Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/467

Rh Now, what has been the effect of the tax of $4,000,000 on the price of iron and steel in this country? Various computations have been made, the latest by Mr. A. B. Farquhar, of York, Pa., the largest exporter of agricultural.machinery in this country, and perhaps one of the largest manufacturers of agricultural machinery in the world. He computes the actual difference in cost of iron and steel to the consumers in this country during the last ten years at about $700,000,000 or $70,000,000 a year. David A. Wells, making very large corrections for contingencies, estimates the difference in the cost of these metals to the consumers of this country, as compared to the consumers of Great Britain, at $560,000,000 for ten years, giving a little different period of time. My own computations, which have been made with the utmost care and which are based wholly upon the figures given by the Iron and Steel Association of this country, and of the Iron and Steel Institute of Great Britain, make the excess of price paid for iron and steel in this country as compared to others, in the years 1880 to 1889 inclusive, not less than $500,000,000 and probably $800,000,000. I may add that the effect of the tariff upon iron and steel has been much greater than in respect to other articles. This country now consumes thirty-five to forty per cent of the entire product of iron made in the civilized world. Our consumption at the present time is greater than the largest product of Great Britain in any year. No other country could possibly supply us. No other country could have supplied us for many years. But by the partial obstruction to our demand upon Great Britain and Germany, due to our own tariff, the price of iron and steel in Europe has been very greatly depressed. The tendency throughout the world has been to a rapid reduction both in cost and in the price of these metals, due to the application of revolutionary inventions. But the reduction in price in gold has been much greater in Great Britain than it has been in this country: consequently, by our own act we have protected the ship-builders, the machinists, and the tool-makers of other countries, while preventing the extension of these arts in our own country; even failing to retain our home market.

We import a considerable proportion of the products of iron and steel that we consume, sometimes in the form of railway-bars, yet more in the form of hardware, tools, and machinery. A first-class textile factory can not be equipped in this country without resort to the machine-shops of Great Britain for a very considerable part of the most necessary machinery.

Again, the burden of a tax upon crude materials is to be gauged, not by its ratio to the value of the product into which it might enter and does enter as a component material, but in ratio both to wages and profits in the arts in which it is needed. If we