TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

BY

EDWARD E. HALE,
AUTHOR OF " H A M P T O N , "

"MY

FRIEND THE BOSS," " M R .

VACATIONS," " T E N T I M E S O N E IS T E N , " " I N H I S
"A

TANGIER'S

NAME,"

M A N WITHOUT A C O U N T R Y , " E T C . , E T C .

BOSTON :
J. STILMAN SMITH & COMPANY,
3 HAMILTON PLACE.

1888.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1888, by
EDWARD E. HALE,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.

TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. CUSHING & Co., BOSTON.

813
H13t

CONTENTS.
No.

PAGE

I.
II..

T H E JACK-KNIFE

1

SOME OPPRESSED FARMERS

9

VARIED

IV.

BOOKS AND A U T H O R S

25

AMERICAN

SYSTEM

32

V.

INDUSTRIES

18

III.

VI.

THE

CHEAPEST MARKET

38

VII.

THE

COOKING-STOVE

44

VIII.

W E L L ENOUGH ALONE

52

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

No. I.
THE

JACK-KNIFE.

UNCLE
TOM took out a well-worn jack-knife, looked
at it with admiration, and said to the company of
us, as we sat on the counter of the store, or on nailcasks, or other comforts provided for loafers:
"That jack-knife made me a tariff man."
Nahum Van Pell took him up, and asked him how that
was. " Looks like an English knife, Uncle Tom," said he.
" English knife it is, — blamed if it is not,-—oldfashioned Rogers.
But I've been a tariff man ever
since my father gave me that jack-knife. 'N't's nigh
fifty miles away."
We knew he was ripe for a story. The train would
not be shovelled out for three or four hours, and we
made him tell it.
" It's more than fifty years," said the old gentleman,
"for I was eleven years old the next month. Father,
he was going down to Shaftesbury. He'd got to be

2

TOM TORREY's TARIFF TALKS.

gone all day. It was the first day of the summer school,
'n I had all my books and my slate ready to go. But
when I harnessed the gray and brought him around to
the door, I'd found out he was going to Shaftesbury, 'n
I asked him to let me go too. I told him the first day
of school was no good anyway—the girls were going,
*n they would find out about the lessons and all that, 'n
if I went with him, he wouldn't be bothered about the
horse nor nothing. So he said I might go. I didn't
ask mother. I just got into the wagon with him. I
came home a tariff man."
Again we asked him to tell us how one day converted
him.
" Well," he said, " I knew too much to do much talking in the first hour, I can tell you, I knew he had to
do his thinking in that part of the ride, 'n I let him.
After we had passed Silas's — I watered the gray there
— he had settled matters, and he began :
" ' Yes, Tom, I like to have you go with me,' says he.
' 'N if I have good luck, I'll buy you a jack-knife at the
store for you to remember the day by.'
" Well, what the day was, I did not know. It was
not Bennington day, and it was not Fourth of July.
But I knew if I asked no questions I should find out.
So I waited; 'n I had to wait all day.

THE JACK-KNIFE.

3*

" Well, we had dinner at the old Eagle Tavern. The
sign was an eagle tearing out the lion's eyes. We don't
have such signs now, but they were left then from the
second war. It was the first dinner I ever ate at a
tavern, and I felt very grand that I had sat at the stage
table. Then the old man went off for half an hour, and
when he came back, I saw he was pleased. H e told the
men at the barn to hitch up, and then he took me to the
store, and he picked out this jack-knife. 'N I've carried
it ever since, as you know. 'N that jack-knife made me
a tariff man.
" We got into the wagon, and father gave the stableman ten cents for himself. So I could see he was goodnatured and pleased. And so I asked why he gave me
the jack-knife, and what I was.to remember.
" ' Well, Tom,' said he, ' I think to-day has been, the
turning-day for us up at Number Three.' You know, fellows, that the place was called Number Three, till we
got the name of Ashland.
' I think/ says he, 'that
we have got the turn now, sure. You know we have
had hard times, and people do not come in much to
take up land, and those that do come do not stay much.
But now, I think the people will come and will stay.
For I have made an agreement with John Carnes, the
blacksmith, and he is going to move up next week, and

4

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

set up his forge — that means anvil and bellows,
you know.
He will shoe our horses, and he will
mend our wheel-tires for us, and the next time a
hinge breaks on a gate, there will be somebody to
mend that/
" Then he went on to tell me about his trade with
John Carnes. He had given him a bond for a deed of
the lot — well, you know the lot; Carnes's people live
there now. If Carnes would stay with us ten years, at
the end of ten years he should have that lot and the
house on it for the payment of one dollar. Well, you
know Carnes kept his share of the bargain. He set up
his forge just where his §on carries it on now. I know
how pleased I was when he let me blow the bellows for
the first time.
«
"Well, my father told me that that would be the
making of the town. And it was/ Men would not go
down to Shaftesbury to have their horses shod, or to
have a bit of iron welded.
" ' It is worth my while, and your uncle's and the rest
of the settlers,' said he, ' t o make John Carnes a handsome offer to come up here and put up his forge. H e
can make more money this year at Shaftesbury, and
more next. But if he don't drink and steal and gamble,
he will make a business with us.' That's what my

THE JACK-KNIFE.

s

father said, and that's what happened. John Carnes
built up a business. But it was quite worth while for
all the farmers to join my father to make him that offer.
On the other side of the river, at the Crossings, they
thought we were fools, and they said so, to give away
that fine bit of interval. But for all that, they came
over to our forge, because they had no blacksmith. And
if there were two farms for sale, and one man to buy, he
bought on the blacksmith side of the river, and not on
the other side, I tell you. And that is the reason,
fellows, why this place took a start, fifty years ago, that
it never lost. And if you want to know why the Crossing yonder is only the Crossings, and why it is the
half-starved, dead-and-alive place it is, I can tell you. It
is because they had not the pluck to begin with a blacksmith, as my father and your father and your father had.
" Well, as we rode home, my father said to me : ' I
give you the jack-knife that you may remember what I
tell you. Just what we do for Number Three, by coaxing John Carnes to come up, is what Mr. Henry Clay
and the American system mean to do for all this country. It is not only blacksmiths you want near at hand.
You want painters and printers and inventors, and men
to make machines for you. You want to have all sorts
of industries in your country.

6

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

" ' In war you want to make your own guns and your
own powder. In peace you want to print your own
books and to write them. You do not want to send to
a foreign nation for anything which is essential. To
make these things at home is what Mr. Clay calls the
" American System."
" ' I hope/ said my father to me, ' that you will live to
see the time when there will be railroads all over this
country, like that they have in Albany, and I hope
Americans will make the engines.
" ' Give them the shops and the chance, and they will
invent something which will do our work better than
the English machines.
" 'Why, Tom,' said he,— he was so far looking,—'if
we had the machine shops here,— that's what they call
them,— we would invent a machine that would cut that
clover lot of ours, and another that would spread the
clover, in a tenth part of the time it will take you aind
me and Nahum. And it would be better cut, too/ says
he. He was a sanguine man, and when he said that, it
seemed very unlikely. But all the same it came true.
We had our own shops, and so we invented what we
wanted for our own farms, and we knew how to make
the machines we wanted.
" 'You will hear plenty of people tell you/ says my

THE JACK-KNIFE.

