Publication titled Salt; April 20, 1871

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Publication titled Salt; April 20, 1871

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People

Alcorn, J. L. (James Lusk), 1816-1894 Barker, J. W.Hewson, H. F.

Events

Crime Crime--Theft Criminal Procedure--Indictments Military Events--Blockade Political elections Taxation

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Under Review

Organizations and Businesses

Free Trade League Mills Mississippi. Executive Department Newspapers Newspapers--New York World (N.Y.)Newspapers--The Evening Post (New York, Ny.)Onandaga Solar Salt Co. (Syracuse, N.Y.)Salt mines United States. Congress

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Commercial agents Contractors Manufacturers Merchants Newspaper editors Public prosecutors Salt workers Secretaries Speculators

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Buffalo (N.Y.)California Canada Carmen (Cal.)Chicago (Ill.)Cincinnati (Ohio)Cleveland (Ohio)Detroit (Mich.)Goderich (West Canada)Lake Erie (Mich.)Lake Michigan (Mich.)Michigan Milwaukee (Minn.)Mississippi River New England New York (N.Y.)New York (State)Ohio Pennsylvania Saint Louis (Mo.)Syracuse (N.Y.)Toledo (Ohio)

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Nationality--British

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SALT.

ANOTHER LETTER
TO THE
NEW YORK WORLD.

SYRACUSE, N. Y.
1871.

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Onondaga Salt.

To the Editor of the New York World:—

The "Salt Swindlers of Syracuse," as you courteously and elegantly call us, beg to have a few more words with you. You say we shall be "abundantly gratified" when we seek discussion, and therefore we feel encouraged to ask again a small space in your columns.

And first, we thank you very much for publish-ing our letter to you of March 18th. True, you delayed three weeks after we sent it to you, but we found other means of getting it before the public, and therefore we did not suffer greatly by your delay. True, also, you prefaced it with a fresh attack three columns long, but we find a compensation in your pleasant and gentlemanly style of composition. On the whole, we do not feel inclined to take your advice and close up our business, and we wish we could persuade you to think better both of our business and of our-selves.

You have so often called us "swindlers," or used towards us other terms of that import, that we suppose you must by this time believe what you say. It seems useless, therefore, so far as you are concerned, to plead to the indictment. Indeed we have such confidence in your judg-ment that our own impressions as to who and what we are, are becoming somewhat confused. You will therefore please to take our general confession of guilt, and we will content ourselves with urging some extenuating circumstances upon your compassionate consideration.

You say we are monopolists (and of course swindlers), first because "on the coast of Califor-nia there is an island (Carmen) where salt can be shoveled up free gratis," and you add that the tariff on salt prevents this from being done. We confess our guilt in respect to this island, but urge in mitigation that we never heard of it before. We moreover deferentially suggest that, inasmuch as it would cost us about ten dollars a barrel to produce and send our salt across the continent, and inasmuch as the article can be had on this island for nothing, we see no reason why the peo-ple of California should not supply themselves. The duty would be precisely fifty cents and four

-mills for each barrel of two hundred and eighty pounds. The people would have cheap salt, and each person consuming it would have in addition the patriotic satisfaction of contributing about ten cents per annum to the revenue of our gov-ernment. Being, as we are, culprits as to this island, we make the suggestion with diffidence.

Your next charge against us, and you prove by a letter from a Michigan salt producer, that we have competed for the markets in the States lying on the great lakes and the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, by selling at low prices, and have thereby caused loss to other salt producing interests. This is so very unusual for individuals and com-panies engaged in the same kind of business that we suppose it must involve some great moral depravity. But we plead in extenuation of our guilt, that in the very markets where this com-petition has taken place our prices have been, with great uniformity, just a shade better than those charged by our rivals. If we have compet-ed with them they have competed with us, and it would be very hard to tell who has suffered most. No doubt we are all swindlers and pirates because we did not combine for protection against one another.

But you make it a still more serious ground of accusation that we do not any longer continue this destructive competition, but have actually come to a friendly understanding with the Western salt producing interests, for the pur-pose of avoiding the mutual losses to which you refer. Of course we are guilty of this offence also, but as none of our customers complain we think you ought to be merciful. We suggest, morever, that this count in your indictment is so totally inconsistent with the other, that you, as the prosecutor, ought to elect upon which you will stand. You are not pleased if we compete and reduce prices, nor if we unite and raise them. We wish we could conduct our affairs more to your satisfaction.

