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 ^
 
 McKINLEYISM 
 
 As It Appears To A^ Non - Partisan 
 
 By JOHN BKATTY. 
 
 If there be any one that makes many poor to make a few rich, that suits 
 not a Commonwealth. — Cromwell. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 Rrlce, - - 25 Oemts. 
 
 columbus, ohio. 
 
 Hann & Adair, Printers. 
 
 1891.
 
 Abraham Lincolu had broad and statesmau-Uke views con- 
 ceroiug our trade and commerce. We could learn much as the 
 result of his example. I have been interested to note how ig- 
 norant many self-appointed champions of our industries are of the 
 land-marks the fathers planted. Much criticism has been aimed 
 at the policy which proposed more liberal trade relations with 
 Canada, and some well intentioned brothers have supposed that 
 in advocating such policy I had departed from the teachings of 
 the Republican apostles. They seemed to have ignored or for- 
 gotten the fact that what I proposed had the support of Abraham 
 Lincoln, Jolui Quincy Adams, Robert C Winthrop, Robert C. 
 fSciieuck, Thomas Corwin and others, who carried the first baimer 
 that the Republican party ever flung to the breeze. — Hon. Ben. 
 Butterworth, Cincinnati, February 15, 1894. 
 
 Entered according to the act of Congress, in the year 1894 
 
 By Hann & Adair, 
 In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
 
 MeKINLEYISM 
 
 nss' 
 
 AS IT APPEARS 
 
 l^<ii 
 
 NON = PARTISAN 
 
 By JOHN BEATTY. 
 
 MeKINLEYISM: Exercise of the taxing power of a 
 nation directly for the benefit of a few selected industries, and 
 incidentally for the raising of revenue to support the gov- 
 ern nrient. 
 
 2. Making the pecuniary success of a few capitalists the 
 object of a national eeononnic system ; the -well being of the 
 nnen who work for thena an incident to the system, and the 
 ^reat body of the people contributors to the beneficiaries of the 
 system. 
 
 3. " The great Anierican systenn : " A syste«i of unequal tax- 
 ation ; a system which enables the manufacturer to sell fifty 
 cents -worth of shoddy for one dollar; a systenn which dimin- 
 ishes the sale of An^ierican food-stuffs in foreign countries; a 
 system dictated by the woolen nnanufacturers of New Eng- 
 land, the iron mongers of Pennsylvania, and other combines, 
 monopolies and pools. 
 
 4. American goods cheap for foreigners, dear for Ameri- 
 cans. 
 
 •11 1 9QP7
 
 I N DKX. 
 
 I. 
 
 Preface C 
 
 The Extent to which the Principle of Protection may be Advantageously Applied. . 9 
 
 Garfield's Position on the Tariff Question 11 
 
 McKinley's Claim that a Revenue Tariff is Inconsistent with Protection 12 
 
 Who Pays the Tax or Duty 13 
 
 Does a Duty on Foreign Goods Increase the Price of Domestic Products 14 
 
 11. 
 
 Low Tariff Periods Contrasted with High Tariff Periods 20 
 
 Testimony of Wells, Allison and Blaine as to the Condition of the Country under 
 
 the Low Tariff of 1846 22 
 
 Klaine's Attempt to Break the Force of His Own Admissions 23 
 
 Schurz's Rejoinder 25 
 
 Republican National Convention of 1856 and the Action of the Thirty-fourth 
 
 Congress 2B 
 
 III. 
 
 McKinley's Statistical Argument in Favor of a High Tariff Briefly Considered .... 27 
 
 Is the Fact that a Nation Buys More than it Sells Evidence of Poor Management.. 30 
 The Panic of 1857 Caused by the Failure of the Ohio Life and Trust Company and 
 
 not by Tariff Laws 32 
 
 Does a Low Tariff Send Money Abroad 34 
 
 IV. 
 
 Free Raw Material for Export Trade and Drawbacks 37 
 
 The Law Discriminates Against the Home Laborer and in Favor of His Foreign 
 
 Rival 39 
 
 Combinations, Pools and Trusts — Sherman and Butterworth 41 
 
 V. 
 
 What Effect have Tariff Laws on the Wages of Workingmen 43 
 
 Thomas G. Shearman's Statistics on this Subject 45 
 
 Carroll D. Wright 4T 
 
 Wages in Europe 48
 
 VI. 
 
 The Condition of a Country can not be Inferred from the Amount of its Importa- 
 tions 50 
 
 Non-dutiable Imports for 1890 51 
 
 Our High Tariffs Have Developed the Wheat Industry in Other Countries 53 
 
 VII. 
 
 Does Unfavorable Criticism of the McKinley Law in Other Countries Prove that 
 
 it is a Good Law for this Country 55 
 
 Memorial of the Colonial Parliament of Bermuda 56 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Our Trade with Canada 59 
 
 Is the Lumberman an Agriculturalist ? 60 
 
 Lumber should be on the Free List 60 
 
 Should Canadian Products be Excluded 1 61 
 
 Butterworth's Answer , 61 
 
 Mills on the Increase of Duties on Agricultural Products . 63 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Canadian Farmer and his Wheat 66 
 
 Liverpool Makes the Price for American Wheat 67 
 
 The Importation of Canadian Wheat no Injury to the United States Farmer 68 
 
 X. 
 
 Farm Products Imported in 1890 69 
 
 Cattle, Horses and Sheep 70 
 
 Bread Stuffs 71 
 
 Fruits 73 
 
 Hay 74 
 
 Hops 75 
 
 Flax 76 
 
 Hemp 77 
 
 Meat and Dairy Products 78 
 
 Rice 79 
 
 Linseed, Flax Seed and Other Seeds 80 
 
 Tobacco 81 
 
 Vegetables 83 
 
 Wool 84 
 
 1. How We Obtain Cheap Clothing 86 
 
 2. The Exorbitant Protection Accorded to the Woolen Manufacturer 87 
 
 3. The McKinley Law does not Lessen Importation of Wool 88 
 
 4. The Woolen Manufacturers' Association's Influence Politically 89 
 
 5. It'Makes the Price for American Wools 90 
 
 6. The McKinley Law Discriminates Against the American Wool-grower ... 91 
 
 7. Facts for the Ohio Farmer to Consider 93 
 
 8. Hides and Skins 93
 
 XI, 
 
 Drawbacks (Again) 95 
 
 XII. 
 
 Position of the Old Whigs on the Subject of Protection 90 
 
 XIII. 
 
 What McKinley Claims for His Law 98 
 
 Ctjnceding All He Claims is it not an Argument in Favor of Lower Duties and a 
 
 Larger Free List? 9!l 
 
 The McKinley Law in some Respects an Improvement on Law of 1883 100 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Influence of Invention on Prices 102 
 
 XV. 
 Is Free Sugar a Saving to the People 104 
 
 XVI. 
 Does a High Tariff Create Competition and Encourage Genius ? 105 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Cause of the Panic of 1893 lOr. 
 
 Panic of 1873 112 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The Tariflf Laws Not Delicate and Sacred Things which cannot be Revised and 
 
 Amended without Injury to the Business of the Country 115 
 
 McMillin's Statement as to who Prepared the McKinley Bill lit 
 
 John Sherman on same Subject 11 T 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Shall All Old Laws, Customs and Precedents be .Adhered To? ll'J 
 
 The EflFect of a Reduction of Tariff Rates on the Iron Industry 120 
 
 The Iron Manufacturers of the Seaboard Demand Free Iron Ore and Coal 12.! 
 
 Certain Manufacturers Obliged to Use Foreign Made Steel 121 
 
 Strife Between Eastern and Western Iron and Steel Producers 125 
 
 XX. 
 
 McKinley's Assumption that a Low Tariff would Lessen the Demand for Labor 
 
 not well Founded 12G 
 
 When People Abroad Buy of Us they Pay Wages to our Laborers 130
 
 XXI. 
 
 Unemployed Men, and Why They are Unemployed 133 
 
 We can not Sell Unless We Buy 134 
 
 XXII. 
 
 The Railroad President and Steel Rails 136 
 
 Reduction in Price of Steel Rails Due to Invention and to Improvement in 
 
 Methods of Manufacture 138 
 
 Wages have always been Higher in this Country than in Other Countries 131) 
 
 The DiflFerence in Price Between American and English Labor in the Production 
 
 of Steel Rails HO 
 
 What was it that Deterred McKinley's Railroad President from Buying Rails? l-il 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 McKinley's Old Clothes Argument US 
 
 Effect of Labor Organizations on Wages 1-14 
 
 Have the Great Body of our Laborers been getting as much Per Capita during the 
 
 past Ten Years as they Obtained during the Ten Years Prior to the War? 145 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 The Old Merchant Argument HT 
 
 Men on the Free List 1*8 
 
 If High Tariffs make High Wages and Low Prices. Wages should have been 
 
 Higher and Prices Lower in 1830, than ever Before or Since 151 
 
 XXV. 
 
 McKinley's Criticism of Gov. McCorkle 153 
 
 The Old Ohio Republican Platforms Suggest the Kind of Tariff which should be 
 
 Maintained 155
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 This book does not pretend to any literary excel- 
 lence, nor to anything beyond a hasty discussion of the 
 tariflf question. A portion of it was written two years 
 ago, but the larger part of it within the past month. It 
 is simply a free and easy criticism of the dogma of high 
 protection as it has been brought to the attention of the 
 public by the speeches of Gov. William McKinley. In 
 the discussion, if it can be called such, the Governor 
 has been permitted to state his own views in his own 
 words : 
 
 A duty or tax, great or small, imposed on such arti- 
 cles of foreign make and growth as come into competi- 
 tion with American products, must of necessity afford 
 more or less protection to our home industries, and 
 hence is to all intents and purposes 2, protective tariff. 
 
 The principle of industrial protection, whether em- 
 bodied in what may be called a protective tariff, a rev- 
 enue tariff, or a tariff by any other name, when properly 
 and honestly applied will undoubtedly be productive of 
 benefit to the country. I have no quarrel, therefore, 
 with Major McKinley to this extent. I am a protection- 
 ist to a certain degree, and have been, and propose to 
 •continue to be. But I fear he has leaped to a dangerous 
 
 (6)
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 extreme. It is the abuse of the principle of protection 
 by the imposition of exorbitant duties for the benefit of 
 comparatively few industries which have no excep- 
 tional claim to public favor, to which I object, and 
 against which I desire to record my emphatic protest. 
 
 Protection when diverted from its legitimate course, 
 and used to promote the interest of cliques and com- 
 bines may be rendered as dangerous to the country as 
 liberty when it degenerates into unbridled license. The 
 abuse of the one leads to high-handed robbery, the 
 abuse of the other to red-handed anarchy. 
 
 If legislation could prevent the organization of 
 trusts and pools under a high tariff, the interests of the 
 unprotected masses might, perhaps, in the main, be 
 safely left to home competition, but Congress has thus 
 far failed to provide a barrier against the extending 
 evils resulting from commercial combinations, and 
 hence those tempted by the prospect of exorbitant profits 
 to engage in business, often find it easier and more 
 profitable to join the combines than to fight them, so 
 that in certain lines there is now practically no competi- 
 tion and no wholesome check on prices. 
 
 Geographically, Ohio stands midway between the 
 great wheat, corn and cattle-growing regions of the 
 West, and the great manufacturing and mining districts 
 of the East. Combined on her own soil in fair propor- 
 tions, are all the natural resources and elements of 
 wealth of which either of the sections named, or both 
 of them, can boast. Her position in the family of States, 
 and the commingling within her boundaries of all the 
 interests and industries of the two extremes, would of
 
 themselves suggest that she should occupy middle 
 ground in this struggle between the manufacturers who 
 demand more bounty, and the farmers and unprotected 
 laborers who insist upon less taxation. 
 
 We should say to the one you shall not, if we can 
 prevent it, be needlessly injured by foreign competition, 
 and to the other, you shall not be mercilessly oppressed 
 by the trusts and combines which develop and multi- 
 ply under high protection. 
 
 The Republicans of Ohio, as will be seen from their 
 State platforms, have for many years held tenaciously to 
 this safe middle ground. If they abandon it now under 
 the leadership of Major McKinley they may expect 
 hereafter to lift up their voices in lamentation oftener 
 than in songs of triumph. 
 
 Against Republicans who adhere to the old doctrine, 
 and refuse to aid in committing the party to the new, 
 the senseless cry of " free trader " will be hurled, but 
 the accusation will be false and harmless. The man 
 who has been carried by the inconsiderate and reckless 
 driving of his party leaders away from his true position 
 and natural abiding place, would be weak indeed if he 
 refused to travel the road which led to his own home, 
 because it stretched many miles beyond his proper res- 
 idence, and, perhaps, terminated in a morass. 
 
 January^ j8^^.
 
 THE LINES ON WHICH AN HONEST AND WHOLESOME TARIFF LAW 
 
 MAY BE DRAWN, AND THE EXTENT TO WHICH THE 
 
 PRINCIPLE OF PROTECTION MAY BE 
 
 ADVANTAGEOUSLY APPLIED. 
 
 " Duties should be so high_tliat our manufacturers can fairly 
 compete with the foreigu product, but not so high as to enable 
 them to drive out the foreign article, enjoy a monopoly of the 
 trade, and regulate the j^rice as they please. This is my doctrine 
 of protection. If Congress pursues this line of policy steadily, 
 we shall, year by year, a^aproach more nearly to the basis of free 
 trade, because we shall be more nearly able to compete with other 
 nations on equal terms. I am for a protection which leads to ulti- 
 mate free trade. I am for that free trade which can only be 
 achieved through a reasonable protection. 
 
 "Mr. Chairman, examining thus the possibilities of the sit- 
 uation I believe that the true course for the friends of protection 
 to pursue is to reduce the rates on imports wherever we can justly 
 and safely do so, and, accepting neither of the extreme doctrines 
 urged on this floor, endeavor to establish a stable policy that will 
 commend itself to all patriotic and thoughtful people. 
 
 "Modern scholarship is on the side of free trade." — James A. 
 Garfield. 
 
 " But the protection should be confined to cases in which 
 there is good ground of assurance that the industry M'hich it fos- 
 ters will after a time be able to dispense with it; nor should the 
 domestic producers ever be allowed to expect that it will be con- 
 tinued to them beyond the time necessary for a fair trial of what 
 they are capable of accomplishing." 
 
 "The expenses of production being always greatest at first, 
 it may happen that the home production, though really the most 
 advantageous, may not become so until after a certain duration 
 
 ^9)
 
 10 KXTEXT TO Vi'HlCH PROTECTION MA V BE APPLIED. 
 
 of poeuniary loss, wliich it is not to lie expected that private spec- 
 ulators should incur iu order that their successors may be benefited 
 by their ruin. I have therefore conceded that in a new country, 
 a temporary protecting duty may sometimes be economically de- 
 fensible ; on condition, however, that it be strictly limited in point 
 of time, and provision be made that during the latter part of its 
 existence it be on a gradually decreasing scale. Such temporary 
 protection is of the same nature as a patent, and should be gov- 
 erned by similar conditions." — John Stuart Mill. 
 
 "If then a nation be so situated, that a protective tariflf' is 
 necessary as a means of introducing manufactures, or any new 
 form of productive labor which it is desirable to have, there can 
 be no doubt of the wisdom of such a measure, provided, the new 
 torm of industry is one that is so well adapted to the people and 
 the country, that when once introduced, ic can be carried on with 
 profit, and without continued protection." — Prof. W. D. Wilson.
 
 I. 
 
 garfield's position on the tariff question — 
 m'kinley's claim that a revenue tariff is 
 inconsistent with protection considered — 
 who pays the tax or duty — does a duty on 
 foreign goods increase the price of domes- 
 tic products. 
 
 Any duty, however small it may be, upon any article 
 the like of which is manufactured in this country, af- 
 fords protection to American manufacturers. It is not 
 necessary to make the duty prohibitory in order to ren- 
 der it protective. No considerable number of men in 
 this country advocate free trade ; there is, in fact, no 
 free trade party, but there are multitudes of intelligent 
 Republicans who hold with Garfield " that one extreme 
 school of economists would place the price of all manu- 
 factured articles in the hands of foreign producers by 
 rendering it impossible for our manufacturers to com- 
 pete with them ; while the other extreme school, by 
 making it impossible for the foreigner to sell his com- 
 peting wares in our market, would give the people no 
 immediate check upon the prices which our manufac- 
 turers might fix for their products. I disagree with 
 both of these extremes. I hold that a properly adjusted 
 competition between home and foreign products is the 
 best gauge by which to regulate international trade." 
 
 (11)
 
 12 WHO PAi'S THE TAX OR DUTY. 
 
 "A reveuuo tariff is inconsistcut with protection, it is in- 
 teuded for ti wliolly dillereut purijose. It loses its force and char- 
 acter us a genuine revenue tariff when it becomes to any extent 
 protective. It has but one object. It can have but one effect — that 
 of opening up our markets to tlie foreign producer, impoverishing 
 the liome producer and enriching his foreign rival."' 
 
 The people of this country understand a revenue 
 tariff to mean the imposition of a tax or duty on im- 
 ports from which at present the country must of neces- 
 sity obtain over ;^200,000,000 per annum in way of rev- 
 enue, and this large amount of money must, to satisfy 
 the people, be derived in the main from what are known 
 as articles of convenience and luxury. It would be im- 
 possible, therefore, to obtain this vast sum without af- 
 fording more or less protection to home products. 
 
 The line of demarkation where a tariff for revenue, 
 with protection as the incident ends, and a tariff for pro- 
 tection with revenue as the incident begins, is some- 
 what obscure and hence difficult to trace. But the peo- 
 ple understand exactly the difference between a low tax 
 and a high tax ; between a low duty and a high duty, 
 and imderstand also in a general way that a high pro- 
 tective tariff has for its primary object, not the revenue 
 needed to support the government, but the exemption 
 from foreign competition which it will afiford to certain 
 manufacturers and producers. 
 
 The revenue tariff favored by the Republicans of 
 Ohio in their old platforms did not contemplate raising 
 the revenue referred to from tea, coffee and other non- 
 American products,^ but from such articles of foreign 
 
 1 Major ISIcKinley at Atlanta. 1888. 
 
 =* The revenue tariff of 1846 imposed no duty on tea and coffee.
 
 IVHO PAYS THE TAX OR DUTY. 13 
 
 make and growth as might come into competition with 
 our own products. It was their purpose, however, to 
 make this duty or tax so low that it would be impossi- 
 ble for trusts or combines to destroy competition, control 
 the home market and extort from consumers, and yet 
 high enough to afford a fair margin of protection to 
 such American industries as could, without too great a 
 waste of labor and capital, ultimately render themselves 
 self-supporting. It certainly never was their intention 
 to expend two dollars' worth of labor in the production 
 of one dollar's worth of goods, and to continue this los- 
 ing business indefinitely by exacting tribute from more 
 profitable industries. 
 
 " Under this sj'stem (the protective sj'stem) if the foreign pro- 
 ducer would enter our market with a competing product, he must 
 contribute something for the x^Tw'dege u'hich he is to enjoy, and this 
 something, in the form of duties, goes into the treasury, furnishing 
 revenue to the Government, and these duties operate to protect the 
 joint product of labor and capital against a like foreign product."^ 
 
 It will be observed that here Major McKinley affirms 
 that it is the foreign producer and not the consumer who 
 pays our customs taxes ! Four questions are suggested : 
 
 1. Does a duty or tariff tax on imported goods 
 make the goods dearer in the American market than in 
 the foreign ? ^ 
 
 1 Atlanta. 
 
 2 In October, 1871, occurred the great fire in Chicago. In the 
 winter following a bit of legislation took place in Cougress in conse- 
 quence, which unmistakably shows the sense of that body to be that 
 tariff taxes raise the price of home products. A bill received the 
 signature of President Grant April 5, 1872, which had passed both 
 Houses by large majorities, to exem.jit for one year all building 
 material, except lumber, from the operation of tariff taxes for the 
 benefit of Chicago alone. Prof. A. L. Perry.
 
 14 lyHO PAYS THE TAX OR DUTY. 
 
 2. If SO, does the consumer pay this higher price 
 when he buys foreign goods ? 
 
 3. Does a duty levied upon foreign goods increase 
 the price of domestic goods of like character ? 
 
 4. If so, does the consumer pay this increased price 
 when he purchases domestic goods? 
 
 As to the first and second questions, it is only nec- 
 essary in this brief discussion to say, if the tarifif does 
 not enhance the price to the consumer, it affords no 
 shadow of protection. For if English goods may be 
 bought in our market as cheaply after the tarifif as be- 
 fore, English competition continues as great after the 
 tarifif as before, and our demand for foreign goods is in 
 no way afifected by the law. And so long as this de- 
 mand is not diminished by an increase of prices the 
 supply will be afiforded to satisfy it, and so long as the 
 old demand, the old supply and the old price continue* 
 no protection or advantage can possibly accrue under a 
 tarifif law to the home manufacturer, and hence the en- 
 actment of such a law, except for purposes of revenue 
 would be utter folly. 
 
 Major McKinley's assumption that a tax does not 
 increase the price, and that an increased price is not 
 paid by the consumer may find a shadowy support on 
 the ground that what diminished supply adds to the 
 price, diminished consumption deducts; but this hy- 
 pothesis fails to take into account the fact that goods 
 cannot be made and sold for less than cost of produc- 
 tion, plus taxes and a reasonable profit to the middle 
 man, and therefore necessarily involves an inability to
 
 WHO PAYS THE TAX OR DUTY. 
 
 15 
 
 satisfy reasonable wants distressing to the people, and 
 hence inadmissible in any just scheme of legislation. 
 
 Protection, does protect ; it does so by making for- 
 eign goods dearer to the consumer to just the extent of 
 the duty paid. By increasing the price of foreign 
 goods it deters many people from buying them, and 
 tends to give home products a monopoly of the home 
 market, to the disadvantage often, if not generally, of 
 the consumer. 
 
 According to Major McKinley's theory, the foreign 
 manufacturer of all goods, the duty on which is a hun- 
 dred per cent, and over, pays not less than one dollar 
 into the United States treasury for the poor privilege of 
 selling a dollar's worth of goods for a dollar, and when 
 the duty is 350 per cent., as it is on some articles, the 
 manufacturer pays two dollars and fifty cents for per- 
 mission to give away a dollar's worth of his products. 
 
 As to the third and fourth questions. It may be 
 said briefly that if a protective tariff does not in some 
 degree lessen competition by the exclusion of foreign 
 products, and thereby advance prices, it fails wholly to 
 benefit those for whose protection and advantage it is 
 adopted. Nobody would want a protective tariff if its 
 effect were not to shut out competition, and increase 
 profits of the home maker and producer ; and whenever 
 prices are advanced by either natural or artificial causes 
 the buyer and consumer must of necessity pay the ad- 
 vance, for the simple reason that nobody else will do so. 
 Why did the Ohio wool grower want a duty on foreign 
 wool ? To increase the price. Why did the Louisiana 
 sugar planter demand, in the old time, that a duty be
 
 16 IVHO PAYS THE TAX OR DUTY. 
 
 imposed on foreign sugar? To increase the price. 
 This is the purpose of a protective tariff, and if this 
 were not its direct effect such a law would neither be 
 asked for nor tolerated by either manufacturer or pro- 
 ducer. So that Major McKinley's argument with re- 
 spect to these questions is illogical and inconsistent. 
 
 "A revenue tariff invites the product of foreign labor and 
 foroigu capital to occupy our markets free and uurestrained iu 
 competition with the product of our own labor and capital." 
 
 A duty levied is not a bonus paid or promised, and 
 hence can neither be an encouragement nor an invi- 
 tation. 
 
 " It is alleged as a serious objection to protective duties that 
 the tax, whatever it may be, increases the cost of the foreign as 
 well as the domestic product to the extent of such tax or duty, 
 and that it is wholly paid by the consumer. This objection would 
 be worthy of serious consideration if it were true, but as has been 
 demonstrated over and over again it is without foundation in 
 fact." 
 
 Such a demonstration if it could be made, would 
 defeat the very end, purpose and intent of a protective 
 tariflf, for if dutiable foreign goods could be sold as 
 cheaply in this country as the non-dutiable, the home 
 producer would have no protection, and the imposition 
 of a duty for any purpose except revenue would be 
 sheerest folly. Major McKinley may, perhaps, with 
 some show of truthfulness, affirm that the tax or duty 
 imposed on foreign products does not always enhance 
 the price of domestic products of like kind to the full 
 extent of such duty or tax, but no sane man will claim 
 that the duty on imported sugar under the old law was 
 not paid by the consumer; nor can it be truthfully
 
 WHO PAYS THE TAX OR DUTY. il 
 
 maintained that the duty on tobacco and cigars under 
 the new law is not paid by those who use them.' 
 
 "Wherever the foreign product hsLS successful competition aX 
 home, the duty is rarely paid by the consumer. It is paid from 
 
 ^ " We do not derive our ability from abroad to pay taxes. 
 That depends upon our wealth and our industry; and it is the 
 same, whatever may be the form of levying the public contribu- 
 tions. . . ."—Henry Clay, April 26, 1820. 
 
 ''The duty constitutes a part of the price of the whole mass 
 of the article in the market. It is substantially paid upon the ar- 
 ticle of domestic manufacture as well as upon that of foreign pro- 
 duction. Upon one it is a bounty, upon the other a burden ; and 
 the repeal of the tax must operate as an equivalent reduction of 
 the price of the article, whether foreign or domestic. We say, so 
 long as the importation continues, the duty must be paid by the 
 purchaser of the article." — John Quincy Adams^ Report on Manu- 
 factures, 1835. 
 
 " I said it, and I stand by it, that as a general rule the duties 
 paid upon imports operate as a tax upon the consumer. A few 
 years of further experience will convince the whole body of our 
 people that a system of national taxes which rests the whole bur- 
 den of taxation on consumption and not entirely on property or 
 income is intrinsically unjust. — Hon. John Sherman, 1867. 
 
 "Who pay these taxe*? When the manufacturer of iron 
 comes to the Senate and says : ' I can live or I can make a profit, 
 if a certain duty is imposed,' what is he saying? He is simply 
 saying, 'if you give me a certain duty you put it in my power to 
 charge over that duty as an additional tax on the farmers of the 
 United States.' " — Senator Preston B. Plumb, 1883. 
 
 " Our goods (American manufactures) are now met by foreign 
 goods on our own shores at a price made up of raw material, plus 
 labor, and plus the j}7^esent rate of duty, on very nearly equal 
 terms." — Minority report (Rei)ublican) Ways and Means Com- 
 mittee on Wilson bill {53rd Congress) page 3. 
 
 Again on page 7 same report. "The honest merchant who 
 values them (imported goods) at their true market value and 
 pays the duty demanded by the government," etc. 
 
 Again on page 28 of same report. "The American manufac- 
 turer has been receiving 38 cents for eaeli dozen spools (of cotton 
 thread) containing 200 yards, and the English manufacturer only 
 28 cents for the same quantity and (juality of goods."
 
 18 H'HO PAYS THE TAX OR DUTY. 
 
 the profits of the manufacturer, or divided between him and the 
 merchant or the importer, and diminishes their profit to that 
 extent." 
 
 Competition to be successful must command the 
 market, and where the home product does this the 
 foreign product does not sell at all, and hence will not 
 as a rule be oflfered for sale, and will not be imported. 
 Nobody ever offers an English hoe or fork or farm 
 wagon for sale in this country, and if anybody did he 
 would be compelled to sell at a loss, for the article can 
 be made cheaper here than in any other quarter of the 
 globe. The foreign product would have, in this in- 
 stance, what Major McKinley calls " successful compe- 
 tition at home," and if by accident a foreign-made hoe 
 or fork or farm wagon were sent here for sale it would 
 be sold at a loss to the sender, and the duty thereon, if 
 duty there was, would not be paid b}' the consumer. 
 But foreign manufacturers are not so unwise as to ship 
 their wares to points where there is no demand for 
 them. On the contrary the American importer does 
 the buying, and like the country merchant, he buys 
 only what he thinks he can sell at a profit ; and in foot- 
 ing up the cost of the goods he buys, he adds to the 
 sum paid the foreign manufacturer the money paid for 
 transportation and the custom house taxes, and all three 
 items, to-wit, the original cost abroad, the cost of trans- 
 portation and the customs-tax, the consumer pays. 
 That there may be occasional exceptions to this rule 
 resulting from stringency in money, failure of merchant 
 or importer, accidental over-supply of certain lines of 
 goods, or an unanticipated diminution of demand, is
 
 IVHO PAYS THE TAX OR DUTY. 19 
 
 freely admitted, and in such instances the stock may be 
 sold at public or private sale at a sacrifice, and in such 
 exceptional cases the consumer would neither pay for 
 the original cost of the goods, the import duties, nor 
 the importer's legitimate profit. It would be, in short, 
 a forced sale, and the price paid might not be one-half 
 the value of the articles sold. 
 
 " There is not in the long line of staple products consumed by 
 the people a single one which has not been cheapened by compe- 
 tition at home, made possible by protective duties. There is not 
 an article that enters into the every day uses of the family, which 
 is produced in the United States, that has not been made cheaper 
 and more accessible as the result of home production and develop- 
 ment which was to be secured only by the sturdy maintenance of 
 the protective system." 
 
 If Major McKinley's theory as to the cheapening ef- 
 fects of the protective system were sound, all nations 
 would be hastening here to buy our products, and Eng- 
 land would be the dearest market in the world.' 
 
 ' "Just so far as prices of the jDrotected article in the market 
 are enhanced by the tariff, all consumers pay a special tax for the 
 benefit of the favored producer."— Z>r. Chapin.
 
 II. 
 
 THE LOW TARIFF PERIODS CONTRASTED WITH 
 THE HIGH TARIFF PERIODS — TESTIMONY OF 
 WELLS, ALLISON AND BLAINE AS TO THE CONDI- 
 TION OF THE COUNTRY UNDER THE LOW TARIFF 
 OF 1846 — BLAINE'S SUBSEQUENT ATTEMPT TO 
 BREAK THE FORCE OF HIS OWN ADMISSIONS — 
 SCHURZ'S REJOINDER — REPUBLICAN NATIONAL 
 PLATFORM OF 1856 AND THE ACTION OF THE 
 THIRTY-FOURTH CONGRESS. 
 
 "The revenue tariff periods of our history have been periods 
 of greatest financial revulsions and industrial decadence, want 
 and poverty among the people, private enterprises checked and 
 public works retarded. From 1833 to 1842, under the low tariff 
 legislation then prevailing, business was at a stand still and our 
 merchants and traders were bankrupted ; our industries were par- 
 alyzed, our labor remained idle, and our capital was unemployed. 
 Foreign products crowded our markets, destroyed domestic com- 
 petition, and, as invariably follows, the prices of commodities to 
 consumers were appreciably raised. It is an instructive fact that 
 every panic this country has ever experienced has been preceded 
 by enormous importations." 
 
 Major McKinley seems to have forgotten that one of 
 the most violent and destructive of all panics, that of 
 1873, occurred under the high protective system. 
 
 Fifty years ago the pioneers of Ohio were struggling 
 ■with the forest, and their few open fields were studded 
 with stumps ; railroads were unknown, and wagon 
 roads at certain seasons of the year impassable. Their 
 houses were huts, and their live stock was unsheltered. 
 (20)
 
 THE REVENUE TARIFF PERIODS. 21 
 
 Grain was cut with the cradle and sickle ; the fields 
 prepared for seed time by use of the grubbing hoe and 
 wooden plow. During many years of the period re- 
 ferred to by Major McKinley, their capital was imag- 
 inary ; their banks' shaving shops and their currency 
 "wildcat." 
 
