the price of copper. If this result should follow the
passage of the bill, a tax for the exclusive benefit of a single class
would be imposed upon the consumers of copper throughout the entire
country, not warranted by any need of the Government, and the avails of
which would not in any degree find their way into the Treasury of the
nation. If the miners of Lake Superior are in a condition of want, it
can not be justly affirmed that the Government should extend charity to
them in preference to those of its citizens who in other portions of the
country suffer in like manner from destitution. Least of all should the
endeavor to aid them be based upon a method so uncertain and indirect as
that contemplated by the bill, and which, moreover, proposes to continue
the exercise of its benefaction through an indefinite period of years.
It is, besides, reasonable to hope that positive suffering from want,
if it really exists, will prove but temporary in a region where
agricultural labor is so much in demand and so well compensated. A
careful examination of the subject appears to show that the present
low price of copper, which alone has induced any depression the mining
interests of Lake Superior may have recently experienced, is due to
causes which it is wholly impolitic, if not impracticable, to contravene
by legislation. These causes are, in the main, an increase in the
general supply of copper, owing to the discovery and working of
remarkably productive mines and to a coincident restriction in the
consumption and use of copper by the substitution of other and cheaper
metals for industrial purposes. It is now sought to resist by artificial
means the action of natural laws; to place the people of the United
States, in respect to the enjoyment and use of an essential commodity,
upon a different basis from other nations, and especially to compensate
certain private and sectional interests for the changes and losses which
are always incident to industrial progress.

Although providing for an increase of duties, the proposed law does not
even come within the range of protection, in the fair acceptation of the
term. It does not look to the fostering of a young and feeble interest
with a view to the ultimate attainment of strength and the capacity
of self-support. It appears to assume that the present inability for
successful production is inherent and permanent, and is more likely
to increase than to be gradually overcome; yet in sp