HIGH PRICES.
The tendency of high tariffs and wars is to produce high prices and inflated values, which excite the fears of those who are more prudent than wise.
Those who fear a fall should never attempt to rise ; and those who dread high prices should be always condemned to small profits, cheap labor and its results.
We never can enjoy "good times" except by high prices and protection to labor : the road to wealth, prosperity, and power is through the busy marts of a well-paid industry; while the road to crash, crisis, and ruin is down the rugged paths of cheap labor and low prices.
Protection necessarily brings high prices at first. Our manufactures have always been in a crippled condition, our factories idle, our experts scattered, capital diverted, prior to every protective tariff or " protective war :" consequently, it required the induce ment of high prices to start the ruined furnaces and mills, open the mines afresh, and bring back the labor. But prosperity follows high prices, and the demand for the pro ducts of labor increases. Want of competition then keeps up these prices ; but, as the domestic manufacturer is the great purchaser of our agricultural productions, the demand for these increases in the same ratio, and the values, though high, become equal.
Domestic competition would in a reasonable time bring all values to a fair standard.
This is natural ; example proves it ; and that such is the result let our cotton-manu facturers, who are now able to undersell even England, testify.
Protection never brings on the crash, crisis, and ruin which the over-prudent and timid fear. These grand and frequent climacterics in our history always follow free trade. Would we have suffered the crisis of '57 if the tariff of '42 had not been repealed for free trade? Would we be in danger of repudiation now if the duties on imported goods had been increased in proportion to the direct tax? It is not, therefore, high tariffs or high prices that we have to fear, but the sudden opening of the flood-gates of free trade, which overwhelms our domestic industry, and drags down prices and values with a quick and ruinous energy at the moment when our labor is high.
The timid capitalist, the prudent merchant, the enterprising manufacturer, and, in fact, the whole domestic industry of the nation, have more reason to fear the blunders and folly of our statesmen than the effect of high prices. Sudden changes in value from the high prices of protection to the low prices of free trade should most be dreaded by all.