 The great States west of Indiana were then almost 
 unknown, and wholly undeveloped. The States east 
 of us were more densely settled than Ohio, and their 
 people lived in better houses, but they, like ourselves, 
 were afflicted with a rotten currency and a craze for 
 speculation similar to that which has recently run like 
 a prairie fire through Kansas and Southern California, 
 bankrupting tens of thousands. What portion of the 
 financial and industrial troubles of the people from 
 1833 to 1842 should be attributed to an unsound cur- 
 rency ; to the credit system ; to wild speculation ; to 
 unfavorable surroundings ; and what portion to the ab- 
 sence of a proper tariff law, it would take a wiser man 
 than Solomon to determine, and yet this is true, to-wit: 
 Wages in Massachusetts advanced from the high tariff 
 period ending with 1830, through the low tariff period 
 ending with 1860, fifty-two per cent., while they ad- 
 vanced from 1860 to 1883, only twenty-eight per cent.' 
 
 "From 1846 to 1861 a similar situation was presented under 
 the low tariff of that period." 
 
 When Major McKinley asserts that during the low 
 tariff period beginning with 1846 and ending with 1861, 
 the country was not prosperous, he makes a statement 
 
 * Mass. Labor Rep., 1885.
 
 22 THE REVENUE TARIFF PERIODS. 
 
 contradicted by history and by the vivid recollection of 
 thousands of living witnesses. Mr. David A. Wells ' 
 says: "This tariflf continued in force for ten years, 
 from 1847 to 1857. During its existence the American 
 mercantile marine touched its highest point of prosper- 
 ity, nearly equaling in point of tonnage that of Great 
 Britain. * * * There was also an increase in nearly 
 everything else pertaining to business. These were the 
 years in which nearly all of our great cotton factories 
 of New England sprang into existence. * * :{= 
 Between 1850 and 1860 the farm values of the country 
 increased 101 per cent., while during the high tariff 
 period between 1870 and 1880, they increased but 9 per 
 cent., though population increased 30 per cent. * * * 
 Most marked of all, manufactures themselves increased 
 during this period 90 per cent. * * * There had 
 never been such prosperity before ; there has never been 
 such prosperity since, as was realized in the whole ten 
 years taken together of this so-called ' free trade ' tariff 
 of 1846." 
 
 Senator William B. Allison,^ of Iowa, said: "The 
 tariff of 1846, although professedly and confessedly a 
 tariff for revenue, was, so far as regards all the great 
 interests of the country, as perfect a tariff as any we 
 ever had. * * * We find that the increase of our 
 wealth between 1850 and 1860 was equivalent to 126 per 
 cent." 
 
 Mr. Blaine 3 said: "The tariff of 1846 was yielding 
 
 ^ Speech at New London, Conn., 1890. 
 
 -^ U. S. Senate, 1872. 
 
 3 Twenty Years in Congress.
 
 THE REVENUE TARIFF PERIODS. 23 
 
 abundant revenue, and the business of the country was 
 in a flourishing condition. Money became very abund- 
 ant after the year 1849 ; large enterprises were under- 
 taken ; speculation was prevalent, and for a considerable 
 period the prosperity of the country was general and 
 apparently genuine. * * * Xhe principles involved 
 in the tariff of 1846 seemed for the time to be so en- 
 tirely vindicated and approved that resistance to it 
 ceased, not only among the people, but among the pro- 
 tective economists, and even among the manufacturers 
 to a large extent. * * * it -^as not surprising, 
 therefore, that in 1857 the duties were placed lower than 
 they had been since 1812. The act was well received 
 by the people, and was, indeed, concurred in by a con- 
 siderable portion of the Republican party." 
 
 It should in fairness be said that in a discussion 
 with Carl Schurz, Mr. Blaine undertook to attribute the 
 prosperity of the country under the tariff of 1846 to 
 other causes, and to deny that this prosperity resulted 
 from tariff legislation ; but no fair-minded man, I think, 
 can read Mr. Blaine's Canton speech and Mr. Schurz's 
 rejoinder without coming to the conclusion that Mr. 
 Blaine's effort to escape the force of his own admissions 
 with respect to the low tariff period was an utter failure. 
 But whether this is true or not, the fact remains that 
 Major McKinley made a palpable mistake when he 
 affirmed that " the revenue tariff periods of our history 
 have been periods of greatest financial revulsions and 
 industrial decadence, want and poverty among the 
 people." 
 
 Major McKinley in a speech at Ada, Ohio, during
 
 24 THE REVENUE TARIFF PERIODS. 
 
 the gubernatorial contest of 1891, referred to this con- 
 troversy between Schurz and Blaine as to the condition 
 of the country under the tariff of 1846, and affirmed 
 substantially that Mr. Blaine had successfully accounted 
 for the prosperity which then prevailed, by calling at- 
 tention to certain accidents of the period which had no 
 relation whatever to tarifif legislation. 
 
 In order to aflford the reader an opportunity to de- 
 termine for himself whether Mr. Blaine succeeded in 
 his effort to account for the good times which he ad- 
 mits extended from 1846 to 1857 without according any 
 credit to the then existing tariff, I shall give the main 
 points of his argument and also those embodied in the 
 reply of Mr. Schurz. 
 
 The fortuitous circumstances which Mr. Blaine 
 alleged rendered the country prosperous during the 
 period covered by the tarifif of 1846, were: 
 
 1. The Mexican war, which caused the government 
 to disburse one hundred millions in one year. 
 
 2. The Irish famine, which called for extraordinary 
 exports of bread stuflfs. 
 
 3. The discovery of gold in California which added 
 greatly to our wealth. 
 
 4. The revolutions of 1848, which " paralyzed the 
 industrial energies of Europe." 
 
 5. The Crimean war, which "paralyzed France, 
 England and Russia for two years and a half in their 
 industries." 
 
 On the other hand, with respect to the high tarifif 
 period since 1861, Mr. Schurz afiSrmed that:
 
 THE REVENUE TARIFF PERIODS. 25 
 
 1. "From 1861 to 1865 we had a war compared with which 
 the Mexican war was a holiday excursion ■" * * causing the 
 government to disburse * * many thousands of millions. 
 
 2. " Since 1861 there has indeed not been agreat Irish famine, 
 but not a few crop failures and local dearths abroad to call tor our 
 breadstuffs in more than ordinary quantity." 
 
 3. " The supply of the newly discovered California gold did 
 not stop with the end of the low tariff period ; on the contrary, 
 while the production of gold and silver averaged from 1849, inclu- 
 sive, to 1860, per year $53,400,000; it averaged during the twenty 
 years of the high tariff period from 1861 inclusive, to 1880, as much 
 as $66,500,000, and after that over $80,000,000. In addition to this 
 we had to contribute to our wealth a new product, petroleum, 
 worth annually the output of scores of gold and silver mines." 
 
 4. " There were no revolutions in Europe as great as those of 
 1848, but many smaller ones, one in Greece in 1862, a Polish rising 
 against Russia in 1863, revolutionary movements in Spain in 1866 
 and 1868; the great Carlist insurrection in the same country in 
 1872," etc. 
 
 5. "While the revolutions were comparatively limited there 
 was a full supply of wars — the French-Mexican war from 1862 to 
 1867; the second Schleswig-Holsteiu war in 1864; the great war 
 between Prussia and Austria in 1866; the great Franco-German 
 war in 1870-1871 ; the war between Russia and Turkey in 1877- 
 1878, and several similar conflicts. The Crimean war was but a 
 petty affair compared with these all together." 
 
 Thus, it will be observed that the high tarifif period 
 since 1861 has been even more favored by contributions 
 from our gold and silver mines and by accidents of his- 
 tory, than the low tarifif period extending from 1846 to 
 1860. 
 
 That the tarifif of 1846 was not regarded by the states- 
 men, the manufacturers and the people of that period 
 as objectionable because of the low duties which it im- 
 posed on foreign products, is conclusively shown by the 
 action of the first Republican National Convention.
 
 26 THE REl'EXUE TARIFF PERIODS. 
 
 This convention was held in Philadelphia — the center 
 of the protection sentiment of the country — in 1856. 
 The platform of principles and purposes which it pro- 
 mulgated made no demand for an increase of customs- 
 duties. The tariff law of 1846 was then in force, and 
 the people of the whole country were not only opposed 
 to a further increase of duties but practically unanimous 
 in favor of a reduction, and hence Democrats, Republi- 
 cans and Americans of the Thirty-fourth Congress united 
 in a measure for the reduction of tariff rates and 
 passed the bill known as the tariff act of 1857. It can- 
 not be truthfully claimed that this law was a Democratic 
 measure and passed by Democratic influence, for 
 Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts, was speaker of 
 the House of Representatives in which it originated, 
 and Republicans and Americans — all Republicans in 
 fact — constituted a majority of that body.
 
 III. 
 
 m'kinley's statistical argument in favor of a 
 high tariff briefly considered — is the fact 
 that a nation buys more than it sells an 
 evidence of poor management — the panic of 
 1857 caused by the failure of the ohio life 
 and trust company, and not by tariff laws. 
 — does a low tariff send money abroad. 
 
 " Contrast this period (the low tariff period from 1846 to 1860) 
 with the period from 1860 to 1880, the former under a revenue 
 tariff, the latter under a protective tariff. In 1860 we had 163,000,- 
 000 acres of improved land, while in 1880 we had 287,000,000, an 
 increase of 75 per cent." 
 
 The tariflf never chopped down a forest and thus 
 cleared a farm. 
 
 " In 1860 our farms were valued at $3,200,000,000 ; in 1880 the 
 value had leaped to $10,197,000,000, an increase of over 300 per cent. 
 
 God made the country, with its hills of coal and 
 
 iron ; its fertile valleys, uplands, and boundless plains. 
 
 The tariff did not. 
 
 " In 1860 we raised 173,000,000 bushels of wheat ; in 1880, 498,- 
 000,000. In 1860 we raised 838,000,000 bushels of corn ; in 1880, 
 1,717,000,000 bushels." 
 
 The tariff did not convert the great prairies of the 
 
 west into fields of wheat, corn and hay, and never 
 
 invented a reaper, mower, binder or thresher. 
 
 " In I860 we produced 5,000,000 bales of cotton ; in 1880, 7,600,- 
 000 bales, an increase of 40 per cent." 
 
 The tariff did not break the shackles from 4,000,000 
 
 (27)
 
 28 McKINLEY'S STATISTICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 slaves, and make them free and willing workers in cot- 
 ton fields and elsewhere. 
 
 " lu 18G0 we manufactured cotton goods to the value of $115,- 
 681,774; in 1880 the value reached $211,000,000, an increase of up- 
 ward of 80 per cent. 
 
 All made from untaxed raw material. 
 
 "In I860 we manufactured of woolen goods $61,000,000; in 
 1880, $267,000,000, an increase of 333 per cent." 
 
 If woolen goods are cheaper now than in 1860, im- 
 proved methods in manufacturing, not the tariff, have 
 made them so. 
 
 •' In 1860 we produced 60,000,000 pounds of wool ; in 1880, 240,- 
 000,000 pounds, an increase of nearly 300 per cent." 
 
 And yet the wool-grower gets less per pound for his 
 wool now than he did in 1860. (Why? See wool page 84.) 
 
 " In 1860 we mined 15,000,000 tons of coal; in 1880, 79,000,000, 
 an increase of over 400 per cent." 
 
 We had more wood in 1860 than in 1880; fewer rail- 
 roads to transport and distribute coal ; fewer people to 
 use it in the Middle States, and comparatively no pop- 
 ulation at all in the vast timberless regions of the West. 
 
 "In 1860 we made 987,000 tons of pig iron; in 1880, 3,835,000 
 tons." 
 
 It is estimated that American consumers of iron and 
 
 steel, from 1878 to 1887, paid ;^560,000,000 "in excess 
 
 of the cost of like quantity to the consumers of Great 
 
 Britain.'" 
 
 " In 1860 we manufactured 235,000 tons of railroad iron ; and 
 in 1880, 1,208,000 tons." 
 
 ' D. A. Wells, Economic Change--.
 
 McKINLEY'S STATISTICAL ARGUMENT. 29 
 
 Did a high protective tariflf ever build a railroad? 
 No ; it simply extorts from those who do. 
 
 " In 1860 our aggregate of national wealth was $16,159,000,000 ; 
 in 1880 it was $43,000,000,000." 
 
 How much of this vast sum in 1880 was in the pos- 
 session of the Andrew Carnegies, and how much in the 
 pockets of their employes ? 
 
 In spite of vicious legislation ; the schemes of polit- 
 ical jobbers ; the blunders of ignorance ; the well-meant 
 but mischevious expedients of monomaniacs, our people 
 have prospered as no other people ever did before, be- 
 cause our advantages and opportunities have been vast- 
 ly greater than any other people ever enjoyed. 
 
 "From 1848 to 1860, during the low tariff period, there was 
 but a single year in which we exported in excess of what we 
 imported ; the balance of trade during twelve of the thirteen years 
 was against us. Our people were drained of their money to pay 
 for foreign purchases. We sent abroad over and above our sales, 
 $396,216,161." 
 
 ;^396,000,000 in thirteen years. The people of the 
 United States pay more than this in the way of taxes 
 every year of their lives ! But suppose the things they 
 got in return for the money sent abroad cost half the 
 sum they would have cost if manufactured here, then 
 they made a clear gain of not less than ;^396, 000,000 by 
 purchasing abroad. Adam Smith said : " It is the 
 maxim of every prudent master of a family never to make 
 at home what it will cost him more to make than to 
 buy." Jean-Baptiste Say said : " It is most for our 
 advantage to employ our productive powers, not in 
 those branches in which foreigners excel us, but in
 
 30 McK/NLEV'S STATISTICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 those which we excel in ourselves, and with the prod- 
 uct to purchase of others." 
 
 It may be, therefore, that the prosperity which Mr, 
 Blaine and others tell us prevailed from 1846 to 1860 
 resulted to some extent from an adherence in part, if 
 not in whole, to the principles which the greatest of 
 political economists affirm should govern us in our in 
 ternational as well as domestic exchanges. 
 
 '* During the last thirteen years, under a protective tariff, 
 there was but one year that the balance of trade was against us. 
 For twelve years we sold to our foreign customers in excess of 
 what we bought from them $1,612,659,755. This contrast makes 
 an interesting exhibit of the work under the two systems. You 
 need not be told that the government and the people are most 
 prosperous whose balance of trade is in their favor. The govern- 
 ment is like the citizen ; indeed it is but an aggregation of citizens, 
 and when the citizen buys more than he sells he is soon conscious 
 that his year's business has not been a success." 
 
 This argument seems plausible, but it is neverthe- 
 less utterly unsound and hardly worthy of serious 
 consideration. Kad Major McKinley told us that when 
 the citizen consumes more than he produces, and hence 
 has left at the end of the year less than he had in hand 
 at the beginning, he is on the high road to bankruptcy, 
 we should have accepted it as the statement of a self- 
 evident and wholesome truth. But a moment's reflec- 
 tion must convince anyone that a majority of Ameri- 
 cans, whether engaged in agriculture, manufactures, 
 trade or other pursuits, during many years of their 
 lives, buy more than they sell and become rich and 
 prosperous by so doing. This is especially true of the 
 younger, more vigorous and enterprising element of our
 
 McKINLEVt, STATISTICAL ARGUMENT. 31 
 
 business population. The man who buys a farm, who 
 builds a house, mill or manufactory, the men who con- 
 struct a railroad, open a coal mine, build a vessel, erect 
 a hotel, purchase improved breeds of horses, cattle, 
 sheep, or swine, generally buy, during some years of 
 their lives, more than they sell, and confidently look to 
 future years for a return of their money increased many 
 fold. 
 
 That "the people are always the most prosperous 
 whose balance of trade is in their favor,'' is not more 
 true of nations than of individuals. When articles of 
 permanent value are purchased, profit is more likely to 
 result to the purchaser from the transaction than loss. 
 And even when such merchandise is bought, as may be 
 consumed within the year, the purchase is often if not 
 always an indication of the presence of accumulated 
 capital ; of financial prosperity ; not of penury and want. 
 The most prosperous people are often the most extrav- 
 agant. Those who have money may spend it ; those 
 who have none cannot. The rich may sell their pro- 
 ducts ; the poor must. The balance of trade which was 
 against us during the revenue tariff period to which 
 Major McKinley refers, could not have indicated a lack 
 of prosperity in this country, for Mr. Blaine and hun- 
 dreds of others bear witness to the fact that money was 
 then abundant, speculation prevalent, and the country 
 in a most flourishing condition. A better condition, 
 Mr. Schurz, Mr. Wells, and others tell us, than it ever 
 was in before, or ever has been in since. 
 
 In order to prove that the revenue tariflf of 1846 was 
 injurious to the country, I observe that at Lakeside
 
 32 Ar-.'.'/XLEY'S STA TISTICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 recently (1891) Major McKinley read from President 
 Buchanan's message of December, 1<S57, as follows: 
 
 '' In the midst of unsurpassed plenty in all the pro- 
 ductions and in all the elements of national wealth, we 
 •find our manufactures suspended, our public works 
 retarded, our private enterprises ot different kinds 
 abandoned, and thousands of useful laborers thrown out 
 of employment and reduced to want." 
 
 But Major McKinley, although addressing an audi- 
 ence composed of good Christian people, was especially 
 careful not to tell them the whole truth. On August 
 25, three months before President Buchanan's message 
 was published, the New York branch of the The Ohio 
 Life and Trust Company suspended payment and pre- 
 cipitated the great panic of 1857, which was only a 
 shade less violent and disastrous to the business inter- 
 ests of the country than the panic which resulted from 
 the failure of Jay Cooke & Co. in 1873. The same logic 
 which would attribute the panic of 1857 to a revenue 
 tariff should attribute the panic of 1873 to a protective 
 tariff; but I apprehend that no fair man would do either 
 the one or the other. 
 
 "Our wealth increases $875,000,000 every year; while the 
 increase of France is $375,000,000, Great Britain $325,000,000 and 
 Germany $200,000,000. The total carrying capacity of all the 
 vessels entered and cleared from American ports during the year 
 1886-7 in the foreign trade was 28,000,000 tons:^ 
 
 How many of these ships carried the flag of the 
 republic ? Comparatively none. High protection has 
 swept American vessels from the seas. In this connec- 
 tion let me quote again from Hon. David A. Wells, a
 
 McKINLEY'S STATISTICAL ARGUMENT. 33 
 
 Statement which no one can successfully dispute: 
 " During its existence [the low tariff of 1846] the Amer- 
 ican mercantile marine touched its highest point of 
 prosperity, nearly equaling in point of tonnage that of 
 Great Britian, and being nearly as large as the entire 
 tonnage of all the nations of the world with the excep- 
 tion of Great Britain." 
 
 The UnitedStates has a larger population than any of 
 the other countries mentioned. It is of broader area. It 
 is a new and more fertile field. It is richer in gold, silver, 
 iron, copper, coal and timber than any other nation on 
 the globe. Why should it not grow wealthy with mar- 
 velous speed ? 
 
 "This (our country's) advancement is the world's wonder. 
 The uatious of the earth can not furnish such a splendid exhibi- 
 tion of progress in any age or period. We defy a revenue tariff 
 policy to present such an exhibition of material prosperity and 
 industrial development. Art, science and literature have held 
 their own in this wonderful march. We are prosperous to-day 
 beyond any other people. The masses are better cared for, better 
 provided for, more self-resi^ectiug and more independent than 
 ever before in our history, which can not be said of the masses of 
 other countries." 
 
 This is simply declamation, not argument. It could 
 have been delivered at any time within the past fifty 
 years as appropriately and truthfully as now. Fourth 
 of July orators have addressed their hearers in substan- 
 tially the same grandiloquent language for generations. 
 They, however, defied the despots of the earth instead 
 of a revenue tariff. Centennial orators have traveled 
 stiltedly over the same ground and indulged in precisely 
 the same rhetoric; they, however, attributed our won-
 
 34 McKINLEV'S STATISTICAL ARGUME.VT. 
 
 derful success, not to a protective tariflf, but to the 
 political, social and commercial freedom of the citizen. 
 Reunion orators have dwelt with even greater particu- 
 larity of detail upon the surpassing glory of our country 
 and the marvelous prosperity of our people, but they 
 have ascribed all the credit, not to an exorbitant duty on 
 pig iron, but to the Un^'on soldiers who fought the bat- 
 tles of the republic and won its victories. 
 
 " Oue of the striking differences between a revenue tariff and 
 a protective tariff is tliat the former sends the money of its peo- 
 ple abroad for foreign supplies and seeks out a foreign market. 
 The latter keeps the money at home among our own people, cir- 
 culating through the arteries of trade, and creates a market at 
 home which is always the best, because the most reliable." 
 
 How can Major McKinley truthfully affirm that a 
 revenue tariff " sends the money of its people abroad for 
 foreign supplies?" There are at least three things 
 under a low tariff always present to induce the citizen to 
 buy at home and to deter him from making purchases 
 abroad : First, the tariS tax; second, the cost of trans- 
 portation on land and water; third, the middle man's 
 commissions and profits. What further protection can 
 the home maker and seller reasonably ask ? Shall we 
 give them control of the market, and thus enable 
 them by combinations, pools and trusts to extort 
 from the buyer and consumer any price they please ? 
 Major McKinley boasts of the freedom, culture and 
 practical business sense of our people, and yet he de- 
 clines to give them any liberty in commerce; he refuses 
 to permit them to exercise their own judgment in 
 making purchases, and assumes the right to oppress
 
 McK/NLEV'S STATISTICAL ARGUMENT. 35 
 
 them with unnecessary expenses and annoying trade re- 
 strictions. Garfield stood squarely upon a low tariff 
 platform and gave utterance to the convictions of a 
 scholar and statesman when he said: "I hold that a 
 properly adjusted competition between home and for- 
 eign products is the best gauge by which to regulate in- 
 ternational trade." He had his eye on just such men 
 as William D. Kelly and William McKinley, Jr., when 
 he denounced that extreme school of economists who, 
 " by making it impossible for the foreigner to sell his 
 competing wares in our markets, would give the people 
 no immediate check upon prices which our manufac- 
 turers might fix for their products.'' 
 
 It may be good policy to keep our money at home 
 and it certainly is good sense to do so, unless by send- 
 ing it abroad we can obtain something more valuable 
 than money in exchange for it. But economic justice 
 demands that the citizen who earns his money by the 
 sweat of his brow shall not be robbed of it to enable the 
 Carnegies to build castles in Scotland and surround 
 themselves with all the splendors of royalty. 
 
 " Surel^^ a new era of industrial development has come to the 
 South. Nothing should be permitted to check or retard it. To 
 her nature has been most prodigal with her gifts. Her hills and 
 valleys have been made the store houses of richest treasure. Coal 
 and iron mines wait impatiently the touch of labor and capital, 
 and tempt both with the promise of lavish profit." 
 
 It may be remarked in passing that the orator at 
 last concedes that the treasures of the hills and valleys 
 are the prodigal gifts of nature, and not the benefac- 
 tions of a high protective tariff.
 
 36 McKINLEVS STATISTICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 " Raw materials are found at every turn to invite tlie skilled 
 artisau to transform them into the finislied product for the high- 
 est uses of man. She possesses tlie fibres in rich abundance ; licr 
 skilled labor should weave tlie fabric." 
 
 Why, amid all this profusion of wealth, with iron, 
 coal and limestone deposited in the same hill ; cotton, 
 corn and beef growing in the same valley, should any- 
 body want a prohibitory tariff on pig iron, or a high 
 protective duty on cotton cloth? 
 
 England descends a thousand feet below the surface 
 of the earth to obtain her iron ore and coal. She comes 
 to America to buy her cotton, carries it across the At- 
 lantic to her own looms, and when the iron is in the pig 
 and the cotton in the cloth, she must transport them 
 three thousand miles by water and six hundred miles by 
 land to bring them into competition with these south- 
 ern products. A low tariff would afford all the protec- 
 tion needed — all the protection honest men could ask 
 for; more than this simply gives the iron monger and 
 the cotton manufacturer opportunities for extortion, 
 which the great body of our people neither ask for nor 
 obtain. There is certainly not, with respect to these 
 products, " that properly adjusted competition between 
 home and foreign products " which President Garfield 
 favored, and which every fair-minded citizen should in- 
 sist upon.
 
 IV. 
 
 FREE RAW MATERIAIv FOR EXPORT TRADE, AND DRAW- 
 BACKS — M'KINLEY law DISCRIMINATES AGAINST 
 THE HOME LABORER AND IN FAVOR OF HIS FOR- 
 EIGN RIVAL — COMBINATIONS, POOLS, AND TRUSTS 
 — SHERMAN AND BUTTERWORTH. 
 
 " But if free, raw material be necessary to secure an export 
 trade and the foreign markets, then I answer that our manu- 
 facturers to-day have substantial free trade in foreign raw mate- 
 rials which they make into the finished product in the United 
 States, provided they export it. Sections 3019, 3020, 3021 and 3022 
 of the United States Statutes provide for the remission of duties 
 on all foreign materials used in manufacturing for the export 
 trade. The law is positive that all articles manufactured for ex- 
 port from imported materials upon which duties have been paid 
 shall, when exported, be entitled to a drawback of 90 per cent. 
 
 It is 99 under the McKinley bill. 
 
 — of the duties paid on such raw materials. Some use has 
 been made of these laws. The remission of duties in 1884 paid 
 upon imported material manufactured for foreign markets 
 amounted to $=2, 2.56, 638. On some articles the drawback is equal 
 to the duty paid, but in no instance where articles are imported to 
 be manufactured here and sent abroad is the duty to exceed 10 
 per cent." 
 
 Major McKinley has already affirmed that the pro- 
 tective system " says to the world of producers : ' If 
 you want to share with the citizens of- the United 
 States their home markets, you must pay for the privi- 
 lege of doing it; your product shall not enter into free 
 and unrestricted competition with the product of our 
 
 (37)
 
 38 DISCR/.'ir/NATES AGAINST THE HOME LABORER. 
 
 own people, but shall be discriminated against to such 
 an extent as to fully protect and defend our own.' '" If 
 this be true, and the foreign producer has paid the 
 duty to the United States Government for the privilege 
 of entering our home market and selling his goods, 
 then in that case it must be true that the home manu- 
 facturer has paid no duty; that he obtained his mate- 
 rials, wool and iron, for instance, at what they were 
 worth abroad with transportation added. Why, there- 
 fore, in the name of common sense should the govern- 
 ment pay him ^2,256,638? If this vast sum belongs 
 to anybody except the government, it belongs, ac- 
 cording to Major McKinley's logic, not to the manu- 
 facturer, but to men who paid for the privilege of sell- 
 ing their goods in this market. In fact, however, it 
 does not belong to them, for they got in return for the 
 money the very identical privilege for which they paid, 
 to-wit : the privilege of entering our market and selling 
 their wool, iron, etc., in competition with the products 
 of our own people. 
 
 There is evidently, therefore, either a defect in Ma- 
 jor McKinley's argument, or the manufacturers are rob- 
 bing the United States treasury by wholesale. 
 
 There is another feature of the present tariff system, 
 suggested in the paragraphs just quoted, which should 
 be seriously considered. This is the fact, that on the 
 pretext of protecting home industry it accords to 
 foreigners valuable favors which it denies to our own 
 people. 
 
 Articles composed in part or in whole of dutiable 
 
 1 Atlanta, 1888.
 
 DISCRIMINATES AGAINST THE HOME LABORER. 39 
 
 material, when manufactured and sold here, are loaded 
 with the customs tax which has been paid on this im- 
 ported material, the tax ranging anywhere from sixty 
 to one hundred per cent. The American citizen pays 
 this tax in full on all of the product consumed here. 
 But if goods of the same brand and make are sent 
 abroad the foreigner obtains them after this duty, rang- 
 ing from sixty to one hundred per cent, has been 
 stricken off, and hence gets them at a considerably less 
 price than that paid by our own people for substantially 
 the same things. In other words, the $2,256,638 which 
 Major McKinley says were refunded to exporters of this 
 class of goods in 1884 indicate the exact sum which 
 the home consumer would have to pay for the same 
 quantity of goods, over and above what the foreign 
 consumer did have to pay for the goods exported. In 
 brief, the foreign consumer obtained the goods referred 
 to $2,256,638 cheaper than it was possible for the Amer- 
 ican consumer to buy them. 
 
 This would seem to be a decided discrimination 
 against the home laborer and in favor of his foreign 
 rival, and goes far to support the belief entertained by 
 many honest and thoughtful men, that what a high pro- 
 tective tariflf gives to the workingmen of America with 
 one hand it takes away from them with the other. 
 
 "And yet we are gravely told by the tariff reformers that we 
 cannot reach foreign markets on account of the high tariff on the 
 raw material, when in fact, for foreign trade, foreign raw materials 
 are practically free. This principle was recognized as early as the 
 administration of George Washington and has been enlarged and 
 made applicable to all imported materials, the drawbacks varying 
 from 60 to 100 per cent."
 
 40 DISCRIMINATES AGAINST THE HOME LABORER. 
 
 These drawbacks show exactly how much farther 
 the foreign laborer's wage goes in the purchase of the 
 comforts and conveniences of life than the wage of the 
 home worker. 
 
 *' But if any of our people are sighing for a foreign market, 
 and value it more highly than our own, they can import foreign 
 raw material praetieallj' free of duty, and after advancing it into 
 the higher forms of manufacture, can go out and possess the 
 world's markets. Taxed raw materials do not stand in their way, 
 and it is hypocrisy to claim otherwise." 
 
 The workingmen of this country are not sighing 
 particularly to possess the world's markets. They 
 could be humbly content with a market at home in 
 which they would not be robbed in a genteel and legal 
 way by a multitude of trusts, combines and pools. 
 
 Combinations to limit production, destroy competi- 
 tion, control the home market and advance prices, were 
 unknown to the low tariff period, and are the direct 
 and legitimate outgrowth of the protective system. 
 Mr. Carl Schurz said in a recent speech, ' " I have be- 
 fore me a list of twenty-seven industries carried on 
 under trusts, combinations, agreements or understand- 
 ings of various kinds, having the control of production 
 and of prices in view. Almost all these industries pro- 
 duce, directly or indirectly, things of common use, the 
 prices of which are of great importance to people of all 
 classes, especially to those of limited means." 
 
 Senator Sherman said, ^ " The great danger of the 
 tarifif and of all schemes for building up domestic in- 
 dustries by law, is that the beneficiaries themselves, 
 
 1 Boston, 1890. 
 
 2 Tarifl' Debates, United States Senate.
 
 DISCRIMINATES AGAINST THE HOME LABORER. 41 
 
 capitalists and laborers alike, will not be content to 
 realize the advantages they enjoy, but will combine and 
 confederate in order to cheat the people of that which 
 they have a right to enjoy. This protective policy must 
 not degenerate into monopoly — into trusts or combi- 
 nations to raise prices against the spirit of the common 
 law." ^ 
 
 Senator Sherman's note of alarm and of warning 
 was sounded too late. The high protective policy en- 
 gendered its first brood of monopolistic combinations 
 years ago, and has been breeding prolifically ever since. 
 When the McKinley bill was under discussion in the 
 House of Representatives, Hon. Ben. Butterworth, a 
 stalwart Republican and one of the ablest debaters 
 Ohio ever sent to Congress, said : " I propose to show 
 that under certain tariff regulations, which have the 
 
 1 "A Cut in Prices. — The Carnegie Steel Company Desert 
 the Combine. 
 
 " Pittsburg, Nov. 9. — The announcement was made tonight 
 and later confirmed that the Carnegie Steel company, limited, of 
 this city, had broken away from the steel combine and cut the 
 prices on steel rails |5 per ton, from ^29 to $24." — Ohio State Jour- 
 nal, Nov. 10, 1893. 
 
 " A Cut in Prices. — Steel Companies Slash Rates.— Combina- 
 tion Falls to Pieces. 
 
 "Pittsburg, Nov. 10. — Concerning the cut in steel rails 
 reported last night, the Pittsburg Post will say tomorrow that it 
 is in a position to state that the cutting on rails has been much 
 greater than supposed. Within a few days the Maryland Steel 
 company accepted an order for 15,000 tons of rails, delivered on 
 the line of the Boston and Albany railroad, at $22 per ton, and 
 within a couple of days the Carnegie Steel company has sold rails 
 at the phenominally low price of $21.90 at the mill. Tbis is 
 slashing prices witn a vengeance and is unparalleled in this 
 branch of the trade. The effect of it has been the disruption of 
 the pool that has been in existence for the last four years." — Ohio 
 State Journal, Nov. 11, 1893.
 
