Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/191

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Negro Congressmen A Generation Later
161

or cotton, lumber, and sugar. His argument was that the cotton producers of the South were in favor of a protective tariff. When its producing class (meaning labor) was slave, when all of its products were exported, when all of its wants were supplied from without, and when cotton was its only interest, the South favored cheap labor and free trade. At this time, however, labor was free as distinguished from slave, and it therefore added to the cost of production, while jute, sugar, rice, lumber, and manufactures in the embryonic stage, shared with cotton the interests of producers. These changed conditions, he maintained, demanded for the South a policy of reasonable protection.

Regarding protection as a panacea for all the economic ills of the South, Lynch asserted that it would foster the growth of industries, permit the manufacturing interests to develop, and prevent the recurrence of a situation in which the whole output of raw material is shipped to a foreign market and sold at a price fixed by market, whereas goods manufactured from this same raw material are shipped to the South and sold at a price dictated by the sellers. He said, moreover, that a protective tariff would effect a decrease of American imports in cotton goods and at the same time an increase of employment among the folks at home. With reference to tariff on sugar and lumber, Lynch held that the South needed diversified industries, that the investment of capital in the South was essential to a diversification of industries, that a reasonable interest must be guaranteed to attract the capital, and that inasmuch as protection afforded the only way whereby the interest could be assured, protection for these industries was nationally demanded.

Any consideration of the merits of the arguments advanced by Lynch must not overlook the fact that protection has been the policy of the nation during its periods of remarkable growth. Two arguments largely supported this policy. In the first place, it was early conceived that pro-