wealth has resulted from some patent which has given them a monopoly in
particular branches of manufacturing, or from some other advantage which
they have employed exclusively in their business. In such cases they
would have prospered without protection as with it. I think there are
few, except in the very inception of a manufacturing enterprise, or in
abnormal cases growing out of war or destruction of property, or the
combinations of large amounts of capital, where protection alone has
enriched men. The result is the robbery of the consumer with no ultimate
good to most of the protective industries.

At a meeting of the textile manufacturers in Philadelphia the other
day, one of the leading men in that interest said: "The fact is that the
textile manufacturers of Philadelphia, the centre of the American trade,
are fast approaching a crisis, and realize that something must be done,
and that soon. Cotton and woollen mills are fast springing up over the
South and West, and the prospects are that we will soon lose much of
our trade in the coarse fabrics by reason of cheap competition. The
only thing we can do, therefore, is to turn our attention to the higher
plane, and endeavor to make goods equal to those imported. We cannot do
this now, because we have not a sufficient supply either of the culture
which begets designs, or of the skill which manipulates the fibres."

What a commentary this upon protection, which has brought to such
a crisis one of the chief industries protected, and which is here
confessed to have failed, after twenty years, to enable it to compete
even in our own markets with foreign goods of the finer quality! What
is true of textile manufacturing is also true of many other industries.
What remedy, then, will afford the American manufacturer relief? Not
the one here suggested of increasing the manufacture of goods of finer
quality, for, aside from the impracticability of the plan, this will