 42 DISCRIMINATES AGAINST THE HOME LABORER 
 
 approval of some of my friends, and which it is pro- 
 posed in a large degree to aggravate, they have in fact 
 take?i out of the farmers of the country — out of our 
 people — hundreds of millions of dollars^ for which we 
 seek to atone by presenting them pictures of prosperity. 
 For instance, we propose to double, and more than 
 double, thetariflfon tin. It is proposed to continue to 
 exact of this people a bounty for the producers of copper. 
 It is proposed to enable certain individuals in the 
 United States to have a corner on nickeled steel. * * * 
 First, let us take the question of copper. During ten 
 years, as I have stated, the people of this country have 
 contributed of their hard earned wages many millions of 
 dollars, for which they have no consideration whatever. 
 It is a mere gratuity and extortion. The same may be 
 said of one-half the money paid for nickel in the United 
 States during the same period. The same may be said 
 of the increased cost of tin proposed in this bill. Let 
 me add also, the further amount we have paid to the 
 producers of steel rails during the last two decades. 
 The amount is simply fabulous. We will pay this year 
 probably ten millions — certainly five millions as a mere 
 gratuity. * * * j sound the note of warning, and 
 whatever this House may decide * * * I assert 
 that there never was a time in the history of the Repub- 
 lican party when it was in more danger of defeat than 
 upon this one suggested idea that it is permissible to 
 levy tribute upon all the people o{ th'xs covLXitry * * * 
 to confer a benefit upon a few hundreds^ by going beyond 
 the imposition of a protective tariff necessary to re- 
 move inequalities and impart to competition the qual- 
 ity of fairness."
 
 V. 
 
 EFFECT OF TARIFF LAWS ON THE WAGES OF WORKING- 
 MEN — THOMAS G. shearman's STATISTICS ON THE 
 SUBJECT— CARROLL D. WRIGHT — WAGES IN EUROPE. 
 
 "Upon what terras can we adoi^t a revenue tariff system in 
 this country? In one way only; by accepting European condi- 
 tions and submitting to all the discomforts and disadvantages ot 
 our commercial rivals. The chief obstruction in the way of a rev- 
 enue tariff, are the wages paid American workingmen, and any 
 return to that policy involves a reduction of the cost of labor. 
 We cannot afiord to have cheap labor in the United States. 
 Cheap labor means cheap men and dear money." 
 
 The question of wages is here introduced. It is as- 
 sumed that a low tariff would, by reducing wages, in- 
 jure the working man, and that the high protective sys- 
 tem must be continued in order to maintain wages at 
 the present standard. It will be observed that this is 
 simply assumption; no argument is presented to sus- 
 tain it. ' 
 
 From the census of 1880, we ascertain that less 
 than one-sixth of our working population find employ- 
 
 1 " It is claimed that we ought to protect our labor against 
 the pauper labor of Europe." 
 
 "Does a restrictive tariff do this? Does it prevent the labor- 
 ers of Europe from entering into competition with ours? Does it 
 not, in fact, bring them to our very doors? " 
 
 " Instead of protecting American labor against the pauper la- 
 bor of Europe, we have brought that labor here to meet the 
 America citizen face to face, on a perfect level, with equal civil 
 rights, and have given to him the advantage of our immense 
 landed capital." Amasa Walker. 
 
 (43)
 
 44 EFFECT OF TARIFF LAWS O.V WAGES. 
 
 ment in mines and manufactures.' Admitting, there- 
 fore, that the wages of this one-sixth are increased by 
 the higlier prices which their product sells for in the 
 home market by favor of the protective system, does it 
 not follow that the unprotected laborers, who constitute 
 the other five-sixths, themselves pay whatever differ- 
 ence there is between the wage of the protected and 
 the unprotected workingman ? In other words, the 
 workingman who got higher wages for making the 
 glass goblet which Major McKinley recently (1891) re- 
 ferred to at Lakeside, obtained the higher wages be- 
 cause the goblet could be sold to other workingmen 
 under a high protective tariff for more money than un- 
 der a tariff for revenue, so that in fact, while the wages 
 of the protected few were raised, the wages of the un- 
 protected many were not only not increased, but the 
 purchasing power of their smaller wage was consider- 
 ably diminished. 
 
 Major McKinley cannot logically claim in this con- 
 nection that high protection has not made the goblet 
 dearer than it would have been under a revenue tariff 
 without in effect admitting that a low tariff would af- 
 ford to the glass industry all the protection it requires 
 to defy competition and successfully and profitably sup- 
 ply the home market. 
 
 In this discussion we should not forget that but 
 
 ^ "It would be for within bounds to say that four-fifths of all 
 the present consumption of manufactures would be supplied by 
 our national industry, irrespective of protection. All tlie matter, 
 then, comes to this : Sliail we impose heavy duties to force labor 
 and capital into such channels as shall provide, at great expense, 
 the remaining fifth of the manufactures we consume?" 
 
 Amasa Walker.
 
 EFFECT OF TARIFF LAWS ON WAGES. 45 
 
 three millions of our working population ar- employed 
 in mines and manufactures, and that fifteen millions re- 
 ceive certainly no direct and probably no indirect ad- 
 vantage from our tariff laws. Indeed, it is extremely 
 doubtful whether even the workers in the protected in- 
 dustries of the country derive any especial and sub- 
 stantial benefit from what Major McKinley calls the 
 true protective system. Additional profit there cer- 
 tainly is to somebody, but this profit does not at the 
 end of the year find lodgment in the pocket of the 
 workingman. 
 
 Thomas G. Shearman affirms that protection does not 
 increase wages, and that manufacturers "pay no greater 
 wages than they are obliged to do by general competi- 
 tion among employers." This seems probable, for 
 manufacturers are very much like other folks, and are 
 not at all likely to pay a workingman three dollars a 
 day when they can obtain his services for two. But Mr- 
 Shearman presents some proof on this subject, a thing 
 which Major McKinley carefully abstains from doing- 
 He says: " In July, 1882, the tax on imported socks and 
 other knit goods was raised from 35 per cent, to 80 per 
 cent. Not only did the manufacturers of these goods 
 fail to increase wages, but within four months after- 
 wards they held a conference for the purpose of cuttmg 
 down the wages of their workmen." 
 
 Again," In 1 872 the protection on iron, wool and cotton 
 
 goods was reduced 10 per cent, and wages were raised."' 
 
 Again, " In 1875 the protection on these goods was 
 
 raised 11 per cent, and wages were reduced that same 
 
 year, and for four years thereafter."
 
 4G EFFECT OF TARIFF LAWS ON WAGES. 
 
 Again, " Early in 1880 a strong attempt was made 
 in Congress, with fair prospects of success, to reduce 
 the duty on steel rails from ;^28 a ton to $10. While 
 this was agitated the steel rail manufacturers paid their 
 workmen higher wages than they had done for five 
 years previously. They kept up these wages until a 
 new Congress was elected which was known to contain 
 a majority of protectionists, who would not allow the 
 steel duty to be materially reduced. Just before that 
 Congress assembled the steel rail manufacturers gave 
 notice to their men of a reduction of wages. About 
 fifteen months afterward another attempt was made to 
 reduce the duty on steel rails, and as soon as that was 
 defeated the manufacturers gave notice of an another 
 and larger reduction.^'' 
 
 Again, " The highest tariff taxes upon iron that were 
 ever known in this country were levied from 1828 to 
 184G. During that period, as the manufacturers testi- 
 fied before a ^ * committee of Congress, they made 
 no increase of wages whatever. Between 1840 and 1842 
 the duties on iron were reduced with no perceptible 
 efiect on wages. In the middle of 1842 the duties were 
 more than doubled and remained high until December, 
 1846; official inquiries being made in the autumn of 
 1845, not one manufacturer pretended that he had in- 
 creased wages. In December, 1846, the duties were cut 
 down about one-third, and so remained until July, 
 1857."— 
 
 This is the revenue tariff period denounced by 
 Major McKinley. 
 
 — " The manufacturers,'' Mr. Shearman continues,
 
 EFFECT OF TARIFF LAWS ON WAGES. 47 
 
 " during that period very largely increased wages in the 
 iron trade, as well as in every other.'' 
 
 Again, " There never was before and there never 
 has been since so rapid an advance in the wages of 
 manufacturing workmen of all classes, estimated in 
 gold value, as between 1846 and 1860, during which 
 time the tariff taxes were lower than they have ever 
 been at any other time since 1812," 
 
 Again, " The census of 1880 shows conclusively that 
 the highest wages are paid by those employers who are 
 not benefited by protectiott^ and that the lowest wages 
 are paid by the protected classes y 
 
 A paragraph in a report of Hon. Carroll D. Wright, 
 formerly labor commissioner of Massachusetts, would 
 seem to indicate beyond a peradventure that high pro 
 tection tends directly to the impoverishment of working 
 people. He gives the wages in 1860 and in 1881, and 
 also the cost of living in those years, and says : 
 
 " Covering the whole period of twenty-otae years, 
 there was an average increase in wages ot 31.2 per cent, 
 and in prices 41.3 per cent. That is, between 1860 and 
 1881 the workingman has suffered a reduction of Z^;//^;- 
 ce7it. in the purchasing power of his wages ^ and this be- 
 tween a dead level year and one of general prosperity.'' 
 
 Admitting, however, that wages are higher here 
 than elsewhere, and that some of our manufacturers 
 should be protected against cheaper foreign labor, can 
 any intelligent and fair-minded man doubt that alow 
 tariff would afford all the protection necessary? Prof. 
 W. D. Wilson, of Cornell University, lut the proverbial 
 nail squarely on the head wheu he affirmed that " pro-
 
 48 EFFECT OF TARIFF LAWS ON WAGES. 
 
 tection for its own sake, and with a mere vague notion 
 of doing good somehow, is but an idle fancy of not a 
 very clear brain." 
 
 Wages have, within the past fifty years, increased in 
 all civilized countries. The increase for Great Britain 
 is estimated at very nearly one hundred per cent. The 
 larger proportion of this increase " has occurred within 
 the later years of this period. * * * ^^ London, in 
 1885, Sir Lowthian Bell stated * * * that all the 
 evidence from France, Germany, Belgium and Austria 
 goes to prove that while during the last forty years the 
 cost of living in all these countries had been notably 
 augmented (with an accompanying rise in wages), in 
 the United Kingdom under free trade measures, with a 
 large average rise in wages, the cost of living has sen- 
 sibly diminished." ^ 
 
 From all the facts presented, but especially from 
 the fact that " the average rate of wages," to use Mr. 
 Wells' language, " has, within a comparatively recent 
 period, greatly increased in all civilized countries," it 
 would be manifestly unfair and untrue to attribute 
 the rise in wages in this country to a high tariff, and 
 equally false to claim that a high tariflf must be con- 
 tinued in order to maintain them at the present 
 standard. ' 
 
 In closing on this point it is pertinent to say that 
 
 ^ Wells' Economic Chauges. 
 
 2 " Col. Carroll D. Wright, the Republican Commissioner of 
 the Bureau of Labor at Washington, after a careful investigation 
 of the subject, reijorted that wages had advanced as nmch during 
 the last fifty years in England under free trade as in this country 
 under restriction — a fact which proves that high tariffs do not 
 make high wages." — Chicago Herald.
 
 EFFECT OF TARIFF LAWS ON WAGES. 49 
 
 Prof. A. L. Perry affirms that the United States census 
 reports show that " between 1850 and 1860 (the low 
 tarifif period) the wealth and wages of the country in- 
 creased in a greater ratio than between 1860 and 1880," 
 the high tariff period.' 
 
 i " I have always been an ultra protectionist. I have made 
 speech after si^eech about the pauper labor iu Europe. I have 
 tried to bring tears to the eyes of my auditors in describing the 
 pitiful conditions aud the hard times across the sea. The first 
 thing when I got to Bremen I began to look for pauper labor. I 
 hunted for it in Hamburg, in Saxony. I scoured Berlin for it, but 
 not one pauper laborer could 1 find. There are more loafers in an 
 American city than there are in all Germany. I affirm this as an 
 absolute fact. There are two things they do not have in the 
 fatherland — weeds aud loafers." — Hon. Ben. Butterworth. 
 
 "Although wages are considerably higher in the United 
 States than in England, much of the advantage which labor 
 should derive from these additional wages is lost in consequence of 
 almost every article in general use being made unnecessarily ' dear 
 by protective duties.' " — Henry Faucett. 
 
 " Wages iu America were higher than in any country in Europe 
 when every country in Europe, England included, was high tariff 
 up to the eyes, and this country was so much low tariff that it 
 was pointed to as illustrating the blessings of free trade and low 
 taxes."— JVew York limes, Nov. 12, 1893. 
 
 Protection and Wages. — "Of all the nonsense talked 
 against the reduction of tariff taxes, the claim that they benefit 
 the workingman is most transparent. The effect of these taxes is 
 to increase the price of everything that the workingman sells his 
 labor for, since the money he gets is only the medium witli which 
 he obtains what is the real object of his'labor. Granted, which is 
 only true in a comparatively few cases, that such taxes increase 
 the profits of his employer. Do employers pay larger wages when 
 they get larger profits ? I do not, and even philanthropists do not. 
 
 "Take Mr. Andrew Carnegie, who gives like a prince out of 
 the millions the tariff has enabled him to take from his fellow-cit- 
 izens. He gives like a prince from his more than princely income, 
 but he doesnot raise wages unless he has to." — Hon. Tom. L. John- 
 son, a steel rail manufacturer.
 
 VI. 
 
 THE CONDITION OF A COUNTRY CANNOT BE INFERRED 
 FROM THE AMOUNT OF ITS IMPORTATIONS — NON- 
 DUTIABLE IMPORTS OF 1890 — OUR HIGH TARIFFS 
 HAVE DEVELOPED THE WHEAT GROWING INDUSTRY 
 OF OTHER COUNTRIES. 
 
 "The increase of our importations in agricultural products 
 has risen from $40,000,000 in 1850, to $256,000,000 in 1889. We im- 
 ported in the last ten years more than $60,000,000 worth of horses, 
 cattle and sheep. "^ 
 
 This paragraph was evidently intended to alarm the 
 farmers, but when understood it will not have the effect 
 desired. 
 
 The importations of 1850, amounting in value to 
 $40,000,000, were made under the revenue tariff of 1846 
 — a tariff which has been time and again denounced by 
 Governor McKinley as an invitation and an encourage- 
 ment to other countries to send their products hither to 
 be sold in competition with those of the American pro- 
 ducer; and yet he tells us that in 1889, under the high 
 tariff of 1883, we imported $256,000,000 of foreign agri- 
 cultural products, $216,000,000 more than had been im- 
 ported under the low tariff of 1846. This statement, if 
 accepted as it is presented by Governor McKinley, 
 would not indicate that farmers were being at all bene- 
 fited by the high protective system ; for if a low tariff 
 
 ^ House of Representatives. 
 
 (50)
 
 HIGH TARIFF DEVELOPMENTS. 51 
 
 leads to the importation of but $40,000,000 of agricultu- 
 ral products, and the high tariff brings in ;^256, 000,000, 
 the former, according to the Governor's economic doc- 
 trine, must be a great deal better for farmers than the 
 latter. The wonder, therefore, is that he did not 
 qualify his statement, and, in so far as he could do so, 
 make it conform to his theories. The truth is, how- 
 ever, that the Governer is " figure" blind, and when he 
 takes to handling statistics is far more likely to hurt 
 himself than to harm his opponents. 
 
 The population of the United States in 1850 was 
 23,000,000. In 1889 it had increased to over 64,000,- 
 000, and a larger amount of products was required to 
 supply the larger population than was needed to sup- 
 ply the smaller. Again, during the thirty-nine years 
 intervening between 1850 and 1889, our people had 
 greatly increased in wealth, and this added wealth had 
 not only multiplied their wants, but enabled them, with- 
 out any perceptible diminution of their means, to fully 
 gratify them. Again, the agricultural products im- 
 ported in 1850 and in 1889 were in the main not such 
 products as come in competition with the products of 
 the American farmer, nor were they such products as the 
 McKinley law now makes dutiable. They consisted of 
 
 1. Coffee and cocoa, (of which we im- 
 
 ported in 1890) $80,580,213 
 
 2. Sugar (same year) 89,734,684 
 
 3. Tropical fruits (same year) 6,867,670 
 
 4. Live animals for breeding 3,496,655 
 
 5. India Rubber and gutta percha 14,854,512 
 
 6. Spices, ungrouud 2,973,994 
 
 Rice, molasses, sugar, from Hawaiian Is- 
 lands under the reciprocity treaty 12,058,557 
 
 Tea 12,317,493
 
 52 HIGH TARIFF DEl'ELOPMENTS. 
 
 The products named constituted in 1890, ;g222,883,- 
 778 of the imported agricultural products referred to by 
 Governor McKinley. 
 
 Under the McKinley law they are now all admitted 
 free of duty, and it was at least unfair for the Governor 
 to allow his hearers and readers to infer that they came 
 in competition with the products of the Northern 
 farmer. 
 
 " We imported within the last ten years more than S60,000,000 
 worth of horses, cattle and sheep." 
 
 Nine-tenths of these at least were for breeding pur- 
 poses or the improvement of the farmers' live stock. 
 This subject, however, will be discussed more fully 
 hereafter. 
 
 " The farmers of the United States have, therefore, come to 
 appreciate that, with the wonderful wheat development in India 
 and Russia, the time is already here when the American farmer 
 must sell his product in the markets of the world in competition 
 with wheat produced by tlie lowest priced labor of other countries, 
 and that his care and concern must in the future be to preserve 
 his home market." ^ 
 
 The cost of farm labor is higher in the United 
 States than in any other country of the world, and has 
 been so under low tariffs and high tariffs for a hundred 
 years and more; but none of the older countries can 
 compete with us in the production of wheat for the 
 simple reason that they lack not only in acreage suita- 
 ble for wheat, but in that freshness and fertility of soil 
 which, with intelligent labor in production, enable the 
 American farmer, despite the higher price of labor, to 
 
 ^ House of Representatives, 1890.
 
 HIGH TARIFF DEVELOPMENTS. 53 
 
 excel all others in the growing of this cereal/ It was 
 not, however, to call attention to this point in the dis- 
 cussion that Governor McKinley's words were quoted, 
 but for the purpose of suggesting to the reader the 
 cause of the wonderful impetus to the wheat industry 
 of Russia and India to which he alludes. 
 
 The United States, although the greatest wheat pro- 
 ducing country on the globe, has now for thirty-two 
 years by exorbitantly high tariflfs, signified its unwill- 
 ingness to exchange products with other countries on 
 fair terms. We have been eager enough to sell, but 
 loth to buy, and other countries could not buy of us un- 
 less they sold to us, and hence from the day when we 
 put high duties upon foreign products to deter their 
 importation and diminish their sale in this country, 
 they — and especially England — began to look else- 
 where for breadstuffs, and the wheat industry of other 
 countries received that stimulus and encouragement 
 which have finally developed it into huge proportions. 
 Our narrowness and niggardliness have thus been in- 
 strumental in bringing competitors into prominence 
 who under a wise and liberal policy would have re- 
 mained unknown, or at least undealt with. It is one in- 
 stance of national importance in which short-sighted 
 statesmen have disabled, if not wholly, killed the goose 
 which laid the golden ^'g^^ and a forcible verification 
 
 1 "The Illiuois or Australian fiirraer has to pay his laborers 
 at least two or three times as much as is paid by the Dorsetshire 
 or Wiltshire farmer, and yet wheat cau be produced mucli more 
 cheaply in Australia or America than in England. It is there- 
 fore ol)vi()Us that other circumstances, besides the amount of 
 wages which may be paid, determine the cost at which any par- 
 ticular article cau be produced." — Henry Faucett.
 
 54 HIGH TARIFF DEVELOPMENTS. 
 
 also of the truth of Pitt's apothegm, " Small ideas and 
 great empires go ill together." The danger which con- 
 fronts us now does not lie in the probability suggested 
 by Governor McKinley, that wheat may be brought 
 into this country from Russia and India, but in the fear 
 that wisdom may not be able to recall the profitable 
 trade which folly has driven away/ 
 
 ^ " An imiwrt duty imposed upou wine iu Frauee, or ou 
 wheat iu America, would therefore be of no advantage to the 
 Freuch wiue grower or tlie American farmer. They are conse- 
 queutly precluded from receiviug any compensation for the higher 
 price whicli they are compelled to pay for the various articles that 
 are made dearer through the operation of protective duties." — 
 Henry Faucett. 
 
 Higli tariff advocates understand very clearly that the farmer 
 is not benefited by the high protective system. In arguing 
 against a low tariff the Columbus Evening Dispatch, oi January 
 24, 1894, made the following honest confession in its editorial 
 column : 
 
 " But when it comes to furnishing things for his table, the 
 condition of the wage-earner is still worse. He will have less 
 money to buy with, and the chances are that the price of farm 
 commodities will be increased. Certainly it will not be reduced by 
 reason of a wider market. He will liave to pay the same, if not 
 more, for his potatoes, and the same, if not more, for his eggs and 
 meats, his flour and his cabbage."
 
 VII. 
 
 DOES UNFAVORABLE CRITICISM OF THE M'KINLEY LAW 
 IN OTHER COUNTRIES PROVE THAT IT IS A GOOD 
 LAW FOR THIS COUNTRY? — MEMORIAL OF THE 
 COLONIAL PARLIAMENT OF BERMUDA. 
 
 " The press of other countries has denounced the bill (McKin- 
 ley bill) with unmeasured severity ; the legislative assemblies of 
 more than one distant country have given it attention in no 
 friendly spirit ; it has received the censure of foreign powers and 
 diplomats for all which there is a manifest reason ; it may pinch 
 them, but no American citizen surely can object to it on that ac- 
 count." 
 
 When the people of other countries speak unfavora- 
 bly of the McKinley law its putative father accepts it 
 as proof conclusive that the child is perfect and that 
 this unfriendly comment abroad should at once silence 
 adverse criticism at home. But let us consider this 
 phase of the question briefly, and ascertain whether 
 there is anything in it of a comforting nature to the 
 people of the United States. 
 
 Suppose the people of the coal regions of the Hock- 
 ing Valley should say to the people of Columbus, " We 
 will sell you coal for cash, but we will not buy goods of 
 you.'' What would the people of Columbus naturally 
 say and do in such a case ? They would regret the 
 action of the Hocking Valley people, and probably de- 
 nounce it as unwise, and then they would look else- 
 where for their coal, and so one avenue of profitable 
 
 (55)
 
 56 UNFRIENDLY COM.MEXT ABROAD. 
 
 commerce would be closed to both parties. Men buy 
 where they sell and sell where they buy, and find mu- 
 tual profit and advantag^e in the exchange of products. 
 Voluntary trade conducted on fair terms and for mutual 
 advantage between friendly nations will be stable and 
 uniform, and hence may be made the basis for timely 
 preparation, while compulsory trade must necessarily 
 be so irregular and uncertain that no forecast can make 
 adequate provision for it. 
 
 Unfriendly comment on the McKinley law by other 
 nations simply means that they will buy our food pro- 
 ducts when there is a short crop in other food produc- 
 ing countries, and at no other periods.' If there is any- 
 thing in this calculated to encourage the American 
 farmer I am unable to detect it. 
 
 Governor McKinley, in a speech at Beatrice, Ne- 
 braska, 1892, quoted the text of a petition of the colon- 
 ial parliament of the Bermudas, islands that supply us 
 to some extent with fresh vegetables before our own are 
 ready for the market, in which the petitioners complain 
 of the McKinley law, and affirm that " the market 
 value of their products in the United States does not 
 allow of any advance in price commensurate with so 
 heavy a tariflf." After reading this the Governor, with 
 an air of triumph, exclaimed, " that being so who pays 
 the tax?'' and then concludes, of course, that the for- 
 eigner pays it, and that Bermuda products will continue 
 as plentiful and sell as cheaply in this country under a 
 
 ^ " When our neighbors prohibit some manufacture of ours, 
 we generally prohibit, not only the same, for that alone would 
 seldom affect them considerably, but some other manufacture of 
 theirs." — Adam Smith.
 
 UNFRIENDLY COMMENT ABROAD. 67 
 
 high tariff as under a low one. If the Governor had 
 read the memorial thoughtfully, however, he would 
 have discovered that the memorialists did not in their 
 displeasure even claim that under the McKinley law 
 they paid all the additional tax which that law had im- 
 posed on their products, but that the American people 
 could not or would not pay them an advance in price 
 *•'' commensurate with so heavy a tariff,'' and hence, by 
 fair inference, that the American market was, or would 
 be, practically closed to them, unless some modification 
 of the law could be obtained. 
 
 It may be, as I have stated elsewhere, that in excep- 
 tional cases the farmers of the Canadian and Mexican 
 border, and those also of near-by islands like Bermuda, 
 bring products of their own raising to this country, and 
 especially such products as deteriorate rapidly, and 
 hence must find a quick market; but whatever tax or 
 duty even these small dealers have to pay in order to 
 reach the United States consumer, is, as a rule, collect- 
 ed back from him. Whenever such a condition of the 
 market exists as will not allow them to collect this cus- 
 toms tax from the consumer, and thus leave enough to 
 cover cost of production, and a living profit, the tariff 
 becomes prohibitory as to the things they have to sell, 
 and they cease to visit us, and our opportunity to supply 
 them with our own products has ended. Intelligent 
 business men do not congratulate themselves on the 
 loss of a customer, and I am therefore surprised to find 
 that a statesman should be disposed to take credit to 
 himself for driving profitable trade away. The islands 
 within easy reach of the American continent should be
 
 58 UNFRIENDLY COMMENT ABROAD. 
 
 generous consumers of American products, and they 
 would be if treated by us with ordinary fairness and lib- 
 erality. When Governor McKinley claims, as he does 
 substantially, that the people of the United States are 
 likely to get the worst end of a bargain in dealing with 
 them, and hence need the interposition of the law, he 
 underrates the intelligence of his countrymen and 
 greatly overestimates his own. Suppose the council 
 of Columbus had the power to impose a duty of twenty- 
 five cents a bushel on potatoes, wheat, etc., offered for 
 sale in its markets by parties resident outside the cor- 
 porate limits of the city, and were to exercise that 
 power, who would pay the tax? Either the people of 
 Columbus would pay it, or the products of the adjacent 
 farms would go to other towns. Under such a law grass 
 would grow on High street, and Broad street would be- 
 come an avenue of deserted mansions.
 
 VIII. 
 
 OUR TRADE WITH CANADA — IS THE LUMBERMAN 
 AN AGRICULTURIST — LUMBER SHOULD GO ON THE 
 FREE LIST — SHOULD CANADIAN PRODUCTS BE EX- 
 CLUDED? BUTTERWORTH'S answer — MILLS ON 
 INCREASING THE DUTIES ON AGRICULTURAL PRO- 
 DUCTS. 
 
 " If that be true (Prof, Goldwiu Smith's statement with 
 respect to Canadian exports to the United States) then the annual 
 exports of about 125,000,000 in agricultural products will be sup- 
 plied to the people of the United States by the American farmer 
 rather than by the Canadian farmer ; and who will say that $25,- 
 000,000 of additional demand for agricultural products will not 
 inure to the benefit of the American farmer? "^ 
 
 The Governor fails to recognize the fact that the 
 United States farmer and the Canadian farmer are both 
 American farmers ; when speaking of the diverse inter- 
 ests of the two in the same paragraph, therefore, it 
 would be well to say less of the American farmer and 
 more of the United States farmer. 
 
 "If that be true," etc. In the first place, Prof. 
 Goldwin Smith did not say that Canada exported ;^25,- 
 000,000 of agricultural products annually to the United 
 States. In the second place, Governor McKinley in a 
 few paragraphs preceding the one quoted, itemizes our 
 agricultural imports from Canada, and makes them 
 amount to but little over thirteen and one-half millions. 
 
 1 House Representatives, 1890. 
 
 (59)
 
 60 OUR TRADE WITH CANADA. 
 
 And ill this calculation he includes the item of Cana- 
 dian barley, $6,454,603, an article which is said to be in- 
 dispensable to brewers of our Eastern States in the 
 manufacture of the better qualities of beer ; so that if 
 Governor McKinley's itemized statement with respect 
 to the value of our agricultural imports from Canada is 
 correct, his general statement as to the amount must be 
 an error. 
 
 It should be said however, that in his desire to swell 
 the agricultural imports from Canada he included among 
 them the item of "planks and boards ;^7,187,101," 
 which I have taken the liberty to exclude. I apprehend 
 the sensible reader is hardly ready to admit that planks, 
 boards, sawlogs, bowlders, bear, deer and wild fowl are 
 products of the farm. I am told that General Alger 
 owns many thousand acres of the sandy pine lands of 
 Northern Michigan, and that the duty imposed by our 
 tariff laws on Canada lumber has made him a million- 
 aire, but I never heard him referred to as a practical 
 farmer or agriculturist, and I can conceive of no valid 
 reason why the home-builders of the United States, and 
 especially those of the prairie States, should be extorted 
 from in order to render lands which cost him $\.1h per 
 acre worth $\1h. 
 
 If there is one single article brought into the United 
 States which above all others is entitled to a place on 
 the free list it is the article of lumber 
 
 1. Our people should have cheap lumber, and the 
 fact that under a high tariff it is imported, proves be- 
 yond a peradventure that we pay dearly for it. 
 
 2. We should be in no haste to consume the forests
 
 OUR TRADE WITH CANADA. 61 
 
 of the United States — the growth of centuries, for the 
 present benefit of a few Algers ; on the contrary, in so 
 far as possible, they should be spared and reserved for 
 the use and comfort of our descendants. In brief, 
 there should be no haste and no waste with respect to 
 them, and they should receive the same vigilant care 
 and protection from our legislative bodies manifested 
 by the older countries of the world in the preservation 
 of their timber lands. The man who encourages the 
 destruction of a tree on any slight pretext is a public 
 enemy. ' 
 
 "From 1854 to 1866 — twelve years of reciprocity with Canada 
 — we bought of theiu twice as much as they bought of us. Wher- 
 ever we have tried recijirocity or low duties, we have always been 
 the loser. "2 
 
 Governor McKinley's argument in favor of exclud- 
 ing Canadian products by a higher duty, and his state- 
 ments as to the extent and value of our trade with Can- 
 ada, were answered by Hon. Benjamin Butterworth, a 
 Republican member of Congress from Ohio, on the 
 floor of the House of Representatives, as follows : 
 
 "During 1888 we bought from the Canadians agricul- 
 tural products to the amount of over $17,000,000. What 
 did we sell them ? About $21,000,000, and the larger part 
 of it corn and the products that we do not btiy from them. 
 To please the farmer of this country we have shut him 
 out of the market where he sold his products to the 
 
 ' "The practically prohibitive duty on lumber confines us 
 now to our own forests as the only source of supply for building 
 materials. A removal of the duty would check the destruction 
 of American (United States) forests to an extent which would 
 most likely, under intelligent forestry laws, go far to establish a 
 balance between the natural growth and cutting down of trees." 
 —New York Times, Deceynb'v 30, 1893. 
 
 2 House of Representatives, 1890.
 
 62 OUR TRADE WITH CANADA. 
 
 amount of ;^21, 000,000, and kept out, as a partial com- 
 petitor, nearly $17,000,000 that we bought from the 
 Canadian side. We have shut out eggs, and that is 
 paraded as an important matter. I made a little calcu- 
 lation as to how that would affect our people. We im- 
 ported 21,000,000 eggs; and by careful estimate that 
 amounts to just one omelet a year to each of our peo- 
 ple — one omelet a year ! That is all. [Laughter.] 
 This committee knows very well that my fellow-citi- 
 zens do not, during one-half of the year, taste eggs at 
 all. Our friends of the committee have not inserted in 
 the bill any provision which would have enjoined upon 
 the hens that they should lay regularly during cold 
 weather as well as warm." [Laughter.] 
 
