THE FARMER AND THE TARIFF. 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 HOIST. J. K DOLPH, 
 
 OF OREGON, 
 
 IN THE 
 
 SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 1890. 
 
 WASHINGTON. 
 1890.
 
 1
 
 UCSB LfBRARY 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OP 
 
 HON. JOSEPH N. DOLPH. 
 
 The Senate having under consideration the resolution submitted by the Sen- 
 ator from Indiana [Mr. VOORHKES] in regard to the depression of agricultural 
 Interests 
 
 Mr. DOLPH said: 
 
 Mr. PRESIDENT: The Kepublican party was restored to power at 
 the last Presidential election on account of its position upon the 
 tariff. It is pledged to a reduction of the revenues to an amount 
 sufficient only to meet the necessities of the Government, but in such 
 a manner as to insure the welfare of American industries. The issue 
 was squarely made between the protective system and tariff for reve- 
 nue only; between the Mills bill, which had passed the House and 
 was the embodiment of the theories of Mr. Cleveland and the free-trad- 
 ers for tariff for revenue only is nothing but free trade so far as wag 
 practicable for the Democratic House, with so many local interests, 
 some of them demanding protection, to embody those theories into a 
 bill, and the Senate bill, which was framed with the view to secure the 
 necessary reduction of the revenue without injury to the industries of 
 the country or abandoning the policy of protection to American labor 
 and American qapital. 
 
 The people decided for the national policy of protection, that the 
 present tariff policy should be continued, and that whatever revision 
 of the tariff was required should be made by its friends. It only re- 
 mains for the dominant party in Congress to execute the will of the 
 people and redeem its pledges. This it is proceeding to do with all 
 possible dispatch considering the magnitude and intricacies of the sub- 
 ject, and before the present session of Congress adjourns it is safe to say 
 that some measure not greatly dissimilar to the Senate bill of last ses- 
 sion will become a law. 
 
 As was to have been expected, the Democratic party has not profited 
 by defeat. The attitude of the two political parties towards the tariff 
 question has not changed. The contest is to be fought over again on 
 the same lines and with the same old arguments used by them in the 
 last Congress and in the Presidential campaign. The Mills bill, or a 
 measure substantially like it, is to be the proposition of the Democratic 
 party, with which the measure of the majority is to be antagonized. 
 
 The Democratic policy at the present session of Congress, as it was 
 at the last, is to continue heavy protection to Louisiana sugar, and to 
 place wool, lumber, salt, and vegetables and other farm products, and 
 the products of the mines and raw material generally on the free-list. 
 
 Having put their hands to the plow in this matter, the Democratic 
 leaders will not turn back. Having been committed by President
 
 Cleveland to free trade, there is no retreat. His free- trade message was 
 the Rubicon, which once crossed was crossed forever. Recognizing this 
 the Democratic leaders, aided by the Cobden Club, are making her- 
 culean efforts to propagate free-trade theories. Taking advantage of 
 the overproduction of corn and th low price of farm products in the 
 Western States, they are industriously seeking to convince the farmers 
 of those States that the depression of the farming industry is caused 
 by the protective system, and to array them against the other indus- 
 tries of the country. Tons of free-trade literature are being circulated 
 among them, and it is hoped and apparently believed by the Demo- 
 cratic leaders that, aided by the discontent wliich naturally prevails in 
 times of business depression, Republican farmers can be brought to 
 adopt the Democratic theory of the tariff, or at least be induced to try 
 a change. 
 
 In accordance with this general policy, the senior Senator from Indi- 
 ana a few days ago made a speech, intended no doubt to have a wide 
 circulation, embellished with brilliant rhetoric and glittering general- 
 ities, in which his imagination was drawn upon, more than facts, to 
 show that the present depressed condition of the farming interests was 
 due to the protective policy, and to endeavor to turn the present dis- 
 content to the advantage of the Democratic party. 
 
 I do not propose to answer his speech, but in my humble way to at- 
 tempt to show that the protective tariff has in no degree contributed to 
 the depression, that the present condition of the farmer is far more 
 prosperous than it would have been under a system of tariff for reve- 
 nue only, more prosperous than it ever has been in this country when 
 the principle of protection was abandoned, and is far better than the 
 condition of the farmer in any fiee-trade country in the world. 
 
 I listened, in entire accord with him, to his eloquent laudation of the 
 farmer. Agriculture in some form is the oldest of the occupations of 
 man, and is still the most important. There are probably more persons 
 engaged directly in farming and dependent upon the earnings of the 
 farmer than are engaged in or dependent upon all the other industries 
 of the country. I hope I shall be credited with equal sincerity with 
 him when I say that all laws, whether State or national, ought to be 
 so framed as to promote the interests of the farmer in common with the 
 interests of all other citizens engaged in honorable and useful occupa- 
 tions, and so as to prevent all combinations, monopolies, and specula- 
 tions which have a tendency to control the supply of and demand for 
 farm products; that whenever any existing law can be shown to operate 
 unjustly upon any class of citizens I will be as ready to vote for its re- 
 peal as he; and that whenever any measure is proposed which in my 
 judgment is calculated to benefit the farmers of this country, without 
 injustice to other equally deserving classes, my voice and my vote will 
 be found in favor of that measure. 
 
 Every impulse of my nature is in full sympathy with the men who 
 till the soil and labor with their hands iu every useful occupation. 
 Labor is honorable and the source of all wealth. Idleness is a curse to 
 the individual and the community. I first saw the light on a farm and 
 from necessity passed through an experience which has made me familiar 
 with all phases of farm life. But when we come to discuss the remedies 
 proposed for the existing depression of the agricultural interests, the 
 Senator and myself, on some of them, are as far apart as the poles. He 
 would endeavor to array the farmer against all other classs of producers, 
 while I believe that the interests of the farmer are intimately connected
 
 with the weal of every other producing class, and that the adjustment is 
 so delicate and sensitive that a blow to one injures the whole. If the 
 manufacturers are not prosperous, farming languishes; if farming is 
 not prosperous, manufactures are depressed. In fact, the surest way to 
 destroy the farmer would be to first destroy the manufactures, which 
 would destroy the home market for farm products and drive the opera- 
 tives to the cultivation of the soil and to competition with the present 
 farming class. 
 
 Employment, not cheapness, is the true basis of all national pros- 
 perity. The way to make a nation prosperous and the people happy 
 and contented is to give every one an opportunity of being employed. 
 The measure of our prosperity as a nation is the value of the fruits of 
 labor, of the wool we grow, the cattle and horses, the wheat and corn, 
 wid other agricultural products we raise, of the articles we manufac- 
 ture, and of the useful and precious metals we mine. When all our 
 diversified industries are profitably carried on together, when the soil, 
 the mines., and the forests are all laid under contribution to add to our 
 wealth, when the hill-sides, which are not well adapted to cultivation, 
 are profitably devoted to the raising of sheep, when the cattle industry 
 is fairly remunerative, when wheat and corn bring a fair price, when 
 there is a demand for the products of our mills and our factories which 
 keeps them in operation, every one is prosperous; and individual pros- 
 perity makes a prosperous whole. 
 
 But let the price of wool be low, lot there be a partial failure of the 
 wheat crop, or, as now is the case, the corn crop be in excess of the 
 demand, or the factories and mills compelled to shut down, and pros- 
 perity is at once checked, other industries suffer, and hard times are 
 threatened. Let noone suppose fora momentthatone class, or the class 
 interested in one industry, is not interested in all the others. All are 
 intimately connected. The destruction of the wool industry and the 
 throwing of several thousand men out of employment would be an in- 
 jury to every man, woman, and child in the United States. The man 
 thrown out of employment by the destruction of that industry would 
 be obliged to crowd into some other. The lands now profitably used 
 for grazing purposes would many of them be idle and unproductive. 
 
 Whatever hurts Maine hurts Texas, and what hurts Massachusetts 
 hurts Oregon. The people of the entire Union are interested in the pros- 
 perity of every part. Massachusetts manufactures Oregon wool, but to do 
 so she buys the wool and helps to make a home market for it, and she 
 also buys the food products of other States to feed the operatives in her 
 factories and her mills. The Senator from Indiana and the party to which 
 he belongs two years ago thought they could single out and strike down 
 the wool industry; but the people of this country understood that one 
 industry could not be stricken down without injury to all the rest, and 
 they made common cause with the wool-grower. 
 
 THE PEICK OF CORN AND WHEAT. 
 
 The low prices of corn and wheat in the West are producing a de- 
 pression of agricultural interests in the principal corn and wheat-grow- 
 ing States. The advocates of free trade charge that the fall in prices 
 is caused by the protective system; but fortunately the cause for the 
 decline in prices is neither obscure nor difficult to understand. The 
 price of corn is fixed by the same law that fixes the prices of all other 
 commodities: the law of supply and demand, in connection with the 
 cost of transportation from the States of production to the places of 
 consumption. But the free operation of this law is often interrupted by
 
 combinations of middle-men. The States which produce 5 surplu* 
 of corn, and therefore are sources of commercial supply, are Ohio, In- 
 diana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. Owing largely 
 to climatic causes, the crop of corn last year was the largest ever pro- 
 duced in the United States and the largest in the rate of yield since 
 1880. From a table contained in a report of the statistician of the 
 Agricultural Department, issued in March of this year, I extract the 
 following: 
 
 The production of corn in 1887 was 1,456,000,000 bushels; in 1888, 
 1,988,000,000 bushels; in 1889, 2, 113, 000, 000 bushels; showing a very 
 large increase of the crop during the last two years, and that it has now 
 reached the surprising proportions of over 2, 000, 000, 000 bushels. 
 
 From the same table I learn that up to March 1 of this year there 
 had been consumed and distributed a greater amount, with one excep- 
 tion, than in any previous year up to the same period. The amount 
 consumed and distributed up to March 1, 1889, of the crop of 1888 and 
 of the surplus of previous years, was 1,201,000,000 bushels, and the 
 amount consumed up to March 1, 1890, of the crop of 1889 and of the 
 surplus of previous years, was 1,443,000,000 bushels, 
 
 These figures show that the demand and consumption have not de- 
 creased, but that the supply has largely increased, and that the present 
 unmarketable surplus and low prices are caused by overproduction, 
 and that alone. The freight rates for the transportation of corn and 
 other farm products are in many cases too high, but the rate of trans- 
 portation is not the cause of the present low price of corn. When the 
 question is examined it will be found that rates of transportation have 
 been from time to time reduced, and that by some transportation lines, 
 notably the Union Pacific, greatly reduced, upon corn to meet the pres- 
 ent emergency; but the situation has not improved, as it could not be; 
 the market has been supplied. There is no legitimate demand for the 
 surplus for present consumption, and if bought at all, must be bought 
 by operators who speculate as to the future demand and therefore buy 
 at their own price. The home market is the principal market; and 
 when the production is largely in excess of the demand for home con- 
 sumption a fall in prices is inevitable. 
 
 On a former occasion I discussed in the Senate the cause of the de- 
 cline in the foreign market of the price of wheat and presented elabo- 
 rate tables to show the value of our exports and imports, the amount 
 of agricultural products exported, the amount of wheat and flour ex- 
 ported through a series of years, the amount of the production and 
 distribution, the growth of the production of wheat in India, the ag- 
 gregate importation of wheat and flour in Great Britian and the countries 
 from whence imported. The latter tables were taken from the report 
 of General Bonham, consul-general of the United States at Calcutta. 
 Referring to these tables I summed up the matter as follows: 
 
 The facts stated in this report fully justify the views of Judge Bonham, that 
 India is to become a formidable competitor with the United States in the wheat 
 markets of Europe, and in my judgment explain the cause of the decline of 
 wheat in Europe in recent years. The table showing the aggregate imports of 
 wheat and flour into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 
 the several countries named is especially instructive. It shows that while the 
 Imports into Great Britain, although some what fluctuating, have not materially 
 Increased since 1881-'82, the imports from Russia have increased from 4,089.308 
 centals in 1881-'82 to 11,986,350 centals in 18S5-'86; the imports from India have 
 Increased from 7,337,924 centals in 1881-'82 to 12,101,963 centals in 1885-'86, and 
 that the imports from other countries, not including the United Sttes, have in- 
 creased from 12.229.230 centals in 1881-'82 to 17,083,501 centals in!885-'86; while 
 the imports from the United States have decreased from 43,776,662 cental* in 
 
 COLFH
 
 1881-'82 to 36,007,187 centals In 1885-'86, and that the export of wheat from India 
 has Increased from 299,385 centals in 1867-' 68 to 21,060,519 centals or 35,100,869 
 bushels in 18S5-'86, a period of nineteen years. These figures show that we ar 
 already engaged in a ruinous competition with Russia and India, which must 
 continue to grow greater as the production of wheat in those countries increase* 
 to crowd the American product out of the European markets ; and yet the free- 
 traders tell us to let our home markets go, buy our manufactures in England, 
 and raise more wheat. 
 
 Protection to industry by creating a diversity of employment and increasing; 
 the number of those who are not engaged in farming, but must depend upon 
 the farmer for the means of subsistence, gives him a steady remunerative market 
 for breadstuffs and creates a market for crops which can not be profitably ex- 
 ported. The foreign market for our wheat is mainly created by England, and 
 is growing every year more uncertain and unsatisfactory. The amount of our 
 corn and wheat required by England depends in the first place upon the crop* 
 of Europe, which usually supply from two-thirds to three-fourths of what la 
 needed; then upon the yield in Russia and India; so that the American farmer 
 first takes the chances of his own harvest, and then of a scarcity in Europe, and 
 in late years the further chance of having the price of wheat fixed by the com- 
 petition of Russian and Indian wheat. And still free-traders assert that the tra 
 principle is to buy where you can buy the cheapest, and say that if our manu- 
 facturing industries can not successfully compete with cheap capital, organized 
 industries, and pauper labor of England, our people should turn their attention 
 to something else that is, to farming destroy our home markets, and lead our 
 farmers to depend apon a foreign market for the sale of their surplus products. 
 
 They propose that we shall increase our exports to pay for our increased im- 
 ports, and in endeavoring to do so that our farmers shall enter the field in com- 
 petition with the miserable ryots of India, who live on a lew-cents a day. If 
 it were proposed to import into the United States several millions of the Indian 
 ryoto or of Chinese for agricultural laborers, to enable us to compete with India 
 in producing wheat, every white laborer in the United States could see that 
 American labor was threatened. How does the case differ when it is proposed 
 to drive several millions of Ameriean laborers from the manufactures into agri- 
 culture and then to force them into competition with the Indian ryots by in- 
 creasing our surplus wheat crop, which we will be compelled to get rid of by 
 underselling Indian wheat? 
 
