CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



181 



cent. duty. Why is there not ? Because the 

 blanket that is produced in the State of Massa- 

 chusetts and in the State of Connecticut that 

 can be bought for $5 is a great deal better 

 than the English blanket which is produced 

 for $3.50. No matter what the tariff is; I 

 am speaking of the quality. I will state an- 

 other fact right here, and defy contradiction 

 anywhere by anybody. Take your duty off 

 wool and we can undersell Great Britain in 

 the Liverpool market with blankets to-mor- 

 row. It will not do, sir, to simply pick up 

 the tariff law and say here is 104 per cent, 

 duty on a woolen fabric without knowing how 

 much difference there is in the price of the ar- 

 ticle abroad and here. There was a duty two 

 years ago and is now, perhaps, I do not re- 

 member of how much, on pig-iron, and you 

 could buy it in the United States and in the 

 State of Pennsylvania for less money than the 

 duty. My former colleague, so long known 

 and so highly respected here, carried millions 

 of pounds of pig-iron, when he would have 

 had to sell it for less than the duty if he had 

 sold. No, Mr. President, what we want is ab- 

 solute intelligence on all these questions. 



" I will not speak now of iron and steel, 

 though I am somewhat acquainted with the 

 product, because all I want is a commission 

 of intelligent gentlemen, experts. I drew the 

 bill with a meaning. I put in nine with a 

 meaning. There are six great industries in 

 the country, and but six. The ramifications 

 of those six may be sixty. I would, if I had 

 the power, appoint thoroughly educated ex- 

 perts in every one of those six industries. I 

 would then take the two ablest statisticians in 

 the United States, and, as my friend from 

 Kentucky said, such men as David A. Wells, 

 of Connecticut, and R. M. T. Hunter, of Vir- 

 ginia, and I would, if I had the power, place 

 at the head of the commission one of the great 

 governing minds of the country, not an expert 

 in anything except in all that makes men great. 

 To go back to another generation, I may say I 

 would place a man as near as possible to such 

 men as Calhoun, Clay, and Webster, at the 

 head of this commission, so that all this broad 

 land would know that all these experts and 

 all these statisticians were under the guiding 

 power of a great governing mind. 



"Thus I would constitute this commission if 

 I had the power. But then we are met at 

 once by my friend from Kentucky and my 

 friend from Texa, who say they will not give 

 this power to the hands of a Republican Ex- 

 ecutive. Sir, I was a Democrat before the 

 Senator from Kentucky was, because I am 

 older than he; I was a Democrat earlier than 

 the Senator from Texas, because I am older 

 than he. Now, I leave this appointment in 

 the hands of the Executive. I know his Ad- 

 ministration, I know the men he has called 

 around him, and I have a right to say here 

 that I believe if this power is left where the 

 finance bill leaves it there will be the names 



of nine intelligent gentlemen presented here, 

 not belonging all to one political party nor to 

 one shade of opinion on the tariff question. 

 I think I have a right to say it. The confir- 

 mation of these gentlemen rests with us. Let 

 us have faith in one another. 



"I do not want to read the platform of the 

 Greeley Democratic party, for I never did take 

 very much stock in that [laughter] ; nor the plat- 

 form of 1876, nor the platform which may be 

 reading to-day, or the one that will be reading 

 twenty days hence. I would, so far as I could, 

 divorce this whole question from politics. It is 

 a great economic question ; it is a question upon 

 which hinges the welfare of all our people, ag- 

 riculturists as well as manufacturers. 



'"Where does Kentucky, where does Ten- 

 nessee, where does Texas find the great market 

 for agricultural products except such as go 

 abroad? Here. There are seven hundred 

 thousand people in my State, and the hundreds 

 of thousands of beeves and of sheep that come 

 to us from the agricultural States of the Union, 

 the hundreds of millions of pounds of wool, and 

 the thousands and hundreds of thousands of 

 bales of cotton that come from your sunny land 

 [turning to Mr. Hampton] find a market in New 

 England and New York. There are consumed 

 in this country, as I before said, one million 

 five hundred thousand bales of cotton, and that 

 great industry is not to be whistled down the 

 wind by anybody. The manufacturing indus- 

 tries of the United States give employment to- 

 day to more than three million people ; the man- 

 ufacturing interests of the United States give 

 food and raiment to more than ten million souls ; 

 and, sir, you dare not strike a blow at an industry 

 of that character. I say 'dare not,' because 

 the honest, upright, thinking, patriotic man 

 dare not do wrong. What was the amount of 

 products last year ? As near as it can be ascer- 

 tained, the amount of products of the various 

 manufacturing industries of the United States 

 was over six thousand million dollars. It is 

 estimated this year that they will be over eight 

 thousand million dollars. I have no doubt that 

 they will be more than that. And are we, Sen- 

 ators of the United States, to strike a mortal 

 blow at these great industries? We are not. 

 The Senator from Kentucky says that he will 

 nourish them if they require it. More than 

 three quarters of them do not want any dan- 

 dling on the knee of the nurse. They can go 

 alone. If you take your impost duties off that 

 you put on the raw material, more than seven 

 eighths of them can go alone. 



" But the great expenditure that was forced 

 upon the country by reason of the terrible civil 

 conflict through which we have gone has im- 

 posed a tariff upon the country that is greater 

 than it ought to have. Therefore revise it, 

 therefore cut it down where you can and as 

 you best can. If I am here I shall be found in 

 the front line of the foremost men in this body 

 to do it. I do not belong to that party that 

 my friend calls the introducers of machine pe- 



