RESOURCES AND POLICY OF THE UNION.
A few words will explain the colonial history of the Provinces under British rule. They were "drawers of water and hewers of wood" to England. They supplied her with such raw material as she could not produce at home, and opened markets for her manufactured goods at great profits. The surplus population of England is encouraged to migrate; to conquer new fields for her industry; and those peaceful conquests have been England's greatest victories. Her colonists in America were encouraged to spread over the continent, to invade the forests, and cultivate the fields, but they were not allowed to make their own axes or their own ploughs; they were told to grow silk, and wool, and cotton, and were offered premiums for raw material, but they were not allowed to make their own cloths or transport their own productions.
The quantity of iron made in this country was almost equal to that of England in 1740, when only 17,350 tons were produced; and our exportation of pig-iron to England during that year was 2275 tons.
Had our manufacturing interests been fostered and encouraged from that date as the manufacturing industry of England was, we should long ago have been able to cope with England and open our ports to free trade without injury to our own productive labor.
During the Revolutionary War we prospered and increased in wealth notwithstanding the long struggle; but when England lost the control of her disobedient offspring, she prohibited the exportation or migration of machinery or mechanical experts, and sought thus to retard the spread of the manufacturing interests, and to increase her own ability to supply the wants of the world at cheaper rates than it was possible for unskilled and unassisted labor to produce it. At this time the steam-engines of Watts and Bolton were fast coming into use, giving England the means of multiplying her productive power to an almost unlimited extent, and, as we have seen, have since increased her physical force from a mere fraction to 600,000,000 of units of labor. Her ability, therefore, to control the trade of the world is constantly increasing, and no other country save our own can ever become her serious rival in the manufacture of iron in its various shapes. Of the 10,000 square miles of productive coal-area in Europe, the United Kingdom contains over half, though its entire area is only 121,000 square miles against the 3,757,209 square miles of Europe. But, as compared with the productive coal-area of the United States, England's resources in this most important of all minerals to a manufacturing people are less in comparison than those of Europe as compared with hers. Her 121,000 square miles of territory contain about 6000 square miles of coal-area. Our 3,000,000 contain over 200,000 square miles of coal. England has one square mile of coal for twenty of territory. We have one square mile of coal for every fifteen of territory; and, as we have shown, our resources in iron are equal to our resources in coal. England's contracted area neither supplies her laborers with food nor offers her products a market. She must, therefore, transport her supplies from beyond the seas, and ship the products of her mills and shops to foreign markets. We have an unlimited area: our plains and fields are on the same scale of magnificence with our resources in coal and iron. The products of our soil will abundantly clothe and support us; while the extent of our country and the diversity of our productions and wants offer our manufactures a home market far greater than the foreign markets ever enjoyed by England. If we had not a pound of domestic or surplus products to
export beyond the amount of our imports, we should grow rich rapidly under the pro tective policy pursued so successfully by England, by the increase of our domestic wealth and the vast accumulation of the precious metals from our Western mines.
The development of our resources has been materially controlled and checked by the overwhelming productive power of England and her ability to produce cheap goods ; by her policy of drawing the raw material from all parts of the world and returning the manufactured article, and by working up her own raw material into the most valu able forms. Her statesmen and her manufacturers have worked in harmony, because her manufacturing interests overshadowed all others. Her political economists have taught precepts which her lawgivers did not practise. They advocate free trade now, in certain articles when no other nation can compete with England in these productions. England by the use of labor-saving machinery increases the production of her work people one hundredfold, and until other nations can approximate this result, free trade will result to her advantage. Cheap labor has comparatively little to do with this result. True, had the Chinese the same intelligence, skill, capital, and machinery, with the same resources, their dense population, laboring at sixpence per day, could even under sell England. But England, with all these advantages at command, and her able-bodied men working at fifty cents per day, can always undersell our manufacturers as long as they pay from one to two dollars per day for labor. Our people can never enjoy pros perity or a proper remuneration for their labor as long as the mere physical force is at open competition with the labor-saving machinery of Europe. But the United States, as before mentioned, can not only compete with England under the same development ; but we are the only other country which can compete with her in the manufactory of the chief staples of the world. Notwithstanding our superiority in resources, however, we can never compete with her 83,000,000 horse-power of labor-saving machinery until we increase the physical force of each laboring unit in the same proportion, say one hundredfold. When this is done, and each million of our ingenious mechanics and experts shall have been increased one hundred million, then we shall be prepared to advocate free trade. But England will never permit this grand consummation, this magnificent development, as long as we allow her to cripple every attempt by exposing our manufacturers to competition and ruin every decade as a chronic political dis temper.
But, under the degree of development attainable in this country through adequate protection for a short time, our skilful mechanics and ingenious inventors, whose pro ductions are unrivalled, would soon add to our industrial resources that power in which we are now deficient to compete with England in our own markets ; and every horse power of steam machinery built and put in use at home adds to that ability by giving us a force equal to the labor of seven men, which can be exerted here as cheap as it can be in England, or put in competition with the meanest slave,—the most ill-paid labor of the world on the score of economy.