7

father to me, ' that you must buy where you can buy
cheapest. But you will find that John Carnes's horseshoes will be cheaper at thirty cents than a Shaftesbury
shoe would be at twenty cents, if you count in the time
it takes you to drive to Shaftesbury and back again,
every time the old gray has to be shod all apound.
" ' S o do you remember, every time you use the jackknife, what I mean when I talk of the American System/
" Well, I tell you, men," said Uncle Tom, as he finished his story, " every word come true. First of all,
John Carnes was always on hand. If it was a horse-shoe
or an ox-shoe, or an extra nail you wanted special, there
was John Carnes. If you wanted special bracing for
your house, when you had a raising, there was John
Carnes. And you know the boys he brought up in the
village, and you know where they are now. Then, because he had his forge, we had more people come from
all the district round here, more trade at the shop, more
grist at the mill, — why, they was more people to meeting, because they got in the habit of coming to John
Carnes's and to the store on week-days. And they
were never sorry, not a man of 'em who joined my
father in begging John Carnes to come up here. Fqr
all that," said Uncle Tom, as he descended from the

8

TOM TORREY's TARIFF TALKS.

counter, " w e did not buy our horse-shoes in the cheapest market in those days. Wasn't that what that fellow
who lectured here bid you fellows do ? John Marks,
eggs are cheaper in Prussia than they are here.
" W h y don't you buy your eggs in Prussia, John?
That's Free Trade/'

No. II.
SOME " O P P R E S S E D " F A R M E R S .
"WOULD
you like to see some oppressed farmers ?"
This was Uncle Tom's invitation to me the next day,
as I stood at the post-office, and he drove up for his
Tribune and his letters. I said I should like to go anywhere with him, and so I climbed into his wagon. He
drove a handsome span of bays, and really wanted to
show them off to me, though he would have died before
saying so.
"I have rather a largish order for cheese," he said, as
we left the village, "and before I answer it, I want to
know what these people yonder are going to do this
summer, and how much we can rely on them. So I am
going out to see Zadok Norton, instead of waiting for
him. Tuesday is his day to come into town, but my
answer must be in London to-morrow, so I go to find
him."
It was a beautiful country we rode through: intervale
for a little way, and then a broken hill country which I
remembered as much more thickly covered with hem-

IO

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

lock and spruce and hard wood than now. Indeed,
forty years ago I knew every inch of it. I had fished
all these brooks for trout in the summer, and knew
some of the wood-roads better than the farmers themselves did. But forty years had kept me away from my
old haunts, and I was astonished, as all men are who reflect on the growth and gain of everything in America
in that time. Uncle Tom was rather eager to show off
the causes of the change.
Thus, when we passed a charming house and orchard,
with pretty shrubs and a garden, "That's eggs," he
said. " J u s t eggs, and nothing else. There, see that
brown low building, — that's the hatching-house. Nothing so old fashioned as setting hens now. Now do you
know, all their business there — that's one of their
yards — there, that's another — all their business there
was started by that lady. Well, she isn't as old as you
are now. She started it the year her husband died,
— nine children, you know, must do something, — and
she set 'em on eggs.
" I remember the first time she came down to me,—
she had nine dozen eggs, — ' and every egg, Mr. Torrey,' says she, ' was laid since Monday.' They was all
fresh, you see. Well, out of that beginning — out of
that nine dozen — has grown that pretty house, that

SOME " OPPRESSED " FARMERS.

II

green-house, that stable, sons in college, son in trade
in Liverpool — they and all they are doing, as you see
there, it's eggs — all of it."
So, in a minute more, he showed me a beautiful bit of
garden farming. " T h a t ' s part celery," said he. "You
don't see the celery now. More of it is cabbages.
Yonder, where I cannot show you, is peas and beans,
and such ; but they rely mostly on cabbages. Do you
know, they tell me that cabbages are one of the things
you cannot make too many of. Cabbages is one, and
oranges is another. They say the market never breaks.
Well, he built up that business, — a very good fellow he is ; name is Murphy. He got a lease of that bit
of land. He's owned it all long ago. He began on
cabbages, and he went into celery.
" T h a t ' s a pretty business yonder, — behind the trees.
There, you see the house now. If we were not in haste,
we'd drive up there, and get a rose for your button-hole.
That's a very pretty business! I do not suppose he
could ever work very hard. Bad lungs, I guess — hole
in one of them, maybe. I don't know; he looked delicate then. But he knew what he was abotit. H e built
in there behind the chestnuts.
H e built that little
greenhouse, forty by twenty. John Carnes made the
irons for him, on his own patterns, year before John

12

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

died; and he just raised roses, — nothing else, as I live.
Roses were not on the market so much then. But he
would take a little box of cut roses, once a week, maybe,
down to Shrewsbury, you know, and he told me that
they sold regularly for ninepence, as we said then,
apiece — one dollar for eight roses. That's not bad business. H e does not get that now; but he has built up
his business. The dealers know his roses, ( and they go
to New York and Philadelphia and Washington. Roses
are always in season. Good for a steady drink," and
Uncle Tom laughed, as he always did at his own jokes.
" Yes, sir, that whole place is made out of roses. And
we have not a prettier."
So we drove on, with an anecdote for each pretty
place we passed. When we were both walking up hill,
to spare the team, as we climbed a high spur, Uncle
Tom took up his tariff talk again.
"Now that dude that was talking Cobden to us
Tuesday night, really thinks that this intervale should
be given to raising wheat, because we can raise wheat
in America somewhere, and that we should send to
Rhodes for our roses, and to Persia for our eggs, and to
Germany for our cabbages. I wish he might eat the
eggs when they come here.
" H e would not own it, but this is where you come

SOME " OPPRESSED " FARMERS.

13

out about all perishable articles like these, which must
be sold in twenty-four hours, or, perhaps, for eggs, a
little longer time after they have been raised. Take
milk for instance, what we are going to see. If you
want a high price for your milk, you must sell it near
home. Nobody wants milk which is a month old.
Why, they only buy it in cans when they cannot help it.
" H e would say that all this perishable stuff is sure
of a market, tariff or no tariff. I only wish he had seen
this valley in old James Buchanan's time.
" To sell perishable stuff, you must have closely inhabited centres. That means, you must have manufacture. If you have to create your manufacture, — create
it, if you mean to have roses, and Qggsf and celery, and
fresh milk at breakfast, even. Around every manufacturing centre, like ours here, there grows up such a set
of garden farmers, I call them, as we have been passing ; and then next to them there come these people I
shall show you, — t h e milk people, who provide our mechanics, our spinners, our weavers, with what we used
to call luxuries, which have become the necessities of
civilized life. When your Mr. Cleveland says that tariffs do not benefit farmers, he forgets, or probably
he never thought of, these garden farmers — I like to
call them — who take care of the manufacturing towns.