 In the report of the statistician of the Agricultural Department, al- 
 ready referred to, the cause of the present depression of agriculture ia 
 admirably stated. Mr. Dodge shows that the low price of corn and 
 wheat is due to overproduction ; that the farmers of this country can 
 not successfully compete with the wheat-growers of India, Russia, and 
 other countries; that other industries should be encouraged and main- 
 tained in order to create a home market forfarm products and em- 
 ployment for our people, and that farmers should engage in diversified 
 farming and produce all the products we now import. He says: 
 
 AGBICTJLTUBAI, DEPRESSION AND ITS CAUSES. 
 
 There is almost universal complaint among farmersof all nations of the prev- 
 alence of low prices. The agricultural depression of Great Britain has proba- 
 bly been more severe than that of any other nation. A potent cause in this cam 
 is the competition from all parts of the world, unrelieved by any taxation of 
 imports. France and Germany are somewhat disturbed by similar complaints 
 of unremunerative rural industry. Italy has also had occasion to make official 
 investigation of the causes of agricultural depression, Other countries are vo- 
 cal with similar cries of dissatisfaction with the proceeds of agricultural labor. 
 So the trouble appears to be general in monarchies and republics, whether th 
 monetary circulation is gold or silver or paper, and under the influence of vari- 
 ous and diverse economic systems. 
 
 Not all countries are In the same depths of distress. In ours farmers and 
 farm laborers are doubtless better fed and clothed, able to maintain a higher 
 tyle of living, and enjoy more of the benefits of civilization and culture than 
 those of any other country. It may be said with absolute truth that In thirty 
 years the scale of living has advanced Immensely in this country, not equally 
 inall sections, but manifestly everywhere. There is a tendency to extravagance 
 in town life that has been imitated in rural circles, and the natural ambition 
 for progress and precedence, when generally aroused, will express itself in dis- 
 satisfaction with prevailing conditions and a determination to overpower all 
 obstacles to advancement. This is a hopeful sign. It is an indication of eon- 
 cious dignity. It Is a prophecy of progress. 
 
 k While, therefore, our own country feels the effect of agricultural depression 
 DOLPH
 
 8 
 
 iu than almost any other in the world, the reduction in prices of most staples, 
 and in domestic animals and their products, forces a disagreeable comparison 
 with agricultural values at their highest, compels reduced expenditure to keep 
 outgo subordinate to income, increases the number of unfortunates who can 
 not make "both ends meet," and reduces the profits of the enterprising and 
 killful who are still able to strike a balance in their favor. Retrenchment is 
 not an agreeable alternative, and is therefore delayed until its compulsion is 
 Imperative and perhaps destructive. "The times" are universally regarded as 
 "hard " in comparison with more prosperous eras of the past. 
 
 It matters not that the prices of implements, utensils, and fabrics, of goods 
 desired by the farmer, have been reduced proportionally ; his interest account, 
 if he has one, is unreduced, and his mortgage is a greater burden to lift. He 
 aijjhs for the good old days of high prices, though they may have been war or 
 famine prices, necessarily temporary, and though they may have been the 
 source of extravagant views, unnecessary expenditure, and the foundation of 
 his present indebtedness. He naturally resents and deplores low valuation of 
 farm products. What are the causes of low prices? They may be various, but 
 the prime cause is the operation of the inexorable law of supply and demand. 
 Abundance leads inevitably to low prices ; scarcity to high prices. .With either 
 iihere is fluctuation, a see-saw of prices which increases cost and reduces profit. 
 Medium and uniform values are therefore best for the farmer. 
 
 There has been an increase of production in this country even more rapid than 
 Uhe increment of population. America has long been the synonym of plethora. 
 Her people probably consume more than those of any other nation, and have 
 < larger surplus for foreign needs. Immigration has been heavy and unre- 
 stricted; railroad building has been stimulated until an empire of new and 
 productive lands have been opened ; and these lands have been given ad libUum 
 to settlers of native or foreign birth. Speculation first, and profitable utiliza- 
 tion afterwards, have been the motive for settlement and development which 
 have astonished the world and caused overproduction and low prices. The foU 
 lowing statement shows the increase in thirty years in certain products of the 
 &rm, as reported by the census : 
 
 Products. 
 
 1849. 
 
 1859. 
 
 1869. 
 
 1879. 
 
 Corn 
 Wheat..'. 
 Oats . 
 
 bushels... 
 do 
 ._ do 
 
 592, 071, 104 
 100, 485, 944 
 146, 584, 179 
 65, 797, 899 
 2,469,093 
 13, 838, 642 
 
 838,792,742 
 173, 104, 924 
 172, 643, 185 
 111,148,867 
 5,387,052 
 19, 083, 896 
 
 760,944,549 
 287,*T45, 626 
 282, 107, 157 
 143.337,473 
 3, Oil, 996 
 27,316,048 
 
 1,754, 581, 67 
 459, 483, 137 
 407, 858, 999 
 169,458,539 
 5, 755, 359 
 85,150,711 
 
 Potatoes 
 Cotton 
 
 do 
 ... bales... 
 
 Hay 
 
 tons... 
 
 If we extend the comparison to the present date, we find that the co rn crop 
 exceeds 2,000,000,000 bushels, wheat approximates 500,000,000, oats exceed 700,- 
 000,000, and hay and potatoes have Increased in similar proportion. While the 
 pnoduct may be three or four times as large, the population is less than three 
 times as much, though the proportion of workers engaged in agriculture wa* 
 larger than now. 
 
 During the forty years from 1850 to the present time the cotton product in- 
 creased from a little over 2,000,000 bales to more than 7,000,000 bales. Cattle hav 
 also increased very rapidly ; cows from between 6,000,000 and 7,000,000 to about 
 16,000,000; other cattle from scarcely 12,000,000 to more than 36,000,000. WhiU 
 heep have doubled in n umber, the wool production has quadrupled. While the 
 milch cows are almost three times as many, their average rate of yield of milk 
 has probably doubled. The improvement of other cattle, through breeding and 
 feeding, has reduced the time required for maturity and increased the weight 
 of carcass to such an extent that the amount of beef produced annually in pro- 
 portion to numbers of animals kept is immensely increased. Relative numbers, 
 In comparison with the past, in all kinds of domestic animals, have far less sig- 
 nificance than improvement in weight and quality, in thriftiness and early ma- 
 turity. 
 
 It is difficult to force a market abroad for a surplus of any product. Every 
 nation is seeking to produce its own food, and as far as possible its raw material* 
 for extension in all forms of industrial production. The instinct of self-preser- 
 vation eompels the adoption of such a policy. This furnishes the motive for 
 the corn laws of France and Germany and other continental countries, and th 
 laws of European nations prohibiting the introduction of our pork product*. 
 We ean not sell our crops abroad, as a rule, except to fill the gaps in supply that 
 Are made by bad seasons or other results of the inevitable or inexorable.
 
 In wheat overproduction has destroyed the grower's profit. Wheat growing 
 has become a philanthropic mission for supplying cheap bread to Great Britain 
 and encouraging her manufacturers to keep wages on a low plane. The North- 
 western missionaries are still diligently sowing their seed and floating their 
 bread across the walers, and mourning that the profits do not return to them 
 after many days of weary transportation. The area of the crop of 1889 included 
 about 10,000,000 acres more than the home consumption of the year will require; 
 and the price in Liverpool has of late been the lowest for a century. 
 
 W can not force foreigners to buy our bread. There has been a mass of in- 
 effable nonsense regarding " the markets of the world " for wheat. Less than 
 a fourth of the people of the world eat wheat. Half of the people of Europe 
 scarcely know its taste, while few of the nations of Asia and Africa have any 
 knowledge of it. Eslewhere the statistician has thus presented the limitations 
 of our distribution of the wheat surplus : 
 
 "South America is now no market for flour, as more wheat is grown there 
 than is required for domestic consumption, and an annually enlarging outlet 
 for wheat is now sought in the distribution of the surplus. Australasia makes 
 more than a home supply. India has a surplus of 10 to 15 per cent. Eastern 
 Europe always has wheat to sell, leaving only Western Europe to supplement 
 its nearly full garners with the contributions of all other countries, those of 
 Europe included. Of the average 4 bushels consumed by each inhabitant of 
 Europe only a half bushel comes from other continents, and this is practically 
 the measure of the market for the wheat surplus of the world, a market which 
 neither reciprocity nor the persuasion of any international comity tan enlarge. 
 Nothing but war, famine, or pestilence, nothing but an act of God or a change 
 of crop distribution utterly at variance with long-settled policy and practical 
 sense can swell to sudden importance the demand for wheat andflour that will 
 relieve prevailing stagnation and advance prices." 
 
 T?he production of meat has also advanced faster than population. In 1880 
 the cattle of all kinds were returned as 39,675,533, and the numbers as now esti- 
 mated, on farms and ranches, are 52,801,907, or 33 per cent. more. Excluding 
 cows, the increase of other cattle, which includes the beeves, is equivalent to 
 about 40 per cent. Then beeves are brought to maturity more rapidly than for- 
 nferly, and more meat is made in proportion to numbers, so that the beef sup- 
 ply is greater than in 1880 in proportion to population. The ratio of supply has 
 been very greatly increased since 1850. Our export of beef has grown up in the 
 past thirteen years, and the export of cattle has not only increased, but its char- 
 acter has changed from the shipment of Texas or Florida long-horns to Cuba 
 to the export of fat beeves to Europe, one of which commands the price of five 
 of the original style of Gulf coast cattle. This difference represents not pre- 
 cisely the meat-making capacity of the cattle of 1850 and 1890 respectively, but 
 it suggests the wide disparity between the ratio of meat to numbers of cattle at 
 the two dates. 
 
 It is futile to attempt to defy the law of supply and demand. So long as farm- 
 ers insist on growing only the bread grains, cotton, tobacco, and cattle, and 
 to neglect other products which are needed, which we import at a cost of more 
 than $200, 000,000 annually, just so long will the lamentation over low prices con- 
 tinue. Diversification is essential to agricultural salvation. There are writers 
 and speakers who are doing incalculable injury by their influence in repression 
 of any tendency to a wider range of rural production, encouraging indolence 
 and idleness, paralyzing enterprise, intensifying rural inertia, and encouraging 
 dependence on foreign production, and the draining of the resources of the 
 country to foreign lands. They appear to deprecate any effort towards inde- 
 pendence or the cultivation of self-reliance, the stimulation of invention, the 
 acquisition of manual skill, or the development of rural taste. Their advice 
 points in the direction of aimless poverty and practical serfdom. 
 
 The agricultural exports of the United States during the past year amounted 
 to about $530,000,000 at the seaports, or about 400,000,000 on the farms. The agri- 
 cultural imports amounted to over 8348,000,000 at ports of shipment, and fully 
 $400,000,OCO with freights and commissions added, without further allowance for 
 undervaluation. Thus it takes most of our agricultural exports to pay for agri- 
 cultural imports. These imports are largely food and fibers. The heavier items 
 for 1888-'89 were as follows : 
 
 Sugar and molasses 893,297,868 
 
 Animals and their products, except wool 40,419,502 
 
 Fibers, animal and vegetable 59,453,936 
 
 Fruits and nuts 18,746,417 
 
 Barley and other cereals 8,971,722 
 
 Tobacco, leaf 10, 868, 226 
 
 Wines 7,706,772 
 
 Total _ .' : 239, 464, 443 
 
 DOLPH
 
 10 
 
 Moat of this Importation should be produced here, and many minor product* 
 not named; in fact, there is little on the list, except tea and coffee, that should 
 be imported. There are many plants yielding fruits, dyes, medicines, and other 
 products useful in the arts or for food that could be profitably grown, after soli- 
 able experiment, for the supply of a demand already existing or to be created, 
 and utilizing rural labor and increasing the wealth of the country. 
 
 ***** 
 
 There may be minor causes of depression which have not been considered, 
 bat they are impotent and unimportant in comparison with those outlined. 
 The main difficulty is, there is overproduction of a few staples and quite too 
 limited a list of rural products. There is too much hog and hominy, and a 
 narrow range of delicacies that are so eagerly sought by the buyer and *> profit- 
 able to the producer. There is too much rural labor unemployed, and too much 
 mechanical and manufacturing labor idle in both cases for lack of sufficient va- 
 riety, and because $500,000,000 or $600,000,000 are spent in foreign countries for 
 products that could better be made here. It is useless, it is foolish, to say that 
 we can not sell onr surplus unless we buy our food and clothing abroad. 
 
 We did sell last year to a single country to the amount of ^01,000,000 more 
 than we bought of that country, and a similar disproportion exists every year. 
 
 As we become more independent, more self-sustaining, producing all sub- 
 utantials of life, wealth will more abound, and be more equally distributed 
 under the industrial than under the commercial idea; and while imports will 
 still be heavy, they will be mainly for luxuries and superfluities of the rich, and 
 will not reduce the resources or limit the comforts of the people. 
 
 In a primitive country the first business of farmers is to produce food, to cater 
 to the wants of the stomach ; if they go no farther, as population advances and 
 its wants increase with the progress of culture and civilization, and so neglect 
 to supply the " raw materials " for the uses of the industrial arts, their country 
 will forever remain primitive and poor. This country can not claim exemption 
 from the inexorable rule. Cotton, by the invention of the gin, and the existence 
 of a suitable soil in the South, became the salvation of its agriculture, and then 
 threatened its existence by its refusal to tolerate other raw materials for other 
 arts. The cotton crop is valuable and will represent a larger value, yet it would 
 not suffice to board the people of the South at first-class hotels for a week. A 
 score of other products should further enrich her agriculture to relieve existing 
 depression. All the worsted wools and all the carpet wools that can be woven 
 in the country can readily be produced in the South. Only the invention of an 
 effective decorticator is required to make ramie a great industry, supplement- 
 ing rather than rivaling cotton ; and jute and many native and foreign fibers 
 should swell the list of raw materials. 
 
 And there should be no more need of going to Italy or Japan for raw silk 
 than there is to India for raw cotton. Further, there should be just aa little 
 need of going to Cuba for sugar. Nine-tenths (at least) of all the raw materials 
 required for textile, metalic, mechanical, chemical, oleaginous or other manu- 
 facture can be produced primarily by our farmers, diverting their labor to 
 profitable channels, and swelling the value of their products, steadying the 
 prices of the food staples, and insuring prosperity and comfort to all. No other 
 panacea will cure hard times; a profitable outlet, by diversification and exten- 
 sion, for constantly augmenting rural labor, can alone make rural industry 
 profitable. If the policy of going abroad for all fibers except cotton shall be 
 pnt into permanent practice, and for all sugar and fruits, barley and oil seeds, 
 to be paid for in corn and wheat and cotton, which are already crowded, into- 
 foreign markets to the last pound and bushel, there will be no necessity for a 
 "single tax" to make the farmer's land valueless, and no need of account- 
 books or pocket-books, and little demand for books of any kind. 
 
