174 



CONGRESS. (THE TARIFF BILL.) 



duction in this country. If the poor working 

 girl who had to earn $3 to pay the taxes on $1 

 worth of cloak stuff can have the $3 to spend 

 for comfortable clothing, we see how much im- 

 petus would be given to the production of com- 

 fortable clothing in this country. 



Mr. Chairman, while this bill will, at first, 

 effect some reduction, some substantial reduc- 

 tion of revenue, the experience of the past jus- 

 tifies us in believing that this reduction will soon 

 be compensated by an increase of revenue under 

 lower duties. 



" When the Walker tariff was carried through 

 Congress it was estimated that it would produce 

 something over $20,000,000 ; but in six or seven 

 years it produced $64,000,000, and that without 

 crippling an industry, without taking labor from 

 a single workingman, but, on the contrary, quick- 

 ening and giving broader prosperity to the in- 

 dustries of the country and better wages and 

 more comforts of life to the working people. 

 The Committee on Ways and Means expect to 

 follow this bill with an internal-revenue bill that 

 will provide for the temporary deficiency in the 

 revenue or with an amendment to the present 

 bill making such provision. Their plan contem- 

 plates an income tax of 2 per cent, on the net 

 earnings of the corporations of the country, a 

 tax of 2 per cent, on personal incomes in excess 

 of $4,000, an internal-revenue tax of $1.50 a 

 thousand in place of the present tax of 50 cents 

 on cigarettes, and also an internal-revenue tax 

 of 2 cents a pack on playing cards, and an in- 

 crease of 10 cents a gallon on whisky. 



" Now, Mr. Chairman, in closing these remarks 

 I want to say that if the economic objections to 

 protection are so great, if it unbalances trade, 

 if it causes fluctuations and gross inequalities in 

 the industries of the country, if it robs labor of 

 employment, if it lessens the wages of the toiler, 

 if it throws crushing burdens upon the Ameri- 

 can farmer, if it makes the support of Govern- 

 ment an onerous burden upon every man or 

 woman who works for a living, a still stronger 

 condemnation of the protective system is that 

 its inevitable effect when persisted in is to un- 

 dermine free institutions in this country and all 

 just sense of equal citizenship. 



" If we had not been drunk for thirty years 

 on protection, if our minds had not been biased 

 and darkened by thirty years' experience of the 

 protective system, no man to-day would have 

 the effrontery to come to Congress demanding 

 50, 60, 70, or even 80 per cent, protection on the 

 articles that he produces. It was said by Mr. 

 Morrill, of Vermont, when he was defending one 

 of those insidious advances by which protection 

 fastened itself on this country, that he hoped we 

 would after a while get back to the ideas of for- 

 mer times, when a duty of even 5 per cent, was 

 weighed as carefully as gold dust in the balance. 

 Yet to-day men come to the Committee on Ways ' 

 and Means boldly, defiantly, demanding that we 

 should put 50 per cent. nay, even 100 per cent. 

 on imported articles competing with their 

 products. 



" Why, Mr. Chairman, a duty of 50 per cent, 

 means that a man must labor a day and a half 

 for that which he can otherwise get by one day's 

 labor. A duty of 100 per cent, means that he 

 must labor iwo days to get that which he could 



otherwise get by one day's labor. Yet so ex- 

 treme have grown the views of those who carry 

 on the protected industries, so blinded are they 

 by the concessions of the past thirty years, that 

 they think it is nothing to ask us to make the 

 laboring people of this country work every third 

 day for them, instead of for their own comfort 

 and the support of their own families. 



"Sir, the system has made those protected 

 industries part of our Government patronage. 

 After every Republican victory since 1872 they 

 have come here, as other party workers, to re- 

 ceive their reward in the form of new taxes on 

 the American people. 



" The men who carried the banner of Mr. Har- 

 rison in 1888 as speakers upon the platform, as- 

 leaders in the States, were no more prompt to 

 come here for the offices they had earned than 

 were the protected industries of the country to 

 come for the bounties they had earned. And, 

 whoever may have been disappointed in getting 

 an office, there is no record that any protected 

 industry failed to get its bounty. 



" There is no hope for free government, there 

 is no hope for pure government, as long as these 

 powerful, wealthy interests are a part of our 

 Government patronage, bribed by its largesses 

 and overawing it by their clamors. It is their 

 clamors to-day, their indignant, maddened, men- 

 acing clamors, that are heard over this House,, 

 in their own factories, in their own mills, in 

 their own mines, at the prospect that this pa- 

 tient victim, the American people, is to be re- 

 leased from some of their exactions, even though 

 it be but a moderate part of them. 



" And now, Mr. Chairman, apologizing to the 

 committee for having spoken so long, I wish to 

 say a few words to my friends on this side of 

 the House. If I understand Democracy, if I un- 

 derstand the meaning of the fact that the Demo- 

 cratic party has had a charmed life in all the 

 history of this country, it is that with more or 

 less courage it has always stood for equality of 

 citizenship as against all claims of privilege. 

 Wherever the party has borne that inspiring 

 legend upon its banner and fought fearlessly 

 and honestly for it, the American people have 

 never failed to give it control of the Federal 

 Government. 



" They have given us control of this Govern- 

 ment to-day with their commission to make it a 

 Government of equal rights. They have put into 

 our hands the power to strike down privilege 

 and caste, that for so many years have controlled 

 and battened upon the taxation of the people. 

 We may have our honest differences of opinion 

 as to items of the bill proposed. I question no 

 man's judgment on that; I question no man's 

 fealty to his party on that. But unless the 

 Democratic party takes up this great cause of 

 tariff reform, to win or lose with it, live or die 

 for it, the Democratic party ought to go out of 

 power, as it will. 



" Change the items of the bills if you choose ; 

 but let us not disappoint the expectations and 

 the long-deferred hope of the American people, 

 of the silent masses who do not vex us with 

 their angry outcries, the farmers and laborers 

 scattered, unable to organize, who plod their 

 weary way pressed by the burden of taxes. Even 

 if they are voiceless, even if our halls and our 