 A Member — " Give them a bounty." 
 
 Mr. Butterworth — " Well, I might have oflfered them a 
 bounty. But I do not care to go into that. My hon- 
 ored friend stated, with the figures at his command, 
 that in the trade between the United States and Can- 
 ada, under the reciprocity treaty of 1854-65, which has 
 been so much denounced here by many, the balance of 
 trade was in favor of Canada. My friend is in error. 
 He took into account Quebec and Ontario, while our 
 trade was with all the Canadian Provinces, and theirs 
 with us. Yet, during those ten years of reciprocal 
 trade, so much deprecated and unfair as it was — I 
 agree with my colleague in many respects — we had 
 the advantage of the balance sheet of over $60,000,000, 
 and in the last forty years in the trade between the Cana- 
 dian Provinces and ourselves the balance in our favor is 
 over ^250,000,000. 
 
 "Strange, is it not? Against our own countrymen 
 here on the north, in whose veins courses the same 
 blood that courses in our own — united to us by a 
 destiny which is above the control of kings or con- 
 gresses — we shut the door, we refuse even to accept
 
 OUR TRADE WITH CANADA. 
 
 63 
 
 their lumber, but send our children shelterless to bed 
 rather than have a fair exchange with them. 
 
 ' ' But that is not all. Behold, we have just expended 
 hundreds of thousands of dollars to establish unre- 
 stricted reciprocal trade with fifty-odd millions of peo 
 pie south of us, of the Latin race. How stands the bal- 
 ance of trade with them during the last forty years? 
 ;^2, 100,000,000 against us. The five millions of our 
 kinsmen north of us have bought of us ;^250,000,000 
 worth during that time in excess of what we purchased 
 from them. 
 
 "What I insist upon is that enlargement of opportu- 
 nity is what is desired, and as you multiply facilities 
 
 you enlarge opportunity. 
 
 i(. if. ^ -^ -^ -^ -^ 
 
 " Ulysses S. Grant is not thought to have been un- 
 wise in his day and generation — a patriot, a soldier 
 and a statesman alike, he negotiated, assisted by his 
 Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, a treaty designed to 
 open the avenues of trade between the northern part of 
 our continent and the southern, not only providing for 
 a free exchange of manufactured and natural products, 
 but opening up the canals and railroads in order that 
 the healthful tide of our commerce might sweep North 
 and South, as it does East and West. 
 
 " What prevented it ? The avarice in certain local- 
 ities. The opposition was dictated from the potato 
 patch, from the cabbage patch, from the hop patch. 
 [Laughter and applause.] And before the bill is over 
 you will see my honored friend in charge of the hop 
 brigade, associated with the Cabbage Cavalry, endeav- 
 oring to persuade the farmer that his highest good is in 
 confining ourselves to a market where we do not sell 
 now more than three-fourths of what we produce. 
 I Laughter and applause.]" 
 
 Hon. Roger Q. Mills in speaking generally of the
 
 64 OUR TRADE WITH CANADA. 
 
 McKinley bill, and particularly of the proposition to in- 
 crease duties on agricultural products, said : 
 
 " The committee are greatly alarmed about our 
 wheat-growers. That great industry is imperiled by 'a 
 most damaging competition.' The American market 
 must be kept for our own farmers and it must be held at 
 all hazards ; and like heroes advancing to the attack, they 
 have scaled the walls, entered the city and spiked the 
 enemy's guns. They have increased the duty on wheat, 
 and that great product is safe. How many bushels of 
 wheat are imported into this country? We exported 
 last year 90,000,000 bushels in wheat and flour. In 1880 
 and 1881 we exported 150,000,000 bushels; but since 
 then our importations have been falling ofif and that has 
 caused a reduction in our exportations ; and last year 
 we exported only 90,000,000 bushels and imported the 
 inconsiderable amount of 1,946 bushels of wheat. 
 [Laughter and applause.] And that duty has been put 
 on to protect American farmers against the damaging 
 foreign competition from India and Russia. 
 
 "What did that 1,946 bushels of wheat cost? Our 
 wheat was at an average export price of 89 cents per 
 bushel, and the average price of the 1,946 bushels which 
 we imported was ^2.05. Seven hundred bushels cost in 
 Germany $3.20 a bushel. What do you suppose that 
 wheat was imported for? Do not all speak at once, 
 please. [Applause and laughter.] It was seed wheat, 
 imported by the wheat-grower of the West to improve 
 his seed. 
 
 "We exported 69,000,000 bushels of corn last year 
 and we imported into this country 2,388 bushels, an 
 amount, we are told, that imperils the market of those 
 who raise 2,000,000,000 bushels. [Laughter.] Why, it 
 could all be raised in Texas by one farmer on 50 acres 
 of ground. That corn came from Mexico into New 
 Mexico, Arizona and Texas, along the border, and if
 
 OUR TRADE WITH CANADA. 65 
 
 you cut it out you cannot supply a single bushel of it 
 from any of the corn-producing parts of the country, 
 because the cost of transportation would be so great 
 that they cannot import it ; and if they cannot get this 
 I suppose they can eat grass and go naked. [Laughter.] 
 
 " Why, sir, we cannot supply that corn from Texas, 
 because the transportation from the settled part of the 
 State to the boundaries on the Rio Grande would cost 
 too much, and this market is supplied by the little con- 
 tiguous farms lying along the Rio Grande and along the 
 border of Mexico, whence it is brought into our country. 
 
 " How much rye did we import last year? Sixteen 
 bushels ! [Laughter.] It could all have been raised on 
 a turnip patch. [Renewed laughter.] What did it cost? 
 It cost in Germany, whence it came, ;^1.50 a bushel, 
 while the rye that we exported from this country cost 
 57 cents a bushel, and we exported 287,252 bushels."
 
 IX. 
 
 THE CANADIAN FARMER AND HIS WHEAT — LIVERPOOL 
 MAKES THE PRICE FOR AMERICAN WHEAT — THE 
 IMPORTATION OF CANADIAN WHEAT NO INJURY TO 
 THE UNITED STATES FARMER. 
 
 " If you waut to know who pays the tax (on imported goods) 
 go ask the Canadian farmer. He brings his wheat to Erie county, 
 New York — to the city of Buffalo, and the Erie county tarmer 
 brings his. They meet at the same market place. The Erie 
 county farmer takes ninety cents home M'ith him. The Canadian 
 farmer takes ninety cents less twenty-five cents, the American 
 tariff." 1 
 
 Here Governor McKinley again makes the unqual- 
 ified affirmation that the foreigner pays the tax or duty 
 on imported goods, and that this duty, therefore, does 
 not increase the price of the imported article to the 
 American consumer. But the case he alludes to is ex- 
 ceptional, if not wholly fictitious. Canadian farmers, 
 do not as a rule, seek a market for wheat in the United 
 States. They can obtain just as much for it in Toronto, 
 Montreal, Quebec and other Canadian cities as they 
 can get for it in Buflfalo. They would manifest a lack of 
 ordinary business intelligence, therefore, if they were to 
 pay twenty-five cents for permission to sell a bushel of 
 wheat in Buffalo for ninety cents when they could sell 
 it at home for ninety cents, without the payment of any 
 duty whatever. 
 
 ^ Governor McKinley at Ada, 1891. 
 (66)
 
 THE CAXADIAN FARMER AND HIS WHEA T. 67 
 
 It is not at all improbable, however, that compara- 
 tively inconsiderable quantities of seed wheat are im- 
 ported, and that Canadian farmers living near the St. 
 Clair River, the Detroit, the Nia^^ara and the St. Law- 
 rence may be able to find a city in the United States 
 much nearer their own domiciles than the market town 
 of their own county, and for these farmers it may be a 
 saving to pay the duty on an occasional basket of eggs 
 or bag of grain rather than to spend a day's time in trav- 
 eling to their more distant home market; but this pos- 
 sibility, probability or ascertained fact no more affects 
 the general proposition that the consumer pays the cus- 
 toms tax on imported goods than the taking of a few 
 buckets of water from the Niagara River would affect 
 the statement that the waters of that river flow into 
 Lake Ontario. 
 
 The price of wheat in this country and in Canada is 
 based upon the price for which it sells in Liverpool, 
 and, so far as price is concerned, it matters not at all to 
 our farmers whether the surplus wheat of North Amer- 
 ica is handled in Canada or in the United States, for 
 both countries are equally distant from the market 
 which establishes the price, and may reach that market 
 at the same cost for transportation ; so that whether the 
 wheat is shipped from this country or from that, the 
 price of wheat will be the same in both, and hence our 
 farmers cannot possibly be injured in the purchase of 
 Canada wheat by shippers, millers or consumers in the 
 United States. 
 
 If it is granted — and it must be, for there is no es- 
 cape from it — that the price of wheat would neither be
 
 68 THE CAXADIAy FARMER AND //AS' WHEAT. 
 
 diminished nor increased by the introduction of the 
 Canadian product into the United States, it must also 
 be admitted that the imposition of high duties for the 
 purpose of deterring the Canadian from seeking a mar- 
 ket for it in this country, is extremely unwise, if not the 
 rankest of legislative folly. If he were induced to sell 
 here, he would buy his farm supplies here, and these 
 supplies would in the main be the product of our own 
 labor. Again, if he sold here our workingmen would 
 find employment in handling the grain and transporting 
 it to the seaboard, and possibly to its ultimate destina- 
 tion abroad.
 
 X. 
 
 FARM PRODUCTS IMPORTED IN 1890 — HOW WE OB- 
 TAIN CHEAP CLOTHING — THE EXORBITANT PRO- 
 TECTION ACCORDED TO THE WOOLEN MANUFAC- 
 TURER — THE M'KINLEY law DOES NOT LESSEN 
 IMPORTATION OF WOOL — THE WOOLEN MANUFAC- 
 TURERS' association's influence POLITICALLY 
 — IT MAKES THE PRICE OF AMERICAN WOOL — 
 THE M'KINLEY LAW DISCRIMINATES AGAINST THE 
 AMERICAN WOOL GROWER — FACTS FOR THE OHIO 
 FARMER TO CONSIDER — HIDES AND SKINS. 
 
 In a speech at Niles, Ohio, 1891, Governor McKin- 
 ley said : 
 
 "It is over and over again asserted that the farmer cannot 
 possibly be benefited by a tariff on farm products — that he has a 
 surplus, and therefore that he must seek a foreign market to dis- 
 pose of it.^ There seems to be a general impression that no pro- 
 ducts come into the United States in competition with American 
 farm products. An examination of the imports of 1890 most ef- 
 fectually disposes of this assumption. Let me enumerate some of 
 them: (1) Value of cattle, horses and sheep imported in 1890, 
 $3,270,277; (2) breadstufls, $6,034,272; (3) fruits, $13,871,809; (4) 
 hay, $1,143,445; (5) hops, $1,053,616 ; (6) flax, $2,188,021 ; (7) hemp, 
 $7,341,956 ; (8) meat and dairy products, $2,011,314 ; (9) rice, $2,042,- 
 120; (10) linseed, flaxseed and other seeds, $3,530,631; (11) leaf 
 tobacco, $17,605,192; (12) vegetables, $4,455,374; (13) wool, $15,- 
 264,083; total, $79,812,102." 
 
 ^ " Farmers are one-half the community ; the direct benefits 
 of protection lie almost wholly with the other half. 
 
 *' It follows, then, that the burdens of protection fall chiefly 
 on farmers."— Pro/. John Bascom. 
 
 (69)
 
 70 IMPOR TA TlOy OF FA RM PR OD UC TS. 
 
 " Besides, 15,062,076 dozen eggs were imported in 1890, worth 
 easily $1,500,000, on which no duty whatever was paid. It will 
 be seen that in 1890 we imported fully $80,000,000 worth of farm 
 products, many of which, it is believed, will be produced here un- 
 der the protection afforded by the new tariff law." ^ 
 
 The several items enumerated by Governor McKin- 
 ley will be considered in the order in which he has 
 placed them. 
 
 1. "Value of cattle, horses and sheep imported in 
 1890, $3,270,277." The whole truth is that the value 
 of cattle, horses and sheep imported in 1890 was ^6,- 
 766,932, but of this amount ^3,496,655 was paid for ani- 
 mals which were "pure bred of a recognized breed and 
 duly registered;'' and these under the law were admit- 
 ted free of duty. Possibly an inconsiderable number of 
 the cattle, horses and sheep referred to by Governor 
 McKinley, as amounting in value to ;^3,270,277, on 
 which duty was paid, were bought in Canada or else- 
 where, for use or food, but by far the greater number 
 were of improved breeds, and many of them " pure 
 bred of recognized breeds," but not " duly registered in 
 the book of record established for that breed," and 
 hence under the law made dutiable, although imported 
 from Canada or from Europe especially for the United 
 States farmer and used by him for breeding purposes, 
 and for the improvement of his live stock. The duty 
 paid on them, therefore, was paid by the farmer, and 
 was a burden to him, not a benefit. 
 
 Nobody knows better than Governor McKinley that 
 
 ' "Of all classes, those devoted to agriculture bear the heav- 
 iest share of the burden laid by the protective tariff, wbile they 
 reap no direct benefit from it." — Chapin.
 
 IMPOR TA TION OF FARM PRODUCTS. 71 
 
 Americans do not as a rule import either cattle, horses, 
 hogs or sheep, for any other purpose than that of secur- 
 ing superior breeds of live stock. On the contrary we 
 are large exporters of domestic animals, and in the very- 
 year of 1890, to which he refers, we sold abroad cattle, 
 hogs, horses, mules and sheep to the value of ;?33,638,- 
 128. May we not, therefore, claim that Governor Mc- 
 Kinley did not speak the whole truth, when he affirmed 
 that the live stock imported in 1890 came into compe- 
 tition with the products of the American farmer ? 
 
 2. " Breadstuffs $6,034,272." Of this amount ;S5,- 
 629,840 was paid for Canadian barley, an article con- 
 sidered by American brewers superior to our home 
 product for the manufacture of the better qualities of 
 beer and ale. Indeed it is claimed that the best malt- 
 ing barley in the world is produced in Canada along 
 the shores of Lake Ontario, and that this barley does 
 not come in direct competition with the barley of our 
 Western states, and further that it is indispensable to 
 the brewers of the East. But we will waive all this and 
 assume that we imported the amount of breadstuffs in- 
 dicated by Governor McKinley. 
 
 The greater quantity and value of these breadstuffs, 
 with the possible exception of barley, came, as we 
 know, from Canadian farmers living just across a bor- 
 der line extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 
 Whether a Canadian or a citizen of the United States 
 paid the duty on them is perhaps immaterial. If the 
 Canadian paid it his action was exceptional ; if the man 
 on this side of the boundary line paid it, it was a loss 
 to him. A comparatively small amount of Mexican
 
 72 IMPOR TA TION OF FARM PRODUCTS. 
 
 and Canadian products for reasons already assigned, 
 will find their way into this country, let the tarifif be 
 what it may. The Canadian with his basket, or possi- 
 bly skiff load, of truck will come to our market when- 
 ever it is ten or fifteen miles nearer than his own, and 
 just so the citizen of the United States will go to 
 a Canadian market with small quantities of farm pro- 
 ducts, when it is ten or fifteen miles nearer to him than 
 his own county town. These exchanges of products in 
 all cases, except perhaps that of barley, are made for 
 convenience sake, often by poor people, who have 
 neither the time nor the means to travel to distant 
 markets, and hence are compelled to submit to cruel 
 exactions. 
 
 But let the stalwart American land owner, who 
 keeps open house and a hospitable board, and who 
 would spurn to stoop to little acts of meanness, pause 
 for a moment to scrutinize the petty thing which Gov- 
 ernor McKinley plumes himself on having done for the 
 farmer's profit and advantage. 
 
 The Governor tells us that we imported in 1890 
 breadstufis amounting in value to a little over ;^6,000,- 
 000, and that he has attempted to protect us against 
 this influx of food products by the imposition of higher 
 duties ; but he did not say what a candid man should 
 have said, that while he was acting in this spirit of 
 illiberality, the people abroad, unmindful of his narrow- 
 ness, bought from the farmers of the United States, in 
 1890, breadstufis amounting in value to ;^1 55,000,000! 
 
 The people who bought these immense quantities of 
 our farm products probably did not even think of keep-
 
 IMPORT A TION OF FARM PRODUCTS. 73 
 
 ing us out of their markets by unfriendly legislation ; 
 and yet Governor McKinley assumes that he is render- 
 ing the farmers of the greatest republic in the world an 
 important service by seeking to stop a trifling business 
 which filters in across the boundary of Canada and the 
 United States, where, in the ebb and flow of products, 
 the farmers on this side of the line always come out 
 ahead. 
 
 3. " Fruits, ;^13,871,809." What kind of fruits did we 
 import ? Apples, peaches, pears and such other fruits 
 as are abundant in the Eastern and Middle States of the 
 Union? No; on the contrary, we sold to other coun- 
 tries in 1890 green and dried apples, amounting in value 
 to ^2,270,118, and our total export of fruits for that 
 year was ;^4,059,547. The dutiable fruits imported con- 
 sisted of figs, raisins, lemons, oranges, plums and 
 prunes, and such tropical or sub-tropical productions as 
 do not come in competition with the hardier fruits of 
 the great body of American farmers. 
 
 It is true that California is an orange, and to some 
 extent, a raisin producing State ; and oranges are also 
 grown in Florida ; but the farmers of Ohio, and, in fact, 
 of all the Eastern and Middle States, could be no more 
 benefited by a customs tax on fruits than they would be 
 by a tax on ostriches. It is impossible, therefore, to 
 conceive of a valid reason why the farmers of Ohio, 
 who are content to make an annual profit of fifteen 
 dollars per acre on their lands, should be taxed to ena- 
 ble the people of California to gather in a profit of 
 from ;^300 to $500 per acre on their orange groves. The 
 orange grower should at least be required to show that
 
 74 iMPORTA rro.v of farm products. 
 
 he cannot stand alone before asking charity from the 
 less profitable, but self-sustaining and independent in- 
 dustries of the country. 
 
 4. " Hay, $1,143,445." Our exports of this product 
 in 1890 amounted in value to $567,558, so that the bal- 
 ance against us in the exchange of hay was only ;^575,- 
 887, and not $1,143,445, as Governor McKinley would 
 have us infer. Has any Ohio, or Indiana, farmer ever 
 seen a ton of foreign grown hay ? I think not, and yet 
 for the past ten years our average importation of this 
 product from Canada has amounted to about 100,000 
 tons per annum. Nine-tenths of this imported hay 
 came into the country through the Vermont customs 
 district, and the amount imported, not deducting, of 
 course, the amount we export, is equivalent in quantity 
 and value to less than one-fourth of one per cent, of 
 the domestic crop ; that is to say, we produce about 65,- 
 000,000 ' tons in this country and import about 100,000 
 tons from Canada, and this latter amount is probably 
 used to keep life in the live stock of the unfertile re- 
 gions of New England adjacent to the Canada line. It 
 may be the tariff is a blessing to the people of that 
 sterile section of our common country ; but it is not at 
 all more likely that they grow fat on it than that their 
 cows do. But whether they do or not is a matter of 
 trifling importance to the western farmer, so far as his 
 hay crop is concerned, for this crop is, in the main, 
 consumed in the feeding of horses and sheep, and in the 
 production of beef, cheese and butter. The loss of the 
 sale of 100,000 tons of hay would not in any event di- 
 
 1 In 1893 estimated crop 65,776,159 tons.
 
 IMPOR TA TION OF FARM PRODUCTS. 75 
 
 minish the annual profits of our farming population to 
 exceed two and one-half cents per capita. 
 
 5. "Hops, ^1,053,616." "The Belgian hops have a 
 good reputation, but those of Bavaria are best of all, 
 the aroma being more perfectly preserved by the 
 method in practice there. The American hops are said 
 to be very powerful, with a flavor so rank and peculiar 
 that unless greatly improved by cultivation they are 
 not likely to find a large demand."' It is assumed 
 from this that climate, soil and culture aSect the flavor 
 of the hop as much as they do that of the tobacco 
 plant, and as hops are used to impart an agreeable bit- 
 ter flavor to beer, it is hardly correct to say that the 
 Belgian, Bavarian and English varieties come into 
 direct competition with the ranker flavored American 
 product. That the latter is extensively used, both here 
 and abroad, in combination with the former, may be in- 
 ferred from the annual statement of exports and im- 
 ports. Next to Germany the United States is the largest 
 exporter of hops in the world, and in ordinary years 
 we produce a large surplus, and in such years no tarifi 
 can be of any advantage to the hop grower. The crop, 
 however, is an uncertain one, sometimes very abundant 
 and at others almost a total failure. In 1885, for in- 
 stance, the crop was most plentiful, and in that year we 
 sold abroad over 13,000,000 pounds. But in 1886 it 
 was short, and our imports exceeded our exports about 
 10,000,000 pounds. In the years when American hops 
 are most abundant, however, our brewers use foreign 
 hops, either in combination with our domestic product 
 
 1 Appleton's Cyclopedia.
 
 / 6 I.MPOR TA TION OF FA RM PRODUC TS. 
 
 or separately, in the production of superior qualities of 
 beer. If Governor McKinley had desired to impart the 
 whole truth to his hearers with respect to the hop trade 
 he would have told them that in 1890 we imported hops 
 to the value of ;^1, 053,616, and exported hops to the 
 value of ^1,110,571, and that in this exchange of hops 
 the balance in our favor was $56,955. In the year 1891 
 the showing was still better for us ; the imports were 
 $1,797,406 and the exports $2,327,474, the balance in 
 our favor being $530,068. These figures indicate most 
 clearly that the demand for American hops, both at 
 home and abroad, is largely increased by the fact that 
 they can be advantageously used in combination with 
 the foreign product. The statement that it is neces- 
 sary to exclude the foreign in order to increase the sales 
 of the domestic, is, therefore, misleading, if not wholly 
 incorrect. 
 
 6. " Flax, $2,188,021." Flax is raised in the East- 
 ern and Middle States of the Union for the seed. It is 
 a quick crop, and soon turned into money, but not a 
 favorite crop with farmers, because it exhausts the soil, 
 and in the long run is found to be unprofitable. Since 
 pioneer times the farmers of Ohio, and of many other 
 States, have given little, if any, attention to the fiber, 
 and have either burned it or permitted it to rot in their 
 fields or barnyards. New York, Virginia and Ken- 
 tucky have attempted to turn the fiber to profitable 
 use, but have not been largely successful and no 
 amount of protection could induce the farmers of the 
 country generally to abandon less exhaustive and 
 more profitable lines of agriculture, and attempt to
 
 IMPORT A TlOlsr OF FARM PRODUCTS. 
 
 compete with the peasants of Belgium, Holland and 
 Russia, and the people of Ireland and Egypt in the 
 preparation of the flax fiber for manufacture into linens, 
 or even coarser cloths. It is absolutely safe to say that 
 no duty, however high, could tempt an Ohio farmer to 
 grow flax with a view to manipulating the straw in or- 
 der to render the fiber a merchantable product. That 
 the flax fiber is prepared in this country for manufac- 
 ture into certain coarse fabrics is, however, true ; but 
 that the finer imported flax comes into competition 
 with the American product to any appreciable extent, 
 is simply nonsense, and if Governor McKinley's con- 
 tention in this regard " fools the farmer," it is not be- 
 cause the farmer is more credulous than other folks, 
 but because — to use Barnum's suggestion — mankind 
 like to be humbugged. 
 
 7. "Hemp,;^7,341,956." There are but few States in 
 the Union which give attention to the culture of 
 hemp. Ohio, although mentioned as one of the four in 
 which the industry has been successfully prosecuted, 
 has now comparatively few fields devoted to it. In cer- 
 tain sections the crop is raised wholly for the seed, but 
 in Kentucky, and perhaps to some considerable extent 
 in Missouri, and possibly in Indiana, it is cultivated for 
 the fiber. The crop is an exhaustive one on the soil, 
 requires much care and cheap labor in manipulation, 
 and hence is not a favorite with farmers. 
 
 There are numerous varieties of hemp, all having 
 their special uses and adaptabilities. There are some 
 kinds— probably many kinds — imported, which cannot 
 with good reason be claimed to come into competition
 
 78 IMPOR TA TION OF FARM PRODUCTS. 
 
 with the American product, any more than it can be 
 fairly claimed that coarse cotton or woolen cloths com- 
 pete with the finer grades of silk. Climate has much 
 to do with the fiber of the hemp plant. There are 
 plants grown which produce fine elastic fibers ; others 
 which produce fibers of coarse and brittle texture ; 
 fibers suitable for cordage, for canvas, for sheeting, 
 shirting, towels and tablecloths, and fibers from which 
 fabrics equal to the finest Irish linens are made. How 
 many of these almost endless varieties of hemp do or 
 do not come into competition with our domestic prod- 
 uct, it is impossible to tell ; some we know are abso- 
 lutely necessary to us in the production of the finer 
 qualities of goods, and some, in combination, increase 
 the demand for our home-grown product. Indeed 
 these various qualities of hemp are as indispensable to 
 the manufacturer as a complete kit of tools to the me- 
 chanic, and yet the McKinley law blindly bears down 
 on all with equal heaviness, "hemp twenty-five dollars 
 per ton ; hemp hackled, known as line hemp, fifty dollars 
 per ton." The Ohio farmer, without receiving a shadow 
 of benefit in leturn, he^ps pay this enormous tax when 
 he buys his towels, table linens, and cordage. 
 
 The States in which hemp is produced in largest 
 
 qv )r a low tariS, and hence may, with good 
 
 , posed not to regard Governor McKinley's 
 
 hi e nonsense as essential to the success of 
 
 either tne hemp industry or any other. 
 
 8. "Mea^ and dairy products ;^2,011,314." The 
 Governor was sorely pressed for suitable material when 
 at Niles and elsewhere he sought to beguile the farmer
 
 IMPOR TA TION OF FARM PRODUCTS. 79 
 
 into the belief that he was being started on the road to 
 opulence by high protection and especially by the M'Kin- 
 ley bill, or he would not have alluded to the fact that in 
 1890 we imported meat and dairy products to the value 
 of ^2,011,314. Two millions of course is a large sum 
 to be expended for meat and dairy products when beef 
 and pork, butter and cheese, are so abundant with us, 
 but the farmers of the United States will derive great 
 comfort from the fact not stated by Governor McKinley, 
 to-wit : That in this same year of 1890 we sold to other 
 countries meat and dairy products amounting in value 
 to ;^136,264,506! In this traffic in meat and dairy pro- 
 ducts, therefore, the American farmer lost nothing ; nay, 
 he made something, for the balance in his favor was 
 over ^134,000,000. 
 
 Of the ^2,011,314 expended abroad for the articles 
 in question $1,295,506 went to pay for certain varieties 
 of cheese not made in this country, and in no way com- 
 petitors of our home product, and while we bought $1,- 
 295,506 worth of Neufchatel, Gouda, Westphalia and 
 other rare varieties, including cheese made of goats' 
 milk, we at the same time sold to other countries cheese 
 and other dairy products amounting in value to ;^13,- 
 081,856. 
 
 9. " Rice, $2,042,120." I assume, without knowing 
 whether my assumption is entirely correct or not, that 
 much of the imported rice enters the country through 
 the customs districts of the Pacific States, and that it is 
 brought thither as return freight from islands with which 
 those States have profitable commerce. The people of 
 the Northern States have certainly no special interest
 
 80 IMPORTA TION OF FARM PRODUCTS. 
 
 in rice, except to obtain what little they make use of 
 at fair prices. The States of the Union where the 
 product is an important one, are not favorable to high 
 protection, and if they accept it at all they do so either 
 under protest or in order to even up with bounty-fed 
 manufacturers of the North. 
 
 10. " Linseed, flaxseed and other seeds, ^3,530,631." 
 We imported in 1890 flaxseed to the value of $1,- 
 839,059 and other seeds to the value of ;^691,574; these 
 two sums make the total amount stated by Governor 
 McKinley. The bulk of the expenditure, as will be 
 seen, was for flaxseed, a crop which, for reasons stated, 
 when speaking of the flax culture (item 6), our farmers 
 do not care to raise. The importation of this seed 
 should be encouraged by low duties instead of restricted 
 by high ones. The oil obtained from it is used by every 
 man who owns a house, whether it be the cheapest of 
 frame structures or the most elegant of mansions. Any 
 duty or tax which adds to the cost of it encourages the 
 unscrupulous to palm off inferior oils on the inexpert 
 and unsuspecting. If flaxseed were a favorite crop 
 with our farmers there would even then be no shadow 
 of excuse for the imposition of high duties, for it can 
 be grown in this country as cheaply as in any other ; 
 but it is not a favorite crop with them. The yield is 
 light, ranging from six to ten bushels per acre ; the 
 straw cannot be put through a machine, because of the 
 toughness of its fiber, and hence the seed must be taken 
 from it by the trampling of horses or by the old-fash- 
 ioned flail ; the straw after threshing is of no value as 
 food for live stock, and of no value otherwise to the
 
 IMPOR TA TIOJV OF FARM PRODUCTS. 81 
 
 average farmer — not even as a fertilizer. All these 
 considerations, with the additional one that the crop 
 exhausts the soil, renders it so objectionable to farmers 
 generally that no duty, however high, and no bonus 
 which could in reason be offered by the government, 
 would render it other than an occasional or exceptional 
 crop in the United States, where land, without material 
 injury to the soil, can be made to yield far better re- 
 turns in the growing of grass, wheat, corn, oats, hay, etc. 
 
 It is true, I think, that there would be little, if any, 
 flaxseed sown in Ohio, if the manufacturers of linseed 
 oil did not, through agents, distribute the seed, and by 
 persona] solicitation induce farmers to sow it. 
 
 In speaking of the imports of seeds in 1890, it would 
 have been no more than fair for Governor McKinley to 
 have mentioned the fact that we exported seeds in that 
 year to the value of ^2,637,888 and oil cake, the product 
 of seeds, to the value of ^7,999,926 ; so that in this ex- 
 change of seeds and their product, the American farmer 
 and trader came out over ^7,000,000 ahead, and certainly 
 did not need any higher protection than he had. 
 
 11. *'Leaftobacco,;^17,605,192." Much, if not most, 
 and possibly all of the unmanufactured tobacco, brought 
 to this country, is used in combination with our domes- 
 tic product. It imparts to the latter a more agreeable 
 flavor than it would otherwise have, and thereby, unfor- 
 tunately, perhaps, increases the demand for it. 
 
 In any fair scheme for obtaining revenue for the 
 support of the government, tobacco, which is not only a 
 luxury but often more or less injurious to the health of 
 the consumer, should be made to bear the heaviest bur-
 
 82 IM PORTA TION OF FARM PRODUCTS. 
 
 den of taxation, and this taxation should be imposed 
 not to encourage its production, but to diminish its con- 
 sumption. We do not place a heavy duty on imported 
 liquors to protect our American distillers, and stimulate 
 them to increase their product. The heavy duty is im- 
 posed to limit importation, and diminish consumption, 
 and so it is and should be with tobacco. I am some- 
 what surprised, therefore, to find that Governor McKin- 
 ley would suggest that the very high duty on tobacco 
 was imposed for the purpose of encouraging its growth 
 among American farmers, and shall now expect to find 
 him claiming that he put a duty of two dollars and fifty 
 cents per gallon on brandy to encourage its produc- 
 tion in this country. The truth is, that neither the 
 whiskey nor tobacco industries need encouragement. 
 Like ragweed both multiply only too rapidly, even 
 under influences unfavorable to their well being. 
 
