The true reason, Sir, why it is not our policy to compel our citizens to
manufacture our own iron, is that they are far better employed. It is an
unproductive business, and they are not poor enough to be obliged to
follow it. If we had more of poverty, more of misery, and something of
servitude, if we had an ignorant, idle, starving population, we might
set up for iron makers against the world.

The committee will take notice, Mr. Chairman, that, under our present
duty, together with the expense of transportation, our manufacturers are
able to supply their own immediate neighborhood; and this proves the
magnitude of that substantial encouragement which these two causes
concur to give. There is little or no foreign iron, I presume, used in
the county of Lancaster. This is owing to the heavy expense of land
carriage; and as we recede farther from the coast, the manufacturers are
still more completely secured, as to their own immediate market, against
the competition of the imported article. But what they ask is to be
allowed to supply the sea-coast, at such a price as shall be formed by
adding to the cost at the mines the expense of land carriage to the sea;
and this appears to me most unreasonable. The effect of it would be to
compel the consumer to pay the cost of two land transportations; for, in
the first place, the price of iron at the inland furnaces will always be
found to be at, or not much below, the price of the imported article in
the seaport, and the cost of transportation to the neighborhood of the
furnace; and to enable the home product to hold a competition with the
imported in the seaport, the cost of another transportation downward,
from the furnace to the coast, must be added. Until our means of inland
commerce be improved, and the charges of transportation by that means
lessened, it appears to me wholly impracticable, with such duties as any
one would think of proposing, to meet the wishes of the manufacturers of
this article. Suppose we were to add the duty proposed by this bill,
although it would benefit the capital invested in works near the sea and
the navigable rivers, yet the benefit would not extend far in the
interior. Where, then, are we to stop, or what limit is proposed to us?

The freight of iron has been afforded from Sweden to the United States
as low as eight dollars per ton. This is not more than the price of
fifty miles of land carriage. Stockholm, therefore, for the purpose of
this arg