.THE TARIFF MADE PLAIN. 
 
 SEVEN SHORT CONVERSATIONS THAT 
 BRING OUT BOTH SIDES 
 
 PROOFS CITED AND ACADEMIC AND POPULAR 
 ERRORS CORRECTED 
 
 BY 
 
 ALBERT CLARKE, A. M., 
 
 Secretary for seventeen years of the Home Market Club, and Chairman of th, 
 U. S. Industrial Commission of 1898 to 1902. 
 
 or THF 
 UNIVERSITY ! 
 
 
 THIRTY-FIFTH THOUSAND 
 
 BOSTON, 1906 
 PUBLISHED BY THE HOME MARKET CLUB 
 
INDEX. 
 
 . 10 
 
 21, 31 
 
 30 
 
 . 22 
 
 i 
 
 Elaine, James G 35 
 
 Canada against reciprocity 30 
 
 Chamberlain policy 29 
 
 Continued protection why necessary 12, 30 - 
 
 Consumers benefited by protection 26 
 
 Cost of living 19 
 
 Dingley duties not made high to be reduced by reciprocity . 30 
 
 Duties, specific, ad valorem and compound . 
 
 Duties, why high sometimes necessary .... 
 
 Duties, 100 per cent harmless 
 
 Duties, why early were low . . . 
 
 -Free Trade makes abnormal prices 21 
 
 Frye, Wm. P.^ . 43 
 
 Imports, our large competing 20, 64 
 
 Industries, interdependence of 18, 19 
 
 Infant Industries 6 
 
 Labor Abroad 13, 14, 15, 42, 75 
 
 Materials, free raw ., 19 
 
 McCleary, James T 76 
 
 Ocean freights affecting protection 22 
 
 Paradise, working-people's 20, 64 
 
 Poem, a Tariff Reformer's Waterloo 69 
 
 Prices, how reduced by protection 7, 32 
 
 Prices, why lower abroad 23, 31, 32 
 
 Protection and revenue only 10 
 
 Protection natural 5 
 
 Protection not a temporary expedient 24 
 
 Reciprocity defined 25 
 
 Reciprocity like special R. R. rates 28 
 
 Reciprocity systems in Europe 75 
 
 Reciprocity with Brazil 26 
 
 Reciprocity with Canada 25 
 
 Reciprocity with Germany 26, 27 
 
 Revenue only and Protection 10 
 
 Sales abroad 23, 31, 32 
 
 Savings deposits 19, 20 
 
 Schwab's $12 rail statement explained 31 
 
 Steel rails, British and American prices 31 
 
 Steel rails, why lower in Canada 3 2 
 
 Sugar, product and prices 27 
 
 -Tariffs defined 9 
 
 Tariff revision, sectional demand 3 2 
 
 Tariff, Single or Dual which 76 
 
 Trusts and the tariff -*3> 7 
 
 Wages in stores and factories i? 18 
 
 Wages, increases of 19 
 
 Williams College, false teaching of !* 
 
 Working-people's paradise 20, 64 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Beginning in April, 1906, the Bright and Strong Papers were issued in a 
 series of seven numbers and printed in nine languages English, French, Ger- 
 man, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Swedish, Hebrew and Armenian and mailed 
 to addresses chiefly of new citizens in Massachusetts.; 
 
 Although, as the almanac-makers say, they were "calculated for the lati- 
 tude" of Massachusetts, they were soon found to be of equal interest in other 
 states, because they deal wholly with a national question, and the only local 
 bearing is by way of illustration. 
 
 In the course of the months in which they were read as separate papers a 
 very interesting and promising discovery was, made, and that was that the citi- 
 zens of foreign birth had been so rapidly learning the language of their new 
 country that the papers in English which accompanied the leaflets were read 
 and studied, though sometimes with the aid of wife or child who had been edu- 
 cated in our schools. This discovery made it seem expedient, when the demand 
 arose for a consolidation of the papers, to print them in English only, and here 
 they are, reproduced from the original plates. 
 
 The papers make no pretensions to literary merit or the dignity of a book. 
 The aim was to be simple, agreeable, instructive, and frankly to meet every 
 question and objection. It is this feature which makes the papers so valuable 
 to young men and other new voters. They feel that they have before them 
 both sides of the question, candidly treated. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln said, " the tariff question will be with us so long as the 
 government stands." The reason for this is that the Constitution provides that 
 all revenue bills shall originate in the House of Representatives and that a new 
 House shall be elected every two years. This makes it and will keep it a politi- 
 cal as well as an economic question. Every voter, therefore, should understand 
 it and he should begin by realizing that it is an American question and not a 
 theory to be squared with British or French text books. The late Professor 
 Bowen of Harvard was right in saying that every important country must have 
 a political economy of its own. The American system is now the policy of 
 every nation except Great Britain and at the recent general election in that 
 country, something like it was favored by 45 per cent of the voters. 
 
 The subject is too great to be covered briefly, but the short readings here 
 presented give the fundamental distinctions and supply the key by which all its 
 phases can be opened and understood. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
MR. BRIGHT AND MR. STRONG. 
 
 AND HOW THEY MADE A JOURNEY SHORT BY TALKING ABOUT 
 AN IMPORTANT PUBLIC QUESTION. 
 
 >N a train between Boston and Pittsfield, on the 2gth day of 
 November, 1905, two men got into an earnest conversation 
 which soon attracted the attention of others. It began by one re- 
 marking to the other : 
 
 " The train is very full. I suppose most of us are on the way to 
 Thanksgiving." 
 
 "Yes," replied the younger, "people think they are prosperous." 
 
 " Well, are they not prosperous ? " asked the other man, who looked 
 like one of those highly intelligent mechanics whom you see all over 
 Massachusetts, who work and think during the day and read or de- 
 bate during the evening, and are often better informed on some sub' 
 jects than even members of Congress. " Isn't the prosperity real 
 and isn't it general throughout the country ? " 
 
 " It seems so," replied the younger, whom we will call Mr. Bright, 
 " but it is more or less a hot-house growth of Protectionism and 
 therefore artificial." 
 
 " O-ho ! " exclaimed the other, who gave his name as Mr. Strong, 
 " so you think Protection is unnatural, do you ? What is the first 
 thing that any living being does ? Isn't it to seek food and shelter ; 
 isn't it to defend itself against the dangers that beset it on every hand ? 
 The means of protection may be artificial, like houses and clothing, 
 and tariffs, and armies and navies, but the desire and need for pro- 
 tection is the most natural thing in the world." 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " They may be all right for young things infant 
 industries but what did I take Athletics in college for if it wasn't 
 to become self-poised, independent and able to defend myself? 
 Now here is a country with the greatest natural resources in the 
 world, growing crops worth six billions this year, with more than 
 200,000 miles of railroad, and with industries which are giants 
 
 5 
 
isn't it almost humiliating to think that such a country has to raise 
 a Chinese wall against the weaker nations of the world ? " 
 
 By this time people began leaving their seats in the car and 
 gathering around the talkers and showing the keenest interest in 
 what was said. 
 
 MR. STRONG. " No, not at all; on the contrary, I am proud of a 
 country which shows such achievements and whose people have 
 known enough to adopt and preserve a policy that gives every man 
 an incentive to do his level best. If our infant industries have 
 grown to giants, so have those of other countries. My right arm 
 has wielded a hammer until it is as good as any other man's, but it 
 can produce only about so much in a day. Across the water there 
 are other men who can turn off just about as much as I can, and 
 their pay is only about one half as much as mine sometimes more 
 than that, but often less. Now two of those men can put out more 
 than I can. This enables their employer to undersell my employer 
 unless their's is required to pay for the privilege of selling in our 
 market. He is required to, and that is my protection. Without it, 
 I wouldn't always have work ; my wages wouldn't be much above the 
 European level, and in some lines they would have to come down to 
 the Japanese level ; I couldn't live in a home of my own in a house 
 with a cellar, and wooden floors, and running water, painted and 
 blinded, with a little lawn and a little garden, with books and musi- 
 cal instruments ; and without that protection I couldn't spare my 
 wife from the mill to keep that house and to keep the children neatly 
 clothed for school and church. O, I have read all about conditions 
 in other countries and I don't want them introduced here. We 
 wouldn't have had half as many miles of railroad, nor raised half of 
 these great crops, nor seen half of these great factories, if we hadn't 
 kept our natural opportunity for our own people." 
 
 Mr. Strong spoke like a man in earnest, but he was not excited. 
 He had the calm confidence of one who knows he is right. But Mr. 
 Bright was also a man of intellectual resource, and he returned to the 
 attack with what he considered a knock-down argument. 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " Are these great crops yours ? Do you get them 
 cheaply ? Aren't you paying a dollar a bushel for potatoes and 47 
 cents a dozen for eggs ? Isn't the very coat on your back tariff- 
 taxed for the enrichment of the woolen trust and the great range 
 shepherds of Montana and Wyoming and New Mexico ? And have 
 
 6 
 
you ever thought that your wages are not real wages, that is, meas- 
 ured by what they will buy ? " 
 
 " I have thought all about it," said Mr. Strong, " and I have ex- 
 amined no end of authorities, and if I had time I could prove to you 
 that after I have paid Protection prices for all that my family and I 
 need, I have more money left for the savings bank than any work- 
 man of my class in any other country. And what is true of me is 
 equally true of others. Whether we have protection or free trade, I 
 guess things get pretty well equalized between the classes. I don't 
 believe that either the manufacturers or the farmers get more than 
 their share that is, as a general thing : there are always some ex- 
 ceptions. But speaking about prices, don't you know that they are 
 governed by the rule of supply and demand ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Bright, " that is good free-trade doctrine, but 
 protection makes prices artificial." 
 
 "Now, hold on a minute," said Mr. Strong. "Protection stimu- 
 lates production, increases the world's supply, and that tends to re- 
 duce prices. You may look at any of the authentic tables and you 
 will find that goods of all kinds are cheaper than they were twenty- 
 five and fifty years age>. Of course, if you want panic prices, when 
 the bottom drops out of everything, you can get them by introducing 
 free trade, or greatly cutting down duties, for that always paralyzes 
 industry. But when that happens, earnings fall off and we haven't 
 much to buy with. And as for the coat on my back, I never owned 
 so good a one before for so little money." 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "I heard Mr. William Lloyd Garrison say re- 
 cently that he got a suit made in London for less than half the 
 money that a Boston tailor would charge." 
 
 "Very likely," returned Mr. Strong. "1 am not talking about 
 tailor-made garments, but about goods manufactured for the million. 
 For such, this country beats the world, not only in quality and fit, 
 but also in low prices. Tailor-made suits are exceptional, but the 
 main reason for that is that cutters, journeymen, stitchers and seam- 
 stresses are all paid in this country twice as much as they are in 
 England." 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " I am not disposed to dispute that, and it is what 
 makes it hard for refined people of moderate means to live here. 
 The manufacturers, the artisans and the producers of food have got 
 us by the throat." 
 
 7 
 
MR. STRONG. " Do you really think the classes you name are in 
 a great conspiracy to rob their fellow-countrymen ? Most of our 
 Congressmen are what you call ' refined people ' ; why did they make 
 a law to rob themselves ? When you reflect a moment you will see 
 the absurdity of your remark. Most people who are not producing 
 are doing something else engaged in trade, or banking, or trans- 
 portation, or teaching, or practising the professions. Are not their 
 incomes even higher, as a rule, than those of producers ? The only 
 reason why producers and not others are protected by the tariff is 
 because they alone are exposed to foreign competition." 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " Mr. Edward Atkinson says, and he proves it by 
 census figures, that only a very small percentage of the people are 
 engaged in pursuits that would even be in danger of suffering from 
 foreign competition. I think he puts it at 9 per cent. So it looks 
 to me as though all the rest are taxed for their benefit." 
 
 MR. STRONG. " Mr. Atkinson was mistaken, for he did not in- 
 clude farmers in the list of the protected ; he confined the list to 
 mill owners and their operatives. And he missed the point entirely, 
 for when protection is applied to the exposed places, it is applied to 
 all. It fixes the scale of wages and living for the whole country. 
 When Mr. Atkinson advanced this small percentage theory in a 
 speech before the Twentieth Century Club, a protection speaker 
 answered him by saying, ' The tall buildings in Boston are but a 
 small percentage of the whole, but they would be good targets. If 
 a foreign fleet should bombard them, how much business do you 
 suppose would be done in the rest of the city ? ' ' 
 
 At this, one of the bystanders said : " I don't want to * butt in,' 
 but I haven't looked into the question at all, and I wish one of you 
 would explain to me what a tariff is and how it is applied." Both 
 said they gladly would, but they were nearing Pittsfield and there 
 wasn't time. By a little further talk, however, they learned that all 
 were going to return the same day, and so they arranged to take the 
 same train, and several others said they also would take it, so as to 
 hear the discussion. They didn't notice that a young man who sat 
 behind them had made notes of what they said, but he concluded to 
 return with them, and that is how it happens that the discussion 
 gets into print. The next installment will follow soon. 
 
MR. BRIGHT AND MR. STRONG. 
 
 THE RETURN JOURNEY AN INTERESTED GROUP OF PASSEN- 
 GERS LEARNS A PRIMARY LESSON ABOUT TARIFFS 
 AND HOW THEY ARE APPLIED. 
 
 According to appointment, Mr. Bright and Mr. Strong and the 
 other Thanksgiving visitors met at the station in Pittsfield and took 
 the Berkshire Express train for Boston. 
 
 "Let us see," said Mr. Bright, "for the information of our young 
 friend here we were to take up in this conversation the question of 
 what a tariff is and how it is applied. If agreeable I will proceed to 
 answer and then, possibly, Mr. Strong will explain the difference be- 
 tween a revenue tariff and a protective tariff, and we will watch 
 each other to see that our definitions are correct." 
 
 MR. STRONG. " All right, go ahead, and be sure that I don't get 
 the joke on you that President McKinley got on W. B. Plunkett. 
 I heard it at Adams yesterday and I may as well tell it now, for 
 I expect your description will be so good that I shall have no chance 
 to tell it after you get through." 
 
 After all had craned their necks to see the beautiful village of 
 Dalton, which they were passing, they came back to a listening atti- 
 tude. 
 
 MR. STRONG. " The story isn't a tariff story, though the inci- 
 dent occurred between two great tariff men. When the President 
 and members of the Cabinet were Mr. Plunkett's guests, one day 
 they had roast turkey for dinner. Just as Mr. Plunkett had lopped 
 off one wing he was called to the telephone and when he came back 
 he saw that the President had slipped into his place and finished the 
 carving. * You made a good job of that, Mr. President,' said he. 
 'Yes,' replied McKinley, 'it is not bad, considering how it was 
 botched in the beginning.' " ( Laughter) 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " That is a good story and I am glad you told it 
 before I make a botch of telling what the tariff is. All civilized 
 countries need revenue and they raise a part of it by placing taxes 
 called duties or customs on goods brought into the country from 
 outside. The law for raising this revenue is called a tariff. At each 
 important port and at places where railroads cross from one coun- 
 
 9 
 
try to another, there are customs houses, officered by a collector, an 
 appraiser, and such assistants as they need in fact usually by more 
 than they need and these officials are required to be familiar with 
 the law, so as to know what duties to collect. The merchant wno 
 brings the goods into the country is called an importer, and one who 
 sends goods out of the country is called an exporter." 
 
 MR. YOUNG ( for this was learned to be the name of the man 
 who had asked to have the tariffs denned ) "Is it possible that 
 a tariff can name all the articles dealt in between countries and fix 
 a duty upon each ? " 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " No, but the principal articles are named and are 
 grouped in lists called schedules, and thus we have the agricultural 
 schedule, the chemical schedule, the iron and steel schedule, and so 
 on, and then the tariff provides that duties shall be placed on ar- 
 ticles not mentioned as near in amount as possible to those on similar 
 goods that are mentioned. Necessarily something has to be left to 
 the judgment and honesty of customs officials." 
 
 MR. YOUNG. "I understand that, now I wish you would explain 
 why some duties are called specific and some ad valorem." 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " With pleasure. A specific duty is a certain sum 
 per yard, or per pound, regardless of the value of the goods. That 
 is always an easy duty to collect and does not permit of frauds. Near- 
 ly all the duties in European tariffs are specific. Ad valorem means 
 according to the value. If the duty is 20 per centum, that means 
 one fifth of the value of the goods, because twenty is one fifth of one 
 hundred. Therefore, if the appraiser decides that the goods are 
 worth $100, the collector will exact $20 before he will permit the 
 goods to enter the country." 
 
 Here another gentleman, who said his name was Gray, remarked 
 that he wished Mr. Bright would also explain compound duties. 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " Again with pleasure. A compound duty is when 
 both specific and ad valorem duties are applied to the same article. 
 For example, 50 cents a yard ( specific ) and 30 per cent, ad valor- 
 em in addition. This is a device of Protectionism and it looks to 
 me like giving the screw another turn." 
 
 MR. STRONG. " Now you have stopped teaching and gone to 
 preaching." 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "I did it on purpose to stir you up, for I had cov- 
 ered the ground assigned to me and now it is your turn to show the 
 difference between a tariff for protection and a tariff for revenue 
 only." 
 
 MR. STRONG. "Thanks, and I will try to be as plain and accurate 
 and polite as you have been. A good many people think that high 
 
 10 
 
duties mean protection and that low duties are for revenue qnly, 
 but this is not the chief difference. The main distinction between 
 the free trade tariff of Great Britain and the protective tariff of the 
 United States is in the articles that are taxed. The British have 
 customs houses the same as we have and they collect substantially 
 as much revenue on imports according to their population as we 
 collect, but their duties do not protect any home industry, while 
 ours are designed to protect all home industries. " 
 
 MR. YOUNG. "This is puzzling. I can't understand it unless 
 you name the goods." 
 
 MR. STRONG. "That is just what I was coming to. Great Brit- 
 ain puts duties mainly on such goods as are not produced in the 
 country and which the people are obliged to import if they would 
 have them. Our policy is exactly the reverse. When we cannot 
 produce goods of a particular kind in commercial quantities, we ad- 
 mit them free of duty, so that our people may get them as cheaply 
 as possible. Neither Great Britain nor the United States grows tea 
 and coffee, but large quantities of both are consumed. Great Brit- 
 ain puts heavy duties upon them, and thus taxes the breakfast 
 tables of the poor just as much as of the rich." 
 
 MR. GRAY. "Great Britain also puts a duty on spirits, and yet 
 is a large producer of spirits. Isn't such a duty protective to the 
 British distillers?" 
 
 MR. STRONG. "It would be, but to prevent that effect, an excise 
 or internal revenue tax is placed upon the domestic product, large 
 enough to offset the duty on the import, and thus more revenue is 
 raised and, as Mr. Bright said about compound duties, that looks 
 like giving the screw another turn." (Laughter) 
 
 MR. YOUNG. "Do those examples illustrate the whole difference 
 as to other articles?" 
 
 MR. STRONG. "They do. Both Britain and America are large 
 manufacturers of cotton and woolen cloths, iron and steel goods, 
 and hundreds of other articles very much alike. Britain puts no 
 duty on them and thus becomes the dumping ground for the sur- 
 pluses of other countries. We put a duty on them so as to raise rev- 
 enue and protect home production. That duty compels the foreign 
 manufacturer to pay into the United States Treasury what he has 
 saved by not paying his work people so much as we pay ours, be- 
 fore he can be permitted to enter our market and sell goods which 
 we can make for ourselves. I think it is right. " 
 
 MR. GRAY. "And we protect agriculture and mining in the same 
 way." 
 
 MR. STRONG. "Certainly, and thus, as McKinley said, 'We have 
 
 ii 
 
become the first nation in agriculture, the first nation in mining and 
 the first nation in manufacturing.'" 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "And having become such, have we not accom- 
 plished the object of protection, and can we not now stand up with- 
 out a prop?" 
 
 MR. STRONG. " Some of us can and some cannot. I said to you 
 on the way over that while I can produce as much as one man in 
 some other country, I cannot produce so much as two, whose joint 
 wages oftentimes do not equal mine. Thus, without a duty their 
 product could come here and undersell mine and drive me out of 
 employment. To my mind this makes protection just as neces- 
 sary as it ever was. " 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "In a given case that may be so, but as a whole 
 we beat the world." 
 
 MR. STRONG. "Yes, with protection. But if we had not enjoyed 
 protection we would not have beaten the world. In your private 
 business would you throw away an implement which has done you 
 good service and which is now as good as it ever was?" 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "Perhaps not, but I would keep up with improve- 
 ments. Didn't Gen. Garfield once say that he favored the protec- 
 tion which leads to free trade?" 
 
 MR. STRONG. "Possibly he did; he was educated at Williams 
 College, which has been noted for free trade professors ; but an Al- 
 lopath might as well say that he favors the practice which leads to 
 Homeopathy. The two systems don't mix. Protection has pre- 
 vented this country from being deluged with foreign goods, and thus 
 we have produced for ourselves. It has cured us whenever tariff 
 reform has made us sick. Here is a speech by the late James G. 
 Blaine, which gives the tariff history of this country, and it proves 
 what I tell you." 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "I will read it with pleasure. But I think you are 
 mistaken about labor being cheaper abroad than here, considering 
 how much more it accomplishes here." 
 
 MR. STRONG. "I would prove what I say if we had time. But 
 here we are, near Boston. Can't we meet again?" 
 
 At this all clapped their hands, and it was soon arranged to meet 
 at the Wells Memorial one week from that night, and to consider 
 the labor question. 
 
 NOTE. For Mr. Elaine's short tariff history, see Appendix A. 
 
 12 
 
MR. BRIGHT AND MR. STRONG. 
 
 HOW THE TARIFF PROTECTS LABOR PRESENT WAGES IN 
 
 ITALY AND JAPAN THE CASE OF CLERKS AND 
 
 SALESMEN. 
 
 At the Wells Memorial Institute, 985 Washington Street, Boston, 
 which is a place of assembly for various working people's societies, 
 Mr. Bright and Mr. Strong and an augmented number of men who 
 wished to learn more about the tariff, found a suitable room on the 
 appointed evening and their conversation proceeded as follows: 
 
 MR. STRONG. "When we separated last week I was going to 
 prove to you that the labor cost of production is not lower here than 
 it is in other countries and on the contrary is much higher. Here 
 is a pamphlet entitled Labor Abroad, which contains a great deal 
 of authentic information on the subject, and, if each of you will read 
 it, he must become convinced that we cannot safely risk our jobs by 
 letting down the tariff bars." 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "Very likely these statements about wages are 
 substantially correct, but we have three great advantages in pro- 
 duction : ( i ) more fuel and raw materials brought cheaply to our 
 mills, (2) superior organization in working forces and machinery 
 without extra handling, and (3) greater alertness, life, vigor, intelli- 
 gence and ambition on the part of operatives. These combined, in 
 my opinion, make the cost of production lower here than in the coun- 
 tries which compete with us." 
 
 MR. STRONG. " As for fuel and raw material, what you say may 
 be true of our Southern States and of some of our Western States, 
 but it is not true of New England. What you say of organization is 
 true of New England, although foreign establishments are rapidly 
 copying our methods and our new machinery, and what you say of 
 our labor is to some extent true, but the English workmen who con- 
 stituted what was called ' the Moseley Commission ' and who came 
 over herein 1903 to study our methods, reported that skilled British 
 labor is quite as productive as any that they saw here. I grant that 
 in nervous energy and ambition our workers are ahead of most 
 others, but this is because they live better, drink less, and see a 
 chance to improve their condition. The higher wages, due in part to 
 
 NOTE. The " Labor Abroad " pamphlet is in Appendix B. 
 
 13 
 
protection, largely account for this superiority. But if the tariff is 
 so reduced that more foreign goods come in, our employers cannot 
 pay these wages, and then, with employment diminished and hope 
 gone, we shall soon sink to foreign standards. Do any of us want to 
 take the risk ? " 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " I see that some of the statements in this 'Labor 
 Abroad' pamphlet were gathered several years ago. There has 
 been a wonderful improvement in foreign countries since then." 
 
 MR. STRONG. " Recent consular reports and other trustworthy 
 data show very little gain in wages, but marked improvement in 
 methods. There is quite a boom in manufacturing in Italy, but a 
 report to our State Department by U. S. Consul Dunning, written 
 at Milan, and speaking of wages in Lombardy, says that, in the dan- 
 gerous work of making matches, 
 
 ' An average wage of eleven cents a day is the pay of girls under 
 fifteen, in factories employing twenty operatives or less ; in large 
 factories of from one hundred to five hundred hands of whom 24 
 per cent are girls under fifteen, the average girl's wage is only twelve 
 cents a day. The highest earnings of mature factory-women are 
 paid, it seems, in the cotton mills, where work is supplied 265 
 days of the year, and the pay is but twenty-nine to thirty-nine 
 cents a day. Women tobacco workers in Lombardy work about 
 three hundred days a year, at an average wage of not much over 
 thirty-five cents a day; 12.2 per cent of the women workers as a 
 whole earn fifteen cents a day ; 30.4 per cent from fifteen to twenty 
 cents ; 43.7 per cent earn from twenty to thirty cents and 10.5 earn 
 from thirty to forty cents daily. Only 3.2 percentage of the women 
 earn more than forty cents a day.' 
 
 These are pitiful wages. Is it any wonder that the willing work- 
 ers of Italy are coming over here in throngs ? " 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " No, it isn't any wonder. But where does your 
 boasted protection come in ? You keep out the Italian goods by 
 duties ranging from 30 to 85 per cent, and try to make our working 
 people believe that thus they are protected, and then you admit the 
 Italians themselves free, to get away your jobs after they arrive." 
 
 MR. STRONG. "After coming here they do not work under Ital- 
 ian conditions, but under American conditions; and they do not get 
 away any job that any man wishes to hold if he is competent to hold 
 it. Besides, when they work here they buy what others produce 
 here. President Lincoln once wisely said : ' When you import, you 
 get the goods, but your money goes abroad to pay for them ; when 
 you produce them, you have both the goods and the money. ' More- 
 over, the coming of good healthy immigrants to a vast new country 
 that is full of opportunities is a great benefit. Andrew Carnegie, 
 who is a philosopher as well as a philanthropist, estimates that, 
 
OF THE 
 
 f UNIVERSITY } 
 
 even if they bring no money they are worth to the country $1500 
 each. So we don't need to protect against them but against the 
 hard conditions that they leave behind." 
 
