Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/66

42 But the student of history will also observe the not unimportant fact that the prosperity of the high-tariff periods and that of the low-tariff periods were not the same in point of generality and popular contentment.

Our first tariff was that enacted in 1789, and subsequently somewhat modified under the inspiration of Hamilton's Report on Manufactures. It was protective in intention, but so low in its rates that, if Hamilton should arise to propose it to-day, he would be hooted out of the protection church as the rankest of free-traders: cotton goods, 5 per cent.; woolens, 5 per cent.; iron goods, 7½ per cent.; pig-iron free,—the general average about 8½ per cent. Under it there was a steady growth and the most general prosperity and contentment.

Then came the War of 1812, during which the tariff rates were temporarily doubled, the act to expire one year after the conclusion of peace. People rushed into venturesome, speculative manufacturing enterprises, such as will inevitably bring on a crash. In 1816, the war tariff having expired, a new tariff was made, protective in principle, and much higher in its rates than that of 1789. The duties averaged 24½ per cent. In 1819 the crash came, with general depression, bankruptcy and ruin in its train.

In 1824 the rates of the tariff of 1816 were thought not high enough, and a new protective tariff was made, the average of duties being 32½ per cent. The country had recovered from the crisis; but already in 1828 duties were again thought not high enough, and again a new tariff was made, the duties averaging this time 43⅓ per cent. This was the so-called tariff of abominations.

Now, it will strike you that in these forty years of protective policy, while times of prosperity alternated with times of depression, one thing was constant,—the pressure of the protected interests for higher tariff duties;