In this agitation lay the germs of the later homestead
system, as well as of the propositions to relinquish the federal
public lands to the states within which they lay.
With manufacturers in distress, thousands of operatives out of
employment, and the crops of parts of the middle states and the west
falling in price to a point where it hardly paid to produce them, an
appeal to Congress to raise the duties established by the tariff of
1816 [Footnote: Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.). chap.
xiv.] was inevitable. Hence, in the spring of 1820 a new tariff bill
was presented by Baldwin, of Pennsylvania, the member from
Pittsburgh. He came from a city which felt the full effects of the
distress of the manufacturers, especially those of iron and glass,
and which was one of the important centers of the great grain-
raising area of the middle states and the Ohio Valley.
Baldwin believed that the time had arrived when, "all the great
interests of the country being equally prostrate, and one general
scene of distress pervading all its parts," there should be a common
effort to improve conditions by a new tariff, intended not for the
sake of restoring the depleted treasury, but distinctly for
protection.
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