 MR. YOUNG. " I think I am becoming a protectionist. Besides 
 the low wages in Italy, there are those in Japan. I have just been 
 reading an article in the Boston Commercial Bulletin, of which 
 Governor Guild is the editor. He thinks the real * yellow peril ' is 
 Japanese competition with our manufactures, and to prove it he 
 gives this table of Japanese daily wages : 
 
 Spinning operatives, men, . $ .16^ Day laborers, .... $ .26 
 
 Spinning operatives, women, .10 Brick makers, ..... 34^ 
 
 Weaving operatives, men, . .18 Carriage builders, . . . .30 
 
 Weaving operatives, women, .11 Paper hangers, ..... 43 
 
 Carpenters, ....... 40 Door makers, ..... 40^ 
 
 Sawyers, ........ 39^ Wooden clogmakers, . . .23 
 
 Matmakers, ....... 43! Lacquerers, ...... 35$ 
 
 The editor does not doubt but that American labor is better than 
 that of Japan, but as it costs more than four times as much, after 
 the little soldiers who drove Russia out of Manchuria have got at 
 work in factories, they can send enough cotton goods and shoes 
 here to close every factory in Massachusetts unless we maintain 
 duties high enough to keep them out." ' 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " I haven't any fears of Japan or any other country. 
 There is country enough in the Orient to engage all their attention." 
 MR. STRONG. " For the present, yes ; but their progress in manu- 
 factures in the last fifteen years has equaled their progress in mili- 
 tary science and achievement. Doubtless it is true that the first 
 overflow of their manufactures will be into other oriental countries, 
 mainly into Korea and China; but they will get the trade which we 
 now have there, and when our Southern mills and our Maine and 
 New Hampshire mills lose their China trade, they will have just 
 that much more product to unload upon the markets of New York 
 and Boston and Chicago, and the result will be sharper competition 
 with our New England mills. There is no use in being blind to 
 these great new facts in the world. We have got to compete with 
 that tremendous volume of cheap and efficient labor somewhere, 
 and as the only market which we can surely control is our own, 
 what folly it would be to throw away the only means by which we 
 can control it." 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " I wish to introduce my friend Mr. Thomas, who 
 has given much study to these questions, and whose views I think 
 you will all be glad to hear". Mr. Thomas was received with ap- 
 plause. He wore glasses and looked like a professor, but he said he 
 was a salesman. 
 
 '5 
 
MR. THOMAS. " I have listened to this discussion with great in- 
 terest, and I have not failed to notice that you all discuss the ques- 
 tion from the standpoint of labor employed in mills. I agree with 
 the remark made by Mr. Bright on your way over to Berkshire, that 
 you artisans and operatives, with your employers, have got the rest 
 of us by the throat, and are bound to keep us from enjoying the 
 products of foreign cheap labor. Here we salespeople are, a great 
 army, numbering a million or more, working on fixed incomes, com- 
 pelled to pay living expenses which have been greatly increased by 
 your exclusion policy, and by the further exactions of the trades 
 unions, and somehow the more the country prospers the poorer 
 we seem to get." 
 
 Several in the company applauded this sharp arraignment, but it 
 was not allowed to go unchallenged. 
 
 MR. GRAY. "Isn't it easier for you to sell goods when the mills 
 are all busy and labor is well employed ? " 
 
 MR. THOMAS. " Yes, but few of us get any more for it, and you* 
 high tariff, coupled with the great demand for everything, has raised 
 prices so that it is harder for us to live. I think protection is a 
 great humbug and we are all being buncoed." 
 
 MR. GRAY. " Do you think there would be as much demand for 
 salesmen if labor were not well employed and trade were dull?" 
 
 MR. THOMAS. " I think if we had free trade there would be a 
 greater demand, because then everybody could get what he wants 
 at the lowest possible price, and every merchant would realize that 
 his success depends upon his salesmen. He wouldn't have any 
 cinch ; he must just hustle." 
 
 MR. GRAY. " I have no doubt you are a smart salesman, but 
 even you can't sell goods unless there are buyers, and if people are 
 not well employed they cannot be great buyers." 
 
 MR. STRONG. "It all comes to this, as the illustrious Thomas B. 
 Reed said in the last article he ever wrote, the ideal condition of 
 society is when everybody is employed. We cannot all be em- 
 ployed if we allow foreigners to make our goods. If we do not earn 
 we cannot buy, and if we cannot buy there is poor business for the 
 merchant and the salesman. The industries of a country depend a 
 great deal upon each other." 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " I should like to go further into this matter 01 
 wages and prices. Let us meet here two weeks from to-night and 
 let each bring any facts which he may have." And so they agreed 
 and adjourned. 
 
 16 
 
MR. BRIGHT AND MR. STRONG. 
 
 RELATIVE WAGES OF SALESPEOPLE AND FACTORY OPER- 
 ATIVESGREAT INCREASE IN WAGES AND IN SAVINGS. 
 
 Pursuant to adjournment the tariff talkers met, several of them 
 having brought new friends, and the first thing they did was to 
 adopt a rule that it would not be in order merely to denounce a 
 policy, as one had done in the last conversation, but to give facts 
 or reasons, for and against, so that the truth might be learned, for 
 nothing but the truth can stand. 
 
 MR. THOMAS. "I accept this rule and will supply what I omitted 
 before. We were talking about salespeople and other unprotected 
 classes." 
 
 MR. STRONG. "I do not agree that there are any unprotected 
 classes. You share the general economic condition of the country. 
 Your salaries or commissions or both are higher than salespeople 
 get in any foreign country, generally twice as high. There are, to 
 be sure, many young salesmen who accept small pay while learning 
 the business, and many saleswomen who work for less than factory 
 wages or the wages of domestics, only because they think the work 
 is more genteel, or affords more hope of promotion, but when we 
 had the last Democratic tariff, from 1894 to 1897, many of these 
 people were thrown out of employment, and a charity workshop had 
 to be opened for them and other working women at the corner of 
 Bedford and Kingston streets. This shows that unless the mills 
 prosper the stores cannot, and thus salespeople are protected through 
 the mills." 
 
 MR. THOMAS. "But the point I was trying to make is that pro- 
 tectionism and trusts have made the rich richer and created a more 
 luxurious style of living, which the great middle class feel compelled 
 to follow more or less closely, and have raised the prices of necessa- 
 ries, and made a good many things necessary which were not nec- 
 essary before, and our incomes have not been correspondingly in- 
 creased." 
 
 
 
 MR. GRAY. " Being a small merchant myself, I wish to answer 
 
 17 
 
that. It is true that there is always more extravagance in good times 
 than in bad, but we people of moderate means are not obliged to 
 ape the rich. It is true, too, that a great demand raises prices, 
 but the rise in necessaries has been much less than many suppose. 
 Dun's index number shows that for 20 years prior to 1890 the 
 wholesale cost of a year's necessaries for each person averaged 
 $ 1 3-SS> while during the last seven years, all of them under the 
 Dingley tariff, the average has been only $99. 69. This, to be sure, 
 is a little higher than under the Wilson tariff, (1894-1897), but that 
 was a time of such general prostration that buyers were few and 
 prices were sacrificed. Now as to the compensation of clerks and 
 salespeople, it is higher in the upper grades than the wages of 
 skilled labor in factories. I have seen a table of such wages in 
 1904, prepared by Chief Pidgin of the Massachusetts Bureau of 
 Labor Statistics, which shows that in stores about 14 in 100 of the 
 employes receive $iobut under $12 a week, while in factories fewer 
 than 13 in 100 get that much. Of those getting $12 but under $15, 
 the proportions are 20 in 100 in stores and 13 in 100 in factories. Of 
 those paid $15 but under $20, the proportions are 13 in 100 in stores 
 and 10 in 100 in factories, while those paid $20 and over number 5 
 in 100 in stores and 3 in 100 in factories. Thus those who handle 
 the goods are paid a little more than those who produce the goods, 
 as perhaps they should be on account of the need of keeping up a 
 little more style. Moreover, most of them have had their wages 
 increased from 20 to 30 per cent in the last six or seven years." 
 MR. THOMAS. "Mine have not been increased." 
 MR. GRAY. "I am sorry for that, but you may inquire at any 
 of the leading stores in Boston and you will find my statement 
 borne out." 
 
 MR. STRONG. "I for one thank Mr. Gray for his very informing 
 statement. And I would call attention to the obvious lesson of it 
 and that is that all our industries, whether protected directly or 
 indirectly by the tariff, are about equally protected, because they 
 sustain such close relations to each other that you cannot hurt one 
 without hurting the others. Let me give you just one illustration 
 of this. The last Democratic tariff put wool on the free list and 
 heavily reduced the duties on woolen goods. But it made the duties 
 on cotten goods fairly protective. This was because the South had 
 begun to manufacture cottons on a large scale and the South was 
 the controlling portion of the Democratic party. The woolen in- 
 dustry became prostrated, but did the cotton industry prosper ? 
 No, not because the tariff was not favorable to that particular indus- 
 
 18 
 
try, but because it could not prosper unless other industries could 
 prosper. There must be general employment and general thrift to 
 enable any industry to sell its product." 
 
 MR. YOUNG. "Is that why you oppose free raw materials?" 
 
 MR. STRONG. " That is exactly it. The farmer and the miner 
 are just as much entitled to protection as we are. What is our raw 
 material is their finished product. It often costs them as much 
 labor as our product costs us. Justice requires that it should be 
 protected. Moreover, common prudence on our part requires that 
 they be treated fairly, because they are more numerous than we are 
 and can outvote us as 10 to 7." 
 
 MR. THOMAS. "I call you back to the question of wages and 
 living. I claim that wages have not advanced as much as the cost 
 of living has." 
 
 MR. STRONG. " There again you are mistaken. Bulletin 5 1 of 
 the United States Bureau of Labor for 1903 contains a great array 
 of figures which show it. One table I more particularly recall be- 
 cause it covers my trade. In 13 occupations, most of them 
 being what you call unprotected including blacksmiths, painters, 
 machinists and laborers, wages from 1896, under the Democratic 
 tariff, to 1903 under the Republican tariff, increased from 8.5 per 
 cent for boilermakers to 31.2 per cent for carpenters, and there was 
 a similar increase in most other occupations. This was three years 
 ago. Since then the mill owners and the operatives at Fall River 
 have arranged a sliding scale of wages, based upon the market price 
 of raw cotton, which is an advance for all classes over the former 
 wages. Last January the American Woolen Company granted a 
 10 per cent advance to its 30,000 employes and this was soon fol- 
 lowed by 29 other woolen companies, the total increase being 
 $1,500,000 a year. The Massachusetts Census, taken in 1905, shows 
 that the number of persons employed in manufactures in this state 
 had increased 11.45 per cent and their wages had advanced 19 per 
 cent in the last five years. Did you ever hear of anything like it? 
 I am amazed that anybody should complain in this state and seek to 
 change a policy that produces such wonderful results, and I appeal 
 to all my fellow workmen to vote for the candidates of the Republi- 
 can party which gave us this beneficent tariff law." 
 
 Mr. THOMAS. " But this inflation that you call prosperity makes 
 people extravagant and they cannot save as they could in more nor- 
 mal times." 
 
 MR. GRAY. " They could if they would, and most of them do. 
 The number of depositors in savings banks in this country has in- 
 
 19 
 
creased from 5,201,132 in 1897, the year the present tariff was 
 enacted, to 7,696,229 last year. The amount of the deposits has 
 increased in the same time from $1,983,413,564 to $3,093,077,357 I 
 Is it not wonderful ? Why, Brother Thomas, as the man in the 
 play said, ' you ain't nowhere ' ! But, gentlemen, I brought with 
 me a friend, Mr. Welch, who would like to say something just here." 
 
 Mr. Welch was received with applause and he said : 
 
 MR. WELCH. "I thank you gentlemen, and lam pleased to have 
 a chance to take part in this conversation. I came from Wales and 
 I take my old home paper, The Western Mail, of Cardiff. I have 
 here a little vest pocket pamphlet made up of extracts from letters 
 written by its editor when he visited this country. They show how 
 much better off the working people and the middle classes are here 
 than over there and I think you will take pleasure in reading it." 
 
 MR. GRAY. "I have read that little pamphlet and it amused me 
 to see how the editor squirmed over his life-long belief in free trade. 
 If free trade were right, he could not understand how people were 
 so much more prosperous under protection. By the way, the dis- 
 tinguished Thomas B. Reed quoted that pamphlet in a speech in 
 Congress. Here is another little pamphlet about Foreigners in 
 Massachusetts. Why have they come here ? Because, as that 
 Wales editor wrote, it is a working-people's paradise. It wouldn't 
 be a paradise very long if Congress were to reduce duties, as our 
 Democrats are 'now demanding. In this same envelope there 
 is an article about the vast quantities of foreign goods that are 
 still admitted, which shows that our tariff is liberal enough now, 
 many think too liberal. The reports of the Government show 
 that last year the imports for consumption were larger in proportion 
 to the population than they had been before for a quarter of a cen- 
 tury, and that the average rate of duty upon them was less than 24 
 per cent. Why don't the people who clamor for tariff reduction 
 find out these important facts ? " 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " The tariff has a big free list and it makes the 
 average duty on all imports fairly low, I admit, but some of the du- 
 ties are outrageously high and Trusts take advantage of them to 
 rob the people." 
 
 MR. STRONG. "I will try to show at our next meeting that the 
 harm of such duties is more imaginary than real." 
 
 NOTE. The papers referred to above are in Appendix C. 
 
MR. BRIGHT AND MR. STRONG. 
 
 WHY DUTIES NEED TO BE HIGHER NOW THAN ONE HUNDRED 
 
 YEARS AGO THE TRUST QUESTION AND CUT 
 
 PRICES ABROAD. 
 
 It was some time after the last conversation when the tariff talk- 
 ers met to resume their discussion, and so many brought friends 
 that a larger room had to be secured. The knowledge of their 
 friendly debates had spread into many cities and towns and men 
 were talking about them in all the shops and clubs. 
 
 MR. STRONG. " When we were obliged to separate we had 
 touched upon the subject of high duties and Trusts, and I promised 
 to show that they are not so hurtful as many suppose. High and 
 low are relative terms. When only a small quantity of foreign goods 
 comes to our markets, low duties afford sufficient protection ; but 
 when foreign markets are glutted and the owners of goods feel the 
 need of money, imports increase and higher duties are necessary. But 
 tariffs cannot be changed every few months to meet varying condi- 
 tions of trade, hence the duties should be high enough all the time 
 to protect against dumping at cut prices some of the time." 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " Now if we only had free trade, prices would 
 find a natural level, like water." 
 
 MR. STRONG. " That is a plausible error. They would find the 
 artificial level that might be created for them by foreign bankrupt- 
 cies and hardships of any kind, or by the determination of foreign 
 manufacturers to gain our market and hold it at whatever cost until 
 they had killed off home production of similar goods." (Applause.) 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " But in such cases we would get the goods and 
 that would be a great benefit to our people." 
 
 MR. STRONG. " Bankrupt sales and slave labor are not benefits. 
 Suppose such competition should close our mills : could those who 
 had been employed in them buy these foreign goods, however cheap ? 
 You remind me of the man that a homely poet wrote about. As 
 the verses bring out a good answer, I will hand them to you and 
 leave that branch of the subject." 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "I wish you would explain if you can why it is 
 
 NOTE. The poem referred to by Mr. Strong is in Appendix D. 
 
 21 
 
necessary to have so much higher duties now than in the early days 
 of the government. Then the plea was that protection was for 
 ' infant industries ' ; now the industries are giants, with full beards, 
 and yet the duties have been more than doubled. If that isn't rob- 
 bery for the benefit of trusts, what is it ? " 
 
 MR. STRONG. " I am glad you have made that point. Our first 
 tariff (1789), and later tariffs up to 1812, were enacted for revenue 
 rather more than protection, although both objects were mentioned. 
 The people were poor then and could not bear much internal revenue 
 taxation. This is one reason why moderate duties were placed on 
 impdrts ; the more imports the more revenue. Another reason was 
 that the wages of labor had not then advanced in this country much 
 beyond wages in Great Britain, France and Spain, therefore high 
 duties were not needed for the protection of labor. Another reason 
 was that ocean freights then afforded a large measure of protection. 
 Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, reported 
 to Congress that freights from Europe usually amounted to from 15 
 to 25 per cent of the cost of the goods. Now they are hardly ever 
 more than three or four per cent, and on goods of high value and 
 light weight they are often less than one half of one per cent. In 
 those early days there were no steam ships, and a voyage from Europe 
 took three or four weeks. Now the great ocean greyhounds come 
 over in a week and every cargo is several times the cargo of an old 
 sailing vessel. In fact, a German ship, called the 'Amerika' now 
 lands a cargo at New York which will load ten miles of freight cars. 
 As wages in Germany are less than one half the wages in this coun- 
 try, and as they have modern machinery, ample capital and great 
 mercantile enterprise in that country, how long do you suppose our 
 wages could be maintained in face of such competition unless our 
 duties were higher than those one hundred years ago ?" 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " Don't we have the same advantage in exporting 
 that they have ? Do not the ' Amerika ' and other foreign vessels 
 carry return cargoes ? And do not our great combinations of com- 
 panies called Trusts send more and more manufactured goods to 
 Europe every year, and often sell them there at much lower prices 
 than they exact in this country ? " 
 
 MR. STRONG. "I answer yes to all those questions, but not one 
 of them affords any reason why our labor should be more exposed 
 to foreign competition. If it were, then foreign goods would come 
 here in constantly increasing quantities, displacing the goods we 
 make, and thus we would be crowded out of work unless our employ- 
 ers could more than correspondingly increase their foreign markets. 
 
 22 
 
I believe that to be impossible, but even if possible, what would 
 they gain by exchanging a part of the home market, which pays 
 good prices, for more foreign markets at lower prices ? They could 
 not make many' such bad swaps before they would reduce our wages. 
 What they send abroad now at cut prices is only a small percentage 
 of what they produce only 1 2 per cent in the case of the U. S. 
 Steel Corporation, which is the most complained of and most of 
 that is a surplus accumulated while running full to keep help and 
 machinery employed and thus to produce the most economically for 
 the home market. By reason of such production and of such dis- 
 posal of a small surplus at about the labor cost, they can make lower 
 prices for their whole product than they possibly could if they ran 
 their great works fitfully, letting fires go out and help scatter when 
 they had filled orders. Do you suppose for a moment that if they 
 got only foreign prices for their whole product they could or would 
 continue to pay American wages ? " 
 
 MR. THOMAS. " Possibly they could not and would not, and I 
 am one of those who believe they should not. Their wages are al- 
 together too high, and they make wages too high in other lines of in- 
 dustry, and it all comes to this, that the Labor Trust, which is the 
 greatest and the most tyrannical of all the trusts, takes advantage 
 of every sign of prosperity and exacts more and more." 
 
 MR. WELCH. "Can you blame Labor for looking out for itself? 
 Great Britain has labor unions quite as great and strong as any in 
 this country. In fact there every advance that labor makes is due 
 to the unions, but here it has in addition the great benefit of pro- 
 tection against old world hardships. I do not contend that there 
 are no abuses of power by the Labor Trust and the other trusts, but 
 they can be and are being corrected by laws enacted for the purpose. 
 As you would not pull down your house to rid it of rats or fleas, why 
 abolish Protection, which is not the cause of trusts, because you 
 think some of them use it to shelter their depredations? " 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "I don't know about your statement that protec- 
 tion is not the cause of trusts." 
 
 MR. STRONG. "Great Britain, a free trade country, had trusts 
 before they were known in this country, and, as Mr. Blaine said, is 
 * plastered all over with trusts ' . I think this proves that trusts are 
 not due to protection." 
 
 MR. YOUNG. "I have a little pamphlet here on the subject of 
 Trusts and the Tariff, which I have found very instructive. It also 
 contains some interesting information as to the relative value of our 
 home and foreign markets, and of how much more would be lost 
 
 XOTK. The "Trusts and Tariff" pamphlet is in Appendix D. 
 
than gained if wages had to be cut in order to enable our manufac- 
 turers to make greater inroads abroad." 
 
 MR. THOMAS. "O you all seem to have documents to sustain 
 your fallacies, but I tell you the people are getting tired of your high 
 tariff and they are getting so they don't believe anything you say 
 or print. The very fact that many high Republicans, when they 
 come before the people for office, talk in favor of liberal tariff con- 
 cessions, is proof enough to me that free trade is right and they know 
 it." (Laughter.) 
 
 "That is a good joke on the politicians," said Mr. Gray, "but 
 when you think seriously about it you can all see that it does not 
 reflect upon the tariff. This is not the first time in history when 
 candidates have prayed 'Good Lord and good Devil ' ! " (Laughter 
 and applause.) 
 
 MR. STRONG. "Let me remind you, friends, that above all ques- 
 tions of politics, and back of all questions of when or how the tariff 
 should be revised, lies the great vital question of preserving our na- 
 tional policy and our national superiority. The idea that protection 
 is a temporary expedient is a great mistake. The idea that we 
 should gradually reduce duties as our industries get on their feet is 
 equally a mistake. You talk about Trusts being giants ; but please 
 bear in mind that the labor employed by Trusts is no stronger than 
 the labor employed by companies or firms or individuals. There is 
 no way under the sun by which our wages can be kept twice as high 
 as in Britain, or three times as high as in Continental Europe, or 
 five to eight times as high as in Japan, without preserving good 
 protective duties. This is what makes this nation superior to others. 
 Why should we wish to change it ? Why should we even risk it ? " 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. l I see that you are unyielding and unprogressive 
 and 
 
 MR. STRONG. "I beg your pardon, but I object to being called 
 unprogressive. Did the world ever see such progress as we are 
 making under protection?" 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "I hope I gave no offence. What I meant was 
 that you were not willing to progress towards a more liberal tariff. 
 Would you not consider reciprocity ? " 
 
 MR. STRONG. "Our time is up, but if you would like to talk 
 reciprocity at our next meeting, I will gladly consider it." 
 
 24 
 
MR. BRIGHT AND MR. STRONG. 
 
 RECIPROCITY TWO KINDS DESCRIBED AND THE WORKING 
 
 THEREOF ILLUSTRATED SOMEWHAT DISTRUSTED BY BOTH 
 
 REAL FREE TRADERS AND TRUE PROTECTIONISTS. 
 
 When the members of the "Bright and Strong Club," as they 
 had begun to call themselves, met to consider reciprocity, the at- 
 tendance was still further increased, for certain politicians had 
 made that subject of renewed interest in Massachusetts. The 
 leading disputants plunged into the merits at once. 
 
 MR. STRONG. "Let us begin at the beginning and inquire what 
 Reciprocity is." 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "I think we can easily agree that it is an agree- 
 ment between two countries that each will admit the other's goods 
 free cf duty, or at lower duties than those of the general tariff, but 
 usually the agreement is confined to certain goods which are named, 
 and they are not necessarily the same goods in each country." 
 
 MR. STRONG. "Your definition is correct and it raises the 
 question whether or not our government has a right to take away 
 protection from one man's products, that another man's products 
 may gain a foreign market. There are two kinds of reciprocity: 
 one is confined to similar articles, which compete with each other, 
 which is free trade so far as it goes, and I may add that this kind 
 is generally favored by the Democratic party in this country; the 
 other kind is limited to dissimilar products, which do not compete 
 with each other, an exchange of which on favored terms seems to 
 be mutually beneficial, and this is the kind generally favored by 
 the Republican party." 
 
 MR. YOUNG. "Please illustrate." 
 
 MR. STRONG. "I will. From 1854 to 1866 we had a reciprocity 
 treaty with Great Britain in relation to our trade with her Canadian 
 provinces. It was confined to natural products only, imports and 
 exports alike. Of what benefit could it be to swap hay for hay, 
 lumber for lumber, coal for coal and fish for fish ? It gave the Ca- 
 nadians an advantage because, owing to their lower wages, cheaper 
 lands and cheaper fertilizers, they could and did flood our markets, 
 
 25 
 
to the injury of our producers. Canada sold more here than we 
 sold there. This turned the balance of trade against us the last 
 seven years of the treaty by $20,000,000, besides which our Treasury 
 lost considerable revenue. The Canadians would not then and will 
 not now reduce duties on our manufactures, and they refuse reci- 
 procity, except of the old kind. They are doing well under protec- 
 tion and our present trade with Canada is three times what it was 
 under reciprocity." 
 
 MR. YOUNG. " Now can you give us an instance of reciprocity 
 in non-competing products?" 
 
 MR. STRONG. "Yes, and you will see what a contrast it pre- 
 sents. Brazil produces coffee and rubber and we do not. We 
 produce wheat and machinery and she does not to any considerable 
 extent. Under the McKinley tariff Secretary Elaine negotiated a 
 treaty with Brazil for the free or favored exchange of unlike good's, 
 including some that were similar but not highly competitive. It 
 worked well for both countries. But when the Democrats got into 
 power in 1894 they terminated it, with a number of other similar 
 treaties, their party in national convention having denounced that 
 kind of reciprocity as a 'sham.' Under the treaty our trade with 
 Brazil handsomely increased. Without reciprocity, it is smaller 
 now by nearly twenty million dollars a year." 
 
 MR. GRAY. "These two instances Canada and Brazil show 
 that reciprocity in similar goods involves loss to one party or the 
 other, while reciprocity in dissimilar goods is mutually beneficial 
 at least so far as two contracting countries are concerned. If 
 it should make trouble with other countries, then perhaps it had 
 better not be undertaken." 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "Here you all are, at it again, looking at the sub- 
 ject from the view point of producers and not considering the con- 
 sumer. You don't seem to think it would be a great benefit to the 
 working people in our factories, stores and on our railroads to get 
 cheap food from Canada." 
 
 MR. STRONG. "We do consider the consumer. By protecting 
 our farmers from outside competition, we encourage a great domes- 
 tic production, which adds enormously to the world's supply of food 
 and makes it cheaper than it otherwise would be ; and by admitting 
 coffee, tea and other non-competing products free, we secure a 
 cheaper breakfast than can be had in free trade Great Britain, kind 
 and quality considered." 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "Your stand-pat leaders don't hesitate to keep 
 sugar dear by refusing reciprocity with Germany, when they know- 
 that we have to import more than one half the sugar we consume, 
 and know that if we would only admit German beet sugar free we 
 
 could get the Germans to admit at low duties quantities of our meat 
 
 26 
 
products and cereals, and probably some of our boots and shoes 
 and shovels. Mr. Eugene N. Foss, who has just been to Germany, 
 says we shall surely have a tariff war with that country unless we 
 enter into reciprocity with it." 
 
 MR. STRONG. " Mr. Foss seems to have strong convictions on 
 slight information. Nothing that he has been reported as saying 
 has shed any new light on the subject. Germany has adopted a 
 new tariff for the better protection of its industries, especially agri- 
 culture, but has softened it a little by entering into reciprocal 
 trade relations with seven European countries. The time of its go- 
 ing into effect towards the United States has been extended a year 
 with the hope that we may enter into a similar arrangement. The 
 diplomats of the two countries are conferring. . They may agree 
 and may not ; if they agree, one or the other country may reject 
 the agreement. In that case our exporters will have to pay a little 
 more for the privilege of selling in Germany, but our duties will 
 not be raised against Germany. It takes a very fervid imagination 
 to work up a war out of such small material. So far as the new 
 German tariff may affect this country, not one person in one hun- 
 dred thousand of our population would ever know that a change 
 has been made." 
 
 MR. YOUNG. "Would it be a benefit to get German beet sugar 
 free?" 
 