 The Governor has told us the amount of leaf tobacco 
 imported in 1890 was in value $17,605,192; to this he 
 should have added the manufactured tobacco imported 
 in that year, ;$4, 105,262, and we would have had a total 
 of ;^21, 710,454. As an offset to these large importations 
 he should have told his hearers, also, that we exported 
 in 1890 leaf tobacco valued at ;^21,479,550, and manu- 
 factured, valued at $3,876,045, making the total of our 
 sales abroad $25,355,595. The balance in our favor in 
 these exchanges of tobacco was $3,645,141, a very com- 
 fortable sum to get, and in this case Governor McKinley, 
 who acts upon the principle that international commerce 
 is war, may congratulate himself upon having inflicted 
 a greater amount of evil upon the " effete monarchies
 
 IMPOR TA TION OF FARM PRODUCTS. 83 
 
 of Europe " than they and all their dependencies in- 
 flicted upon us. 
 
 12. " Vegetables, 1^4,455,374." The vegetables im- 
 ported in 1890 amounted in value, as Governor McKin- 
 ley has told us, to ;^4,455,374. Of this sum ^1,307,772 
 went to pay for beans and peas, and ^1,365,898 was ex- 
 pended for potatoes. Potatoes, beans and peas are com- 
 mon products of the American farm, and are ordinarily 
 very abundant and so cheap that no nation on the face 
 of tlie earth can transport them hither and successfully 
 compete with us in our own markets. Occasionally, 
 however, the potato crop is almost if not quite a total 
 failure, and at such times the people of our cities, and 
 especially the poor, are dependent for this article of 
 prime necessity upon other countries. In years of av- 
 erage plenty, therefore, the farmer needs no protection, 
 and in periods of failure protective duties could do him 
 no good, and would do the people of our great cities on 
 the seaboard — especially those dependent for their sub- 
 sistence upon the proceeds of their daily labor — almost 
 infinite harm, by increasing the price and thus putting 
 a sufficiency of this vegetable beyond their reach. The 
 duty of twenty-five cents per bushel on potatoes, there- 
 fore, is not only absurd, but in exceptional cases, ex- 
 ceedingly severe.' 
 
 There was, I think, no failure of the potato crop in 
 
 1 "Ireland sent us potatoes all last year and took our corn; 
 but Congress made us pay a penalty of more than one-third of all 
 the potatoes imported ; not because the money was needed for 
 revenue, but for the express purpose of preventing us from buying 
 good Irish potatoes instead of rotten American ones." — Ihos. O. 
 S hearman.
 
 84 IMPOR TA TION OF FARM PRODUCTS. 
 
 1890, nor of the bean and pea crop, and I assume that 
 our importation of vegetables for the year named was 
 neither unusually large nor unusually small, but about 
 the average of years when our domestic crops are fairly 
 good. How, then, it may be asked, is this importation 
 of vegetables in 1890 accounted for? Simply by the 
 fact that it consisted mainly of new potatoes, green 
 peas and beans, etc., brought into this country during 
 the fall, winter and early spring, when fresh vegetables 
 cannot be obtained of the American farmer, from places 
 probably like Berm,uda and other islands where summer 
 continues all the year, or where seed time and harvest 
 are not the same as with us. These products, therefore, 
 do not enter into competition with ours any more than 
 the green corn, known as roasting -ears, competes with 
 the hardened corn of a previous year's crop. It is to be 
 regretted that Governor McKinley has ridden his pro- 
 tective hobby to such an extreme as to insist that by 
 diminishing the importation of fresh vegetables and 
 attempting to compel our people to eat old potatoes, 
 dried beans and peas, he has conferred a blessing upon 
 the country. 
 
 13. " Wool, $15,264,083." It may be said briefly, 
 and without wearying the reader with details not nec- 
 essary to a clear understanding of the main features of 
 the subject, that the tariff laws of the United States 
 separate the wools of commerce into three classes, each 
 class being so essentially different as to be easily recog- 
 nized. The purposes for which these wools are used, 
 either separately or in combination with each other, or
 
 IMPOR TA TION OF FARM PRODUCTS. 85 
 
 in combination with silk, cotton, flax, hemp or hair, are 
 almost infinite in number and variety. 
 
 The first class embraces Merino and similar 
 wools, and of these we imported in 1890 
 to the value of $3,894,760 
 
 The second, long or combing wools, of 
 
 which our imports amounted to 1,905,970 
 
 The third, coarse wools — wild wools, known 
 
 as carpet wools 9,463,353 
 
 Total, including hair, etc ^15,264,083 
 
 On the first class the McKinley law placed a duty 
 of 11 cents per pound on the unwashed; 22 cents on 
 the washed and 33 cents on the scoured. Second class, 
 unwashed, 12 cents; scoured, 36 cents. Third class 
 wools are taxed at from 32 to 50 per cent, of their value, 
 and of this latter class it will be observed we imported 
 in 1890 $9,463,353, or nearly two-thirds in value, and 
 nearly eight-tenths in quantity of our entire impor- 
 tations. 
 
 It should be remembered that under the McKinley law 
 the duty on a pound of scoured wool of the first class 
 is thirty-three cents, let its value or cost abroad be what 
 it may, while the duty on scoured wool of the third 
 class, based on value not quantity, rarely if ever exceeds 
 ten cents per pound, and the duty on washed and un- 
 washed probably rarely exceeds three cents per pound. 
 One pound of third class scoured, if my estimates of 
 cost abroad are correct, would, duty and transportation 
 added, cost the American manufacturer not over thirty- 
 two cents, and this one pound of scoured would be 
 equal in quantity of actual wool to three pounds of
 
 86 IMPOR TA TION OF FARM PRODUCTS. 
 
 merino wool as it is ordinarily prepared by the Ohio 
 farmer for market. In other words, while the Ameri- 
 can wool-grower has, by the cunning devices of the 
 woolen manufacturer, and the complicity of the com- 
 mittee, of which Governor McKinley was chairman, 
 been deluded into the belief that he is protected against 
 all foreign wools to the extent of eleven cents a pound 
 on the unwashed, twenty-two cents on the washed, and 
 from thirty-three to thirty-six on the scoured, he has 
 had practically no protection at all against at least 
 seven-tenths of the wools, and substitutes for wool, 
 brought into the country. 
 
 I know it is said that these third class wools are not 
 used for the same purposes as those to which the first 
 and second classes are devoted. This statement should 
 be true, but unfortunately it is not, and these cheap 
 third class wools are now found in combination some- 
 times with better wools, sometimes with cotton, some- 
 times with the fiber of flax and hemp, in all the cheap 
 carpets and low-priced, so-called, woolen cloths of the 
 country. It is this fact which enables Governor McKin- 
 ley, while advocating high protection, to boast with 
 some show of plausibility of the cheapness of men's 
 clothing. Why should they not be cheap indeed, when 
 made of inferior wool, mixed with shoddy and cotton, 
 materials practically untaxed? 
 
 On the pretence of afifording the American wool- 
 grower eleven cents per pound protection on unwashed 
 wool, the woolen manufacturer is accorded by the Mc- 
 Kinley bill prohibitory duties, and no one who reads 
 paragraphs 391 , 392, 393, 394 and 395 of our present tariflf
 
 IMPORTATION OF FARM PRODUCTS. 87 
 
 law can reasonably doubt that Hon. Benton McMillin, 
 colleague of Governor McKinley on the Ways and 
 Means Committee, told the exact truth when he affirmed 
 that "whole sections of the bill were framed by inter- 
 ested parties, and are now the law of the land. This is 
 notably true of the sections increasing the duties on 
 women's dress goods, which was prepared by one of the 
 greatest manufacturers of those goods." 
 
 A clause of paragraph 392 provides that on woolens or 
 worsted cloth, etc., "valued at above forty cents per 
 pound, the duty per pound shall be four times the duty 
 imposed by this act on a pound of unwashed wool of 
 the first class, and in addition thereto fifty per cent, ad 
 valorem?'' Now, let us see what protection the manu- 
 facturer is allowed on this pound of goods valued at 
 above forty cents: 
 
 Actual value of goods, say 41 
 
 To which add four times the duty imposed 
 
 on one pound unwashed first class wool. 44 
 Add also 50 per cent, ad valorem 20| 
 
 And we have a total of 105| 
 
 or 64J cents protection on 41 cents worth of goods. 
 
 It is claimed that the specific duty of forty- four 
 cents per pound of cloth accorded to the manufacturer 
 in the above estimate is to oSset the eleven cents per 
 pound allowed the wool-grower on four pounds of un- 
 washed wool, which are supposed to have gone into the 
 pound of cloth ; but the fact is that the law does not 
 require the pound of cloth to be made of American 
 wool at all, nor of any raw material on which there is a 
 duty of to exceed four cents per pound (counting the
 
 88 I.VrOR TA TION OF FARM PRODUCTS. 
 
 raw material unwashed as we do in estimating the pro- 
 tection accorded to American wool). The law says 
 with respect to the material which shall enter into the 
 construction of this pound of goods that it may be 
 " wholly or in part of wool, worsted, the hair of camel, 
 goat, alpaca, or other animals," so that, in fact, the 
 pound of cloth may be one-fourth wool, one-half cotton, 
 and one-fourth ground woolen rags, or it may be com- 
 posed of cheap foreign wool, on which there is what is 
 equivalent to a three-cent-per-pound duty, and cotton 
 on which no duty at all is paid, or it may have in it a 
 trace, more or less pronounced, of good wool, on which 
 there is a duty of eleven cents per pound. But what- 
 ever the relative proportions of the materials used may 
 be, the pound of cloth is protected to the extent of over 
 150 per cent, on the assumption that it is wholly made 
 of first-class American wool, or first-class foreign wool, 
 when in truth and in fact this assumption is a fiction of 
 the law maker, under and by virtue of which the woolen 
 manufacturers obtain control of the American market, 
 and charge whatever prices they please for their goods.' 
 In evidence of the fact that the higher duties im- 
 posed by the McKinley law have not in any way 
 checked the inflow of foreign wool, and by lessening 
 competition helped the American wool-grower, a state- 
 ment of the importations for a series of years is given.' 
 
 ^ Hon. William Lawrence, in a letter to the Ohio State Journal^ 
 July 21, 1891, said: "Last, but not least, (the McKinley law) 
 makes duties substantially prohibitory on the importation of 
 most kinds of woolen and worsted goods." 
 
 2 Clipped from New York Times of December 18, 1893. Not 
 entirely accurate, but substantially so.
 
 IMPORTATION OF FARM PRODUCTS. 89 
 
 IMPORTS OF WOOL IN POUNDS. 
 
 All kinds. Cheap Wools or 
 
 Carpet Wools. 
 
 1890 109,902,105 80,851,229 
 
 1891 119,390,280 85,895,659 
 
 1892 134,622,366 90,560,125 
 
 1893 168,433,836 118,386,070 
 
 It will be seen that under the McKinley law the 
 number of pounds imported has gradually increased, 
 and that 70 per cent, of the quantities were wools which 
 practically pay no duty. 
 
 The following paragraph from the Bulletin of the 
 American Protective Tariff League would indicate that 
 the wool-grower can look for no protection against the 
 cheap wool producing countries : 
 
 " It is well known that the lowest grades of carpet wools are 
 from wild sheep and could never he 'produced in this country, 
 except at a cost for production which ivould require from 500 to 
 1000 per cent, of protection,^'' 
 
 The average value of these cheap wools is much less 
 than ten cents per pound, and an ad valorem duty of 
 from thirty-two to fifty per cent, is no protection to the 
 American farmer. 
 
 The introduction of these low grade wools, however, 
 and their abundant use in the manufacture of the low 
 priced woolens with which this country has been 
 flooded, are not by any means the only ways in which 
 the American wool-grower has been deluded and cir- 
 cumvented under the so-called protective system. 
 
 The Woolen Manufacturers' Association is a com- 
 pact body of shrewd business men, which controls 
 millions of capital, and wields immense political influ-
 
 90 IMPOR TA riON OF FARM PRODUCTS. 
 
 ence. Its not widely distributed membership co-operate 
 in the promotion of any cause deemed beneficial to the 
 association with machine-like unity. It is in business 
 what a well equipped army is in war. Its influence is 
 felt not only in the vicinity of its mills, but this influ- 
 ence extends to every congressional district in which it 
 can be made efifective and then focuses in the legisla- 
 tive chambers of the National Capitol. The association 
 sustains its political champions with princely liberality, 
 not perhaps by direct donations, but by contributions 
 for campaign purposes and long leases of official power. 
 To it one hundred thousand dollars is proportionally no 
 more than a five dollar bank-note to the average farmer. 
 It recognizes the power of money, and knows enough 
 to use it discreetly, if not at all times honestly. It, in 
 conjunction with other manufacturing industries, sup- 
 plies whatever argument its political emissaries may 
 require in fighting its battles on the stump, and, what- 
 ever editorials the high tarifi" press may need to recon- 
 cile the voter to the absurd doctrine that high prices 
 and high taxes render the poor folks who pay them 
 exceedingly prosperous and happy 
 
 This association fixes the price of American wools. 
 It controls the only market in which the wool-grower 
 of the United States can sell a pound of his product. 
 It establishes the price, and from its decrees there is no 
 appeal. It may buy at home, but it is not obliged to do 
 so. It can keep its machinery employed, and net a 
 profit of 20 per cent, per annum on its capital, under 
 the McKinley law, if it does not obtain a pound of 
 domestic wool. It knows that the American wool-
 
 IMPORT A TION OF FARM PRODUCTS. 91 
 
 grower must sell to it soon or late at whatever price it 
 may see fit to pay, and hence, if the association can 
 save five or ten cents a pound on the whole American 
 clip by a little delay in purchasing it can well afford to 
 run its mills certain months of the year on such of the 
 better grades of foreign wool as it may need. When 
 the duty on foreign wool was raised by the McKinley 
 law the manufacturers quietly boasted that it would not 
 increase the price of the domestic, and it did not. 
 Having used the wool-growers of this country to elevate 
 the price of their own half shoddy product' the manu- 
 facturers have been, and are now, taking in the Ameri- 
 can clip at their own prices, without regard to the price 
 of foreign wools, or to tariff rates. 
 
 Again, there is one feature of the existing tariff law 
 which operates as a positive discrimination against both 
 the American wool-grower and the American consumer. 
 This is the system of drawbacks. The woolen manu- 
 facturer, if he were to make his cloth of domestic wool, 
 for which he paid what foreign wool would cost with 
 duty added, would have to sell his product in the home 
 market if he sold at all, and sell at a high price. On 
 the other hand, if the goods are made of foreign wool, 
 he may sell at home if he can do so, or he may export 
 
 ^ Two years ago a gentleman made a statement to our com- 
 mittee remonstrating against putting wool on the free-list, which 
 we were proposing to do, in order to give greater employment and 
 cheaper clothing to our people, because the duty on wool, he said, 
 had developed a great American industry in this country, which 
 was the manufacture of shoddy. He said we have 815,000,000 of 
 capital invested in manufacturing shoddy goods, and employing in 
 that branch of labor 100,000 hands. And, Mr. Chairman, just in 
 proportion as we have developed the shoddy business we have de- 
 stroyed the woolen business. — Hon. R. Q. Mills.
 
 92 IMPOR TA TlOy OF FARM PRODUCTS. 
 
 if there is a demand abroad, and in this latter case the 
 goverment will refund to him the duty he has paid. 
 This duty, on the better grades of woolen goods, 
 would amount to from forty to sixty per cent, of the 
 cost of the raw material. 
 
 With American wool at the price of foreign wool, 
 duty added, therefore, the manufacturer is practically 
 restricted by the law to the American market, while 
 with foreign wool he may sell at home, or under the law 
 compete with England in any of the markets of the 
 world. Cheap foreign labor will not prevent this com- 
 petition, for it is a well ascertained truth that a dollar's 
 worth of American labor will produce more yards of 
 woolen goods than a dollar's worth of foreign labor. 
 
 The gist of the whole matter is this : The woolen 
 manufacturers' association is free to buy where it 
 pleases, and if it sells abroad it may obtain foreign 
 wools of any and all varieties without the payment of 
 any duty or tax, and may sell its goods to foreigners on 
 as good terms as the most favored manufacturers of 
 the world. It is only in the United States that this 
 gigantic combination and other combines equally 
 grasping and merciless are enabled by protective duties, 
 ranging from 60 to 150 per cent,, to rob the American 
 public on the hollow pretext that they in some myster- 
 ious, if not miraculous, manner benefit the working- 
 man and help the farmer by selling them manu- 
 ufactured products at from 25 to 75 per cent, more than 
 the goods are actually worth. A wise man may at 
 times be excusable for accepting an agreeable but self- 
 evident untruth, when he can get it for nothing; but
 
 IMPOR TA TION OF FARM PR OD UCTS. 93 
 
 only the most amiable and unthrifty can entertain, 
 adopt and defend an ill-favored and ridiculous false- 
 hood like that propagated by the high protectionists 
 when it costs good money to do it. 
 
 The Ohio farmer should, in this discussion, squarely 
 face two important facts : 
 
 1. That the woolen manufacturers have the power, 
 by combination, to control the price of American wool, 
 and that they will not permit him to derive any advan- 
 tage from tariflf laws. 
 
 2. That his greatest competitor in the better class 
 wools is the wool-grower of California, New Mexico, 
 Wyoming, Texas, Idaho and other sections of the 
 United States, where grazing land costs nothing, winter 
 feeding is not required, and where wool can be profit- 
 ably grown at less than ten cents a pound. Even if 
 foreign wools could be wholly excluded by tariflf laws, 
 a price for wool which would render the industry profit- 
 able in Ohio, would make it more lucrative than a gold 
 mine in those Western States and Territories. 
 
 In concluding on this branch of the subject I desire 
 to call attention to one class of articles of great interest 
 to farmers which Governor McKinley, either intention- 
 ally or unintentionally, neglected to mention. He was 
 particularly careful to tell us at least one-half the truth 
 about hay, flax, rice and vegetables imported in 1890, 
 all of which combined, amounted to less than ^10,000,- 
 000 ; but he omitted even to suggest that we imported 
 during the same year hides and skins to the value of 
 ;^21,881,886, and that in our exchanges of these articles 
 the balance against us was over ;^20,000,000. Have not
 
 94 IMPOR TA riON OF FARM PRODUCTS. 
 
 the farmers of Ohio a greater interest in hides and skins 
 than in rice? Why, therefore, mention the one and ut- 
 terly ignore the other? Why palter about an expendi- 
 ture of a million more or less for hay, and say nothing 
 of an expenditure of nearly 522,000,000 for hides and 
 skins ? The latter are the direct product of the farmer's 
 hay — hay in its most condensed and valuable results, 
 and yet Governor McKinley, in the presence of Ohio 
 farmers, was dumb as an oyster on this subject. Why? 
 Because he knew if he were to suggest it the farmers 
 might ask ugly questions — questions which from his 
 high protection standpoint he could neither consistently 
 nor satisfactorily answer. If there should be a duty on 
 wool and cabbage and pickles, why not on the skins of 
 our sheep, the hides of our cattle, and even the hair, for 
 this is an article of commerce ? To all this the Gov- 
 ernor could have made but one truthful answer, to-wit, 
 "the leather manufacturers demanded free raw material, 
 and in accordance with a rule of late invariably ad- 
 hered to by the Ways and Means Committee, we gave 
 to the manufacturers exactly what they wanted."
 
 XI. 
 
 DRAWBACKS (again). 
 
 " We give a rebate of 99 per cent, on imported raw material 
 which is finished into the finished product, and then entered for 
 the export trade." ^ 
 
 This reopens an old question which has already 
 been sufficiently discussed ; but it may be well in this 
 connection to inquire who got the rebate of 99 per cent, 
 of the customs tax paid by the Canadian farmer, referred 
 to by Governor McKinley (see page Q6) when his wheat 
 the raw material — was converted into flour — the finished 
 product and then exported ? Was the amount of the 
 rebate paid to the Canadian farmer or to the manu- 
 facturer? If to the farmer the government obtained 
 no revenue from the transaction, and the Canadian got 
 as much for his wheat as if he had been a resident of 
 the United States. If to the manufacturer, the govern- 
 ment derived nothing in way of revenue, and the man- 
 ufacturer obtained a profit to which he was not justly 
 entitled. This may appear like trifling with an im- 
 portant subject, but it illustrates forcibly the ridiculous 
 attitude in which Governor McKinley places himself 
 logically, when he affirms, as he does substantially, 
 that the foreign producer pays the duty and the Ameri- 
 can manufacturer gets the rebate. 
 
 ^ Governor McKinley at Ada, 1891. 
 
 (95)
 
 XII. 
 
 POSITION OF THE OLD WHIGS ON THE SUBJECT OF 
 PROTECTION. 
 
 " Let me call as witness, first, Thomas Ewing," etc. i 
 Thomas Ewing, Horace Greeley, Henry Clay and Mil- 
 lard Filmore were old Whigs who advocated reasonable 
 protection for so-called infant industries. Their utter- 
 ances while supporting the protective theory to the ex- 
 tent indicated, cannot, without great injustice to their 
 memories and disregard of their avowed purposes be 
 distorted into an approval of continuous and permanent 
 protection to long and well established industries. 
 Henry Clay, in 1833, gave expression to the views of 
 the Whig party on this subject when he said : 
 
 "The theory of protection supposes, too, that after a cer- 
 tain time the protected arts will have acquired such strength and 
 perfection as will enable them, subsequently unaided, to stand 
 against foreign competition." 
 
 Again in 1840: 
 
 "No one in the commencement of the protective policy ever 
 supposed that it was to be perpetual." 
 
 But long prior to Henry Clay's entrance into polit- 
 ical life, to-wit, in 1791, Alexander Hamilton, who was 
 a leader and teacher in the school of economic states- 
 men, to which Henry Clay and Thomas Ewing be- 
 longed, had said : 
 
 1 Ada. 1891. 
 
 CJG)
 
 POSITION OF THE OLD WHIGS ON PROTECTION. 97 
 
 "The continuance of bounties on manufactures long estab- 
 lished must always be of questionable policy, because the pre- 
 sumption would arise in every such ease that there were natural 
 and inherent impediments to success." 
 
 To affirm that the fathers of the old Whig party 
 ever contemplated the imposition and maintenance of a 
 duty of ;^i3.44 per ton on steel rails, an article which 
 can be manufactured in this country and sold at a profit 
 for $1^ per ton, is not only misleading but arrant non- 
 sense. Such exorbitant protection to an industry long 
 established would have been denounced by them as an 
 attempt to make robbery and extortion lawful. 
 
 I followed the tall white plume of Henry Clay with all the 
 idolatry of boyhood in his advocacy of his great American Sys- 
 tem half a century ago. I was tlien, have ever been and am 
 to-night a Clay protectionist (applause), and there is no more 
 similarity between the McKinley and the Clay theories of pro- 
 tection than there is between the soaring eagle and the mousing 
 owl. Clay protected labor when our manufacturing industries 
 were in their infancy; McKinley protects capital when industries 
 are fully established, breeds monopoly and trusts, limits our 
 markets, oppresses labor by lessening employnaent and increased 
 taxes on the necessaries of life, and his most conspicuous pro- 
 ducts are rapidly multiplying millionaires and tramps. [Ap- 
 plause.] 
 
 The Clay protective tariff of 1842 levied a lower rate of pro- 
 tective taxes than the Mills bill that McKinley now calls a free 
 trade measure, and in his defense of protection to labor he never 
 claimed the right to enact anything but a revenue tariff, with in- 
 cidental protection for a very brief period, as he held that con- 
 tinued taxation for the benefit of any class was unjustifiable. He 
 held free raw materials as one of the integral parts of protection 
 to labor and continued taxes on some of them for a season 
 only to develop them fully, and as early as 1833, when urg- 
 ing the passage of the compromise tariff, he said in his Senate 
 speech of February 12, 1833: "Now give us time; cease all 
 
 FLUCTUATIONS FOB NINE YEARS AND THE MANUFACTURERS IN 
 EVERY BRANCH WILL SUSTAIN THEMSELVES AGAINST FOREIGN 
 
 COMPETITION." — Col. A. K. McClurCy September 2^^ 1892.
 
 XIII. 
 
 WHAT M'KINLEY CLAIMS FOR HIS LAW — CONCEDING 
 ALL HE CLAIMS IS IT NOT AN ARGUMENT IN FAVOR 
 OF LOWER DUTIES AND A LARGER FREE LIST? — 
 THE M'KINLEY LAW IN SOME RESPECTS AN IM- 
 PROVEMENT ON THE LAW OF 1883. 
 
 " What has this bill (MeKinley bill) doue? In the first ten 
 months under that bill we bought more goods in Europe than we 
 ever bought in any ten mouths since the formation of the govern- 
 ment; * * * more and bettor than that, in the first ten months 
 under that law we sold more products to Europe than we ever 
 sold in any ten months before," etc. ^ 
 
 Again, at Beatrice, 1892, in a speech modestly enti- 
 tled " The Triumph of Protection," Governor MeKin- 
 ley said : 
 
 "Notwithstanding the cry that under a protective tariff we 
 cannot sell abroad if we do not buy abroad, yet during the last 
 fiscal year we sold abroad nearly $203,000,000 more than we bought 
 abroad. * * It will be observed that under the operation of the 
 new law the free list has been increased, while the dutiable list is 
 decreased. The value of free imports for the last year exceeded 
 the value of dutiable imports by $88,000,000. During the last fis- 
 cal year the value of imported merchandise free of duty was over 
 $458,000,000, an increase over the preceding year of $91,759,793. 
 * * « The average rate (of duty) to-day is less than it has been 
 at any time before for thirty years. More than one-half of the 
 value of all our imports is absolutely free. * * * The value of 
 our exports of merchandise during the fiscal year 1892 was $1,030,- 
 335,626. * « * Our exports never before reached that point in 
 any given year in all our history." 
 
 ^ Ada, 1891. 
 
 (98)
 
 U'^I/A r Mc KIN LEY CLAIMS FOR HIS LA W. 99 
 
 Figures, whether old or new, relevant or irrelevant, 
 have as great a fascination for the Governor as edge 
 tools for children, and he is just as likely to get hurt, 
 logically, while handling them, as a child is to become 
 physically disabled in a room full of razors. 
 
 Let us, for the sake of good-fellowship, concede that 
 the very large quantity of goods bought in Europe 
 during the period to which he refers, resulted directly 
 from the beneficent provisions of the McKinley law! 
 Now where does the confession on his part and the con- 
 cession on ours, leave his numerous arguments against 
 a revenue tariff? His main, if not sole, objection to a 
 low tariff' is that it encourages our people to buy goods 
 abroad — that it induces large importations, that it 
 furnishes employment to the foreign laborer, that it opens 
 "up our markets to the foreign producer, impoverish- 
 ing the home producer and enriching his foreign rival." 
 And yet now that the McKinley law has the field he 
 boastingly affirms that under it "we bought more goods 
 in Europe than we ever bought" in the same time "since 
 the formation of the government" — more goods even 
 than were bought under the revenue tariff of 1846, 
 which he has time and again denounced as the worst 
 tariff our country ever had, because it encouraged peo- 
 ple to buy goods abroad. 
 
 But without paying further attention to Governor 
 McKinley's inconsistencies of speech and self contra- 
 dictions in argument, let us simply admit that all he 
 claims in this particular for the McKinley law is abso- 
 lutely correct ; that under it we have bought more and 
 sold more than we ever bought and sold before ; that
 
 100 Pf^I/A T McKINLEY CLAIMS FOR HIS LA /K. 
 
 these large purchases abroad and large sales abroad, 
 have contributed to the prosperity of the country. Hav- 
 ing conceded all this — all he claims with respect to the 
 goods sold and bought, and the beneficial efiects of this 
 buying and selling, may we not commend him to cer- 
 tain paragraphs of his own speech for the causes of this 
 unexampled prosperity? "The average rate of duty 
 today is less than it has been at any time before for 
 thirty years.'''* And again, "more than one-half of the 
 value of our imports is absolutely free." And again, 
 "under the operation of the new law the free list has 
 been increased while the dutiable list is decreased." 
 And again, "the value of free imports for the last year 
 exceeded the value of dutiable imports by ;^88,()00,000." 
 
 May we not, from his own confessions, therefore, af- 
 firm that under a still more liberal law, with a longer 
 free list and lower duties, we would do a still more ex- 
 tensive and profitable business with European coun- 
 tries? Do not his own figures prove that low duties 
 lead to a larger trade, and that larger trade leads to in- 
 creased prosperity ? And if all this means anything is 
 it not an unanswerable argument against the restrictive 
 policy of high protection ? 
 
 The McKinley law is, in some respects, an improve- 
 ment on that which preceded it. It reduced duties on 
 a few things ; it enlarged the free list ; it, in a small 
 degree, gave recognition to the policy of reciprocity; 
 but in many ways it is more objectionable than any 
 tarifif law the country ever previously had.' It has 
 
 ^ The passage of the McKinley law of 1890 was the greatest 
 blunder ever committed by any party since the Democratic crime 
 of secession.— >iSV. Louis Globe- Democrat {Hepub.).
 
 IVHA T McKINLE Y CLAIMS FOR HIS LA IV. 101 
 
 made duties, which were too high before, still higher. 
 It has given to many lines of industry a monopoly of 
 the American market by according to them prohibitory 
 duties on competing products. It lacks that apparent 
 spirit and intent of absolute fairness and impartiality to 
 every individual and all vocations which should char- 
 acterize all laws of a general nature. In brief, while it 
 is not without good features, it yet has many which are 
 wholly indefensible.
 
 XIV. 
 
 INFLUENCE OF INVENTION ON PRICES — QUOTATION 
 FROM AN ARTICLE WRITTEN BY W. E. SIMONDS, 
 EX-COMMISSIONER OF PATENTS. 
 
 " Things were never as cheap as they are to-day," etc. ^ 
 This is true in all civilized countries ; the invention, 
 improvement and general use of labor-saving machin- 
 ery readily accounts for this cheapening of products, 
 whether grown or manufactured. The putting on of a 
 duty or tax never made a thing cheaper. We cannot 
 diminish by addition. With respect to the influence of 
 invention upon prices, Hon. W. E. Simonds, ex-Com- 
 missioner of Patents, said: "Banish our agricultural 
 inventions and the entire population of the United 
 States * * * would not suffice to raise and care 
 for half of our present crops." * * It was Whitney's 
 improvement in cotton gins that made cotton into 
 king. * * * Under the old order of things the 
 value of each bushel of this grain (wheat and oats) 
 would have been consumed in carting it from Omaha to 
 Chicago. * * * No delusion is more surely a delu- 
 sion than the somewhat common one that inventions 
 lessen the wages and the number of manual laborers. 
 The same kind of mechanics who now gets two dollars 
 and fifty cents per day, received not more than one-half 
 that wages in 1843. * * * The history of American 
 
 1 Ada, 1891. 
 
 (102)
 
 INFLUENCE OF INVENTION ON PRICES. 103 
 
 carpet-making is instructive upon this point, and also in 
 showing how inventions reduce prices in the long run. 
 A generation ago our carpets were all made for us by- 
 foreign hands, and the prices were excessive. A great 
 American inventor produced the Biglow carpet loom. 
 To-day the prices of carpets are less than half what 
 they were.'' ' 
 
 1 North American Beview, December, 1893.
 
 XV. 
 
 SUGAR AND THE SUGAR BOUNTY. 
 
 "There has been an annual saving of $45,000,000 to the 
 American people, and you never had sugar so cheap as you have 
 got it to-day," etc. ^ 
 
 If the abolition of duties and the admission of goods 
 free is a saving to the people, why not abolish all duties 
 and thus make an annual saving of ;^200,000,000 ? The 
 truth is the tax stricken from sugar has been put on 
 other things, and will be collected from the people, and 
 in addition thereto ;^10,000,000 will be extorted from 
 them to pay bounties to home sugar-makers. The 
 people, therefore, have not saved forty-five cents by the 
 abolition of the sugar tax. 
 
 1 Ada, 1891. 
 
 (104)
 
 XVI. 
 
 DOES A HIGH TARIFF CREATE COMPETITION AND 
 ENCOURAGE GENIUS? 
 
