By a curious coincidence the word "pipes" is entirely omitted from the Mills bill, and also from the first section of the existing law.

So quick is the foreign competitor to catch at these significant distinctions that German tubes have been imported and invoiced as pipes, thereby obtaining the advantange of the lower duty, and securing a market for their goods at prices against which it is impossible for our clients to compete.

We have presented these general views for your earnest consideration, without burdening you with a mass of statistics and figures to justify our facts; but should you crave the confirmation we are prepared to give, and your patience and strength will permit you to peruse them, we will gladly furnish the data collected for the purpose of enabling us to present the views herein expressed.

They warrant us in laying down the following propositions:

(1) The system of protection in practice during the last ten years has stimulated the growth of the manufacture of wrought iron and steel pipes and tubes.

(2) It has protected the home industry without injury to the consumer. (3) Home competition is now so active as to prevent unnatural and artificial prices and exorbitant profits.

(4) The addition of foreign competition would result in disaster to our home mills."

(5) We can not compete with foreign manufacturers. (a) They have 100 per cent. advantage in the cost of material. (b) They have at least 45 per cent. advantage in cost of labor. (c) Their goods are inferior in quality.

(6) The present investments in manufacture were made on the faith. of protection and an expectation of reasonable stability of the tariff.

(7) The home consumer has been benefited by a natural fluctuation in prices and a superior standard of goods.

(8) A radical change in the tariff would imperil the capital invested, and injure the laborers, who must, of necessity, prosper or suffer according to the condition of trade.

These considerations warrant the appeal we submit, and in view of the reasonable concessions made in our recommendation, we confidently hope you will be justified in reporting them in the bill to be proposed by you to the Senate.

STATEMENT OF J. MIDDLEDITH, OF WASHINGTON, D. C.

REASONS FOR OPPOSING MR. CLEVELAND'S TARIFF POLICY.

According to the Bureau of Statistics the imports of the United States for the year ending June 30, 1888, were $783,000,000 and the exports. were $742,000,000, leaving a balance of trade of $41,000,000 against us. To this balance $120,000,000 must be added for freight charges, for nearly all goods imported and exported are carried in vessels belonging to foreign nations. This debt of $161,000,000 we have settled by remitting American railroad stocks and bonds to Europe. In other words, our foreign trade for one year has obliged us to give Europe mortgages on our properties-mortgages that can be returned and gold demanded therefor any time in twenty days.

The Mills bill, by reducing tariff duties, will stimulate importations and necessarily increase our debt to Europe for the coming year and

require exports of additional mortgages, or of gold, in liquidation. Is this constantly increasing indebtedness to Europe to be viewed without anxiety? Is money sent to Europe or liable to be called thither by the return of American securities any the less withdrawn from circulation here than if gathered into the Treasury of the United States? Every reduction of duties has been followed by increased importations and increased revenue-in some instances immediately, but increased revenue in all instances eventually.

In 1846, with an average tariff of 33 per cent., imports were $110.000,000; duties thereon, $30,400,000.

In 1847, with an average tariff of 28 per cent., imports were $116,000,000; duties thereon, $28,000,000.

In 1848, with an average tariff of 26 per cent., imports were $140,000,000; duties thereon, $33,000,000.

In 1856 duties were reduced about 4 per cent.

In 1857 imports increased $38,000,000; revenue decreased but $400, 100.

In 1870, with an average tariff of 47 per cent., imports were $426,000,000; duties thereon, $191,000,000.

In 1871, with an average tariff of 44 per cent., imports were $500.000.000; duties thereon, $202,000,000.

In 1872, with an average tariff of 41 per cent., imports were $560,000,000; duties thereon, $212,000,000.

In 1873, with an average tariff of 38 per cent., imports were $663,000,000; duties thereon, $185,000,000.

"Increase your purchases abroad and you will increase your sales there," says Mr. Mills. The falseness of this is shown by the fact that our imports in 1888 were $30,000,000 more than in 1887, yet our exports were $10,000,000 less. Indeed, for the last four years our imports have increased each year, while our experts for the last six years have decreased, and our foreign trade, contrary to its occasional condition under Mr. Cleveland's predecessors, has continually shown a balance against us (including freight charges), and to this is due the decreased amount of money in circulation, as well as to the absorption by revenue and tariff duties.

To relieve this the administration has been obliged to loan $58,000,000 to the national banks, and to pay $40,000,000 for $33,000,000 of 4 per cent. and 4 per cent. bonds, purchased at 27 per cent. premium. Have the dry-goods men of New York aiready forgotten how their discount lines were reduced last fall, owing to the apprehensions of the banks? Is the entire business of this country to depend upon the speculative demand for our securities abroad-to boom here when the fever is on there, or to be driven into a panic here with the return of but one-fourth of the securities exported last year and the demand of gold for them? Even in reducing the revenue from tariff, the Mills bill will afford no reef, for the increase of imports will offset the decrease of duties.