We are greatly perplexed with a doubt whether we have sinned most in charging high or in charging low prices for our salt. In your

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minds the latter offence seems the gravest offence, for we are accused by you of furnishing cheap salt, also in the New York market and to the fishermen of New England, very much to the prejudice of the trade in the foreign article. We humbly confess the fact that we have been selling vast quantities of salt in those markets at very low rates. But our excuse is that we have always tried to get better prices and could not. We suppose we ought to have kept our salt at home, or rather we should not have made it at all. Such is manifestly your opinion, and we can only plead that the trading and business portion of mankind have generally acted on a different theory.

But here is your indictment in regard to the Canada market:—You say, "Again in Canada where no duty is imposed on the import of salt, the Onondaga Company sell cheaper salt than they will sell from their own works in Syracuse and cheaper than foreign salt can be imported. An attempt was made to produce salt in Goderich, Canada West, but the Syracuse Company at once invaded Canada, established an agency and sold salt at $1.60, thus disposing of that infant industry." This is perhaps the worst of all our sins. We have not only, as you show, been selling salt cheap all over the United States (ex-cept in the territory immediately around us) but we have actually crossed the Great Lakes with a home production and taken possession of a foreign market! And for this offence you think we ought to receceive condign punishment. It may be that your judgment is slightly influenced by your unconcealed preference of foreign over domestic interests.

But before your final sentence is pronounced, we ask your leave to state the facts. There was a time when we did take the large market of Upper Canada, and we kept there an important agency. But the salt mines or waters of Gode-rich were discovered and developed. So far from our "disposing of that infant industry" it ef-fectually disposed of us by driving us out of that market. We were compelled to close our agency and we now send no salt to Canada. The knowl-edge of this fact will be to you the occasion of pleasant thoughts and emotions, and will, we hope, engender more kindly feelings towards us.

We confess the truth of the charge that we have often sold salt in the country around our works at higher prices than we have got at the more distant markets of the West, the seaboard, and Canada. It is an extenuating circumstance that if a small population near to us have paid more, the great populations at a distance have

-paid less. If the few do not indict us for this offence, why should you who profess to speak for the many? The grievance of which you com-plain is not that we sell at home for too much, but that we sell away from home for too little. For this reason you wish to crush us. You plead not for the people, but for foreign salt in-terests. We compete with them, as you persist in saying, with our low prices, and therefore you denounce us and denounce the tariff which en-ables us to do so. Again, it may seem to you strange and anomalous that we should sell the cheaper the further we carry our salt. But we respectfully suggest that the laws of trade have something to do with this. If we carry a barrel of salt one thousand miles and find there other barrels of salt produced near by and competing with us at low rates, we must sell for what we can get, or withdraw from the market. What we can do in markets distant from us, other salt interests can do and have the right to do in markets distant from them and near to us. The law of trade is the great regulator of us all. Generally speaking all people who have com-modities for sale are allowed to sell in all places for what they can reasonably get. We are the only exception that we have heard of.

Some other matters contained in your article claim a brief attention. We told you in our former letter that a bushel of loose salt cost us last year at the works twent three and one-half cents, and that so far from making profits on our sales we sustained a very serious loss. We courteously invited you to an examination of the facts and figures. Without examination you deny our statements, on the authority of some nameless fool or monstrous liar, who writes, you say, from Syracuse. This writer tells you, and you swallow his statement, that if a bushel of salt cost twenty-three and one-half cents, a barrel of five bushels would cost $1.17 1/2, and consequently at the prices per barrel for which we sold we must have made enormous profits.

You will now please to observe that when loose salt is put into a barrel, the cost of the pack-ing and of the barrel must be added. This amounted last year to fifty cents, and thus we have $1.67 1/2 as the prime cost at home of a bar-rel of salt. You will please to observe further, that nearly all our salt is sold by agents, and that the average cost or commission at the agencies is ten cents per barrel. Thus you will see that in order to save ourselves from actual loss, our salt must net at our works $1.77 1/2 per barrel. But we pay also for freights to New York twenty-five cents, to the ports of Lake Erie twenty-five cents,

and to the ports of Lake Michigan thirty-five cents. Those are our principal markets, and you will see at a glance that to avoid loss we must have sold in New York at $2.02 1/2, at Toledo at $2.02 1/2, and at Chicago at $2.12 1/2. Your name-less correspondent tells you that we sold under these figures, except the small quantities we sell at home.

