Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 423, January 1851
Although it never can be agreeable to know that any important branch of trade in this country is retrograding or falling into decay, we cannot affect to feel much sympathy with the cotton manufacturers, and that for several reasons. In the first place, their trade was a factitious one, not founded upon or tending in any degree to promote the real production of Great Britain, but avowedly rendering us dependant to a dangerous degree upon foreign supplies. Secondly, there can be no doubt that our demand for the raw material has had the effect of perpetuating slavery in the southern states of America. And, lastly, we cannot forget that we owe all our present difficulties to the machinations of men connected with the cotton manufacture. The doctrine that the strength of Britain lay in its powers of conversion, not in its powers of production, originated with them; and in their selfish eagerness to maintain a monopoly, even then in a precarious position, they made no scruple of sacrificing every interest which stood in their way. Our readers cannot fall to recollect the arguments which were employed by the champions and leaders of the League. America, whether as an example or an ally, was never out of their mouths. We were to spin for America, weave for America, do everything in short for her which the power of machinery could achieve. America, on the other hand, was to forego all idea of interfering with our industrial pursuits, in the way of encouraging her own children to become manufacturing rivals, and was to apply herself solely to the production of raw material, cotton, corn and provisions, wherewith the whole of us were to be fed. Our statesmen acted on this faith, assured us that we had but to show the example, and reciprocity must immediately be established, and opened the British ports without any condition whatever. The consequence was an influx of corn and provisions far greater than they expected, which at once annihilated agricultural profits in Great Britain, and is rapidly annihilating agriculture itself in Ireland. We were told to take comfort, because the very amount of the importations showed that it could not be continued; and yet it is continued up to the present day, and prices remain at a point which, even according to the estimate of the Free-traders, is not only unremunerative, but so injurious to the grower that he must lose by the process of cultivation. The actual labourer was the last sufferer, but he is suffering now, and his future prospects are most miserable and revolting. The smaller branches of manufacture, and the multitudes of artisans employed in these, have felt grievously the effect of lowered tariffs, and, even still more, the competition which has been engendered by the amount of displaced labour. Our large towns are the natural receptacles for those who have been driven from the villages, on account of sheer lack of employment; and ever and anon philanthropists are made to shudder by the tales of woe, and want, and fearful deprivation, which are forced upon the public ear. And yet few of them appear to have traced the evil to its source, which lies simply in the legislative discouragement of production, for the sake of a system of conversion which can offer no means adequate to the wants and numbers of the competing population.
Our exports, when we deduct the value of the raw material, constitute in reality an insignificant item in the account of our annual creation of wealth. The greatness and prosperity of Britain never did, and never will, depend upon the amount of her foreign trade, though that is now regarded by our statistical quack-doctors as the sole criterion. What we must depend upon is the home trade, and that can only be prosperous by maintaining the value of production. For how else, save from production, are the labouring population, or indeed any of us, high or low, rich or poor, as we may call ourselves, to be maintained? All of us derive our subsistence from the earth, and beyond what is reaped or redeemed from its bosom we have nothing. If, for example, there is no market for iron, the furnaces will be blown out, and the ores left unworked; if there is no market for agricultural produce – that is, a remunerative market – the fields will be left untilled. What, then, becomes of the converters? – for whom do they work? – or how do they acquire the wherewithal to purchase the food which the foreigner may chance to send them? Let Ireland answer. That unhappy island is at this moment paying the last penalties of Free Trade. It stands before us as a beacon and warning of what we must expect, and cannot avoid, if we continue to discourage production, in the insane hope of thereby stimulating conversion; and perhaps we cannot do better than quote an American opinion as to the cause of its wretchedness and ruin: —
"With this vast increase in the importation from abroad has come the ruin of the people of Ireland. Deprived of manufactures and commerce, her people were driven to live by agriculture alone, and she was enabled to drag on a miserable existence, so long as her neighbour was content to make some compensation for the loss of labour, by paying her for her products higher prices than those at which they might have been elsewhere purchased. With the repeal of the Corn Laws that resource has failed; and the result is a state of poverty, wretchedness, and famine, that has compelled the establishment of a system which obliges the landowner to maintain the people, whether they work or not; and thus is one of the conditions of slavery re-established in that unhappy country. From being a great exporter of food, she has now become a large importer. The great market for Indian corn is Ireland – a country in which the production of food is almost the sole occupation of the people. The value of labour in food throughout a population of eight millions, is thus rapidly decreasing."
To every word of this we subscribe, and we beg to say, further, that this is not the only instance. A large portion of Scotland has been absolutely pauperised by Free Trade. The condition of the western Highlands and Islands is most appalling; and unless Ministers and members of Parliament are prepared to do their duty to the children of the soil, they are utterly and execrably unworthy of the trust which has been committed to their charge. It is with a feeling nearly akin to loathing that we peruse accounts of Brobdignag glass-houses, and sham exhibitions of the industry of nations, reared at an enormous cost, when we know that the men who ought to be the producers of our national wealth – and who might be so, were they not made the victims of a heartless and senseless system – are being driven in hundreds from their hearths and homes, and cast upon the wide world, without a roof to shelter them, or a rag to give them covering!
