CONGRESS. (THE TARIFF BILL.) 



177 



cnitic friends recognize a bit of truth, but I am 

 afraid that it is by mistake. It so happens, Mr. 

 Speaker, the corn laws were not, as these Demo- 

 crats in their ignorance imagine, for the protec- 

 tion of the farmer. What Cobden was fighting 

 was an odious law enacted to enhance the price 

 of bread, not for the benefit of the farmer, but 

 of the aristocratic owner of land. Workingmen 

 were clamoring for increase of pay. The manu- 

 facturers knew that decrease of the price of 

 wheat was the equivalent of higher pay. Men 

 do not work for money ; they work for money's 

 worth. 



" I have said the corn law was an odious law. 

 It was more than that. In its workings it de- 

 prived the poor of food, and put the enhanced 

 price into the pockets of those who toiled not 

 nor spun. Had that enhanced price gone to the 

 farmers and farm laborers it might have been 

 defended to-day on the ground that it was a fair 

 means of distribution among the farmers of their 

 share of the wonderful gains of the earlier manu- 

 facturing. But as it was, no more unjust law 

 was ever attacked. Meantime what was the at- 

 titude of the manufacturers as to their own pro- 

 tective duties ? Why, by the aid of these pro- 

 tective duties and the inventions they led to, 

 they had grown so powerful, had machinery so 

 superior, and the factory system so firmly estab- 

 lished they could hold their own markets, beyond 

 clamor or dispute, with duties or without. No 

 nation with capital as great, and machinery as 

 useful and productive, and wages of skilled work- 

 men lower by more than one third hunar threat- 

 ening over her border. Her machinery was so 

 superior that even the low wages of other coun- 

 tries could not affect her. 



" Not only were these manufacturers in con- 

 dition to permit the duties to be taken off, but 

 they knew it themselves. Not only did they 

 know it, but they avowed it ; not in a corner, 

 but to Parliament itself. 



" I have here ' Hansard ' for Feb. 8, 1842 (vol. 

 Ix, p. 133), where the Marquis of Lansdowne 

 presents the petition of the woolen manufac- 

 turers of England, asking that all Duties be 

 abolished, including their own, but especially the 

 corn laws. On page 137 of the same volume 

 Lord Brougham declared that prior to that time 

 he had ' laid upon the table a petition from per- 

 sons authorized by all the great manufacturing 

 bodies of the kingdom. They prayed for the 

 repeal of every duty levied under the pretense 

 of protection/ I am using the very language of 

 Lord Brougham. This, then, was a fight made 

 by the manufacturers lor the manufacturers 

 against the aristocratic landowners over the 

 question of cheap food in an island that could 

 not produce a supply for its workingmen. 



" The men who made the fight were not phi- 

 lanthropists or saints. They were good, honest, 

 selfish men struggling for 'their own interests, 

 and never lost sight of them. Down to their 

 latest day they resisted lesser hours of labor, and 

 were deaf to all improvements which led to the 

 elevation of the working classes. They held 

 firmly to the doctrine that 'as wages fall profits 

 rise.' 



' To sum this all up, England, when she be- 

 came free trade, was a workshop wherein was 

 manufactured the raw material of the rest of the 

 VOL. xxxiv. 12 A 



world. Of raw material she herself had none. 

 Her coal and iron and the invention of the steam 

 engine had developed her manufactures so out 

 of proportion to the wages of her workmen that 

 she must have a larger market. At that time 

 the only idea of a larger market was one that 

 had more consumers. The notion that the mar- 

 ket could be enlarged by those who were already 

 consumers had not entered into the popular 

 thought, yet her* workmen were clamoring for 

 more pay. Tariff had really ceased to be protec- 

 tion except on corn, and not on that.in any 

 true protective sense. It was only a tax like 

 that on sugar. It made food dear. Repeal of 

 the corn laws meant an increase of real wages. 

 Repeal of tariff on manufactures meant nothing. 

 The whole crusade of 1840 was for free food, and 

 Cobden nowhere says anything else. Protec- 

 tion, in our modern sense, is never mentioned in 

 any one of his free-trade speeches. 



" After this review of the story of England's 

 change, will any man dare to say that he finds 

 therein any justification for the present deed of 

 violence which is called the Wilson bill ? 



"Suppose England, instead of being a little 

 island in the sea, had been the half of a great 

 continent full of raw material, capable of an in- 

 ternal commerce which would rival the com- 

 merce of all the rest of the world. 



"Suppose every year new millions were flock- 

 ing* to her shores, and every one of those new 

 millions in a few years, as soon as they tasted 

 the delights of a broader life, would become as 

 great a consumer as any one of her own people. 



" Suppose that these millions, arid the 70,000.- 

 000 already gathered under the folds of her flag, 

 were every year demanding and receiving a 

 higher wage and therefore broadening her mar- 

 ket as fast as her machinery could furnish pro- 

 duction. Suppose she had produced cheap food 

 beyond all her wants, and that her laborers spent 

 so much money that whether wheat was 60 cents 

 a bushel or twice that sum hardly entered the 

 thoughts of one of them except when some Demo- 

 cratic tariff bill was paralyzing his business. 



" Suppose that she was not only but a cannon- 

 shot from France, but that every country in 

 Europe had been brought as near to her as Balti- 

 more is to Washington for that is what cheap 

 ocean freights mean between us and European 

 producers. Suppose all those countries had her 

 machinery, her skilled workmen, her industrial 

 system, and labor 40 per cent, cheaper. Sup- 

 pose under that state of facts, with all her 

 manufacturers proclaiming against it, frantic in 

 their disapproval, England had been called upon 

 by Cobden to make the plunge into free trade, 

 would she have done it? Not if Cobden had 

 been backed by the angelic host. History gives 

 England credit for great sense. 



"It so happens that America is filled with 

 workers. There are idle people, but they are 

 fewer here than elsewhere except now, when we 

 are living under the shadow of the Wilson bill. 

 If those workers are all getting good wages they 

 are themselves the market, and if the wages are 

 increasing the market is also increasing. The 

 fact that in this country all the workers have 

 been getting better wages than elsewhere is the 

 very reason why our market is the best in the 

 world and why all the nations of the world are 



