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Subject Area: Economics
Topic: Free Trade

ESSAY No. XCII. - Condy Raguet, The Principles of Free Trade [1835]

Edition used:

The Principles of Free Trade illustrated in a series of short and familiar Essays originally published in the Banner of the Constitution, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 1840).

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ESSAY No. XCII.

march 23, 1831.

The trade of the Western country. Practical operation of.

THE following article is copied from the “Cincinnati Daily Advertiser,” of March 3d:

“Shipments from Cincinnati.—We have conversed with a number of gentlemen engaged in the pork business, and, from the best information we can obtain, the returns (at usual prices) for pork, bacon, and lard, shipped from this port this season, will not fall short of one million and a half of dollars. The quantity put up here, and in the vicinity, to Dayton included, is greater than it ever has been. We have it from good authority, that there are now twenty-five thousand barrels of flour at Dayton, together with a quantity of whiskey, pork, bacon, lard, &c., waiting the opening of the canal, which, judging from the appearance of it yesterday, will not be navigable for several days to come—it has now been closed nearly three months, and has occasioned much loss and distress to the upper part of the city. The extra business, and the facility of getting to market at the most desirable time, would, in two or three years, pay for turning it into a rail-road.”

Almost the whole of the above quantity of pork, bacon, and lard, descends the Ohio and Mississippi river, to New Orleans, from which it is shipped to the West Indies, or the Atlantic cities, except the part which is consumed in Mississippi and Louisiana. Let us now compare the result of this operation, as it is now carried on, with what would take place if our duties on foreign commodities were low.

In exchange for this produce, the Ohio farmer no doubt desires to get, out of the store of the merchant who buys it of him, as many store goods as the merchant can be induced to give; and would he not, therefore, be greatly benefited, if the merchant could afford to sell him goods at a cheaper rate—or, what is the same thing, if the merchant could afford to give him more dry goods, sugar, salt, iron, and such other things as he might want, in exchange for his pork, bacon, and lard? Now, if it were not for the present high duties, there is not a single article that the farmer desires to get at the store in Dayton or Cincinnati, which could not be purchased at a much cheaper rate than now; and the only question for him to decide, in order to enable him to judge how far he is benefited or injured by high duties, is this: Should I get as high a price for my pork, bacon, and lard, if the duties on foreign goods were reduced, as I now get? To this question there could be but one answer. If duties were reduced, we should consume more foreign goods, because they would be cheaper, and other nations, finding us to become better customers in buying of them, would necessarily buy more of us. The market for pork, bacon, and lard, would consequently be extended—more could be sold, at the same price, whilst of all store goods the prices would fall. But, not only would the foreign demand increase—the domestic demand would also increase. The saving of the great mass of the people, in getting their foreign goods cheaper than before, would give them the means of buying more pork, bacon, and lard. How a truth, so self-evident as this, can long remain concealed from the Ohio farmers, we are not able to imagine.