176 



CONGRESS. (THE TARIFF BILL.) 



East and set in the West just like the moon, and 

 both in the same way revolved around the earth, 

 and to-day most men accept the Copernican 

 theory, not on their own understanding, but on 

 the general belief of mankind. 



" I shall not, therefore, in what I have to say, 

 be able being, as I hope, on the side of truth 

 to rival the charming simplicity of the gentle- 

 men opposite, or, like them, to compress the uni- 

 verse into the nutshell of a speech. I regret 

 this the less because I know that many a philos- 

 opher has put the world into a nutshell only to 

 find that the nutshell contained a world in 

 which nobody ever lived, or moved, or had his 

 being, and consequently a world which was of 

 no human account. 



" I shall not attempt to deal much with the 

 metaphysics of this discussion, or to cite statis- 

 tics which have no meaning except to the stu- 

 dent, and so often mislead even him. I shall 

 for the most part confine myself to large facts 

 which are known of all, or can be ascertained in 

 the simplest possible way. 



" Whether the universal sentiment in favor of 

 protection as applied to every country is sound 

 or not, I do not stop to discuss. Whether it is 

 best for the United States of America alone 

 concerns me now, and the first thing I have to 

 say is, that after thirty years of protection, un- 

 disturbed by any serious menace of free trade, 

 up to the very year now last past, this country 

 was the greatest and most flourishing nation 

 on the face of this earth. Moreover, with the 

 shadow of this unjustifiable bill resting cold 

 upon it, with mills closed, with hundreds of 

 thousands of men unemployed, industry at a 

 standstill, and prospects before it more gloomy 

 than ever marked its history except once this 

 country is still the greatest and the richest that 

 the sun shines on, or ever did shine on. 



"According to the usual story that is told, 

 England had been engaged with a long and vain 

 struggle with the demon of protection, and had 

 been year after year sinking further into the 

 depths, until at a moment when she was in her dis- 

 tress and saddest plight, her manufacturing sys- 

 tem broken down, ' protection, having destroyed 

 home trade by reducing,' as Mr. Atkinson says, 

 ' the entire population to beggary, destitution, 

 and want,' Mr. Cobden and his friends provi- 

 dentially appeared, and after a hard struggle es- 

 tablished a principle for all time and for all the 

 world, and straightway England enjoyed the 

 sum of human happiness. Hence all good na- 

 tions should do as England has done and be happy 

 ever after. 



" This fairy tale has not the slightest resem- 

 blance to history. England, after three centu- 

 ries of stationary life, during which the wages of 

 its laborers remained without change, at the be- 

 ginning of this century began to feel the pulses 

 of a new life. Wages then commenced to rise, 

 and in 1840 were 80 per cent, higher in money 

 than in 1800, and, measured by purchasing 

 power, were 90 per cent, higher than ever before. 

 Coining as this did right after three centuries of 

 stagnation, it showed the great power of two 

 things : protection and the establishment of the 

 factory system. For England was enormously 

 protected, not only by duties such as we have, 

 but by the laws which forbade the exportation 



of machinery, whereby she obtained or sought to 

 obtain a monopoly of steam-driven methods. 



" It had so happened that England's develop- 

 ment, owing to her insular position and her 

 early efforts to obtain the results of skill, which 

 caused her to import Flemish weavers, to receive 

 the Huguenots driven out of France, to welcome 

 workers from everywhere, and in every way to 

 encourage manufactures, had reached such a 

 point that the invention of the steam engine 

 was in her grasp, and possible to her alone. 

 Whoever has examined, even in the most cursory 

 way, the history of the long line of inventions 

 which culminated in the steam engine of James 

 Watt can not fail to be satisfied that the condi- 

 tion of England at that period led to that line of 

 invention, and that nothing else could. With 

 the steam engine and the factory system Eng- 

 land could so utilize human labor that no nation 

 in the world could compete with her, no matter 

 what the wages were, until the invention passed 

 her borders. 



" Unfortunately, England at that time and for 

 years afterward had no conception of its duty to 

 its workingmen. The only limit of work was 

 human strength. It took the fiercest struggle 

 to get slight remission of labor even for chil- 

 dren. Shorter hours of labor were scorned not 

 only by Cobden and Bright, but. by every polit- 

 ical economist of England, even down to 1883, 

 when Bonamy Price denounced shorter hours of 

 labor as a ' repudiation of the great doctrine of 

 free trade.' The sole idea of the political econo- 

 mist of that class has always been as low wages 

 as possible, as long hours as could be, and a 

 product of as cheap a price as possible. 



"England also was a country where in the 

 main the raw materials were scanty and few in 

 number. Even the raw material of labor, wheat 

 and other breadstuffs, could not be produced 

 within her borders in sufficient amount for the 

 consumption of her workers. Naturally enough, 

 her theory of low prices for labor prevented a 

 reasonable division of the tremendous increase 

 of production caused by the steam engine, and 

 restricted her own market, and in 1840 she found 

 herself in manufactures entirely ahead of her 

 consumption. Her manufactures had grown out 

 of proportion, and could no longer subsist on 

 English patronage alone. The workmen were 

 pressing them for that regular increase of wages 

 which I shall by and by show to be the natural 

 progress of civilization, and therefore manufac- 

 turers commenced their agitation against the 

 corn laws which resulted in their repeal. 



" Was that crusade the same as is waged here 

 to-day? Are the gentlemen of the Ways and 

 Means Committee legitimate successors of Bright 

 and Cobden and the Anticorn Law League? 

 Not the least in the world. That was a fight by 

 the manufacturers. This is a fight against the 

 manufacturers. The manufacturers then de- 

 sired no protection whatever. Turn over this 

 big volume of " Cobden's Speeches " until you 

 come to the twentieth speech, seven years after 

 he began; you will find hardly one allusion to 

 protective duties to manufacturers, and even in 

 the twentieth speech they are only alluded to to 

 reiterate the declaration made in 1838, when the 

 Corn Law League began, that all duties were to 

 be abolished. I am glad to see that my Demo- 