 •' We have created competition." ^ 
 
 Is competition created by excluding competitors ? 
 By restricting trade? By limiting the buyer and con- 
 sumer to one market, and that the dearest? By putting 
 a duty of from 40 to 150 per cent, on competing foreign 
 products? By encouraging the formation of pools, 
 trusts and combines ? 
 
 "We have encouraged genius; we have promoted inven- 
 tion." 2 
 
 No, our schools have done these things. It is an 
 era of invention ; our whole population has been stim- 
 ulated to intellectual activity. The high tariff, like any 
 other tax or burden, has been a hindrance ; but in 
 spite of this we have made progress. 
 
 1 Ada, 1891. 
 ' Ada, 1891. 
 
 (105)
 
 XVII. 
 
 CAUSE OF THE PANIC OF 1893 — CARNEGIE — RUSSELL 
 — DOLAN — SHERMAN — HEPBURN. 
 
 " The truth about it is that the money of this country has 
 been so good that when the peojjle after the elections last fall lost 
 faith in everything else they never lost confidenee in the money 
 of the country. Every man who .had a dollar due him at the 
 bank during the la^t five months wanted it, and he wanted it bad ; 
 and everybody wanted their money on the same tlay. They 
 didn't want it for investment; they didn't want it for building 
 any industry, for we are not building industries now ; they 
 wanted it because they believtd in it ; wanted it near them. They 
 drew the money out of the banks to hoard it, and you never heard 
 of anybody hoarding anything that wasn't good." ^ 
 
 From the day of Mr. Cleveland's election in Novem- 
 ber, 1892, to the first of June, 1893, business of all 
 kinds was carried on with unabated vigor, and with 
 perhaps more than average profit. For two years or 
 more, however, prior to the retirement of Mr, Harri- 
 son from the executive ofiice it had been manifest to 
 students of finance, not only of this country, but of 
 Europe, that what was known as the Sherman law of 
 1890 would, if left unamended, or unrepealed, ulti- 
 mately lead to the destruction of American credit 
 abroad, and to the serious injury, if not utter paralysis 
 of all business at home. 
 
 Early in 1891 our exports of gold became so large 
 that the country, from March to July, trembled on the 
 
 1 McKinley's campaign speech, 1893. 
 
 (106)
 
 CAUSE OF THE PANIC OF iSgj. 107 
 
 verge of a monetary panic, and was only saved from 
 financial disaster by fortuitous good harvests in this 
 country and bad harvests in the British Islands and 
 continental Europe. Our unprecedented export of bread- 
 stufifs in the latter part of 1891, induced by short crops 
 abroad, led at once to a return of the gold which had 
 been frightened away by our silver legislation, and this 
 afforded a false but plausible argument in favor of the 
 continuance of the Sherman law, to the party which 
 had originated it, to legislators who desired a ready 
 market for the silver product of their constituents, and 
 to that great multitude of inspired statesmen and idiotic 
 financiers who, like Jack Cade, are eagerly looking for- 
 ward to the blessed day when a two-penny loaf shall, 
 by an exercise of legislative authority, be sold for a 
 half-penny. That the purchasing clause of the Sher- 
 man law was ultimately the direct and only cause of 
 the panic to which Governor McKinley has referred, can 
 be demonstrated as clearly, and as absolutely, as the 
 fact that the monetary disturbances which led to the 
 impoverishment of France 1719-20 were the direct out- 
 growth of the plausible but impracticable financial 
 vagaries of John Law. 
 
 As has been stated the business of the country had 
 been flowing with at least ordinary volume in all the 
 channels of trade and manufacture up to the latter part 
 of May, 1893, and the fact that the country's stock of 
 gold, in the absence of any unusual demand for our 
 breadstuffs abroad, was again rapidly diminishing, had 
 apparently passed unobserved by the great majority of 
 our people. But now by circulars from the banks of
 
 108 CAUSE OF THE PANIC OF jSgj. 
 
 New York City, and by editorials of the entire press of 
 the country, they were suddenly awakened to the fact 
 that our European creditors had become alarmed over 
 the probability that our obligations to them would be 
 paid in silver dollars, intrinsically worth but sixty-six 
 cents each, and hence were hurrying our certificates of 
 indebtedness home for immediate payment. This led 
 to a rapid decline in stocks and bonds ; unsettled public 
 confidence in this class of investment securities, ren- 
 dered it difficult, if not impossible, to borrow money on 
 them or to continue loans already made, and to prose- 
 cute enterprises in hand or in contemplation, and this 
 condition of affairs led to numerous failures, not only in 
 the great money centers, but elsewhere, and these fail- 
 ures being paraded in startling headlines by all the 
 newspapers of the country imbued the great mass of our 
 people with the belief that banks were unreliable cus- 
 todians of their money, and hence as Governor McKin- 
 ley said, "They drew their money out of the banks to 
 hoard it." Indeed, they became so thoroughly alarmed 
 that they withdrew from the national banks alone over 
 1^350,000,000 ' and probably as much more from the sav- 
 ings, state and private banks of the country. To affirm, 
 therefore, that anybody who depended upon banks for 
 accommodations could continue business amid this tem- 
 pest of distrust and excitement, is to give utterance to 
 an absurdity. Merchants could not borrow ; manufac- 
 turers could not obtain money to pay employes; State 
 and municipal bonds could not be sold. In brief, the 
 
 ' Comptroller of the Currency.
 
 CAUSE OF THE PANIC OF iSgj. 109 
 
 Nation had, with respect to its monetary and business 
 aflfairs, a recurrence of its experiences of 1873, when 
 its currency disappeared as suddenly as if it had been 
 wholly destroyed. 
 
 The panic of 1893 began in the latter part of May 
 and continued through the months of June, July, August 
 and September. It reached the maximum of its fury 
 about the middle of August, and began visibly to abate 
 when the House of Representatives passed the bill to 
 repeal the purchasing clause of the Sherman act. The 
 long delay and idiotic chatter of the Senate over the 
 matter prolonged the feeling of distrust, and retarded 
 business, but from the hour when the repeal bill finally 
 became a law all indications of the fright disappeared, 
 and the money so hastily withdrawn from the banks 
 was as hastily returned to them. Indeed, on the 18th 
 of November, the New York banks held ^65,000,000 
 over and above the 25 per cent, reserve which the law 
 required them to keep, and since that date the sum in 
 excess of their legal reserve, has reached the unprece- 
 dented amount of ^102,000,000. Mr. Andrew Carnegie 
 attributed the panic to its proper cause when he said, 
 "There is no reason in the world why the United 
 States should not be as prosperous today as it was until 
 recently, except one. Owing to the enormous and con- 
 stantly increasing amount of depreciated silver in the 
 treasury, confidence has been shaken in the ability of 
 the government to pay its currency in gold, as it has 
 promised." ' 
 
 ' North Americati Review, September, 1893.
 
 110 CAUSE OF THE PANIC OF iSgj. 
 
 When Governor McKinley, in his campaign speech 
 of 1893, affirmed that the panic was attributable to 
 prospective changes in the tarifif law, he not only made 
 averments which could not be sustained by an appeal 
 to contemporaneous events, but he struck a vicious and 
 serious blow at the business of the country by encour- 
 aging and augmenting the prevailing distrust, and he 
 did it for personal and political ends. If it were true 
 as Governor McKinley incorrectly claimed, that our 
 business troubles resulted from proposed changes in the 
 tariff, it must follow that the panic would not only have 
 continued to the end of 1893, but enough longer to give 
 the country an opportunity to try the amended law, and 
 so ascertain, by actual experience, whether the changes 
 made in it were good, bad or indifferent. On the other 
 hand, if it were true, as Mr. Carnegie, a practical and 
 successful business man maintained, that the purchas- 
 ing clause of the Sherman silver law was the cause of 
 our monetary and industrial troubles, it must follow 
 that with the abolition of the cause, or repeal of the 
 law, its effects would disappear, and the country at once 
 become more hopeful and gradually return to its usual 
 prosperous condition. The fact that business began to 
 revive the moment the purchasing clause of the Sher- 
 man act was repealed would indicate, conclusively, 
 that Mr. Carnegie was right and that Governor McKin- 
 ley's alleged cause of our business troubles was not the 
 true one, and that his arguments based upon the con- 
 dition of the country at the time he made them, were 
 wholly unfounded and designed simply to influence the 
 votes of the temporarily unemployed.
 
 CAUSE OP THE PANIC OP iSgj. Ill 
 
 As further evidence on this point extracts from Gov- 
 ernor Russell's able paper in the North American Re- 
 view of December, 1893, are submitted for the consider- 
 ation of the reader : 
 
 " The best proof that this was the cause of the business 
 depression comes from business itself. In the midst of its distress 
 it knew and stated the cause of it and the remedy. From boards 
 of trade and business centers all over the country there came a 
 imanimous demand for what? To let the tariff alone? No, but 
 to repeal the Sherman bill." 
 
 Thomas Dolan, the well-known protectionist of 
 Philadelphia, and of its Manufacturers' Club, said: "I 
 believe that the depression is almost wholly due to the 
 silver policy. If the alarm was due to the victory of 
 the Democrats, why was it not manifested last Novem- 
 l-,ej- p * * 5i« Ijj f^Qt^ JQ ^}^e woolen business every- 
 thing went swimmingly, until first of July." 
 
 The American Wool Reporter said : 
 
 " The depression is due to lack of confidence in the stability 
 of our currency." 
 
 John Sherman, in the debate in the U. S. Senate, 
 said: 
 
 "If we would try it ( repeal of the Sherman act) to-morrow 
 we would gladden the hearts of millions of laboring men who are 
 now being turned out of employment ; we would relieve the busi- 
 ness cares of thousands of men whose whole fortunes are em- 
 barked in trade; we would relieve the farmer and his product, 
 for free transportation to loreign countries now clogged for want 
 of money. In the present condition of affairs there is no money 
 to buy cotton, or corn, or wheat for foreign consumption." 
 
 Hon. A. B. Hepburn, late Comptroller of the Cur-
 
 112 CAUSE OF THE PANIC OF 1893. 
 
 rency, in a speech before the Ohio Bankers' Association 
 
 (non-partisan) at Cleveland, Ohio, said : 
 
 "The iuitial cause of our recent panic was distrust of our cur- 
 rency, a fear of the free coinage of silver, and a conviction that 
 under the operations of the Sherman law we were rapidly ap- 
 proaching the condition that would result from the free coinage of 
 silver, at a ratio of sixteen to one, while the commercial ratio 
 ranges about twenty- eight to one. 
 
 •X- » « * « * » * 
 
 The foreign investor first took fright and not only withheld 
 further investments, but sent back to us in large quantities the 
 securities already held lest the future miglit compel him to accept 
 payment in depreciated money. Credit generally became 
 alarmed, and the hoarding of gold followed. The currency famine 
 thus inaugurated, intensified by business necessities, sent all forms 
 of money to a premium and taxed the resources of every locality 
 to find money and substitutes for money for the transaction of 
 business," 
 
 Persons who do not keep a record of the weather are 
 not easily convinced that the last cold day is not the 
 coldest they have ever experienced. And so it is with 
 respect to panics, and years of industrial distress. The 
 last always seems to be the worst. The anxieties, dis- 
 comforts and dangers of the old time are to a great 
 extent forgotten, while those of the present are obtru- 
 sive, demand immediate attention, and are hence hastily 
 accepted as the most distressing ever known. 
 
 Grant was President in 1873, both branches of Con- 
 gress had round Republican majorities, and no one was 
 at all alarmed over any prospective changes in the 
 tariff law, and yet in the latter end of that year busi- 
 ness houses from the Atlantic to the Pacific were swept 
 down by a financial cyclone like rotten reeds before a 
 tempest. There was then nothing in the estimation of
 
 CAUSE OF THE PANIC OF iSgj. 113 
 
 the public so precious as spot cash, and everybody 
 began to clutch and hoard. A million of productive 
 property could not tempt a thousand dollars in currency 
 from the strong box. Business men theretofore in high 
 credit acknowledged with shamed faces their inability 
 to meet maturing obligations. Fear of bankruptcy 
 and ruin dominated every thought and controlled every 
 action. In brief, the current of business was as sud- 
 denly congealed as a stream might be which ventured 
 into the frigid temperature of an arctic winter. -The 
 country was five years in recovering from this disaster, 
 and failures among business men during 1876, 1877 and 
 1878 were proportionally greater than in 1893, while 
 the proportion of failures in 1875 was exactly the same as 
 in 1893, In other words, the number of failures in 1,000 
 firms in — 
 
 1874 was 10.7 1877 was 13.6 
 
 1875 was 13.0 1878 was 15.5 
 
 1876 was 14.3 1893 was 13.0' 
 
 In 1877 great labor riots occurred at Pittsburgh and 
 elsewhere ; it was during this year that Columbus was 
 terrorized by bands of discontented workingmen. In 
 1878 unemployed men were apparently more numerous 
 than the employed. In 1879 and 1880 there were 
 decided indications of improvement, but in the latter 
 of these years Columbus found it necessary to make 
 provision for idle men, and opened a free hotel for their 
 accommodation at the corner of Spring and High 
 streets. In 1883 failures among business men were 
 
 ^ Dun's Review, January, 1894.
 
 114 CAUSE OF THE PAX/C OF iSqj. 
 
 proportionally but little less than in 1893. In 1884 the 
 country experienced a financial panic only a shade less 
 disastrous than that from which it has just emerged ; 
 the banks of New York, Boston and Philadelphia were 
 compelled to resort to the system of clearing house cer- 
 tificates to avoid suspension, and failures among mercan- 
 tile firms were 12.7 in 1,000, only a fraction less than in 
 1893, the number during the latter year, as already stated, 
 being 13.0 in 1,000. In 1890 there was another financial 
 panic, during which the banks of New York, Philadel- 
 phia and Boston again resorted to the issuing of clear- 
 ing house loan certificates to avoid suspension, and but 
 for the timely purchase of government bonds by the 
 Secretary of the Treasury, and the disbursement of one 
 hundred millions in currency, this panic would proba- 
 bly have been as damaging to the business of the 
 country as the last one. Notwithstanding all these 
 facts, however, men who believe their political success 
 depends upon the propagation of the falsehood, will 
 maintain that the panic of 1893 was the worst the 
 country has ever experienced, and that it was directly 
 attributable to prospective changes in the tariff law, 
 whereas the truth is that the panic of 1873 was fully 
 as disastrous to the country as that of 1893, while the 
 panics of 1884 and 1890 were distressingly injurious to 
 business, and the years 1876, 1877 and 1878 were unparal- 
 leled for the number of failures among business men.
 
 XVIII. 
 
 THE TARIFF LAWS NOT DRLICATE AND SACRED THINGS 
 WHICH CANNOT BE REVISED AND AMENDED WITH- 
 OUT INJURV TO THE BUSINESS OF THE COUNTRY 
 — M'MILLEN'S STATEMENT AS TO WHO PREPARED 
 THE m'KINLEY bill — JOHN SHERMAN ON THE 
 SAME SUBJECT. 
 
 " Now, my fellow-citizens, are you surprised at the condition 
 of the country? If you are, you will not be if you reflect a 
 moment. For thirty-two years this country was under a protec- 
 tive tariff, and during all that time, until now, there was no party 
 in control in this country that could destroy it. Remember that 
 — thirty-two years of uninterrupted protection, and no party able 
 to disturb it. Every business in this country was built up under 
 that protective tariff; every industrial interest was made to con- 
 form to it ; every delicate thread of industry entwined about it ; 
 every artery of trade and commerce led out from it. Everything 
 we made, everything we produced, was related to that protective 
 system. The cost of production, the selling price, the cost price, 
 the wages of labor, were all adjusted to that protective systena 
 that had continued for thirty-two years." ^ 
 
 " For thirty-two years this country was under a pro- 
 tective tariff. " — Multitudes of iniquitous laws, customs, 
 precedents, and practices have become hoary with age. 
 We have had, indeed, nearly one hundred years of 
 slavery in this country, during which human beings 
 were bought and sold at private and public sale ; hus- 
 bands ruthlessly separated from wives, parents from 
 
 ^ Campaign speech, 1893. 
 
 (115)
 
 116 IFHO PREPARED THE McKIXLEY BILL. 
 
 children, and "every delicate thread of industry en- 
 twined about'' this accursed institution, and pleaded for 
 its continuance, just as Governor McKinley pleads for 
 the perpetuation of high protection and prohibitory 
 tariflfs. Age cannot sanctify a wrong, and every year 
 through which robbery is continued demonstrates with 
 cumulative force the necessity for its extinction. 
 
 When Governor McKinley abandons declamation 
 and proves by ascertained facts and pertinent figures 
 that the great mass of our people are benefited by giv- 
 ing the woolen manufacturer of New England, and the 
 iron and steel maker west of the Alleghenies, a monop- 
 oly of the American market, thus enabling them, by 
 combines, to extort from the consumer from twenty to 
 fifty per cent, more for their product than it is worth, 
 he will do what he has never hitherto done to-wit, sup- 
 ply the world with a substantial reason for the exist- 
 ence of a high tariff". The idea that the tariff laws of the 
 United States are delicate and sacred things which can- 
 not be revised and amended, without destroying the 
 business of the country, is about as ridiculous a notion 
 as a sane man ever entertained. The truth is there have 
 been not fewer than twenty changes in these laws since 
 1861, and the McKinley act was about the most radical 
 of them all, for it unwisely increased the tax on many 
 articles, wisely reduced it on some, considerably en- 
 larged the free list, and paid a direct bounty to the 
 sugar makers, who were no more entitled to a bounty 
 than the hodcarriers. In brief, this law, by according 
 to certain well established and politically influential in- 
 dustries, exorbitant protection, forfeited all just claim to
 
 IV HO PREPARED THE McKINLEY BILL. 117 
 
 respectful consideration." In this connection I desire 
 to introdace again the testimony of Hon. Benton 
 McMillin, member of the committee of the House of 
 Representatives which is supposed to have prepared 
 the McKinley bilL 
 
 "The manufacturers were called in and allowed to frame the 
 schedules to suit themselves, ^yhole sections of the bill were thus 
 framed and inserted bodily as they were made by interested par- 
 ties, and are now the law of the land. This is notably true of the 
 sections increasing the duty on women's dress goods, which was 
 prepared by one of the greatest manufacturers of those goods. It 
 was true of others. Does any one deny this? The members of 
 the Ways and Means Committee who 'edited' the bill will not 
 deny it." ^ 
 
 McMillin's emphatic testimony as to the manner in 
 which the McKinley bill was gotten up may not be 
 readily accepted by those who diflfer with him politically ; 
 but unfortunately for the credit of our legislators, the 
 public has the evidence of Senator John Sherman as to 
 the substantial accuracy of Mr. McMillin's statements. 
 In the Cleveland Leader of November 6, 1891, Mr. 
 Sherman, while speaking of the McKinley law*is re- 
 ported to have said: "The best and most equitable 
 tariff bill that was ever framed was sent into congress 
 by the commission of which Harry Oliver, of Pitts- 
 burgh was thepresident, but the manufacturers knocked 
 it to pieces by inserting into it all sorts of petty chimcr- 
 
 1 The recent break in the price of steel lails (from 5^29 per ton 
 to $21.80) is said to be due to the action of a Pittsburgli concern 
 which refused to re-enter the agreement between the mills (or tlie 
 maintenance of a stated value for rails when it expires tirst ol 
 January. — New York Tribune, Nov. 11, 1S93. 
 
 ^ North American Beview, Oct. 1893. 
 
 9
 
 118 WHO PREPARED THE McKINLEY BILL. 
 
 ical protection for pen-knives, pearl buttons and other 
 Yankee notions, until I am free to say it was in many 
 respects a Yankee notion bill, dealing in small matters 
 that needed no protection. * * * The tin-plate 
 question is one I am in favor of, and there are other 
 important business enterprises that I believe should be 
 taken under our wing, but the Eastern manufacturers 
 are constantly making an effort to insert themselves 
 into the tariff question when they need no protection 
 whatever." ' 
 
 It is evident that these manufacturers succeeded in 
 inserting themselves into the McKinley bill, and that 
 notwithstanding Governor McKinley's assertion to the 
 contrary, they did it for their own special advantage 
 and not for that of the consumer. To affirm, therefore, 
 that the prosperity of the country depends upon the 
 maintenance of such a law, unamended, is to give ut- 
 terance to a palpable absurdity. 
 
 ^"Protection tends to demoralize our national legislation. 
 The lobby of the capitol is thronged with representatives of cer- 
 tain manufacturers, seeking to obtain or to perpetuate special pro- 
 tection. Money is freely used, and bargains are made to combine 
 the friends of separate measures, when votes are given. Proposed 
 acts come thus to be judged of not by their real merits, but by 
 their relation to personal interests." — Dr. Chapin.
 
 XIX. 
 
 SHALL ALL OLD LAWS, CUSTOMS AND PRECEDENTS BE 
 ADHERED TO — THE EFFECT OF THE REDUCTION OF 
 TARIFF RATES ON THE IRON INDUSTRY — THE IRON 
 MANUFACTURERS ON THE SEABOARD DEMAND FREE 
 IRON ORE AND COAL — CERTAIN MANUFACTURERS 
 OBLIGED TO USE FOREIGN MADE STEEL — STRIFE 
 BETWEEN EASTERN AND WESTERN IRON AND STEEL 
 PRODUCERS. 
 
 " I don't care what the system is, any industrial system that 
 has existed thirty-two years in a country, that has been imbedded 
 in every business enterprise and in every human activity, if you 
 go from that system to another and a different one, you paralyze 
 the business of the country. (Applause.) Men in this country 
 — and they are not different here from any other country— men in 
 this country do not produce for the future when they do not know 
 what the future will be. No man will put his good money into 
 that end of the factory when he doesn't know what he will get for 
 his product when it goes out at the other end of the factory. No 
 man will make iron and steel for the future with tariff coal and 
 tariff iron ore and tariff wages, M'hen, six months from now, that 
 iron and steel may have to compete with iron and steel made with 
 free coal and free iron ore and with free trade wages. (Applause.) 
 And that is what is the matter with the country today. (Cheers.) 
 Certainty in business, confidence in the future constitute the es- 
 sence of business prosperity. (Cries of "Good," and applause.) 
 No man will invest his money in any industrial enterprise unless 
 he has reasonable assurance of a profit. Don't forget that." ^ 
 
 " If you go from that system to another and a differ- 
 ent one you paralyze the business of the country." — 
 
 1 Campaign speech, 1891. 
 
 (119)
 
 120 REDUCTION OF TARIFF RA TES— ITS EFFECT. 
 
 If this be true, all attempts to make improvement, 
 advancement, or progress in any line should be forbid- 
 den by the Constitution of the United States. The 
 industrial system in operation at any time should, ac- 
 cording to the Governor's superior wisdom, be resolutely 
 adhered to. The revenue law enacted by congress in 
 1789 should have been continued to the present day. 
 The so-called free trade tarifif of 1846, after it had 
 become "imbedded in every business enterprise and 
 every human activity," should have been scrupu- 
 lously maintained. The infant industry which needed 
 help to put it on its legs, and some measure of pro- 
 tection until fairly established, should, after it had 
 become old and strong and abundantly able to stand 
 alone, continue to be a burden upon other industries. 
 The internal taxes of war times should never have 
 been repealed, and the war itself should have been 
 continued because it made manufacturing profitable 
 and furnished employment to millions of men as 
 soldiers, as agriculturalists and as artisans. The in- 
 consistencies, not to say stolidities, of the Governor are 
 marvelous ; but his elocution is splendid and the good 
 people are sometimes thoughtless, and somewhat cred- 
 ulous. 
 
 "No man will make iron and steel for the future with tariff 
 coal and tariff iron ore, * * when six months from now that 
 iron and steel may have to compete with iron and steel made of 
 free coal and free ore," etc. 
 
 This revives the old question of who pays the tax ? 
 Governor McKinley has repeatedly afl&rmed that it is 
 paid by the foreigner for permission to sell his goods in
 
 REDUCTION OF TARIFF RA TES—ITS EFFECT. 121 
 
 the American market. Notably he made this claim at 
 Atlanta, Georgia, at Beatrice, Nebraska, at Ada, Ohio, 
 and he has made it at numerous other places, so that 
 he stands plainly committed to the doctrine that under 
 the protective system the tarifif is a tax upon foreign 
 countries "which they must yield up to our treasury if 
 they want to enter this market." ' 
 
 Now, if the Governor's old contention as to who 
 pays the tax is well founded, it must follow that the 
 manufacturer can make iron and steel as cheaply 
 from tariS coal and tarifif ore, as he can make them 
 from free coal and free ore. In other words, if the for- 
 eigner pays the tax or duty the American is now, and 
 has been hitherto getting his foreign coal and ore with- 
 out the payment of any duty — at free trade prices — at 
 the actual cost abroad with simply transportation, but 
 no duty added. Why, therefore, should any manufact- 
 urer hesitate to make iron and steel for the future, 
 with the probability of free raw material before him, 
 when, according to Governor McKinley's numerous 
 afifirmations, that is exactly what the manufacturer has 
 been doing for the past thirty-two years? 
 
 The truth is the Governor's protective system is of 
 the most elastic and accommodating nature, and may 
 be so adjusted as to meet the views of either buyer or 
 seller. To the former it says, "The foreigner pays the 
 tax and the price of goods is not increased thereby ; " 
 to the latter, "You get from twenty to fifty per cent. 
 
 1 Beatrice, Nebraska, 1892.
 
 122 REDUCTION OF TARIFF RATES— ITS EFFECT. 
 
 more for your product than you could obtain under a 
 low tariflf." 
 
 The speech from which the citation at the head of 
 this chapter is made was delivered for the last time on 
 November 5, 1893. On the 22d of the same month and 
 year, the iron and steel mills at Pittsburgh, Youngs- 
 town, and elsewhere west of the Alleghenies, were 
 either in active operation or about ready to resume. 
 The same is true of the coal mines of Ohio and Penn- 
 sylvania, so that we have in these facts a practical 
 refutation of the Governor's statements. 
 
 It may be said, however, in a general way, that iron 
 ore, in many but not by any means in all the existing 
 varieties, can be obtained as cheaply in the United 
 States as in any country of the world ; but in order to 
 make certain grades of iron and steel demanded by the 
 trade, ores from widely separated mines must be assem- 
 bled at the furnace, and in certain well-ascertained pro- 
 portions intermingled and smelted into one common 
 mass, and then cast, rolled or drawn out into the forms 
 desired. Many of our iron mines would be almost, if 
 not wholly, valueless, if it were impossible to combine 
 their product with that of other mines. While the 
 mills and furnaces west of the Alleghenies use but 
 little, if any, foreign ore, and of course no foreign coal, 
 it is often cheaper for mills and furnaces located on the 
 seaboard to obtain the qualifying ore needed to create 
 the exact product desired, from other countries, than to 
 transport it by boat and rail from distant sections of the 
 United States. Indeed, it may be for their advantage 
 to buy their entire stock of certain rare ores abroad,
 
 REDUCTION OF TARIFF RA TES — ITS EFFECT. 123 
 
 rather than pay freight charges from mines in Minne- 
 sota, Wisconsin and northern Michigan. 
 
 The following statement, clipped from the New 
 York Times of November 25, 1893, suggests at least 
 that all producers of iron and steel, whether capital- 
 ists or laborers, are not eager for the continuance 
 of the duty on iron ore : 
 
 Frederick W.. Wood, president and receiver of the Maryland 
 Steel Company, and second vice president of the Pennsylvania 
 Steel Company, made an important statement as to the steel 
 industry. He said: 
 
 " The complexion of the steel business in this country has 
 changed most decidedly in the past year. It is all due to the dis- 
 covery of deposits of good steel-making ore in Michigan, on the 
 banks of Lake Superior. The ore comes from what are known as 
 the Messaba Districts, and can be very cheaply mined by steam 
 shovels and loaded by them directly on the cars. 
 
 " Owing to the freight charges we cannot, of course, compete 
 with the mills west of the Alleghenies in purchasing this ore. 
 Nor can the foreign ore from Cuba and the Mediterranean, which 
 we use entirely, paj^ing the duty of seventy-five cents a ton, com- 
 pete with the Western ore. The result is that our steel business 
 has gone to pot, and will continue so if the Western output holds 
 out and the tariff is not taken off the raw material. 
 
 "If the tariff is taken off raw material we will be able to 
 compete on even terms with the other steel-making companies. 
 If it is not, I don't think there will be a single company east of 
 the Allegheny Mountains that will be able to continue operations 
 in steel making " 
 
 Thus it will be seen from the evidence of an expert 
 that if the McKinley tariff law should remain un- 
 amended the steel business east of the Alleghenies is 
 likely to be abandoned, the capital invested in the 
 numerous plants of that section wholly lost and thou-
 
 124 REDUCTION OF TARIFF RA TES — ITS EFFECT. 
 
 sands of workingmen, resident in the vicinity of the 
 mills, left unemployed. 
 
 But as further evidence on this point it should be 
 said that in February, 1889, 598 iron and steel con- 
 cerns of New England, " including, almost without ex- 
 ception, every one of importance," ' declared in a state- 
 ment to congress that the tendency of the duties on 
 coaland iron ore was " to wipe out the iron and steel indus- 
 tries, large and small, of New England." Again, " it 
 is * * * the duty on coal and crude iron that is 
 strangling in New England one of the largest of all the 
 wonderful industries of modern days.'' * * * * 
 The abolition of these duties will not only keep it alive 
 but will insure its tremendous vitality and large in- 
 crease.'' 
 
 It should be said also in this connection that there 
 are certain lines of industry in this country which could 
 not be followed if restricted, either in whole or in part, 
 to the product of native ores. The seamless tubes 
 manufactured by the Shelby (Ohio) Tube Company, for 
 instance, cannot be made from American steel. To 
 say that this promising industry is benefited in the 
 slightest degree by a heavy duty on the steel it is com- 
 pelled to use, would be arrant nonsense. The same 
 may be said truthfully of a hundred other industries — 
 industries dependent, either in whole or in part, upon 
 foreign raw material for their existence. The president 
 of the Elwood (Indiana) Tin Plate Company admitted 
 that the tin plate industry in this country would be 
 
 ' Governor Russell, North American Review, December, 1893.
 
 REDUCTION OF TARIFF RATES— ITS EFFECT. 125 
 
 stimulated by a remission of the duty on pig tin. But 
 waiving all this, let us return to the subject of foreign 
 iron ores — the ores which Governor McKinley thinks 
 it would be a calamity to introduce into this country free 
 of duty. 
 
 It must be apparent that if these ores were on the 
 free list, they would, by reason of distance and cost of 
 transportation, never constitute more than a small pro- 
 portion of our entire finished steel and iron product; 
 except for the use of mills on the seaboard, they would 
 only be imported when indispensable as a mixture for 
 our more common and cheaper grades of ore. To 
 restrict their importation by the imposition of high 
 duties would, aside from revenue, serve no other pur- 
 pose than to lessen the demand for labor, reduce the 
 rate of wages, and bring about the precise results 
 which Governor McKinley is professedly anxious to 
 avoid. 
 
 The truth is that the iron and steel makers west of 
 the Alleghenies are not so much afraid of foreign com- 
 petition, in case the duty on iron ore and coal is stricken 
 off, as they are of domestic competition. They propose 
 to either crush the iron and steel mills of New England, 
 or compel them to work at such a disadvantage as will 
 enable the Western mills and furnaces to monopolize the 
 lion's share of the American market.
 
 XX. 
 
 m"kinley's assumption that a low tariff would 
 lessen the demand for labor not w^ell 
 founded — when people abroad buy of us 
 they pay wages to our workingmen. 
 
 " \Mi3', what is a lower tai'iff for ? A lower tariff is to make it 
 easier for foreign products to get into this country. That is what 
 u lower tariff is for. And the easier it is for foreign products to 
 get into this country, the more will come in, and the more that 
 come in the less we will make at home. (Applause.) And the 
 less we make at home the less labor we will employ at home. 
 ( Applause.) You can not buy your goods abroad and make them 
 at home. (Applause.) If you buy them abroad they will be 
 made by labor abroad. If you buy them at home they will be 
 made by labor at home, and wages will be paid at home, and 
 wages will be spent at home. (Applause.) If you buy them 
 abroad, the wages will be paid abroad and the wages will be spent 
 abroad. Every foreign product that comes into this country in 
 competition with the products of our own labor displaces just 
 that quantity of home product ; and as it displaces that quantity 
 of home product it displaces the home man who makes it. " (Ap- 
 plause.) 
 
