EXHIBITION OF 1868. 
459 
agriculture with them, and our power to buy abroad such articles as can best 
be produced in other lands increases, our importations are healthy, and our 
internal trade—far greater and more important than the foreign—keeps ac" 
tive and strong. 
Protection to home industry is the business of a good government, and its 
advocacy the duty of the intelligent and enlightened citizen. Not monop¬ 
oly for the benefit of any one class, but protection to the degree needed to 
encourage manufactures and benefit farmers, and keep our balance of trade 
healthy. You do not need a tariff on wheat to prevent its import from Eu¬ 
rope, for the freight is a tariff, but a roll of English or German cloth is a car 
load of cheap foreign corn, packed in small compass, and if you buy it you 
help to keep down the price of your grain to its level. Better make it here 
and have your home market govern a price that shall rule higher than in Liv¬ 
erpool or Hamburg. 
How can a farmer raise wool and pay his laborer decent wages for a civil¬ 
ized man, and compete with half-naked herdsmen in Australia or South 
America ? Is it easy even for a cotton-grower, paying his laborer $20 per 
month, to compete with Egypt and India at $5 or even $3 a month wages ? 
In 1864, by the accurate report of the Revenue Commission, it appears the 
wages of an English iron puddler were $1.80 per ton, or 90 cents per day, 
those of an American $6.54 per ton, or $3.27 per day—much more here than 
there, allowing for higher cost of living. Can we so shape affairs that Amer¬ 
ican workers, in the field and mill, shall be decently paid for doing our own 
work ? Or must we come to the pauper wages of the old world ? 
The elevation of labor is called “ the sentiment which created civilization,” 
Sometimes we find a frank statement of the effect of “free trade,” as in a 
late New York journal. 
“ I am for unqualified free trade. I would sell out the custom houses, dis¬ 
charge the leeches there, and allow people to sell and buy wherever they 
chose. This will bring us to a true and normal relation. 
“ Commercial disturbance would result. We should be on a new founda¬ 
tion. The first effect would be to stop manufacturing here, and fill the coun¬ 
try with foreign goods many of which Europe would never see her money for. 
A commercial revolution would follow, laborers would be out of employment, 
and the "price of labor "would come down, down, until it reached the European stand¬ 
ard, and then success is secured^ 
Success, possibly, for the few, but hard work at pauper pay for the many ! 
If a farmer half tills his land, and buys silks, gewgaws, cloths, etc., more 
than he pays for, year by year, no matter how large or rich his farm, he comes 
to trouble at last. So with a nation. Our trouble is the great and growing 
tendency to idleness and extravagance. Our boys complain of work, and 
want to be clerks or government officials. Our girls waste their time on 
frivolity and dress, and mechanics and laborers want large pay for little 
work, and we see as the result high prices for all the products of industry, 
large importations of foreign commodities to supply the deficencies caused 
