Carl Schurz

“ Let it not be said that this would be developing commerce at the expense of the industrial interests. No, it would be an extension of commerce for the benefit of our manufactures. Far from being the destruction, it will be the liberation of our industries in two senses: It will liberate our manufactures of the clogs that hamper their production, and to those that are now confined to the home market alone, it will open the boundless field of the markets of the world. Nor will the raw material men suffer. ”

“ And then I say that, as the tariff enhances the price of the things the manufacturer has to use in the production of his finished article, it enhances the cost of production; and as it enhances the cost of production, it enhances the price the manufacturer must ask for his finished product to make a reasonable profit; and as it enhances the selling price of the manufactured goods, it puts them at a disadvantage in the foreign market, renders them unfit for exportation, and thus narrows and cripples our foreign commerce. ”

“ Do you not think that, when we hear of German commerce crowding out that of other nations in many parts of the world, this fact may in some measure be owing to the systematic care with which the study of foreign markets is cultivated? Now, if our young merchants, married or unmarried, devoted a little less time to Fifth Avenue, Newport and Paris, and a little more to Buenos Ayres, Rio, Valparaiso, Shanghai, Zanzibar and similar places, thus enlarging their mercantile education too, would not that be likely to do our foreign commerce a world of good? ”

“ There are almost boundless natural resources of raw material for manufacturing industries. There are several of these industries, the mechanical appliances and the laboring force engaged in which, as has been computed by good authority, are capable of producing in seven or eight months as much as the home market will regularly absorb in twelve. There are, in addition to this, American enterprise, energy and inventive genius, capable of increasing incalculably the production of things to sell and to feed our commerce, if given a fair chance. ”

“ Simply because American laws prevented them. We have navigation laws reading like relics of a barbarous age, which forbid us to buy ships where we might buy them as cheaply as other nations buy them; and we have tariff laws under which we cannot build ships as cheaply as other nations build them. I know, for many years we have had a statute in force admitting free certain materials imported for ship building purposes, but it was so contrived that its provisions in the main benefit only the building of wooden vessels, which in the foreign trade are fast becoming a thing of the past. ”

“ We all know how our merchant marine in the foreign trade has declined since the wooden ship had to make way for the ship built of iron. What is the cause of our having no mercantile fleet worth speaking of in the foreign trade under the American flag? Is it the unwillingness of American business men to put capital in ships? By no means. There is in fact a large amount of American money invested in ships aside from our coasting trade. ”

“ We export, also, some of our manufactured products which compete successfully in the foreign market. A majority of them consists of those articles whose principal value is contributed by labor—our intelligent, energetic, efficient American labor, aided by superior machinery and inventive ingenuity; articles representing that striking, important and natural combination: the best labor, commanding the highest rate of wages, and producing at the lowest cost. A large exporting merchant tells me that when he finds a manufactured article 65, or in some cases even 60 per cent. ”

“ Like many other things, our problem of foreign commerce may be reduced to very simple principles which will be universally recognized by all who do one thing: take the politics out of the matter and judge it on its own merits. ”

“ But in foreign commerce we have to do with ignorant, mean-spirited, grovelling foreigners who, when we offer them an article at fifty cents, and somebody else offers the same at forty, will actually be contemptible enough to give the forty cents thing the preference. ”

“ As a Chamber of Commerce you will, of course, recognize an active interest in the development of our commercial intercourse with the world as one of the primary reasons of your being. There is also at present among the people a very general feeling that something ails them, for which the extension of our foreign commerce would afford at least a partial remedy. ”

“ Freedom to buy ships where they can advantageously be bought, they to be our ships, the stars and stripes to be hoisted over them. Freedom to get the material as advantageously as other nations get it, for building ships on American soil. ”

“ As to the second point, the adaptation of our products to the requirements of the foreign market, we find here and there among our business men the lofty notion that the foreign consumer should cultivate his tastes according to our ideas of what is good for him. ”

“ The third condition to be complied with is certainly not of less importance: that we should be able to offer our goods in the foreign markets at prices at least as low as those at which other people offer goods of the same kind and quality. This is so self-evident that I should deem it almost insulting to business men of sane mind to argue it before them, had we not of late been told by great statesmen that the demand for cheapness is un-American. ”

“ Aye, it is a matter of common report that two of the finest ocean grayhounds plying between New-York and Liverpool are substantially owned and controlled by Americans, while they are sailing under British colors, and form part of Her British Majesty’s navy reserve, to fight against us in case of war between England and the United States, the happening of which heaven forbid! Have we any right to accuse those Americans of a lack of patriotism? Why did they not put their money into ships bearing the stars and stripes? ”

“ It is the anxiety of the beneficiaries and the political advocates of our high tariff policy not to have any part of that system touched. When I hear them discuss means for the development of our foreign commerce and the revival of our ocean marine, and talk around and around and around the subject, careful not to touch the vital point, it reminds me vividly of an experience of old times. When slavery still existed in our land, many Southern men felt painfullly the industrial and commercial backwardness of the South. ”

“ Now, the surplus of our agricultural products has to be shipped abroad to be sold at the world's prices, determined by the world's competition, and if those prices are low, and the farmers' profits are still more reduced by the comparatively high prices of almost all he has to buy at home, we deplore his misfortune, and should be willing to remedy it by wise measures of public policy. It seems our farmers themselves, have at last begun to understand the case. ”

“ All these ladies had lived at such places with their husbands—merchants who were still in business in foreign parts, or had been there in their younger days, either having establishments of their own or acting for German houses—but in either case studying the habits and tastes of foreign peoples, and the requirements of foreign markets as well as the export resources of foreign countries, and giving the commerce of their German home the benefit of their studies and experiences. ”

“ And yet we have heard strange doctrines—ancient superstitions revived—in our days: that commercial intercourse with foreign nations is a thing of doubtful desirability; that importing is sinful; that goods may go out of the country, but only cash should come in ”

“ The difference in the cost of labor would be overcome by the superiority of American mechanics.” Is not that good authority? Attract American ambition, capital and energy once more to ocean shipping by opening new opportunities, and our ship yards will have more work than ever. Neither should it be said that the higher wages to be paid to our officers and seamen would prevent our ships from competing with the foreigner. ”

“ Even those gentle shepherds of Ohio, who by dragooning Congress into a strict maintenance of the tariff-taxing of raw material gained their high rank among the most insidious enemies of our industries and our commerce, even they will finally see that a policy calculated to promote the manufacturing of woolens will eventually prove a benefit to the grower of wool. Indeed, in advocating such a policy for the harmonious development of our industries and of commerce together, I claim to be a better friend to our manufacturers, aye, a better protectionist than Mr. ”

“ It consists in such a revision of the tariff as will deliver our manufacturing industries of those artificial burdens which increase the cost of the things they have to use in production, thus permitting them to obtain those things as cheaply and advantageously as their foreign competitors obtain them, and in that way giving them a fair chance for the export trade. ”

“ We may despise and pity them, but we can hardly expect to convert them. Whether we like it or not, we have to accept the fact that he who offers abroad his merchandise at the lowest price, other things being equal, will have the business. ”

“ Certainly there is not. It is an old story, as old as common sense. But it is amazing how far some people contrive to get away from such self-evident truths as soon as the practical application is called for. ”