 And yet there is gross ignorance abroad of the extent of these limitations of 
 our agriculture, and of the means of recuperation. Many of our farmers are 
 delaying the emancipation of rural industry, and seeking to import cordage to 
 bind upon their backs still closer their present burdens. Instead of enlarging 
 the range of profitable production, they are seeking to restrict it. The wheat- 
 growers insist upon going to the antipodes for binder-twine, while a million 
 acres of flax fiber is wasted in adjoining fields, and when they could produce 
 hemp enough within six months to bind the wheat of the world. The cotton- 
 STowers want to go to India for jute, which will grow in their cotton fields as 
 readily as weeds. If we will not produce the twine to bind our sheaves, or the 
 jute or hemp or flax to cover our bales, we shall have no right to complain of 50 
 cents per bushel for the one or 5 cents per pound for the other. 
 
 During the last ten yearsmore than twomillion workers in agriculture, armed 
 with improved implements, have been added to the seven millions that were 
 making corn and wheat and cotton: and shall they still insist on the same 
 limited range of effort, walk in the same furrows their fathers turned, and seek 
 to live and die in the same overdone and profitleS routine? If so, agricultural 
 
 DOLPH
 
 11 
 
 depression will become chronic and Intensified to a degree unknown at present. 
 Shall farmers hug the chains of their dependence, limit the range of their in- 
 dustry, refuse to strike out into new paths, and sink into comparative idleness 
 and poverty? There are millions of them too intelligent and enterprising and 
 ambitious to co-operate in any such scheme of self-degradation. 
 
 Little can be added to this admirable statement of the case. If Mr. 
 Dodge's facts are correct and his conclusions well drawn, it follows that 
 instead of removing duties upon imports of labor products into the 
 United States, the dutjes should be maintained in order to stimulate 
 every industry which gives employment to labor and creates a demand 
 at home for farm products. Instead of admitting into this country free 
 of duty wool and other farm products we should maintain the present 
 duty, and in some cases the duties should be increased so as to make- 
 them practically prohibitory. 
 
 In times of business depression, from whatever cause produced, it 19 
 natural to blame the laws for the exisiting condition. The laws may 
 or may not be to blame. The price of every commodity is determined 
 by supply and demand. There is no way in any industry to restrict 
 production to the probable demand, where so many are engaged as are 
 employed in farming, and as aconsequence the supply must vary, even 
 if the demand remains reasonably stable. So with other productions. 
 It follows that a business, during the most prosperous condition of the 
 country and under the best possible laws, can not at all times be equally 
 profitable. The farmer will have his good and his bad years. One year 
 the manufacturer will be able to operate his factory at a profit; another 
 year he must operate it at a loss, or not at all. 
 
 What can Congress do now to aid the farmers ? The Senator from In- 
 diana and those who think like him say, " Eemove the duties which 
 keep out foreign goods, and let the farmer obtain them at the foreign 
 prices." I and all who believe general employment necessary to na- 
 tional prosperity say, "Continue the protective system so as to maintain 
 existing industries, bring others into existence, build up and strengthen 
 the home market so as to consume at home more farm products, and 
 bring the consumer and producer together, and thus save the cost of 
 transportation." I say also, increase the duties upon all the farm prod- 
 ucts that are imported into the United States, to enable our farmers as 
 far as possible to produce them at home. 
 
 If we examine the last published reports of our imports and exports 
 we shall find that an enormous sum is paid to foreign countries for 
 articles of food, every particle of which should be produced in thia 
 country. Why is it necessary to import into this country $2,500,000 
 worth of vegetables, including cabbage, from Holland, 317,156 bushels 
 of potatoes from Scotland, 1,441,466 bushels of potatoes, and 608,432 
 bushels of beans and pease from Canada and Nova Scotia ? Why is it 
 necessary to import over $1,000,000 worth of hay, and nearly $8,000,000 
 worth of breadstuffs, and over 16,000,000 dozen eggs, some of which 
 came from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and, the Senator from Iowa 
 [Mr. ALLISON] says, some of them from Italy ? 
 
 I hold in my hand a newspaper clipping from a Canada paper, or at 
 least what purports to be a telegram or letter from Ottawa, Ontario, 
 in which is stated the amount of certain articles imported into Canada 
 from the United States free of duty, the amount of dutiable articles, 
 and the amount of similar articles exported from Canada into the 
 United States. I will submit the table, simply saying that I under- 
 stand the first two columns represent the value of the articles which are
 
 imported into Canada, and the last column represents the articles and 
 the value thereof exported from Canada to the United States. 
 
 Taking the trade and navigation returns of the Dominion for the year ending 
 June 30, 1887, it is shown that the exchange between the Dominion" and United 
 States in commodities was as follows : ' 
 
 
 Free 
 goods. 
 
 Dutiable. 
 
 Exported 
 to United 
 States. 
 
 
 $883,146 
 
 $265 521 
 
 87 291 369 
 
 Straw 
 
 
 45 
 
 21 335 
 
 Hay 
 
 
 4 936 
 
 67n 749 
 
 
 
 173 652 
 
 404,119 
 
 Salt 
 
 6,023 
 
 7 246 
 
 16 962 
 
 
 
 6,339 
 
 331,349 
 
 eans 
 
 
 7 588 
 
 206 840 
 
 Barley 
 
 
 2,557 
 
 5, 245, 968 
 
 Malt .... 
 
 
 19 296 
 
 146 012 
 
 Eve 
 
 
 2 539 
 
 67 269 
 
 Oats - . 
 
 
 7 641 
 
 12,210 
 
 
 
 27 
 
 
 
 
 503 
 
 
 
 
 5 585 
 
 3 805 
 
 
 
 933 
 
 
 Butter . 
 
 
 51 733 
 
 17 207 
 
 
 
 10 567 
 
 30 667 
 
 
 5, 482 
 
 452, 893 
 
 2,717,509 
 
 
 1 385 
 
 83 628 
 
 65 &Q 
 
 
 
 8 524 
 
 41 285 
 
 
 2 492 
 
 
 191 276 
 
 
 474 344 
 
 101 707 
 
 9.3-V2 506 
 
 Grindstones , 
 
 1,869 
 
 14,382 
 
 23,358 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 Mr. President, I am glad to know that the dominant party in Con- 
 gress, at least in the other House, are disposed to take the same view 
 of the question of duties upon agricultural products which I have just 
 indicated. 
 
 I hold in my hand an article clipped from yesterday morning's Wash- 
 ington Post, with the heading, "A protection for the Grangers.'' As 
 the newspapers are supposed to know everything, I presume it to be 
 correct, and from the best information I can obtain I believe it to be so. 
 The article is as follows: 
 
 PROTECTION FOB THB GRANGERS THB GREAT WORK OF THE LEGISLATIVE COM- 
 MITTEE OF THE PATROLS OF HUSBANDRY. 
 
 The legislative committee of the National Grange, Patrons of Husbandry, 
 office 514 F street, has issued an address to the different granges of the country 
 showing the results of its labors with the Committee on Ways and Means. 
 The legislative committee furnishes the following list of farm products which 
 the Ways and Means Committee has agreed to protect, and the amount of tax 
 laid on each article : 
 
 Animals: 
 
 Horses and mules $30. 00 
 
 Horses and mules valued at $150 and-over 30 per cent. 
 
 Cattle more than one year old $10.00 
 
 Cattle less than one year old 2.00 
 
 Hogs 50 
 
 Sheep 1.50 
 
 All other live animals 20 per cent. 
 
 Breadstufis: 
 
 Barley 30 cents per busheL 
 
 Barley, malt 40 cents per busheL 
 
 Barley, pearled patent, or hulled 1 cent per pound. 
 
 DOLPH
 
 13 
 
 Buckwheat 10 cents per bushel. 
 
 Corn- 10 cents per bushel. 
 
 Corn meal - 10 cents per bushel. 
 
 Macaroni.. _ .... 2 cents per pound. 
 
 Oats - 10 cents per bushel. 
 
 Oatmeal 1 cent per pound. 
 
 Eice -.. li cents per pound. 
 
 Eye t 10 cents per bushel. 
 
 Rye flour i cent per pound. 
 
 Wheat _ 20 cents per bushel. 
 
 Wheat flour 20 per cent, ad valorem. 
 
 Dairy products : 
 
 Butter and substitutes.. 6 cents per pound. 
 
 Cheese _ 6 cents per pound. 
 
 Milk _ 5 cents per gallon. 
 
 Milk, preserved or condensed _ _ -3 cents per pound. 
 
 Farm and field products : 
 
 Beans 40 cents per bushel. 
 
 Beans, pease, mushrooms, prepared 40 per cent. 
 
 Broom-corn _ ....$8 per ton. 
 
 Cabbages, each ~ 3 cents. 
 
 Cider 5 cents per gallon. 
 
 Eggs 5 cents per dozen. 
 
 Egga, yolks of -. 25 per cent. 
 
 Hay - $4 per ton. 
 
 Hides - 15 per cent. 
 
 Honey _.. 20 cents per gallon. 
 
 Hops....... - 12 cents per pound. 
 
 Onions 25 per cent. 
 
 Pease ..._ . 40 cents per bushel. 
 
 Split pease 20 cents per bushel. 
 
 Potatoes 20 cents per bushel. 
 
 Flaxseed 30 cents per bushel. 
 
 Garden seed 20percent. 
 
 Vegetables (prepared) _ _ 45 per cent. 
 
 Vegetables (natural state) - 25 per cent. 
 
 Straw $2 per ton. 
 
 Teaslea _ 30 per cent. 
 
 Tobacco (for wrappers) _.. $2 per pound. 
 
 Fruits and nuts : 
 
 Apples, green 25 cents per bushel. 
 
 Apples, dried 2 cents per pound. 
 
 Dates, grapes, plums, prunes ~ _ 1 cent per pound. 
 
 Figs 2 cents per pound. 
 
 Oranges, according to size of package _ 25 cents to Slper box or case. 
 
 Raisins 2 cents per pound. 
 
 Fruit preserves _ .. 20 per cents. 
 
 Almonds, not shelled 5 cents per pound. 
 
 Almonds, shelled _ 7i cents per pound. 
 
 Filberts and walnuta _ _ _ 2 cents per pound. 
 
 Peanuts, unshelled ...... 1 cent per pound. 
 
 Peanuts, shelled li cents per pound. 
 
 Nuts,not enumerated IT cents per pound. 
 
 Meat products: 
 
 Bacon and ham ^. Scents per pound. 
 
 Beef, mutton, and pork _ 2 cents per pound. 
 
 Meats of all kinds, prepared and preserved _ 25 per cent. 
 
 Lard ^ 2 cents per pound. 
 
 Poultry, live . ......_.._. ....._... Scents per pound. 
 
 Tallow _ ._ _ ^ 1 cent per pound. 
 
 Vinegar _ .' 7s cents per gallon. 
 
 The present duty upon horses and mules is 20 per cent. It will be 
 observed that the proposed duty is to be $30 per head on horses and 
 mules valued at less than $150, and on those valued at $150 and over, 
 30 per cent. Under the existing tariff there are imported into the 
 United States something over f 3, 000, 000 in value of animals free of 
 duty and about $780,000 in value of dutiable animals, all animals for 
 breeding purposes and all emigrant teams, etc. , being admitted free.
 
 14 
 
 Under the existing law the duty upon barley is 10 cents per bushel; 
 the proposed duty is 30 cents per bushel. 
 
 Under the existing law barley malt is 20 cents per bushel; under 
 the proposed law it is 40 cents per bushel. 
 
 Under the existing law barley pearled, etc., is one-half a cent per 
 pound; under the proposed law it is to be 1 cent per pound. 
 
 Under the existing law buckwheat is 10 per cent., while under the 
 proposed law it is to be 10 cents per bushel. 
 
 Under the existing law butter ia 4 cents a pound; under the pro- 
 posed law it is to be 6 cents per pound. 
 
 Cheese under the existing law is 4 cents; under the proposed law, 
 6 cents per pound. 
 
 Milk under the existing law is 10 per cent., and under the proposed 
 law it is to be 5 cents per gallon. 
 
 Beans and pease, etc., prepared under the existing law are 30 per 
 cent., and under the proposed law the duty is to be 40 per cent. 
 
 Broom-corn under existing law is 10 per cent. ; under the proposed 
 law it is to be $8 per ton. 
 
 Cabbages under the existing law are 10 per cent. ; under the pro- 
 posed law the duty is to be 3 cents apiece. 
 
 Eggs under the existing law are free; under the proposed law the 
 duty is to be 5 cents per dozen. 
 
 Under the existing law the duty on hops is 8 cents; under the pro- 
 posed law it is to be 12 cents per pound. 
 
 Under the-existing law the duty on onions is 10 percent; under the 
 proposed law it is to be 25 per cent. 
 
 Under the existing law the duty on potatoes is 15 cents per bushel; 
 under the proposed law it is to be 20 cents per bushel. 
 
 Under the proposed law the duty on flaxseed is 20 cents per bushel; 
 under the proposed law it ia to be 30 cents per bushel. 
 
 Under the existing law the duty on pease is 10 per cent. ; under the 
 proposed law it is to be 40 per cent. 
 
 Under the existing law the duty on vegetables prepared is 30 per 
 cent. ; under the proposed law it is to be 45 per cent. 
 
 Under the existing law vegetables in the natural state pay 10 per 
 cent. ; under the proposed law 25 per cent. 
 
 Under the existing law straw is free; under the proposed law the 
 duty is to be $2 per ton. 
 
 Under the existing law apples green and apples dried are free; under 
 the proposed law apples green are to pay a duty of 25 cents per bushel, 
 and dried apples 2 cents per pound. 
 
 Under the existing law the duty on bacon and hams is 2 cents per 
 pound; under the proposed law it is to be 5 cents per pound. 
 
 Under the existing law the duty on beef and pork is 1 cent per pound ; 
 under the proposed law it is to be 2 cents per pound. 
 
 TBUSTS. 
 
 There is another way in which the producer may be benefited by 
 legislation, and that is by enacting and executing laws to prevent gam- 
 bling and speculation in the products of labor. I am sorry to say that 
 the power of Congress is limited to deal with this matter; but the power 
 of the States is ample, and should be exercised. 
 
 Labor is the source of all wealth. 'No other means of producing 
 wealth have ever been or ever will be found. It must be wrung from 
 the soil by patient toil; it must be brought up from mines deep in the 
 arth by the labor of man ; it must be coined from the forest by the axman
 
 15 
 
 and the millman ; it must be wrought out from raw materials by the 
 kill, the patience, and the labor of human operatives. The curse of 
 this and all other communities to-day is that so many persona are trying 
 to escape this Heaven-ordained law, and to secure something for noth- 
 ing wealth without labor. 
 
 This is at the bottom of every wild scheme to create wealth without 
 labor and to create its representative (money) by legislation alone, to 
 have the Government do by legislation for the citizen what he can only 
 do for himself by labor. This is at the bottom of all gambling contri- 
 vances, speculative combinations, all the attempts to control the prod- 
 ucts of the mills, factories, and farms, and to fix the prices for both 
 consumer and producer. This fever of speculation grows hotter during 
 times of business depression when capital is unemployed. Combina- 
 tions, monopolies, speculators may indeed acquire wealth, but it is 
 wealth that has been produced by labor. I repeat, labor only can pro- 
 duce wealth, and all schemes, whether of legislation or of speculation, 
 to produce it otherwise will fail. The strong arm of the law should be 
 interposed to protect the producers and consumers of the country from 
 being plundered by such organizations. 
 
