manufacturing business in a new country. Some assistance is needed at the outset to tide it past the critical period. Now, if we can give our manufacturers a start and enable them to establish themselves, they will improve all these natural advantages which we possess; and with the abundance of raw material in our mines and farms and forests, with our ingenuity and Yankee enterprise and skill, who can doubt that our manufacturers, once established, can produce goods more cheaply than they could ever be brought across from foreign countries? This protection from foreign competition will be a great incentive to the establishment of manufacturing enterprises. Everywhere mills and factories will spring up; a brisk home competition will be created; and that will finally reduce prices lower than they could ever go if we remained dependent on foreign countries for our manufactured goods."
It was a wise and well-founded plan, and only as to its final result did it fail. The protective tariff did make manufacturing more profitable than any other business, and mills and factories of every sort have sprung up in all parts of the country. But the expected extreme competition which was to reduce manufacturers' profits and the price of manufactured goods to a basis