16. Lampblack, and other painters' colors.
17. Gunpowder.
Besides manufactories of these articles, which are carried on as regular trades, and have attained to a considerable degree of maturity, there is a vast scene of household manufacturing which contributes more largely to the supply of the community than could be imagined without having made it an object of particular inquiry. This observation is the pleasing result of the investigation to which the subject of this report has led and is applicable as well to the Southern as to the Middle and Northern States. Great quantities of coarse cloths, coatings, serges, and flannels, linsey-woolseys, hosiery of wool, cotton, and thread, coarse fustians, jeans, and muslins, checked and striped cotton and linen goods, bedticks, coverlets and counterpanes, tow linens, coarse shirtings, sheetings, toweling, and table linen, and various mixtures of wool and cotton and of cotton and flax are made in the household way, and in many instances to an extent not only sufficient for the supply of the families in which they are made, but for sale, and even in some cases for exportation. It is computed in a number of districts that two-thirds, three-fourths, and even four-fifths of all the clothing of the inhabitants are made by themselves. The importance of so great a progress as appears to have been made in family manufactures within a few years, both in a moral and political view, renders the fact highly interesting.
Neither does the above enumeration comprehend all the articles that are manufactured as regular trades. Many others occur which are equally well established, but which not being of equal importance have been omitted. And there are many attempts, still in their infancy, which though attended with very favorable appearances could not have been properly comprised in an enumeration of manufactories already established. There are other articles also of great importance, which, though strictly speaking, manufactures, are omitted as being immediately connected with husbandry: Such are flour, pot and pearl ashes, pitch, tar, turpentine, and the like.
There remains to be noticed an objection to the encouragement of manufactures of a nature different from those which question the probability of success. This is derived from its supposed tendency to give a monopoly of advantages to particular classes at the expense of the rest of the community, who, it is affirmed, would be able to procure the requisite supplies of manufactured articles on better terms from foreigners than from our own citizens, and who, it is alleged, are reduced to necessity of paying an enhanced price for whatever they want by every measure which obstructs the free competition of foreign commodities.
It is not an unreasonable supposition that measures which serve to abridge the free competition of foreign articles have a tendency to occasion an enhancement of prices; and it is not to be denied that such is the effect in a number of cases; but the fact does not uniformly correspond with the theory. A reduction of prices has, in several instances, immediately succeeded the establishment of a domestic manufacture. Whether it be that foreign manufacturers endeavor to supplant, by underselling our own, or whatever else be the cause, the effect has been such as is stated, and the reverse of what might have been expected.