 The advocates of free trade tell us that trusts and combinations to 
 control products and prices are fostered by the tariff. But every one 
 knows that some of the most gigantic and oppressive trusts in this 
 country were formed to deal in articles of purely domestic manufacture, 
 the prices of which are not affected in the least by the tariff; that 
 others are formed to deal in articles which are imported free; and others 
 still are formed to deal in articles which are both imported and pro- 
 duced in this country. The truth is that the tariff has nothing what- 
 ever to do with the question of trusts. 
 
 FAEM MOBTQAGK3. 
 
 A great deal has been said on this floor and elsewhere about farm 
 mortgages, and it appears to be thought by some that if the number 
 of farm mortgages is large in any State or Territory it indicates an nn- 
 prosperous condition of the farmer. But nothing is farther from the 
 truth. Nothing can be absolutely predicated as to the prosperity or 
 lack of properity of the farmers of a community from the existence or 
 non-existence of farm mortgages. The inference to be drawn from the 
 number of mortgages in an old, settled country, like one of the New 
 England States, might be very different from the inference to be drawn 
 from the same thing in a newer community. In a new State a large 
 number of farm mortgages may indicate great prosperity, may repre- 
 sent cultivated and productive farms and comfortable homes, where, 
 without the ability to borrow, there would have been a wacte and un- 
 productive area. They may have been the means by which day labor- 
 ers on the farm have been converted into prosperous farmers on their 
 own account. In many cases they represent additional lands, pur- 
 chased on credit, which are a source of increased prosperity, and so a 
 blessing. 
 
 In the State I have the honor in part to represent I "can remember 
 when, in the beautiful and fertile Willamette Valley, most of the orig- 
 inal claimants still owned and occupied their donation claims of 640 
 acres free from mortgage, and when many of the claims did not even 
 furnish the agricultural productions necessary for the support of their 
 families. But another generation grew up. Enterprising young men, 
 without means, from nearly every State of the Union, went to that
 
 16 
 
 State, bought lands on credit, gave mortgages for the purchase price, 
 began to raise from 40 to 60 bushels of wheat to the acre, and in prob- 
 ably forty-nine cases out of fifty have paid off the mortgages and have 
 become wealthy and prosperous farmers. 
 
 Mortgages are only necessarily an indication of a want of prosperity 
 of the farming class when they represent indebtedness for living ex- 
 penses or losses in conducting business; and such cases are as likely 
 to be the result of extravagance and bad management as poor crops 
 and low prices. I repeat, the statements which we hear from time to 
 time in this Chamber and published in the free-trade press, as to the 
 number and amount of farm mortgages, may as well be taken as evi- 
 dence of prosperity as of the reverse. 
 
 THE UNEQUAL, DISTRIBUTION OF WKAXTH. 
 
 The Senator from Indiana [Mr. VOOEHEES] dwelt at length upon the 
 unequal distribution of wealth in this country. There is, it is true, a 
 great inequality in the distribution of wealth. This inequality has 
 naturally increased with the growth of the country, the division o 
 labor, and the multiplication of large establishments to conduct every 
 kind of business. But it is produced by causes largely beyond the con- 
 trol of legislation. It will continue while the world endures, for some 
 men will always be industrious, economical, and acquisitive, while 
 others will be indolent, extravagant, and wasteful. Some will possess 
 the ability to make and keep money, while others will have the capac- 
 ity only for spending it. Some will be enterprising and successful, 
 while others will fail in every undertaking. Fathers will continue to 
 acquire fortunes to be squandered by their sons. If the wealth of the 
 world were to be equally distributed to-day, within five years there 
 would be larger fortunes and more paupers than ever before in the 
 world's history. 
 
 Nor do I think there is as much difference between the prosperity of 
 the farmers and of those engaged in other industries as the free-trader 
 would have the farmer believe. In this country every occupation is 
 open to all. A man may obtain a farm from the public domain, by liv- 
 ing on it, and it requires but a comparative small capital to work it. 
 If a farmer believes that he can do better at some other occupation there 
 is nothing to prevent him from entering it. Where there is such free- 
 dom for selection of occupation the tendency must constantly be for 
 those engaged in the less profitable to seek the more remunerative em- 
 ployments; and it would appear that if the profits of a fanner are not 
 as large as the profits of those engaged in other occupations there must 
 be some other compensating advantages to induce him to continue his 
 calling. 
 
 It is no test of the merits of the protective system that under it, dur- 
 ing a season of depression and overproduction, the farmer is not pros- 
 perous. The real tests are his condition during periods when the pro- 
 tective policy has prevailed as compared with his condition during 
 periods when the policy of a tariff for revenue only has been tried, and 
 his condition in this country during periods of protection as compared 
 with the condition of farmers in countries where free trade prevails. I 
 have not time to enter into details in contrasting the present condition 
 of the farmer in this country with his condition prior to tariff legisla- 
 tion under a Republican administration. Besides, I have something 
 to present, to show his condition as compared with that of the farmers 
 of free-trade countries, quite as important and not so generally under- 
 stood.
 
 17 
 
 Suffice it to say, in a word, that the condition of the farmers of the 
 United States to-day, notwithstanding the depressed condition of agri- 
 culture, is immeasurably better than before the war. I think there is 
 no doubt that in proportion to their numbers there are fewer mort- 
 gages upon their farms. Their houses are homes of luxury compared 
 with the farm-houses of that period. The log cabins and the cramped 
 and inconvenient farm-houses, the kitchen fire-places, the bare floors, 
 the rough walls, the home-made furniture, the cupboard of rough 
 Shelves, which largely prevailed within ray own recollection, have been 
 supplanted by modern cottages, containing the conveniences of life, and 
 the farmers' tables are loaded with food that was then considered lux- 
 uries. The appliances for cultivation, the tools for plowing, sowing, 
 reaping, and thrashing, and the facilities for marketing have ail been 
 improved. The farmer, as a rule, works fewer hours, and his children 
 do not go to the field as so tender an age. The hardest portions of hia 
 work, once done by hand, are now accomplished by machinery. His 
 children are better clothed and better educated. . In short, in every 
 way the farmer of to-day, even if his farm is mortgaged, lives better 
 than the man who held the mortgage did jn the ante-bellum days. 
 
 What does our experience as a nation during the century of our ex- 
 istence show as to the effect of a protective policy upon the farmer and 
 other productive interests of the country? As I read our history in 
 connection with the tariff it shows that absolutely all the prosperity 
 of the farmers of this country, as well as all the prosperity we have 
 enjoyed as a nation, has been enjoyed when the protective policy has 
 prevailed, and that the abandonment of that policy in whole or in part 
 has always caused business depression, scarcity of employment, low- 
 wages, and hard times, and that at such times the farmer has always 
 suffered moat. 
 
 I have not time upon this occasion to review the history of tariff legis- 
 lation in this country, but I will briefly refer to a few of the salient 
 points of that history. 
 
 One of the strongest reasons which, prior to the adoption ol the Con- 
 stitution, were urged in favor of a stronger government was that the 
 power to regulate commerce, to impose duties upon imports for the 
 protection of manufactures, was necessary to revive and make pros- 
 perous our languishing industries. The preamble of the first tariff act, 
 signed by President Washington, recited that the imposition of duties 
 was necessary for the encouragement and protection of manufactures. 
 Until 1816 the duties levied were not sufficient to afford adequate pro- 
 tection to American industries, but under the tariff acts of 1816, 1824, 
 and 1828 more ample protection was given, and the country entered 
 upon a career of unexampled prosperity; every industry prospered and 
 the Treasury was full. 
 
 This policy was stricken down, at the demand of the South, by the 
 act of 1832, which provided for a gradual reduction of duties, and which 
 as gradually brought on a crisis which culminated in 1837 iu the great- 
 est commercial crash the country ever witnessed. The suffering, low 
 wages, and low prices produced a political revolution, and the Whig 
 party came in power in 1840 pledged to re-enact a protective system, 
 a promise it redeemed in 1842. Again the country began to recover 
 from its business prostration and to prosper. 
 
 But under the promise at least in Pennsylvania to maintain the 
 tariff of 1842, the Democratic party carried the Presidential election of 
 1844, and again.struck down the protective tariff system and checked
 
 18 
 
 the prosperity of the country. The grervt commercial crisis of 1857 
 was a legitimate result of the Democratic tarifl" policy. 
 
 The Republican party came into power in 1861, and the protective 
 policy came to the front. I need not describe the wonderful prosperity 
 of this country under the policy adopted and maintained by the Re- 
 publican party. It has. been without a parallel in the history of the 
 world. Our growth in wealth, in population, in resources has been 
 constant and rapid, resulting in the improved condition of every class 
 of our citizens. 
 
 HOW DOES THE CONDITION Of TUB AMERICA* FARMER COMPARE WITH THB 
 CONDITION OF THE FARMER IN FREE-TRADE COUNTRIES* 
 
 It did not occur to the Senator from Indiana when he was painting 
 the condition of the poor and the depression of the farming interests 
 in contrast with the luxury and splendor of the rich, and advocating 
 tariff for revenue only as a remedy for this inequality, to tell us what 
 had been the effect of free-trade where it had been tried; whether it 
 had there secured employment for the laboring classes and filled their 
 homes with comfort. 
 
 England is the great free-trade country, and the Senator would have 
 done better to have told us, in his splendid oratory, of the blessings 
 which free- trade had conferred on the laborer and the poor there, rather 
 than to have drawn on his imaginaton for the blessings tariff for reve- 
 nue only would confer upon the same classes here: before he charged 
 the present depression of the farming industries in this country to the 
 protective system, it would have been instruct! \ e and would have helped 
 to arrive at correct conclusions to have considered how free-trade has 
 affected the farmer in England and her dependencies. 
 
 For forty years the tariff-for-revemie-only policy has been tried in 
 England, and during the whole period the condition of the laboring 
 classes has been growing comparatively worse. If the system has ben- 
 efited any class it has been the rich. It has promoted the accumula- 
 tion of wealth in the hands of the few and prevented its distribution 
 among the many. The wealth of the favored classes has been wrung 
 by the employers of labor from the labor of the poor, and has, in turn, 
 been wrung from them by the bankers, brokers, and financiers. It has 
 promoted the interests of four millions of capitalists at the expense of 
 thirty millions of workers. 
 
 In the present condition of England we have an object-lesson we 
 would do well to study. On one side, four millions of capitalists, titled 
 aristocracy, with wide country seats devoted to parks and game pre- 
 serves; with magnificent baronial castles filled with costly works of art; 
 stables filled with horses which have never been used in any useful or 
 profitable employment, and are better cared for every day than the 
 thirty millions of human beings who are ground into the earth to sup- 
 ply all this magnificence; bankers who go on from day to day adding 
 bond to bond and stock to stock, who loan their millions to kings and 
 control kingdoms by their wealth; four millions who live in luxury 
 such as na similar number of men in any other country in ancient or 
 modern times ever lived, squandering often in vice the gains wrung 
 from labor under the uneqal and unnatural industrial system of Great 
 Britain. 
 
 If my friend from Indiana had chosen to picture their great wealth, 
 their baronial castles, their festive boards, and their splendid equipages, 
 their extravagances and their vices, what a field it would have been for 
 his rhetoric. But let us turn to the other side of the picture.
 
 19 
 
 Thirty millions of people, millions of whom were once prosperous 
 farmers, small traders, employers of labor, well-to-do merchants, and 
 day-laborers, under the system which placed their labor in competition 
 with the labor of the world, have been growing poorer and poorer, and 
 their condition has gone from bad to worse. The harvest of the system 
 is thirty millions out of thirty-four millions of people who dwell in pov- 
 erty and starvation and rags. There are among them one million of 
 paupers; millions who are half clothed; millions out of employment, 
 while fourteen millions find employment for but a portion of the time 
 only, and work for starvation wages at that. 
 
 If my friend from Indiana had wanted examples of business depres- 
 sion, of poverty, squalor, and wretchedness from which to draw con- 
 clusions as to the relative merits of the American system of protection 
 and the British system of free trade, he could have found them in 1'ree- 
 trade England, and if he had wanted an illustration of what Great 
 Britain would make this country if she had the power to force her 
 economic theories upon us, he could have found it in Ireland. Does 
 England advocate free trade for the United States from unselfish mo- 
 tives? Do her rich manufacturers maintain agents and circulate their 
 free- trade literature in this country for our good? No; England would 
 like to monopolize the workshops of the world, and make the people 
 of all other nations hewers of wood and drawers of water. 
 
 All remember how, when President Cleveland sent his free-trade 
 message to Congress and the Mills bill was reported in the House, the 
 whole press of England and Scotland teemed day after day and week 
 after week with eulogies of President Cleveland; how they heralded 
 the message as in the interest of free trade; how they predicted pros- 
 perity for their depressed and languishing industries if the Cleveland 
 policy should prevail in the United States. It is for her own interest, 
 or rather, I should say, in the interest of the governing classes, that 
 she advocates free trade. It is with the hope of breaking down the 
 manufacturing and commercial industries of other nations and pro- 
 moting her own. 
 
 In a speech which I made in the Senate on the 12th of March, 1888, 
 I had a passage read from the speech of an English free-trader concern- 
 ing the controversy between the United States and Great Britain over 
 the Oregon Territory. My apology for repeating it, if one is needed, 
 is its peculiar interest for the people of the Northwest. I then said: 
 
 SHALL, KJTGLASTD CONQUER THE OREGON TERRITORY BY FREE TRADE ? 
 
 The present conspiracy against tho material interests of the Pacific coast re- 
 minds me of the remarkable utterances of an English statesman, Mr. Pox, 
 nearly forty-three years ago, at Covent Garden Theater, London, April 9, 1845, 
 in dwuuswing the Oregon controversy, during President Polk's administration, 
 when the rallying cry for political parties was "54 4lX or fight." I ask the Sec- 
 retary to read this remarkable prediction of Mr. Fox. 
 
 The PRESIDING OKFICKR (Mr. HISCOCK in the chair). The Secretary will read 
 as requested. 
 