 MR. STRONG. " I do not think it would. We are growing sugar 
 beets ourselves and making better sugar from them than we ever 
 imported from Germany. Under the Dingley tariff, which was 
 framed to develop the industry, our product has grown from 39,684 
 tons in 1897 to 220,722 tons in 1905, which shows wonderful pro- 
 gress. More than 250,000 acres of land and 51 great factories are 
 devoted to it. Besides, we have an increasing growth of cane sugar, 
 which amounted in 1905 to 334,522 tons. Furthermore, Porto 
 Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines now belong to the United States 
 and last year they produced 516,098 tons. These items aggregate 
 more than one million tons, or very nearly one half of all that we 
 consume. . The domestic product will be largely increased unless 
 we discourage it by favoring Germany. Moreover, we have reci- 
 procity with Cuba, for the liberty and order of which country we 
 have made ourselves responsible, and in return for which Cuba has 
 given us control over her commercial relations. This arrangement 
 puts us under a peculiar obligation to prefer Cuban sugar to that 
 of any other country." 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. " That is all very instructive, but look at the 
 price we pay for all this protection. During the last five years the 
 average cost of raw sugar in other countries has been 2.08 the 
 pound and in this country it has been 4.03 cents. Of course some- 
 
 S*\ ?>v 
 
 /T OF THF X 
 
 UNIVERSITY I 
 J 
 
 
thing has to be allowed for freight, but if there were no duty I think 
 the price would come down to 3 cents here, and this would save 
 our consumers more than fifty millions of dollars a year. If Ger- 
 many is foolish enough to give sugar an abnormally low price by 
 paying a bounty on its exportation, why shouldn't we have reci- 
 procity with her and get the benefit of it ? " 
 
 MR. STRONG. "Because that would discourage production in 
 our own country and possessions and in Cuba, and this would di- 
 minish the world's supply and that would raise the price. Besides, 
 we should become dependent upon a foreign country. The price 
 here has not prevented an increase in the use of sugar from 63.4 
 Ibs. per capita in 1895 to 70.5 Ibs, in 1905, so it is not felt as a 
 great burden. If free sugar would save for us all you say it would, 
 each person would be benefited only about 70 cents a year. That 
 is too small to justify the sacrifice of our producers and a breach 
 of faith with Cuba. I cannot see why labor in the sugar industry 
 is not just as much entitled to protection as yours and mine is." 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "I am willing to give up protection on my 
 labor." (Laughter.) 
 
 MR. STRONG. "Yes, because you toil not, neither do you spin, 
 nor gather into barns." (Laughter and applause.) 
 
 MR. WELCH. " President Roosevelt has made a brave and suc- 
 cessful fight against special freight rates to different shippers. It 
 seems to me the same rule ought to govern our tariff relations." 
 
 MR. GRAY. " Some of the greatest students of the subject are 
 reaching the conclusion that there had better be no reciprocity of 
 either kind, because it provokes jealousies between nations. If it 
 were not for the hope that Reciprocity might help us to gain our 
 share of South American trade, I should say myself we had better 
 treat all nations alike." 
 
 MR. THOMAS. "I agree with you. Reciprocity is only a pre- 
 tense at free trade. Give us the real article and don't be hum- 
 bugged by the politicians." (Laughter.) 
 
 MR. STRONG. "At all events, let us have no reciprocity that 
 will endanger our industries and our labor. President McKinley 
 annexed that condition in his much misquoted last speech. From 
 entirely opposite reasons, Brother Thomas and I have come near 
 together. ' ' ( Laughter. ) 
 
 And amid this good feeling they appointed the next meeting and 
 adjourned. 
 
 NOTE. For some very informing articles on Reciprocity, see Appendix E. 
 
 28 
 
MR. BRIGHT AND MR. STRONG. 
 
 THE FINAL MEETING RECIPROCITY, THE CHAMBERLAIN 
 
 POLICY, STEEL RAILS, TARIFF REVISION AND 
 
 PARTING WORDS. 
 
 The next meeting happened to be held on a warm night and as 
 the heated term was near, all agreed that this would be the final 
 discussion. 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "At the last meeting we talked about reciprocity; 
 most of you seemed to be against me ; and yet, Mr. Joseph Cham- 
 berlain, who is leading a movement for again fastening protection 
 upon Great Britain, talks about tempering it by reciprocity with 
 the colonies. Dingley promised the same thing when he fastened 
 his high duties on this country. Reciprocity seems to be a good 
 platform to get in on, but not to stand upon." 
 
 MR. WELCH. "Reciprocity between the different parts of the 
 Empire is an essential part of the Chamberlain policy of Imperial 
 Federation. Its great object is to bind the United Kingdom and 
 all the British colonies more closely together by the bonds of mu- 
 tual interest. The system will then closely resemble ours. Internal 
 free trade and external protection together make our national poli- 
 cy. To say that external free trade would work as well as internal, 
 would be to ignore national differences and interests and our Consti- 
 tutional history. Both parties in Canada favor the Chamberlain 
 policy, and for several years the Canadian tariff has promoted it by 
 taking off one third of the duties on British and Colonial goods." 
 
 MR. GRAY. "Nevertheless, our trade with Canada is increasing 
 over that of Great Britain. That is no reflection on their policy, 
 however, but results from our nearness and the great convenience 
 of getting goods quickly. The tariffs of the two countries do not 
 stand in the way of a great and increasing trade and of entirely 
 friendly relations. So long, therefore, as Canada favors the Cham- 
 berlain policy, for imperial reasons, he certainly will not favor reci- 
 
 29 
 
procity with the United States; hence there never was a more un- 
 timely and senseless agitation than that of the last two or three 
 years in Massachusetts for reciprocity with Canada. You might as 
 well undertake to sow wheat in the winter or gather figs of thistles 
 in the fall." (Applause.) 
 
 MR. STRONG. "I desire to correct Mr. Bright's statement that 
 the Dingley bill made duties high with the promise and expectation 
 that they would be reduced by reciprocity. This was true of only 
 seven articles, named in section 3 of the bill, and reciprocity has 
 been established upon all of them, so there can be no controversy 
 over that promise. Section 4 of the law, which provided that 
 treaties might be negotiated within two years from the date of its 
 enactment, by which duties on other goods could be reduced as 
 much as 20 per cent, and under which several treaties were nego- 
 tiated by Mr. Kasson but not ratified by the Senate, was not in the 
 bill as prepared by Mr. Dingley and his committee, but was added 
 by the Senate. This is proved by the Congressional Record and the 
 Journals of both houses. Therefore it is not true that duties were 
 purposely made higher than necessary, with the promise that they 
 would be reduced by reciprocity. If reciprocity has any claims upon 
 public confidence, they must not be based upon error or falsehood, 
 for, as I have said before, nothing but the truth can stand. " 
 
 MR. THOMAS. "Well, if the Republicans had no liberal inten- 
 tions to take the form of reciprocity, they are all the more blamable 
 for enacting duties of 100 or more per cent. " 
 
 MR. YOUNG. "I have read the speech upon that by John Sharp 
 Williams, the Democratic leader in Congress, and I have looked up 
 the imports of such articles and the prices of similar United States 
 goods; and what do you think I found? Out of nearly a billion 
 dollars' worth of imports that year, all that he cited which bore 
 thosfc high duties amounted to only about $3000! It did not seem 
 to occur to Mr. Williams that if the duties are more than 100 per 
 cent on the value of the goods, they are not added to the price, for 
 the price is the value ! What harm is there in a duty of 6 cents a 
 yard on calico when you can buy equally good calico at any dry 
 goods store in this whole country for 6 cents ?" (Laughter.) 
 
 MR. THOMAS. "Where's the sense in keeping duties so high ? 
 Why not revise the tariff and get rid of such monstrosities ?" 
 
 MR. GRAY. "Why cry for a theoretical hurt? Domestic com- 
 petition having brought down prices so that they are actually below 
 some of the duties, this is one of the triumphs of protection. Prices, 
 however, are always fluctuating and sometimes duties need to be 
 high to prevent the shutting of our mills by the dumping here of 
 foreign bankrupt stocks. Take a case like this: In January and 
 February, 1890, steel rails in England were regularly quoted, free 
 
 3 
 
on board, at $35 a ton; in May at only $23.75 a fall of more 
 than $11 in three months. From May to August, 1886, they were 
 $16.42; but in the fore part of 1890 they were more than twice that. 
 Mr. James M. Swank of Philadelphia, the highest authority in this 
 country on iron and steel, well says that 'we do not need protec- 
 tion against British steel rails at $35 per ton, but against steel rails 
 at $16.42 per ton.' The same is true in varying degrees of other 
 commodities. The point I make is that if we are to have protec- 
 tion at all the duties must be high enough to guard against violent 
 fluctuations in foreign prices, for of course we cannot alter our 
 tariff every little while to conform to them. (Applause.) 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "No matter about British prices. Didn't Mr. 
 Schwab write another Pittsburg steel magnate in 1899, 'You know 
 we can make steel rails at a profit for $12 a ton?' This was in- 
 side information but it got out. Now why not revise the tariff and 
 give the American people the benefit of $12 rails?" (Applause.) 
 
 MR. STRONG. "I suppose Mr. Schwab did use some such ex- 
 pression, but it was very incomplete information. It had reference 
 to the Carnegie Steel Company's ability to compete, and it was 
 based on the cost of manufacture and not on the cost of the mate- 
 rials. Look in the U. S. Statistical Abstract and you will see that 
 the price of Bessemer pig iron at Pittsburg in 1899 was $19.03 a 
 ton. It takes more than a ton of pig to make a ton of rails. 
 So if the steel company had been obliged to purchase its mate- 
 rial, it would have lost from $8 to $10 a ton on all the rails it 
 sold for $12. (Applause.) Ever since then the price of pig has 
 been above $12, and the U. S. Steel Corporation, though the largest 
 producer of iron ore and pig iron in the country, and having ves- 
 sels and railroads of its own for assembling the materials, is con- 
 stantly in the market as a buyer of pig and has paid from $13.76 
 to $18 for it during the last four years. This completely disposes 
 of the $12 story, for of course it would be absurd to expect pro- 
 ducers to give away their raw material." (Applause.) 
 
 MR. WELCH. " Mr. Bright says 'No matter about British prices,' 
 but I think they come in pat here, for since 1899 the average price 
 of steel rails in England has been $29.04 the ton, while in this 
 country it has been only $28.62 and is only $28 now. Speaking of 
 these prices, General Draper made a good point in a speech when 
 he showed that if the duty of $7.84 were added to the English 
 price, (as our free trade friends say it always is), the price here 
 would have been $8.26 the ton more than has been charged here." 
 
 MR. THOMAS. "Why does the Steel Trust deliver rails in Can- 
 ada for $22, and demand $28 here?" 
 
 , MR. WELCH. "Because there are two important steel plants in 
 Canada to which the Dominion government pays bounties on bil- 
 
 3* 
 
lets and rails. This compels the British, the Belgian and the United 
 States rail makers to cut prices in Canada if they sell there." 
 
 MR. THOMAS. "Well, if they can sell there for $22 they can 
 here." 
 
 MR. WELCH. "That does not follow. There is no probability 
 that they make a living profit in Canada. Manufacturers in all 
 countries get more at home than abroad. They have to or they 
 could not afford to do business. But the home price is not excess- 
 ive. It has come down from $166 in 1867, before we made steel 
 rails, to $28 now. The protective policy which has made this pos- 
 sible has also brought down the cost of hauling a bushel of wheat 
 by rail from Chicago to New York from 44.2 cents in 1867 to 10.2 
 cents in 1906. Thus, not only do our workmen get general em- 
 ployment at high wages, but consumers get the benefit of cheaper 
 freights, which means cheaper food." (Applause.) 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "Still I think the tariff ought to be revised." 
 
 MR. GRAY. "Of course it will be some day, but every reason 
 which any of you has given for it, or which has been advanced in 
 Congress, has been answered. Why act without reason? Why 
 disturb prosperity ? Why should Massachusetts invite reprisals by 
 being singular, sectional and selfish?" What do you seek by re- 
 vision? 
 
 MR. BRIGHT. "We seek lower prices and we believe lower 
 duties will bring them." 
 
 MR. GRAY. "I thank you for that honest admission. But 
 lower prices will mean lower wages. More than once lower duties 
 have meant no wages at all, for they have closed our mills. Cheap- 
 ness at the expense of employment would be a dear mistake. If 
 scaling down is what revision means, we had better postpone it as 
 long as we can." 
 
 MR. STRONG. "Gentlemen, our time is up and we must part. 
 Not only have we formed a pleasant acquaintanceship with each 
 other, which I hope will be a lasting friendship, but I think we 
 have learned a great deal about the tariff. And is it too much to 
 claim that this knowledge makes us love our country a little better ? 
 Before we part let us sing ' America.' Mr. Bright will like it be- 
 cause it has the same tune as 'God Save the King,' and Mr. Thomas 
 will like it because that tune is said to have been 'made in Ger- 
 many,' '(laughter) and all of us will like it because it makes us 
 feel that we have the greatest, the freest, the most prosperous and 
 the happiest country in the world." (Hearty applause, in which 
 all joined, and then sang "My country, 'tis of thee.") 
 
APPENDIXES. 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 This most interesting and instructive speech by the late Mr. Elaine brings 
 the tariff history of the United States down to 1890. The McKinley tariff was 
 then enacted and the industries of the people sprang forward, as Mr. Gladstone 
 said, "by leaps and bounds." But a fierce war was made upon the tariff by the 
 Democratic party, and though labor was more generally employed and at higher 
 wages in 1892 than it had ever been before, the unfortunate labor difficulties at 
 Homestead, Buffalo, Coal Creek and Cceur d'Alene, though in no way growing 
 out of the tariff, were used to create prejudice against the Republican party, 
 which, being in power, was obliged to enforce the laws, and the result was the 
 restoration of the Democratic party to full power, pledged to enact a tariff for 
 revenue only. 
 
 In anticipation of such a law, business " took in sail " and became depressed 
 and within six weeks after Mr. Cleveland's second inauguration the country was 
 convulsed by a panic. This and the four years of hard times which followed 
 were charged by the Democrats to the coinage of silver dollars which the people 
 would not take at their face value, but the panic was precipitated by the declara- 
 tion of Mr. Cleveland's Secretary of the Treasury that when gold in the treasury 
 should be exhausted he would pay the public creditors with the overvalued 
 silver dollars. When Mr. Cleveland assured the world that this should not be 
 done, the panic was over, but the depression of industries continued, and this 
 was due entirely to the impending calamity of a free trade tariff. 
 
 When the Wilson tariff was reported to the House, Mr. Wilson confessed 
 that it was " a political bill." It was not for revenue only, as had been promised, 
 and when enacted it was so protective in spots that Mr. Cleveland called it an 
 act of "perfidy and dishonor," but allowed it to become a law without his 
 signature. Its withdrawal of protection from industries which needed protection 
 the most, and its many incongruities, caused a continuance of the hard times 
 and such a deficit in the revenues as necessitated a large increase in the public 
 debt in time of profound peace. 
 
 In 1896 the people condemned it, elected McKinley President and restored 
 the Republican party to power. In anticipation of the Dingley tariff, which was 
 enacted the next year, business revived and as a result of that scientific, equit- 
 able and non-sectional law, the country has ever since enjoyed the greatest 
 prosperity in its history. But some people cannot bear prosperity and the tariff 
 is again bitterly assailed, partly as the McKinley law was assailed in 1892 by a 
 great outcry against prices, and partly by falsely charging that the new problem 
 of trusts is a child of the tariff. Hence it is most opportune for voters to read 
 the tariff history of the country, so admirably given by Mr, Blaine in the fol- 
 lowing pages. 
 
 BOSTON, 1906 
 
CONDENSED HISTORY OF AMERICAN 
 TARIFF ACTS 
 
 AND THEIR EFFECTS UPON INDUSTRIES. 
 
 SPEECH OF HON. JAMES G. ELAINE, AT THE POLO GROUNDS 
 (HARLEM), NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 29, 1888. 
 
 A TRIBUTE TO GENERAL HARRISON. 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Fellow-Citizens : General Harrison has shown remarkable 
 ability in condensing a whole argument within the dimensions of a proverb. 
 This is a great and rare talent. It was the striking feature in Franklin's mode 
 of reasoning, and was practiced by Lincoln with irresistible effect. When 
 General Harrison, in his letter of acceptance, described the dogmatic free traders 
 as "students of maxims and not of markets," he exposed in one brief sentence 
 the fallacy and the weakness of their economic creed. They are in truth simply 
 theorists, perpetually arguing from arbitrary premises to an ideal conclusion, 
 and blindly rejecting the teachings of a century's experience a century during 
 which protective and revenue tariffs have had an equal chance to exhibit the 
 results of their operations and of their relative effect upon all the material 
 interests of the country. Whoever deceives himself as to the facts of the 
 history of this long period, does so wilfully or ignorantly. 
 
 THE FIRST ACT THAT WAS PASSED. 
 
 From the foundation of the Government to the war of 1812 there was no 
 embittered controversy on the question of the tariff. The first act passed for 
 levying duties on "foreign goods, wares, and merchandise," was reported by Mr. 
 Madison, afterwards President of the United States, and was in its preamble 
 declared to be " for the support of Government, for the discharge of the debts of 
 the United States, and for the encouragement and protection of manufactures." 
 It was the second enactment placed on the statute book of the United States, 
 and received President Washington's approval on an auspicious and prophetic 
 anniversary the Fourth of July, 1789. It affirmed both the power and the 
 policy of protective duties the affirmation being sealed by the unanimous vote 
 of the Senate and by a majority of more than five to one in the House of Repre- 
 sentatives both Houses containing many of those who had taken a prominent 
 part in framing the Constitution of the United States. Since that vote all 
 arguments against the Constitutional right and power of the Government to levy 
 protective duties have been as futile as a contradiction of Euclid's demonstrations. 
 
 INCREASING THE RATE OF DUTY. 
 
 Between the adoption of the First Tariff Act and the beginning of the war 
 of 1812, twelve additional acts were passed, generally increasing the rate of duty 
 and adding to their protective power. The indisputable effect of these protective 
 acts had been to stimulate the growth of all the material interests of the country 
 in a remarkable degree. The population increased in a greater ratio from 1 790 
 to 1810 than in any subsequent twenty years in the life of the Republic, and 
 this was an index of the growth of agriculture, manufactures and commerce 
 which was so great as to draw the attention of all Europe. 
 
 The annual messages of Washington and Jefferson, representing in their 
 persons both the political schools into which the people were then divided, give 
 ample testimony to this end. In his message of December, 1795, six years after 
 the National Government was organized, Washington spoke of "our agriculture, 
 
 35 
 
commerce, and manufactures prospering beyond former example," and "every 
 part of the Union displaying indications of rapid and various improvement; 
 with burdens so light as scarcely to be perceived." In his message of the 
 following year he urged upon Congress "the necessity of accelerating the 
 establishment of certain useful manufactures by the intervention of legislative 
 aid and protection." 
 
 In his first message delivered in December, 1801, Jefferson felicitated 
 Congress upon the revenue derived from tariff duties, and suggested that "there 
 is now reasonable ground of confidence that we may safely dispense with all 
 internal taxes." Dispensing with " all internal taxes " and relying upon the 
 tariff duties for " support of the Government and the payment of the public 
 debt," was Jefferson's conception of a financial policy a policy sternly re- 
 sisted by the party to-day that claims (however absurdly) to be the inheritor of 
 his principles. 
 
 In his message of December, 1807, Jefferson was able to advise Congress of 
 a heavy surplus in the revenue. The only duty which he proposed to remit in 
 consequence of this anticipation was that on salt, an article of high price at that 
 time and very insufficiently supplied by our own product. But with .the salt 
 duty totally repealed, and what is known as the " Mediterranean Fund " at an 
 end, Jefferson informed Congress that "there will still ere long be an accumula- 
 tion of moneys in the treasury beyond the instalment of the public debt which 
 we are permitted by contract to pay. . . . The question, therefore, now comes 
 forward: To what other objects shall these surpluses be appropriated, and the 
 whole surplus of impost after the entire discharge of the public debt and when 
 purposes of war shall not call for them? Shall we suppress the impost and give 
 that advantage to foreign over domestic manufactures ? " 
 
 JEFFERSON STUCK TO THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 
 
 This weighty question was answered by Jefferson in the negative. He was 
 not frightened into an abandonment of the protective system because it happened 
 to yield a surplus, nor did he recommend the overturning of a fixed industrial 
 policy on which the growth and wealth of the country were founded, simply 
 because the National Treasury shared the general prosperity of the country and 
 overflowed with money. This subject had taken strong hold on Jefferson's 
 mind, and the next year (1808), in returning to the subject in his annual message 
 to Congress, he said: "The probable accumulation of the surplus of revenue be- 
 yond what can be applied to the payment of the public debt, whenever the free- 
 dom and safety of our commerce shall be restored, merits the consideration of 
 Congress. Shall it lie unproductive in the public vaults? Shall the revenue be 
 reduced? Or shall it not rather be appropriated to the improvement of roads, 
 canals, rivers, education, and other great foundations of prosperity and union, 
 under the powers which Congress may already possess, or such amendments to 
 the Constitution as may be approved by the States?" 
 
 So earnestly was Jefferson in favor of using the surplus which was yielded 
 by a protective tariff, for some great National benefit, that he was ready and 
 anxious to amend the Constitution to supply any deficiency of power which his 
 strict construction creed might find. Nor was it a trifling surplus which he was 
 ready to use for National improvements. It amounted to $14,000,000 equiva- 
 lent on the mere basis of population to a surplus to-day of $i 50,000, ooo and equiva- 
 lent on the basis of relative National wealth of the two periods to a surplus of 
 $450,000,000. It never occurred to Mr. Jefferson's mind the most compre- 
 hensive and farseeing mind of all the Presidents of the United States, his peer 
 being found, if found at all, in Abraham Lincoln alone I say it never occured 
 to Mr. Jefferson's mind that it would be a wise policy for the Government or an 
 advantageous one to the people to loan the Treasury surplus to a few favorite 
 banks, as the administration of President Cleveland has done. Mr. Jefferson 
 looked to higher aims and ends something that would benefit the nation 
 at large and be of equal and impartial advantage to all the people. 
 
 CONGRESS TOOK A WISE PRECAUTION. 
 
 In his message touching the useful purposes to which the Treasury surplus 
 might be applied, Mr. Jefferson apprehended the possibility of trouble with 
 
 ' 36 
 
England, and had already recommended the " embargo." His wise and beneficent 
 designs were thus frustrated for the time, and the whole country was compelled 
 to face the probability of war with Great Britain long before actual hostilities 
 were begun. When there was no longer a doubt of war, Congress took the wise 
 precaution of passing a tariff bill in the highest degree protective. All existing 
 duties were doubled, and 10 per cent was added to this rate upon all importa- 
 tions in vessels sailing under a foreign flag. This act was approved by 
 Madison, July i, 1812, and, despite the three years of war that followed, the 
 country made rapid strides in development, and was far richer at the close of 
 the war than at its beginning. American manufactures had indeed been greatly 
 stimulated from 1808 to 1815, first by the "embargo," and still further by the 
 period of actual hostilities. 
 
 It is worthy of special mark that up to this time there had been no sharp 
 division of party lines on the tariff. The various acts were passed with the 
 general acquiescence of all parties, with some difference on minor details. But 
 on the return of peace, the War Tariff, so-called, expired by its own limitation, 
 and in its stead followed the famous tariff of 1816. It was not, however, passed 
 without discussion and resistance. Its advocates, as near as an analogy might 
 be found in eras so remote and situations so different, made the same heedless 
 and unreasoning blunder that the free-trade Democrats and the supporters of the 
 Mills bill are making to-day. Its opponents foretold the disasters that would 
 follow its enactment. What these disasters were I shall not myself attempt to 
 describe, but shall quote two contemporary witnesses of illustrious fame one 
 the greatest of Whig leaders, the other a Democratic statesman of lasting 
 renown. 
 
 A DARK PICTURE DRAWN BY HENRY CLAY. 
 
 Mr. Clay, at that time Speaker of the House, in a speech during the session 
 of 1823-4, seven years after the tariff of 1816 had been adopted, said, "The 
 general distress which pervades the whole country is forced upon us by 
 numerous facts of the most incontestable character. It is indicated by the 
 diminished exports of native produce ; by the depressed and reduced state of 
 our foreign navigation; by our diminished commerce; by successive unthreshed 
 crops of grain perishing in our barns for want of market; by the alarming 
 diminution of the circulating medium ; by the universal complaint of the want 
 of employment, and a consequent reduction of the wages of labor; . . . and, 
 above all, by the low and depressed state of the value of almost every description 
 of property in the nation, which has, on an average, sunk not less than about 
 fifty per cent, within a few years. ... It is most painful for me to dwell on the 
 gloom of this picture. But I have exaggerated nothing. Perfect fidelity to the 
 original would have authorized me to throw on deeper and darker hues." 
 
 Colonel Benton's description of the same period fully sustains the dark 
 picture drawn by Mr. Clay. He gives this vivid description of the "hard 
 times ": " No price for property or produce. No sales but those of the sheriff 
 and the marshal. No purchasers at execution sales but the creditor or some 
 hoarder of money. No employment for industry, no demand for labor, no sale 
 for the products of the farm, no sound of the hammer but that of the auctioneer 
 knocking down property. Stop laws, property laws, replevin laws, stay laws, 
 loan office laws, the intervention of the Legislature between the creditor and the 
 debtor, this was the business of the Legislatures in three-fourths of the states 
 of the Union. . . . No medium of exchange but depreciated paper; no change 
 even, but little bits of foul paper, marked so many cents, and signed by some 
 tradesman, barber, or inkeeper; exchanges deranged to the extent of fifty or 
 one hundred per cent. Distress, the universal cry of the people. Relief, the 
 universal demand, thundered at the doors of all Legislatures, State and 
 Federal." 
 
 RELIEF CAME THROUGH THE TARIFF. 
 
 "Relief" came, and it was through the enactment of the protective tariff of 
 1824. The relief was profound and general, reaching all classes, the farmer, 
 the manufacturer, the shipowner, the mechanic, and the day laborer. The 
 change was as great as was wrought in the financial condition of the United 
 States when Hamilton smote the rock of public credit, and abundant streams of 
 
 37 
 
revenue gushed forth. It may be instructive to the free-trade Democrats of to- 
 day, from the President of the'United States to the ward orator, to read the yeas 
 and nays, in the two houses of Congress, by which this protective act was 
 passed. He will find among its supporters not only Colonel Benton, whose 
 graphic outline of the previous distress has just been quoted, but he will find 
 Gen. Andrew Jackson, then a senator from Tennessee and afterward president; 
 also Martin Van Buren, then a senator from New York and afterward president; 
 also James Buchanan, then a representative from Pennsylvania and afterward 
 president; Richard M. Johnson, then a senator from Kentucky, afterward vice- 
 president of the United States; Louis McLane, then a representative from 
 Delaware, and afterward a member of General Jackson's cabinet; Gen. Sam 
 Houston, then representative from Tennessee, and afterwards senator from 
 Texas. 
 
 Following these great leaders came scores of Democrats in Congress who, 
 differing from the Democrats of to-day, believed that a protective tariff was the 
 surest and most effective measure for the financial safety and general prosperity 
 of the country. 
 
 GREAT DEMOCRATS THEN ON THE RIGHT SIDE. 
 
 After four years of prosperity under the tariff of 1824, and when the public 
 men had gained courage in the cause of protection, a measure still more effective 
 and imposing still higher duties was passed in 1828. Colonel Benton, who sup- 
 ported the tariff bill of 1824, voted also for the tariff of 1828; so did Mr. Van 
 Buren and Richard M. Johnson, who became vice-president under him ; so did 
 Mr. Buchanan, so did Louis McLane, so did Mr. Hendricks, of Indiana, uncle of 
 the late vice-president; and, last of all, so did Silas Wright, the ablest Democrat 
 ever sent to Congress from the State of New York. These great men, the 
 founders of the Democratic party, were not afraid of the doctrine of protection, 
 nor were they squeamish in its application. Wool didn't frighten them as it 
 apparently has President Cleveland. They levied on wool a specific duty of 
 four cents per pound and an ad valorem duty of forty per cent, with a proviso 
 that at the end of two years it should be raised to fifty per cent. At that rate 
 to-day it would impose a much higher tariff than the ten cents duty in which 
 ^President Cleveland finds especial danger to our national finances. 
 
