The antebellum tariff on cotton textiles revisited

Recent research has suggested that the U.S. cotton-textile industry would h ave been wiped out had it not received tariff protection throughout the ant ebellum 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 tex tile products that were imperfect substitutes for one another. Using data f rom 1826 to 1860, we estimate the responsiveness of domestic production to fluctuations in import prices and conclude that the industry could easily h ave survived even if the tariff had been completely eliminated.