 The Secretary read as follows : 
 
 "Quarrel about this! Why, we might just as well be Invited by Peel and 
 Polk to fight about mountains in the moon, 
 
 "But let men have something to do with it; let those who have found no pref- 
 erable home go there and see what effect they can produce upon the best por- 
 tions of the soil ; as their numbers increase and their exertions tell it will soon 
 become more valuable. And when man has occupied it, when industry has 
 .driven its car of peaceful conquest around tlie borders of that vast land, when 
 towns have arisen and cities appeared with their thronging numbers, when 
 the Rocky Mountains are tunneled arid rail and canal have united the Atlantic 
 and Pacific, when the waters of the Columbia swarm with steam-boats, why, 
 then will be the time to talk of the Oregon territory ; then, without a regiment 
 r line-of-battle ship, without bombarding any town whatever, free trade will 
 DOLPH
 
 20 
 
 conquer the Oregon territory for us, and will conquer the United States for 
 also as far as it is desirable either for us or for them that there should be any 
 conquest whatever in the case. Free trade will establish there all the insignia 
 of conquest. When their products come here, and those of our industry return, 
 there will be scarcely a laborer upon the pine forest that he is clearing but will 
 wear upon his back, to his very shirt, the livery of Manchester. The knife with 
 which he carves his game will have the mark of Sheffield upon its blade as a 
 testimony of our supremacy. Every handkerchief waved upon the banks of the 
 Missouri will be the waving of an English banner from Spitalfields. Throughout 
 the country there will be marks of our skill and greatness, and tribute paid for us 
 received not by warriors or governors, not coming directly into the national 
 treasury, but flowing into the pockets of the industrious and toiling poor, refresh- 
 Ing trade and enriching those who pursue it, giving them an imperial heritage 
 beyond the wide Atlantic, Why, they will be conquered, for they will work 
 for us; and what can the conquered do more for their masters? They will 
 rrow corn for us, they will grind it, and send us the flour; they will fatten pig 
 lor us upon the peaches of their large wooded grounds ; they will send u> what- 
 ever they can produce that we want, and without asking us to put our hand 
 in our pocket in order, by taxation, to pay a governor there for quarreling 
 with their representatives, or soldiery to bayonet their multitudes. There is 
 nothing upon earth worthier the name of empire than this; this is a nobler 
 kind of dominion, less degrading both for the one party and for the other, less 
 debasing than any sovereignty that was ever -won by armies, and being so won, 
 reluctantly swayed by scepters." 
 
 Mr. DOLPH. This passage has heretofore appeared to be a piece of brilliant 
 oratory, the offspring of a vivid imagination. It now, in view of the recom- 
 mendations of a Democratic administration and the action of a majority of the 
 Committee on Ways and Means of the House, seems almost like the voice of 
 prophecy, and it begins to look as if the Cobden Club, re-enforced by the ad- 
 ministration, is about to succeed in conquering Oregon, destroying her wool in- 
 terest, and bringing to pass the event predicted by Fox, when there will be 
 scarcely a laborer in Oregon, not only in the pine forests that he is clearing, but 
 in the valleys and on the hillsides he is tilling, but will wear on bis back to his 
 very shirt the costly livery of Manchester, and that to be paid for in wheat at 
 CO cents per bushel laid down in Liverpool. 
 
 Mr. President, the more the boasted prosperity of England under free 
 trade is examined the clearer will it appear to be the prosperity of the 
 privileged classes, a prosperity measured by the increasing fortunes of 
 her millionaires, by the bank accounts of the rich, by the luxuries which 
 inherited fortunes and fortunes wrung from the laboring classes insure 
 to them. Her system of political economy has destroyed agriculture, 
 has driven many important industries from the country, has thrown a 
 large proportion of her population out of employment and driven them 
 to more prosperous countries. Not only is the prosperity of 4,000,000 
 of her population secured at the expense of the other 30,000,000, but 
 at the expense of her dependencies wherever they have not rebelled 
 against the system, and at the expense of other and weaker nations 
 wherever she could succeed by diplomacy or force in destroying their 
 industrial interests to build up her own. 
 
 But as even the rich can not long prosper when labor is unemployed, 
 when agriculture is depressed, when other industries are paralyzed, it 
 was inevitable that a time should come when the depression caused by 
 free trade should become universal. To-day the English capitalist 
 finds it difficult to employ his capital in England, and foresees that 
 there is bound soon to be a breaking up of the present system, that a 
 day of reckoning is at hand, and he is casting about for some safe and 
 profitable field for investment. Sjtrange as it may appear, free-trade 
 English capitalists are investing their surplus millions in this country, 
 where labor is protected against the cheap labor and cheap-labor pro- 
 ducts of England. Millions of dollars of British capital which, under 
 a system of political economy that would foster industries and give em- 
 ployment to home labor would be invested in England, are being in- 
 rested in the United States. English capitalists with free trade drove
 
 21 
 
 English artisan* and English laborers to protected America, and wer* 
 themselves driven there to find employment for their capital. 
 
 Every great industry in the United States which has been built up 
 by the maintenance of the American system of protection, and which 
 has given employment to American citizens in our towns and cities, 
 and thns created a horae market for the products of the farm, is to-day 
 being examined by agents of English capitalists with a view of being 
 purchased by English syndicates. Several important industries of the 
 United States within the past year have been transferred to British 
 owners. I saw a statement not long since I know not what founda- 
 tion there may be for it that a syndicate of English capitalists were 
 negotiating for the purchase of the salmon canneries on the Columbia 
 River with a view of controlling the cannery business in Washington 
 and Oregon. All this shows that at last free trade, by destroying many 
 industries of England, has, in its depressing effects, reached the men 
 who have heretofore been benefited by it, and is driving them for the 
 employment of their capital out of Great Britain, as it has heretofore 
 driven millions of aitisans and laborers from England and Ireland to 
 find employment elsewhere for their labor. 
 
 THB HANDWRITING ON THB "WAli,. 
 
 The Senator from Indiana predicted that the handwriting is on the 
 wall foreshadowing the downfall of the protective system. On the 
 contrary, let me tell him that the decree is already written in the his- 
 tory of the near future for the abandonment by Great Britain of her 
 nonsensical and suicidal economic system, and that with that will fall 
 the whole fabric of free trade, which is to-day only supported by Eng- 
 land and her Crown colonies, which have no power to impose duties 
 for their own protection. To prove that I have not overdrawn the pict- 
 ure of the condition of England under free trade, I will quote from 
 an English writer whose burning and eloquent words will show t'. at 
 he possesses the requisite knowledge and ability to enable him to 
 speak with certainty as to facts and to draw correct conclusions from 
 them. He is not one of the thirty million reduced to poverty and pau- 
 perism by free trade; he belongs to the aristocratic four million. But 
 his eyes have been opened to see the iniquities of a system which 
 has produced such sad results in England, his ears are open to the cries 
 of distress that come up for relief from every quarter of the United 
 Kingdom, and, in the interest of humanity, inspired by patriotism, he 
 has voiced the wrongs of his countrymen. I hold in my hand a pamphlet 
 entitled "A Forbidden Subject; or, Protection to British Industry," 
 by Sir Edward Sullivan, Bart. I wish the rules of the Senate permit- 
 ted me to incorporate in my remarks the suggestive cut upon the first 
 cover, which represents the British Lion securely chained in a barrel 
 labeled "Free trade;" his tail, protruding through a hole, is twisted 
 into a knot on the outside to further secure his safe confinement, while 
 above him, sailing in cloudless skies in freedom and sunshine, is a bird, 
 which I suppose represents the American Eagle. 
 
 Nowhere have I seen the questions of free trade and protection pre- 
 sented with greater terseness and pungency than in this pamphlet. 
 Nearly every sentence is a text. The subject is discussed in a series of 
 hort essays under the following titles : 
 
 "A forbidden subject." "Near is my shirt, but nearer Is my skin." "Th 
 heap loaf No. V " The cheap loaf No. 2." "The necklace of Siva." "Gen- 
 eral employment." "Is England to go out of tillage?" "Sham." "Shrink- 
 age." , The logic of facts." "Prosperity by arithmetic." "Protection." "A 
 five-shilling duty on corn." "The burning question." "The capital of labor." 
 
 DOLPH
 
 22 
 
 I wish every voter in the United States had a copy of this pamphlet 
 that he might read the baronet's eloquent plea on behalf of the 30,- 
 000,000 workers in England for protection, an;i their protest against 
 the foolish free-trade policy of England, and that he might learn, what 
 is the fact, that there is a serious growing sentiment and movement in 
 England against that policy. I propose to incorporate in my remarks 
 quotations from some of these essays, that they may reach some of the 
 farmers and laboring men of my State. 
 
 Under the title of " A. Forbidden Subject," the baronet says: 
 We know perfectly well that very many of us are in our hearts thinking 
 caudal of "free trade?" pray ing for higher prices, though we know that higher 
 prices can only come with protection. 
 
 **** 
 
 Yes, there are actually idiots going: about the county talking scandal about 
 free trade and I am one of them and this is what I say : That after forty years' 
 experience of one-sided free trade the condition of labor in the United Kingdom 
 is very alarming. That many industries have died out, or removed to other 
 countries; that in nearly every industry English labor is undersold by foreign 
 labor ; that in most industries four days is now considered a week's work. That 
 agricultural -wages are dropping- to a point never berore reached; that in many 
 counties the laborers are competing for work at 10s. and 9s. a week. That, in 
 spite of excessive cheapness, there are millions in the country who only taste 
 fresh meat once a week, or once a fortnight, and milk never. That the pauper 
 class number 7,000,000 in a population of 34,000,000. That there are 14,500,000 of 
 the community receiving less than 1Q. 6d, per week. That flesh and blood never 
 was so cheap; the sweating system never so crueL That land is rapidly going 
 out of cultivation. That every year, with a rapidly increasing population, we 
 are growing less food. That agriculture in all its branches is rapidly declining. 
 That whilst our lands are going out of tillage, those who are ready and anxious 
 to till them are standing idle. 
 
 That land-owners, tenants, laborer*, county tradesmen represent 10,000,000 or 
 12,000,000 directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture. That agriculture, 
 the growing of food for the people, must always be the most important interest 
 In every community. That of all the ways in which capital can be employed, 
 agriculture is by far the most advantageous to society. That no equal capital 
 puts into motion so much productive labor as that of the farmer. That to im- 
 pose conditions under which the land can not be cultivated is devising the most 
 gigantic "lock-out" ever conceived. That the United Kingdom is the only 
 country in the world that is going out of tillage. That everywhere else, in 
 France, in Germany, Belgium, tillage is extending. That to advocate a return 
 from tillage to grazing is like advocating a return from express trains to stage 
 -wagons. That tillage produces eight limes the amount of human food, employs 
 three times the amount of human labor that grazing does. That, therefore, the 
 return from tillage to grazing means the emigration of one-half of the popula- 
 tion. That all production that docs not pay its cost ceases. 
 
 That, therefore, if growing food does not pay its cost, it -will cease. That em- 
 ployment, not cheapness, is the mninspring of national prosperity and content- 
 ment. That the way to make a nation happy and prosperous is to give every- 
 body an opportunity of being employed. That the idea of supplying a popula- 
 tion of 34,000,000 with everything at a lower price than they can produce it is 
 probably the most preposterous nonsense that ever entered the human mind. 
 That this is actually what tree trade pretends to do; we are attempting to sup- 
 ply ourselves with everything cheaper than we can produce it. That, in other 
 words, we place before our workers cheap food, but put it out of their power to 
 earn the money to buy it. That there is hardly an article in the world that can 
 not be produced cheaper in some other country than in England. That freight 
 and transport are so cheap that nearly everything will now pay the cost of 
 tran.sjjort to England. That, owing to her insular position, surrounded on all 
 ides by ports and harbors, England is more vulnerable to industrial invasion 
 than any country in the world. That, owing to the extravagant and unthrifty 
 character of her people, England is the one country in the world that require* 
 to protect its labor. 
 
 That it Is impossible the price of labor can be maintained in the face of th 
 labor competition of the whole world. That England is now suffering from in- 
 dustrial invasion. That foreign labor is driving out English labor, as the brown 
 rat has driven out the black rat. That, as it is the duty of the Government to 
 protect us from an armed Invasion, so it is the duty of the Government to 
 protect us from an industrial invasion. That an armed invasion means tempo- 
 rary disgrace that an industrial invsion means ruin. That protection means 
 protection to labor, protection to native industry, protection to those who eat 
 
 DOLPH
 
 23 
 
 their bread In the sweat of their face. That free trade means un taxed foreign 
 competition. That foreign competition means competition in cheapness; com- 
 petition In cheapness means competition in cheap labor; competition in cheap 
 labor means competition in flesh and blood ; and comp-tition in flesh and blood 
 Is slavery. That excessive competition is the greatest curse that can be im- 
 posed on a working community. That the unrestricted labor competition of the 
 whole -world is rapidly making the conditions of English labor impossible. That 
 cheap clothing and cheap food are of no value if human labor is cheaper still. 
 That excessive cheapness is of no value to the community without employment. 
 That employment means cheapness. That those who have employment can 
 buy. That those who have notemployment can not buy. 
 
 That the first and paramount duty of every Government is to encourage 
 conditions under which every one can find employment. That we import 
 manufactures and export manufacturers; import agricultural produce and ex- 
 port agricultural laborers; export strong men and import helpless paupers. 
 That to advocate emigration with our fields unfilled, and 7,000,000 of our popu- 
 lation half clothed is monstrous. That board of trade returns are mere flap- 
 doodle, the food of fools. That foreign imports and foreign exports alone are 
 no proof of national prosperity. That internal production and internal con- 
 sumption are the only proofs of national prosperity. That free trade has ruined 
 Ireland, and protection alone can restore it to prosperity and contentment. 
 That the cheapest countries are those most unfavorable to labor. That free 
 trade means cheapness to the rich, the idlers, those with fixed incomes ; but 
 longer hours, lower wages, harder work to the workers. That the workers are 
 twenty to one to the idlers, and therefore free trade sacrifices the interests of 
 the nineteen to the interests of the one. 
 
 That in no other community in the world has the Government ventured to im- 
 pose the tyranny of unrestricted foreign competition on the workers. That for- 
 eign competition cheapens every thing the working classes produce, but cheap- 
 ens nothing they consume except food. That protection raises the price of one 
 article they consume, but also raises the price of everything they produce. That 
 higher prices for what they produce means higher wages, less grinding competi- 
 tion, a higher standard of life. That five shillings spent on the produce of Eng- 
 lish labor benefits the working class more than fifty shillings spent on the pro- 
 duce of foreign labor. That it does not follow we eat more corn because we 
 import more corn ; we may grow less. That it does not follow we consume more 
 Bilks because we import more, if we give up producing silks. That it is home 
 trade enriches the working classes. That 25.000,000 of the population depend on 
 the supply and demand of home trade. That they consume no foreign articles 
 whatsoever. That it is manifestly unjust as between class and class to make 
 everything the poor produce artificially cheap. That indeed the tendency ought 
 to be the other way; that the agricultural classes are the best customers of the 
 manufacturing classes. That they consume no foreign man factures. That, 
 with the exception of food, foreign competition does not cheapen one single 
 article the working classes consume ; as a rule they consume entirely goods of 
 English manufacture. That when the agricultural classes are doing well they 
 bviy ; that when they are doing badly they " do without." That the wealth of 
 a nation is the value of what it produces. That under foreign competition the 
 value of everything we produce is decreasing every year. That to say that 
 under these conditions we are getting richer is absurd. That every year the 
 baUince of foreign trade is 100,000,000 against us. This has to be paid. 
 
