prevent the introduction of rifle-caliber machine guns has been the powerful opposition of the artillery, due in a great measure to an unreasoning and exaggerated fear that these weapons, if introduced, would threaten the very existence of the field artillery; but now that those who advocate the employment of this arm have forsaken their mistaken policy of pitting rifle-caliber machine guns against field guns, and the actual purpose of the weapons has at last been grasped, a decided reaction in favor of their employment in the field is evident. The object of rifle-caliber machine guns, as at present constructed, is to provide either of the other branches of the military service with an exceedingly powerful rifle fire, by means of weapons having the property of mobility in the highest degree. Such pieces should be treated as merely a cluster of rifle-barrels so arranged as to afford a greater power of rifle fire than is possible to be obtained from a similar number of rifles in the hands of soldiers, while capable of being moved with as great facility over any ground as infantry, and requiring but two or three men for their operation. In a few words, the use of rifle-caliber machine guns offers to a general the simplest and most effective means whereby to intensify rifle fire at any point of his position, without causing the offensive or defensive power of any other part to be weakened for this purpose.

Rapid-firing single-barreled shell guns possess some exceedingly important features for the military service, whether used in the field, as mountain guns, or for the armament of fortifications and earthworks. The properties that most strongly recommend these guns for service in the field are rapid fire, little or no recoil of gun-carriage, mobility, simplicity of mechanism and manipulation, and, lastly, the use of made-up or self-contained cartridges. It is difficult to conceive of more suitable guns for light horse artillery. Take, for instance, a battery of six rapid-firing three-pounder shell guns, each capable of discharging eight projectiles in half a minute, with deliberate aim between each shot. A battery of this nature could in this short period of time deliver forty-eight projectiles, equivalent to one hundred and forty-four pounds of metal; and if common shells were used, with one thousand four hundred and forty splinters, or for shrapnel shells, with two thousand and sixteen lead bullets. Such a rain of bursting shells would create terrible con

fusion, and have a most demoralizing and destructive effect if thrown amongst a body of troops; while if directed against earthworks or houses, the continuous fire of shell after shell would soon produce considerable damage. The comparative lightness of these weapons would permit of their being provided with an effective shield protection without reducing to any serious extent their property of mobility; besides, the additional weight of this shield would permit of a larger powder charge being used, with a corresponding increase in initial velocity, accuracy, and power. Three-pounder guns have been referred to, but six-pounders are also adapted for field service, by allowing them to recoil and automatically return to their original positions without causing their carriages to run back.

C. SLEEMAN.

BENEFITS OF THE TARIFF SYSTEM.

SO PERSISTENT has been the misrepresentation of the American policy of protection, and so ingeniously have its opponents employed the arts of sophistry to bring odium upon it, that though that policy has been the means of increasing the wealth of the United States to an extent without parallel, the adherents of one of our great political parties, numbering nearly half of the voters of the country, are supposed to be ready practically to abolish the system. The advocates of free trade assume the title of tariff-reformers; but their purpose is the destruction of the tariff system, not its reform. A reformed protective tariff should promote effectually the development of home industries; and that is the test of every project that purports to aim at tariff reform. Does it tend to favor the production here, rather than abroad, of the articles that we need? Does it tend to develop the natural resources of our own country, and to call into full play all the energies of the American people? If not, its object and tendency is eradication, not reform; retrogression, not progress.

Our political economists and our law-makers, if they would deal understandingly with the questions of free trade and protection, should, first of all, ascertain what is the full measure of our natural resources above and beneath the soil, and should have a clear apprehension of all the bearings of these questions upon the social condition of our whole people. The value of a manufactured article is made up almost entirely of the amount of labor expended in its production, and this is as true of the ton of ore taken out of the earth and made into a railroad truck as of the most ingenious piece of mechanism ever contrived; hence, in fixing the price of any product of American manufacture— which is done when the law-maker fixes the tariff at which a competing foreign product is admissible-account must be

taken of the price paid here and in foreign countries respectively, for the same amount and kind of labor, also of the respective rates of interest. In whatever specious phrases the builders of a party platform may express their concern for the welfare of the workingman, if they are not prepared to offer without ambiguity such a tariff on foreign manufactured goods as will cover the difference between the percentage of the cost represented by the wages and interest current in foreign countries and the wages and interest current in the United States respectively, their professions of friendship for the workingman must be largely discounted, and their declarations in favor of cherishing American industries will be seen to be a very transparent disguise. The test that the great army of workers must apply to all party platforms is one that the most skillful concocter of honeyed phrases cannot hope to elude; it is this: Does the party you represent favor the imposition on all imported manufactures of such a tariff as will bring the price up to what the same article would cost if manufactured here by American workingmen, receiving such wages as they are accustomed to receive, and by American capital receiving such interest as is customary in this country? No "tariff for revenue only," no "tariff for incidental protection," will stand this test.

The proportion of the cost of a manufactured article represented respectively by the raw material, and the wages of the labor employed in the process of manufacture, presents an interesting subject of inquiry. I am able to furnish from my own experience a few facts that throw some light upon it. Two or three years ago, in conjunction with some friends, I built a blast-furnace and rolling-mill which cost upward of $500,000. Of this sum not less than ninety-five per cent. was expended for labor, and not over five per cent. for the raw material. When I was planning the furnace, the iron was ore in the mine, the stone was still in the quarry, the bricks were clay. To transform them required labor, and that it was which gave them their value in the completed structure. Were such a furnace to be built in Europe, its cost would not exceed $300,000, wages there being sixty per cent. lower than here. So, too, with regard to interest on money. Our capitalists, being very timid on account of the continued tariff agitation, demand greater interest, $40,000 a year on $500,000, and $10,500 a year on $300,000. Here the interest on the cost of this blast-furnace would be about eight

per cent., at an average, North and South; while in Europe it would be only three and a half per cent. In the light of such facts, what possible chance of existence would American manufactures have, if they were to be exposed in the home market, to competition with the manufactures of countries where both labor and capital are so much cheaper?

We have here in abundance the skilled labor and the capital needed for the development of our vast natural resources. The application of labor to the stores of wealth hidden in the mine, latent in the forest and in the soil, is the source of our national prosperity. Before the advent of the white man, all this wealth was in the possession of the aboriginal race; but the red man was heedless of the treasure that nature had placed at his command, and his life was a continual struggle for a bare existence. The policy of free trade, whether frankly expressed or cunningly disguised, tends to the same consummation. The iron of Pennsylvania would lie unheeded in the mine; the looms of New England would be transported to other lands; there would be here no career for our enterprising and highly gifted population. I see not how these conclusions can be avoided; the utter ruin of at least half of our industries would inevitably follow the enactment of a tariff for revenue only, unless, indeed, the millions of workers consented to enter into competition with the workers of Europe, and to work for half the wages they now receive, with corresponding restriction of their enjoyment of the comforts and decencies of life. But we are not left to mere argumentation and inference when we seek to determine the outcome of a policy of free trade. From a study of what the policy of protection has done for our country, we may estimate precisely what results will follow if ever that policy is abandoned. We have only to read the history of the country's material progress since the enactment of the protective tariff, and to compare our condition since that period with our condition before; or we have only to compare to-day those States of the Union that accept cordially the doctrine of protection, with those that are in favor of free trade. The former are prosperous, opulent, and growing rapidly in wealth and population, in civilization and culture; while the latter in all these respects lag far behind. The South, with equal and in many cases superior natural resources, remains undeveloped, and is trying to force legislation to bring the North to the same condition.