As we do not intend to have our statement ca-villed at again by some knave, demagogue or idi-ot, we will be more precise as to the cost of a barrel of salt:—

Cost of fuel and boiling common salt was 17 cents per bushel, or per barrel of 5 bushels	$ [gap] 85
The State duty, 1 cent per bushel	5
Packing per barrel	6
Cask or barrel	44
Rent of the salt blocks	20
Taxes of all kinds and local expenses	10
Total prime cost per barrel	$1.70

Our solar salt, constituting about one-fourth of our production, is produced about fifteen cents per barrel cheaper, and the average result is $1.67 1/2, as above stated. The cost of transpor-tation and of agencies must be added before you can compare the cost with the prices in our ex-tended markets. If you can descend to facts and will look into these figures, you will know some-thing about the business of which you speak so flippantly and yet so wildly. You will begin to see how and why we sustained last year the loss of which we told you, and this will be a consolation to feelings which no doubt have been greatly out-raged by the belief that we are making money without dividing it among the newspapers and editors who are eternally carping at us.

It will be a further consolation to you to know that our present prospects are not eminently en-couraging. The friendly interest you take in our private affairs will justify you in calling for our price list per barrel for the year 1871. It is at your service, as follows:—

At home, with transportation to be added for interior New York and Northern Pennsylvania.	$1 76
At Buffalo, Cleveland and Detroit	2 00
At Chicago and Milwaukee	2 10
At Cincinnati	2 00
At St. Louis	2 40

In Canada we have no market or price. In New York and on the Sea Board where we sell two or three millions of bushels annually we have no fixed price and sell for all that we can get. In that market we never made a profit, but we intend to hold it for the honor of American salt as long as we can. You and the Evening Post may drive us out, but your readers will pay dearer for salt than they now do.

If you think the price list just given you is a low one, we beg to assure you it is the best we can do with our salt. Knowing something of

-our own business and affairs, we think we should lose more than we should gain by putting the rates higher. With these figures before you, if you can tell us how we are to make any thing be-yond very small profits for the year 1871 we will thank you with our whole soul for the informa-tion. If we look through the vista of future years we see nothing more encouraging. Still we think we can live and we mean to live. We make the best common, packing, curing, table and dairy salt in the world. We take infinite pains in the elaboration and perfection of our processes, and we think under Providence and the disciminating favor of the American people, we shall survive your absurd and unreasonable em-nity.

In our letter we said to you that you might have all our salt works and take all the advan-tages of our business for the next twenty years, if you would guarantee to us a return of seven per cent. per annum on the capital invested. Your answer is a tirade of abuse on account of profits made by us during the war, by which our capital was increased to an extent still inade-quate to the transaction of our business. Be-sides our salt works, we actually use throughout the year nearly two millions of other capital, at least one-third of which we constantly borrow. Our bills payable to-day are nearly $600,000. If you do not believe it, we pray to come and look at our books.

But we will now put our proposition in such form that it cannot be misunderstood or misrep-resented. All our salt works and erections shall be valued at such a sum as it would now cost in cash to build them. Our moneyed capital shall be reckoned at its actual amount, after deduct-ing all liabilities. These sums added together shall be the principal on which we will accept a guaranty of seven per cent. annual income. There shall be nothing watered, nothing ficti-tious. True it is, that our cash capital has been mostly earned in the past years of the war. Still it is ours and we will make it over to you on the terms proposed. We suppose you will rail at us again for making this proposal. It is however made in sincerety and earnestness, and it is open to all mankind.

You charge again upon us the sin of having made large profits. We candidly admitted the fact in our former letter. But we truly explained that one portion of this profit was due to ex-traordinary good fortune in coal as incidentally connected with our business, and that the resi-due was made during the blockade of the Mississippi, and under the anomalous circumstances produced by the war. We repent in dust and

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ashes of this great sin, and we will do works meet for repentance. Even if we were willing, it seems to be beyond our power to repeat the offence. But are we the only interest that made money out of the war? Look at the army of merchants, manufacturers, contractors, speculat-ors and editors who prospered and made fortunes during that extraordinary period. Be compassion-ate toward us, and turn away upon ten thousand other and greater offenders some portion of your virtuous wrath and indignation.