14

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

Not wholly. My friend, Mrs. Egg-woman, down there
has to run on in close competition with Michigan men,
I know, who can send down a carload of eggs packed in
oats. You see the oats are salable, so that even the
packing costs nothing. Now, if she sends eggs far to
market, she has to buy egg-boxes, — and they pay no
freight. But still she has the help of three or four days,
in which the Michigan egg is older than hers. Your
egg has to'be above suspicion.
" Were you ever in Russia ?" he asked.
I said I never had been.
" Well, you travel through the south part of Russia.
They are the great ideal corn-raisers. Tell me how
many rose factories, and how many celery factories, and
how many cabbage factories you find there."
We were at the hill-top now, though there were
plenty more hills before we came out at Zadok Norton's.
The road went through forest, but, to my surprise, the
road-way was guarded, — not by the old-fashioned Virginia rail fence, but by wire fences. I asked Uncle
Tom about this. Here was the chestnut-tree right over
the fence. Surely it would have been cheaper to split
out chestnut rails.
" O h , no," he said. "These farmers know too much
for that. It is not what you saw when you used to

SOME " OPPRESSED" FARMERS.

15

come here trout-fishing. Then, all of them who were
so poor that they could not go away, had their hands
and their axes. In winter they had little or nothing to
do, and they and their boys turned out and split rails.
But now, this very man, who owns this piece of wood,
he and his sons have a dairy of cows, from which they
sell, well, two hundred quarts a day of milk, day in and
out, in our region, to the Fisherville people and our
people; and at the basket works, well, more than two
hundred quarts. That is, beside any butter he makes,
or any cheese. He could not build up his dairy for
butter or cheese alone. But give him the milk market
beside, he can. In fact, he needs more help than his
own family. That German we passed just now works
for him the year around. Now, such a business as that
cannot afford to send men out chopping chestnut.
Their work is worth more in the home dairy work, and
so he buys a wire fence with the money the milk brings
him. Mr. Cobden ^vould tell him to split the rails and
send them to Sheffield, and with the money to buy wire
in Sheffield and build the fence. But he does not see it
that way, and Henry Clay did not see it that way; and
that is not the ' American System.' Sell close at hand,
buy close at hand, — that is the American system. If
the shippers do not like, I do not wonder.
But I

i6

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

suppose America is for Americans, and not for shippers/'
So we came to Zadok Norton's. I was not admitted
to much of the talk which went on between t h e m ; and,
as we drove home, I observed that Uncle Tom was not
much satisfied with the result. My talk was more with
Mrs. Norton, who looked in on me from time to time,
and, when she found I was interested, sent one of the
boys round with me to show me the out-buildings and
all the details of comfortable farming on an upland farm.
They were four miles from the meeting-house and town
library. They had not a neighbor for an eighth of a
mile. But here they were, ready for a snow blockade,
with every comfort I could have asked for for them.
I noticed the best new Cyclopaedia on the shelves, late
and good magazines on the table, a good piano in the
sitting-room, and all the aspects of a comfortable home.
When I remembered forty years ago, in the same town,
I could hardly believe the change which had come in on
its prosperity.
I said as much to Uncle Tom, as we drove back, after
he had finished his first brooding on his ill success with
Zadok Norton.
" Y e s , " said he, " i t is all milk,—milk and fresh
butter. Zadok has so much of that business to do,

SOME " O P P R E S S E D " FARMERS.

\J

that he does not take hold eagerly about my cheese
contract. All the milk he can raise, and more, he
needs for the supply of these same villages I pointed out
to you. His wife stands over him, and makes him leave
her enough to make the fancy butter he sells, at fancy
prices to your father, and to Edwards, and to me. Prosperity needs prosperity. We all want to get the best,
and I like it, and your father likes it as well as any one
else. So I, myself, by buying Mrs. Norton's fancy
butter, am hardening her husband's heart, so that he
does not hanker for my offer about cheese. I must go
further back in the hills, that is all. Observe, too, that
if Mrs. Norton were not a bit old-fashioned, she could
send her milk to a creamery.
But people know her
butter, it is 'gilt-edged,' and so she keeps up her own
dairy.
" Now, do you suppose," said Uncle Tom, " that all
this industry would have been created here, if it had not
been for the machine shops and the mills ? No, sir!
Why, you remember what this was in James K. Polk's
time?"

No. III.
VARIED

INDUSTRIES.

A S we sat watching the sunset that evening from
•*•*• the piazza of Mr. Torrey's house, I asked him
about his children. I knew that most of them were
men and women, and we had seen but three of the
whole number at home.
H e told me that there were six others living in one
part of the world or another. Three of his daughters
were married and lived in their own homes, and three
of his sons had left Ashland.
" To go back to what we were talking of," said he,
" I believe that if, we lived as that little speaker thought
we ought to live, all the children would be at home
here, and we; should be all doing the same thing, whatever that might be. The theory, from Adam Smith
down, has been that each country should make that
which God meant it to make, and that no artificial
effort of government should change its production.
Your friends in Boston would raise lobsters; that is
what the peninsula of Boston is made for. That was
the original product, and, by the theory, that should be

*

VARIED INDUSTRIES.

19

the product now. There is nothing in Boston now,
excepting its lobster traps, which has not been added
to Boston by the measures of government which, in
their nature, correspond exactly with what we call
protection.
"But the truth is," said Uncle Tom, "that while the
natural laws of climate, soil, and the rest seem to intimate that each province should have but one product,
all this uniformity of law disappears when our children
come into the world. When you have had as many as I
have, — and that is nine in all, — you will find that they
are born with very different faculties, and they want to>
do very different things. If they are unfortunate enough
to be under the vassalage of a mother-country, as our people were before the Revolution, these varieties of temperament will in most cases be suppressed by the pressure
of the institutions under which they live. I know nothing so pathetic as the absolute suppression through New
England, for the first hundred and fifty years, of the
inventive faculty of New England. There must have
been as much of it then as there is now. But absolutely, those fellows who aimed their muskets over the
breastwork at Bunker Hill, used the identical, muskets
their grandfathers used in Queen Anne's war. They
had not changed the make of the lock or of the barrel

20

TOM TORREY's TARIFF TALKS.

— no, not by a rivet or an inch in nearly a century.
They were clothed in shirts which were woven on the
identical looms, and the fibres were spun on the identical wheels, which had been used a century before. So
much success had a gracious mother-country had in
bringing about a uniformity of life. There must have
been unconscious inventors, like inglorious Miltons
and village Hampdens, but the poor fellows invented
nothing.
"But the minute independence came, there came with
it the necessity of home manufacture, and you had such
men as Eli Whitney, who revolutionized the world, and
Robert Fulton, who also revolutionized it. So we find
that we have through this country now, a great crop of
people who are clearly enough born with the ability for
painting and for sculpture. But there was no painting
and no sculpture so long as the theory of our dependence upon England for all our luxuries held — while
we fed them, and they sent to us our pictures, or
1
paints and oils/ if you remember, the original tax-bill±
and the rest of our luxuries.
"The truth is," he said, "what I was saying about
diversified industries has a very close bearing upon
education. One of your boys is born to be an inventor,
as one of mine was. If you have workmen who can

VARIED INDUSTRIES.

