Pennsylvania Iron Memorial [pp. 1-22]

1852.] Pennsylvania Iron Memorial. 5
takings, or that any other class of our fellow-citizens do
not make money as fast as they desire, surely cannot be
considered as a grievance from which they are to be relieved by the government. Is the iron master to be made
an exception to this rule? Oh, no, answers Senator
James, the cotton manufacturer must compose a part of
this prerogative class. Just so, in Great Britain, does
Blackwood contend for the corn growers. They, too,
must have the monopoly of prices.
"The policy of purchasing in the cheapest market (we
are told by the memorialists,) sends all the world to Great
Britain for iron." This they are anxious to prevent oil
the part of the citizens of the United States, aiid perhaps
for reason of the fact they state, that "there the cost of
making iron is one itaif less Uzan it gre, and is in still gre ater disproportion with all other nat~ons." One would suppose, primafacie, that such a reason could scarcely satisfy
"the wisdom of all interests and all parties," which \hey
invoke to the consideration and preparation "of suen a
system as will be permitted to stand."
The grievance which the memorialists wish removed,
appears to us nothing more nor less than the British
market, "to which the people of the United States, and in
fact all the world," must ever be rnnning for cheap iron.
"The difficulty (say these disinterested memorialists) is
that the manufacturers and merchants of that country are
not governed [as all the rest of the world are] by the cost
of production in selling their commodities, but by the cxtent and urgency of the demand. When there is a demand, the prlees are at the highest; when there is not, the
world is invited to a cheap market." And this stuff is
placed before "the wisdom of all interests and parties to
be applied to the preparation of such a system as will be
permitted to stand ~" Now, really, we have been foolish
enough to suppose that if ther~ was any demand for a
commodity, whoever could make that commodity at one
half the cost of any one else, might afford to sell for one
half the price of any body else; and, that if there is any
grievance in a man's making that which nobody wants,
at least at his price, it is a grievance of which he has no
right to complain, or to have removed at the expense of
others.
But the memorialists intimate that as Great Britain is