 Economists may argue until they are black in the face how it is paid ; it does 
 not signify Zd. ; it has to be paid somehow. That one-sided free trade is a 
 game of heads I loose, tails you win. That every one is getting poorer who 
 deals in labor, and every one is richer who deals in money. That unrestricted 
 foreign competition is so evident! y destructive of the vested interests and rights 
 of labor that out of England no single statesman has ever considered it worth 
 a moment's consideration. That in America the working classes believe to a 
 man that in England the aristocracy have forced free trade on the working 
 classes in order that they may buy their foreign luxuries cheap. They can not 
 conceive that any working community can be such fools as to invite unrestricted 
 foreign competition, that is killing their industries and driving them out of 
 their country. That thirty-nine fortieths of mankind look upon free trade as 
 absolute nonsense, unworthy a moment's serious consideration. That it is only 
 a question of the majority. 
 
 If 5,000 desire protection and 20,000 do not it is a monopoly. If 20,000 desire it 
 and 5,000 dp not it is common sense. When the majority are for protection, pro- 
 tection is right; when the majority are against protection, protection is wrong. 
 Thiil free-traders conceal the truth from the working classes. They (ell them 
 thai labor is in a worse condition in America, France, Germany, and Belgium 
 than it is in England, which is not trne. They tell them that under any cir- 
 cumstances they can beat the foreigner, which is not true. They do not tell them 
 that under protection the wages in France, Belgium, and Germany have nearly
 
 24 
 
 doubled. That forty years ago these countries had no manufacturing industries; 
 that now they are teeming with them. That fifty years ago America had no 
 manufacturing industry whatever; that now she supplies the entire wants ot 
 50,000,000 of i>eople, besides exporting everywhere. They do not tell them that 
 In every country in the world, except England, agriculture is progressing. They 
 do not tell them that for every sovereign that waa in circulation forty years ago 
 there are three sovereigns to-day. That it U the increased circulation of gold 
 and the spread of steam not England removing her Import duties that have 
 caused the increased trade of the world. They do not tell them that English 
 laborers, with 11s. a week (it ought to be 20*.), can not grow wheat as cheaply as 
 Indian ryots, with 2*. a week. That English operatives, working fifty-two 
 hours for 25--., can not produce as cheaply as French, German, or Belgian op- 
 eratives, working seventy hours for 20. The work ing classes do not know the 
 truth, and those who want their votes have not the courage to tell them. 
 ******* 
 
 If English consumers are to be supplied by foreign producers, how are Eng- 
 lish producers to live? How can they buy if they have not got any money T 
 and how are they to get any money if they don't earn any wages? and how are 
 they to earn any wages if they don't get any work? How can they consume 
 unless they first produce? Did the folly of man ever conceive more suicidal 
 nonsense than a scheme for supplying an industrial community of 31,000,000 
 with everything they consume from abroad cheaper than they can produce it 
 themselves? It is simply a scheme for depriving our working men of work. 
 It is only political economists run riot who could have conceived it. 
 
 *** 
 
 The foolish fellow in the fable who pulled down his chimneys and bricked up 
 his fire-places because the almanac told him it was June was a wise man com- 
 pared to those who throw off their coats in order to keep warm and encourage 
 cheap labor in order to keep up high wages. 
 
 Let me repeat the proposition. If an industrial community insists upon being 
 supplied with everything itconsumes cheaper than it can be produced at home, 
 there will soon be no work for that community to do. It must leave the coun- 
 try or starve. It was always a certainty that directly our workers realized the 
 fact thai the foreigners wer.e taking the bread out of their mouths they would 
 call for protection. Well, that time has come, and they do realize it. The in- 
 stinct of self-preservation is awakened, and it is possible they may make it very 
 hot for those who have so long been leading them astray from the paths of com- 
 mon sense. Industrial depression has been so long reaching wages that people 
 began to fancy it would never reach them at all. But it has. The great indus- 
 trial boom put it off ten years, but at last it has come. 
 
 The cause of the delay is very simple. Up to the present time the immense 
 industrial capital of the country has ?tood between English aud foreign work- 
 men, and so long as that buffer remained the former did not feel the full shock 
 of the competition with cheap labor; now it is gone, and they are face to face 
 with their enemy. First the employers lost their profits, then they lost their 
 capital, and now at last the workers are losing their wages. The shoe is begin- 
 ning to pinch, and the reaction has commenced. It was a certainty. The em- 
 ployer may mana-re to live without his profits; he may struggle on even if he 
 loses half his capital; he luu his political economy to console him; hut when 
 the workman loses employment he is done. Xo theories will help him then ; he 
 wants remedies, and very quickly, too. It is a case of work or the workhouse.- 
 
 Under the head of " Near is my shirt, but nearer is my skin," he 
 
 In every industrial country in the world except England it is recognized that 
 the first duty of (he Government is to promote the employment of the people: 
 in other words, to protect their industries. In every other industrial country 
 but England the industries of the people are protected. Is it so certain that .ill 
 the whole world is wrong and England only right ? In every country except 
 England it is allowed that the interests of those who both produce and consume 
 are greater than the interests of those who only consume. In every industrial 
 community out of England it is allowed that employment i? of more importance 
 than mere cheapness. In England alone it is maintained th:it cheapness is of 
 more importance than employment. Are even free-traders infallible? Is there 
 any doubt which is right? Ernploj'merit gives the means of buying; cheap- 
 ness does not give the means of buying. 
 
 The penny roll is now down at a halfpenny; and thousands of the unem- 
 ployed would be much bette_r off with the penny roll at twopence if they had 
 twopence-halfpenny to buy it with. When a cry goes up from the unemployed 
 in England it is met by an assurance from the Cobden Club that workmen ar 
 far worse off in foreign countries. The information I have gathered on this sub- 
 ject with much care satisfies me that this statement is absolutely untrue ; that it
 
 25 
 
 la, In fact, the actual reverse of the truth. There is industrial distress In other 
 countries, no doubt, but nothing like the industrial distress that exists In Eng- 
 land. There is this immense difference : Other nations suffer chiefly from th 
 results of their own overproduction, whereas England suffers from, the over- 
 production of the whole world. 
 
 Under the title of "Cheap loaf No. 2," he says: 
 
 It is important for Englishmen to understand this one great fact, that a popu- 
 lation of 34,000,000 of people inhabiting a country of 77,000,000 of acres, with all 
 the resources of civilization, and with the cheapest coal and iron in the world, 
 with still working capital left, a good climate, a splendid seacoast, can with the 
 greatest ease supply all its food and all its manufactured requirements, pro- 
 vided the people wish to work ; if they won't work, cadet quscslio; but they are 
 like other workers all over the world they will work if the conditions of labor 
 are sufficiently favorable; if they are not, they will not work. The farmers 
 will till their fields if Phey can make a profit by doing so; if they can not, they 
 will let them lie fallow. Those who tell Englishmen they can not supply their 
 wants in agricultural and manufactured produce tell them what is not true. 
 
 Our total imports (1879) were 378,000,000. If we were to return to the practice 
 of common sense, and of " civilized mankind," and admit duty free tea, coffee, 
 cocoa, sugar, tobacco, that we can not produce at home, and put a high duty 
 on all foreign luxuries, wine, spirits, and on all agricultural and manufactured 
 produce that interfere with employment at home, we should, If the importa- 
 tion continued, relieve our taxation to the extent of 30,000,000 a year; or, if the 
 Importation ceased and we produced these articles ourselves, we should, with- 
 out exaggeration, add 60,000,000 or 70,000,000 directly and indirectly to the 
 wage-earning class of the community. Now, this is no exaggeration. The 
 nightmare of one-sided free trade, in which England has given away every- 
 thing and received nothing in return, is passing away. The sieeper is already 
 half awake, and asking himself uneasily, " Is this true or is it only a dream? " 
 Alas ! it is no dream. May the awakening be complete and soon ; it can not be 
 too soon. 
 
 Under the caption of " Necklace of Siva," he says: 
 
 From Cape Comorin to Cashmere the credulous Hindoo bows himself before 
 the great god Siva, the destroyer. From the land's end to John O'Groat'a 
 House the credulous operative bows himself before the great god Competition, 
 the destroyer. The Siva of the Hindoo is a cruel god, adorned with a necklace 
 of skulls, and propitiated with oblations of blood and human sacrifices. The 
 Siva of the British operative is also a cruel god, adorned with a necklace of 
 skulls, and propitiated with the life blood of many millions of workers. 
 * * * * * * * 
 
 Of course, competition must come in this industrial world ; but woe to those 
 who add competition to competition till the?e is no place left for the worker. 
 
 In the fierce struggle for gold, and the fiercer struggle for life, the weak, of 
 
 greatest benefactor to industrial mankind is the legislator or economist who di- 
 minishes competition, and the greatest curse, to industrial mankind is the one 
 who artificially increases it. " But," say our instructors, " competition is not a 
 cruel god that delights in a necklace of skulls," etc. Let us see. A wretched 
 woman stitches shirts at 4d. a dozen, her very life all the time passing through 
 her fingers into her work. "You must look alive, my good woman," says the 
 slopmaster; " you must stitch a good deal harder than you have done if you 
 wish me to employ you. I have been paying you 4d. a dozen for stitching these 
 shirts, but now I find I can get them stitched as well in Belgium, Saxony, and 
 Italy for 3d. per dozen. You must do them for 3d. a dozen or lose my work." 
 
 "But I can't stitch them for 3d. a dozen," answers the poor woman ; "already 
 I stitch sixteen hours a day, often more; my fingers are sore :' I hare to pay for 
 fly light and for my needles and thread, and all I can earn is 3s. 6d. per week. 
 I will try to stitch cheaper, I will indeed; but for God's sake don't take away 
 my work, or I starve." " I am very sorry," says the slopmaster, who realizes her 
 misery, " but what can I do? Business is business, competition is so severe that 
 I must have the cheapest labor. If shirts can be stitched for 3d. a dozen abroad 
 I must get them stitched for 3d. a dozen at home or lose the trade." And so an- 
 other skull is added to the necklace of Siva. The same with chainmakers or 
 nailmakers. " Now, then, my man," we say to the foreman or gangman, " you 
 moat make these women and children of yours work harder than they have 
 been doing. I find I have been paying you too much. I can get the work done 
 cheaper abroad." "But," says the gangmaster, "Ican'tjret any more work out 
 of them. I work them as long as the law allows me, and longer, too; and If 
 you look at them I think you will see by their appearance that I do not allow 
 them to waste their time."
 
 26 
 
 "Well, 1 don't know anything about that; all I know la that unless you can 
 upply me with chains and nails cheaper than you have done I shall be obliged 
 to buy my obains and my nails abroad." And so there is another turn of th 
 crew and more skulls added to the necklace of Siva. Sooner or later the com- 
 petition for cheapness becomes competition in cheap labor, and competition in 
 cheap labor means competition in flesh and blood. Flesh apd blood is plenty, 
 peonies are scarce, and therefore th holders of the pennies have the game in 
 their hands. They get a great deal of flesh and blood for their pennies. And 
 then flesh and blood has no claim on them; they have not to replace it. "i'ou 
 buy your horse, and if you work him to death you must buy another, but you 
 do not buy the women who stitch your shirts, or your chain-makers, or your 
 nail-makers, or those who make cheap clothes in the sweating den. They cost 
 you no money. If they worked themselves to death it is no lo-n to you ; a hun- 
 dred others are always ready to take the vacant place. When men, women, 
 and children can work no more they go to the hospital or the workhouse to 
 di, probably to many of them the happiest hours of their poor, joyless live*, 
 to learn, perhaps, alas, too late, that there are conditions under which life ! 
 worth living. But does it signify? Who cares? 
 
 " Rattle his bones over the stones; 
 It's only a pauper, that nobody owns." 
 
 It's only a few more victims on the altar of competition, a few more skull* 
 added to the necklace of Siva. This is not the fault of the employers of labor. 
 They may be, and very likely are, as kind-hearted as their neighbors, but they 
 have no choice. It is the fault of those vain theorists who have artificially stim- 
 ulated competition until the conditions of labor have become fatal. 
 
 In Ma essay on " General employment " he says: 
 
 The prosperity of an industrial community like England may be summed up 
 In the two words, general employment. General employment means content- 
 ment, sobriety, self-respect, and '.he general progress and improvement of the 
 working classes. The want of it means the very reverse of all this. General 
 employment is of far greater importance to an industrial community than cheap 
 food ; the cheapest food will be dear if there are no earnings wherewith to pur- 
 chase it. It is of far more, importance than cheap luxuries. It is of far more 
 moment to the community that the producing class should have general em- 
 ployment, should be able to earn wages to keep themselves and those depend- 
 ing on them in health, comfort, and respectability, than that the owners of 
 realized and fixed incomes should be able to buy their luxuries at a somewhat 
 cheaper rate. 
 
 Under the title of "Is England to go out of tillage? " he says: 
 "Are you apprised," said Grattan, ninety years ago, in one of his magnificent 
 orations, " that the population of Ireland is not less than 6,000,000, and that a 
 great proportion of that number are people connected with tillage? If you 
 go out of till. ige, what will you do with that population? " We can answer 
 Gr titan's inquiry. Since he spoke one-third of Ireland has gone out of tillage. 
 an<i one-third of her population has left the country; and at her present rate or 
 decrease a few years will see one-third of England also gone out of tillage, and 
 one-third of her population lea re the country. England and Ireland are going 
 out of tillage. That is the terrible truth I wish to bring home to the convic- 
 tion of all thinking people. Why are they going out of tillage? For the very 
 simple reason that tillage does not pay, because the value of the article pro- 
 duced is not equal to the cost of producing ii. 
 
 Under the title of "Sham " he says: 
 
 After all, the whole question with the working classes is one of wages. What 
 on earth do they care for theories of political economy, for Adam Smith, or Mill, 
 or Gobden, or rtright, except as guides to a "better land ? " 
 
 The cost of agricultural produce is everywhere more than anything a casa 
 of wages, and when we are urging our agricultural classes to produc-e corn as 
 cheap as it can be produced in India, in America, Wallachia, Egypt, Turkey, 
 Poland, etc., we are urging them to do what, with their present rate of wages, 
 is impossible. In India, agricultural wages are lid. a day; in Turkey, Egvpl, 
 the shores of the Bdltic, about 3d. or id. In America and Canada daily wages 
 are very high; but agricultural labor is only employed four months in the year. 
 The farmer only employs labor to plow and sow the seed and harvest the crop. 
 Directly harvest is over he sends his corn to the nearest depot, locks up the 
 farm, and all hands, himself very often included, go off into the forest lumber- 
 ing till summer comes again. We say to our farmers, " You must grow wheat 
 In competition with Poles, Turks, Ryots, Fellahs, Wallachians." Supposethey 
 were to answer, " Well, we can do so if we have labor at lid. a day," what 
 would our economists say then? They want to have their cake and to at it 
 too. They want high wages and cheap produce, but this is i*"iWe. 
 