Before closing, we desire once more to have a few words with you about the tariff on salt. And first, you are in the constant habit of over-stating the rate of duty. You and other organs of free trade variously represent it to be from one to two hundred per cent. If your basis of calcu-lation is the cost of producing the cheapest and poorest brand of salt in foreign countries where labor is cheap, you may be right. If you take the average cost or price of salt in the ports of this country, it does not exceed thirty or thirty-three per cent. On the costlier brands, like the Ashton salt, it is less than twenty-five. The ac-tual duty is 18 cents per 100 pounds—equal to 50 cents 4 mills per barrel of 280 pounds. Why should not the public know the exact truth?

As the result of the local situation and long established position of Onondaga salt, we are the chief domestic competitors with the foreign article. Hinc illae lachrymae. Hence your tears and your rage against us. You cry out against us because we undersell the importers in New York. The fishermen of New England prefer our "diamond solar" to any salt in the world. You say down with the tariff, down with our salt, down with us, and down with competition, so that the importer may be the lord of the market and may prosper and thrive.

You and other free trade organs have boldly avowed the principle which annimates you in this reckless and unprincipled war upon us. You propose no general and well-considered revision of the tariff, no substitute for the existing law. You explicitly say that protection must be as-sailed by an attack upon some special interest. You select salt as the outpost to be stormed. But you have not the courage and manliness to de-bate even the question of protection to that arti-cle, for you endeavor to attain your end by in-termedling with the business and discussing the affairs of a particular company. The statesman-ship of your course is equalled only by its can-dor and fairness! Did it ever occur to you to inquire whether there is such a thing as honesty in the discussion even of public questions!

But a few days ago the Free Trade League, of which you are the organ, memorialized Congress against the repeal of the duties on tea and coffee, on the ground that the resulting loss of revenue might lead to the retention of the duty on salt and some other articles produced in this coun-try. Your columns have protested on the same ground. Satan never revealed his cloven foot more distinctly than you reveal thus the motive of your attacks upon us. Tea and coffee are not produced in the United States, and the import-ers are without competition. The duty is there-fore precisely and mathematically an addition of so much to the price which the consumer must pay. This you are in favor of. You remonstrate against relieving the poor man from this tax. But salt is an American as well as a British production. Our markets take twenty million bushels of domestic and twelve million bushels of foreign salt, and the two maintain a struggling competition with each other, which regulates the price. But you say, repeal the du-ty on this article, drive out the American manu-facturer and let the foreigner have the market to himself. In short, your openly avowed policy is to retain the duties which the consumer must because there is no competition, and repeal them where competition keeps down the price. These are the principles of the Free Trade League and of the New York World.

But we tell you again, as we told you in our former letter, that we make no general issue with you on the question of protection and free trade. Indeed, we are ignorant of the extent to which you propose to push your doctrines. If you mean a revenue tariff, that is, a tariff which will produce the best revenue, we agree to it so far as our interest is concerned. But you propose to march to some kind of victory over our dead bodies. You recklessly intend to repeal, now and at once, the duty on our production without offering us the compensation of a repeal, or even of a modification of other protective duties. We must pay the high prices of a protective system for labor and for every item which enters into cost. We must sell at the dead level of absolute free trade, or close up our business. This is your justice. We are to be destroyed in order, as you openly declare, that you may obtain some future triumph, the nature of which you do not define, over other interests. Against such an unprincipled warfare we shall defend ourselves with "all the weapons which God and nature have put in our hands."

Syracuse, April 20, 1871.

THE SALT COMPANY OF ONONDAGA
Attest: J. W. Barker, Secretary.

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PRECIS.

No'.

Executive Office,
State of Mississippi,
~~County of~~ New York

From Onondaga Salt
Address Syracuse
Dated April. 20/71
Received —
Answered —

"Another Letter to the New York World"

JAMES L. ALCORN,
Governor.

H. F. HEWSON,
Private Secretary.