 SOUTHERN HOSTILITY DEVELOPING. 
 
 Following the tariff of 1828 a Southern hostility began to develop, confined 
 mainly, though not with precision, to the states that afterward rebelled against 
 the national government. Mr. Calhoun originally favored protection, but he 
 had come to the conclusion that manufactures could not be established in the 
 planting states of the South ; that free labor and slave labor could not be made to 
 harmonize, and that the example of free labor would breed discontent among the 
 negroes and ultimately undermine and overturn slavery, or at least render it un- 
 profitable, which was equivalent to its destruction. He had, moreover, since his 
 quarrel with Jackson, been compelled to give up all prospect of the presidency, 
 and had no hope of conciliating the Northern Democracy on the basis of its ex- 
 isting organization, which was firmly in the hands of the supporters of Jackson 
 and Van Buren. Mr. Calhoun felt and foresaw that, with the Southern states 
 united in defence of slavery and in hostility to protection, he could ultimately con- 
 trol the policy of the Democratic party. Just then and just there began the change 
 of the Northern Democratic party on the tariff, and of Northern " doughf aceism " 
 on the question of slavery. Free trade and the extension of slavery formed a 
 national partnership, and were thenceforward made the corner-stones of Demo- 
 cratic policy. 
 
 A SLIDING SCALE ADOPTED. 
 
 Attempted nullification followed, and after a hot contention a compromise 
 tariff bill was agreed upon, with a sliding scale downward for ten years, with the 
 certainty, as the protectionists believed, that it would end in commercial and 
 financial disaster. The disaster came sooner than was expected, and in 1837, 
 the year after the election of Mr. Van Buren, a panic came upon the country 
 that beggars description for its severity and distress. Many men still living can 
 testify to the widespread suffering and the general derangement of all depart- 
 
 38 
 
ments of business. The condition of the country between 1816 and 1824, as 
 described by Mr. Clay and Colonel Benton, was exceeded by the prostration 
 following the panic of 1837. A peculiar feature in both cases was the deep dis- 
 tress of the farming interest. Mortgages and forced sales in every direction, 
 thousands of men out of work or toiling for twenty-five cents a day or less, and 
 other thousands compelled to rely on the soup-houses for the food which, for 
 lack of opportunity to labor, they were unable to supply for themselves. 
 
 The people naturally revolted against the administration. The Democratic 
 party was justly accused of making money scarce by its banking policy, and of 
 crushing all demands for labor by its tariff policy ; and, under the joint influence 
 of the two, it went down under an avalanche of popular disfavor in the presiden- 
 tial election of 1840. In 1836, when Van Buren was elected, his Whig opponent, 
 General Harrison, carried only seven States, and in 1840, when General Harrison 
 was elected, Van Buren carried only seven states. The contrast was even 
 stronger in the electoral vote, for Harrison had seventy-three in 1836 and Van 
 Buren had but sixty in 1840. It was a popular uprising against the Democratic 
 party, a revolt against free trade, a powerful affirmation in favor of a protective 
 policy. 
 
 GOOD RESULT OF THE WHIG VICTORY. 
 
 The proof of the Whig triumph was the protective tariff of 1842, which held 
 the same relation to the compromise tariff of 1833 that the protective tariff of 
 1824 held to the tariff of 1816. And again was the policy of protection most 
 signally vindicated. The years following the enactment of the tariff of 1842 
 witnessed an almost phenomenal revival of all industrial persuits in the country. 
 All interests felt it, and the popular sentiment was so widely and deeply touched 
 by it that in 1844, in the presidential contest between Mr. Clay and Mr. Polk, 
 the latter was compelled to write a letter expressing his belief in the value of 
 protection, and a Pennsylvania candidate, George M. Dallas, had been associated 
 with him on the ticket in order that the people might have the pledge of the 
 strongest protection state in the Union as the guarantee that the protective 
 system would be safe under a Democratic administration. 
 
 But under the malign influence of the Southern leaders, the ablest exponent 
 of free trade in the country, Robert J. Walker, of Mississippi, was made Secre- 
 tary of the Treasury. Under the whip and spur of Southern dominion, and 
 without even an apology for the perfidy involved, the protective tariff of 1842 
 was broken down, and the free trade tariff of 1846 was placed upon the statute 
 book by the casting vote of Vice-President Dallas, who had stood as the political 
 hostage that protection should be maintained; while Silas Wright, to whom the 
 vice-presidential nomination was first offered, and who had voted for the high 
 tariff of 1828, ran for governor of New York and innocently yet powerfully 
 aided in a deception of which he afterwards repented in sackcloth and ashes. 
 
 THE EVIL DAY PUT OFF BY SPECIAL CAUSES. 
 
 Great apprehension was felt by Whigs and Democrats alike as to what ef- 
 fect the tariff of 1846 would have upon the industrial interests of the country. 
 The Protectionists expected that bad results would be visible within a year, but 
 an extraordinary series of incidents, or accidents, if you please, postponed the 
 evil day. Coeval with President Folk's approval of the tariff bill came the 
 declaration of war with Mexico. That led to a demand for more than 100,000 
 men for enlistment and camp-followers, and caused an outlay of $150,000,000 
 beyond the ordinary expenditures of Government within the ensuing two years. 
 Before the great stimulus given to all departments of trade by these large dis- 
 bursements began to lessen, a great famine occurred in Ireland. That led to an 
 altogether unprecedented export of bread-stuffs, and that, of course, brought 
 large shipments of money from Europe. Before the effect produced on our 
 trade by the famine had ceased, the European revolutions of 1848 began, and 
 trade and manufactures over the whole Continent, from Madrid to St. Petersburg, 
 were disturbed, and, in many cases, thrown into hopeless confusion and panic. 
 This stopped importations, and gave to the American manufacturer a far larger 
 field than he could have had if a normal condition of business had existed in 
 Europe. 
 
 39 
 
THEN CAME THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD. 
 
 While these causes were in full operation and were producing a prodigious 
 effect upon our prosperity, the whole country was electrified, at the close of the 
 year 1848, by the tidings that gold had been discovered in California, which we 
 had acquired only a few months before from Mexico. The precious metal flowed 
 to us in rich streams from the Pacific Slope for the next six years and opened 
 avenues of trade unknown before. It drew young and vigorous men by hundreds 
 of thousands from the older States, and gave to this great metropolis of the 
 continent, the city of New York, an impulse the like of which it had never 
 experienced before. 
 
 It was a historic epoch in the advancement of the country, and when, at the 
 beginning of 1854, the output of gold showed signs of decline, a European war 
 supplied fresh stimulus to the trade of the United States. The three leading 
 powers of Europe, as powers were then reckoned, England, France, and Russia, 
 engaged in a giants' contest on the shores of the Black Sea, and the confusion 
 which resulted throughout Europe for the next two and a half years afforded a 
 rich harvest for the United States. Peace came in 1856. The 1 spindles and 
 wheels and looms, the forges and factories and furnaces of Great Britain and 
 France were set going with renewed energy. The seas were once more unvexed 
 "and Russia poured forth her grain in the markets of Western Europe to com- 
 pete with the shipments from America. 
 
 RESULTS OF DELUSIVE PROSPERITY. 
 
 The last of the causes which had contributed to our prosperity in these ten 
 years of happy accident was at an end, and its course had so deluded our people 
 with the Democratic fallacy that a low tariff leads to prosperity as surely as a 
 protective tariff, that in the spring of 1857 Congress passed a brief tariff act 
 lowering the duties still further, and the United States set forth to depend upon 
 its own energies, with a tariff that brought it directly in competition with the 
 low-priced labor of Europe. We were no longer sustained by some extraordinary 
 accident like war, or famine, or revolution abroad, or trie discovery of vast 
 deposits of the precious metals at home. I need not tell the result. The panic 
 of 1857 came upon the country with crushing and disastrous effect. Every 
 interest was prostrated, and a Democratic President, within a year from the end 
 of the last of the extraneous causes that helped us, was compelled in his mes- 
 sage to Congress to portray the disastrous condition of the country in as strong 
 colors as even protectionists would have painted. Mr. Buchanan said : 
 
 " With unsurpassed plenty in all the elements of national wealth, our manu- 
 factures have suspended, our public works are retarded, our private enterprises 
 of different kinds are abandoned, and thousands of useful laborers are thrown 
 out of employment and reduced to want." 
 
 And that was the downfall of the famous tariff of 1846. When left to 
 stand alone, it stood just one year. The people had not sufficiently heeded the 
 tremendous influences of the accidental causes I have cited, and mistakenly be- 
 lieved that the ten years of prosperity were due to a low revenue tariff. 
 
 THEN CAME " HARD TIMES." 
 
 Following the panic of 1857 there were four years of " hard times." Money 
 was scarce, specie payment was maintained by the banks with great difficulty, as 
 the gold from the California mines had largely been shipped to Europe to pay 
 adverse balances, and new enterprises were few in number and unprofitable in 
 result. The country did not revive until after the election of Abraham Lincoln, 
 and the Morril! j Tariff, which was the foundation and beginning of the present 
 tariff system of the country, was enacted. Under the influence of the new pro- 
 tective system, despite the sudden outburst of a great civil war and all the evils 
 that accompanied it, including the industrial paralysis of the eleven seceded 
 States, the country was enabled to sustain itself and to revive and increase in an 
 extraordinary degree its manufacturing industries, and generally to enter upon a 
 course, which, for nearly twenty-eight years which close the century of our tariff 
 experience, has given to the United States a prosperity beyond that ever enjoyed 
 by any country, ancient or modern, in this hemisphere or the other, upon any 
 continent or upon the isles of the sea. 
 
 40 
 
-" **^^v 
 
 A 
 VEP. 
 
 FACTS THAT ARE BEYOND DISPUTE. 
 
 In this brief historical view of our century's experience with the tariff, these 
 facts are, I think, incontestably established. 
 
 First, that this country, under a low tariff, inviting sharp competition and 
 large importations from abroad, has never prospered, but every such attempt 
 has ended in financial and industrial disaster, prostrating every interest, most of 
 all the agricultural, and operating without exception with peculiar severity upon 
 the wage-earners. 
 
 Second, that at no time in our century's history has the United States ever 
 recovered from the financial depression caused by a low tariff until a protective 
 tariff was enacted to take its place. The tariff of 1824 relieved the long suffer- 
 ing that followed from the too hasty lowering of duties in the tariff of 1816. 
 The tariff of 1842 revived the country after the compromise and destructive 
 tariff of 1833, and the tariff of 1861, still in force, and which Mr. Cleveland's 
 Administration is endeavoring to destroy, introduced a prosperous era after the 
 tremendous convulsions of 1857, which was caused by the perfidiously enacted 
 tariff of 1846. 
 
 Third, that there never has been a time since Mr. Calhoun forced the Demo- 
 cratic party to submit to the control of Southern leaders, as it is now inglorious- 
 ly submitting to-day, that it did not, if in power, demand the repeal and destruc- 
 tion of a protective tariff, even when its efficient and beneficial action upon all 
 the interests of the country was established and demonstrated beyond doubt or 
 cavil. Mr. Calhoun forced the Democratic party in 1833 to break down the 
 tariff of 1824 and 1828, for which three Democratic Presidents had voted. Mr. 
 Polk forced the Democratic party, even though it stained his political record 
 with bad faith, to break down the tariff of 1842, which had already in its four 
 years' existence renewed the hopes of the country after a long era of depression. 
 And now Mr. Cleveland, true to the precedents and instincts of his party, seeks 
 to break down the present protective tariff at the risk of disturbing the in- 
 dustries of a continent, and to commit the American people once more to the 
 old experiment of Democratic free-trade or revenue tariff, with its inevitable 
 disaster to the material interests of the country, and in no small degree to that 
 mighty host who earn their day's bread by their day's work, and to whom good 
 wages bring happiness and low wages bring misery. 
 
 WORKINGMEN MUST PROTECT THEMSELVES. 
 
 The first political speech which I delivered after more than a year's absence 
 in Europe was in this great city, last month. I then warned the laboring men 
 of the United States that a protective tariff was their shield and bulwark ; that 
 they could break it down with votes, or they could sustain it with their votes. 
 I repeat that admonition in the same great city, here and now. If the great 
 army of wage-workers in this country will not protect themselves, there is no 
 other power that can protect them. A century's experience of the tariff should 
 be their warning and their guide. 
 
 It is for you to say if a century's experience should be a light to your feet. 
 It should teach you the great and useful lesson that if you do not maintain your 
 own ground no one else will maintain it for you. The power is in your hands. 
 It may be wielded for your destruction, or it may be wielded for your protection 
 and for your safety. [Loud and prolonged cheering, and waving of hats, flags, 
 and canes.] 
 
 -IT 
 
APPENDIX B, 
 
 LABOR ABROAD. 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 What Senator Frye Saw in Europe 43 
 
 What English Advertisements Show 52 
 
 Facts about the " House Industry " in Germany 53 
 
 What the "Scripps League" Workers Saw Abroad 56 
 
 A New Danger Looming Up in the Orient 57 
 
 The Views of a British Trades-Union Leader 59 
 
 Wages of Tin-Plate Makers 60 
 
 Wages of Window-Glass Workers 61 
 
 Wages in " Unprotected " Industries . .61 
 
 W T ages in Mexico 62 
 
 What Makes Paupers 62 
 
 Wages in Massachusetts and Great Britain 63 
 
 European and American Wages 63 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The chief reason why it is important to maintain protection in this country 
 is to prevent the products of foreign cheap labor from flooding our market, clos- 
 ing our mills and either turning our working people out of doors or compelling a 
 reduction of their wages to those of other countries. 
 
 The opponents of protection deny that foreign labor is cheaper than ours, 
 when productiveness is taken into account ; but every time we reduce the tariff, 
 foreign goods displace our own, which proves that they are wrong. 
 
 The great array of facts presented in the following pages will shed a flood 
 of light upon the whole question. They are mostly from official sources and 
 are believed to be accurate. Those which were first presented a few years 
 ago are substantially correct to-day, as is shown by up-to-date reports. 
 
 To workingmen they are of the greatest interest and they show that the 
 Democratic tariff policy would do to Labor the greatest wrong. 
 
SPEECH OF HON. WILLIAM P. FRYE, 
 OF MAINE, 
 
 BEFORE THE HOME MARKET CLUB, BOSTON, OCTOBER 19, 1887. 
 
 Gentlemen of the Home Market Club : Your Secretary, in inviting me to 
 be present on this pleasant occasion, told me that he desired me to speak of my 
 impressions of the necessities of a protective tariff, as suggested by what I saw 
 in a recent trip abroad. I felt a deep and profound interest in this question 
 while I was in Europe, for I have been in the habit of making tariff speeches, 
 and of illustrating them by reference to wages abroad. A public speaker is 
 always under great temptation to exaggerate, in order to sustain his argument, 
 and I did not know but that I had been guilty of exaggeration hitherto. I 
 determined to know for myself. And, therefore, when I was abroad, I took 
 more interest in men and in women and in things than I did in churches and in 
 ruins, in architecture and painting. 
 
 AMERICA'S ADVANTAGES FOR ECONOMICAL PRODUCTION. 
 We have some wonderful advantages in this country of ours in this matter 
 of manufacturing, over any I saw; I believe over any in the wide world. In the 
 first place, we can feed a billion more men on our land than we do to-day, and 
 suffer no harm either. Then, again, we have an enormous sea-coast, and rivers 
 and lakes which the Almighty planted just exactly right for us to use for our 
 purposes, to make cheap freights all over the country. Then, again, we have 
 more railroads than all the rest of the world combined; and to-day our freights 
 are cheaper in the United States of America than in any other country on this 
 earth. On our through lines the rates are not one-half what they are on the 
 through lines in England. That is a great advantage. Again, we raise our own 
 cotton and a part of England's. We can raise all the cotton the world needs, if 
 we please. Texas alone can produce every pound of cotton you use to-day and 
 England purchases from us, and yet not be exhausted at all. Again, we can 
 raise all the wool we need in this country without the slightest difficulty, unless 
 the free-traders get it on the free list. (Laughter.) Again, we have iron in twenty- 
 four states and territories, piled up in mountains now and then, like those in 
 Missouri, with 500,000,000 of tons in their bosoms ; accessible, more accessible 
 than the iron of any other country. Again, we have inexhaustible coal fields, 
 accessible too. Again, we have, for I have seen it, mountains of salt; I saw one 
 in Louisiana, where, with a pick, you could pick the salt out in blocks. Moun- 
 tains of sulphur, granite, sand-stone, marble, lime-rock, slate, supplies of borax, 
 gold, silver, copper. Every conceivable thing that we need to make us a great 
 manufacturing nation is spread out here for our use ; ninety-one-hundredths of it 
 to-day lying as untouched as when planted there in the earth by the finger of the 
 Almighty. Again, and this meeting to-night illustrates this, we have the most 
 active, earnest, vigorous business men that are to be found on earth. Why, 
 abroad they will go to sleep while a man in America is making a fortune 
 (laughter); open their stores at ten o'clock, close them at four; idle behind the 
 counter, seeking no trade. Again, we have the most ambitious, hopeful, 
 reasonable, intelligent laboring people that are to be found. I know that 
 sometimes to employers these days of lively ambition among the laboring men 
 seem to be somewhat irksome; but I tell you, business men of Boston, it is all 
 working together for good, and that the good sense and intelligence of the labor- 
 ing men of this country are to work out nothing but good from the present fer- 
 ment; and I rejoice, myself, in it. (Applause.) 
 
 43 
 
Now, WHY DON'T WE MANUFACTURE FOR THE WORLD? 
 
 Why did we last year bring into our own market I mean the year which 
 ended June 30 last why did we bring into our own market $31,250,000 worth 
 of silk goods? You can manufacture every yard of them here. Why did we 
 bring from abroad $29,000,000 worth of cotton goods made out of cotton raised 
 in our own land? Why should we import $44,900,000 worth of woollen goods? 
 Why should we import $49,250,000 worth of manufactures of iron and steel, 
 when, as I tell you, ninety one-hundredths of our iron is lying untouched in the 
 earth? Why did we import last year $7,250,000 worth of glass, when the 
 material for making glass is lying around here everywhere? Why did we im- 
 port $5,750,000 worth of pottery, when the best clay in the world for making 
 pottery is found in every state of the United States except Florida? Why did 
 we import $12,250,000 worth of the manufactures of hemp, flax and jute, when 
 you can raise hemp and flax in your own country ad libitum? With all the ad- 
 vantages I alluded to in the outset, why is it that we do not manufacture for our 
 own market? Why, there is but one reason, Mr. President, in the race we are 
 handicapped handicapped by cheap labor in Europe and no other reason can 
 be given. (Applause.) 
 
 Cheap labor in Europe. And is labor such a factor in the production of 
 manufactures as to overbalance and overcome all these advantages we possess? 
 Aye, Mr. President, it is; because labor makes up one-half the cost of all manu- 
 factured articles. I do not mean to say that labor is one-half the cost of a 
 cheap piece of cotton cloth, but I mean that the average is one-half labor in all 
 manufactured products. 
 
 How LABOR ADDS VALUE TO MATERIAL. 
 
 I was over at Waltham one day a marvelous workshop and I spent a 
 day there. I was in the office of the Superintendent. He showed me some 
 watch screws ; he said they were screws ; they were so infinitesimal that with the 
 eye I could not tell they were. My curiosity was aroused. I asked him if he 
 could figure out for me what those screws cost. He said he could. He did. 
 What do you suppose they cost a ton by wholesale? Four million six hundred 
 and sixty-six thousand dollars. And the hair springs he showed me $3,120,000. 
 How much is silver worth a ton ? Thirty-two thousand five hundred dollars. 
 How much is gold worth a ton ? Six hundred thousand dollars and a little over. 
 Now, when those screws were lying in the bosom of the earth, what were they 
 worth ? Two dollars a ton. And labor alone has made them worth $4,666,000. 
 Now, the difference between $i and $2 a day on those screws would count, would 
 it not? (Applause.) John Roach, one of the best men that ever lived in America 
 [applause] killed because, though imported from Ireland, he loved America, and 
 was for American ships and American workmen always [applause] John 
 Roach said that 90 per cent of an iron ship was work, going to the forest and 
 mining the coal and iron. So 90 per cent of your machinery is work; so 90 
 per cent of your factory and your furnace and of your forge is work. 
 
 When I was in Dresden I saw a report which the bureau of statistics had 
 just made there, in which they undertook to show the exact cost of factories in 
 the world. They said mills cost in England from $5.79 to $7.60 a spindle; 
 in France, from $8 and a little over to $9 and a little over; in Germany, the 
 same as in France; and in the United States, from $12 to $18 a spindle. Why? 
 Wood is as cheap here as there; so is clay; and the only thing that is not is 
 labor. I was in Paisley. I went there as a matter of great curiosity, for I had 
 known of the thread mills of Paisley. Mr. Clark said it cost from 80 to 85 per 
 cent more to build his mill here than it did to build his mill in Paisley. Mr. 
 Coates said that it cost twice as much to build his mill here. Now, that is labor. 
 So you see that, after all, is the most important factor in the matter of produc- 
 tion. The question as to whether or not they have cheap labor in Europe is a 
 question that must be met and must be understood by men who legislate on the 
 subject of protective tariff, or revenue reform, or whatever they call it. I know 
 that free traders say there is little difference between here and there. I know 
 they say that when you take the cost of living into consideration there is no 
 practical difference that is the usual statement as though the cost of living 
 had anything to do with it. It is the manner of living that tells the story. 
 
 44 
 
Now, let me give you a few illustrations of what I saw, and they will be 
 facts, not fancies. 
 
 I WILL START WITH ITALY. 
 
 "Ah, but we haven't got much competition with Italy. Why go there?" 
 Why, my friends, Italy is one of the coming powers of Europe to-day. Her 
 voice is potent and will be more potent as the years pass by. She has entered 
 upon a new life. She has to-day nearly 30,000,000 of people, and has, in my 
 judgment, the most sagacious ruler in ail Europe, King Humbert. She has a 
 great navy ; she is reaching out for commerce in a way that this great American 
 people never has dared to try. I went into a cotton factory. ' A great many people 
 of the United States hardly know that Italy has entered upon cotton manufacture. 
 But King Humbert says : " I have millions of people here without work, sleeping 
 in the streets," as I have seen them by scores, and as some of you have 
 men and women lying down on the curbstone, with no homes. King Humbert is 
 sagacious enough to say : " If I am going to have a great Italy, a great nation, I 
 must have it a nation of workers, and of men who can live in homes with their 
 families around them." And King Humbert is doing everything in his power to 
 build up Italy as a manufacturing nation, and they have commenced on cotton 
 mills. The agent of this cotton mill happened to be a German who could talk 
 English enough for me to understand. I inquired about his operatives. He said 
 they were first-class workmen, good people ; they did not understand machinery 
 very well, but they were good people to work, both men and women. Said I : 
 " What are the average wages you pay in your cotton mill here in Naples?" 
 " Well," said he, "I pay on the average about $4 a week." Well, that was the 
 old cry, and I didn't believe it. Said I : " Will you be kind enough to tell me 
 how you make your average? " " Yes," said he. " I have to put about two skill- 
 ful men in each room, because Italians do not know much about machinery, and 
 those men are Englishmen. I am obliged to pay them a little better than English 
 wages in order to get them, and I pay them about $7 or $8 a week." " Well," 
 said I, "what do you pay the rest?" "I pay my women from 15 to 18 and 20 
 cents a day, and my men from 35 to 45 cents a day." That is the way he got his 
 average. Now, there was not a score of men there working for $7 or $8 a week, 
 not a score. And that is true in England, in Scotland, in Ireland, in Germany, 
 and everywhere else where you undertake to find out the wages. They will 
 pick out and say, " We pay from $3 a week up to $15." And you get to the 
 bottom of it and you will find they have got two men at $15 a week and 2,000 
 at $3 a week. So that the great bulk, the 90 out of a hundred at work in this 
 cotton mill, were at work for 20 cents a day, for four out of five in the mill were 
 women. How will that be for competition when Italy gets to 100 mills or 200 
 mills ? Will you then look at Italy and make inquiries as to labor there? 
 
 I went into the quarry, not the quarry, but where they were manufacturing 
 the granite and marble which had been quarried. I found that the average rate 
 of wages of the men was from 40 to 50 cents per day, the most skilled getting 
 50 cents ; and that they regard as a high price. Four dollars a day here for the 
 same man. I asked my driver I hunted a long while to find one who could 
 talk English, and I found one who could a little I asked him what he got, 
 and he said he got 30 cents a day and the little tips, pour boires, strangers gave 
 him. A pour boire in Italy is about three cents, I should judge. I went out 
 with him a great many times, and he always carried his dinner with him. Here 
 is a free-trader's cheap living. I asked him three times to show me his dinner, 
 and he showed it to me, and every time it was macaroni and grease. " But he 
 was happy, was he not ? " says the free-trader. The happiest man I ever saw in 
 my life. But do you want your laboring men and women to live on macaroni 
 and grease and be happy ? (Laughter.) 
 
 I went up to Venice and went into the government lace factory there. 
 Fortunately, there I found a man in charge who could talk English, and he was 
 very communicative, too about the only one I found in all Europe who would 
 answer my questions when I asked them. I went over the establishment. It 
 had been long established. He showed me first the work, and it was superlative- 
 ly magnificent laces from $5 to $400 a yard. I then went into the workshop. 
 There were, perhaps, 200 or 300 women and girls at work. I spent two or three 
 hours with him looking through the concern. I finally settled upon one woman 
 
 45 
 
who was doing remarkable work. She was apparently about 70 years of age, 
 but did not turn out to be, I think, over 60. She was working at a piece of 
 thread lace. My recollection is that she was using 200 bobbins at a time. She 
 would move them with a swiftness of speed that I could hardly see them when 
 
 they moved. Said I, " Mr. , that woman is very expert." Said he, " She 
 
 is the most expert woman in this factory; that woman has worked here 40 years." 
 Well, I remembered it. I then went into his office, and said I, " Will you be 
 kind enough to show me your pay-roll?" Said he, "I will, with pleasure; I 
 have nothing to conceal." He showed me his pay-roll. " Now," said I, " point 
 me out the name of the woman whom I saw working there, who had worked 
 there 40 years." He pointed it out. How much do you suppose was the most 
 that woman succeeded in making a day ? Twelve cents, and the average 11% 
 cents. And the average earnings of the women in that mill were 10 cents a day, 
 and of the girls, six and seven cents. They may go into a cotton mill by and by, 
 and then you in Massachusetts will be interested in their wages. 
 
 You can go out there in Venice and hire a gondola that cost nearly $200 or 
 $250, and a gondolier, elegantly dressed ; four men can hire him and pay for ten 
 hours of hard work one dollar. How much does the gondolier get of that 
 dollar? The Lord knows ; I could not find out. That gondolier may be at work 
 in a shop in Italy before you know it, making machinery. They are as fine- 
 looking a set of men as you can find in the United States of America, patriotic, 
 too. Why, you look at that Italian army of 500,000 men, and there is not an 
 army in all Europe, in my opinion, superior in its material; and what do they 
 get ? Two dollars a month. (Laughter.) Well, what do you suppose they get 
 in Germany ? Two dollars and a half ; and a lieutenant gets the enormous sum 
 of $150 a year. That is an indication of wages in Europe. Why, you may go 
 in Venice into one of those shops where they make that beautiful jewelry, no, 
 go into that shop where I went, where they make this magnificent Venetian 
 glass; take the pay-roll, and you may start with the overseer, I think, not, 
 perhaps, with the superintendent, but with the next man to the superintendent, 
 and follow it away down through, and there is not a single man except the 
 blower who gets over one dollar a day ; and you may hunt all Europe through 
 to-day on their pay-rolls, and it is only once perhaps in 100 names that you can 
 find a man who is getting one dollar a day. 
 