21

make his models for him, if you can put him into a shop
himself, so that he can punch a hole or make a rivet,
and get up his own machine,—why, he has a chance,
as my George has in the works at New Altoona. Under
the free-trade theory, he can exile himself and go to
Birmingham or Sheffield, as Ben Franklin set type in
London, but we fathers of families do not much fancy
sending our boys off for such necessities.
" I can remember when all the mining engineers of
this country were Frenchmen or Germans or Swedes.
But the country declared its independence in 1861; the
Calhoun nonsense was knocked in the head for five-andtwenty years; we protected our own mines, and what
is the consequence ? Some of our finest men are now
developing our own industries in that direction But,
according to theory, the same men ought to be raising
lobsters or making corn. By the theory, if Adam Smith
himself had lived up to it, he ought to have been twisting cotton or weaving it, or heading pins, — perhaps
that is more in the chronological order,—and ought to
have left the making of books to somebody else. The
French do say that he stole everything he had to say
from Turgot, who was at that moment the best writer
on the subject in the most civilized country in the
world. But England chose, in spite of him, to have a

22

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

variety of industries; England therefore chose to protect
its industries. Out of that protection it was that England
came to make the finest machinery in the world, and the
first of the nations to get the result, which is the point
where the best machinery can be used. Bolton and Watt
invented the steam engine; it came into being in 1775,
the year some other things came into being. In that
year, as I think you said once, i liberty was in the air/
With the invention of the steam engine, the human
race was emancipated from labor, and men began to
work. That is to say, we set these great giants to do
our work for us, and we took the easier parts of life.
Among other things, we took the management of the
giants, which is not a disagreeable thing. But to do
that, we must be able to employ the giants, and we
must employ them ourselves.
" Now the free-trader says this, 'That is very well,
but, if you please, we will keep the giants, and enjoy
the benefit of the use of them, and you shall go and dig
and hoe and put seeds in the ground, and do the other
things to which the giants are not yet trained. In
fact, you know/ they say, 'it will be more agreeable
for us, you know, to have that part of industry which is
easy, you know, and for you, you know, to have that part
of industry, you know, which is hard, you know. You

VARIED INDUSTRIES.

23

shall raise the food, you know, and we will make the
machinery, and we will do the other things, which depend on the machinery.'
"But I say that I propose to educate all these nine
children of mine, each one of them to do the thing
which he does best, and to be able to carry on that
education not so very far from their homes. George
proved to be an inventor; I let him go into a workshop,
and an inventor and machinist the boy will be. It was
born in his blood, and I should be a fool if I tried to
resist the drift of it. John, whom you will see tomorrow, is a farmer, and a farmer he shall be. H e
lives on the other side of the river yonder. He will or
will not go into this cheese business with me this fall,
as he chooses. If he does not choose, it will be because, like our friend Norton, up in the mountains, he
can do better. H e knows enough to know that it is
better for him to send his milk to market in the morning, and get his money for it in the afternoon, if he
wants, than it would be to have all his eggs in onebasket, and have to wait for half the year, while he
sent his product over half the world. John is no worshipper of ships, as most of the free-traders are. Then
my third boy, you know. They say he has a knack at
literature; I think he has. At all events, that is the

24

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

reason why he has drifted into literary life; and, as you
know very well, there; is no literary life until a nation
can print its own books, and no nation prints its own
books thus far in this world unless it protects its own
industries. I do not observe, for instance, that there
is a very large literature in Canada, and I do not
observe that there is much invention in Canada. They
have not protected their own industries long enough,
but if they live a generation longer, they are a wideawake set over there, and we shall begin to hear from
them."

No. IV.
BOOKS A N D
I

AUTHORS.

W A S interested in what Uncle Tom had said about
literature, and I took care before my visit was over
to draw him out again on that subject.
" I am old enough," said he, " t o have grown up in
the days when practically every book which was read
by every child was a book written by an English author.
All our better picture-books had the London mark upon
them; and, indeed, every woodcut made on this side,
with very few exceptions, was inferior. The American
paper and print were inferior. Or, as I said yesterday,"
said he, " it looked as if it had been done in Canada.
" What was the consequence ? Why, as a school boy,
I knew all about dukes and duchesses; I knew about
'China oranges,' and Marks,' and 'bulfinches,' and
' robin redbreasts.' I was quite skilful, as J grew older,
about the precedence in society of viscounts and barons
and earls. But there was not a single book in the series
which turned on the fortunes of an American senator
or representative, or of a hand on a canal-boat, or of an
engineer on a steamboat.
Mrs. Sedgwick's ' Young

26

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

Emigrants' is the only child's book I remember which
dealt with the affairs of our own country, excepting the
little books of American history which we had. I was^
brought up to consider Charles I. a saint and a martyr,
and Oliver Cromwell a fanatic and a murderer, simply
because the people who wrote the books which I read
as a child chose to think so, and lived in England.
"Why, as lately as when Agassiz first came to this
country, he went into a Cambridge printing-office,
where they were printing a book of natural history.
They showed him the sheets with some pride, and
Agassiz said, ' Yes, I see. An American school-book,
with pictures of three butterflies, and not one of the
butterflies was ever in America!'
" That is the way to bring up children in a colony.
That is the, way the children were brought up in this
country till 1776. Natural enough, but it was rather
hard on the children of the children who had been
brought up so, for England to insist on bringing
them up so still. Arid when my friend Cobden comes
over here, and wants me to continue that system of
education, I do not fancy it.
But that is just what
must happen, unless you print your own books. Read
Cotton Mather's ' Magnalia.' See what happens to you
when a book is sent to London to be printed, by an

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

i 2?

American author. It is a very good instance that —
for two hundred years and more — we lost the history
of the place where the Pilgrim Fathers came from,
because a compositor in London put the letter n in a
word where he ought to have put the letter u. Cotton
Mather did not read his own proof, and the Magnalia'
is black with mistakes in consequence. Of course, no
one will stand that. What happens, then, is that, if
you have a person thoroughly serious about authorship,
he goes to the country where the books are well
printed. For instance, Jefferson printed his ' Notes on
Virginia' in Paris, because he could not afford to print
them in Richmond, or in Philadelphia, or in New York.
Barlow goes to ^England to print his ' Columbiad,' because it cannot be properly printed in America. There
is a handsome book," said Uncle Tom, and he handed
over to me the elegant edition of Frechette's poems,
which has just now been printed in Paris. " That Frechette," said he, " is one of the real American poets of
to-day. You will find verses in that volume which will
be repeated a hundred years hence, and that is more
than we can say of most of our poetry of 1888. YQU
see how elegant his book is. I suppose he knows what
a handsome book is, so he has to go to Paris to have it
printed. For, as I said yesterday, our Canadian friends

28

TOM TORREY's TARIFF TALKS.

obeyed the instructions given them from home so
long, t^hat they have' hardly any literature, and such
men of letters as they have have to go abroad
if they would have a decent coat put upon their
children.
"Even later down," said he, "than Barlow and Jefferson, Washington Irving himself went to England.
It is fair to say he made his reputation in England.
There is his ' Sketch Book,' in the English edition,"
said Uncle Tom, and he took the book from the shelves,
and gave it to me. " It is a miracle, indeed, that we
ever got him home again. All this is as it should be,
according to Adam Smith and Mr. Cobden. They will
write the books for us, they will print the books for us ;
we shall make the corn and send them the corn.
Every nation shall do what it can do most cheaply in
the money market.
" F o r instance, the people of America and Southern
Russia shall make the corn, and the people of Germany
shall make the opinions ; the people of France shall
weave the silks, and the people of England shall make
the cannon, and the machinery, and the woollens, and
the cottons, and, as I said yesterday, the other things
which are made easily and by the assistance of the
giants. But there can be no intelligent nation which

BOOKS A N D

AUTHORS.