All this, and more – for every day brings its fresh tale of woe and wretchedness – is the consequence of free imports. And how stands the account the other way? Where is the counterbalancing advantage? It may be that the ruin and prostration of Ireland and the Highlands is no great loss to the indwellers of the towns, the men of the factories and counting-houses. It may be that they are not at all affected by such misery, or that they care to listen to it, notwithstanding that the victims are in the sight of God as valuable beings as themselves. It may be that, in consequence of such suffering, or rather by creating it, they have derived some advantage large enough to compensate for the havoc, by enabling them to give a livelihood to thousands who would otherwise have been unemployed and destitute. If so, where is it? Has America reciprocated?
No! and America will not.
America laughs at the whole crew of Manchester conspirators with sovereign and undisguised contempt. She wants nothing from them – she will take nothing from them. Secure in her own position, and possessing within herself every requisite for greatness, and – what is more – for the happiness and welfare of her children, she regards with scorn the attempted compromise of the crippled converters, and, while she rejects their offer, gives them a burning rebuke for their treachery to their native land.
So far from discouraging her manufactures, she intends to protect them; so far from concealing her mineral wealth, she has resolved to develop that to the utmost – judging, and rightly judging, that it is alone through the "harmony of interests" that a nation can be truly prosperous.
Her rebuke, as contained in the documents before us, which we firmly believe convey the sentiments of the wisest men of the Union, is perhaps the most poignant that ever was cast in the teeth of a civilised and Christian community. It resolves itself into this: —
"You, producers, mechanics, and artisans of Great Britain, who are deprived of your labour, which is your only heritage, for the sake of a few men, who will neither take your produce nor avail themselves of your skill, come to us. We require hands to till our savannahs, to excavate our ores, to work at the furnaces, to weave, and to spin. Labour with us is not as in your country. The producer shall not be sacrificed for the sake of the converter, or the converter subjected to the precarious mercy of the producer of another land. Here, at least, you will find an entire harmony of interests. Foreign customers you need seek none, for every requisite of life is secured to you in return for your labour."
And, lest it should be thought that we are putting words into the mouth of the Americans without authority, we shall presently have occasion to quote from the remarkable work before us.
The repeal of the Corn Laws, and of the duties levied on provisions, have enormously, as we all know, increased the exports of America. The following tables will show their amount, and, in the case of provisions, the increase since the lowered tariffs came into operation.
AMOUNT OF AMERICAN EXPORTS OF GRAIN AND PROVISIONS.
Grain and Flour.
Provisions.
Now, if the doctrine of the Free-traders is a true one, it will follow that the imports of America must be on a scale corresponding to the magnitude of the exports. If that be so, the fact will be evident on the face of their revenue accounts. We turn to these, and find the following results: —
CUSTOMS REVENUE FROM THE IMPORTS TO THE UNITED STATES.
How, then, and in what shape, were these enormous exportations of grain and provisions paid for? Not certainly in goods, for if that were so, a corresponding increase would be apparent in the revenue accounts. The answer is quite short – in gold, and in that commodity which ought to be regarded as far more valuable than gold – MAN.
It is a fact of no small interest, that the ship-owning corn-merchants have willingly sold grain in Liverpool for less than they could have got for it in the States, in order to insure the return cargo – that which they find so profitable – emigrants. Mr Blain, who was engaged for many years by the Jews of London and Germany in valuing the growing crops of America, gives the following account of this apparently unreasonable process: – "The shipowners of America are making much money by carrying emigrants to the States: they are now extensive corn-merchants, and are buying largely at very low prices, it being better to carry wheat across the Atlantic, and sell it at 2s. per quarter less than it cost, than buy ballast, which is very dear in the American seaports."31 Steam, too, is now about to be applied in furtherance of this traffic, and we read of magnificent steamers built expressly for the corn and emigrant trade between New York and Liverpool. By the way, with freights at 6d. a barrel of flour, (the rate in September 1849,) equivalent to 1s. per quarter of wheat, what becomes of the once favourite sophism, that the Atlantic afforded a natural protection of at least 10s. to the English farmer? Nor should it be forgotten that the American farmer finds it his plain interest thus to part with his surplus production, procuring in return that of which he stands so much in need – labour; and the vast emigration from the western states to California has rendered European labour more valuable and welcome to him than ever.
