. It is not an article of changeable fashion, but of absolute,
permanent necessity, and such, therefore, as would always meet a steady
demand. Sir, I think it would be well for the chairman of the committee
to revise his premises, for I am persuaded that there is an ingredient
properly belonging to the calculation which he has misstated or
omitted. Swedes iron in England pays a duty, I think, of about $27 per
ton; yet it is imported in considerable quantities, notwithstanding the
vast capital, the excellent coal, and, more important than all perhaps,
the highly improved state of inland navigation in England; although I am
aware that the English use of Swedes iron may be thought to be owing in
some degree to its superior quality.

Sir, the true explanation of this appears to me to lie in the different
prices _of labor_; and here I apprehend is the grand mistake in the
argument of the chairman of the committee. He says it would cost the
nation, as a nation, nothing, to make our ore into iron. Now, I think it
would cost us precisely that which we can worst afford; that is, great
_labor_. Although bar-iron is very properly considered a raw material in
respect to its various future uses, yet, as bar-iron, the principal
ingredient in its cost is labor. Of manual labor, no nation has more
than a certain quantity, nor can it be increased at will. As to some
operations, indeed, its place may be supplied by machinery; but there
are other services which machinery cannot perform for it, and which it
must perform for itself. A most important question for every nation, as
well as for every individual, to propose to itself, is, how it can best
apply that quantity of labor which it is able to perform. Labor is the
great producer of wealth; it moves all other causes. If it call
machinery to its aid, it is still employed, not only in using the
machinery, but in making it. Now, with respect to the quantity of labor,
as we all know, different nations are differently circumstanced. Some
need, more than any thing, work for hands, others require hands for
work; and if we ourselves are not absolutely in the latter class, we are
still most fortunately very near it. I cannot find that we have those
idle hands, of which the chairman of the committee speaks. The price of
labor is a conclusive and unanswerable refutation of that idea; it is
known to be higher with us than in any other civilized state, and this
is the greatest of all proofs of genera