 DOLPH
 
 27 
 
 And under " Shrinkage " he says: 
 
 Now, what do the working classes really want? They want their industrial 
 llvt-atobe brighter, gayer, more hopeful, less laborious, they wish to be pro- 
 tected from excessive competition; from the competition of underpaid labor; 
 from competition that makes their industrial life intolerable to them, that lowers 
 their wages, lengthens their hours of labor, destroys their industry. What a 
 ham it is to tell the agricultural laborer be should have 20s. a week, and at the 
 same time to make him compete with the ryot of India, who gets 2. a week, or 
 with the fellah who gets 3s. What a sham to tell the poor needlewoman she 
 ought to get Is. a dozen for stitching shirts, and at the same time to make her 
 compete with the Swiss, or Saxon, or Belgian, who will stitch them for 3d. a 
 do/.en. The working classes want protection to wages, protection to labor, pro- 
 tection to industries, protection from "rings" that artificially increase the price 
 of meat, and fish, and bread ; protection from adulteration, from false weights 
 and measures ; they want a tender poor law for the old, the infirm, those who 
 can't work, a hard one for the able-bodied loafers who won't work. They want 
 free elementary education. They want technical education, agriculture, horti- 
 culture, farriery, natural history taught in every school of the country- What 
 the country requires is legislation that will before all things and in every way 
 encourage and stimulate the employment of the people; that will not, if possi- 
 ble, allow a single industry to be crushed out; that will promote the distribu- 
 tion of wealth instead of the accumulation of wealth. 
 
 ******* 
 
 In France, Germany, and America Protection argues thus: "We have large 
 populations, amounting to from 35,000,000 to 50,1100,000. Every individual of this 
 population has to be fed and clothed and housed and supplied with necessaries 
 and luxuries. Thisconstitutesan immense home market. If we keep it as much 
 as possible to ourselves, stimulate supply to keep pace with increasing popula- 
 tion, exclude foreigners, pur workers will find employment, pur money will be 
 employed at home and will fructify at home; whereas, if we invite foreign sup- 
 plies into our markets, our money will go abroad to pay foreign labor, and our 
 workers will be thrown out of work." This is what the economists, the states- 
 men, the thinkers, the workers all say in France, Germany, Belgium, America. 
 They proclaim aloud that home trade is ten times more profitable to the com- 
 munity than foreign trade, that employment ia often times greater importance 
 than mere cheapness. Home trade, they say, is the citadel of national wealth 
 and prosperity. Foreign trade is the outworks ; we will protect the citadel first 
 of all. " Hang the citadel " say our free-traders; " let that look after itself, we 
 will protect the outworks; " and so the citadel of home trade is neglected in 
 favor of the outworks of foreign trade, internal production and consumption 
 are put on one side in favor of exports and imports. But, in the words of 
 Cicero, " Urbem prod:lis durn rastell'i defendilis" you may lose the city whilst 
 you defend the outworks and we have done so. 
 
 In England we have actually reversed the practice of all other nations. We 
 also have a magnificent home market, a population of 34,000,000, great eaters 
 and drinkers, and consumers; every one of whom has to be fed, to be clothed, 
 aud housed ; but instead of keeping this splendid market to ourseU'es we hand 
 it over to th" foreigner. "Come over and supply us," we say. " Certainly," 
 they reply, "but remember you must not come over and supply us." We not 
 only admit them to our markets on equal terms, but we actually offer them 
 special advantages in the way of cost or transit to come ovei and supply us. 
 Was there ever such a case of national madness; of industrial suicide? 
 
 Kvery year our population increases, every year their consumption of every- 
 thing increases, every year our. production diminishes, every year we spend 
 less money on production at home and spend more money on production abroad. 
 Are we mad? I think so. It is well the country should realize, if in the ominous 
 murmur of approaching revolution she can realize anything, that the process of 
 industrial shrinkage that is now going on is universal. It affects every industry, 
 manufacturing and agricultural, almost without exception. England is bleed- 
 ing at every industrial pore. Foreign trade profits individuals, home trade 
 profits the -whole community. The money that is turned over once in foreign 
 trade is turned over ten times in home trade. Foreign trade enriches the deal- 
 ers, home trade enriches the producer. A dozen or so great bankers and brokers 
 and financiers and foreigners and dealers in money are now making money, 
 but all the rest of the community fire losing it. 
 
 The Senator from Indiana proposes, as a remedy for the existing de- 
 pression of the agricultural interests of this country, a policy which 
 has been the cause of the destruction of the agricultural interests of 
 Great Britain and of all the misery and wretchedness so vividly and 
 truthfully portrayed by the writer of the foregoing extracts. 
 
 But for fear that it may be claimed that the distress in England has
 
 28 
 
 
 
 been overdrawn by Mr. Sullivan, I will quote briefly from an official 
 report to the same effect. 
 
 I am indebted for it to the speech delivered in the Senate on the 16th 
 of October, 1888, by the junior Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. SPOONER], 
 The report I refer to is a report from a commission that waa appointed 
 on the 29th day of August, 1885. On that date Victoria, " by the grac* 
 of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britian and Ireland, Queen, 
 defender of the Faith," issued a commission to certain "trusty and 
 well-beloved cousins and councilors" and others, numbering twenty- 
 six, the Earl of Iddlesleigh being the first and the Earl of Dnnraven 
 being the second, the object whereof is set forth in the commission, u 
 follows: 
 
 Whereas we have deemed it expedient that a commission should forthwith 
 issue to inquire and report upon the extent, nature, and probable causes of th 
 depression now or recently prevailing in various branches of trade and indus- 
 try, and whether it can be alleviated by legislative or other measures. 
 
 Sir James Caird, the senior land commissioner for England, and a 
 great authority, testified before the commission to the continual de- 
 pression and ruin among the agricultural classes of England. After 
 giving the result as to the different countries, he was asked: 
 
 Have you made any generalization of the result? 
 
 Answer. Yes. 1 have. The present as compared with ten years ago as deduced 
 by me from these figures, which I have already given, would show on an aver- 
 age that the landlord* have lost 30 per cent., the tenants 00 per cent., and the 
 laborers 10 per cent., and putting that into figurs, it bringes out that on 65,000, 000 
 of rental for the United Kingdom the landlords' loss of 30 per cent, would b 
 equal to about 20,000,000, and the tenants' 60 per cent., inasmuch as their incom* 
 may be taken at half the rental, would be just the same ; that is to say, 00 per 
 cent, on half the rental is also 20,000,000. With regard to the laborers there waa 
 a difficulty in estimating the amount of reduction, but I will place before your 
 lordships the way in which I endeavored to arrive at it. 
 
 The following is from the final report: 
 
 With very few exceptions trade is reported to be depressed, and in many case* 
 It is considered to be more depressed than at any previous period. The num- 
 ber of workmen out of employment at the time when the answers were drawn 
 up showed considerable variation according to the districts and trades to which 
 they belonged, but there appears to have been a greater want of employment 
 among the unskilled than among the skilled workmen. The rate of wages for 
 time work appears on the whole to be slightly higher than the average of th 
 last twenty years, but it is not now at its highest point. The rate for piece- 
 work has diminished for nearly all cases. A reduction is reported in hours of 
 work of from three to four hours a week during the last fifteen years. Both th 
 quantity and the quality of the work produced have largely increased. Summar- 
 izing very briefly the answers which we received to our questions, and the oral 
 evidence given before us, there would appear to be a general agreement among 
 those whom we consulted. 
 
 A. That the trade and industry of the country are in a condition which may 
 be fairly described as depressed. 
 
 B. That by this depression is meant a diminution and in some cases an ab- 
 sence of profit, with a corresponding diminution of employment for the labor- 
 ing classes. 
 
 C. That neither the volume of trade nor the amount of capital invested therein 
 has materially fallen off, though the hitter has in many cases diminished in 
 value. 
 
 D. That the depression above referred to dates from about the year 1875, and 
 that -with the exception of a short period of prosperity enjoyed by certain 
 branches of trade in the years 1880 to 1883, it has proceeded with tolerable uni- 
 formity and has affected the trade and industry of the country generally, but 
 more espeoially those branches which are connected with agriculture. 
 
 As regards the causes which have contributed to bring about this state of 
 things, there was, as might be expected, less unanimity of opinion, but the fol- 
 lowing enumeration will, we think, Include all those to which any importune* 
 was attached : 
 
 First. Overproduction. 
 
 Second. The continuous fall of prices caused by the depreciation of the stand- 
 ard value.
 
 29 
 
 Third. The effect of foreign tariffs and bounties and the restrictive commer- 
 cial policies of foreign countries in limiting our markets. 
 
 Fourth. Foreign competition, which we are beginning to feel both in our own 
 knd neutral markets. 
 
 Fifth. An increase in local taxation and the burdens of industry generally. 
 
 Sixth. Cheaper rates of carriage enjoyed by our foreign competitors. 
 
 Seventh. Legislation affecting the employment of labor in industrial under- 
 takings. 
 
 Kighth. Superior technical education of the workmen in foreign countries. 
 
 Those who may be said to represent the producer have mainly dwelt upon 
 the restriction and even the absence of profit in their respective businesses. It 
 is from thia class, and more especially from the employers of labor, that the 
 omplainta chiefly proceed. On the other hand, those classes of the population 
 who derive their income from foreign investments, or from property not di- 
 rectly connected with productive industries, appear to have little ground of 
 complaint. On the contrary, they have profiled by the remarkably low prices 
 of many commodities. 
 
 We may therefore sum up the chief features of the commercial situation as 
 being: 
 
 A. A very serious falling off in the exchangeable value of the produce of the soil; 
 
 B. An increased production of nearly all other classes of commodities; 
 
 C. A tendency in the supply of commodities to outrun the demand; 
 
 D. A diminution in the profits obtainable by production; and 
 
 E. A similar diminution in the rate of interest on invested capital. 
 
 The diminution in the rate of profit obtainable from production, whether ag- 
 ricultural or manufacturing, has given rise to a widespread feeling of depression 
 among all the producing classes. Those, on the other hand, who arc in receipt 
 of nxed salaries, or who draw their incomes from fixed investments, have ap- 
 parently little to complain of, and we think that so far as regards the purchasing 
 power of wages a similar remark will apply to the laboring classes. 
 
 We are disposed to think that one of the chief agencies which have tended 
 to perpetuate this state of things is the protectionist policy of so many foreign 
 countries, which has become more marked during the last ten years than at 
 any previous period of similar length. The high prices which protection se- 
 cures to the purchaser within its protected area naturally stimulate production 
 and impel him to engage in competition in foreign markets. The surplus pro- 
 duction which can not find a market at home is sent abroad, and in foreign 
 markets undersells the commodities produced under less artificial conditions. 
 The natural growth of the industries of foreign countries, possessing in many 
 cases the population and other resources required for successful manulacturing 
 enterprise, has also contributed to produce the same result. 
 
 We have, as above pointed out, suffered a serious loss iu our purchasing 
 power by reason of the deficient or unremunerative character of the produce of 
 the soil. Sir James Caird estimates the loss in purchasing power of the classes 
 engaged in or connected with agriculture at 42,800,000 during the year 1885. 
 ami sthe loss in several of the preceding years must no doubt have been equal 
 to or even greater than this. This amount has been lost to the markets in 
 which it was formerly agent, and can not fail to have had an Important influ- 
 ence upon the demand for manufactured goods. 
 
 All the colonies of England which have the power to do so have re- 
 pudiated free trade and adopted a protective system. Under protec- 
 tion the condition of the Canadian Dominion has wonderlully improved. 
 She calls the system ' ' the National System. ' ' She follows the example 
 of the great Republic, and hopes to secure under that policy some meas- 
 ure of the prosperity we enjoy. Australia is also demonstrating the 
 wisdom and benefits of a protective policy. Her industries, which lan- 
 guished under free trade, are to-day nourishing under a tariff which 
 protects her people against the manufacturers of Great Britain. All 
 this could not take place without creating doubts, not only among the 
 30,000,000 workers, but among the privileged classes of Great Britain, 
 as to the wisdom of free trade; and, as I have said, the sentiment there 
 in favor of protection is to-day strong and rapidly growing. 
 
 Injurious as free trade has been to England, it has been far more so 
 to her colonies, where they have had no power to set up barriers against 
 her commercial policy. 
 
 IRELAND AND INDIA. 
 
 Ireland and India illustrate the ruinous effects of free trade. The 
 squalor and wretchedness of the masses of Ireland exceed that of ay
 
 30 
 
 other civilized people on the face of the globe. Her people flee from 
 her borders into exile to escape starvation; and yet Ireland is a fertile 
 and prod active country, possessing abundance of resources, if developed, 
 to sustain all her people in comfort and even luxury. Her people are 
 naturally industrious and economical. Ireland, under a protective 
 system, has been made to bud and blossom as the rose, and her people 
 to prosper. Under such a system contentment, happiness, and good 
 order reigned. All her poverty and all her woes to-day can be traced 
 to the commercial policy of Great Britain. A writer, discussing the 
 processes by which Ireland has been impoverished, says: 
 
 Ireland has an extremely rich soil and is pre-eminently adapted to the raising 
 of cattle, slieep, and all kinds of grain. She has the richest pa.st.ure lamt in 
 Europe, has an abundance of cheap fuel, ia rich in mineral resources, and ha* 
 many of the finest natural harbors in the world. 
 
 The Irish, at a very early d.ite, devoted their attention to the raising of cattl 
 for English markets. In the seventeenth century it became a very lucrative 
 business and the first great source of Irish wealth. But Parliament, in obedi- 
 ence to the demand of England landlords, passed a law prohibiting the impor- 
 tation from Ireland of all cattle, sheep, and swine, of beef, pork, bacon, mutton, 
 butter, and cheese. 
 
 The source of Irish Industry having been destroyed, the Irish having few 
 ships built others, mid betook themselves to commerce, establishing large and 
 flourishing trade with the colonies, with the East and West Indies and the con- 
 tinent. Hut again England interfered, and Parliament, to please English ship- 
 builders and traders, passed the celebrated navigation laws, prohibiting the 
 Irish from carrying on trade wUh the colonies, and thus Ireland's flourishing 
 colonial trade was cut off and lorever destroyed. 
 
 Ireland was now completely at England's mercy. Forbidden to raise cattle 
 for English markets, forbidden to build up a merchant marine, forbidden to 
 trade with other nations, they were still determined to live on the beautiful soil 
 God had given them. Though crushed in spirit and discouraged they still 
 had the indomitable pluck so characteristic of the Irish race, and they turned 
 their attention to the raising of sheep and manufacturing wool, and it soon be- 
 came a flourishing industry. "Irish wool," says Froude, "was the finest in 
 Europe, and Irish cloth wa eagerly sought after." All were for a time prosper- 
 ous, but England became alarmed and jealous at Ireland's prosperity, and Par- 
 liament again crippled them hy prohibitory laws. 
 