"We imported last year," says Mr Carey, "about three hundred thousand persons. Estimating their consumption of food at twenty cents per day for each, there was thus made a market on the land for the products of the land to the extent of twenty millions of dollars. This transportation required the constant employment of two hundred and fifty thousand tons of shipping, and ships carried freight to Europe at very low rates, because certain of obtaining valuable return cargoes. The farmer thus obtained a large home market, and the power of exporting cheaply to the foreign one; and to the conjoined operation of these two causes is due the fact, that wheat and flour have continued so high in price.
"We may now, I think, understand many curious facts now passing before our eyes. Food is so abundant in Russia, that it is wasted, and yet among the large exporters of food to Great Britain is this country, in which it sells at a price almost as high as in Liverpool, and now even higher. The produce of Russia has to bear all the charges out and home, and the consequence is that the producer remains poor, and makes no roads; and thus the cost of transportation, internal and external, continues, and must continue great. The farmer of the United States sends his produce to market cheap, because the return cargo, being chiefly man, is valuable, and the space it occupies is great. He therefore grows rich, and makes roads and canals, and builds steamboats; and thus is the cost of transportation, internal and external, so far diminished, that the difference in the price of a barrel of flour in Pittsburgh and in Liverpool is, when we look at the distance, almost inconceivably small.
"The bulk of the trade of Canada is outwards; and the consequence is that outward freights are high, while our imports of men and other valuable commodities keep them low with us; and therefore it is that the cost of transporting wheat and flour from our side of the line is so much lower than from the other, that both now pass through New York on their way to Liverpool. Hence it is that there has arisen so vehement a desire for commercial reciprocity, and even for annexation. The protective system has thus not only the effect of bringing consumers to take their places by the side of the producer, facilitating the consumption on the land of the products of the land, and facilitating also the exportation of the surplus to foreign markets by diminishing outward freights, but the further one of producing among our neighbours a strong desire for the establishment of the same perfect freedom of trade that now exists among the several states, by becoming themselves a part of the Union. Protection, therefore, tends to the increase of commerce, and the establishment of Free Trade; while the British system tends everywhere to the destruction of commerce, and to the production of a necessity for restriction.
"We see, thus, that if we desire to secure the command of that which is falsely termed 'the great grain-market of the world,' it is to be effected by the adoption of such measures as will secure valuable return freights. The most costly and the most valuable of all are men; the least so are pig-iron and coal. The more of the latter we import, the larger will be our surplus of food, the higher will be the outward freight, internal and external, the greater will be the waste, and the poorer will be the farmer. The more of the former we import, the smaller will be our surplus of food, the lower will be the outward freights, and the more numerous will be the commodities that can go to Europe, to be given in exchange for luxuries that now we cannot purchase."
So much for the American views of reciprocity. Secured by her system of tariffs, which she is now about to heighten, against the effects of foreign competition, America is resolutely bent on availing herself to the utmost of all the vast natural resources which she possesses, and to render herself wholly independent of the conversion of foreign countries. By following such a course she must, as her population increases, grow in greatness and in might, as must every nation wherein labour is estimated and cherished according to its proper value, and the rights of the domestic producer and workman guarded with untiring vigilance.
One word as to the prospects of the British farmer. We know from undoubted authority that in many parts of the United States, for example Ottawa, excellent land may be purchased for £1 an acre, broken up for 7s., burdened by no poor nor county rates, and unconscious of the presence of the tax-gatherer. Land such as this can, indeed, afford to produce corn at an almost nominal price – ballast for the ships that shall bring back the overweighted and ruined yeomen and peasants of England to New York and New Orleans! But, vast as the immigration has been, the production of food has greatly outstripped it; and as fresh tracts of virgin land are, year by year, brought into cultivation, and internal communications opened or improved, we see no reason whatever to believe that the export of grain to England will diminish, or the price of that grain be enhanced. Let our readers bear in mind the wonderful development of the mining and manufacturing resources of America, to which we have just directed their attention, and then see how, in spite of, or far rather concurrently with that, the production of food also increased. We again quote from The Harmony of Interests. How great was the increase may be seen by the following comparison of the returns under the census of 1840, and the Patent Office Estimates for 1847: —
Showing an increase of not less than 40 per cent in 7 years, during which the population only advanced 23 per cent.