 " There is not a farmer in Hamilton county who thinks it 
 wise economy to hire his neighbor's boys to do his work when he 
 has got half a dozen stalwart boys of his own idle at home, 
 (Laughter and applause.) No good government should consider 
 it wise economy to buy its goods abroad when it has got a million 
 unemployed men at home. (Great applause and cheers.) The 
 more that is done at home the better wages will be paid at home. 
 
 " If there is one day's work and two men to do it, neither of 
 them will get as good pay as though there were two days' work 
 and one man to do it. (Applause.) And you laboring men know 
 (126)
 
 WORKINGMEN BENEFITED BY FOREIGN TRADE. 127 
 
 that. Free trade proposes to give one or both days' work to 
 Europe. Protectiou proposes to keep them both at home. 
 (Applause.) " 
 
 The paragraphs here quoted, plausible as they appear 
 to the unreflecting, are based wholly upon a false as- 
 sumption — the assumption to-wit, that a lower tariff 
 would diminish the aggregate value of our annual pro- 
 duct, lessen the demand for labor, and the wages of our 
 workingmen.' Governor McKinley, at Ada, Ohio, in 
 1891 and at Beatrice, Nebraska, in 1892, unwittingly 
 confessed that the United States could find not only in- 
 creased profit, but additional employment for her 
 workingmen by friendly commercial relations and an 
 active trade with other nations. At Ada he said : 
 " What has this bill ^ done? In the first ten months 
 under that bill we bought more goods in Europe than we 
 ever bought i7i any ten months before since the formation 
 of the government." He at that time evidently regarded 
 these large purchases abroad — the largest the country 
 had ever known, under any tariff, as evidence that our 
 countiy was in a highly prosperous condition. He cer- 
 tainly did not on that occasion deem it necessary to tell 
 his hearers that " the easier it is for foreign products to 
 
 1 " The assumption that protection creates the home market is 
 a fallacy. These centers of varied industry grow up naturally and 
 healthily with the increase of population and wealth. Mechanical 
 genius, the investigating turn of mind, the energy' of will-i^wer, 
 managing capacity — these qualities come not of protective tarifTs. 
 They are the gifts ol God to men. Left to themselves, and stim- 
 ulated by competition, they spontaneously lay hold on all gifts of 
 God in nature, and, using all available capital, set up the work- 
 shops ol industry, wherever best opportunities are presented." 
 — Aaron L. Chapin, D, D. 
 
 2 McKinley bill.
 
 128 irORKlXGMEN BEXEFITED BY FOREIGN TRADE. 
 
 get into this country the more will come in, and the 
 more that comes in the less we will make at home, and 
 the less we make at home the less labor we will employ 
 at home. You cannot buy your goods abroad and make 
 them at home. If you buy them abroad they will be 
 made by labor abroad. If you buy them at home they 
 will be made by labor at home, and wages will be spent 
 at home," etc. There was not a word of all this either 
 at Ada or at Beatrice. On the contrary, it was a good 
 thing then to buy abroad, and the Governor becomes 
 jubilant over the fact that under the benign influence of 
 the McKinley bill " we bought more goods in Europe 
 than we ever bought in any ten months before since the 
 formation of the government!" 
 
 Was it true at Ada or Beatrice, in any broad, practi- 
 cal business sense, applicable to the question in hand, 
 that " the more (goods) that come in the less we will 
 make at home, and the less we make at home the less 
 labor we will employ at home?" ' Not at all. If not 
 true then why should it be true now ? The Governor 
 might with just as much pertinency have said to his 
 Ohio audience, " If you buy goods in New York, you 
 cannot buy them in Cincinnati ; the fewer pumpkins 
 you buy in Indiana the more you will raise in your own 
 garden; you cannot keep the pig in your own pig-sty 
 if the pig is kept in the pig-sty of the butcher." These 
 
 ^ "Some other gentlemen, in the course of the debate, have 
 spoken of the price paid for every foreign manufactured article as 
 so much given for the encouragement of foreign labor to the prej- 
 udice of our own, but is not every such article the product of our 
 own labor as truly as if we had manufactured it ourselves? Our 
 labor has earned it and paid tlie price for it. It is so much added 
 to the stock of national wealth." — Daniel Webster.
 
 WORKINGMEN BENEFITED BY FOREIGN TRADE. 129 
 
 are truths, of course, but it would hardly be wisdom to 
 accept them as the basis of a great national or inter- 
 national policy. Governor McKinley's subtle method 
 of argument, though unknown to Aristotle, is neverthe- 
 less somewhat antiquated. It was invented by Mother 
 Goose, and has been used for ages to amuse infants. 
 
 He tells us in his speech at Ada that under the 
 McKinley bill *' we bought more goods in Europe than 
 we ever bought * * before ; " and at Beatrice he 
 boasts that " during the last fiscal year (1892) the value 
 of imported Vi\QXQ\\2M^\SQ: free of duty was over ^$458, 000,- 
 000, an increase over the preceding year o^ ^91,759,- 
 793.'' What followed these immense purchases of 
 foreign goods to which the Governor at Ada and Beat- 
 rice so boastingly refers ? Was the laboring man thrown 
 out of employment ? No. Were his wages reduced ? 
 No. Did the country go at once into bankruptcy? Not 
 at all. What then followed these enormous importa- 
 tions ? The Governor in his Ada speech answers : " We 
 sold more American products than we ever sold before ; " 
 and at Beatrice he said : " The value of our exports of 
 merchandise during the fiscal year 1892, was ;$1,030,- 
 335,626. * * Our exports never before reached that 
 point in any given year in all our history." ** The excess 
 in value of exports over imports * * was ^202,944,- 
 342."^ 
 
 Under a more liberal law and lower duties might we 
 not then reasonably expect to buy still more and sell 
 still more? If increasing the free list resulted not only 
 
 ^ " Commerce is always an exchange of produce against pro- 
 duce. So much imported, so much exported." — Prof. Emile De 
 Laveleye.
 
 130 workingme:^ benefited by foreign trade. 
 
 in an increase of trade, but, as was the case in 1892, in 
 a balance in our favor of over ;^202, 000,000, why should 
 we not make further reductions in duties and further 
 additions to the free list, secure a larger trade and a 
 larger cash balance? ' 
 
 When we exchange a dollar's worth of our own sur- 
 plus product for a dollar's worth of European surplus 
 product, there is not only nothing lost to us, but cer- 
 tainly a saving of one dollar. If we neglect or de- 
 cline to exchange an article we do not need and can- 
 not sell at home, and which costs us a dollar's worth of 
 labor, for some article we do need and which costs a dol- 
 lar's worth of labor abroad, exactly two dollars in labor 
 may be lost, to-wit: the dollar's worth of labor ex- 
 pended on the surplus product we cannot use, and the 
 dollar's worth of labor expended on the foreign surplus 
 product which we could use if permitted to exchange 
 our — to us valueless — product for it. 
 
 When we export, as we did in 1892, a billion dollars 
 worth of American products, the foreigner — not the 
 citizen of the United States — pays the American 
 laborer good wages for creating those products, and so 
 long as there is an even exchange of products between 
 two countries there can be no loss to either, and may be 
 much gain to both.^ Still, it is in a narrow sense true 
 
 1 "Nothing, however, is more certain than that if America 
 purchased goods more largely from England, the English people 
 would in their turn increase their purchases of American pro- 
 duce." — Henry Faucett. 
 
 2 "'In buying of a foreigner, the Nation really does no more 
 than send abroad a domestic product in lieu of consuming it at 
 home, and consume in its place the foreign ])roduct received in 
 exchange." — Jean-Baptiste Say.
 
 WORKINGMEN BENEFITED BY FOREIGN TRADE. 131 
 
 as Governor McKinley says, that " the less we make at 
 home the less labor we will employ at home ; " but this 
 weak aphorism does not by any means prove that gen 
 erous dealing and an active trade with other nations 
 would diminish the number and value of our home pro- 
 ducts and lessen the wages of our workmen. On the 
 contrary we have abundant reason to conclude that 
 such a course would stimulate business at home, and cre- 
 ate an increased demand for labor by giving our products 
 a value which under present unfavorable trade limita- 
 tions they do not possess. 
 
 The following paragraphs clipped from the Ohio 
 Farmer, and written by W. T. Bethune, suggest the 
 gist of the whole matter: 
 
 " When a farmer buys manufactured goods with the 
 money he receives for his wheat, he has simply 
 exchanged his labor for the labor of other men engaged 
 in different branches of production, and the goods he 
 receives for his money are as much the product of his 
 own labor as they would be had he expended his labor 
 in the actual making of the goods. The same holds 
 true of our national trade. 
 
 ^tf ^ ^ ^ ^If ^4f *\f •1' -x* 
 
 •T* 'T* •T* 'T* 'T* *!* 'T* 'T^ 't^ 
 
 " The foreigners grant we can grow wheat cheaper 
 than they can. Mr. Lawrence acknowledges that the 
 foreigners can grow some things cheaper than we can, 
 therefore by each growing that for which they are best 
 fitted, and exchanging one for the other, both will gain. 
 Both will be using the process of production that 
 requires the least labor. 
 
 " But our high tariff friend still maintains that by 
 obliging us to produce directly instead of indirectly we
 
 132 WORKINGMEN BEXEFITED BY FOREIGN TRADE. 
 
 will give more work for American labor. He is correct. 
 By obliging ns to adopt a more difficult system of pro- 
 duction it will be necessary to expend more labor to 
 produce the same result. It will give more work in 
 the same way that a wet season or weedy field gives 
 more work by making it more difficult to produce.'' ' 
 
 " If you buy abroad wages will be paid abroad, and 
 the wages will be spent abroad," etc. — True enough, 
 within narrow limits, but only half the truth applicable 
 to this question. If the people abroad buy of us they 
 will pay wages to us, and these wages will be spent 
 with us, and the demand for labor with us will remain 
 undiminished, and, as has been said, if by possibility 
 we exchange something we do not need for something 
 we do need, we shall gain by the transaction. Governor 
 McKinley errs, however, when he affirms that "every 
 foreign product that comes into the country in compe- 
 tition with products of our own labor displaces just that 
 quantity of home product." For, if the quantity which 
 comes in is cheaper than ours it would displace a smaller 
 value, and should suggest to us that we could employ 
 our labor in more profitable ways than in making things 
 under unfavorable circumstances and at a disadvantage. 
 In brief, it never pays anybody to spend two dollars' 
 worth of labor to create a dollar's worth of product. It 
 would be wiser to earn the two dollars at some profit- 
 able occupation, and spend one dollar for the product ; 
 by the latter method there would be a dollar gained, 
 while by the former there would be a dollar lost. 
 
 ^"The aim of economics is not to increase but to diminish 
 labor. If I can obtain a yard of cloth from a foreigner by means 
 of one day's work, it is contrary to this aim to force me to spend 
 two."— Pro/. Emile De Laveleyc.
 
 XXI. 
 
 UNEMPLOYED MEN — WHY ARE THEY UNEMPLOYED — 
 WE CAN NOT SELL UNLESS WE BUY. 
 
 " No good government should consider it wise econ- 
 omy to buy its goods abroad when it has got a million 
 unemployed men at home." — Possibly not; but if the 
 government has a million of unemployed men it would 
 be high time for it to scrutinize its industrial system 
 and commercial regulations, with a view to ascertaining 
 if there were not some way to dispose of its surplus 
 products, and thereby increase the demand for labor, 
 and provide profitable employment for its citizens. The 
 merchant, manufacturer, or farmer who has but one 
 customer, and that customer himself, is not likely to ac- 
 cumulate great wealth, or prove a friend to the working- 
 man, and a help to the community. Niggardliness and 
 selfishness in business never led to an extended trade, and 
 the successful development of a great industry. If by 
 buying goods abroad the Nation can sell goods abroad, 
 and at the end of the year figure out a cash balance of mil- 
 lions, it would be millions ahead in the year's business 
 and this balance would be a stimulus to wages and an 
 encouragement to workingmen. And even if the bal- 
 ance were not in actual cash but in such products as 
 our people needed, the effect upon the laborer would be 
 substantially the same. Cash itself is not as valuable, 
 either to the Nation or the individual, as the products 
 
 (133)
 
 lo4 UNEMPLOYED MEN. 
 
 for which it is exchanged, and if we can get most of 
 the products we desire in exchange for products we do 
 not need, we may at times find profit in paying a cash 
 balance to others. People who can get all they want 
 without cash have little, if any, use for money. ' 
 
 The idea that the United States can sell goods to 
 Europe and not buy goods of Europe, is wholly er- 
 roneous. In the first place, it would be impossible for 
 olher countries to pay cash for all the products they buy 
 of us. Our exports in 1892 amounted to one thousand 
 million dollars ; a few such years of sales abroad, if 
 nothing were accepted by us in return but gold, would 
 bankrupt every nation with which we dealt, and in the 
 end leave us without a customer. In the second place, 
 nations would not be inclined to buy largely and liberally 
 of us, if we declined to buy largely and liberally of them. 
 In brief, they buy where they sell, and if England can- 
 not obtain wheat in America in exchange for English 
 products, she will seek her wheat in Russia and else- 
 where, and leave ours to waste in the farmers' granaries. 
 
 Governor McKinley should not forget in this con- 
 nection that under the low tariff of 1846 (a tariff whose 
 duties were materially reduced by the help of a Repub- 
 lican House of Representatives in 1857) "the American 
 mercantile marine touched its highest point of pros- 
 perity" ^ that during this period *' the great cotton fac- 
 
 1 " Nobody wants to keep gold unless he is a crazy miser. It is 
 the very i)()orest kind of permanent investment. You cannot eat 
 gold, or wear gold, or cultivate gold. You have to part with it, 
 in order to make it of the slightest use. The man to whom you 
 lend or pay it looks around anxiously for the first chance to get rid 
 of it for somethiug better."— 77wmas G. Shearman. 
 
 2 D. A. Wells.
 
 UNEMPLOYED MEN. 135 
 
 tories of New England sprang into existence " ' " that 
 from 1850 to 1860 farm values increased 101 per cent. ; " 
 that " the increase of our wealth was equivalent to 126 
 per cent. ; '' =" that " the business of the country was in a 
 flourishing condition, money * * abundant * * 
 large enterprises * * undertaken, and the prosperity 
 of the country * * general and apparently genuine." ^ 
 In view of all these facts it does not seem at all 
 probable that the prosperity of the people of the United 
 States is solely dependent upon the continuance of a 
 tarifif law " prepared by the manufacturers " '• and 
 *' edited " by a committe of which Major McKinley was 
 chairman. 
 
 1 D. A. Wells. 
 
 2 W. B. Allisou. 
 
 ^ James G. Blaine, 
 ■i McMillin.
 
 XXII. 
 
 The railroad president and steel rails — RE- 
 DUCTION IN PRICE OF STEEL RAILS DUE TO IN- 
 VENTION AND IMPROVEMENT IN METHODS OF 
 MANUFACTURE — WAGES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HIGH- 
 ER IN THIS COUNTRY THAN IN OTHER COUN- 
 TRIES — THE DIFFERENCE IN PRICE BETWEEN 
 AMERICAN LABOR AND ENGLISH LABOR IN THE 
 PRODUCTION OF STEEL RAILS — WHY M'KINLEY'S 
 RAILROAD PRESIDENT WOULD NOT BUY. 
 
 " There is not a railroad company in this country today that 
 is buying any steel rails. Why ? The president of a railroad com- 
 pany told me why his company was not buying. He said that 
 last fall they had made up their minds to relay a large part of 
 their tracks. That would have meant labor for the trackmen. 
 They would have employed thousands of men. He said when 
 the elections went in favor of free trade, his company made up its 
 mind they would not buy any steel rails. And I asked him why. 
 He said, because the Democratic party was in power, and it was 
 pledged to reduce the tariff on steel rails from $12 a ton to $5 a ton ; 
 and be said if they reduced the tariff to $5 a ton his company 
 would get cheaper rails in England than they could get in the 
 United States. And so the railroad companies of this country are 
 waiting for the Democratic party to reduce the tariff. And while 
 they are waiting for the Democratic party to reduce the tariff, the 
 workiugmen in the rail mills of the United States are idle and 
 unemployed. (Great applause.) For if the railroad companies of 
 this country do not buy steel rails at home, there will be no labor 
 nor wages for the steel rail maker at home." 
 
 It is, ou personal grounds, to be regretted that the 
 exigencies of a political campaign should disturb the 
 
 (136)
 
 THE RAILROAD PRESIDENT AND STEEL RAILS. 137 
 
 mental equipoise of Governor McKinley to such an ex- 
 tent as to lead him into inconsistencies of speech so 
 palpable and preposterous as in eflfect to supply his 
 opponents with weapons for his own destruction. 
 Those, however, who have neither a well established 
 principle to guide them, nor a comprehensive under- 
 standing of the subject in hand, are not unlikely to be- 
 come entangled and finally lost in a labyrinth of self- 
 contradictions and conflicting statements. 
 
 The Governor, it will be borne in mind, has affirmed 
 over and over again that the tariff does not increase 
 the price of domestic manufactures. He has said, 
 " There is not in the long line of staple products con- 
 sumed by the people a single one which has not been 
 cheapened by competition at home, made possible by 
 protective duties." ' He has summoned the Canadian 
 farmer to bear witness that the foreign producer and 
 not the American consumer pays the tariff duty. ^ He 
 has introduced a memorial of the colonial parliament 
 of Bermuda ^ to prove that the exporter and not the 
 importer — the foreign producer and not the home 
 buyer and consumer, pays the customs tax, and that he 
 does so for the privilege of entering our market and 
 selling his goods. After having established the truth 
 of this proposition, by what he deems unimpeachable 
 testimony and incontrovertible argument, he now intro- 
 duces a nameless railroad magnate and permits him to 
 annihilate this most delightful and comforting theory 
 
 ^ Atlanta. 
 
 2 Ada. 
 
 3 Beatrice.
 
 138 THE RAILROAD PRESIDENT AND STEEL RAILS. 
 
 without uttering one word of protest. Indeed, to all 
 intents and purposes the Governor bows obsequiously 
 to this railroad magnate, and in eflfect says: '' I used 
 to think differently, my lord, but I see now you are 
 right; the consumer not only pays the tax on dutiable 
 goods, but a price equivalent to this tax on domestic 
 products, and by waiting until the tariff on steel rails 
 is reduced from ;^13.44 per ton to ;^5 per ton, you will 
 save a heap of money !" What a humiliating descent 
 this must have been for a great statesman, who had 
 time and again declared that the tariflf did not increase 
 the price of nails, iron, steel rails, etc. 
 
 The introduction of the railroad president and the 
 subject of steel rails, suggest a few facts which may 
 properly be considered at this point, in the discussion. 
 Steel rails were at one time sold in the United States at 
 ;^155 per ton. In 1873, however, they were $95.90 here, 
 and $14: in England. In 1885, the price was $2Q in this 
 country, and $23.17 abroad. For many years it was the 
 custom of a certain brood of half-fledged political ora- 
 tors to attribute this great decline in price to the cheap- 
 ening effect of our tariff laws. Indeed the broad state- 
 ment was freely made that a high rate of duty had re- 
 duced the price of steel rails from $155 to $26 per ton, 
 and from this false premise it was argued that high 
 tariffs made cheap goods, and hence were a blessing to 
 the consumer. The truth is, however, that the reduc- 
 tion in the price of steel rails, and other forms of steel 
 product resulted not from legislative enactments, but 
 from certain important discoveries like the Bessemer 
 process, and the Gilchrist and Thomas process, and also
 
 THE RATLROAD PRESIDENT AND STEEL RAILS. 139 
 
 from certain improvements in mill machinery, for which 
 mankind is wholly indebted to the inventive genius of 
 the age, and not at all to the wisdom of political econo- 
 mists. If it were true that high tariffs made low prices, 
 steel rails would be cheaper in this country than in 
 England. 
 
 While wages are from 30 to 100 per cent, higher in 
 England than in any of the high tariff countries of 
 Europe, it is admitted that workingmen, as a rule, have 
 always been paid less money for a day's work there, than 
 men have received here for the same hours of labor ; 
 but this was just as true when England was a high 
 tariff country, and the United States a low tariff 
 country, as it is to-day. In fact, in the time of 
 William Cobbett, when tariff reform was agitating Eng- 
 land, wages in the United States were higher than in 
 any of the high tariff countries of Europe, and this 
 country was then "pointed to as illustrating the bless- 
 ings of free trade and low taxes." ^ From these facts it 
 may be fairly assumed that the wages of men depend 
 .rather upon the supply of laborers and the demand for 
 laborers than upon legislative influence, and we may 
 safely conclude also that in a new and comparatively 
 thinly settled country, where opportunities for making 
 money are numerous, laboring men will always com- 
 mand better wages than in old and densely populated 
 countries where opportunities for making money are 
 few, the supply of laborers abundant, and the demand 
 comparatively small. 
 
 It is claimed by ultra protectionists, but denied by all 
 
 1 New York limes, Nov. 12, 1893.
 
 140 THE RAILROAD PRESIDENT AND STEEL RAILS. 
 
 others/ that American workingmen obtain for the labor 
 necessary to the production of one ton of steel rails 
 ;^3.7'5 more than is paid in England for precisely the 
 same amount of work, and the production of precisely 
 the same amount of steel. Accepting this statement as 
 correct and assuming that iron ore, coal and limestone, 
 etc., are only just as plentiful in this country as in that, 
 and that it will cost at least $\ to transport a ton 
 of English made rails to this market, it must follow 
 that a duty of $1.1^ per ton upon foreign rails would 
 put the English and American manufacturers upon an 
 absolute equality as competitors for the American trade. 
 Suppose, therefore, the railroad president to whom Gov- 
 ernor McKinley refers, was right in assuming that the 
 
 1 Hon. Tom L. Johnson, a steel rail manufacturer and mem- 
 ber of congress from Ohio, said : 
 
 Steel can be made here as cheaply as anywhere else in the 
 world, and would not now be imported save in exceptional cases, 
 even if there were no duty, while the tendency of invention and 
 improvement is in favor of the United States as against Europe. 
 The steel made into rails in this country is from native ore. 
 What pig metal, billets and blooms are imported are used entirely 
 in other iron and steel manufactures. 
 
 It costs less than $2 a ton to make steel rails from blooms, in- 
 cluding straightening and punching. On today's market steel 
 blooms are selling at less than $17; steel rails should, therefore, 
 not bring over $19. They did fall nearly to that price a few weeks 
 ago, duriug a temporary break in the steel rail pool. But that 
 pool was quickly reorganized, and the price of steel rails was put 
 up, and is now maintained at $24 a ton, so that by virtue of the 
 duty which keeps out foreign rails, the pool is compelling the 
 users of steel rails to pay them twenty-five per cent, ujore than a 
 fair price. Tiiis new steel-rail pool is composed of seven inan- 
 ufactiirers, headed by Carnegie, who absolutely control the 
 product of more than one-half of the rolled steel produced in the 
 United States, and who have combined together to pay other large 
 manufacturers heavy annual sums to close their works, discharge 
 their men, and make no steel.
 
 THE RAILROAD PRESIDENT AND STEEL RAILS. 141 
 
 duty on steel rails would be reduced from $13.44 to ;^5 
 per ton, would not the American manufacturer in that 
 event still have ^2.25 per ton (over ten per cent.) ad- 
 vantage of his foreign rival? While this reasonable 
 duty would enable him to supply the market at fair prices, 
 it would not enable him through a combine, like that 
 now and hitherto existing, to extort ^5 or ;^10 per ton 
 more for his product than it is worth. The fact is, we 
 should then have that " properly adjusted competition 
 between home and foreign products " which Garfield 
 considered "the best gauge by which to regulate 
 international trade.'' 
 
 It will be observed from what has been said that a 
 duty of $ 5.00 per ton on steel rails would provide for 
 not only the difference between the higher wage of the 
 American and the lower wage of the Englishman, but 
 afford ample protection to the American manufacturer. 
 What was it then which deterred this nameless railroad 
 president from buying rails, relaying his track and giv- 
 ing employment to thousands of trackmen? Was it 
 not the fact that under the McKinley law there is the 
 exorbitant duty of ;^ 13.44 per ton on steel rails, and 
 the further fact that under this prohibitory tax Ameri- 
 can manufacturers had combined to extort from con- 
 sumers $ 5.00 to $ 10.00 per ton more for rails than they 
 were worth ? The man, probably, did not propose to 
 be robbed under the McKinley law if he could avoid 
 it ; and to avoid it, he did not relay his track ; did not 
 furnish employment to thousands of trackmen ; did not 
 buy rails, and thus help keep the millmen and miners 
 employed. The truth is, then, that the McKinley law was 
 the obstacle in his way, and directly responsible for the 
 enforced idleness of trackmen and millmen. It stood 
 up between the man and the work he contemplated,
 
 142 THE RAILROAD PRESIDENT AND STEEL RAILS. 
 
 and said, " You can relay your track only upon one con- 
 dition, to-wit: that of being robbed to the extent of 
 $5.00 per ton by the steel men — $5.00 per ton, mind, 
 on every ton of steel rails you buy ! '' Fair trade, not 
 free trade, would in this case have put thousands of 
 men to work at honest wages, who, under the baleful 
 operation of the McKinley law, are left to idleness and 
 suffering, and possibly to beggary and starvation. And 
 thus it is that high protection, by restricting trade and 
 enterprise, tends directly to the injury of labor as well 
 as capital.' 
 
 1 Hon. Tom L. Johnson, a member of congress from Ohio and 
 a steel rail manufacturer, while speaking on the Wilson bill in the 
 House of Representatives (Fifty-third Congress), was interrupted 
 by Mr. Dalzell, of Pennsylvania, when the following colloquy 
 occurred : 
 
 " Now I want to ask you a question," continued Mr. Johnson, 
 turning to Mr. Dalzell. " Do you believe in the existence of a steel- 
 rail pool? " 
 
 " I do not," replied Mr. Dalzell. 
 
 " Do you make a quibble on the word pool ? " 
 
 "There was a combination to keep up prices, but it did not 
 keep them up, and so it dissolved," answered INIr. Dalzell. 
 
 "You deny the present existence of a pool?" asked Mr. 
 Johnson. 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " AVell, here is the proof," said Mr. Johnson, flourishing aloft 
 a document. " Here is the agreement in the Iron Age. A certain 
 R. F. Kennedy contracted to receive 25,000 tons of rails at what I 
 consider an exorbitant price, and to forfeit |1,000 a day if he did 
 not take them. I looked into the matter to see who such a large 
 buyer could be. I found he was a stockholder in the Cambria 
 works, a rival concern and now secretary of the new pool, formed 
 last November. That pool agreed to give the manufacturers of 
 Sparrow's Point, Md., |l,000 a day to close their works and dis- 
 charge their men. It gives a concern in Pennsylvania $80,000 a 
 year to close down. The old pool of eight or nine companies agreed 
 to maintain the price of rails at $29. One of the members secretly 
 undersold the pool. Carnegie made war on him, beat the price 
 down to $19, closed him up, and then formed another pool." 
 
 "I cannot controvert what the gentlemen says," interposed 
 Mr. Dalzell. " But if such a pool as he describes exists, I depre- 
 cate it as much as he."
 
 XXIII. 
 
 m'kINLEY'S old clothes argument — EFFECT OF 
 LABOR ORGANIZATIONS ON WAGES — HAVE THE 
 GREAT BODY OF LABORERS BEEN GETTING AS 
 MUCH PER CAPITA DURING THE PAST TEN YEARS 
 AS THEY OBTAINED DURING THE TEN YEARS PRIOR 
 TO THE WAR? 
 
 "And what is true of steel rails is true of every other industry. 
 How many men iu this great audience have said to themselves or 
 to their wives, " I am going to wear my old clothes a little longer." 
 (Laughter and applause.) I venture to say there are more than a 
 thousand men iu this audience who, because of the reduction of 
 wages, or of time, or because of non-employment, have made up 
 their minds not to get any new clothes until there is a change. 
 " Lots of them," my friend says. And just what is in the minds 
 of a thousand men before me tonight is in the minds of a thousand 
 men in every audience like this all over the country. And you 
 multiply the thousand people here with the thousand people in 
 like communities, and you have got millions of people who do 
 not intend to buy any new clothes until there is a change, 
 (Laughter and cheers.) 
 
 What does that mean? It means there is to be diminished 
 employment for the tailors and the sewing women. It means 
 there is to be diminished sale* by the merchant. Because if you 
 do not make clothes you do not buy cloth. It means more than 
 that. If you do not buy the cloth the manufacturer will not make 
 the cloth. It means more than that. If the manufacturer does 
 not make the cloth, the workingman is not going to be employed 
 to make it. And it affects millions of other people all over this 
 country." 
 
 The Governor's old clothes argument could have 
 been made as pertinently in the fall of 1873 as in the 
 
 (143)
 
 144 McKINLEVS OLD CLOTHES ARGUMENT. 
 
 fall of 1893. It could have been made also with scarcely 
 lessened force in 1876, 1877, 1878, 1884, 1890 and at al- 
 most any other time during the past twenty years, for 
 there has been hardly a twelve months within the 
 period named when labor was not discontented and bit- 
 terly complaining of lack of work and inadequate pay. 
 When at Pittsburg, at Homestead, at Bufifalo, and at 
 numerous other points dissatisfied workmen struck for 
 higher wages, unemployed men came forward to take 
 their places in such numbers as to suggest that at the 
 end of over thirty years of high protection one-half of 
 our working population was unemployed, and hence 
 *'were wearing their old clothes and giving no employ- 
 ment to tailors and sewing women," "because if you do 
 not make clothes you do not buy cloth * * * and 
 if you do not buy cloth the manufacturer will not make 
 the cloth, and if the manufacturer does not make the 
 cloth the workman is not going to be employed to make 
 it," and so the case might have been argued by sense- 
 less repetition to all eternity. 
 
 Well disciplined labor organizations and somewhat 
 arbitrary restrictions with respect to the taking-on of 
 apprentices and sub-employes have enabled a certain 
 proportion of American workmen to obtain employ- 
 ment at good wages, and to hold their positions in shop, 
 manufactory, or railway service with some considerable 
 degree of permanency. But while this is true of one 
 class of laborers it is also true that another and still 
 larger class have been condemned by the usages and 
 exigencies of the times, to idleness, to half work, or to 
 such tasks as were neither pleasant nor profitable. It
 
 McKINLEV'S OLD CLOTHES ARGUMENT. 145 
 
 may with reason be doubted, therefore, whether the 
 great body of laborers, including the employed and un- 
 employed, have been getting during the past ten years 
 as much per capita for their services as the great body 
 of our workmen obtained during the decade which im- 
 mediately preceded the war. When estimates of the 
 rate of wages paid to workmen in this country are pre- 
 pared by the statistician, I apprehend no proper deduc- 
 tions are made for time lost by reason of shutting down 
 of mines, mills or factories, and no allowance admitted 
 for the vast number of men and women without trades 
 and regular occupations, who are on half work and half 
 pay, or wholly unemployed and therefore destitute. 
 The tramp was unknown in the United States forty 
 years ago, and there were then no idle workingmen and 
 women, but every man and woman, and every boy and 
 girl of proper age and strength was earning something, 
 and if not making money rapidly, they were at least ac- 
 quiring those habits of thrift and industry which lead 
 finally to independence. The delusion that it was the 
 province of government to make provision for them by 
 legislative enactments, and that they should look to it 
 for an increase of wages, or for special privileges in any 
 line, had not entered their heads to undermine their 
 natural sturdiness of character, render them distrustful 
 of themselves and deprive them of that pluck and spirit 
 of self reliance so essential to even moderate success 
 in life.' 
 