What effect the reduction of the tariff in 1846 would have had can not be ascertained, for it was followed by the Mexican war, the discovery of gold in California, the annexation of Texas, all of which stimulated our business and added to our wealth and territory; but we do know that both the tariff reductions in 1856 and 1872 were followed by panics. The years of 1857 and 1873 are memorable, and if any reduction is now adopted, it will be followed by a panic greater than either of the others, because it will affect our extensive manufactories by the introduction of cheaper goods, our wool-growing industry by the introduction of free wool, cur merchants by stimulating over-purchases, and our banks by

crippling them when the demand for gold is made, to pay for importaCan the banks respond when they are now borrowing $58,000,000 of the General Government? This $58,000,000 will be called to meet the amounts now covered by appropriations already made by this Congress.

The duty on coffee was taken off some years ago. Does the consumer buy coffee any cheaper to-day? The United States was deprived of the revenue, but the Brazilian producer eventually marked up the price just about as much as the duty amounted to. What cause has the consumer to complain of the cost of manufactured articles; were goods ever cheaper? Of course, old-time prices for eggs, butter, and such will never return. Not the tariff, but the railroad facilities for distributing them to follow demand has changed all that. In the mountains of North Carolina three chickens can be had for a quarter, and butter is a shilling a pound to-day, and labor there is proportionately low; but the result of protecting American industries has been to reduce, first, the price of the foreign article, and then, by competition among American manufacturers, to still further reduce the home article either lower than or to within a small fraction of the price of the foreign article. When England had a monopoly of steel-rail manufacture the price of steel rails was over $100 a ton. The price, while it has been, of course, largely influenced by the Bessemer process, is now $29 to $30 a ton for American rails, and English rails have been forced by our competition to $26. If the $3 a ton represents the profit of the manufacturer and the higher wages paid the American workman, why should we not keep out English rails, when that profit and those wages are spent here to the benefit of every merchant, méchanic, and farmer in the vicinity of the mill? English rails are low because their supply exceeds the demand. Obliterate our steel industries and increase the demand for English rails and what guaranty is there that the price may not be advanced 50 per cent.?

The farming community does not realize the extent of the injury free wool would inflict. The exports of wool from Australia fifteen years ago were next in importance to its exports of gold. At that time New South Wales, with an area of 360,000 square miles, had 16,000,000 sheep. Queensland, with an area of 660,000 square miles, devoted 195,000 square miles to sheep-farming and had 7,000,000 sheep. They were so cheap as to be slaughtered for their hides and tallow. Australia itself is nearly as large as the United States, and land for sheepfarming can be had at a nominal price there, while the growth of our settlements is every year rendering lands available for sheep-raising more expensive in America. The removal of the duty from wool, if unaccompanied by 20 per cent. reduction in the duty on woolen goods, might benefit woolen manufacturers temporarily, for Australian wool is cheaper now because the duty keeps it from American markets; but throw our markets open to it, force our American farmer, with his white help, into ruinous competition with the Australian, with his black, semi-savage help; drive the American from the sheep-raising business, and what is to prevent the price of Australian wool rising with the immense demands of our continent? But the Mills bill accompanies free wool with 20 per cent. reduction in the tariff on woolen goods, aud means ruin to both manufacturer and farmer.

Is it wise to follow Mr. Mills in the matter of tariff? He is neither a banker nor a merchant, and while he may have had peculiar facilities for posting himself as to the raising of cattle and of cowboys, he proba bly derives his tariff notions from studying Adam Smith's "Wealth of

Nations," the very Koran of all good believers in free-trade. Adam Smith is the same political economist who announced in 1773 that England, with a national debt of £140,000,000, had reached the utmost limit of her solvency; yet in 1793 that debt was £240,000,000, and has averaged £740,000,000 since 1813, and England is solvent and prosperous to day. His book was published in 1776, and was based upon conditions existing in Europe then. At that time this country had just declared its independence, and its resources were unknown to its own people. The cotton-spinning frame of Cartwright, which was to put England at the head of manufacturing nations, was only invented in 1771. The cotton-gin of Whitney, that made our Southern States a great agricultural community, was not invented till 1795. It was not till 1805 that Fulton invented the steam-boat, nor till 1828 that Stephenson built the first railroad.