How much of this surplus produce may be expected to find its way into the English market, we do not pretend accurately to foretell; but when we find that, without the inducement of an unrestricted access to it, in 1846 America was able to raise her exports of grain to thirteen millions of bushels, from six millions in 1845; and in 1847, with only the preparation of a year, to twenty-six millions, we think Lord Fitzwilliam is quite justified in taking it for granted that the price of corn in England will not rise above its present ruinous average. Attempts, no doubt, will be made to show that the emigration to California has deprived the Western States of the labour that is required to raise these enormous crops. Our answer is, that 300,000 souls were added by immigration to the population of the United States in 1849; and that our own emigration returns for 1850 show that the tide from England is flowing in that direction with unabated force. So last year, when the great and unexpected import of French flour was adding to the depression, and stimulating the complaints of the English agriculturists, the Free Import authorities explained it away as a forced unnatural importation which must speedily cease, as France was an importing, and not an exporting, county, and the price of corn there was naturally higher than in England; and yet we learn from the same organ of public opinion which favoured us in the summer with this satisfactory explanation of the French importations, that in the month of November last, the prices of wheat, flour, and bread were all much higher in London than in Paris. In its City article of November 14th, appeared the following comparison of the present prices of wheat, flour, and bread, in London and Paris: —
"The highest price of wheat of the first quality in Paris is 24 francs per 1½ hectolitres, which is equal to 36s. 8d. per quarter; and the highest price of white wheat of the first quality, in London, being 48s. per quarter, it follows that wheat is 307⁄8 per cent dearer in London than in Paris. The highest quotation of flour of the first quality in Paris is 29 francs 95 cents the 100 kilogrammes, which is equal to 29s. 11d. per sack of 280 lb. English; and the highest quotation of flour in the London market being 40s. per sack, it follows that flour is about 335⁄8 per cent dearer in London than in Paris. The price of bread of the first quality in Paris is 27 cents per kilogramme, which is equal to 45⁄8 per 4 lb. loaf English weight; and the price of bread in London, at the full-priced shops, being 61⁄2d. per 4 lb., it follows that bread is 401⁄2 per cent dearer in London than in Paris."
We apprehend that a difference of thirty or forty per cent is sufficient to tempt the French corn-grower, or miller, into the higher-priced market which lies so conveniently open to him; and thus from the model republic of the Old, no less than from the model republic of the New World, must the English farmer expect to see for the future those supplies of grain and flour pouring in, which shall prevent his produce procuring a remunerating price. To complete the picture, it should not be forgotten that both these exporting countries impose considerable duties on the importation of grain and flour, and thus afford us a perfect specimen of that reciprocity which all Liberal governments and free nations were so anxious to establish, according to our sapient rulers, in 1846.
We do not think that we need add any further argument to what has been already said. Our antagonists, the Free-traders, have been allowed – what they required and what was fair – time for the working of their experiment. Ample time has been granted, and we now see that it has failed in every particular. They said that it would induce reciprocity; it has induced higher opposing tariffs. They said it would secure for Great Britain the manufacturing custom of the world; on the contrary, foreign manufactories are springing up with unexampled rapidity. They said it would increase the demand for iron; it has prostrated it. They said it would give full employment to all our labouring population; it has displaced labour, and driven our working men by hundreds of thousands to emigrate. They said it could not attract such an importation of foreign grain and provisions, as permanently to beat down prices in this country below the remunerating level; it has already brought such an influx of these articles, that the grower of grain is impoverished, and the breeder of cattle ruined. They said it would be the commencement of a new era of prosperity to Ireland; it has laid it utterly desolate!
Are we, then, obstinately to persevere in a course of policy so evidently obnoxious and detrimental? Are we still to crush down labour for an end which is now proved to be impossible of attainment; and to tell the working classes, that because our rulers have made a false step, they and theirs must submit to descend into the hideous gulf of pauperism? These are questions for the nation to consider – questions of unparalleled magnitude, both for the present and the coming time. If we are not so to persevere in our folly, there is no alternative left but to build up our commercial system anew upon wiser and sounder principles. It cannot be expected that we shall ever again possess a monopoly of the manufactures of the world. We must be contented with that share which our skill, and energy, and undeniable resources can command; and if we wish still to retain possession of the vast Colonial Empire which has long been our pride and boast, we must foster, stimulate, and protect the industry of the colonists as sedulously and anxiously as our own.
After all, we may possibly, at no very distant period of time, have reason to be thankful that the experiment has been made, notwithstanding all the misery and loss which have accompanied the trial. For, if anything could have broken down the free independent spirit of Great Britain, and rendered it callous and listless to external aggression or insult, no better method could be found than the complete adoption of a system which must have made us perpetually subservient to the wants of other nations, doing their work to order, and receiving wages in return. In order to emancipate ourselves from this state of threatened Helotism – the state which the disciples of the Manchester school regard as the most enviable upon earth – we must attempt to re-establish perfect harmony and mutual co-operation amongst all the interests of Britain, to give productive labour its proper place and pre-eminence, and, since we cannot secure for convertive labour the command of foreign markets, to take care that, in the home market, it is not exposed to any undue or unfair competition. We hold by this proposition, well understood and energetically supported in America, that "when a nation makes a market at home for nearly all its products, other nations have to come and seek what they require, and pay the highest price; and that, when it does not make a market at home, markets must be sought abroad, and then sales must be made at the lowest prices." If this be true, it will follow that the way to sell at the highest prices, and to buy at the lowest, is to buy and sell at home.