CONGRESS. (THE TARIFF MEASURE.) 



199 



and economical administration of the Govern- 

 ment with the least possible restrictions upon 

 importations, the least possible limitation upon 

 exportation, and the least possible interference 

 with the private business of the people. 



" The Republican party maintains that taxa- 

 tion ought to be imposed on such articles and at 

 such rates as will produce the largest possible 

 restriction on importation consistent with the 

 production of the necessary revenues for the 

 support of the Government. With the Republi- 

 can party the primary object in imposing taxes 

 upon imports is, in the frank language of the 

 committee who have reported this bill, to check 

 importation. The secondary object is to obtain 

 the required revenue from the smallest amount 

 of importation and as far as possible from com- 

 peting articles. 



" The bill which the committee have reported 

 is a bold and unequivocal declaration of that 

 doctrine ; and, while we have heard all through 

 our history the advantages of protection against 

 competition proclaimed by its advocates, this 

 bill is the first in the history of the Government 

 that has come before the American people with 

 its mask thrown off and with the audacity of a 

 highwayman demanding that the people shall 

 throw up their hands and surrender their purses. 



"It is necessary, Mr. Chairman, to examine 

 the proposition upon which this most extraor- 

 dinary' measure is founded. Is it for the benefit 

 of the American people that importation shall 

 be checked or hindered ? Will it promote their 

 interests to stop their trade? Will it feed more 

 mouths ; will it clothe more backs ; will it give 

 more shelter to their heads to stop them from 

 marketing the products of their labor? For 

 that is the position assumed by the advocates of 

 the bill and the party which they represent. 



" To check importation is to check exportation, 

 and gentlemen may split hairs -and ride soph- 

 istries just as much as they please, but no man 

 can call to mind a trade that has ever been 

 effected either between two individuals or be- 

 tween two nations where each did not give 

 something in exchange for that which he re- 

 ceived. You may bestow upon another some- 

 thing without a return ; that is a gift. But no 

 people are laboring to give their products with- 

 out consideration to others. The great body of 

 the people of the world are laboring in order to 

 obtain profit for their toil, and when they trans- 

 fer something to another it is for something re- 

 ceived from that other in return. You can not 

 make it any other way, and no amount of soph- 

 istry will change the plain, common-sense state- 

 ment. 



" Two years ago, when Democrats told you 

 that the country was on the edge of a dark 

 shadow that was stretching itself over the land, 

 that our agriculture was being pressed to the 

 wall, that all our prosperity was based upon it, 

 and we were recklessly draining the life current 

 from its veins, one statesmen after another arose 

 on the other side of the hall and asserted that 

 pur farmers were in the very heyday of prosper- 

 ity, and that the mortgages on their farms were 

 only evidences of their thrift, of the improve- 

 ment of their farms, and the increase of their 

 wealth. 



"But we do not hear these statements now. 



These gentlemen are on their knees at the con- 

 fessional now. They now tell us that there is 

 widespread depression all through the agricult- 

 ural sections of the country. The committee 

 tell us they have spent months in a critical ex- 

 amination of the subject, and they have come to 

 the conclusion that the all-pervading distress is 

 due to ' a most damaging foreign competition.' 

 They say that there is $356,000,000 worth of agri- 

 cultural products imported from foreign coun- 

 tries and displacing that amount of American 

 products. 



" Against this most damaging competition the 

 barriers should be put up. What are these for- 

 eign agricultural products ? The first is sugar, 

 of which we import $95,000,000 worth. What 

 did our friends do with it? Did they 'put up 

 the barriers,' as they did for woolens and cot- 

 tons and iron and steel ? While they were 

 building up the tariff wall and giving protection 

 to the manufacturers 'and even the refiners, they 

 did not walk up like little men and take sugar 

 in theirs. 



" Why did they not shelter sugar against this 

 damaging competition as they did others ? Why 

 did they not try and ' naturalize ' this infant 

 that is still mewling and puking in its nurse's 

 arms ? Why not put a prohibitory duty on for- 

 eign sugar and develop the industry ? It might 

 have required two or three hundred per cent, 

 duty, but the gentleman from Ohio, speaking for 

 his party, tells us they do not care for per cents. 



"But, strange to say, they have put sugar on 

 the free list. They have removed all the barriers 

 and exposed it to the floods of pauper sugar 

 from foreign lands. And to soothe the coquetted 

 and jilted sugar growers they propose to take 

 seven millions of money that does not belong to 

 them out of the pockets of the people to pay for 

 the privilege of doing it. 



"What is the next article embraced in the 

 $356,000,000 of agricultural products coming in 

 to destroy the prosperity of the farmer ? Sev- 

 enty-five millfon dollars' worth of coffee. Coffee 

 was put on the free list eighteen years ago by a 

 Republican Congress. Why did you not put a 

 prohibitory duty on coffee and naturalize it in 

 this country ? It can be grown in glass houses. 

 You do not care anything about the expense of 

 labor in the production of an article. It is 

 purely a question of patriotism with you, and 

 why not make the people of the United States 

 pay for naturalizing this foreigner from Brazil ? 

 But while acknowledging the perilous situation 

 in which our farmers are placed, you left coffee 

 bravely on the free list. 



" What is the next article ? One of which we 

 have, heard much within the past two months 

 an article called hides ; perhaps you have heard 

 of it before. During the canvass last fall in the 

 State of Iowa, where my friend here (Mr. Gear) 

 lives, when the Democratic party was driving in 

 the pickets of the Republicans on the tariff 

 question when we were exposing the alarming 

 and perilous condition of the farmer, cut off 

 from his market, with his enormous surplus, 

 what did our Republican friends do ? In order 

 to turn our flank a great military manoeuvre 

 our friends all through the State of Iowa, on 

 every stump, at every cross-roads, wherever 

 there were two or three brethren assembled to- 



