The free-trader replies that the fall in price has been still greater in the foreign market, and the protectionist rejoins that the reduction was made to compete with the American product, and that the former price would probably have been maintained so long as the importer had the monopoly of our market.

Thus our protective tariff reduced the price in both countries.

This has notably been the result with respect to steel rails, the production of which in America has reached a magnitude surpassing that of England.

Meanwhile rails have largely fallen in price to the consumer, the home manufacture has disbursed countless millions of money among American laborers, and has added largely to our industrial independence and to the wealth of the country.
While many fabrics have fallen to as low a price in the United States as elsewhere, it is not to be denied that articles of clothing and household use, metals and machinery, are on an average higher than in Europe.

The difference is due in large degree to the wages paid to labor, and thus the question of reducing the tariff carries with it the very serious problem of a reduction in the pay of the artisan and the operative.