VALUE OF A PKOTECTIVE TARIFF. 319 



naked Hindoos! While the manufacturers, furnace men, 

 iron and machine makers and miners are protected against 

 the well-paid artisans and skilled laborers of England, 

 France and Germany, whose wages have been shown to be 

 as high as those in this country, the agriculturist has to 

 compete with the lowest grade of labor on earth, and with- 

 out the privilege of reciprocity. If it be said that you have 

 a better home market for what you raise ; on the other hand 

 it must be admitted, that a very large amount of your sur- 

 plus productions, amounting to 552,000,000 dollars last 

 year, and in 1881 to 730,000,000, would have been lost en- 

 tirely but for the foreign market. 



You do not dispose of all you can at high prices, as do 

 the salt-makers and copper-miners, and sell the surplus only 

 at a sacrifice. It is one price for all. Is it not due, then, 

 to this immense interest that some attention should be given 

 to build up and improve this foreign market, rather than to 

 spend all legislative effort in raising higher barriers to keep 

 our produce at home? 



The protective system has not worked so well that you 

 find a home market for all that is raised, and the market 

 you have to seek abroad is not replaced or made needless by 

 the one it is attempted to build up at home. The last cen- 

 sus shows that there were employed in the manufacturing 

 establishments of the United States 2,738,895 men, women 

 and children, or a little over five per cent, of the whole popu- 

 lation, and the profits earned upon the products of their 

 labor by the manufacturers, in the year 1880, were $1,024,- 

 801,847, or over one thousand millions of dollars. If these 

 are " infant manufactures," the profits are surely not infan- 

 tile. 



It is well, then, to look at these things squarely and fairly, 

 and ask how much good does the farmer derive from the 

 tremenJous import tax of 216,000,000 dollars paid last 

 year? For it must be borne in mind, that if by this tax the 

 price of foreign goods imported is raised from thirty to fifty 

 per cent., the domestic article is not sold any cheaper for the 

 same quality. As a rule the selling price of home manu- 

 factures is fixed at little, if any, below that at which the im- 

 porter offers to sell you his duty-paid goods. I could go 