 Every inch of Italy is farmed, as you may well suppose, to support 
 30,000,000 of people. You may take every man, woman and child there is in 
 the United States to-day, 60,000,000, add 15,000,000 to them, and drop them 
 right down in the single State of Texas, and it would not be as thickly populated 
 as Italy is to-day. So they farm every inch of land, away to the tops of the 
 mountains, where there is a bit of soil. The women do it. I have seen twenty 
 women in one field. They employ from six to eight persons on an acre of land 
 where we do not employ more than one. What are their wages ? From fifteen 
 to eighteen cents a day, working the livelong day in the hot sun. If with a hoe, 
 with one of these old-fashioned stub hoes that would weigh from three to four 
 pounds, with a handle nearly as large as that bottle, not half so exhilarating 
 as that bottle was. (Applause.) The President desires me to say that this is an 
 Appollinaris bottle, as it sets right in front of him. (Laughter.) I was through 
 there in haying-time, and the women did the haying ; they did it with a scythe 
 like our own bushwhacker, as we call it, only about three inches wider than that. 
 Suppose in a short time they get our agricultural implements in Italy, they will 
 free from that sort of labor four out of five who are at work at it, and they can 
 go into the cotton mills and the silk mills to work against your people at fifteen 
 to eighteen cents a day. 
 
 Go UP TO SWITZERLAND. 
 
 I was at Interlachen, and I stopped at an elegant hotel. I remember Jung- 
 frau was right in front of me. I remember, too, there was a very elegant garden 
 and grounds splendidly laid out, splendidly taken care of. I saw a young man 
 there who was at work from early in the morning till late at night, and I found 
 that he was a landscape gardener. I said : " Mr. Landlord, I want to know what 
 you pay that man? He is a good man, is he not?" "Yes," said he, "he is 
 splendid." Said I, " What do you pay him ? " "I pay him $80 a year and he 
 boards himself, I giving him a few vegetables." (Laughter.) " Well," said I, 
 
 46 
 
" what do you pay those fellows that help him ? " " Well," said he, "that fellow 
 who is working there I pay 35 cents a day, and I can hire just as many as I 
 want for 30 cents a day." His immense herd of cattle had that morning started 
 for the mountains, where they would stay the livelong summer through, and 
 away into the fall, so long as the grass was green on the mountain side, going 
 gradually up the mountain as they ate the grass below. Herdsmen were put in 
 charge of the cattle, lived in little huts on the mountain side, stayed there, and 
 made butter and cheese the whole season through. Said I: " What do you pay 
 your herdsmen ? " Said he : " Forty cents a day is a heavy price to pay herds- 
 men, but I think a great deal of my cows." (Laughter.) Go into a Swiss silk 
 factory and you will find there, competing with your silk manufacturers in the 
 United States, women working for an average of 20 cents a day, and you will 
 find men working for 41 cents a day, skilled laborers, too, in that manufacture. 
 
 STEP UP TO BELGIUM. 
 
 Belgium is a perfect bee-hive. It is about one-third the size of the State of 
 Maine in territory and has 6,000,000 of people more people to the square mile 
 than any other country in Europe. And they seem to love to work. Why, the 
 manufacturing of Belgium is perfectly amazing. Did you know she was fright- 
 ening England to-day out of her boots? Did you know that she compelled 
 Adamson, only about twelve days ago, the president of the British Steel and 
 Iron Association, in his inaugural speech, made in Manchester, in that free-trade 
 country, to say that unless England protected her steel and iron manufacturers 
 against the competition of Belgium by law, England would be driven to the 
 wall in the business ? (Applause.) Did you know that she sold steel and iron 
 rails right under the nose of the British lion within the last year, until Parlia- 
 ment spent almost a whole half day, forgot the Irish question, and talked about 
 Belgium and Belgium iron? (Laughter.) 
 
 Well, how about wages in Belgium? I went into a lace factory in Brussels 
 the first place I went to and I saw women at work there precisely as they 
 worked in Venice. I was able to get information there, and I found that the 
 women there skilled workers earned twenty cents a day. The wages in 
 Belgium are better than the wages in Italy or Switzerland, and about equal to 
 the wages, in my judgment, as near as I could learn, in Germany and France, 
 I think a little better than the wages in Germany to-day. In the cotton factory 
 in Belgium they pay their women from twenty to twenty-five cents a day, and 
 their men from forty to sixty cents a day. You may go into the great steel 
 and iron manufactory and you cannot find on the pay-roll of the whole concern 
 a single laboring man whose daily pay amounts to eighty cents a day not one ; 
 and they run down to forty cents. The women do all the farming in Belgium, 
 and they do it for from sixteen to eighteen and twenty cents a day. 
 
 WORKERS IN GERMANY. 
 
 I went first to Munich, and on the first voyage of discovery I made I saw 
 about a score of women with an awkward-looking saw and a singular-looking 
 block for the wood to rest on, sawing wood in the streets of Munich and carry- 
 ing it on their backs into the stores. I had seen women doing almost every- 
 thing in Italy and Belgium, but I had not seen them doing anything like that, 
 and it struck me as remarkable. And, by the way, the women bear the burden 
 in Europe everywhere. I, having a curiosity to know about that business, went 
 off and hunted up an interpreter. Said I : " I want you to go with me out on 
 the streets. I wish to know about this business that is going on out here. 
 Why, I saw women sawing wood ! " " Oh, nonsense ! that don't amount to any- 
 thing." "But," said I, "I wish to know about it. Go with me." He went 
 with me. "Now," said I, "you ask that woman" [she was about 50 years of 
 age, stout, healthy-looking, sawing this wood, cord wood, into about three sticks 
 each], "ask that woman what she gets a day." He asked her. She said she 
 got, she didn't say fifteen cents, of course, but, translated into English, it was 
 fifteen cents a clay, but that she could not work all day, because she had to go 
 home and see to the children. She could make twenty cents a day if she could 
 work all day. I said to him, " Ask her, in heaven's name, how many children 
 she has and how she takes care of them?" She said she had six. "How does 
 she take care of them with fifteen cents a day?" "Oh," she said, " I get the 
 
 47 
 
first washings of that restaurant," pointing to a hotel, "for ten cents a day, and 
 that feeds them." Does the free-trader in Massachusetts want his women to 
 work ten hours a day, take care of six children, and buy of a restaurant the 
 first washings to feed her children with? 
 
 I saw a very intelligent man 'in Germany, who had studied the subject of 
 wages there, and I asked him if he would talk with me. He said he would. 
 Said he: "I will talk with you freely. I know what you desire, and I wish to 
 tell you that work is not in a fair condition to-day in Germany, although you 
 see they are building mills everywhere." Said I: "I do, and they look prosper- 
 ous." " Well," said he, " manufacturing is not so good as it might be, even in 
 Germany. There are some manufacturers in Germany without souls, and they 
 are actually hiring men and women to-day for anything they have a mind to 
 pay them. They are paying, in one factory I know of, women twenty cents a 
 day for their work, while the average they pay men in Germany is not over 
 fifty cents a day." 
 
 I am aware that the Boston Herald makes this a knock-down argument 
 against protection. [Laughter.] The other day I saw an article in the paper, 
 and it said, " Look at it ! See the fact. Here is Germany paying lower wages 
 to-day than free-trade England. Does not that show conclusively that pro- 
 tection does not protect labor?" Why, how absurd an argument! Does not the 
 Boston Herald know that there is something in the very air of this free country 
 which makes men aspire? Does not that paper know that Germany to-day is a des- 
 potism where the Reichstag, elected for three years, if it does not do the will 
 of the despot, is dispersed, though its life had only been one year? Does not. 
 that paper know that under a despotism the people cannot be elastic, cannot ob- 
 tain their rights, cannot acquire the privileges they can obtain and acquire under 
 a free and independent government like ours? 
 
 Then, again, the question may not be, does protection, per se, increase 
 wages ? Of course it increases wages in but one way. It encourages men like 
 you to invest your money in manufacturing. You build great mills here and 
 there; you have competition. That makes a demand for labor. A demand for 
 labor makes high price of wages. Now we have high price of wages, twice as 
 high as any other country on the face of this earth. Is not the maintaining of 
 these high wages worth something? Does not the Boston Herald know that 
 protection does maintain the high wages that we have? May not the contest in 
 the next twenty years, even in America, be: How shall we maintain our present 
 high wages? If it is, cannot any man see that the protective tariff is certain to 
 assist in that beneficial result and that free trade would simply drag those wages 
 down to European wages? And oh, what a fearful thing that would be for our 
 people. Why, our whole people consume to-day twice as much meat and grain, 
 reckoning potatoes four bushels to a bushel of grain, as any people on this earth 
 except Great Britain. It is an absolute necessity for them to-day. The com- 
 forts which our laboring people enjoy to-day in America are just as much neces- 
 sities of life as the macaroni of the Italian is a necessity for him. When you 
 undertake by free trade to drag these workmen of ours down to the level of 
 Italians, Germans, Frenchmen and Belgians in wages, to make them live as they 
 live, you have done a wicked and cruel wrong to these people, which no amount 
 of good or profit to employers can justify. [Applause.] 
 
 But in order to show that the tariff does something even in Germany, I wish 
 to cite to you the report, both as to the amount of wages paid in Germany and as 
 to the advance caused by protection there, made by the German Statistical 
 Bureau this year. 
 
 " Replies have been received from 233, chiefly large iron works and engineer- 
 ing establishments, 94 of which are owned by limited companies, from all parts 
 of Germany. From the figures of January, 1879" I w ^l not rea d the figures, 
 but these figures show that the number of workme 7 ; increased in eight years by 
 38,000, or 30 per cent, the monthly wages by 30,^8,765 marks, or 39 per cent. 
 In 1879, consequently, each workman earned on an average 61.83 marks per 
 month, or rather under 15 shillings a week. Now there is a commentary on 
 German wages. Mind you, these are the wages of men where they command the 
 very highest wages, in iron and steel; and yet, in 1879 they did not earn $4 a 
 week from 233 establishments. Now, what effect did the tariff have? The tariff 
 increased it in January, 1887, to 66.17 marks, a fraction over 16 shillings and 6 
 
pence, so they earned over $4. There has been an increase of 30,000 employes, 
 and that had resulted in an increase of a shilling and a half a week in wages. 
 Suppose it resulted in doubling the number of employes and you had 360,000 
 more, would not the ratio of increased wages be still greater, because the de- 
 mand is still greater ? And is not the energy displayed by Germany to-day in 
 manufacturing enterprises the result of their German tariff ? 
 
 I learned from this gentleman I alluded to a moment ago that in his opinion, 
 from careful investigation, the earnings of the men in Germany would not 
 average $115 a year, not over that, and that the women would not average 
 over $50 a year. Now there are families to be supported out of that $115. 
 Another man I talked with put it that in Prussia the average earnings of men 
 are not over $105 a year. They refused me admission in more than a do/en 
 establishments ; they would not answer my questions, or, if they did, they would 
 not tell the truth. They do not like to have it known what the wages are in 
 Kurope. 
 
 WHAT WAS SEEN IN GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 Now cross over to England, to Scotland and to Ireland. Take Ireland; 
 you know that it is in a fearful condition, without anybody telling you. You 
 know that you cannot ride through the western portion of Ireland without 
 hundreds of children, men and women following your carriage for miles, asking 
 for a penny to get food to appease hunger. You know there are thousands and 
 tens of thousands of people in Ireland to-day right on the ragged edge of starva- 
 tion. You may imagine the state of affairs where there are thousands and 
 hundreds of thousands of men and women who cannot find employment. Why, 
 there were 250,000 little holdings in Ireland, of five acres each and under land- 
 lords. How did they pay their rent? Why, for six, eight or ten years they used 
 to go over to England and Scotland, hire out to the farmers for the summer, earn 
 a few pounds, save it and take it home to pay their rent, while their wives and 
 little children were cultivating the half acre, the acre or two acres of land they 
 rented. You know as well as I do that that is all cut off, and that there cannot 
 an Irishman hire out to do farming in Scotland or England to-day. You know 
 as well as I do that American competition has killed agriculture in England and 
 Ireland and Scotland; that the people out of employ there are as thick as black- 
 berries; that women do farm work in Ireland for 16 to 18 cents a day, and are 
 glad to get it. 
 
 Take England. My opinion, from the best sources I could reach in Eng- 
 land, is that the average wages there are not one-half of the average wages in the 
 United States of America. I was up in Manchester, and made some inquiries 
 there. They told me that in Manchester there were nearly 90,000 women at 
 work in cotton mills, two-thirds of the work being done by women, and that 
 those women were not averaging $60 a year for their wages. Mind you, you 
 must count out holidays, sick days, feasts, fairs, saints' days, and all that 
 sort of thing; and when you come down to the net at the end of the year you 
 will find that the English laborer is getting but a mere bagatelle. The men in 
 England are not averaging, according to the best light I could get, over $125 or 
 $135 a year. 
 
 Take Scotland, which is a fair test of wages in England. I was in Glasgow, 
 and I felt a profound interest in the Clyde. It had been hurled at my head 
 more than a thousand times since I have been in Congress, the Clyde and the 
 shipbuilding of the Clyde, that they could beat us, that we were handicapped 
 with the tariff, and all that sort of thing. So I took a deep interest in the Clyde. 
 I went up to the Longloam Iron Works. They cover thirty-five acres of ground ; 
 they are right near to the coal and the iron ; the average haul of the coal is two 
 miles, and the average cost of the coal delivered is five shillings a ton. The 
 blast furnaces are seven in number, and the average product is 300 tons of pig 
 iron a day. What are the wages? Laborers from two shillings and two pence to 
 two shillings and sixpence a day. What would a Pittsburg laborer say to that? 
 Skilled labor, three shillings to seven shillings, and more of them at three than 
 at seven. Coal miners, $5.59 to $5.88 a week, and board themselves. Iron 
 miners, from $5.34 to $5.59 a week. Pit-hand foreman, that is one of the 
 high-priced fellows, one of the aristocrats, (laughter) from $6.25 to $6.32 a 
 week. Wages have decreased for five years in Glasgow. And Bright said, in a 
 
 49 
 
speech that he made, that in Glasgow alone 41,000 families out of every 100,000 
 lived each in one room. And I should say, from my observation, that half the 
 men and women in Glasgow to-day were out of work. Now what could you 
 expect wages to be ? And the same is true in England. 
 
 I was in Liverpool for ten days, and almost every day went to look over 
 those docks. I could whistle " Yankee Doodle " almost all over Europe, but 
 when I struck those docks I was silent. I do believe they beat anything in the 
 United States or in the world. I was unusually attracted to them, and in the 
 habit of going down there mornings and afternoons. I am safe in saying that 
 I have seen 500 able-bodied men, looking hungry, as a hungry man looks, 
 stalking about those docks and begging for a little work, not getting it; coming 
 down after dinner, I was going to say coming down after the time men 
 ordinarily eat dinner, their numbers augmented, and beseeching again for work, 
 ten cents' worth, twenty cents' worth, "any work, for God's sake, and to feed 
 my children." How^c^jl.w^ages, be high wheje-that thing endures? 
 
 v lJ ft *t 
 
 How AjtfERjcAN LABOR is" IMPERILED. 
 
 But I am rtoV go^rigi toTweaf y- your ' patience. I have spent enough of your 
 time on the question gf? what wages are worth in Europe. I say, from all my 
 observations made there, and they were made as carefully as I could make them, 
 and in all honesty of purpose, there is only one country in Europe that comes 
 within one-half of our wages, and that is Great Britain; that in Germany, 
 France, Belgium and Switzerland, they are not one-third of our wages, and in 
 Italy not one-quarter. Now, if labor is the factor I said it was, I ask you what 
 you are going to do about that? If it ever was a factor of importance, it is 
 infinitely more important to-day. Why? John Bright, fifty years ago, made a 
 speech in Parliament in which he rather congratulated the English nation on 
 the fact that America was an independent people. He said that the trade of 
 Great Britain with the United States independent was worth a great deal more 
 than it would have been if the United States had remained a British colony ; 
 and then he added this: Said he, "On all the merchandise you have exported to 
 the United States of America during the last thirty years, your merchants and 
 manufacturers have averaged forty per cent net profit." Well, now, forty per 
 cent net profit, fifty years ago, was pretty good protection for a man who 
 wanted to go to manufacturing in the United States. But under the beneficence 
 of the tariff we went to manufacturing, and to-day the net profit of English 
 manufactures in the United States can be counted on the fingers, I guess 
 (laughter), for I understand they sold steel here in the United States for nine 
 pence a pound which they sell at home for twelve and a half pence, and paid the 
 duties besides; I understand that to be the fact. So that they are not making 
 this profit to day. 
 
 Again, you and I can remember when England was an immense distance 
 away from us; when Italy seemed to be away back in the dark ages; when 
 Belgium was equally unknown to us, and Germany was a kind of a myth in the 
 distance. But now all the nations of the earth lock arms ; we are close together, 
 side by side, and they can pour their manufactured goods on you to-day in ten 
 days' time. Why, Manchester to-day is nearer to you than San Francisco is in 
 time, and in freight it is three times as near. So that in the matters of freight, 
 distance, communication, telegraph and everything else, and this extends not 
 alone to the seaboard, but away into the interior of these countries, here we 
 are, locked right up, elbow to elbow, and that makes this matter of cheap labor 
 of infinitely greater importance than it was fifty years ago, and it is growing 
 more important every moment of time. Now what are you Americans going to 
 do about it? Are you going to allow men who call themselves reformers; men 
 who pretend to believe in free trade, an utter absurdity, no nation believes in 
 it, are you going to allow them to strike at your home market? Instead of 
 giving Europe $180,000,000 of your market as you did last year, are you going 
 to give up to them $400,000,000 or $600,000,000? Will you allow these 
 reformers to carry out the purpose which they now so freely express? Will you 
 do it? They say you have duties to-day which are almost prohibitory, and it is 
 not very often that you find a tariff man who does not admit that the duties are 
 high. Now that is a most singular thing. Why have not the tariff men the 
 courage of their convictions ? Is the duty on fine muslins and lace and curtain 
 
 50 
 
iituff too high when under it \ve imported last year $29,000,000 worth into your 
 market where the cotton is grown, and where you can make it as well as they? 
 And yet you never hear a man who talks about reforming your tariff talk about 
 increasing the duty ; it is about decreasing the duties all the time. 
 
 Now I have to say this: I wish to see some of the duties increased. 
 (Applause.) I wish to see a duty put on silk that will prevent 31,250,000 yards 
 being imported into this country. I wish to see duties placed on woollen goods 
 that will prevent $44,900,000 worth being brought into this country. I wish to 
 see a duty laid on the manufactures of iron and steel that will prevent $49,2 50,000 
 worth of their manufactured goods being purchased by us. 
 
 PROTECTING LABOR BUILDS UP THE COUNTRY. 
 
 Now, my friends, I have talked to you a great deal longer than I ought, and 
 have wearied your patience. (Applause and cries of " Go on.") But I confess 
 to feeling a good deal of interest in this matter. I confess that I feel an interest 
 in the American people; that I think a hundred times more of them than I did 
 before I saw the other peoples of the earth; that the most delightful part of my 
 trip abroad was the journey home. I love to see the manufacturing laborers 
 coming out of the mills in my city and to contrast them with the people I saw 
 coming out of the mills abroad. Why, the difference is world-wide. What 
 though the ambitious restlessness of these men may trouble us for a season, is 
 it not infinitely better than that solemn hopelessness that you see in the faces of 
 those operatives abroad ? And is it not better that the weaver of to-day shall be 
 an overseer to-morrow than it is for a man to be content to do to-day what his 
 grandfather or his great-grandfather did a hundred years ago ? Is not all this 
 turmoil and excitement better than the apparent sleep of death amongst the 
 working people of Europe? What though it cause us trouble for a while, as I 
 said before, good will come out of it. Let us make this,American people not 
 worse ; let us make them happy. They are the people who govern this country 
 and control it. This is a government of the people ; it ought to be intelligent 
 and it ought to be comfortable. There ought to be homes and comfort in 
 homes. And every man who works in the United States of America, and is tem- 
 perate and frugal, can have a home under your wages. 
 
 Within the last twenty years, now, we have progressed marvelously under 
 our tariff. It was forced upon us by the war. It was one of the most beneficent 
 things that the war achieved for us, that Morrill tariff. From 1860 to 1870 
 we increased our manufactures over two billions of dollars; and from 1870 to 
 1880 over a billion dollars; and no other country in the whole world increased 
 in the same time over $500,000,000. In 1880 we outstripped Great Britain by 
 $650,000,000 a year, and to-day are richer than she is, are a greater manufac- 
 turing nation. Why should we give up this vantage ground? Why should we 
 trifle with it? 
 
 This splendid meeting to-night; this Home Market Club; the interest 
 which so many gentlemen in this city evince in the purposes of the club; this 
 organization in itself; the fact alone that there is an organization with your 
 purpose, gives me courage and will give the working people of New England 
 courage, too. I tell you, friends, that the protective principle of our tariff is 
 more powerful to-day in this republic than it ever was before ; there are more 
 men who believe in it from principle, more men ready to work for it from 
 principle, and it will not be long before the working men and the working 
 women of this country will see that their only safety is in a protective tariff. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 We want no slave labor. Two million men, with their blood, wiped away 
 slavery forever. We want no labor, either white or black, in a virtual state of 
 serfdom. Labor must be free, with all the perogatives which pertain to free- 
 dom. Vice-President Charles Warren Fairbanks. 
 
 The success of the United States in material development is the most illus- 
 trious of modern times. It is my deliberate judgment that the prosperity of 
 America is due mainly to its system of protective laws. Prince Bismarck. 
 
 
WHAT ENGLISH ADVERTISEMENTS SHOW. 
 
 HERE is PROOF OF THE PREVAILING RATES OF WAGES IN VARIOUS 
 OCCUPATIONS IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Some people will not believe what we in America say about wages in Eng- 
 land. Here is what the Englishmen themselves say in their advertisements, 
 clipped by the Chicago Inter-Ocean from the Yorkshire Post of Nov. 7, 1890. 
 The Post is published at Leeds, the central city of English woollen manufactures: 
 
 WANTED For Christ Church Schools, ex-P. T. as assistant master; 
 Churchman; salary, ^"45. Apply Vicar, High Harrowgate. 
 
 ASSISTANT MASTER (ex-P. T.) WANTED After Christmas; must be com- 
 petent to teach drawing and good disciplinarian. Churchman. Salary, ^50 
 per annum ; might increase this by taking night school. Send copies of three 
 testimonials, giving full particulars, to Vicar, Christ Church, Wakefield. 
 
 The Vicar of High Harrowgate will pay the princely sum of $225 per year 
 for a teacher in the Christ Church School; the Vicar of Wakefield will pay 
 $250, but in this case it is necessary that the teacher should be something of an 
 artist as well as " a good disciplinarian." The lady assistants in our city 
 schools who begin on $350 and have a clear prospect of $800 a year before 
 them, can give thanks that they teach in American and not in English schools. 
 
 Let us see what labor in the trades is worth : 
 
 PLUMBERS WANTED IN LIVERPOOL; wages 8^d per hour; six months* 
 work guaranteed to efficient plumbers. Address Plumber, care Meek, Thomas 
 & Co., Liverpool. 
 
 This is 17 cents an hour, $1.70 for ten hours' work. Our American plumbers, 
 who demand $4 for eight hours' work, can .give thanks that they do not work in 
 free trade England. . 
 
 Or let u^ consider this : 
 
 WANTED STABLE HELP; good experience necessary ; knowledge of team 
 work preferred ; must have lived in good private stables; salary 205. Apply 
 by letter only. H. Blakey, The Stables, Oakwood, Shadwell Lane, Moor- 
 Allerton. 
 
 That is to say, a thoroughly experienced hostler can earn the sum of $4 
 per week in England, and, presumably, without board. The presumption is 
 confirmed by this advertisement : 
 
 WANTED GARDEN LABORER Married; no family; wife to attend to 
 bothies; 195 per week; cottage found. For particulars apply to R. Keightley, 
 Deighton Grove, York. 
 
 Here is a demand for the skilled labor of a gardener and the unskilled labor 
 of his wife for $3.75 per week and the rent of a cottage thrown in. Let us thank 
 God that no skilled labor in America is under such dire pressure as this. 
 
 Let us see how our friends, " the hired help," fare in England. 
 
 AN EXPERIENCED PERSON, not over 35, wanted, to assist with the linen 
 and sewing, and have charge of the Nurses' Home, under the direction of the 
 lady superintendent; wages 20 per annum. Personal application preferred, to 
 the lady superintendent, Infirmary, Bradford. 
 
 This is $100 a year for a very superior person, a lady qualified to superin- 
 tend nurses. The clumsiest " Biddy " in the most economical of American 
 families would not accept such a pittance. 
 
 But here is another offer : 
 
 USEFUL MAID WANTED Good sewer, little dressmaking, willing to assist 
 butler occasionally; 18. County Agency, Knaresbro. 
 
This is $90 a year for a woman who can do all the plain sewing of the 
 family, assist in its dressmaking, and help the butler to wait at table. Such a 
 person would be considered very cheap at $300 a year in Chicago. 
 
 Here is another: 
 
 REQUIRED FOR LONDON, a thoroughly competent and very strong house 
 kitchenmaid; wages ,14; washing paid; three other servants kept, all from 
 Yorkshire; fare paid. Apply Miss Earles, 5 Chester Place, Hyde Park Square, 
 London, W. 
 
 This is $70 a year for a very strong and skilful kitchenmaid, and the in- 
 ducement, " washing paid," leads to suspicion that, generally speaking, English 
 servants have to pay for their own washing out of their very scanty wages. Let 
 the hired girls give thanks to-day for the privilege of living in America. 
 
 But the free-traders will tell us that while wages are very low in England 
 the prices of what labor buys are correspondingly low. 
 
 The free-traders are wrong, as usual. 
 
 The very lowest price they can find advertised for overcoats in the York- 
 shire Post, published in the heart of the woollen district, where clothing is 
 cheapest, is $5. It not seldom happens that in our columns overcoats are ad- 
 vertised at $5 ; we have published advertisements of these garments for less 
 than $5. The lowest price advertised for pantaloons in English newspapers is 
 $2.12 ; the price can be duplicated in any clothing store in Chicago. We might 
 multiply evidence from the columns of the English press in proof that furniture 
 is cheaper here than in England, that medium grades of clothing are as cheap, 
 that many groceries are as cheap, that the average cost of living is not much 
 greater, and that incomes are vastly greater. But we have said enough to give 
 cause for thanksgiving that America is not as England is. 
 
 HERE IS CHEAPNESS. 
 Low WAGES AND LIVING OF OUR EUROPEAN COMPETITORS. 
 
 The " House Industry " in Germany as reported by the United States 
 Commercial Agent at Mayence. 
 