29

does not print its own books, make its own paper, make
its own ink, make its own type, keep its own schools,
and, as I said,^ write its own school-books, and train its
own authors.
" Nothing so damaging to the good sense, and even
to the happiness of these girls growing up around us
here, as the intimate acquaintance they make with
French life and English life in these novels they read,
which are written by French authors and by English.
I suppose it would be old-fashioned to say that I wish
there were a sea of fire to keep such things out. I sup^
pose that is not the way. The way is to overcome evil
with good. The way is, to train a set of people here
who shall write better novels, made true to the life of
this town, to the life of Chicago, and Cattaraugus, and
Opelousas, — life so true to the life we are living that,
on the whole, the boys and girls shall rather read them,
and shall turn the cold shoulder to what Zola writes, or
' T h e Duchess/ or even my over-worked friend, Mrs.
Oliphant.
"But we shall have no such authors if the men and
women who are to write these books for us must go to*
another country to print them.
" I believe all the writers, even Adam Smith and
Turgot, admit that a nation has the right to maintain

3<3

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

its own manufactories of small-arms, percussion caps,
cannon, powder, and the rest of the weapons of destruction.
" I believe it is admitted that if we are to have
any such thing as independence, we must not be
subject to a foreign power for the manufacture of
these things.
"But, for my part, I would much rather let the
crown of England make my cannons and powder for
me, than to let the authors of England make my public
opinion for me.
" I do not want to have them teach my boys and
girls about larks and bulfinches. I want the boys and
girls to know, as a matter of course, about orioles,
and partridges, and bluebirds.
" I do not care if my boy here makes a mistake about
the courses of a dinner, and even eats his fish after his
chicken. I can stand that. But I do care that he shall
understand what is meant by a republican government,
that he shall know what experiments have been tried in
the hundreds upon hundreds of years before his own
nation came into being. I do not like to have him
think that his ancestors were fools in starting the
present order of things. And when a lot of theorists
in London all tell him that his own father did not know

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

31

what he was about when he went into the emancipation
of 1861, I chafe a little if I find the boy takes what
they say as gospel.
" Between you and me," said Uncle Tom, " the
emancipation of the business of this country from the
control which a lot of Southern planters had had upon
it, was an emancipation quite as great in its way as the
emancipation of four millions of slaves."

No. V.
MERICAN

SYSTEM.

I HAD observed that Uncle Tom usually spoke of our
present tariff system as the "American System.''
H e said once that that was Henry Clay's phrase. I do
not know whether Henry Clay invented i t ; but it was
the phrase under which tariff men fought in the old
nullification days of Webster and Clay.
I asked him about this use of the word, one day.
a
Yes," he said, " there was a great deal in the name.
I do not want any one to protect me. I protect myself.
And if this nation chooses to say some day that, Germany shall make her cannon, and England write her
books for her, as Mr. Mills and the rest of them purpose—why, we shall manage to make a living here
somehow. When the hay-cart goes over, we shall not
be at the bottom of the hay; at least," he said, laughing,
" Yankees never have been there long,' and I do not
think we shall begin now.
" B u t do you read the correspondence and the
speeches of the people who lived within ten years of
either of the old wars ? See what a bloody tariff-man

AMERICAN

SYSTEM.

33

Calhoun was, when he could remember what it was to
have an English blockading squadron off Charleston,
snapping up any poor little coaster that wanted to
carry a few bales of cotton, perhaps, to Philadelphia.
See how Tom Jefferson, in his hatred of England, was
willing to build up factories of muskets and cannon.
H e wanted, of course, to build them at Harper's Ferry
if he could. But even he did not propose to buy our
gunpowder and our guns of an enemy. Did you ever
hear what old Dupont said to him — Dupont, grandfather of these Duponts ? "
I said I never had.
" Old Dupont stayed at Monticello, and Jefferson
hoped he would establish his powder mills there. But
Dupont would not. Jefferson asked him if he did not
like the water-power, or the climate, or what was the
matter?
' I do not like your black sheep/ said the
Frenchman.
So he went to Wilmington, and the
Duponts make powder there to this day.
" Poor Jefferson and Madison, while they were bullying the English about the Chesapeake, and impressment, and all that, they had occasion to strike some
medals for the heroes of the Algerine war. But they
had not in all America machinery strong enough to
stamp the medals, and so they had to ask the British

34

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

government to be good enough to strike them in the
English mint. That is pretty bad, — to have nursed
your free trade to such a point, that you must ask your
enemies to give the medals to your heroes!
"Well, to tell truth, the most practical.of the crew do
admit that, for what they call the absolute necessities of
war a nation must be independent. Even Toombs and
Jeff Davis and this Mr. Mills—free-traders, as they
were — did not expect the South, when she went to war
against the Union, would buy her powder of Dupont or
her cannon of Uncle Sam. Floyd did what he could ;
but stealing is one thing, and buying another. So all
free-trade systems are made to reserve certain exceptions, by which you make your own guns and cannon
and powder and shot. But where is this to stop ?
What is a ' necessity of life' ? I saw a charming Southern lady the other day. She told me that of all presents
she ever received in her life, a box of table salt was that
which, at the time it was given, was the most valuable
and the most prized. Is salt a necessity of war, or is it
not?
" Now, why was it not easy to make salt in the
South ? Why not make salt in Florida as well as in
Barnstable? The sea is as salt in one place as in
another. The difference is that in one place the people

AMERICAN SYSTEM.

35'

are used to making things, and in the other they are
not.
" The monitors, for instance. There was not a monitor when the war began. The second monitor which
was built — the Nahant— met in the mouth of the Savannah the Atlanta, which had been built in Savannah.
With the first shot of the Nahant the Atlanta was disabled. At the third shot the Atlanta hung out a white
handkerchief and struck. Why did not the Southern
workshop make as good a ship as the Northern workshop ? Why, because for two generations the men who
built the Atlanta had said it was better to have such
things built in England ; that that was the native country of machinery and iron ; that the North should catch
fish and the South sell cotton. But the Northern men
had not said any such thing. They had said that there
must be varied industries. They had said that, whether
screws cost them eleven cents a dozen or ten cents a
dozen, we must have the" ability to make screws in
America. Accordingly, when the time came, we could
make screws and we could make salt at this end of the
country, and we could make monitors. And they could
not at the other. The consequence was that they went
under. They are as brave as we are ; they can live on
half-rations as long as we. But, in the long run, a

36

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

nation that can make its own coats and trousers, and
shoes and stockings, and guns and ramrods, and locomotives and cars, and nails and screws and hammers,
beats the nation that cannot do these things. This is
the reason why we beat them. I do not wonder that
now, when Mr. Mills of Texas is at the top, he wants to
draw the lion's teeth ; that is natural enough. I do not
wonder that Mr. Cleveland wants to let him ; I wonder
at nothing which Mr. Cleveland wants to do. But I do
wonder that practical men in the North and West want
to try such an experiment.
As I said, war, when it
comes, teaches another lesson. The people do not call
manufacturers thieves and robbers, when they come and
say, * Please, how soon can you let us have a hundred
thousand uniforms, or a hundred thousand pairs of
shoes ?' 6 Please, how soon can we have ten thousand
carts and ten thousand tumbrils ?' Then you find out
that the ability to make a wagon which can carry the
supplies of an army, is an ability just as much needed
for war as is the ability to cast a cannon or make a
pound of powder.
" But all this has no great weight nowadays. People
take it for granted that peace is' to last forever. They
have not imagination enough to think out what it will
be to have a foreign fleet blockading every harbor —

AMERICAN

SYSTEM.

