Special interest protectionism and the antebellum woolen textile industry: a contemporary issue in a historical context

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Nov, 2006 by Grant D. Forsyth

However, an examination of the Annals of the Congress of the United States (December 8, 1819: 708-710) reveals that the creation of the Committee on Manufactures was done with surprisingly little discussion or verbal opposition. Representative Peter Little of Maryland argued that the concerns and demands of manufactures had become sufficiently different to warrant their own committee. The chair of the existing Committee of Commerce and Manufactures, Representative Thomas Newton of Virginia, argued that the current committee was sufficient to meet and balance the demands of both commercial and manufacturing interests. The House quickly approved the new committee by a vote of the whole. However, the Senate Committee on Manufactures was not created until the start of the 19th Congress, six years later. It is not clear why the Senate waited to create its own Committee on Manufactures, but an examination of Register of Debates in Congress (December 7, 1825; 1st Session 19th Congress: 1-4) shows that the arguments for and against the creation of the Senate committee mirrored those given six years earlier in the House. After a short debate, the Senate overwhelmingly approved the new committee by a vote of the whole.

Table 3 shows the members serving on the Committee on Manufactures for selected Congresses, their party affiliation (Martis 1989), their home state, and the strength of party and sectional (North-South) voting as measured by averaging the Poole and Rosenthal (1985, 1987, 1991, and 1995) party loyalty and sectional voting index scores for each committeeman.

The Z statistics show the number of standard deviations away the committees' average index scores are from the population mean of the entire House or Senate for the same Congress. For the 19th through 22nd Congresses, a positive party loyalty index indicates a party bias in favor of tariffs when voting; a negative sectional index indicates a voting bias in favor of Northern economic interests. (11) Tables 1 and 3 highlight that the committee in both houses was largely dominated by legislators from states where the woolen industry and other growing manufacturing industries were located.

Since the House Committee on Manufactures would be the starting point for most tariff legislation, and the destination of petitions from manufacturing interests, of all the elected officials present at the convention, the most important was Representative Rollin Mallary of Vermont, Chair of the House Committee on Manufactures for the 19th through 21st (1825-1831) Congresses. (12) This is especially true if one takes into account that between the 19th and 20th Congresses there had been a substantial change in congressional membership such that it "was the first time in American history that a presidential administration [that of John Adams] was faced with control of both chambers of Congress by the opposition [the supporters of Andrew Jackson]" (Martis 1989: 30). As a result, Mallary, an Adams supporter, was chairing a Committee on Manufactures dominated by Jackson supporters, which included a member from South Carolina (see Table 3). By 1827, Jackson's supporters, many of whom were fellow Southerners, were either openly hostile toward the protective tariff or, as in the case of Jackson himself, increasingly ambivalent toward the supposed benefits of protectionism (see Schlesinger 1945; Bemis 1956; Ellis 1987). (13) This was in sharp contrast to the House and Senate Committees on Manufactures in the 19th Congress; Adams's supporters had dominated these committees, and the 1827 bill still failed. Thus, if the woolen industry was to be successful in the 20th Congress, Mallary's support would be crucial in maintaining the duties requested by the Harrisburg Convention.