There were others that complained in the same way that the higher cost of materials cut them off from a foreign market. Colonel Albert A. Pope, the great bicycle manufacturer of the day, said that he was shut out of South America by English makers. He could offset the extra wage cost here by his more efficient machinery and methods, but his materials were so much dearer that he could not compete. A manufacturer of neckwear and trimmings complained that he could not sell his goods in foreign markets because his imported materials cost too much. The carriage-builders claimed that previous to the Morrill tariff they had a market in Cuba and South America, but they had been run out entirely by France, who could put goods there at half the American price. The oil cloth manufacturer pleaded for free trade. “If you give us free trade, we can send goods to any part of the world and do an enormous business.”
Consumers of copper complained that they paid, in 1875, 23 cents in New York for copper which cost 18 in London; in 1879, 17.5 for what cost 12.2 in London; in 1880, 20 for what cost 13.5 in London. Indeed, importers and manufacturers had at times been able to buy American copper in London so much cheaper than at home that it had paid them to buy it there and send it here. (It came in duty-free if proved to be an American product.)
Nor were the high protectionists even in steel and iron without opposition from men who, like them, profited from the growth of iron and steel industries. Mr. Abram S. Hewitt of New York, for instance, declared that from his point of view the duties were altogether too high, profits unfairly large. In speaking of steel profits he said: “I have never known any such profits in connection with anything with which I have had anything to do;” a statement which confirmed everything which could be learned about the carefully concealed profits of that industry—for instance, not long before this in a law-suit involving the estate of J. Edgar Thompson, the fact had been brought out that he had received as high as 77 per cent per annum as dividends on his steel holdings.
A sinister phase of the testimony was the recurrence of the word monopoly. The theory of Mr. Kelley and his kind had been, of course, that when in consequence of high protection the manufacturing of an article became profitable, capital rushed in to take advantage, and such competition resulted that prices eventually fell lower than they were abroad. But it was not working that way. In the steel and iron business, for instance, as soon as prices began to go down from interior competition a combination to keep them up resulted. It was even shown in the hearings that in 1878 the Vulcan Works of St. Louis had been paid to shut down.