37

cutting off salt and pins and needles and cloth and nails
and the rest — leaving us the comfort of our lobsters
and wheat and corn and cotton and petroleum and pork
and whiskey. When that time comes, there will be no
free-traders about, and no one to ask why Henry Clay
called the tariff system ' t h e American system/ Henry
Clay remembered the war with England.''

No. VI.
T H E CHEAPEST

MARKET.

UNCLE
TOM came home from Boston a little
dejected.
I saw this at once, but I would not
ask him why.
We had to wait till after dinner, when the sedative of
his cigar began to act, as well as the refreshment of the
mutton and spinach.
"I have got another tariff story for you," he said
then. And of course I pressed him then to know
what it was, and I said frankly that I saw he was
displeased.
Then it appeared, that among his other errands in
Boston, he had gone to a large marble-worker. Uncle
Tom held a quarter of the stock in a little marble
quarry, some fifteen miles away from us, and, as the
only member of the concern who ever had other business in Boston, he was expected to make the large contracts there. All this he explained to me.
"And now it seems that half the marble work in Boston is to go to Belgium," he said. 'Buy in the lowest
market.'
That is the rule, you know. Market in

THE CHEAPEST MARKET.

39

Belgium lower than it is here. That is good free
trade. So our quarry yonder is to stop, and all the
people there are to go West to make grain, I suppose,
unless, indeed, they turn to be seamen and shipbuilders,
and bring cut marble from Belgium to Boston, and, when
they go back again, undersell the men who carry wheat
from Boston to Belgium now.
" The one thing certain is, that our quarry at King's
Crossing yonder is to be grown over with hardhack and
white birch. No more marble there/'
A disastrous strike in Boston had just changed the
difference between the cost of cut marble in Belgium
and that in Boston.
" Gravestones we shall still make,'' said Uncle Tom,
grimly, and yet with some fun. C( People do not like to
be ticketed for heaven with a Dutch ticket or a French
one. We are 'protected' there. But I suppose that
protection is un-Christian, too, as Mr. Garrison says
all protection is. Gravestones, however, we shall still
make. But your other marble work, — washstand tops,
soda fountain tops, all that thing, — ' buy in the cheapest
market'; so we shall buy in Belgium. My marble happens to be of that kind, — not the gravestone kind, — so
we must shut up."
With this he threw away half a cigar, and lighted

40

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

another, as if, by good luck, it might be better. This
is always an index that a man is deeply displeased.
" That is a fair instance of what Mr. Mills proposes to
do all round. This change in marble wages does not
begin to come up to the change his tariff makes and
must make — well, in five hundred kinds of work. But
just take this one and figure on it. Grant that you will
get your soda fountain as cheap as you get it before.
Observe, no one says you will get it any cheaper. But
you have a Belgian soda fountain instead of a Yankee
fountain. For this privilege you have shut up our
quarry, you have turned loose the hundred men we
employed; their houses rot down; you have put them
upon your labor market, and reduced just so far the
rate of wages. If they go and make wheat, as the freetraders bid them, you think wheat is so much cheaper.
" On the other hand, you have increased the need of
shipping. You have done so much for the navigation
interests of England and the rest of the world."
" A n d , " I interrupted him, "you have employed the
Belgian workman instead of ours. That is the Christian side of the change, and that is what Mr. Garrison
means when he says that free trade demands Christianity."
\
" Y e s , " said Uncle Tom, perfectly serious by this

THE CHEAPEST MARKET.

41

time, "that is what I am coming to. And now will
you consider who and what the Belgian workman is.
Is he, on the whole, better off there than he would be if
he came here ? Is it, on the whole, so desirable to have
people live in a population of four hundred and eighty to
the square mile, that you and I and Mr. Mills and Mr.
Cleveland should change our whole system of society in
order that the Belgian workman may stay in Belgium ?
" Or is it, on the whole, better for mankind that he
and his household shall come to a country where we
have not twenty people to a square mile, and where his
children will have the chances my children have, or
yours ? Ask Carl Schurz, for instance, whether the
Belgian workman is better off there than here.
" Now this is just the way that this soda fountain business is to work. The Belgian marble-cutter has heard
of America. He is hoping to come here. He wants
just what Mr. Cleveland wants — t o have gravestones
cheap in America. Just as he is about to come, his
boss comes into the shop and says in their lingo, ' Good
luck, boys, good luck; here is an order from America/
' Was ist das ?' they say, and they do not believe him.
All the same it is true. For some reason which the
boss does not understand the Americans have determined to make their soda fountains in Belgium. And

42

TOM TORREY's TARIFF TALKS.

he and his men make them, when last year Nahum
Spry and Joshua Whitcomb made them. H e and his
men all stay in Belgium.
" The United States, which had land to sell, does not
sell it to these men. These men grow up, as their
fathers grew up before them, and die as their fathers
died. And their children will grow up in the same
way. You have destroyed my quarry and settlement,
you have upset a hundred men here, and a hundred or
two in one marble shop or another, who did their work
in America last year.
You have made a little more
maritime commerce for our English friends. You have
injured, as far as you could, your own market for land
and wheat, you have ruined the only chance for improvement which your Belgian workmen had — and
this you call 'applied Christianity.'
"Now take your Mills tariff bill, and estimate on
about half a thousand various industries which it proposes to transfer to Europe, and you will see how much
and how little it is going to increase the stock of human
happiness.
" The truth is, that we receive well-nigh a million or
more people every year/with a good deal of money in
their pockets, too, — - because we have an American sys»
tem. They come and they will come, as long as we

THE CHEAPEST MARKET.

43

have an American system. One part of that system
is protection; another part is homesteads; another part
is free schools; another part is cheap books. It all belongs together. It hangs together.
" For my part, I do not see the Christianity of keeping the Belgian or the Englishman in a place where he
has not these chances, when he really wants to come
and take them.
" But Mr. Cleveland says he must be kept there, so
that I may have my pantaloons cheaper than these are,
which cost me three dollars.
" To tell the truth, Mr. Cleveland only put it on that
ground. H e never talked about Christianity. Not he.
He talked about nothings but money. He said that
it would be a great advantage to me to buy my trousers
for two dollars and ninety-five cents. I hope I may find
them when I have no marble to sell."

No. VII.
THE

COOKING-STOVE.