These inventions have changed the character of nations and revolutionized the commerce of the world; yet Adam Smith knew nothing of them nor of their consequences, nor did he dream that the wheat fields of the "rebel colonies" would feed the Old World; that their corn fields would introduce a new article of food; that their silver mines would change the relative rates of gold and silver; nor did he dream that here would arise a nation with every variety of climate, with boundless resources to make its population happy and independent of the Old World; yet Mr. Mills, of Texas, asks us to accept Adam Smith's conclusions and apply them to our condition. They are of no more use to us than a chart of the time of Columbus would be to the navigators of the nineteenth century.

It is also a matter for reflection that the men whom Mr. Cleveland delights to honor are those who either at the North, by words, or at the South, by deeds, opposed the war for the Union. Confederates or their sympathizers are among our ministers abroad, constitute the majority of the Cabinet, are the appointees to the Supreme Bench, and are the authors and advocates of this Mills bill. The South, aided by England, drove our commerce from the seas, and this country has to pay over $100,000,000 annually to foreign nations for carrying our goods. Our captains and our seamen are driven from their vocation by cheaper foreign substitutes, and we no longer have a nursery for a navy. In the event of a foreign war the victories of American seamen that made glorious the war of 1812 are no longer possible, unless they be achieved by foreign seamen. The Mills bill protects the rice of South Carolina and the sugar of Louisiana, although their producers are an immense minority and their consumers an immense majority of the people of this country. Is this a bribe to the South for its support in handing over to England the manufacturing industries of the North and the agricultural interests of the West? If England paid the millions of the Geneva award for her part in ruining our commerce, what sum would she not pay for the control of our home trade? Is this Mills bill, after all, a conspiracy to avenge Appomattox on the part of those eminently practical Southerners, Mills, Carlisle, and Watterson, aided by our highly intellectual President?

Why is the tariff policy of England recommended and not her system of subsidies to ships? Are subsidies opposed because the carrying trade of England would suffer by them? Is it the settled policy of a Democratic administration to strengthen England while by evictions, imprisonment, and murder she stamps out every attempt at home rule in Ireland? Or has anglomania affected the Democratic party, as it has the weak-headed of our countrymen? Is that party to turn up its

trousers here because it is raining in London, and to speak with a broad "a" because its English, you know?

The agony of this Administration over a surplus in the Treasury is simply ludicrous. Would it be in ecstasy over a deficiency? From the appropriations already made by the House of Representatives there will be no surplus, and any reduction of revenue must result in a deficiency. Nearly four years of Mr. Cleveland's business methods have elapsed and our extensive sea-coast is still defenseless. The Secretary of the Navy has constructed half a dozen vessels and sold for $10 one frigate costing half a million dollars. The Secretary of State has offended both Austria and Italy by his appointments. The present Secretary of the Treasury is buying Government 4 per cent. bonds at $1.27, while the late Secretary of the Interior recommended the Government to accept 75 cents on the dollar for the $60,000,000 Government 6 per cent. bonds owed by the perfectly solvent Pacific railroads, and which are worth $1.30 in the open market. The President lends $58,000,000 of Government money to the banks without charging them interest; yet his policy exacted just $244 taxes, for July last, from the banks and $2,500,000 from working-men and those who use tobacco. He is ponderously industrious in vetoing small pension bills to save a few dollars, but signs without protest the Mexican pension bill to spend millions. He protects the public lands by saving 160 acres for Guilford Miller, but gives away thousands of acres to railroads in the Backbone landgrant bill, and removes, with an empty compliment to "his rugged honesty," the Land Commissioner who stood between the lands and the corporations. As a reformer he has gone out of his way to kick civilservice reform down stairs. As governor of New York he showed his hostility to the working-men by vetoing a bill to reduce the fare on the elevated railroad to 5 cents. Under his administration every strike of a labor organization has failed-that against the Missouri Pacific, that against the Reading, and that against the Burlington railroad. We are so prosperous that our merchants are doing a larger business with smaller profits-our railroads earning more in gross and less in net earnings. Speculation has never been more dead, and reduction of dividends has been the rule for investments. Farmers have exported less of breadscuffs in quantity aud received the lowest price in years. The nation is spending more than its income and is getting annually deeper in debt to Europe. If these are the results of Mr. Cleveland's business methods the country has had enough of them.

RAGS FOR PAPER STOCK,

STATEMENT OF JNO. T. GODFREY, OF JAS. HENNESEY & CO., OF NEW YORK, AUGUST 18, 1888.

We beg to call your attention to an industry which is not protected, although brought in competition with another which is, and has large and aggressive competition from every other nation on the face of the globe.

I refer to the domestic paper-stock trade; it is estimated that there are at least 75,000 persons engaged in this business in the State of New York alone. Every other State in the Union adds to these numbers, while the capital employed in it can not be less than $40,000,000.