198 



CONGRESS. (THE TARIFF MEASURE.) 



sachusetts for the year 1887 were $302,948,624, 

 and the number of depositors was 944,778, or 

 $320.67 for each depositor. The savings banks 

 of nine States have in nineteen years increased 

 their deposits $628,000,000. The English sav- 

 ings banks have in thirty-four years increased 

 theirs $350,000,000. Our operatives deposit $7 

 to the English operative's $1. These vast sums 

 represent the savings of the men whose labor 

 has been employed under the protective policy 

 which gives, as experience has shown, the largest 

 possible reward to labor. 



" There is no one thing standing alone that so 

 surely tests the wisdom of a national financial 

 policy as the national credit, what it costs to 

 maintain it, and the burden it imposes upon the 

 citizen. It is a fact which every American 

 should contemplate with pride that the public 

 debt of the United States per capita is less than 

 that of any other great nation of the world. 

 Let me call the roll : Belgium's public debt, per 

 capita, is $72.18; France, $218.27 ; Germany, 

 $43.10; Great Britain, $100.09; Italy, $74.25; 

 Peru, $140.06; Portugal, $104.18; Russia, 

 $35.41 ; Spain, $73.34 ; United States, $33.92 on 

 a population of 50,000.000 ; and now, with our 

 increased population, the per capita would be 

 under $25. England increased her rate of taxa- 

 tion between 1870 and 1880 over 24 per cent., 

 while the United States diminished nearly 10 

 per cent. 



" We lead all nations in agriculture, we lead 

 all nations in mining, and we lead all nations in 

 manufacturing. These are the trophies which 

 we bring after twenty-nine years of a protective 

 tariff. Can any other system furnish such evi- 

 dences of prosperity ? Yet in the presence of such 

 a showing of progress there are men everywhere 

 found who talk about the restraints we put upon 

 trade and the burdens we put upon the enter- 

 prise and energy of our people. There is no 

 country in the world where individual enterprise 

 has such wide and varied range and where the 

 inventive genius of man has such encourage- 

 ment. 



" There is no nation in the world, under any 

 system, where the same reward is given to the 

 labor of men's hands and the work of their 

 brains as in the United States. We have widened 

 the sphere of human endeavor and given to 

 every man a fair chance in the race of life and 

 in the attainment of the highest possibilities of 

 human destiny. 



"To reverse this system means to stop the 

 progress of the republic and reduce the masses 

 to small rewards for their labor, to longer hours 

 and less pay, to the simple question of bread 

 and butter. It means to turn them from ambi- 

 tion, courage, and hope, to dependence, degrada- 

 tion, and despair. No sane man will give up 

 what he has got, what he is in possession of, 

 what he can count on for himself and his chil- 

 dren, for what is promised by your theories. 



" Free trade, or, as you are pleased to call it, 

 * revenue tariff,' means the opening up of this 

 market, which is admitted to be the best in the 

 world, to the free entry of the products of the 

 world. It means more it means that the labor 

 of this country is to be remitted to its earlier 

 condition, and that the condition of our people 

 is to be leveled down to the condition of rival 



countries; because under it every element of 

 cost, every item of production, including wages, 

 must be brought down to the level of the lowest 

 paid labor of the world. No other result can 

 follow, and no other result is anticipated or ex- 

 pected by those who intelligently advocate a 

 revenue tariff. We can not maintain ourselves 

 against unequal conditions without the tariff, 

 and no man of affairs believes we can. 



" Under the system of unrestricted trade which 

 you gentlemen recommend, we will have to re- 

 duce every element of cost down to or below 

 that of our commercial rivals or surrender to 

 them our own market. No one will dispute that 

 statement, and to go into the domestic market 

 of our rivals would mean that production here 

 must be so reduced that with transportation 

 added we could undersell them in their own 

 market, and to meet them in neutral markets 

 and divide the trade with them would mean that 

 we could profitably sell side by side with them at 

 their minimum price. 



" First, then, to retain our own market under 

 the Democratic system of raising revenue by re- 

 moving all protection would require our pro- 

 ducers to sell at as low a price and upon as fa- 

 vorable terms as our foreign competitors. How 

 could that be done ? In one way only, by pro- 

 ducing as cheaply as those who would seek our 

 markets. What would that entail ? An entire 

 revolution in the methods and condition and 

 conduct of business here, a leveling down through 

 every channel to the lowest line of our competi- 

 tors; our habits of living would have to In- 

 changed, our wage cut down 50 per cent, or 

 upward, our comfortable homes exchanged for 

 hovels, our independence yielded up, our citizen- 

 ship demoralized. 



" These are conditions inseparable to free 

 trade ; these would be necessary if we would 

 command our own market among our own peo- 

 ple, and if we would invade the wofld's markets 

 harsher conditions and greater sacrifices would 

 be demanded of the masses. Talk about depres- 

 sion, we would then have it in its fullness. We 

 would revel in unrestrained trade. Everything 

 would indeed be cheap, but how costly when 

 measured by the degradation which would en- 

 sue ! When merchandise is the cheapest men 

 are the poorest, and the most distressing experi- 

 ences in the history of our country ay, in all 

 human history have been when everything was 

 the lowest and cheapest measured by gold, for 

 everything was the highest and the dearest meas- 

 ured by labor. We want no return of cheap 

 times in our own country. We have no wish 

 to adopt the conditions of other nations. Ex- 

 perience has demonstrated that for us and ours 

 and for the present and the future the protect- 

 ive system meets our wants, our conditions, pro- 

 mote's the national design, and will work out 

 our destiny better than any other." 



In opposition to the measure, Mr. Mills, of 

 Texas, said : " There are two opposing opinions, 

 supported by the two opposing parties into 

 which the people of the United States are 

 divided, with reference to the proper construc- 

 tion of laws imposing taxes on imports. The 

 Democratic party maintains that taxes should 

 be imposed on such articles and at s\ich rates as 

 will bring the required revenue for an honest 



