30 ($1,885,000,000) to the large sum of five thousand, three hundred million dollars ($5,369,000,000.) Protection has developed all our industries. The annual product of our coal mines has increased from fourteen million tons to ninety-six million tons, nearly seven fold. The various metal industries in i860 employed abouf 53,000 hands, consuming $100,000,000 worth of material, and producing $180,000,000 worth of annual product. To-day these same industries give employment to 300,000 hands, consume nearly four times as much material, and produce $600,- 000,000 in value in manufactured goods. “We ship copper to England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and twelve other countries, lead to these named and twenty-three others, and manufactures of iron to every nation in the world, except Greece. We exported to England last year iron castings, car-wheels, stoves, steam engines, other machinery ($1,000,000 worth), nails and other manufactures of iron ($500,000 worth), edge tools, cutlery, files and saws, fire-arms, and other manufactures of steel. We sent stoves to fifty-two countries, machinery to fifty, edge tools to forty-eight, nails, fire-arms, and other manufactures of steel, to forty-five countries each, files and saws to forty-two, castings to thirty-seven, cutlery to thirty-six, car-wheels, boilers, and stationary engines to twenty-two countries each, steel ingots to sixteen, sheet iron to fourteen, bar iron to thirteen, and rails, in spite of British competition, to Canada, Cuba, Mexico, and Brazil.” We sent over 21,000,000 pounds of leather to England last year, and boots, shoes, and harness to thirty-eight countries. Instead of sending all our cotton to England, that she may make it into cloth for us, we now use seven hundred and fifty million pounds yearly, twice as much as we required in i860. This shows an increasing home market. What if we were simply an agricultural country, as England would like us to be? No country entirely devoted to agriculture ever becomes rich. The farm and the spindle, the grain and the rolling mill, are necessary to each other. We import only one-tenth as much of cotton goods as we did in i860, and export now about one hundred and fifty million yards. In silk goods the increase has been more remarkable still. We have three times as many silk factories under protection as in i860, employing six times as many persons. We import*no more than in i860, and produce about six times as much silk. With all this prosperity why should we desire to change from protection to free trade ?
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