I H A D come into town late one evening, and I went
of course to Uncle Tom's house. They said he
ruined the hotel in the village, because his hospitality
made welcome all the travellers who were of any account, I do not know how that was. I only know that
I always put up at the "Hotel Torrey," and that there
was never any bill.
When I came down to breakfast I found a great deal
of fun in the dining-room. One of the girls was toasting bread at the open fire. One of the boys was tending the boiling of some eggs over a spirit lamp. In a
minute more Mrs. Torrey herself came in with a coffeepot, and summoned us all to breakfast. "You must
fare as well as you can/' she said, " and nobody is to
grumble."
Then it proved that, as Bridget poked out the fire in
the cooking-stove the day before, the grate had broken
into three or four pieces, and that "all the King's
horses and all the King's m e n " could not make any
fire until there was a new grate. So the coffee had to

THE COOKING-STOVE.

45

be made over a kerosene stove, some eggs were to be
scrambled over one lamp, and some boiled over another,
and so on, and so on, as every housekeeper knows must
happen sometimes.
But at dinner, when we met again, the usual superabundant hospitality of Uncle Tom's table was to be
observed — three times as much food as the company
could eat, and of such a variety that it was hard to know
what one was to choose.
I was so much at home there, that, after the first
pangs of hunger were satisfied for everybody, and after
Uncle Tom, and Jonathan, too, at his end of the table,
were relieved from the cares of carving, I asked for
some explanation of the rapid convalescence of the
stove, " Or had there been a new stove ?"
" N e w stove? No, indeed," said Uncle Tom, laughing. " No new stoves in this shebang. Ours is the old
respectable patent, double combination, single entry,
triple-valved Meteor and Banner, No. 2, and we cannot
think of cooking in any of your trumpery, every-day
affairs. No new stoves for us in this generation."
Everybody was laughing. It was clear that there
was some family joke about the stove, and I inquired
again. I said I was very stupid, but certainly at breakfast they had said the stove was very sick. Now, if I

46

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

could judge from the mutton and partridges and potatoes and soup, and all the " fixings" in general, the
stove was now very well again.
" T h e r e you have it," said Uncle Tom. " W a s very
sick. Is very well. Protective tariff again/'
This time I laid down knife and fork with unaffected
surprise. " Protective tariff, indeed ? Do you tell me
that Mr. Mills wants to ruin your breakfasts ?"
" I say nothing about Mr. Mills. But I guess Mr.
Mills knows the difference between a grate smashed
into four pieces and a new grate. And this is the difference between home industries and Birmingham industries. Mrs. Torrey has had a new grate made since
yesterday — that is all."
" New grate ?" said I, as stupid as before. " Do you
make stoves here ? "
"Stoves? No. This stove — I do not know — it is
made at Providence or Philadelphia — Troy, perhaps.
But all the thing wanted was a new grate. The stove
is an out-of-the-way thing, anyway, a fancy of my wife's
mother — wedding present, when we had our silver wedding. But when the grate broke yesterday, Huldah
tied up the four pieces, and sent them down by the
express to Carstairs, and asked him to make a new casting for her. Carstairs gave them to his moulder, and

THE COOKING-STOVE.

47

the man wired them together and made a mould from
them. They tap their furnace down there at eight in
the morning. T h e thing was cool at ten. Carstairs
put it on the up-train, and Bridget had a fire on it at
noon.
" But if Mrs. Torrey had had to send to England for
her casting, you would be eating dry beef and v cheese
and hardtack now, and for the next month, I am afraid."
We all laughed, and let him ride his hobby a little,
with some droll illustrations. But I was not going to
let an exaggeration of his take the place of an argument. I said that the Birmingham stove-dealer would,
of course, know his market. That he would not send
over stoves, without sending extra pieces of the parts
most likely to break. That Mrs. Torrey would then go
to the village, and inquire for the particular part which
she wanted, and buy that one piece, and that the law of
supply and demand would see to it that she had the
piece she needed. I was quite sure of this, because it
was all proved in Tract 999 of the Cobden Club, which I
would lend him, if he liked.
"Tell it to the marines," said Uncle Tom, incredulously. , " Law of supply and demand, indeed ! Do you
suppose that O'Hara, down there at the village, is going
to carry a lot of stoves or pieces of stoves, so as to take

48

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

the chances of our breakages here ? Not much ! No ;
when Mr. Cobden and Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Mills have
their way, that will be the end of our fads and fancies
in these things. We must all take what Birmingham
wants to send us. Supply and demand is not going to
fill up every special want of every special household.
And, as for Birmingham knowing exactly how Mrs.
Torrey and Bridget like to have a stove run — why, if
Birmingham knows that, it knows more than I do.
"Of course, though," he said more seriously, "this is
only an illustration. Home industries and varied industries mean that we can have artisans at our hands to do
what we want. Your man Pickering, at your Harvard
observatory, wants to make the smallest holes in a bit
of steel or brass that were ever made. He wants them
to study light with. Well, Harry Clay and the American system, home industry and varied industry, give to
him, right at his door, an ingenious workman, intelligent and sympathetic, who can make for him just the
tool he needs. Then he measures the light of a satellite
of Jupiter, and you all say, ' Great triumph of American
science.' So it is. Now, please imagine him writing
his directions for his tool to a merchant in Sheffield!
Or, my friend Watrous, in Missouri, is driving his sugar
mills night and day. Just the week when the sorghum

THE

COOKING-STOVE.

49

is all right he has a cog-wheel break. He telegraphs
to the next foundry, and his wheel is renewed in fortyeight hours. Where would Watrous be if he must telegraph to England ? His sap or juice will not wait for a
ten days' voyage."
I was reminded of what President White showed me
at Cornell. They wanted a set of the Olivier models,
so called, made by a man of that name in Paris. But
the man was dead. Three thousand dollars, which they
offered for one of the sets he made, would not buy them.
So, Dr. White went to their own instrument-maker in
Ithaca. He got up a better set, improving on Olivier's
plans, and they cost $700. But if, twenty years ago,
we had all " bought in the cheapest market," we should
have no instrument-maker here to-day, and no models.
Uncle Tom was pleased by my interruption, and then
went on to say:
" Do you suppose that all these inventions — typewriters, reapers, sewing-machines, planters — the whole
string of them -— would have lieen wrought out in a country that did not make its own machinery ?"
To this I replied, as Tract 999 had taught me, that
if there were need of machinists, there would be machinists, that if there were a market for stove casting, some
would be ready to make stove castings. He might be

5o

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

.sure of that, because supply and demand would see
to it.
" Supply and demand be blessed! " cried Uncle Tom.
"" I understand an Englishman's believing that, because
they know no better. But I do not think you believe
it, because you are a Yankee.
" Do you not see that the large market governs ?
What becomes of supply and demand up here, when I
demand early strawberries ? Will any strawberry man
in Norfolk send me two boxes of strawberries up into
the hills here, to take the chance of my eating them ?
Not much! But if there is a large market, — at Troy,
say, or New York, — he will be ready for that. Carstairs yonder, do you think he built his furnace for the
chance of odd jobs, while Birmingham was to have
the steady trade ? Not much. But now that Carstairs is
at work, why, the small jobs come to him with the large.
Tom, Dick, and Harry are running to him all the time
with this fad and that, and so, as I say, invention becomes possible, new things are started, and Carstairs
finds, like other good fellows, that he built better than
he knew.
" But if one thing is certain in trade, it is this. No
successful merchant means to go in for the margins and
scraps and pickings, after some one else has the cream

THE

COOKING-STOVE.

