THE ANTEBELLUM TARIFF ON COTTON TEXTILES REVISITED

Abstract

Recent research has suggested that the U.S. cotton-textile industry would have been wiped out had it not received tariff protection throughout the antebellum period. We reaffirm Taussig's earlier judgment that the U.S. cotton-textile industry was largely independent of the tariff by the early 1830s. American and British producers specialized in quite different types of textile products that were imperfect substitutes for one another. Using data from 1826 to 1860, we estimate the responsiveness of domestic production to fluctuations in import prices and conclude that the industry could easily have survived even if the tariff had been completely eliminated.