Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/307

Rh hens' eggs at the rate of consumption in your own factory boarding-houses, the hen-yards of the country now supply about one hundred and twenty-five million dollars' worth of eggs a year, and by exchange and conversion into capital this sum would suffice to build all these cotton-factories and to supply the working capital as well, year by year.

Again, in two years only out of this ten ensuing, as much capital will be expended in the construction of new railroads in this country as the whole five million spindles which we may need in ten years will cost.

Or, again, if we assign only five hundred dollars to the construction of a dwelling-place to each five persons comprised in this increase of population, the capital which will be needed to house them will come to two hundred and twenty-five million dollars a year, or $2,250,000,000 in all.

So the world wags on, always within one year of starvation, within two years or so of being naked, and within a few years of being houseless and homeless, except for the work which we must do to supply the products which we must exchange with each other—eggs for cottons and cottons for eggs, etc.

This may be a pleasant prospect for our machine-shops. They will also have a good deal of work to do in substituting new spindles for old, and perhaps new looms for old, if the double-faced, fast-running, vertical loom does the work which is expected of it. How soon will your present noisy, cumbrous, and unscientific loom be invented out of existence? When will it be displaced by a smooth-running, circular loom? How about your carding-engines, your drawing and your combing machines? Are we to go on importing them? Yes, until the taxes are taken from the metals and from the other crude materials which are needed to make them. Iron has cost you for ten years previous to the present year (1889) ten dollars per ton on the common grades, and steel fifteen to twenty-five dollars per ton more than the same materials cost the machinists of Great Britain; thus enhancing the cost of your capital, and placing you at a disadvantage in competition with the manufacturers of Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and almost all the other manufacturing countries in which such materials are free from taxes. The lower the prices of metal the greater this disparity.

I think we shall not even secure our home market, much less extend our foreign sale, so long as the prices of crude materials are kept by taxation far above those of our competitors. If, however, there should be a change in the policy of the country, to which all events appear to be tending, and to which the advocates of both sides of the tariff question appear to be moving, and it should be decided that the crude materials, commonly called