n from taxation and the relief of
cyclone sufferers in Beaufort, South Carolina.

The Negro Congressman, too, had an interest in the more important
economic questions. On the question of the tariff several Congressmen
expressed opinions. In the Forty-second Congress, Josiah T. Walls
sought to amend the tax and tariff bill relative to certain
commodities produced in the State of Florida.[88] He favored a tariff
for protection as opposed to one for revenue only. During a similar
discussion, in the House, John R. Lynch, a member of the Forty-seventh
Congress, urged a protective tariff[89] for 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