 The State Department at Washington issued in 1890 an interesting report 
 on the manufacturing business carried on in the homes of the workers in 
 Germany, carefully prepared by Commercial Agent James H. Smith, who 
 was stationed at Mayence, and based on a publication by the German Society 
 for Social Politics. 
 
 It is of great interest in this country, because many of the goods thus pro- 
 duced are sold here. It is of special interest at this time because the German 
 Government and certain New York agents of German houses are doing their 
 utmost to get their goods in here at lower duties. 
 
 It appears that fully 350,000 people in Germany are employed by merchants 
 or manufacturers to produce goods in their homes, by hand and by simple 
 machinery. Different kinds of goods are made in different districts, but they 
 embrace most kinds that are produced in our own country factories, such as 
 linen and cotton goods, hosiery, woollens, toys, silk goods, tools, scythes, cutlery, 
 small iron ware, wickerwork, crocheting, embroidery, shoemaking, the manu- 
 facture of clothing, clocks, musical instruments, cigars, etc. Indeed in thirty of 
 the leading branches of industry in Germany, more than 10 per cent of the 
 work is done in the homes of the workers. 
 
 The figures given show the largest number of persons employed in house 
 industry to be in the following branches of industry: (i) Silk and velvet weav- 
 ing, (2) cotton spinning, (3) sewing, (4) linen weaving, (5) hosiery making, (6) 
 making of wearing apparel, (7) wool weaving, (8) weaving of mixed goods each 
 of which has more than 20,000 workers. 
 
 Tables are given showing the numbers of men, women and children engaged 
 in all these industries and the proportions of women, young children and aged 
 people at large. 
 
 53 
 
Then come the following important facts as to hours of labor, wages, style 
 of living, and the food, health and morals of the workers : 
 
 HOURS OF LABOR. 
 
 The hours of labor in the house industry are, in many instances, excessively 
 long. The Thuringian wood carvers sit at their work all day and late into the 
 night. The slate makers work eighteen hours a day. The basket makers in 
 Upper Franconia and Coburg rise in summer at half-past four and in winter as 
 soon as it becomes gray, and work in the height of summer until half-past eight 
 at night, and in winter by lamp-light until late at night. Workers in meerschaum 
 at Ruhla work generally fifteen or sixteen hours a day in summer, usually from 
 four in the morning until eight at night, and in winter from five in the morning 
 until six at night. The makers of musical instruments at Markneukirchen and 
 Klingenthal work twelve hours a day, exclusive of the pauses for rest and meals. 
 The makers of harmonicas in Upper and Lower Sachsenberg and other villages 
 of the Klingenthal district are at their work by five in the morning and seldom 
 quit it before eight at night ; an hour at mid-day (often only half an hour), is the 
 only pause they make, and their breakfasts and suppers are eaten while at work. 
 The hand weavers of Saxony, who work at home, labor from fourteen to fifteen 
 hours a day, while weavers in the factories work only eleven or twelve hours a day, 
 with a pause of one hour at noon and one of fifteen to twenty minutes in the 
 forenoon and afternoon respectively. The nail makers in the Taunus Mountains 
 work over twelve hours a day at severe labor. In making network the women 
 sit at their work from six o'clock in the morning until at least ten at night, with 
 a short respite at noon only, when they take their scanty dinner. 
 
 WAGES. 
 
 The wages paid in house industry are very paltry and allow the recipients 
 only a miserable existence. In the Crefeld district the average wage per loom 
 in 1872 amounted to $126.37; in 1877 to only $108. In 1867 a weaver of velvet 
 of one color earned on an average $2.38 a week; in 1872, $2.85 a week; and in 
 1877, only $2.14. In the Gladbach district the weekly wages on December i, 
 1875, and April i, 1878, of a successful velvet weaver, amounted to only $3.80 
 and $2.14 respectively; of a skillful silk weaver to $3.57 and $2.14 respectively; 
 of less skillful workmen to $2.85 and $1.42, and $2.61 and $1.42 respectively. A 
 swordmaker earned at Solingen in 1877, weekly, $3.10; a polisher, $3.33 ; but 
 each had, on an average, three months of unemployed time in the year. At 
 Remscheid wages were much higher. 
 
 In the Thuringian house industry the earnings of the toy makers in the 
 Sonneberg district average as follows : Of an embosser, aided by wife and chil- 
 dren, to $2.85 or $3.57; of a tuner, to $1.66 and $2.14; of a female worker on 
 doll-baby hair, 80 to 95 cents; of a slate-maker, to $1.42; of a paper-box maker, 
 to 71 cents. Handsome wages! 
 
 At Ruhla the makers of meerschaum pipes earn, when they have full em- 
 ployment, the best of them, $4.28 to $5 a week; ordinary workmen, $2.85 ; and 
 poor workmen, but $1.90 to $2.14. 
 
 The earnings of a family of wood carvers in the high country of the Eisen- 
 ach district, consisting of five members, including two children going to school, 
 is said to be $3.57 to $3.80 a week, when they have full employment and are of 
 the better class of workers. Poor carvers hardly make enough to obtain their 
 daily bread. Cork cutters in the same region are still worse paid, a whole 
 family of them receiving only $1.19 to $1.90 a week. Among the makers of 
 willow ware in Upper Franconia and Coburg, strong men who have the rough 
 work with whole willows to perform, earn only $2.85 to $3.57 a week. Ordinary 
 workmen manage to make only a miserable livelihood. The makers of musical 
 instruments at Klingenthal and Markneukirchen get much better wages than 
 the people just named. In Klingenthal the makers of the different parts of the 
 harmonica earn weekly: straighteners, $i to $1.70; polishers and tuners, 90 
 cents to $3.57; finger-board makers, $2.50 to $3.75; case and frame makers, 
 $2.38 to $4.76; women making bellows, about $1.25. 
 
 In the making of textiles the wages in Saxony for house industries are very 
 poor and oftentimes very fluctuating. In the year 1875 a hand weaver of fine 
 
 54 
 
mull earned $2 a week, but in 1877 only $1.30. In the factories the wages are 
 always higher. The average weekly wages in the Upper Voigtland, in the 
 vicinity of Oelsnitz, of curtain weavers, amounted in 1881 to only $i. In 1882 
 these curtain weavers made from $1.66 to $2.14 a week, while the average weekly 
 wages of a factory weaver of ordinary capacity amounted to $1.73 a week, and 
 of weavers at the Jacquard looms to $3.09. 
 
 The weavers in the Weilerthal earn, in the great body of instances, only 
 $1.14 to $1.71 a week on the average; and to do this it is necessary that two 
 persons should work, one of them from early morning until evening yea, even 
 into the night. 
 
 HOMES OF THE HOUSE WORKERS. 
 
 In view of the meagre wages they receive, the homes of the workers in 
 house industry, which are also their places of work, must necessarily be of a 
 wretched character. 
 
 The places of abode of the Sonneberg toy makers consist, generally, of one 
 large room with a side room, the first of which has to answer as a living-room 
 and a v/ork-room. It has to be heated not only in winter but in summer also, 
 that the toys which are laid on boards before the stove may quickly dry ; and 
 on the stove, water is kept hot all the time, the steam from which escapes into 
 the cooler sleeping-room and adds to the natural dampness. The sleeping-vooms 
 are usually so small that there is room enough in them for only two or three 
 beds put close together, upon each of which two, and often three or four persons 
 sleep. The houses are overcrowded, and cleanliness absent from them. The 
 slate-pencil makers work in very small rooms, three to five in a room, with the 
 windows closed and the dust from the stone thick. Match-makers work, also, 
 in utter disregard of all the laws of health, and cook their food on the same 
 stoves on which the phosphorus and sulphur are prepared. The stench in these 
 rooms to the incomer is almost unbearable. Everything in the house human 
 beings and articles is besmeared with phosphorus, and the cracks in the floors 
 and the separations between the boards show an accumulation of match-heads, 
 matches, dust from phosphorus, and other dirt, while children of tender age just 
 old enough to creep over the floor, can be seen playing in it all. 
 
 In the Eisenach hill country the people in house industry live, also, in 
 miserable habitations. They live and work in houses lightly built, in rooms 
 small and damp, with low ceilings for the most part, which are oftentimes used 
 to sleep in, as well as to live and work in. The beds are often dirty, and several 
 persons frequently sleep together in one. The people are mostly engaged in 
 making corks and carving in wood. Among the basket makers in the same 
 region a room which serves the three-fold use of living, working and sleeping- 
 room is the rule. It has generally a table, a bench, two chairs and two beds in 
 it. The beds are of straw, ill-smelling, with no sheeting over them. The walls 
 of the room are plastered, but dirty, and the floor has dirt on it an inch thick. 
 Then they have a kitchen, in which they keep a clothes-press and a plain 
 bureau. 
 
 The workers in tobacco are in a miserable plight. They work in over- 
 crowded cellars and garrets, with the windows kept tightly closed. It is said 
 that they sit at work in such rooms so thick together that when one will go out 
 all the others in his row have to stand up and lay their stools on the work-table 
 to let him pass. At night a petroleum lamp gives light, and heat an old stove 
 supplies. Here young and old men and women, boys and girls sit together 
 and work their lives out over the smokers' " weed." 
 
 FOOD. 
 
 When habitations are so bad food must be correspondingly inferior. It is 
 meanly simple, and consists chiefly of potatoes ; it is potatoes morning, noon 
 and evening. Chicory coffee, coffee-water, bread, butter, cheese, vegetables, 
 sauerkraut, peas, beans, rice, beer, and milk are also sometimes taken. Meat is 
 rarely partaken of. In Remscheid the people in house industry eat meat three 
 times a week, but in Schmalkalden hardly ever, except when a hog has been 
 raised by the family. In the Weilerthal, and in Markneukirchen or the Kling- 
 enthal, it is, at the most, only once or twice a week that meat is had: in the 
 
 55 
 
Taunus only on Sundays and holidays. In the Saxon Voigtland the rate of 
 consumption of meat has been put for 1875 at 494 pfennigs (u^ cents) per 
 head of the population, and for the whole Kingdom of Saxony at 61.1 pfennigs 
 (i$i cents) per head. 
 
 HEALTH. 
 
 Of course the conditions above set forth impair the physical constitution. 
 In the different districts the number of men found unfit for military duty ranged 
 from 30 to 56 in each 100. 
 
 MORALS. 
 
 Illegitimate births are usually adopted by statisticians as tests of morals. 
 
 Throughout Germany 11.5 per cent of all the children born from 1861 to 
 1870 were illegitimate ; from 1871 to 1880 only 8.9 per cent; but in the town of 
 Voigtland, where house industry is largely carried on, 14.6 per cent of the births 
 from 1868 to 1870 were illegitimate, and in the country 18.8 per cent. In the 
 Markneukirchen district, 16 per cent of the children born from 1865 to 1870 
 were illegitimate, and in the Klingenthal district 22.2 per cent. In Thuringia 
 the people are quite lax in their morals. The foregoing percentages of il- 
 legitimacy are very much larger than any in the United States. 
 
 Now the question is, whether American workingmen and women and 
 children will consent to be deprived of remunerative work that enables them to 
 live in decent fashion, by the free importation of goods made by people ground 
 down and degraded as above set forth. 
 
 The protective tariff is the only thing that prevents, 
 
 WHAT THE "SCRIPPS LEAGUE" WORKERS SAW 
 ABROAD. 
 
 Fifty American working men and women, mostly selected by trades unions, 
 visited the Paris Exposition and the factory towns of Europe, in 1889, and wrote 
 accounts of their observations for a syndicate of American newspapers. In the 
 syndicate were several free trade papers, among them the Boston Globe. Before 
 many of the letters had been published, it became obvious that the facts con- 
 tained in them were damaging to free trade, and the advocates of that cause, 
 notably the Globe, ceased to print the letters. 
 
 But to every American they are of the highest value, because they are non- 
 partisan and all the subjects are treated from the workman's standpoint. Here 
 are a few extracts : 
 
 William Delaney, building tradesman : 
 
 " In no part of Europe do the men live as well as the American mechanic, 
 nor are they housed and clothed as well. They seldom save any money." 
 
 David N. Kendall, woodworker : 
 
 " Only in a very few places can a workman hope to own a house. Workmen 
 seem to be satisfied with close quarters. Workmen generally get along from 
 week to week, and do not seem to trouble themselves further." 
 
 Robert E. Masters, iron-moulder: 
 
 " I found the English iron-moulders earning on the average $8.20 a week. 
 [He gave a careful statement of the cost of the necessaries of life, showing that 
 it was as high or higher than with us.] I could not find any foundryman who 
 owned his own home, or who knew of any one who did." 
 
 A. B. Capron, weaver : 
 
 " The European employee, as I met him, was seen under his best conditions. 
 In wages he was guaranteed a certain amount, and if by extra exertions he could 
 earn over the guarantee he was permitted to do so, but the American working- 
 man on the same plane of life is far better fixed in all that enters into the great 
 sum of existence than his European brother. The thing that pained me most 
 was the too plain evidence of mastership and servitude even between manager 
 
 56 
 
and employee. The self-respect of the American toiler was wanting in nearly 
 every instance. The greater portion of the help employed in the mills I have 
 visited are females, and they range from the child of ten or twelve years to the 
 gray-haired matron. The children are rather puny, and the mothers are gaunt, 
 hungry-looking creatures, and have a pallid look that is far from interesting. 
 Their working clothes would not bring a shilling to the individual ; they work in 
 their bare feet on stone floors, and their heads look as though the use of a comb 
 would be a torture. Bread and beer seem to be the staple articles of diet, and 
 it is a common practice to send a girl child of about the size of the can she 
 carries for the beer that is to wash down the bread. How the bread comes to 
 the house is beyond my ken." 
 
 Adrian Dorin, baker : 
 
 " Our men have better homes, some of them homes of their own, and in 
 Europe you will find few bakers who have homes of their own. The American 
 baker is getting more money and works no longer than the European baker. 
 The American baker, I think, lives more happily and is much better off in every 
 way." 
 
 Archibald S. Davis, painter and decorator : 
 
 " Butter is an unknown article on the workingman's table. The price of 
 provisions in the Old World is on many articles much dearer than in America. 
 In my opinion the American workman in my trade is better fed, better paid, 
 better clothed and better housed than his European brother." 
 
 W. T. Lewis, miner : 
 
 " I found the English miners earning from 50 cents to $i per day, and the 
 women 36 cents. The cost of living for necessaries will average 10 per cent 
 higher than in the United States." 
 
 A. T. Anderson, tin-worker : 
 
 " The wages of the American tinner are from 50 to 100 per cent higher than 
 in the countries visited. The foreign mechanic lives cheaper than the American 
 because he eats a cheaper kind of food. The variety of food which adorns his 
 table is very limited indeed. Our necessaries are his luxuries. On the whole, 
 the condition of the working people of the Old World is by no means as good 
 as of the same class here ; and if the American workman would live as they do, 
 he could save from one-fourth to one-half his gross earnings." 
 
 " Free trade between nations will sooner or later bring the price of labor 
 wages to the same level the world over, and that level will be the lowest figure 
 to which tyranny and misgovernment can reduce the laborers anywhere." Prof. 
 W. D. Wilson, of Cornell University. 
 
 A NEW DANGER. 
 
 MILLIONS OF TEN CENTS A DAY WORKERS READY TO RUN 
 MACHINERY. 
 
 Manufacturing in India Another Market lost to England The 
 small Cost of bringing foreign Goods to America Official State- 
 ments of Wages in the Orient. 
 
 {From a Speech by Albert Clarke, Secretary of the Home Market Club, at Great 
 Barrington, Mass., August if, s8gf.] 
 
 It is not alone the cheap labor of Europe that pur wage earners would have 
 to compete with if protection were removed. During the last few years cotton 
 manufacturing has been a growing industry in Bombay. About $60,000,000 of 
 British capital have already been embarked in it, and as capital usually goes 
 wherever it can be most profitably employed, I see no reason why manufacturing 
 
 57 
 
should not greatly increase in the oriental countries. Together they comprise a 
 population of 700,000,000, mostly toilers, who are as docile, ingenious, plodding 
 and productive workers as the world contains. They have no such ideas of 
 civilization as we have. No weekly payments, no employers' liability laws, no 
 eight hour problems trouble capital over there. Last winter the Textile Mercury 
 of Manchester, England, published a letter from Mr. Will. Clark, formerly of 
 Bolton, England, who is employed in a cotton mill in Bengalore, India, in which 
 he wrote : 
 
 " I have not seen a white face since October ; all here are black as night and 
 almost naked. We work from light to dark. Sundays, too (no Factory Act 
 here), and we only stop the engine a half hour for dinner. Our hands only get on 
 an average six annas per day, which is equal to five pence." 
 
 Commenting upon this, the Canadian Manufacturer of February 20, 1891, 
 thus showed the effect of the British policy which is now beginning to be 
 terribly felt at home: 
 
 Great Britain will not permit India to levy an import duty upon cotton 
 \ goods manufactured in Britain, and until recently Britain supplied about all the 
 1 cotton goods consumed in India. But now India is manufacturing her own 
 cotton goods with labor costing but ten cents a day, and the British laborers 
 who formerly found employment in making cotton goods for the Indian market 
 are in idleness, forming a contingent of that submerged tenth of Britain's popu- 
 lation so graphically described by General Booth in his "Darkest England." 
 
 China and Japan are also introducing cotton machinery, and it will be but a 
 few years before they will supply their own demands. The deft hands which 
 make their marvelous silks and pottery can certainly run any kind of modern 
 machinery after becoming familiar with it, and with that machinery and the Euro- 
 pean and American capital which would be sure to flow to them if they could have 
 free access to the markets of the world, it would be but a few years longer before 
 they would or easily might supply the people of all countries with nearly every 
 form of manufactured goods. 
 
 Look at their wages. 
 
 The U. S. Consular Report of September, 1887, shows that in China the 
 current wages of an able bodied young man, with board, are $12 per annum. 
 
 The U. S. Consular Report for December, 1884, shows that in Japan male 
 hands are paid from $8.60 to $12.90 per annum, with food and lodging, and 
 females $6 per annum. 
 
 British official reports give the wages in different districts of British India 
 as follows: In Delhi, males 6 cents a day, females i}4 cents, children i cent. In 
 Kurnal the highest permanent wage is 50 cents a month. In Borat, men em- 
 ployed by the year get 80 to 100 pounds of grain per month to live on and from 
 44^ cents to $1.98 per annum in wages. In Bombay and Madras laborers are 
 paid 6 to 1 2 cents a day ; by the year, without food, 60 cents a month : with food, 
 22^5 cents a month. 
 
 Now the practical question for every wage earner in Massachusetts and in 
 all the United States to consider, is, How long could the present rate of wages, 
 or anything like it, be maintained in this country if the goods that may be 
 easily produced by those foreign toilers could be brought to our markets free of 
 duty ? 
 
 The ocean is no longer much of a barrier. The cost of transportation is so 
 low that Scotch granite and Italian marble are often brought over as ballast. I 
 made an investigation and published the figures a few months ago, showing that 
 nearly all products of English mills are brought to Boston for less money than 
 it costs to carry the products of Boston factories no further inland than Spring- 
 field. 
 
 Mr. E. A. Hartshorn, of Troy, stated the following interesting fact in an 
 article published a few months ago : 
 
 A four-masted 2900 ton iron sailing vessel recently came into the port of 
 New York laden with Asiatic products, having made the voyage from Calcutta 
 in 109 days. Twenty-nine men at fifty cents a day, costing $1580.50, or fifty-four 
 and one-half cents a ton, had sailed the great ship successfully during the long 
 voyage. If we double the amount paid for labor to cover other expenses, the 
 cost of the trip is only $1.09 per ton, or less than six cents per 100 pounds. 
 
 58 
 
Hence it will be seen that goods are being carried a thousand miles by sea almost 
 as cheaply as a dozen miles by land, and a mill in New York city has no more 
 advantage in freight over a competing mill in Calcutta than over a similar mill 
 in Paterson, New Jersey. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that the cotton cloth now manufactured in Bombay can 
 be transported to New York for less than one mill a yard. It is made on 
 machinery precisely like that employed in British and American mills. The 
 labor cost of its production is not one-tenth the labor cost here. There is no 
 limit to its production but the world's capacity to buy. 
 
 When our "tariff reform" friends are confronted with these facts, they 
 say, " Very well, wherever goods can be produced the cheapest, that is the place 
 to buy them." 
 
 And when asked what will become of the more than three millions of pros- 
 perous wage earners now employed in American mills their hard answer is, " Let 
 them do something else." 
 
 Gentlemen, a political party which espouses such a cruel policy as that 
 merits the opposition of every civilized man and deserves to be consigned to 
 everlasting infamy and defeat. 
 
 BRITISH LABOR AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 A remarkable Letter from a Trades Union Secretary The 
 World's Markets Gone, England now Needs Protection. 
 
 In January, 1891, the Manchester (Eng.) Courier printed a most thoughtful 
 and courageous letter from Mr. William V. Jackson, general secretary of the 
 National Union of Paper Mill Workers of Great Britain and Ireland, in which 
 is the following able review of the industrial situation, opportunity and duty in 
 the United Kingdom : 
 
 The diminution of our previously profitable husbandry, especially tillage, 
 and all the rural industry clustering around and sustained by a thriving agricul- 
 ture, has driven the discharged and frozen-out rural workpeople and tradesmen 
 into the large towns to swell the crowds of competing and suffering laborers 
 there. In like manner the transitions which have taken place under our non- 
 reciprocated free import system, suppressing and extinguishing, after a long 
 process of affliction, a variety of productive industries, has had a like effect. 
 This appears to be going on unchecked by any of the usual devices of Nation- 
 alist and Democratic communities, out of deference to the inexplicable delusion 
 of so-called free trade, or the exigencies of political parties unable or unwilling 
 to grapple with the question. 
 
 OUR CONTROL OF THE WORLD'S MARKETS GONE. 
 
 We have no longer either the monopoly of improved industrial appliances, 
 which we once enjoyed, nor have we the aggressive trade and military and naval 
 spirit of Pitt's and Nelson's time, so that we do not now command the slightest 
 consideration for our equitable trade interests on the part of foreign states. 
 77/6' consequence is that they are either compelling us to work more cheaply, through 
 our having to sacrifice profit to pay their re-venue duties, or they are restricting and 
 excluding our produce upon their markets by raising duties to a protective 
 standard. 
 
 THEORETICAL PREDICTIONS FALSIFIED. 
 
 We have thus entirely falsified, in our late experience, the doctrines and 
 the predictions of the commercial doctrinaires who persuaded the country into 
 a free import policy. We have not got the free trade promised. There is no such 
 thing. 
 
 HOSTILE TARIFFS MEAN REDUCTION OF PROFIT AND WAGES HERE. 
 
 The consumer abroad is not in every case paying the duty imposed on our 
 produce, but we are compelled to sell at a sacrifice determined by the duty, and, 
 lastly, we are not paying for our imports by our exports. 
 
 59 
 
 
PAST PROFITS PAYING PRESENT CONSUMPTION. 
 
 In regard to the last point, it is quite clear that we are paying for these with 
 our capital previously lent, which if not repudiated comes over in this form. 
 We are thus robbing the principal producers of the country, and using their 
 capital in order to enrich irresponsible and cosmopolitan capitalists, and develop 
 the resources of foreign and hostile states, while we starve and congest our own. 
 It is the bounden duty of trades union leaders to call attention to these things, 
 and to be able to consider them fearlessly and dispassionately. 
 
 Secondly, trades unions, in recognizing these economic factors in the indus- 
 trial problem, have now to 
 
 DISTINGUISH BETWEEN CAPITAL AND CAPITAL. 
 
 They have to distinguish between the capital embarked in the same boat with 
 labor and in honest and responsible partners Jiip with it which we will call 
 national and productive capital and the capital employed in distribution and in 
 pure speculation, which is in no sense either national or responsible, or in sym- 
 pathy with the land and the labor of England, Ireland, or Scotland. This latter 
 we may call irresponsible and unproductive capital, so far as our commonwealth 
 is concerned. On these grounds I wish to urge two practical steps. 
 
 ADAPT COMMERCIAL TREATIES TO PRESENT TIMES. 
 
 First, let the expiry of commercial treaties (1892) with foreign states be 
 made the occasion of reconsidering our trade and fiscal policy, with a view 
 of adapting it to existing facts, and not of abstract dreams. Let us look to the 
 prosperity of Ireland, Scotland and England in production, and in some grand 
 imperial trade union with India and our Colonies. 
 
 WOOLLEN MILL OPERATIVES. 
 
 Below is a table showing the average weekly rate of wages paid in woollen 
 factories in the United States (Massachusetts), France (Rheims District), Eng- 
 land (Yorkshire District), and Germany (Rhenish District). It is impossible 
 to doubt the accuracy of this table, as Carroll D. Wright is responsible for the 
 United States figures, ex-Consul Frisbie for those of France, Robert Giff en for 
 the English, and ex-Consul Du Bois for those of Germany. 
 
 England. Germany. 
 
 $5-76 $5.50 
 
 2.40 2.50 
 
 1. 80 1.90 
 
 6.00 6.60 
 
 5-00 5.25 
 
 3.00 3.00 
 
 i. 80 1.90 
 
 2.50 2.40 
 
 4.80 4.25 
 
 3.48 4.00 
 
 5.50 5.00 
 
 3-35 3-oo 
 
 TIN-PLATE MAKERS. 
 
 Comparison of their wages in Wales and the United States. 
 
 Mr. Wilkins Frick, formerly secretary of the Wales Tin-Plate Makers' Asso- 
 ciation of Swansea, gives the rates of wages paid to labor in tin-plate making in 
 Wales and in the United States, as follows: 
 
 60 
 
 Occupation . United States . 
 
 WOOL SORTERS. 
 Men - So. /i -2 
 
 France. 
 
 #5-82 
 2.70 
 2.00 
 
 6.50 
 
 6.00 
 
 3.00 
 
 2.OO 
 3-00 
 
 4.67 
 4.00 
 6.2 5 
 
 3-75 
 
 Women .... 
 
 6.00 
 
 Young Persons . 
 SPINNERS. 
 Men (Overseers) . 
 Spinners .... 
 
 . 5-i2 
 
 . I2.OO 
 Q O^ 
 
 \Vomen .... 
 
 6 18 
 
 Young Persons 
 Piecers .... 
 WEAVERS. 
 Men . . 
 
 4.81 
 . 5.00 
 
 8 
 
 "Women .... 
 
 oo 
 
 7 4.S 
 
 Mechanics . . . 
 Laborers . . . 
 
 . 13.40 
 . 8.58 
 
English 
 
 rates. rates. 
 
 Roller and catcher (combined), per day ... $3.14 $8.05 
 
 Doublers, per day 1.92 3.85 
 
 Furnacemen, per day 1.75 3.50 
 
 Opener, per day 52 1.75 
 
 Shearer and assistants (paid for product of four 
 
 mills in both countries), total earnings per day 10.13 32.00 
 
 Ore men, per week 7.20 25.00 
 
 Boys, rolling, per day 40 1.25 
 
 Catching, per day 28 i.io 
 
 Greasing, per day 20 .75 
 
 Foreman and roll turner, per week 14.40 25.00 
 
 Mason, bricklayer, per day 1.44 3.00 
 
 Blacksmith, per day 1.32 2.75 
 
 Millwright, for repairs 1.44 3.00 
 
 WINDOW-GLASS WORKERS. 
 
 Table of wages paid in Plank Lane, England, and in 
 Pittsburgh, America. 
 
