. It must be apparent from the utterances of eminent English writers, which are given below, that the statements of opinion. professional free traders to the effect that English industries were being ruined by protection, were pure fabrications. The following quotations, written, nearly all, between 1845 and 1854, are taken from the works of men who advocated the doctrines of free trade, with the exception of

Archibald Alison, the eminent historian, who was a protectionist and certainly a very trustworthy authority upon the condition of English industries between 1815 and 1845. Writing in 1845 a review of the period between 1815 and 1845, Alison said:

Considered in one point of view, there never was a nation which, in an equal space of time, had made so extraordinary a progress. Its population had advanced from 20,600,000 in 1819 to 28,000,000 in 1844; its imports had increased from £30,000,000 in the former period to £70,000,000 in the latter; its exports had advanced during the same period from £44,000,000 to £130,000,000; its shipping from 2,650,000 tons to 3,900,000. There never, perhaps, was such a growth in these the great limbs of industry in so short a period in any other State. Nor had agriculture been behind the other staple branches of national industry. Its produce had kept pace with the income, unparalleled in an old State in the population, as well as the still more rapid multiplication of cattle and horses for the purposes of use and luxury; and amidst this extraordinary growth of consumption, the still more extraordinary fact was exhibited of the average importation of grain steadily declining from the commencement of the century, till at length, anterior to the six bad seasons in succession, which commenced in 1836, it had sunk to 400,000 quarters on an average of the five preceding years, being scarce an hundred and twentieth part of the annual consumption of men and animals, which exceeds 60,000,000 quarters. And what is most extraordinary of all, the returns of the income tax, when laid on even in the year 1842, a period of severe and unprecedented commercial depression, proved the existence in Great Britain alone of £200,000,000 of annual income of persons enjoying above £150 each; of which immense sum about £150,000,000 were from the fruits of realized capital, either in land or some other durable investment. It is probable that such an accumulation of wealth never existed before in any single State, not even in Rome at the period of its highest splendor.1

He further said:

Nor has the increase of opulence in cities been less remarkable than the augmentation in the number of their inhabitants. The daily display of wealth in the metropolis excites the astonishment of every beholder. It is not going too far to say that it is double of what it was at the close of the war. Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Bristol, Dundee, Aberdeen and all the trading towns of the empire have advanced in a similar proportion, not merely in the opulence of a few, but the evident ease and well-being of a considerable portion of the community. It is impossible to see the streets of comfortable houses calculated for persons of moderate income, and the miles of villas beyond them for those more advanced in opulence, without becoming sensible that prosperity has almost everywhere descended far in society in the urban population.2

Even Mr. Mongredien, in speaking of the year 1845, the year before free trade was adopted, says:

"In 1845 the country was flourishing, trade was prosperous, and the revenue showed a surplus, railways were being constructed with an enormous rapidity and the working classes were fully and remuneratively employed."

In 1836, Mr. Cobden, referring to the condition of the English people from the close of the Napoleonic wars, says: "In a word, at no period 1 England in 1815 and 1845, Alison, p. 6. 2 Id., pp. 26 and 27.

were the peasantry of this country enjoying so great an amount of comforts as they possess at this time, and the primary cause of which is the twenty years' duration of peace.

Mr. Dunckley says:

1

No century since the conquest has done half so much to revolutionize the modes of subsistence, and with them the prevalent habits and manners of the people, as that which closed with 1850. During this period the population has multiplied at a quicker ratio than any preceding epoch.2

To Northen Europe our exports have nearly doubled; to Southern Europe, they had experienced an advance of almost 90 per cent; our exports to Africa had increased five-fold; to Asia 150 per cent; to the United States 80 per cent; to the foreign West Indies more than 100 per cent; to South America more than 75 per cent; and the total amount to £58,484, 292, being an advance of no less than 86 per cent upon the value of our exports in 1826.3

Mr. Porter (1851) in concluding a survey of the industrial progress of the country from the beginning of the nineteenth century to 1850, says:

If the complaint of "surplus population" has any foundation, would it not have been in the later years of this series that the evils of such a condition would chiefly have made themselves apparent? And yet, we may triumphantly point to the evidences that have attended our researches as recorded in this volume, to show that the material progress of the country has never before proceeded with a speed equal to that which it has made during the past five and twenty years.

The reader will do well to contrast the foregoing expressions from some of the most eminent and trustworthy authors of Great Britain, with the literature that has been circulated by the members of the Cobden Club, to create an impression that the industries of Great Britain were being crippled by protective tariffs. An illustration of the way in which the facts bearing upon this question are misunderstood is afforded by the following passage in a speech by Mr. Harter, member of Congress from Ohio, in favor of the Wilson bill, January 11, 1894:

Yes, Great Britain had protection until about 1842, but what was the condition of England's trade under it? How did her commerce flourish? Did her manufacturers prosper? These, and questions like these, will throw much needed light upon this subject, which so utterly befogs the average Republican intellect. I beg, therefore, to say to the House that, at the time tariff reform measures were first introduced in Great Britain, the chronic condition of her working people was one of hunger. One of hunger, I repeat. Her manufactures were languishing. At the end of a period of many hundred years of protection her trade was dormant.

Mr. Harter could not have been familiar with the expressions of Archibald Alison, Mr. Porter, or even with what Mr. Cobden himself said in 1836. The effort to throw discredit on the policy of protection by 1 Cobden's Political Writings, p. 248. 2 Charter of the Nations, p. 10. 3 Id., p. 129. 4 Progress of the Nation, p. 686.

False impression as to the condition of England protection.

under

statements of this character has arisen since the masses of the English people have become reduced to degradation and poverty, and the industries of the country paralyzed under the blighting influence of free trade, in order to show that the conditions are no worse than they were while the policy of protection was being practiced. Aside from the distress of 1846 and 1847, caused by the failure of the potato crop and wheat harvest in 1846 and 1847, and a few exceptional years of commercial panics, it may be safely stated that the English people enjoyed a high degree of prosperity so long as protection was continued.

PART IV.

RETURN TO FREE TRADE AND ITS EFFECT ON

HOME INDUSTRIES.

CHAPTER I.

ORIGIN OF THE FREE Trade MoveMENT.

The period embraced within this chapter, from 1793 to 1860, is so filled with industrial and legislative changes that a whole volume might be devoted to their consideration, with an exercise of a fair degree of brevity.

The industrial changes which began in the latter part of the eighteenth Introduction of century were continued by discoveries and inventions, until, by the middle machinery. of the nineteenth century, nearly all branches of trade and commerce were revolutionized. During this period steam engines were substituted for water wheels in nearly every branch of manufacture requiring the use of motive power, while railroads and steam navigation revolutionized the means of transportation and communication. The increase of knowledge, the discoveries in chemistry and other departments of science, placed the arts of manufacture upon an entirely new basis, and brought into requisition a different order of talent and skill. By 1846 machine work had largely displaced the old system of hand labor. The old masters who had carried on small factories with a few journeymen and apprentices, were compelled to give way to companies and corporations, with large capital and plants fitted up with all modern improvements. The factory system was brought into existence by those inventions of textile machinery which increased the expense of setting up plants and carrying on this department of manufacturing. As machinery became more perfected, and its use extended to different branches of industry, the system of capitalistic production increased, until finally a complete transformation was effected and the lord of ten thousand spindles became more powerful in the realm, than the lord of ten thousand acres.

By the use of machinery a person could, in a very short time, not only learn to perform the same work which hitherto had required years of training, but could accomplish so much more in the same length of time, that thousands of old artisans were thrown out of employment. Their

Industrial effects of machinery.