 Those who find steady work may get more wages 
 
 ^"Protection nourishes dependence, not independence." — 
 Prof. W. O. Sumner
 
 146 McKlNLEY'S OLD CLOTHES ARGUMENT. 
 
 now than laborers did then, but how has it been for the 
 past ten years with the vast army of the irregularly 
 employed ? Would a reduction of tariff duties help 
 them? This is the question. Governor McKinley thinks 
 it would not. I think it would. He thinks it would 
 diminish wages and add to the ranks of the unem- 
 ployed. I think it would open up new avenues of 
 trade, enlarge the market for our products, restore our 
 mercantile marine to its old power and influence, 
 cheapen the necessaries and conveniences of life, stim- 
 ulate production, create additional demands for labor, 
 and implant in the breast of every citizen a spirit of 
 sturdy independence, and thus make more strong men 
 and women for the country, and at the same time make 
 no less money.
 
 XXIV. 
 
 THE OLD MERCHANT ARGUMENT — MEN ON THE FREE 
 LIST — IF HIGH TARIFFS MAKE HIGH WAGES AND 
 LOW PRICES, WAGES SHOULD HAVE BEEN HIGHER 
 AND PRICES LOWER IN 1830 THAN EVER BEFORE 
 OR SINCE. 
 
 "The other day when I was speaking in Northern Ohio, an 
 old merchant brought his books to nay hotel. He had been a 
 merchant from '48 to '62. I wish everybody might see those old 
 books. They tell the truth. They tell the cost of living then ; 
 they tell the prices of labor then, and I copied from that old book 
 — one of them — an entry dated June 30, 1858, and it was an 
 account between the merchant of the village and the carpenter of 
 the village. 
 
 " The carpenter was working for the merchant, and on June 
 30, '58, the merchant credited him on his day book with one day's 
 work at $1.50 a day, and on the same day the carpenter bought 
 the following four items, which are charged on the merchant's 
 book, with the prices at the time, and these were the items: Nine 
 yards of calico at 12j cents a yard, $1.13; nine yards of lawn at 
 12^ cents, $1.13; eight pounds of coffee sugar at 12| cents a pound, 
 $ 1.00 ; and twelve pounds of cut nails at 7 cents a pound, 84 cents. 
 The total for these four items in 1858 was $4.10. The wage 
 received by the carpenter was $1.50 a day. He gave to the mer- 
 chant his one day's work, bought those four items, and owed the 
 merchant $2.60 in cash. 
 
 " Now let's take the carpenter of 1892. The pay of the car- 
 penter in 1892 was from $2.50 to $2.75 a day in Ohio. I take the 
 lowest. $2.50. Now charge him with the same four items that 
 were charged the carpenter in '58, with the prices prevailing last 
 year, and let us see the state of the account. One day's labor, 
 $2.50 a day ; nine yards calico in '92, 5 cents a yard, 45 cents ; nine 
 
 (147)
 
 148 THE OLD MERCHANT ARGUMENT. 
 
 yards of lawn 8 cents a yard, 72 cents ; 8 pounds of coffee sugar at 
 6 cents a pound, 48 cents ( and 6 cents, I am told, is too high, but 
 call it 6 ) ; twelve pounds of cut nails at 3 cents a pound, 36 cents. 
 The total of these four items in '92 is §2.01. The carpenter in 1892 
 gave his one day's work to the merchant, bought those four items, 
 paid for them, and out of that day's work had 49 cents in cash in 
 his pocket-book, ( Loud applause and cheers ). 
 
 "The carpenter in 1858 gave the same number of hours, the 
 same skill and the same toil ; bought the same four items, and 
 owed the merchant $2.60 in cash, or nearly two days' additional 
 work. Which do you like best— 1892 or 1858 ? ( A voice, " '92." ) 
 Well, then, vote that way on next Tuesday." 
 
 The account book of the old merchant was evidently 
 regarded by Governor McKinley as conclusive evidence 
 that the high protective system elevates the price of 
 men's labor and depresses the price of everything else. 
 This was proving rather too much to suit the wool- 
 grower, the iron monger and the woolen goods manu- 
 facturer, but as the Governor had many times before 
 proved just as conclusively to them that either a low 
 tariff or no tariff would reduce the price of their prod- 
 ucts to a ruinous extent, they doubtless listened to him 
 without alarm and applauded with their usual vigor. 
 The laboring men in his audience were the only per- 
 sons at all likely to be deceived. These probably were 
 too much interested in the Governor's speech to medi- 
 tate on the fact that men — laboring men, as well as all 
 other men, are on the free list. There is no duty on 
 foreign laborers ; they come to the United States when 
 they please, and compete with the naturalized citizen 
 and the native born on equal terms in all the vocations 
 of life. They sometimes stand at the entrance way to 
 employment with gun or club to drive away a descend-
 
 THE OLD MERCHANT ARGUMENT. • 149 
 
 ant of a soldier of the Revolution who presumes to seek 
 for work and bread in the land of his fathers ! They 
 bring to our very doors that competition which seems 
 so formidable and repulsive to our high tariff orators 
 when seen three thousand miles away. It may 
 be that their products are better when made here than 
 when made abroad. It may be also that the advantages 
 which they afford us in a social way are more than a 
 full compensation for the injuries they inflict by their 
 eager competition. They help, of course, to eat, wear and 
 use our products, but they help to make them also, and 
 to hasten the day when the population of the United 
 States shall be six hundred millions and our children, 
 like the children of densely populated sections of the 
 old world, be compelled to wage a life-long warfare 
 against starvation. This suggests the only competition 
 American laborers have to fear. A tariff or tax upon 
 foreign goods never increased any man's wages to the 
 extent of a farthing. There is but one way to increase 
 the price of labor by congressional enactment, and that 
 is by a law limiting the supply of laborers.' This would 
 
 1 " This iucreasing readiness to emigrate must exert an equal- 
 izing influence on wages, and must cause the difference in wages 
 in the two countries, between which the migration takes place, 
 steadily to diminish."— ^en?-^ Faucett. 
 
 Pittsburgh, Pa., January 27.— A wave of anarchy, in whose 
 train followed bloodshed, arson and the destruction of property, 
 passed over the Mansfield coal region today. It began at dawn 
 and at dusk it was estimated that $100,000 worth of property had 
 been destroyed. Made wild by fancied grievances and liquor, a 
 mob of several hundred foreigners, Hungarians, Slavs. Italians 
 and Frenchmen, swept over the countiy surrounding Mansfield 
 and through the valleys of Tom's and Painter's runs. They 
 attacked mine owners, miners and the few scattered deputy 
 sheriffs, burned tipples, wrecked cars and destroyed railroad 
 property.— Ohio State Journal, Jan. 28, 1894.
 
 f50 THE OLD MERCHANT ARGUMENT. 
 
 increase the price of labor just as a high tariflf increases 
 the price of goods. 
 
 The subject I intended to talk about, however, is the 
 account book of the old merchant. No one could dis- 
 pute the correctness of its divers and sundry entries. 
 The merchant, and the carpenter with whom he dealt 
 were vouched for by Governor McKinley as honest men. 
 In this book, therefore, was proof conclusive that low 
 tariffs make low wages, and high prices, while high 
 tariffs make low prices and high wages. It is somewhat 
 remarkable that such should be the case when the wages 
 of labor and the product of labor are so intimately con- 
 nected. It would indeed seem to the ordinary observer 
 that things made by a day's work when wages are only 
 one dollar a day should cost a little less than when 
 made by labor for which four dollars a day are paid, and 
 this I understand from Governor McKinley is the case 
 in Europe. But high tariffs, and especially the McKin- 
 ley bill, make products exorbitantly high for the seller in 
 America, and exceedingly low for the buyer, and thus 
 satisfy both parties to a bargain. Just how the tariff" 
 accomplishes the marvelous feats attributed to it, in this 
 country, while tariffs operate in an exactly opposite 
 way in other countries, is only known to the initiated, 
 and never understood by the common run of men. 
 The book of the old merchant, however, supplemented 
 by Governor McKinley's logic, establishes the fact that 
 high tariffs in America are so cunningly and skillfully 
 devised as to bring about the precise results desired by 
 each individual person of a population numbering sixty- 
 five millions, and this being the case the book was a
 
 THE OLD MER CHANT ARG UMENT. 1 51 
 
 lucky find for the Governor, for he had about exhausted 
 the invaluable but irrelevant statistics of the United 
 States census reports, and was sorely in need of some- 
 thing to give an appearance of strength; if not the sub- 
 stance thereof, to his eloquent utterances. The book, 
 therefore, was a timely and fortunate acquisition. It 
 indicated the prices of labor and products under the 
 low tariflf of 1857 — a tariflf enacted by the aid of a Re- 
 publican House of Representatives — and the Governor 
 and his audience were familiar with the prices of labor 
 and products under the high tarifif of recent years, so 
 that the introduction of the old book ended all argu- 
 ment by proving beyond a peradventure that the higher 
 the tariff waSy the lower the prices of products and the 
 higher wages would be. 
 
 The foregoing proposition being now forever estab- 
 lished, permit me to present a paragraph from the Gov- 
 ernor's speech at Niles, Ohio, in 1891, and then call 
 attention to a startling fact never hitherto mentioned 
 by political economists. 
 
 "In 1820, the average rate (tariff rate) was 22.29; in 1830, 
 46.31 ; in 1840, 15.45; in 1850, 23.16; in 1860, 15.67 ; in 1870, 42.23 ; 
 in 1880, 29.7 ; in 1890, 29.12. These are the average rates upon all 
 articles both free and dutiable." 
 
 In the year 1830, therefore, according to the Gover- 
 nor's most admirable argument, wages must have been 
 higher than at any other time in the history of our 
 country, and cut nails must have trotted around after 
 carpenters, begging to be accepted and hit on the head 
 for nothing. That year, to-wit, the year A. D. 1830, 
 must, if there is any confidence to be placed in strong
 
 152 THE OLD MERCHANT ARGUMENT. 
 
 argument, re-inforced by the account book of a truthful 
 merchant, who had dealings with an honest carpenter, 
 have been the most prosperous known to American his- 
 tory. I assume from the Governor's unerring logic and 
 not from a knowledge of the prices current at the time, 
 that nine yards of calico at two cents a yard then cost 
 eighteen cents ; nine yards of lawn three cents per yard, 
 twenty-seven cents ; eight pounds of cofifee sugar two 
 and one-half cents a pound (and two and one-half cents 
 a pound I am told is too high, but call it two and one- 
 half), twenty cents; twelve pounds of cut nails, 0; 
 total for the four items sixty-five cents. Now the wages 
 paid to the carpenter could not, according to the tariff 
 rates on imported goods, have been less than four dol- 
 lars a day and board. It follows, therefore, that out of 
 his day's wages the carpenter was enabled to pay the 
 merchant's bill and have enough left to buy a cow. All 
 this may seem a little improbable, but the reader should 
 bear in mind that in that blessed year the country had 
 the highest tariff on record !
 
 XXV. 
 
 m'kinley's criticism of gov. m'corkle — Cleve- 
 land's POSITION ON THE TARIFF — INCONSIST- 
 ENCY IN GOV. m'corkle, no WORSE THAN INCON- 
 SISTENCY IN GOV. M'KINLEY — THE OLD OHIO 
 REPUBLICAN PLATFORMS SUGGEST THE KIND OP 
 TARIFF WHICH SHOULD BE MAINTAINED. 
 
 " We are in a remarkable condition in this country to-day. 
 There never was just such a situation. Democrats are petitioning 
 congress not to disturb the tariff (laughter), after having voted 
 the party in power to disturb it. That is all very well, but peti- 
 tions don't count in this country— it's ballots. (Applause.) The 
 ballot expresses the free man's will, and that alone is conqueror 
 in a popular government like ours. Governor McCorkle, of West 
 Virginia, a Democrat, elected on the same ticket with Mr. Cleve- 
 land, elected on a free trade platform, went to the Committee of 
 Ways and Means the other day, and begged that committee not 
 to disturb the tariff on coal." [Laughter.] 
 
 Governor McKinley should not deliberately mis- 
 state the position of his political adversaries, for in doing 
 so he fails to maintain the high standing, as a debater, 
 accorded to him by the New York Tribune in its issue 
 of October 11, 1893. That pronounced high tariff organ 
 affirms that " His (Governor McKinley's) speeches are 
 conspicuous for fairness and sincerity. He strives to 
 bring out clearly what is essential to the argument on 
 each side, and then to adjust the scales with an even 
 hand and an unprejudiced eye. It is this habit of mind 
 which imparts educational value to his speeches." 
 
 (153)
 
 154 INCONSISTENCV. 
 
 Now the truth is that Governor McCorkle and 
 President Cleveland were not elected on a free trade 
 platform, and when Governor McKinley said they were 
 he was not only not making himself "conspicuous for 
 fairness and sincerity," but for another trait which has 
 never hitherto been counted among the virtues. The 
 convention which nominated Mr. Cleveland declared in 
 favor of a tarifif for revenue only ; but it was as well un- 
 derstood then as now that this resolution did not express 
 his views nor those of any considerable number of his 
 supporters. Mr. Cleveland's tarifif message during his 
 first term defined his position on the tarifif question with 
 admirable consistency and force, and this to all intents 
 and purposes was the platform upon which he ran for a 
 second term. He then said: 
 
 " In a readjustment of our tarifif the interests of 
 American labor engaged in manufacture should be care- 
 fully considered. * * * Relief from the hardships 
 and dangers of our present tarifif laws should be de- 
 vised with especial precaution against imperiling the 
 existence of our manufacturing interests." President 
 Cleveland today occupies the precise position on this 
 subject held by President Garfield and a million 
 intelligent Republicans; the precise position, in fact, 
 but recently occupied by the Ohio State Journal, the 
 Cincinnati Commercial and all the more prominent and 
 ably conducted Republican newspapers of Ohio. In 
 brief, President Cleveland's views are identically those 
 embodied in the Republican State platforms of Ohio 
 certainly for ten, and probably for twenty successive
 
 INCONSISTENCY. 155 
 
 years.^ To say, therefore, that he is a free trader is not 
 only misleading but a wilful perversion of the truth. 
 What Governor McCorkle has been, or is now, I shall 
 not undertake to say ; I only know he was not elected 
 on a free trade platform, because there was no free 
 trade platform in any State of the Union for a governor 
 to be elected upon.^ Governor McCorkle, therefore, 
 
 ^ " We favor a tariff for revenue limited to theneeessities of gov- 
 ernment, economically administered, and so adjusted in its applica- 
 tion as to prevent unequal burdens, encourage productive indus- 
 tries at home, afford just compensation to labor, but not to create 
 or foster monopoly." — Ohio Bepublican Platform. 
 
 2 The Ohio State Journal has, for thirty-seven years, been the 
 recognized organ of the Republicans of Ohio. It has from time 
 to time given publicity to very decided opinions on the subject 
 under consideration. It might be well, therefore, for gentlemen 
 of the McKinley school to refresh their memories somewhat by 
 reference to old files of this valuable paper. 
 
 I clip the following from the JournaVs editorial column of 
 June 17, 1869: 
 
 " The only kind of a tariff we believe in is a tariff for revenue, 
 which is only another name for equitable taxation. The differ- 
 ence in the principles upon which are based revenue tariff and a 
 protective tariff is radical and fundamental. The one system is 
 restriction, prohibition, monopoly, for restriction's, prohibition's 
 and monopoly's sake, the other is the imposing of a just and 
 equitable tax upon goods entering the country ■■ * for the sake 
 of revenue." 
 
 Again, "a protective tariff — or to give words their proper 
 meaning, a prohibitory tariff — robs the many to bestow subsidies 
 which are doubtful benefits upon the few." 
 
 March 18, 1870. "Instead of legislating for this interest and 
 for that interest, consuming months in inquiring what this class 
 and that class wants, and being dogged about the streets as 
 Schenck complains, by Pig Iron, and Beeswax, and Hair Pins and 
 Saleratus, the simple inquiry is, what do the interests of a major- 
 ity of the tax-payers require ? Less than five millions of our pop- 
 ulation of forty millions are engaged in the manufacturing busi- 
 ness; would it not be sensible to legislate in the interest of the 
 thirty-five millions?" 
 
 April 26, 1870. " When we speak of a protective tariff man 
 we mean what we say, i. e., a man who supposes protection to be 
 the object of a tariff. When we speak of a revenue tariff man we 
 mean a person who believes that revenue is the projyer object of a 
 tariff. When we speak of a free trader we mean a man who does 
 not believe in any tariff of any description."
 
 156 INCONSISTENCy. 
 
 might consistently enough have asked that in the dis- 
 tribution of special privileges and legislative favors his 
 own State should not be overlooked. And then, again, 
 Governor McCorkle might have been inconsistent ; the 
 temptations to inconsistency in speech and act are, in 
 these latter days, exceedingly plentiful. It has been 
 my task for some little time to point out the inconsis- 
 tencies of a governor of Ohio, and I have had reason 
 to conclude that inconsistency is not a more excep- 
 tional trait in governors than in common men. It 
 may be, therefore, that Governor McCorkle, after ex- 
 horting the brethren to be honest concluded that so 
 long as men were licensed to rob, the good people of 
 West Virginia should not be denied the privilege of rob- 
 bing.^ It was perhaps an error on his part, but even if 
 he knew it to be an error, and frankly admitted it, he 
 was no more culpable certainly than the plausible gen- 
 tleman who professes to believe that stealing is right on 
 principle, and hence proceeds to appropriate to his own 
 use, and that of his friends, everything within reach. 
 I have no interest, however, in Governor McCorkle, 
 and have referred to him simply to show that neither 
 his words nor his acts have any relevancy whatever to 
 the merits of the question Governor McKinley was 
 attempting to discuss. 
 
 ^ "Much was said about broad principles, but all referred to 
 the notion that by robbing all for the benefit of the few it was 
 possible in some way, which never was explained, to gain great 
 benefit to all." — Prof. W. O. Sumner.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 STATEMENT OF THE WAGE WORKERS IN THE POTTERIES OF 
 TRENTON, NEW JERSEY, FEB'Y., 1894. 
 
 "(Notwithstanding the fact that the tariff on pottery has been 
 increased by every tariff bill passed since the industry was started 
 the wages of the workman have been decreased. * In 1874 
 
 the manufacturers cut down wages. ■■ In 1885 soon after the 
 
 passage of the Act of 1883 increasing duties, another strike against 
 reduction in wages lasted from January until March. * In 
 
 Dec, 1890, after the McKinley law was enacted the sanitary ware 
 combination forced another strike by a cut of fi'om 10 to 40 per 
 
 cent." mBBBtitm 
 
 In 1874 the workingmen of Trenton signed the following peti- 
 tion : " We the operative potters of the city of Trenton, being 
 convinced by experience that a high rate of duty on crockery ware 
 yields no benefit financially to the workingman, and is inimical 
 to his interest in increasing the price of living generally, respect- 
 fully petition your honorable body (Congress) for such a revision 
 of the tariff as will reduce the rates on crockery ware to a revenue 
 basis. * ■■ A tariff levied in the name of protection to Ameri- 
 can industries is a false pretense and a delusion. In its practical 
 operation it is a monoijoly for the benefit of the few at the expense 
 of the many."— iV^ew York World, Feb'y. 19, 1894. 
 
 On page 252, volume 20, of the tenth census report the reader 
 will find that the wages paid for mining ore in >.orth Staflord- 
 shire district, England, were in 1880 as follows: (,'olliers, 97 cents 
 per day of nine hours' length ; tunnellers and shaftsmen, 85 to 97 
 cents per day of similar length. Wages paid at the Shelby iron 
 works, Alabama (U. S.) to miners and laborers the same year, 90 
 cents per day of ten hours. — Ohio State Journal, Feb'y., 1887. 
 
 The above would indicate that protected industries in the 
 United States do not pay more for labor than they are obliged to 
 
 pay 
 
 This paper printed a list of over 500 strikes against reduced 
 wages in protected industries in the year after the McKinley bill 
 became a law.— iVew York World, Feb'y. 13, 1894. 
 
 EFFECT OF COMBINES AND POOLS ON CERTAIN LOCAL 
 INDUSTRIES. 
 
 1. The starch factory of Columbus was bought by the great 
 starch combine at a high price for the purpose of destroying 
 competition ; and to limit production the factory was closed and 
 its employes discharged. 
 
 2. The Columbus Steel Mill, after an expenditure of $500,000, 
 was compelled to shut down because it could neither aftord to pay 
 the exorbitant duty on foreign steel blooms or ingots, nor obtain 
 at a fair price blooms or ingots manufactured in this country.
 
 Go to any importer and he will show you his bill of goods 
 bought abroad at the market price in the place where purchased, 
 aud then he will show you his custom-house receipts for duty 
 paid, and his freight receipts for treight paid; aud you will find 
 that all these items, together with interest and profits, enter into 
 aud make the price which the consumer pays. JVIr. Maize, the 
 collector of customs at Columbus, can from his books also satisfy 
 you that the importer not the exporter pays the duty or tax ou 
 foreigu goods. 
 
 The Republican party in its national platform of 1892 affirmed 
 that tariff'duties should be "equal to the difference between wages 
 abroad and at home;" that is that the duties should be equal to 
 the ilittercnce in the labor cost of products. 
 
 The following table, ^ showing the amount paid for labor in the 
 production of one dollar's worth of goods, is taken from the report 
 of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Connecticut. The statistics — 
 prepared by a Republican — relate to the year 1891, and were com- 
 piled from' returns made by the proprietors of 624 Connecticut 
 factories : 
 
 Wages cost. Wages cost. 
 
 Products. per cent. Products. per cent. 
 
 Brass goods 21.76 Machinery 43.80 
 
 Carriages 36.08 Paper boxes 35.35 
 
 Clocks 42.80 Paper 20.46 
 
 Corsets 29.70 Rubber goods 26.10 
 
 Cotton goods 25.18 Shoes 30.48 
 
 Cutlery 51.57 Silver-plated ware 27.82 
 
 Hardware 39.61 Wire goods 21.21 
 
 Hats 36.50 Woodenware 31 .55 
 
 Iron foundry products. 38.60 Woolen goods 21.60 
 
 Knit goods 28.61 
 
 If it is assumed that wages are 100 per cent, higher in this 
 country than iu other manufacturing countries, and that foreign 
 goods can be brought to the United States without cost for trans- 
 portation it would follow that the following tariff rates on articles 
 in the above list would be " ecjual to the diftereuce between wages 
 abroad and at home," and hence a comj^lete fulfillment of the re- 
 quirements of the Republican national platform : 
 
 Brass goods 10.88 Machinery 21.90 
 
 Carriages 1 8.04 Paper boxes 17.68 
 
 Clocks 21.40 Paper 10.23 
 
 Corsets 14.85 Rubber goods 13.05 
 
 Cotton goods 12.59 Shoes 15.24 
 
 Cutlery 25.78 Silver plated ware 13.91 
 
 Hardware 19.80 Wire goods 10.61 
 
 Hats 18.25 Woodenware 15.78 
 
 Iron foundry products. 19.00 Woolen goods 10.80 
 
 Knit goods 14.30 
 
 Under the McKinley law the tariflf rates on woolen goods 
 
 1. Clipped from the New York Times. 
 
 ii
 
 range from 60 to 150 per cent.; on cotton goods from 35 to 66 ; on 
 cutlery from 50 to 150. When in fact " the difference between wages 
 abroad and at home" cannot exceed 11 per cent, on woolens; 13 
 per cent, on cottons, and 26 per cent on cutlery. Substantially the 
 same criticism may be made with respect to other articles named 
 in the above table. 
 
 There were good reasons why Mr. McKinley could not be per- 
 mitted to open the Pandora bos of tariff taxes in Philadelphia 
 and before the members of the Manufacturers' Club. They had 
 contracted by purchase for increased taxes upon the people, and 
 McKinley, as Chairman of Ways and Means, was made the audi- 
 tor to apiiortion the tariff-tax raiment of the people among its 
 purchasers. [Laughter.] President Dolan lit up his exquisite 
 college-professor face with its most fascinating smile as he planked 
 down his $10,000 to help Quay get an honest election in New 
 York in 1888 [Shouts of laughter], and he made his fellow woolen 
 manufacturers follow his example. He promptly appeared before 
 Auditor McKinley when sitting for distribution of the plunder, 
 and was awarded the increased taxes on woolens he demanded. 
 He had paid spot cash for it, and McKinley, like an honest Audi- 
 tor, gave him what he had paid for. [Laughter.] Mr. Dobson 
 cheerfully gave his $10,000 to help Quay purify elections, and he 
 and his fellow carpet contributors pleaded their contract before 
 Auditor McKinley and were awarded their claim. [Laughter.] 
 The Harrisons, the Spreckels and the Knights chipped in with their 
 thousands and Auditor McKinley gave them free raw sugar and 
 continued the tax on refined sugar. All have since sold out to the 
 Sugar Trust because Auditor McKinley protected it, and Spreckels 
 waved us a grateful farewell as he shook the dust of Philadelphia 
 from his feet and hastened toward the setting sun with three mil- 
 lions or so as his award. — Col. A. K. McClure, Sept. 26, 1892. 
 
 If Governor McKinley will spend an hour with me on the 
 new Times building now in course of erection on Sansom street 
 above Eighth I will introduce him to the skilled and unskilled 
 labor employed on it, and Allen Rorke, the builder, who is yet 
 green with his laurels as Chairman of the Republican city com- 
 mittee, will exhibit him the pay list of the non-protected but 
 heavily-taxed labor employed. Here are the daily wages and 
 hours of labor of the non-protected workmen engaged on that 
 structure : 
 
 Hours. Daily wag^s. 
 
 Stone-masons 9 $3.25 to $3 75 
 
 Bricklayers 9 3.75 to 4.50 
 
 Carpenters •••• 9 3.00 
 
 Plumbers 9 3.25 to 3.50 
 
 Plasterers 8 3.00 to 3.50 
 
 Stone-cutters 9 3.50 to 4.00 
 
 Roofers 9 3.00 to 3.25 
 
 Painters 9 3.00 to 3.25 
 
 Hod-carriers 9 2.75 to 3.00 
 
 Riggers 9 2.75 to 3.25 
 
 Laborers 9 2.00 to 2.25 
 
 iii
 
 After having asfortained the wages paid to these non-jirot^cted 
 and highly taxed workmen 1 will take him to the composing roona 
 of The TniKs, where every expert printer can earn $4 per day of 
 eight houns, with steady Mork from January to January, and 
 special experts can earn as high as $5 per day. 
 
 * S:- « vf- •:•:• « 
 
 Now let us look at the protected industries of Philadelphia. 
 Of these the woolen industry is one of the most important, and if 
 Governor IMcKinley will turn to Superintendent Porter's census 
 bulletin No. I3!», he will find that the following average wages are 
 paid in the woolen industry in the States named : 
 
 For the Year. Per Week. 
 
 Alabama $159 $3.06 
 
 Arkansas 201 3.86 
 
 Ohio .. 242 4.65 
 
 Virginia 270 5.20 
 
 New Jersey 334 6.42 
 
 New York 336 6.46 
 
 Pennsylvania 355 6.83 
 
 Massachusetts 375 7,21 
 
 Oregon 436 8.40 
 
 It will be seen that the average wages of labor in the woolen 
 industry of Pennsylvania is $^355 per year or $6.83 per week or 
 about $1.15 per day. — McClure. 
 
 Mr. Blaine told the truth as he was struggling for months to 
 force McKinley to accept reciprocity as a feature of his tariflf, when 
 he declared in an open letter to Senator Frye, that the McKinley 
 tariff would not furnish the farmer a market for a single addi- 
 tional barrel of i^ork or sack of flour. — Mo Clure. 
 
 By some miscalculation in the figuring, wool has gone down 
 instead of up, but the manufacturer gets twenty-three cents more 
 per pound for his cloth, and buys Ohio wool four cents lower in- 
 stead of four cents higher per pound. It would seem that, while 
 Judge Lawrence and Mr. Harpster were discussing some decision 
 of the umpire, instead of playing ball, Mr. William Whitman, 
 Treasurer and General Manager of the Woolen Manufacturers' 
 Association, made a home run and won the game. The public 
 prints inform us that Mr. Whitman, on the 29th of March, 1890, 
 before the new tariff law was passed, in an address to the stock- 
 holders of the Arlington Mills, told them that he had been their 
 treasurer for a period of twenty years, and that during that time 
 the average earnings had been 28.8 per cent, on their capital, and 
 that the earnings of last year were three and a half times more 
 than that of the previous year. Notwithstanding thislvery great 
 prosperity Congress on the 1st of October, 1890, increased the 
 duties on woolen goods instead of reducing them. It will be very 
 late in the evening of a very chilly day when Mr. Whitman gets 
 left on the woolen schedule of a tariff bill. — Hon. B. Q. Mills, 
 Mansfield, 1891. 
 iv
 
 WHO PAYS THE TAX? 
 
 GOVERNOR 
 
 Mckinley says 
 eigner pays it. 
 
 THE FOR- 
 
 GOVERNOR Mckinley says the amer 
 
 CAN CONSUMER PAYS IT. 
 
 " We tell every man in America who wani 
 Scotland's pig iron, if he thinks it is an 
 better and does not want the American pi 
 iron — we tell him if he must have the Scotcl 
 ' You must pay for the privilege,' and in th; 
 way we maintain that great industry" (^ 
 188; Oct. 29, 1885). 
 
 " Under this law [the McKinley bill] tl 
 [United States] Government cannot u 
 abroad and buy what it can get at hom. 
 without paying duty. The result will b 
 that the Government hereafter will buy mor 
 at home and less abroad — and it ought t( 
 [Applause] " (p. 511; April 10, 1891). 
 
 " What, then is the tariff? The tariff . . 
 is a tax put upon goods made outside of the 
 United States and brought into the United 
 States for sale and consumption. ... If 
 a man comes to our cities and wants to sell 
 goods to our people on the street, . . . 
 we say to him, ' Sir, you must pay so much 
 into the city treasury for the privilege of 
 selling goods to our people here.' Now, 
 why do we do that? We do it to protect 
 our own merchants. Just so our Govern- 
 ment says to the countries of the Old World, 
 . . . ' If you want to come in and sell to 
 our people, and make money from our peo- 
 ple, you must pay something for the privi- 
 lege of doing it. .' Now, that is the 
 tariff" (pp. 185, 186; Oct. 29, 1885). 
 
 :;; * j:: :;: * * 
 
 "They say 'the tariff is a tax.' That is 
 a captivating Cry. So it is a tax; but 
 whether it is burdensome upon the Ameri- 
 can people depends upon who pays it. If 
 we pay it, why should the foreigners object? 
 Why all these objections in England, France, 
 Germany, Canada, and Australia against 
 the tariff law of 1890, if the American con- 
 sumer bears the burdens, and if the tariff 
 is only added to the foreign cost which the 
 American consumer pays? Jf they pay it, 
 then we do not pay it" (p. 579; May 17, 
 1892). 
 
 We should not stop here if our object were to confute INIr. Mc- 
 Kinley ; but vve have quoted enough to ilhistrate the mental confu- 
 sion of the great latter-day apostle of protection. * ® * •■■ 
 Throughout, we encounter that playing fast and loose with the con- 
 ception of the tariff which makes it impossible to reason with men 
 like the present Governor of Ohio, and which would inspire distrust 
 of their honesty if atrophy of the logical faculty were not so plainly 
 evinced. — The Nation, February 8, 1894. 
 
 " Last year we paid $55,000,000 out of oi. 
 own pockets to protect whom? To protec 
 the men in the United States who are pro 
 ducing just one-eighth of the amount of ou 
 consumption of sugar. Now we wipe tha 
 out, and it will cost us to pay the bountj 
 just $7,000,000 every twelve months, whicl 
 furnishes the same protection at very mucl 
 less cost to the consumer. So we save $48, 
 000,000 every year and leave that vast sun 
 in the pockets of our own people. [Applaus 
 on the Republican side]" (p. 452; May 20 
 1890).
 
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