51

of the business. The tailor who sews on buttons for
you, and presses out an old coat for you, is, and knows
he is, debased, unless you give to him the standing
order for all your clothes. And if he is worth a straw,
he goes where he can get that order.
" I guess Mr. Mills understands that as well as I do.
The men of Texas are as bright as the men of Vermont.
I guess Mr. Mills knows why they do not invent typewriters, and sewing-machines, and reapers in Texas. I
think he knows why they couldn't make them if they
did invent them. Start a well-educated people like the
Americans with the understanding that they shall have,
on the whole, the run of the business, and they will
build for you the foundries, the forges, and the rest,
which you and they will come to regard as prime necessities. But if you choose to give to Birmingham and
the German shops nine-tenths of the business, you will
find that the other tenth will be done there also — or,
more likely, that it will not be done at all."

No. VIII.
WELL ENOUGH
r

ALONE.

I ^HE Cobden Club, or some of their correspondents,
•*• had called a meeting for what they called " Tariff
R e f o r m " ; and, with infinite difficulty, I had made
Uncle Tom go. The imported speaker was a person
of some note. The ladies were resolved to hear him,
and I flatly declared that I dared not drive the bays
down and back in the dark. If he would not drive, no
one could go.
As Uncle Tom is good-natured, he arrayed himself
for the evening, and went.
We had all the old jokes about raising our pineapples
in Wisconsirt and our coffee in Vermont. The people
did not laugh so much as they should have done, but
listened respectfully, as Vermonters will.
Nothing was said about the advantage of varied industries.
Nothing was said about the facilities which varied
industries give for the education of men according to
their ability.
Nothing was said about the manufacture at home of

WELL ENOUGH ALONE.

S3

articles necessary to National life, like cannon, powder,
shot, books, type, salt, machinery, and so on.
On the other hand, it was taken for granted that the
object dearest to all of us was money, and that each
man, so he got more money, was willing to see the
Nation, as a nation, go to the dogs.
Nothing was said about the place of the immigrants
who arrive here daily, nor about the advantage to a
nation which has hundreds of thousands of acres of
desert to sell, that it shall find customers for them %
It was never hinted that the tariff belongs with our
general system of popular education, of open promotion,
of free homesteads, of much " wealth in common." It
was never implied that to meddle with one is to meddle
with all.
The speaker did not seem to know that by destroying
one part of the system he might derange the other parts.
Indeed, he did not seem to have travelled much in his
own country.
H e always took it for granted that the duty added
just its own amount to the price of the article which
was sold, and did not seem to understand that there was
any home competition.
When he spoke of iron, he made no allusion to the
new iron fields of Alabama, but he referred only to the

54

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

established iron industries of past years.
Indeed,
he always spoke as if this were an old country,
and the period of preparation and education was
over.
When he was, done he said he should be glad to
answer any questions, and that there were some tariffreform tracts on the table for any who would like them.
But the people are not much in the habit of asking
questions — and, indeed, they seemed a little glad of
the chance to go home.
After a pause of a minute
or two, the chairman said another meeting would be
called in a few weeks, and people began to scatter
away.
Then somebody called out, " Tom Torrey! Tom
Torrey!" and the boys took it up, and cried, " Uncle
Tom! Uncle T o m ! " The chairman stepped forward
promptly, and said it would give great pleasure to him,
and to his friend, the speaker, and to the audience, he
was sure, if Mr. Torrey would speak. H e would have
entire freedom to say what he chose. Uncle Tom was
pleased. But he said :
" N o , Mr. Chairman. This is your meeting and not
mine. No man shall say that I captured another man's
meeting. But I believe the hall down stairs is not in
use. And if any one here likes to stop there, as he goes

WELL ENOUGH ALONE.

55

down, and our friend Mr. Haines will light up there, I
shall be very glad to speak a few minutes on the other
side. I shall not try to reply to the gentleman who has
spoken. I shall only say one thing, to which he has not
alluded/'
At this they all clapped. And as we worked our way
down but slowly, we found Mr. Haines rapidly lighting
up the lower hall, and an audience from above assembling there.
" I will not be long, my friends," said Uncle Tom, as
he laid off his overcoat and put it on a chair on the platform. " I will not answer our friend, passage by passage, of his speech. I will only tell a story, and then
you shall guess at the moral.
" There was a little fellow over on the other side of
the lake, and his father died, and left him a little sawmill. It was not much of a mill, but there was a good
fall of water, the saws were good, and the neighborhood
was growing. Sam was only eighteen years old when
bis father died. But they built up the forge village
there, and that big hotel at Bellevue was buijt, and he
cut all the lumber. Well, he doubled his business in a
few years. He had to put in new saws and build him a
new road and bridge, and then he doubled it again, and
after twenty years he had everything nice and comforta-

56

TOM-TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

ble, and none of 'em had to work very hard there. They
just cut the logs for them as hauled them, and pulled in
the money.
"Just then there came some men from Canada down
to see Sam, and they told him that his business had run
so well for twenty-six years that he had better give it all
up, and turn his water-fall and privilege into a plant for
making electric light for the hotel. They said he had ,
succeeded so well in wood-sawing that perhaps he would
succeed better in making electricity.
" Now Sam Allen is thinking that over now. What
shall you say if he takes out the saws ?"
A man on the front said, without much apology, that
he should say Sam was a blank fool.
And the people, in their several ways, said " Amen."
" I think so, too," said Uncle Tom. " And that is my
speech. Uncle Sam is the Sam Allen of my story. In
twenty-six years after the Morrill tariff was passed, he
doubled his property once, and then doubled the double.
All that his father, and theirs and theirs had made in
two hundred and fifty years, he doubled and doubled
again in twenty-six. And now Mr. Mills and Mr. Cleveland come and tell him that he has succeeded so well
that he had better give it all up, and try another plan
which will succeed better.

'

WELL ENOUGH ALONE.

$/

" A n d what is he to gain ? "
" Lower taxes," replied the imported speaker.
"Exactly," said Uncle Tom. " T h e taxes are to be
fifty million dollars less. There are sixty millions of us;
so my tax will be eighty-three cents a year less than it
was — one cent and a half a week. I shall walk into
town with Mrs. Torrey one day, and she will cheapen'a
bonnet, and I shall buy my week's stores. The quarry
will have gone up, and nobody will want my milk, and
the mill will shut down, and there will be no workmen
making things cheerful, and I shall have sold the bays.
You good fellows will all be in Dakota making corn.
But when I have got through my day's shopping, if
O'Hara has given me the right change, I shall have
saved two-thirds of a cent on my part of the day's business, and Mrs. Torrey will have saved two-thirds of a
cent on hers. O'Hara, I hope you will have small
change ready before that time.
" W e shall derange the business of a nation. But
those of us who have anything to spend will save a cent
and a half a week from the derangement.
" We shall upset a system which has made the country
so rich-that it does not know what to do with its money,
but we shall have this cent and a half a week, every man
of us, if the new experiment turns out as it should, —

58

TOM TORREY'S TARIFF TALKS.

and any man keeps his accounts close enough to know
what he has.
" I do not think we shall try the experiment.
" So you may put out the lights, Mr. Haines, and we
will all go home."

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