MONOPOLY OF TRADE THE TARIFF. 617 



compelled to seek employment at some other occupation; 

 and, while a few might become engaged in trade, trans- 

 portation, mining, personal and professional services, the 

 great body of this vast army would be compelled to 

 engage in the cultivation of the soil. The effect of this 

 can well be realized when we consider that these millions 

 who had once been the consumers of our own products, 

 now, not only produce what they consume, but compete 

 with us in supplying an already over-glutted market, and 

 whiph is made the more so by their becoming non-con- 

 sumers. An enormous over-production of the products of 

 the farm and garden would be the result and a consequent 

 ruinous fall in prices. 



We would thus be placed in a position where we 

 would not only have to pay to foreign. manufacturers high 

 prices for goods, but would be compelled to exchange the 

 products of our own labor at greatly reduced prices. To 

 use an old and familiar expression, we would have ( 'jumped 

 out of the frying pan into the fire." The manufacturer is 

 sufficiently protected if the tariff rate is equal to the differ- 

 ence in the price of labor in this and foreign countries. 

 He is then enabled to meet his competitor on an equal 

 footing in our home markets, and at the same time pre- 

 vented from forming combinations to increase the price of 

 his goods. To fix the tariff higher than this leads to a 

 monopoly of trade; to fix it lower than the difference in 

 wages is to degrade American labor, either arbitrarily by 

 a reduction of wages in the factories, or naturally by com- 

 pelling him to become a producer of the products of the 

 soil, causing over-production, and consequent reduction of 

 prices. As certain as it is natural for men to have affini- 

 ties for different trades and professions, it is right that a 

 Nation should have a diversity of interests. To be wholly 

 independent of other Nations is to be -prosperous and 

 happy; but without a diversity of interests it is impossible 



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