cal action of the general government.
The South needed for its great staples of cotton, rice and tobacco the
freest access to the markets of the world, and unrestricted competition of
the world in its own market, and this the principle of protection denied
to it. For the grand purpose of the new policy of protection was to occupy
and retain as far and as fast as practicable, and in some cases a little
farther and faster, a monopoly of the home market for the products of the
new industrialism, and therefore to exclude foreign buyers and sellers
therefrom on equal terms with their domestic rivals. Owing to the
limitations of its peculiar labor the South was disabled from adapting
itself, as the North had just done, to changing circumstances and new
economic conditions, and so was deprived of participation in the benefits
of a high tariff. Its slave system and industrial prosperity were
accordingly caught by the free industrialism of the North at a fatal
disadvantage and pressed mercilessly to the wall.

And so it happened that the protective tariff which was welcomed as a boon
by one set of industrial interests in the Union was by another set at the
same time denounced as an abomination. But when the struggle between them
grew fierce and threatened to disrupt the sections a compromise was hit
upon and a sort of growling truce established for a season whereby the
industrial rivals were persuaded that, in spite of the existence of bitter
differences and memories, they could nevertheless live in peace and
prosperity under the same general government. The soul of the compromise
measures of 1833, which provided for the gradual abolishment, during nine
years, of the specific features of the high tariff objectionable to the
South, failed, however, to reach the real seat of the trouble, namely, the
counterexpanding movements of the two systems, with their mutual
inclinations during the operation, to encroach the one upon the other, and
a natural tendency on the part of the stronger to destroy the weaker in an
incessant conflict for survivorship, which would persist with the
certainty and constancy of a law of nature, compromise acts by Congress to
the contrary notwithstanding. And so the struggle for existence between
the two industrial forces went on beneath the surface of things. Meanwhile
modern industrialism was gaining steadily over its slave competitor in
social strength and political importance and power.

This conflict fo