CONGRESS. (THE TARIFF BILL.) 



173 



on which to exercise his industry than untaxed 

 and cheapened necessaries of life. His wages 

 depend on the products of his labor. Whatever 

 goes as a tax into the material he uses is a dimi- 

 nution of the wages of the laboring man. As 

 you cheapen his materials you widen the market 

 for his products. With untaxed iron and steel 

 in its cruder forms, or even in the humbler be- 

 ginning of the ore, with untaxed wool and coal 

 and lumber, you enable him to put his finished 

 products on the market at prices that will rap- 

 idly and indefinitely increase the number of his 

 consumers, and in this way you secure to him 

 steady employment, increasing wages, and that 

 personal independence he can never enjoy in a 

 closed, high-tariff market. 



" Mr. Chairman, I well remember in the first 

 months of my service in this House, during the 

 debate on the first Morrison bill, listening to a 

 speech of Mr. Abram S. Hewitt, himself a great 

 miner of iron and coal, a great manufacturer 

 and employer of labor, in which he proved by 

 masterly reasoning and array of facts that in'the 

 organization of modern industry the only pro- 

 tection of labor against corporate and other 

 capital was in its own organizations and its own 

 trade unions ; and that the only field in which 

 labor organizations can flourish, the only arena 

 on which trade unions can manifest their power 

 to protect the manhood of their members and 

 the wages of their labor, is a country which 

 throws down the bars and gives the workingman 

 untaxed raw material to work with. 



" Trusts and other combinations of capital may 

 thrive in a close market because they can con- 

 trol their output and regulate the price of their 

 products. But labor is dependent upon the de- 

 mand for its product, and the larger the market 

 for this product the more certain is it to com- 

 mand regular employment and increasing wages. 

 Years ago, in an inquiry conducted by the dis- 

 tinguished ex-Senator from New Hampshire 

 [Mr. Blair] into the relations between labor and 

 capital, the president of the Amalgamated Asso- 

 ciation of Iron and Steel Workers testified that 

 it was not the tariff but their own organization, 

 their power to treat on equal terms with their 

 employers, that gave them the lever by which 

 they could secure for themselves profitable and 

 paying wages. 



" What hope is there, Mr. Chairman, for a 

 labor strike when production has outrun the 

 demands of the home market 1 when the manu- 

 facturer already has more than he can sell for 

 months to come in that market? Do we not 

 know that when supply has outrun remunerative 

 demand, the employer welcomes a strike or 

 makes an excuse for a lockout, for the very pur- 

 pose of discharging his laborers for a season? 

 But with the world for a market, with hundreds 

 of millions of consumers for our iron and steel 

 and other products, with all our mills running 

 and orders ahead, labor can achieve its own 

 emancipation and treat on equal terms for its 

 own wages. 



" Mr. Chairman, the question of wages is, in 

 my judgment, the vital question of tariff reform. 

 If gentlemen on the other side can prove to the 

 people of this country, can prove to the intelli- 

 gent American workingman that his wages are 

 either maintained or increased by the operation 



of a tariff, then I say that the laboring man and 

 the whole country with him ought to uphold 

 protection. 



" I am willing to rest this whole controversy 

 on the question of wages. If protection makes 

 or increases wages, if it improves the well-being of 

 the American worker, I am a protectionist from 

 this time forward. But, sir, neither reason nor 

 experience gives countenance to any such idea. 

 The wages of labor are paid from the products 

 of labor. The general productiveness of every 

 country determines the wages of the laboring 

 people of that country. The skill and intelli- 

 gence of its labor, the character of its institu- 

 tions, and the abundance of its resources deter- 

 mine that general productiveness. We have 

 higher wages in the United States than are at- 

 tainable elsewhere, first, because we are a great, 

 new country, with all the elements of produc- 

 tion and of industrial supremacy in unsurpassed 

 abundance, for whose development we command 

 all the resources of art and skill, of science and 

 invention ; and, second, because we have the 

 most intelligent and the freest laboring men in 

 all the world. 



" And now, Mr. Chairman, I wish to call at- 

 tention to the total reductions proposed by this 

 bill. I have already said that in the interest of 

 the consumer, and especially in the interest of 

 labor, we place $50,000,000 worth of raw mate- 

 rials on the free list, releasing nearly $14,000,000 

 of taxes now paid on them. In addition, we 

 have reduced taxes on finished products about 

 $62,000,000 ; making the proposed lightening of 

 the burdens of the consumer and of the laborer 

 offered in this bill nearly $76,000,000, reckoned 

 on the importations of 1893 ; and that is only 

 the share which the Government receives of 

 these taxes. No man can tell how many times 

 this sum must be multiplied to get at the full 

 relief from taxes offered to the people in this 

 bill. 



" Mr. Chairman, it is said, in substance, in the 

 report of the minority, that it is the first duty 

 of Government, to look after the producer. If 

 they had defined the protective system accord- 

 ing to their own method of applying it, they 

 would have said that it is the duty of the Gov- 

 ernment to loan the power of taxation to a small 

 part, and that the wealthiest and strongest part, 

 of the producers in this country. I take issue 

 with both propositions. I say it is the duty of 

 the Government to treat all citizens, producers 

 and consumers, alike, by equal laws and equal 

 burdens. But if any set of men are to be pro- 

 tected it is the consumers. 



",The producer is made for the consumer, not 

 the'consumer for the producer. The protective 

 system reverses that idea. It holds that 70,000,- 

 000 consumers in this country are made to be 

 taxed by a few hundred thousand producers. 

 We give untaxed materials to the producer, not 

 for his own sake but for the sake of the consum- 

 ers that are beyond him ; and by remitting these 

 $76,000,000 which they paid last year as taxes, 

 and the 3 or 4 or 5 times $76,000,000 which they 

 paid as passage money to get that amount into 

 the Treasury, we leave in the pockets of those 

 who earn it this immense sum to expend for 

 their own comfort, thereby necessarily giving a 

 great impetus both to consumption and to pro- 



