Page:Report on Manufactures (Hamilton).djvu/56

 To secure to the national manufacturers so essential an advantage, a repeal of the present duty on imported cotton is indispensable.

A substitute for this, far more encouraging to domestic production, will be to grant a bounty on the national cotton when wrought at a home manufactory, to which a bounty on the exportation of it may be added. Either, or both, would do much more toward promoting the growth of the article than the merely nominal encouragement which it is proposed to abolish. The first would also have a direct influence in encouraging the manufacture.

The bounty which has been mentioned as existing in Great Britain, upon the exportation of coarse linens not exceeding a certain value, applies also to certain descriptions of cotton goods of similar value.

This furnishes an additional argument for allowing to the national manufactures the species of encouragement just suggested, and, indeed, for adding some other aid.

One cent per yard, not less than of a given width, on all goods of cotton, or of cotton and linen mixed, which are manufactured in the United States, with the addition of 1 cent per pound weight of the material, if made of national cotton, would amount to an aid of considerable importance both to the production and to the manufacture of that valuable article. And it is conceived that the expense would be well justified by the magnitude of the object.

The printing and staining of cotton goods is known to be a distinct business from the fabrication of them. It is one easily accomplished and which, as it adds materially to the value of the article in its white state and prepares it for a variety of new uses, is of importance to be promoted.

As imported cottons, equally with those which are made at home, may be the objects of this manufacture, it will merit consideration whether the whole or a part of the duty on the white goods ought not to be allowed to be drawn back in favor of those who print or stain them. This measure would certainly operate as a powerful encouragement to the business, and though it may in a degree counteract the original fabrication of the articles it would probably more than compensate for this disadvantage in the rapid growth of a collateral branch which is of a nature sooner to attain to maturity. When a sufficient progress shall have been made the drawback may be abrogated, and by that time the domestic supply of the articles to be printed or stained will have been extended.

If the duty of 7½ per cent on certain kinds of cotton goods were extended to all goods of cotton, or of which it is the principal material, it would probably more than counterbalance the effect of the drawback proposed in relation to the fabrication of the article, and no material objection occurs to such an extension. The duty, then, considering all the circumstances which attend goods of this description, could not be deemed inconveniently high, and it may be inferred from various causes that the prices of them would still continue moderate.

Manufactories of cotton goods not long since established at Beverly, in Massachusetts, and at Providence, in the State of Rhode Island, and conducted with a perseverance corresponding with the patriotic motives which began them, seem to have overcome the first obstacles to success, producing corduroys, velverets, fustians,