 Mr. James Campbell, president of the Window Glass Workers' Association, 
 furnishes the following table of wages at two principal places of production in 
 free trade England and protective America: 
 
 Percentage 
 
 Plank Lane, Pittsburgh, American 
 England. 
 
 Assorters $6.72 
 
 Cutters 5.28 
 
 Teasers 6.84 
 
 Coal wheeler 5.36 
 
 Master teaser 8.46 
 
 Lear tender 2.88 
 
 Wheel turner 2.88 
 
 Blacksmith 6.72 
 
 Pot maker 8.40 
 
 Common laborer 4.08 
 
 Batch mixer 5.76 
 
 Blow furnace man 5.04 
 
 Packer 5.76 
 
 Clerk 2.40 
 
 Clerk 3.60 
 
 Clerk 
 
 Pittsburgh, 
 
 America. 
 
 $25.00 
 
 25.00 
 
 1 2.60 
 
 15.00 
 
 23.62 
 
 11-35 
 
 13.30 
 
 25.00 
 
 25.00 
 
 9.OO 
 
 7.20 
 
 I2.OO 
 20.00 
 12.00 
 18.00 
 25.00 
 
 to English. 
 
 $372.02 
 47348 
 184.21 
 
 279.85 
 279.19 
 394.09 
 461.80 
 372.02 
 297.61 
 220.58 
 226.56 
 238.09 
 347.22 
 500.00 
 500.00 
 
 347-22 
 
 AN ENGLISH COMPARISON. 
 
 And how Protection Benefits what the Free Traders Call the " Un- 
 protected" Industries. 
 
 Reynold 1 s Newspaper, an English workingmen's organ, of March 29, 1891, 
 contained the following brief comparison of English and American wages in 
 some of the leading trades : 
 
 " The contrast in the payment of artisans and laborers generally between 
 that of the United States and European countries is very marked. Printers in 
 New York are paid 543. per week, painters 543., plumbers 625., tailors 585., shoe- 
 makers 623., carpenters 443., masons 563., smiths 503., tinsmiths 503., and bakers 
 423. It may be said that, considering the cost of food, these wages are not so 
 out of proportion, but this is a delusion." 
 
 " The wage paid (in the United States) to the workingman is nearly double, 
 on an average, that paid to him in this country." 
 
 6r 
 
" The workingman in the great Republic can live comfortably on the same 
 wage as the workingman in this country." 
 
 It will be noticed that several of the industries mentioned are what free 
 traders in this country speak of as "unprotected" such as smiths, masons, 
 etc. But really their protection is the most complete of any, because stone 
 walls and brick houses cannot be imported, and men do not go abroad to get 
 their horses shod or bread baked, and the wages of the men employed in these 
 industries are gauged by standards in other trades near by, which are determined 
 by the general prosperity. 
 
 But nearly all agricultural and manufactured products are subject to foreign 
 competition. Nothing can be more certain than that a cheap labor country, 
 having machinery and the knowledge of its use, would supply the market of 
 any higher wage country, in the absence of protection, and thus deprive its 
 labor of employment or bring its wages down. 
 
 In view of this self-evident truth, how can any American wage earner vote 
 for Democratic candidates, when the policy of that party, as repeatedly de- 
 clared in its platforms, is to make imports free ? 
 
 WAGES IN MEXICO. 
 
 A California paper says that in Mexico stone masons and brick-layers get 
 75 cents a day ; hod-carriers 44 cents a day. Laborers receive 31 to 37 cents a 
 day. These wages are paid in a debased coinage, so the rate is 25 per cent less 
 than the amounts named, the bricklayer and mason receiving in our money 
 about 57 cents a day. [This was before Mexico adopted the gold standard.] 
 
 The duty on imported clothing is 100 per cent, so a skilled mechanic could 
 earn a suit of common San Francisco clothes in one hundred days, and he could 
 then devote some time to earning food, paying rent, clothing his family, and so on. 
 
 Under the wise policies of President Diaz, manufacturing has increased in 
 Mexico and wages have advanced. The gold standard has been adopted, and, 
 therefore, wages are not reduced one-half by cheap money. Most of the rail- 
 roads and mines and some of the factories are owned by Americans. But 
 labor is still very cheap there. Cheap foreign labor under American guidance 
 makes protection necessary here. 
 
 WHAT MAKES PAUPERS. 
 
 Prof. Richard T. Ely, of Johns Hopkins University, discusses pauperism in 
 an interesting article in the North American Review, from which the following is 
 an extract : 
 
 " Inquiry was made at the Prison Association two years ago as to the chief cause 
 of crime, and every expert in criminal studies was reported to have replied, ' bad 
 homes and heredity.' The same reply may be given as to the causes of pauper- 
 ism. In London Mr. Charles Booth not General Booth attributes from 13 
 to 14 per cent of the cases to intemperance. There are others who attribute a 
 much larger percentage of pauperism to intemperance, but nearly if not quite al- 
 ways a minority. Lack of employment, or involuntary idleness, is a more 
 prominent cause of pauperism, and undoubtedly many cases of intemperance 
 may be traced back to a period of involuntary idleness. The number of unem- 
 ployed in England and Wales has been placed at six million, and in the United 
 States at over one million, and an extremely small percentage is due to strikes or 
 lockouts. Industrial crises are a chief cause of modern pauperism, it having 
 been observed in every modern nation that the number of tramps and paupers 
 increase immensely during a period of industrial depression. Many men, while 
 seeking work during these periods, fall hopelessly into vagabondage and pau- 
 perism, and those dependent upon them are thrown upon the public." 
 
 If Prof. Ely had not been a theoretical free trader, he probably would have 
 drawn the obvious lesson from the foregoing that the way to avoid industrial 
 crises in this country is to oppose general reductions of the tariff. Adequate 
 protection against foreign goods keeps our labor employed. Every attempt to 
 lower it has closed mills and opened soup houses. 
 
 62 
 
Free trade has nearly ruined British agriculture, the value of farms and 
 buildings having fallen ,800,000,000 since 1846. This has driven a million farm 
 laborers into the cities and towns to swell the armies of the unemployed. Sir 
 Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the present Prime Minister of Great Britain, said in 
 1903 that 30 per cent of the population of that country " is on the verge of 
 hunger." This is because the free entry of foreign products deprives the people 
 of the opportunity to produce for themselves. It is free trade or low duties, 
 therefore, that makes paupers. 
 
 WAGES IN MASSACHUSETTS AND GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 In 1897 the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor published an elab- 
 orate comparison of wages in Massachusetts and Great Britain. It shows that 
 from 1860 to 1883 wages here were 75.4 per cent, higher than there, in 88 indus- 
 tries here and 58 there. In 1897 wages in Massachusetts were 28.56 per cent 
 higher than they were in 1860 (they are now 10 per cent higher still), while the 
 advance in Britain was only 9.74 since 1872. The grand result of the compari- 
 son is that wages are 77 per cent higher here than there and that the average 
 cost of living is 17.29 per cent higher here than there, although it is much better 
 living here, 
 
 EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN WAGES. 
 
 \Neiv York Commercial^ 
 
 It is a fact generally known that the American workman receives the highest 
 wages paid in any country in the world. Some statistics recently compiled by 
 the Labor Bureau at Washington give a fair idea of the relative welfare of the 
 British, French, Belgian and American workman from 1870 to 1902. The rate 
 given is the average per day : 
 
 Great United 
 
 Britain. Paris. Liege. States. 
 
 1870 $1.30 $I.o6 #0.69$ $2.20 
 
 1876 1.40^ 1. 12 0.63 2.l8 
 
 1886 1.39 i. 25! 0.63 2.47^ 
 
 1896 1.49 1.33 o.66i 2.45! 
 
 1902 1.45 1.34 0.65 2.50 
 
 The Labor Bureau's statistics show that the department-store girls of 
 Chicago average $329 a year, which is more than is earned in a year, even on 
 the basis of 300 working days a year, by Belgian brickalyers, carpenters, black- 
 smiths, house painters, teamsters or laborers. The sum is also larger than the 
 amount annually earned by common laborers in Great Britain or France. 
 
APPENDIX C. 
 A WORKING PEOPLE'S PARADISE. 
 
 LETTERS OF A BRITISH FREE TRADE EDITOR WHO VISITED 
 THIS COUNTRY IN 1893. 
 
 Plain Facts and Comparisons with his own Country. 
 
 Few letters by a foreign tourist have ever been written from this country 
 which displayed so clear an insight of its conditions of labor and living, and 
 which have attracted so much attention for their engaging style, their candor 
 and fairness, as those of MR. LASCELLES CARR, editor of the Western Mail, of 
 Cardiff, Wales, which were written to his journal in the spring of 1893. After 
 he had visited New York and Philadelphia, he wrote as follows of what he 
 called 
 
 "A WORKING PEOPLE'S PARADISE." 
 
 The more I see of this wonderful country and the further my inquiries reach, 
 the more satisfied I am that it is the paradise of the working man, and especially 
 of the working woman. Wages are high and the cost of living comparatively 
 low. The margin between the amount of money necessary for a bare subsist- 
 ence and the ordinary wage-rate is larger than anywhere else in the world. If a 
 working man and his wife and family were content here to live as they live in 
 England they could save money very rapidly. But they are not so content. 
 Except in the matter of house accommodation, their circumstances are in every 
 respect better than are those of their English brethren they eat better and 
 more varied food, they dress better, they have at least as good means of educa- 
 tion and other sources of intellectual and social recreation. They are free from 
 any sense of the indignity of labor. 
 
 Yesterday evening I stood at a ferry in Jersey City and saw the work girls 
 trooping over in the boat from New York. The crowd was composed of much 
 the same social elements as those of which the crowd passing over Blackf riars 
 Bridge consists. But, oh ! what a difference in the appearance of the two sets 
 of girls. These New Jersey girls were neatly and appropriately dressed, and 
 not one of them but wore decent, well-fitting, and, in some cases, quite elegant 
 boots and shoes. They walked and spoke and in every way behaved themselves 
 as ladies. Mind you, this is no reflection on our English girls ; it is only a re- 
 flection on the system under which the working classes are fain to accept such 
 a rate of wages as puts neat clothes and good boots and the elegance and pro- 
 priety of behavior which accompany the surroundings of well paid labor beyond 
 their reach. Men and women here all seem alike prosperous, respected and self- 
 respecting. 
 
 LETTER FROM PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 I have several times alluded to the condition of the working man in this 
 country. The further my inquiries extend the more convinced I become that 
 the real truth of the matter is that in this country a workman earns nearly twice 
 as much as he would in England, and the cost of his living, except in the matter 
 of rent and clothing, is about the same. Even in the matter of clothing the 
 difference is not great, except in so far as it is brought about by the general use 
 of much better clothing by the artisan in this country than in England. As for 
 the rate of wages prevailing here, the waiter at my table to-night told me he was 
 an Englishman who had settled in America for ten years. His earnings, he said, 
 were double -what they were in the old country, and whereas his wife, a fore- 
 
 64 
 
woman in the scarf department of Messrs. Morley, in London, earned 253. a 
 week, here in Philadelphia, in a similar capacity, she earned $10 (over 6os.) a 
 week, and had all Saturday and one other afternoon in the week to herself. 
 What nonsense to compare the conditions of this family with that of an ordin- 
 ary waiter in England, and say the Philadelphia man is worse off because he 
 has to pay 53. a week more rent. It is true he does pay an increased rent 
 here, but what does that matter when, as a matter of fact, he lets off enough of 
 his house to leave him rent free ? Another illustration of the American wage- 
 rate was given in this morning's New York paper. It was announced that the 
 Philadelphia Railway had, unsolicited, raised the wages of the men working on 
 their line. The porters and baggagemen are divided into three classes. The 
 lowest of all gets, under the new scale, $45 a month, or 455. a week, and the 
 highest $65, or 3 53., a week. Compare that with the rates of pay prevailing 
 on the Great Western Railway. He would be a lucky porter there who would 
 get half the money. 
 
 LETTER FROM YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO. 
 
 Commencing with the working men, it appears to me clear that their stand- 
 ard of comfort and living is higher than it is amongst the corresponding class 
 in Britain. Here a very large proportion of them live in their own freehold 
 houses. Land is no cheaper in the towns of America than it is in Cardiff. In- 
 deed from all inquiries made, it appears to be nearly twice as dear. But, being 
 freehold, there are no restrictions by landlords on the class of buildings that 
 should be erected, and, the municipal authorities being equally complaisant, a 
 man finds that he can get a plat of land for ^40 or ^50, and then for another 
 j5o to ;ioo can erect a commodious six-roomed house. You will ask how it is 
 that with labor so dear in this country a man can build a house so cheaply. 
 The answer is contained in the one word wood. In Pittsburg nine-tenths of 
 the houses, from the mansions and villas of the middle and wealthiest classes 
 down to the humblest workman's cottage, are built of " lumber." They are 
 called " frame " houses. 
 
 As regards the cost of food in the United States, it varies, of course, in 
 various localities, but, generally speaking, it may be said to be as cheap, or 
 if anything cheaper, than in England. 
 
 ALL THIS PUZZLES A FREE TRADER. 
 [Letter from Chicago^ 
 
 Mixing as I have done of late amongst all classes of Republican workmen 
 and manufacturers having witnessed the phenomenal prosperity alike of 
 capital and labor informed as I have been of the extent and strength of the 
 enormous interests created by the American policy of protection, I cannot help 
 realizing the fact that those of our English people are living in a fool's paradise 
 who believe that the result of the recent Democratic victory in this country, al- 
 though based on the cry of Tariff Reform, will result in any measure that will 
 open the markets of the United States to the manufactured goods of England 
 or the Continent of Europe. There is no American statesman living who dare 
 precipitate such a national economic crisis. It would not be reform it would 
 be revolution. I am, as you know, a convinced free trader. Protection is to me 
 an economic heresy, the fraud and folly of which are capable of mathematical 
 demonstration demonstration as absolutely convincing as that by which the 
 solution of a problem in Euclid is arrived at. And yet, throughout the length 
 and breadth of this vast continent, one is almost daily brought face to face with 
 solid, indisputable facts, that seem to give the lie to the soundest and most uni- 
 versally accepted axioms of political economy. Let me give you just one 
 example. Under the shadow of a stringent protective tariff the manufacture of 
 paper was commenced in the United States. Paper is still subject to a heavy 
 import duty. According to our theories, that ought to enhance its price to the 
 consumer in this country. As a matter of fact, the New York newspaper pro- 
 prietors buy their "news" at a less price than that at which it could be supplied 
 to them in London, and some of the paper mills are actually exporting paper to 
 the old country. Unless it can be shown that this paper industry would have 
 grown up without the aid of a protective tariff, it is futile nay, it is an im- 
 
 6 
 
 OF 
 
 UN!V 
 
 | UNI 
 
pertinence for an outsider to say that the Americans have acted unwisely in 
 taxing themselves for a few years in order to establish in their midst a great in- 
 dustry giving occupation to a great quantity of highly paid labor. And it seems 
 to me that this set of facts and the arguments based on it apply to many of the 
 other industries which are assuming such colossal proportions throughout the 
 length and breadth of the land. 
 
 FOREIGN LABOR IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
 
 What immigrants do after they come to Massachusetts is shown by statis- 
 tics in the bulletin issued in 1906 by Ghief Pidgin of the Bureau of Statistics of 
 Labor. It appears that nearly one-half, or 49.02 per cent, of the persons em- 
 ployed by local Governments are foreign born or of foreign descent, and of the 
 common laborers in the State, 73.50 per cent are foreigners. Considering all 
 the productive industries as a whole, Chief Pidgin finds that more than three- 
 fifths of the persons employed are foreigners. He finds that as a rule the immi- 
 grants engage in manufacturing activities. This class takes 69.30 per cent of 
 the Irish who engage in productive industries, 60.41 of the English, 44.95 of the 
 Canadians, 57.04 of the Germans, 43.36 of the Nova Scotians, 53.89 of the Scot- 
 tish, 48.53 of the Swedish, 51.29 of the Russians, 34.33 of the Italians, 40.85 
 of the Portuguese, 59.80 of the Poles, 47.15 of the French and 53.23 of the 
 Welsh. Common labor does not seem to appeal very strongly to any other than 
 those coming from Italy, Portugal, Poland, Ireland, Wales, Newfoundland, 
 France and Canada, Russians have the highest percentage in the trades, which 
 is accounted for by the fact that so many of the Jews coming from Russia 
 remain true to traditions and start into business here on a small scale. In the 
 domestic service the immigrants from Sweden, Prince Edward Island, Nova 
 Scotia and Ireland show the highest representation. 
 
 In the professional rank there is no branch so foreign in its composition as 
 that of religion. More than half of those engaged in religious work are of for- 
 eign birth or descent; one-third of the artists and musicians, more than two- 
 fifths of those engaged in amusement enterprises, and a quarter or more of 
 those engaged in medicine, education and science, are foreigners. 
 
 In some branches of manufactures the preponderance of a foreign element 
 is almost startling; it is highest in the worsted goods industry, with ninety-two 
 foreigners to eight natives ; next comes the cotton goods industry, with ninety- 
 one foreigners to nine natives. Among the eighteen principal manufacturing 
 branches in the State there are seven in which the proportion of foreigners to 
 the total number of employees is more than eighty in 100, these being carpetings, 
 cotton goods, rubber goods, silk, stone, woollen goods and worsted goods. Com- 
 menting upon these figures, the report says : 
 
 " It is evident that in the four specified industries the great majority of 
 Massachusetts immigrants have found their means of support, and the question 
 is forcibly presented Is not our industrial prominence due to this influx of 
 willing workers, and is not our industrial advancement dependent upon a still 
 further supply ? We think a careful consideration of the preceding tables will 
 convince the reader that the industrial assimilation of our Massachusetts immi- 
 grants has been as complete as could reasonably be expected when we recall their 
 previous conditions, their comparatively short residence in the State, their un- 
 familiarity with our language and customs, and the inherent difficulty of secur- 
 ing industrial opportunities in a State so thickly settled as our own." 
 
 They work here under American and not under foreign conditions, and they 
 soon take pride in being Americans. And they are needed because there is a 
 scarcity of labor all over this country. 
 
 OUR LARGE COMPETING IMPORTS. 
 
 People who think that the protective policy prevents a large foreign trade 
 do not understand the subject. 
 
 During the fiscal year ended June 30, 1906, our total exports of domestic 
 merchandise amounted to $i ,7 1 7,952,382 and our total imports were $i ,226,563,843 
 
 66 
 
making a total foreign trade of $2,970,428,343. This was nearly 335 millions 
 greater than the year before and it was $1,347,533,772 greater than in 1896, the 
 most normal year under the Wilson-Gorman tariff. When a foreign trade nearly 
 doubles in ten years, the tariff is far from "prohibitory," as it is so often called 
 by the opponents of protection. 
 
 The Dingley tariff is carefully framed so as to admit free of duty articles 
 that are not produced in sufficient quantities at home. In 1906, 44.81 per cent of 
 all our imports, which is nearly one half, were admitted duty free. 
 
 It is also liberal enough towards competing imports, and, by reason of the 
 great prosperity which it promotes, that class of imports is enormous and steadily 
 increasing, as will be seen by the following table: 
 
 PRINCIPAL ARTICLES IMPORTED. 
 
 1906- 1905- 
 
 Animals $3,914,422 $3,337,454 
 
 Breadstuff's 4>5 I 3>66; 6,557,347 
 
 Chemicals, etc 74,452,664 64,779,559 
 
 Coffee 73,256,134 84,654,062 
 
 Cotton 10,879,592 9,914,750 
 
 Cotton, manufactures 63,043,322 48,919,936 
 
 Earthen, stone ware 12,877,528 11,659,723 
 
 Fibres 39,360,290 38,118,071 
 
 Fibres, manufactures 51, 437, 581 40,125,406 
 
 Fruits and nuts 28,915,747 25,937,456 
 
 Furs and manufactures 21,855,682 18,306,302 
 
 Hides and skins 83,882,167 64,764,146 
 
 Iron and steel and manufactures . . 29,053,987 23,510,164 
 
 Jewelry, etc 42,120,715 35>65,iS8 
 
 Lead and manufactures of 4,302,307 3,904,839 
 
 Leather and manufactures 15,140,926 11,666,233 
 
 Paper and manufactures 6,998,761 5,623,638 
 
 Silk 54,080,504 61,040,053 
 
 Silk, manufactures 32,910,560 32,614,540 
 
 Spirits, wines, etc J 9, 2 57,59O 17,652,323 
 
 Sugar 85,460,088 97,645,449 
 
 Tobacco and manufactures .... 26,590,706 22,145,846 
 
 Wood and manufactures 36,528,563 29,564,323 
 
 Wool 39.068,372 46,225,558 
 
 Wool, manufactures of 23,080,683 17,893,663 
 
 The table embraces a few articles that are admitted without duty, but most 
 of them are dutiable because they compete directly with domestic products. 
 Take cotton manufactures as an example: if the 63 million dollars' worth im- 
 ported had been manufactured here, as they might have been, the work would 
 have given employment to more people than are now employed in the cotton 
 mills of Fall River, New Bedford and Lawrence combined. 
 
 Mr. George W. Russell of Lynn, formerly superintendent in a shoe factory 
 and a careful student of tariff questions from the standpoint of labor, contends 
 that the Dingley duties are not high enough to afford adequate protection and 
 that there is a great deal more occasion to revise upwards than downwards. In 
 a communication to the Boston Daily Advertiser he says: 
 
 "We imported last year more than $600,000,000 in competing products. This 
 would support a population nearly as large as the population of New England as 
 well as the people of New England are supported. When we realize what an 
 increase our home market would have if these imports were produced at home, 
 we see the absolute folly of increasing these imports by a downward revision of 
 our present tariff. When the Dingley tariff is revised downwards it will be re- 
 vised by free traders, who want to help foreign labor at the expense of American 
 labor. The advocates of protection to American labor will never do this. 
 
 " The advocates of revision say ' The changed conditions necessitate a down- 
 ward revision of the tariff.' 
 
 " Directly the opposite is true. Since the Dingley tariff was adopted in 1897, 
 our wages in all lines of production have largely increased, both in the aggregate 
 
 67 
 
and in per cent to individuals, while in the countries from which our imports 
 come, wages have remained nearly stationery. Of course this necessitates a 
 higher tariff instead of allowing a lower one. Consul McNally, stationed at 
 Liege, in a late communication, says that he is often asked by Belgian manu- 
 facturers as to the probability of a reduction in the American tariff, on the 
 articles they are now shipping to the United States. 
 
 "He says': 'They are elated with the merest rumors of a reduction, and it 
 would not have to be a substantial one to permit them to stock the American 
 market with their products, made by employees working for a moiety of Ameri- 
 can wages.' The talk about revising the tariff downward by protectionists is 
 the merest vapor." 
 
 68 
 
APPENDIX D. 
 
 A TARIFF REFORMER'S WATERLOO. 
 
 BY SOCRATES SMITH. 
 
 His head wuz full er theories ; he talked 'em by the job ; 
 
 His speech w'en shelled was one part corn an' ninety-nine parts cob. 
 
 It sounded purty; some the boys they said 'twas jest immense; 
 
 "The sound's all right," sez I to them, "but where in time's the sense?" 
 
 He called purtection "robbery," like all the Cobden school, 
 He said free trade wuz righteousness, the modern golden rule. 
 " Is't right ter rob your wife and kids," sez I ter him, " is't right 
 For formers to git our work while we must starve or fight?" 
 
 "It's sound economy," sez he, "to let the cheapest sell." 
 Sez I, " My friend, that barb'rous rule would drag us down to hell. 
 Ter purtect yer home and famberly may be a deadly sin 
 But them's jest the kind er sinners thet St. Peter passes in." 
 
 " Free trade 'ud save fer you," sez he, " on food, an' cloe's an' rent." 
 Sez I, " Meat's dear 't a cent a pound 'f ye haven't got no cent. 
 Free trade it robs yer wallet an' steals yer meat an' corn, 
 An' offers ye big bargain sales, w'en all yer money's gone." 
 
 I ast him, " Wouldn't a pauper find it purty middlin' hard 
 To be a dude with trouserin's at thirteen cents a yard? 
 We'd wear di'mon' studs fer buttons if they sol' 'em fer a nfckei, 
 But if we had no money we'd be in the same ol' pickle." 
 
 " Free trade will usher in," sez he, " the gran' mellenial age 
 Foretol' by seers an' prophets ez the worl's gret heritage." 
 "Oh, w'en the big mellenium comes 'twill be all right," sez I, 
 "W'en our rivers flow 'ith honey an' our shade trees bloom 'ith pie; 
 
 W'en the angels drop down manna from the bendin' firmerment. 
 An' we hoi' our han's an' take it an' don't have to pay a cent ; 
 W'en food drops in our open jaws w'ile loafin' in the shade 
 W'y then 'twill be a bully time to interduce free trade." 
 
TRUSTS AND THE TARIFF. 
 
 WHY REDUCTION OF DUTIES WOULD BE NO REMEDY) 
 FOR EVILS. 
 
 Relative Value of Home and Foreign Markets. 
 
 Some people think that the tariff is " the mother of trusts," that the main 
 object of trusts is to destroy competition, that the abolition of protection on 
 trust-made articles would bring down prices, and that if it were not for trusts 
 and the tariff, goods would not be sent abroad and sold at lower prices than they 
 are sold for at home. In fact these are Democratic war cries but all of them 
 are mistakes. 
 
 All political economists now recognize the fact that industrial combinations, 
 called trusts, have come as a natural evolution of industry, just as the small 
 corporation came when business had grown too large and complex for individuals 
 and firms. Prof. W. G. Sumner of Yale University, one of the most eminent 
 free traders in this country, who has never lost an opportunity to assail protec- 
 tion, says : 
 
 " Trusts, department stores, railroad consolidations, bank unions, are cases 
 of a general development in the mode of industrial organization. All branches 
 of industry fall into it. ... It was the discoveries and inventions of the nine- 
 teenth century, especially in the fields of transportation and the transmission of 
 intelligence, which made it possible, and then profitable, to organize industry on 
 a more comprehensive scale." 
 
 Here is not a word about the tariff as a possible cause. Further on he sug- 
 gested the protective tariff as a possible aggravation of the evil of monopoly 
 which is supposed to be incident to trusts, but when they are not monopolies 
 this objection could not apply. 
 
 No trust in this country is a monopoly. Every one has domestic competi- 
 tion, which is increasing, The two which come the nearest to monopoly are the 
 Standard Oil Company and the anthracite coal combination, but neither of them 
 has any protection from the tariff hard coal and petroleum and its products 
 being in the free list. This, and the fact that trusts flourish as well in England 
 as here, proves conclusively that they do not depend upon the tariff and that 
 monopoly is approximated as well without protection as with it. 
 
 In February, 1902, the United States Industrial Commission (which was 
 composed of five senators, five representatives, and nine appointees by the Presi- 
 dent, both of the leading parties and all sections of the country being repre- 
 sented) closed its labors of three years and sent its reports to Congress in nine- 
 teen volumes, aggregating seventeen thousand pages. They present an epitome 
 of the progress and latest status of all the great industries and discuss the latest 
 problems. The subject which received the most attention was Trusts, and to 
 make its investigations more complete the Commission sent an agent abroad, 
 who found numerous trusts in all European countries, many of them longer es- 
 tablished than any in this country. Concerning trusts and the tariff, the report 
 says (Vol. XIX, pp. 630, 631) : 
 
 " The removal of the tariff, then, will not abolish combinations unless it 
 abolishes the industry. The domestic competitors of combinations might be 
 largely cut off by tariff reductions or removal, and the combination survive with 
 moderate profits, and yet be forced to sell its products to domestic customers at 
 much lower prices. But this sharpening of "foreign competition by the removal 
 of the tariff would, beyond any doubt, lead American combinations in some 
 
 70 
 
cases to enter into international combinations. Already we have the thread in- 
 dustry of England and the United States, indeed, the thread industry of the 
 world, largely in the hands of an international combination. The borax trade 
 is also organized internationally, and there have been efforts to bring about an 
 international iron and steel combination. In Europe many combinations have 
 crossed national boundaries. The advocates of lowering or removing the tariff 
 in any line of industry should inquire carefully whether its effect might be to 
 produce an international combination, and if so whether such an international 
 trust would be desirable. The possible effect upon wages of a reduction or re- 
 moval of duties must also be considered and the further possibility of admitting 
 to this country the surplus stocks of European manufacturers, at rates so low as 
 to seriously cripple our home manufactures. If our manufacturers extend their 
 foreign markets by selling at low rates abroad, they but follow the example of 
 European manufacturers, who for years have disposed of surplus stocks in this 
 country so as to keep their factories going to their full capacity. What can be 
 gained by helping foreign trusts to hurt domestic trusts is not apparent." 
 
 So the Commission came to the conclusion that the way to control trusts is 
 to enforce the anti-trust law of 1890 (enacted by a Republican Congress), to 
 strengthen the interstate commerce law and to enact laws for greater publicity 
 and to gain federal supervision through the power of taxation, but not to attack 
 them through the tariff, for that would be futile and harmful. 
 
 As to prices at home and abroad, the Commission said : 
 
 " From such information as came to the Industrial Commission in response 
 to its inquiries addressed to exporters, it is certain that the making of lower 
 prices abroad than at home has been greatly exaggerated. About twenty per 
 cent of those reporting say that they occasionally make such prices in order to 
 meet the market and sell their goods. But eighty per cent report that they sell 
 at either the same price abroad as at home, or at higher prices. 
 
 "It is a fact well known in the commercial world that exports from all coun- 
 tries are often sacrificed in foreign markets wholly irrespective of tariffs at 
 home. The report of the royal commissioner appointed under the act 5 and 6 
 Victoria, chapter 99, which was made in the British Parliament in 1848, con- 
 tained the following statement of the exploitation of foreign markets by the 
 manufacturers of that country: 
 
 ' I believe that the laboring classes generally in the manufacturing districts 
 of this country, and especially in the iron and coal districts, are very little aware 
 of the extent to which they are often indebted for being employed at all to the 
 immense losses which their employers voluntarily incur in bad times in order to 
 destroy foreign competition and to gain and keep possession of foreign markets. 
 
 ' Authentic instances are well known of employers having at such times 
 carried on their works at a loss amounting in the aggregate to ^300,000 or 
 ,400,000 in the course of as many years [three or four]. 
 
 ' The large capitalists of this country are the great instruments of warfare (if 
 the expression may be allowed) against the competing capital of foreign coun- 
 tries, and are the most essential instruments now remaining by which our manu- 
 facturing supremacy can be maintained.' 
 
 " The practice thus reported upon more than fifty years ago in a free-trade 
 country has since been common to all countries." 
 
 Instead of protection promoting monopoly, the tendency of it is to create 
 domestic competition. It has built up many industries in this country and no 
 sooner has one company become profitable than others have been formed. The 
 tariff of 1890 made a tin plate industry possible here. In 1904 it was saving 
 consumers $4,611,317 a year in comparison with the prices of the last five years 
 before 1890, when we were dependent upon foreign supply, and it is giving 
 profitable employment to many thousands of people. When the so-called steel 
 trust consolidated most of the plants, those not consolidated began to enlarge 
 and others were established. The managers of these independent plants, and 
 also some of the large consumers of tin plate, testified before the Industrial 
 Commission that a repeal of the protective duty would hurt them a great deal 
 worse than it would hurt the trust. Therefore, if we would safeguard the 
 people against monoply, we must continue to encourage home competition by 
 protection. 
 
 Most of the evils attributed to trusts, as well as to the tariff, have been 
 
caused by something else. The advances of 1902 in the prices of meat and iron 
 and steel, as well as of many other articles, were due to the law of supply and 
 demand. No producing companies then curtailed their output ; on the contrary, 
 they all exerted themselves to the utmost to increase it. For a number of years 
 past the beef supply has been growing smaller, owing to the occupation of 
 millions of acres of grazing land for general farming, and the population has 
 been growing larger and more able to consume meat. Higher prices would 
 have been inevitable if there had been no beef trust. In fact, though the trust 
 may have been guilty of extortion and of trade tyranny, it remains to be proved 
 that the packing companies have not actually made prices lower than they 
 otherwise would have been, by the economy of their methods and by the great 
 stimulus which they have given to the producing industry. Whatever abuses 
 they have been guilty of can be corrected under the anti-trust law, and the 
 recent pure food law, and not through the tariff. 
 
 The great demand in 1902 for iron and steel was due not only to general 
 prosperity, but to the substitution of steel for wood and masonry. It was 
 proved before the Industrial Commission that the new uses of steel for buildings, 
 vessels, bridges and cars call for a tonnage greater than all the old uses com- 
 bined, and we have all the old uses still and many of them much enlarged. The 
 fact that all our steel works were busy and many of them enlarging, and that 
 importations were increasing, proves the demand, and the fact that the United 
 States steel corporation resisted advances in prices and only followed all its 
 competitors, proves that the enhancement was not due to monopoly. There is 
 no such thing as so regulating human affairs that prices will be always steady, 
 but what friend of industry does not prefer activity to stagnation, and good 
 prices to bad? Trusts and all other creatures within our own land can be and 
 must be subject to public control ; but if we repeal protective duties, we invite 
 a procession of foreign evils, entirely beyond our control, which will dislocate 
 industry and oppress labor an hundred times more and worse than all our 
 domestic ills combined. 
 
 WHY TARIFF REDUCTION WOULD BE NO REMEDY. 
 
 \From the New York Commercial Advertiser^ 
 
 We extract this from our news columns at the beginning of September, 
 1902: 
 
 " In view of the colossal growth of trusts and combines of speculative capi- 
 talists and consequent concentration of capital and monopoly of industry this 
 congress foresees the grave danger to the nation and the toilers of dislocation of 
 trade, stoppage of work and distress of wage-earners." 
 
 All right ; then why, to steal Democratic thunder, don't you take the tariff 
 off the things the trusts make and sell ? Because (alas that our Cobden friends 
 should show that our borrowed noise is only stage thunder) there is no tariff to 
 take off. The trusts and combines referred to are English trusts and combines, 
 the congress was an assemblage of English trades unions, and the resolution 
 quoted above was introduced by the London Dock, Wharf and Riverside Union. 
 What then becomes of the discovery made by President Roosevelt's critics that 
 his talk of regulating the trusts is all buncombe because he does not tell the 
 American Congress to smash them by taking the tariff off the goods they make ? 
 We give it up. The question savors too much of a conundrum in the familiar 
 form: Why is an American trust unlike an English trust? Because one 
 flourishes with a tariff and the other attains colossal growth without a tariff. 
 
 THOUGHTLESS AND IMPRACTICABLE. 
 
 \Boston Transcript, Independent^ 
 
 Many newspapers and many speakers we observe treat the suggestion of 
 wiping off the protection on all goods made by trusts and combinations as if 
 
 72 
 
trusts and combinations would alone be affected. This is the glib suggestion 
 of men who cannot or will not realize the facts of the industrial situation, not 
 alone in the United States but in the world. Wherever there is a country with 
 capital and industry, there is found the combination of corporations shifting 
 over from competition to union. Such combinations exist in free-trade England 
 and in protective France and Germany. 
 
 If the United States should remove all the duties on goods made in this 
 country by trusts or combinations, it would simply throw open its home market 
 to the combinations of Europe. 
 
 Nor is it practicable to arrange a tariff which shall take the protection off 
 goods made by a combination and keep it on the same goods made by an indi- 
 vidual. You cannot prostrate A, B and C, who operate in a combination, and 
 leave D, who is an individual manufacturer, unaffected. Moreover, as very 
 large sums of money are loaned to combinations, anything that prostrates them 
 must seriously affect banking capital, to the great loss or inconvenience of all 
 lines of business. Trusts and combinations can be regulated by a Federal law 
 and Federal supervision, as suggested by President Roosevelt. 
 
 RELATIVE VALUE OF HOME AND FOREIGN 
 MARKETS. 
 
 Hon. Theobold Otjen, member of Congress from Milwaukee, who was also 
 a member of the Industrial Commission, thus states the relative value of home 
 and foreign markets for the great army of producers in the United States: 
 
 " The productive energies of the people of this country last year amounted 
 to $20,660,000,000. Of this vast sum $1,460,000,000 found a market abroad, 
 while $19,200,000,000 was consumed or taken in our home market. In other 
 words, for every dollar of the productive energy of our people which found a 
 market abroad more than $14 was taken in the home market. Good business 
 sense would dictate a policy which will not be to the injury of the $14 market. 
 It should be our endeavor to extend our $i market by every means in our power, 
 but this should not be done at the sacrifice of our greater market, the $14 
 market. There is the tariff issue in a nutshell. Level-headed Americans, be 
 they business men or workingmen, are not likely to join the shouters for tariff 
 tinkering if they are in possession of these statistics and are willing to take the 
 time to reflect upon what these statistics mean." 
 
 In 1902 an economic magazine in New York contained the following para- 
 graph, of interest to all classes but of immense interest to Labor: 
 
 " The only gain to the nation in foreign trade, of course, is the profits. The 
 total exports and imports for 1901 were $2,310,428,573. Ten per cent profit on 
 that amount would be only $231,042,857, or less than one-seventh of the loss to 
 the nation of a twenty-five-cents-a-day reduction in wages. The loss to the 
 nation of such a step would be equal to sinking to the bottom of the sea every dol- 
 lar's worth of our exports for 1901. Indeed, if we could increase our foreign 
 trade forty per cent by reducing all workers five cents a day, the loss to the 
 nation would be nearly twenty millions a year greater than the gain. This does 
 not mean that we ought not to have foreign trade or seek for it. What it does 
 mean, however, is that foreign trade should always be the incident and outgrowth 
 of diversified home industry, and that the public policy of the nation should 
 never favor the promotion of foreign trade at any sacrifice, however small, of 
 domestic industry ; and, above all, by any lowering of wages and curtailment of 
 home consumption." 
 
 CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 The foregoing articles prove: (i) that trusts are not caused by tariffs; (2) 
 that as tariffs must apply to all alike, reducing duties will hurt the smaller com- 
 panies that compete with the trusts more than the trusts themselves ; (3) that 
 making lower prices abroad than at home is a practice as old as commerce and 
 
 73 
 
due to neither trusts nor tariffs ; and (4) that tariff reduction will endanger em- 
 ployment and wages and thus hurt vastly more than it will help. 
 
 The way for all toilers and producers in this country to preserve its prosperity, 
 and make the most of their industry and savings, is to vote for Republican can- 
 didates for Presidential electors and representatives in Congress and send to the 
 legislatures men who will vote for Republican candidates for the United States 
 Senate. This is the lesson of experience, the logical conclusion from all the 
 foregoing facts and the practical sense of those who prefer business to politics. 
 
 74 
 
APPENDIX E. 
 
 WOULD RECIPROCITY HELP AMERICAN 
 SHOE WORKERS? 
 
 FROM THE LYNN CENTRAL LABOR UNION'S PROGRAMME, IS- 
 SUED FOR THE MASSACHUSETTS STATE BRANCH OF THE 
 AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR CONVENTION, 1904. 
 
 The duty on imported shoes is 25 per cent. If it were repealed or reduced, 
 would not some of the low wage countries, all of which now have American shoe 
 machinery, compete with us and would not our manufacturers make it an excuse 
 for reducing wages ? Let us see : 
 
 COMPARISON OF DAILY WAGES OF SEVERAL CLASSES OF SHOE WORKERS. 
 
 Canada. England. France. Massachusetts. 
 
 Cutters $1.50 $1.30 $1-35 $2.40 
 
 Lasters 2.00 1.34 1.60 2.65 
 
 Stitchers 1.49 1.05 1.25 2.28 
 
 Heelers 1.42 1.22 .77 3.72 
 
 Edge Setters .... 1.67 3.69 
 
 Finishers 1.73 1.30 1.06 3.11 
 
 In 1894 the weekly wages of journeymen shoemakers in Germany ranged 
 from $1.66 in Breslau to $5.23 in Bremen, and in other places they were from 
 $2.50 to $3.50. That is, they were little more for a week than similar workmen 
 in America get for a day. A consular report says that in Berlin the average 
 earnings per year in the different factories are, for men, $142.80 to $214.20; for 
 women, $47.60 to $119.00, and for youths of both sexes, from $47.60 to $117.10. 
 Doubtless they are somewhat higher now, but they are still very low compared 
 with earnings in America. 
 
 It may be said that the American workman turns out a greater product in 
 the same time than any foreign workman. As a rule this is true, but the 
 official reports from which the above table was compiled show that foreign opera- 
 tives of the same class work more hours per week than those in Massachusetts 
 for example, 59 in England, 60 in Canada, and 60 to 72 in France, as against 
 58 in Massachusetts. Probably the longer time abroad nearly makes up for the 
 slower speed. 
 
 If it should be allowed that the weekly product of the American workman 
 is greater by 20 per cent than that of his foreign competitors, the labor cost 
 here would still be more than 50 per cent greater than in Canada, 90 per cent 
 greater than in England, and 95 per cent greater than in France. This would 
 give those countries a dangerous advantage in competition. 
 
 We are gaining foreign markets without reciprocity. Our exports of boots 
 and shoes for the year ending June 30, 1904, were valued at $7,238,940, as 
 against $1,708,224 seven years ago, when the present tariff was enacted. 
 
 And yet about 40 times as many of our boots and shoes are sold at home 
 as abroad, and the home market grows faster than our foreign market. What 
 should we gain by exchanging it for them? Reciprocity might for a time help 
 merchants and shippers, but for working people it would be a delusion and a 
 snare. 
 
 CHARLES O. WHIDDEN, President Joint Council, No. 4, 
 
 B. & S. W. U., Lynn, Mass. 
 JOHN R. RONALD, Secretary-Treasurer Joint Council, No. 4, 
 
 B. & S. W. U., Lynn, Mass. 
 
 ALBERT M. HARLOW, Local 32, B. S. W. U., Lynn, Mass. 
 75 
 
SINGLE TARIFF OR DUAL TARIFF WHICH ? 
 BY THE HON. JAMES T. MCCLEARY, 
 
 Representative of the Second Minnesota District in Congress ; Member of the 
 Ways and Means Committee. 
 
 [Copied by permission from the American Monthly Review of Reviews, April, 
 
 1906.} 
 
 Last October, a meeting of prominent German exporters was held in Berlin 
 to discuss American tariff conditions. It was a secret meeting, and its proceed- 
 ings were never published. But the speech of the chairman was issued for con- 
 fidential circulation, and copies of it have found their way to this country. 
 The speech may later be published in full. It would make interesting reading 
 for our people. Only one sentence of the speech will be quoted here. After 
 referring to the American market, its enormous value and the great care with 
 which it is guarded by our laws, the chairman made this very significant and 
 suggestive statement : " But with a government that can be changed every four 
 years, it is equally an easy matter to change the tariff laws and customs regula- 
 tions." Change them how? Through what agency? The chairman's statement 
 gives special significance to the announcement in the press reports from Berlin 
 that the German Government extends to the United States its lowest tariff rates 
 under its new law for only a limited time namely, until June 30, 1907 simply 
 long enough "to afford time to conclude more permanent arrangements." 
 
 Why cannot the "more permanent arrangements" be concluded sooner, if 
 at all? Why wait until the middle of next year? What "change" related to this 
 matter can possibly take place in the meantime? It is obvious that into the 
 Congressional campaign this fall will be projected the question of the tariff, 
 especially that phase of it involving the relative merits of single and dual tariffs. 
 To decide wisely in this "government of the people" it is vitally important that 
 every American citizen seek the fullest possible information. During the com- 
 ing months much will be heard about "maximum and minimum rates," "autono- 
 mous and conventional tariffs," and such things. To contribute something to- 
 ward a righteous conclusion on a momentous question is the purpose of this 
 article. 
 
 No SUCH THING AS INTERNATIONAL FREE TRADE. 
 
 There is no such thing as free trade among nations, that is, there is no 
 nation in the world that admits free of duty all articles of foreign production. 
 Almost every nation, however, admits certain classes of foreign articles duty-free, 
 the enumeration of such articles in the tariff law constituting its "free-list." 
 For instance, in the calendar year 1905 the United States admitted into this 
 country absolutely free of duty foreign goods to the value of $530,464,135. 
 
 On the other hand, every country charges duties on certain classes of im- 
 ported articles. Thus, in its fiscal year ending March 31, 1904, the United 
 Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland raised from duties on imports the enor- 
 mous sum of ^33,921,323 sterling, or about $169,000,000. Having a population 
 of about forty millions, her customs collections amounted to about $4.25 per 
 capita. 
 
 During our corresponding fiscal year, ending June 30, 1904, the United 
 States collected from duties on imports $261,274,565. Our population then 
 being over eighty millions, we raised from tariff duties only about $3.25 per 
 capita or a dollar less per capita than the United Kingdom. 
 
 From this will appear the absurdity of saying that the United Kingdom has 
 free trade, or even low rates of duty compared with ours. 
 
 PROTECTIVE AND NON-PROTECTIVE TARIFFS. 
 
 In both the United States and the United Kingdom, then, duties on imports 
 constitute the chief source of national revenue. The difference in the tariff 
 policies of the two countries is really found in the articles each puts on its " duti- 
 able" list and on its "free" list. In this country, we lay the duties on articles 
 such as we ourselves do or can produce economically in sufficient quantities to 
 
 76 
 
supply our own market, that is, on such articles as compete in our market 
 with our own products. Non-competing articles we admit free of duty. In the 
 United Kingdom, the policy is exactly the reverse of ours. There, duties are 
 laid on non-competing articles, and nearly all competing articles are admitted 
 duty-free. Thus, tea, which is not produced in either country, is on our free list 
 and on Great Britain's dutiable list; while steel, which is produced in both 
 countries, is on our dutiable list and on her free list. In other words, each of 
 these countries admits free the articles that the other makes dutiable. 
 
 Countries which, like the United States, lay their duties on competing 
 articles are said to have a "protective" tariff; while countries which, like the 
 United Kingdom, lay their duties on non-competing articles are said to have a 
 tariff "for revenue only." 
 
 Almost every nation in the world except the United States may lay duties 
 on exports also. But export duties are forbidden by our Constitution. 
 
 In this paper, only methods of laying duties on imports will be discussed. 
 Although each country has certain minor peculiarities in its mode of levying 
 such duties, all the systems fall broadly into three classes or groups. 
 
 THE AMERICAN, OR "SINGLE-TARIFF," SYSTEM. 
 
 The system that may properly be considered first, because it is in use in the 
 largest number of countries, maybe called the American, or "single-tariff," 
 system. Under this system, each article on the dutiable list bears only one rate 
 of duty, that is, the duty on any article is the same no matter what country 
 it comes from. 
 
 Throughout our entire national history, whatever party may have from time 
 to time made the tariff law, the single-tariff system has, in the main and with 
 only minor exceptions, been the one followed in the United States. In the 
 main, this system has also been the one obtaining in the United Kingdom, and 
 in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland and Turkey, in Europe, and in most of 
 the countries of the world outside of Europe except Japan and Brazil. 
 
 In the other countries of Europe, and in Japan and Brazil, the so-called 
 " dual-tariff " system is in vogue. Of these dual tariffs there are two general 
 types, one of which may be called the French type and the other the German 
 type. 
 
 THE FRENCH TYPE OF DUAL TARIFF. 
 
 Under the French type of dual tariff which should, perhaps, be called the 
 Spanish type, as it was first used in Spain the tariff law itself definitely pre- 
 scribes two sets of duties, two rates on each article on the dutiable list, except 
 as to a few articles on which there may for special reasons be only one rate. 
 The higher rates are called the "maximum," and the lower the "minimum." 
 The important thing to observe is that both the maximum and the minimum 
 rates are fixed and determined by the legislative authority of the country using 
 this system. Then, through the executive branch of the government, countries 
 granting concessions in their tariff rates that are satisfactory to the country 
 having this French type, or which have a " most favored nation" treaty with it, 
 are granted its minimum rates. All other countries are required to pay its 
 maximum rates, except that concessions may be granted as to part of the imports 
 from any country. 
 
 The French type of dual tariff is in vogue in France, Spain, Portugal and 
 Greece, and in Brazil. Until less than fifty years ago, France used the single- 
 tariff system. But in 1860, France entered into a treaty with the United King- 
 dom under which each country granted the other reduced rates on certain 
 articles. Thus began in France what grew to be a system of dual tariff some- 
 what like the German type, to be described shortly. In 1892, however, France 
 abandoned that system and adopted the Spanish method, which she has since 
 maintained. 
 
 THE GERMAN TYPE OF DUAL TARIFF. 
 
 Under the German type of dual tariff there is only one set of tariff duties 
 prescribed in the tariff law as enacted by the legislative authority of the coun- 
 try, one rate on each article. This entire set of schedules is therefore called 
 the " autonomous " tariff, meaning significantly the tariff made by the indepen- 
 
 77 
 
dent action of the nation's legislative authority, free from dictation or interven- 
 tion by any other country. This law prescribes, however, rates of duty which 
 in the main are higher than are needed, or even desired in some cases, by the 
 country enacting it. The rates are thus purposely placed high, with the view of 
 their being reduced, by " concessions," through treaties with other countries. 
 The set of duties thus arranged by treaty or convention constitutes what is aptly 
 and significantly called the " conventional " tariff. 
 
 As a rule, the conventional tariff covers only a part of the items in the 
 general, or autonomous, tariff. Thus, in the new German tariff law, which be- 
 came operative March i, there are 946 sections, but to only 243 of these do the 
 conventional rates apply. 
 
 Under this system, the autonomous tariff is avowedly enacted largely as a 
 basis for "dickering" with other countries as to mutual tariff rates. Inmost 
 countries having this system, the conventional rates must be ratified by the 
 legislative branch before becoming operative. 
 
 The German type of dual tariff is in vogue in Germany, Russia, Austria- 
 Hungary, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Roumania and Servia, and in Japan. 
 
 SOME GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 It may be remarked in passing that in each of these systems slight modifi- 
 cations are sometimes made for special reasons. Scarcely one of the countries 
 keeps its chosen type absolutely unbroken. Thus, in the new German tariff law 
 there is a minimum fixed in the law itself (after the French type) on rye, wheat 
 and spelt, malting barley and oats, below which minimum and it is a high one 
 the duties cannot be reduced through treaty. And France has occasionally, 
 under stress of tariff wars, reduced by treaty (after the German type) certain 
 rates below those fixed in the law as the minimum. 
 
 A glance at the map of Europe will show that each of these systems has, in 
 the main, its own section of the continent. Thus, the single-tariff system is in 
 use in northwestern Europe in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Den- 
 mark and Holland with Turkey added. The'French type of dual tariff is used 
 in southwestern Europe in France, Spain and Portugal with Greece added. 
 And the German type of dual tariff is in use in central Europe, with the con- 
 tiguous countries in the southern and eastern part of the continent added. 
 
 Norway has been placed among the nations having the single-tariff system. 
 And this is correct in fact, though not in form. Norway's idea is unique, and is 
 well worthy of special consideration. Norway's law carries two rates of duty, 
 after the French system. But, unlike France, Norway gives to every country 
 her best rates of duty, unless she is discriminated against. She holds in reserve 
 the higher rates of duty, to apply to the goods of any country that may discrimi- 
 nate against the goods of Norway. 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF EACH SYSTEM. 
 
 The single-tariff system is built on the principle of " equal opportunity for 
 all, special privileges to none." Under this system, the goods of the small- 
 est country are admitted on exactly the same terms as the goods of the largest 
 country. All countries are treated alike. There is no country so weak that it 
 need fear being discriminated against ; there is no country so powerful that it 
 can compel discrimination in its favor. Under the single-tariff system, every 
 country gets " a square deal." 
 
 A country having the single-tariff system gives freely and voluntarily to 
 every country the "best terms" that it gives to any country, and it has a right 
 to demand in return from every country the best terms that are given to any 
 country. And, in support of that reasonable demand for the impartial treat- 
 ment which it freely gives, it may consistently and properly enact and hold in 
 reserve a set of higher duties, as does Norway, to apply to the goods of any 
 country which discriminates against its goods. 
 
 Both types of dual tariff are built on the principle of "giving to him that 
 hath and taking from him tkat hath not." Under the dual-tariff system, the 
 powerful are given what they want, while the weak must be satisfied with what 
 they can get. The dual tariff is based on power, not on justice; on favor, not 
 
 78 
 
on equity. It is the very opposite of " the square deal." It is but the applica- 
 tion among nations of the very principle that the people of the United States 
 are fighting in the form of dual railway rates and the discriminations shown 
 therein. 
 
 DUAL-TARIFF SYSTEMS PROVOKE WAR. 
 
 In a public address at Pittsburg, recently, a distinguished gentleman 
 from Boston advocated what he chose to call " reciprocity." In neither form 
 nor spirit was it the reciprocity advocated by Elaine and practised by McKin- 
 ley. What he advocated as " reciprocity " was simply and only the German 
 type of dual tariff. He urged his views on the ground that the policy advocated 
 would cultivate international peace and good-will, something that everybody 
 desires. 
 
 The plea is not a new one. It is probably the most seductive argument in 
 favor of so-called "reciprocity." The very word "reciprocity" has an attrac- 
 tive and persuasive sound. It suggests friendliness, mutual consideration, 
 neighborly kindness. Even the dual tariff, if advocated as " reciprocity," may 
 be made to seem attractive. But it is well to remember in this connection that 
 the only real tariff wars that have ever taken place have been between countries 
 having dual tariffs. Among recent examples may be cited the tariff wars 
 between Germany and Russia, 1893-94, between France and Switzerland, 
 1892-95, and the eleven-year conflict between France and Italy from 1888 till 
 1899. 
 
 The reason for such wars is not hard to find. A nation having the dual- 
 tariff system stands before other nations with a whip in one hand, as it were, 
 and a wisp of hay in the other. The country of the dual tariff virtually says 
 to other countries: " Give me what I want and I'll give you something good 
 that I don't want. Deny me what I want and I'll strike you." The country of 
 the dual tariff neither needs nor desires its higher rates of duty; they are en- 
 acted simply as a club to be held over the heads of other countries. The very 
 attitude of such a country is a challenge to conflict. No wonder that every real 
 tariff war in history has been between countries having dual tariffs. 
 
 Conversely, there has never been a tariff war between two countries having 
 the single-tariff system. Under that system there is neither necessity nor 
 opportunity for such a war. 
 
 Whether among persons or among nations, there is nothing so provocative 
 of anger and resentment as " showing favors " to some that are not accorded to 
 others. On the other hand, there is nothing so promotive of peace and good- 
 will as evenhanded justice to all. 
 
 79 
 

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