 The Irish wool industry was wiped out and the ruin waa absolute and com- 
 plete. At the time of the destruction of the woolen industry it afforded employ- 
 ment to fifty thousand families. They were thrown upon the land; rents rose 
 to a ruinous state; thousands had no employment, and those who had work 
 earned only their board. Many emigrated to America. 
 
 What did the Irish do next? They developed their fisheries, but as the In- 
 dustry became profitable they were once more pounced upon by England, and 
 the poor Irish fisherman, blessed with an abundance of fish in his own waters, 
 was by statute compelled to fish in English ships manned by English sailors. 
 No wonder the spirit of the people was for a time broken their commerce 
 swept from the seas, their manufactories closed, their operatives perishing from 
 want and famine, or fleeing to other countries to find a home. 
 
 But coon after, a few leaders came to Ireland's rescue. Grattan, Flood, Chai* 
 lemont, and others worked for this downtrodden people. The Irish Volunteer* 
 with Grattan, supported by Flood, made demands of England which were 
 granted, and once more Ireland was free. One of the first acts of the newly- 
 enfranchised legislature was to introduce measures for the protection of Irish 
 industries by placing heavy duties on all imported goods. Then sprung up a 
 wonderful spirit of enterprise, and soon Ireland's industry and prosperity was 
 the greatest she had ever known. The island was dotted over with busy hives 
 and marts of industry. Her ports were alive with commerce, her ships visited 
 every sea, her flag floated in every port, her people were peaceful, contented, 
 and happy; landlord and tenant were alike satisfied. 
 
 There was a ready home market for produce, and a continually increasing 
 demand for the wares of the manufacturer. The laborers had steady employ- 
 ment at high wages; they were well fed, comfortably housed, and decently 
 clothed. This was Ireland under "protection." But, alas, it could not last 
 long. English monopolists and landlords could not brook such growing pros- 
 perity. Pitt came upon the scene, and by one of the foulest acts known to his- 
 tory, Ireland waa drawn to England, and England's free-trade was forced upon 
 her. Thus again was Ireland robbed of her prosperity. English manufact- 
 urers glutted the Irish market, undersold them, crushed them. Five million 
 of operatives were thrown out of work. Almost all manufacturers oloaed their 
 doors, and sought elsewhere a living. 
 
 DOLTH
 
 31 
 
 According to the Government report, in 1802, the first year of English free-trad* 
 under the "act of the Union," there was a population of 8,000,000; employed, 
 2,000,000; anemployed, 6,000,000. Those without work had to seek it some- 
 where, and many, as in 1699, went upon the land. Rents rose from one pound 
 to ten. There being no home consumption, the price of produce fell almost to 
 nothing. The tenants could not pay the rent; the landlords were bankrupt; 
 the whole island was in gloom and despair. Then came the famine with all ita 
 horrors whole families laid down and died. Over 2,000,000 perihed by famine 
 and 2,000,000 more came to America. And so it has continued to this day. 
 
 Ireland is a down-trodden country, and Irishmen at home are suffering want 
 and poverty and degradation, and simply for the want of self-government and 
 the right to adopt and maintain a protective policy. 
 
 Free trade was forced by Great Britain upon British India, and her 
 extensive manufactures were annihilated, her factories dwindled away, 
 her commercial activity was destroyed, her agriculture impoverished. 
 In short, like a blight, free trade blasted and scorched her prosperity, 
 made her a producer of raw materials for English manufactures, and 
 bound her people in abject and hopeless commercial servitude to En- 
 glish masters. 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 France has had for three-quarters of a century a protective system, 
 and by her tariff laws the importation of many articles is absolutely 
 prohibited, and as to others her duties are prohibitory. Her tariff is 
 BO comprehensive in its character tbat the smallest industry is pro- 
 tected and the largest not neglected. 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 Germany, on account of the alarming depression of many of her in- 
 dustries, was compelled to adopt a protective policy. A little over a 
 decade of protection has there produced the same beneficent results 
 that it has always produced elsewhere; new life has been infused into 
 old industries; new ones have been prosperously inaugurated; wages 
 have advanced, and the condition of her laboring people has been greatly 
 improved. 
 
 I donotbelievea case canbe found of any civilized country which has 
 tried the protective policy whose prosperity has not been materially 
 increased thereby, and I do know that, judging by the standards by 
 which the people of a Republic measure prosperity, there is not acivil- 
 ized country on the face of the globe whose material interests have been 
 advanced by free trade. 
 
 THE INDUSTRIES OP THK COUNTRY ABE AT PRESENT UT THE HANDS OF THK 
 FRIENDS OF THB PROTECTIVE SYSTEM. 
 
 Whatever is done by Congress at this session, and as long as the Re- 
 publican party has a majority in either branch of Congress, will be in 
 accordance with that policy. The friends of protection, however, ought 
 not to be forgetful of the position of the Democratic party upon the 
 tariff issue, or unmindful of the consequences of a victory which would 
 enable them to put those theories into practice. A good illustration of 
 the difference between the policies of the two parties is afforded by the 
 manner in which they propose to treat two important productions of 
 the country. 
 
 WOOL, AND SUGAR. 
 
 The Senator from Indiana and the party to which he belongs propose 
 to pat wool on the free-list and to maintain a heavy duty upon sugar. 
 The Republican party proposes to maintain and strengthen the tariff 
 on wool and to reduce or remove the tariff on sugar. 
 
 What would be the effect of putting wool on the free-list? 
 
 President Cleveland, Mr. Marfaiug, and Mr. Mills all said it would 
 make wool cheaper, and they justified their attempt to put it on the free- 
 
 <
 
 list by the assertion that it would make clothing cheaper. But sonu 
 demagogues, daring the last Presidential campaign, at least in Oregon, 
 undertook to make the people believe that removing the duty would 
 not decrease the price. 
 
 What fixes the price of wool? The same law that fixes the price of 
 any other commodity the law of supply and demand. The wool clip 
 of the world and the demand of the world govern the price of wool in 
 London, the great wool market; and the price in the United States is 
 fixed, and has been for the last quarter of a century, by the London 
 price, and has always been the London price with the cost of transpor- 
 tation and duty added, except when the customs laws have been avoided 
 and wool imported at an undervaluation. Every time the price of 
 wool has gone down in London it has gone down in this country, and 
 the only reason that it has not gone as low in this country as in London 
 is that our tariff prevented its importation. 
 
 There has been no free wool since the year 1816. Duties were in- 
 creased in 1830, and this was followed by an advance of over 5 cents per 
 per pound in the average price of American wool. From 1833 to 1842 
 the tariff was systematically reduced each year. When this redaction 
 began the price of wool was 6 1 cents per pound, and when it ended the 
 price was 43} cents, and the tendency of prices was generally down- 
 ward. 
 
 When the tariff was reduced in 1883 wool in the United States fell, 
 in anticipation of the admission of foreign wools under the new tariff, 
 6 cents per pound, although the reduction in the duty was less than 
 2 cents per pound. 
 
 It is apparent, to every thinking person that wool-growing in the 
 United States would be doomed should wool be placed on the free-list 
 or the tariff on imported wool reduced. Consider the magnitude of the 
 loss which would ensue. It is estimated that in the United States there 
 are 700,009 wool-growers, employing 500, 000 additional men as assist- 
 ants. The most of these men have families, and there are probably 
 4,000,000 persons interested in the industry, about one-fifteenth of our 
 entire population. There are probably 150,000 more owners of small 
 flocks. These wool-growers own 700,000 farms, averaging 160 acres of 
 land, or 112,000,000 acres in the aggregate, portions of which are too 
 rough to be cultivated, but are valuable for sheep-raising. 
 
 The effect of putting wool on the free-list would be to make wool-grow- 
 ing unprofitable. It would render unproductive the rough and poor 
 portions of these seven hundred thousand farms now used for grazi ng 
 sheep; it would decrease the value of the sheep and of the wool clip; 
 it would decrease the wages paid to the employes and deprive the 
 farmer of his profit. I have seen this loss put in this way: 
 
 Depreciation of the value of land, $2.50 per acre 5280,000,000 
 
 Depreciation of the value of labor 25,000,000 
 
 Depreciation of the value of sheep 25,000,000 
 
 Depreciation of wool 25.000,000 
 
 Total 55,000,000 
 
 The loss on account of the price of wool would be an annual and 
 continuing loss. 
 
 The free-traders assert that if wool is placed on the free-list our man- 
 ufacturers can make their goods cheaper and send them into foreign 
 markets and successfully compete with foreign manufacturers, but be- 
 fore they can do this we must supply ourselves, which we have not yet 
 done. In 1887 we imported $45,000,000 worth of woolen goods, which 
 not only bore the cost of transportation but paid the duties. In the
 
 33 
 
 year ending June 30, 1888, we imported nearly $50,000,000 worth of 
 woolen goods. Before we can supply the markets of the world we must 
 supply our own market, and to do this we must reduce the price be- 
 low the cost of woolen goods now sent to our country from abroad, and 
 in addition pay the transportation to distant countries. This we can 
 never do and pay existing wages to the laborers who make the goods 
 and existing prices to farmers who produce the wool. 
 
 The free- trad ers, while industriously endeavoring to make the farmer 
 believe that he is unjustly taxed by a protective tariff, are seeking to put 
 wool on the free-list, which is one of the principal sources of revenue 
 to the American farmer. Who demands this sacrifice? Not the wool- 
 growers; not the farmers; not the manufacturers who, with few excep- 
 tions, are in favor of according the wool-grower the same protection en- 
 joyed by themselves. No organization, no class of citizens engaged in 
 industrial pursuits demands it. It is proposed to sacrifice this great in- 
 dustry for a theory, upon the theory that the members of the Cobden 
 Club know better what is to the advantage of the farmers of the United 
 States than they know themselves; that the sugar and cotton planters 
 of the South know better what is good for the laboring men of the 
 North than they know themselves. 
 
 It is said free wool will reduce the price of clothing. So far at least 
 as the price of the poor man's clothing is concerned this is untrue. 
 Clothing is cheaper to-day in the United States than ever before in the 
 history of this country ; the laboring man can now buy more and better 
 clothing with the product of a month's labor than ever before. The 
 fact is that the domestic competition in a nation of 60, 000, 000 of peo- 
 ple, with skilled artisans, with improved machinery, and a long and 
 constant demand of the best market on the face of the globe, has re- 
 duced the cost of plain clothing to the lowest living prices. But con- 
 sider how trifling the effect of the tariff on wool must be on the price 
 of a suit of clothes. There are from 3 to 5 pounds of wool in a suit of 
 clothes. The average duty is, say, 10 cents per pound. The price of 
 the wool in a suit of clothing would, until our wool industries were 
 destroyed and our sheep driven to the slaughter-pen, be decreased from 
 30 to 50 cents per suit, but as soon as our wool industry was destroyed 
 it would be largely increased. 
 
 The fact is that the wool which is in a suit of clothes is but a small 
 part of its cost After the wool is prepared for market by the grower 
 there is the home buyer with his commissions, the wool broker with 
 his charges, transportation, storage, insurance, the manufacture of the 
 cloth, the profits of the wholesale and retail merchants who handle the 
 cloth before it reaches the manufacturer of clothing; the manufacturer 
 of the clothing, the wholesale merchant and the retail merchant who 
 sell the clothing, with their profit. Undertake to trace this 30 or 50 
 cents reduction in the price of the wool which is used in making a suit 
 of clothes from the wool-grower until it comes back to him in clothing, 
 and how much would be returned to him ? You might as well expect 
 to irrigate your garden by pouring a pail of water on a mountain top 
 10 miles away, as to expect to see the visible effects of cheaper wool 
 under free trade in cheaper clothing. Then only a small proportion 
 of the laborer's wages is expended for woolen clothing. 
 
 N o complaint has ever been heard from the laboring man about the 
 price of clothing, and American laborers and their families are better 
 clothed to-day than ever before in the history of this country, and bet- 
 ter than the laboring men of any other country on the face of the earth 
 at this or any other time in the history of the world. The crusade 
 
 DOLPH 3
 
 34 
 
 against the protective tariff on wool is conducted by the free-trader 
 upon a deceptive plan. He tells the farmer that free trade will in- 
 crease the price of wool and benefit him; he assures the manufacturer 
 that it will decrease the price of wool and benefit him; the laboring 
 man that it will cheapen clothing by foreign importation, and the manu- 
 facturer that he can make goods cheaper and thus keep out the for- 
 eigner and be enabled to find a market abroad; while at the same time 
 importers and foreign manufacturers are intriguing and subscribing 
 funds to place wool on the free-list. If they succeed some one will be 
 cheated, and it will not be the importers or foreigners. Clothing will 
 not be perceptibly cheapened. The power of the farmers and laboring 
 men to purchase will be reduced, the demand for home consumption 
 diminished, foreign importations greatly increased, and home produc- 
 tion decreased. 
 
 For a period of nearly forty years a heavy duty has been imposed 
 upon imported sugar in the interest of the sugar-planters of the South. 
 More than a thousand millions of dollars has been during that time 
 paid by the consumers of sugar in the United States to swell the profits 
 of sugar-planters, who for a portion of the time raised their cane and 
 manufactured their sugar with slave labor, and since the war, owing 
 to the peculiar conditions in the South, have carried on business with 
 the poorest paid labor in the United States, and yet the production of 
 sugar in the United States is chiefly carried on in Louisiana, and is now 
 only about half as large as it was in 1862. The tariff has not, owing 
 to the peculiar conditions in the South, developed the sugar industry 
 in the United States, and to-day, while we consume one-fourth of the 
 sugar manufactured in the world, and more than one-fourth of our en- 
 tire revenue from customs duties is derived from the duty on sugar, we 
 raise Jess than one- tenth of the sugar we consume. 
 
 How can we account for the fact that the advocates of tariff reform 
 propose to place wool, lumber, vegetables, fruit, and other articles, the 
 production of Northern States, upon the free-list, and to retain the 
 enormous duty on sugar ? Is it because the sugar industry is an industry 
 of the South, the support ef which is indispensable to the Democratic 
 party, that Louisiana demands protection for it, and the Democratic 
 party, North and South, dare not refuse to comply with her demand ? 
 There can be no other conclusion. 
 
 In order to reduce the surplus $5,000,000 and to reduce taxation, if 
 it be admitted the consumer pays the duty, 8} cents per capita upon 
 an estimated population of 60,000,000, the Democratic party pro- 
 poses to put wool, which is a profitable industry in almost every North- 
 ern State, upon the free-list, in order to sustain a tax of $58,000,000 
 upon imported sugar, which is a necessity to every household in the 
 Union, and thus taxing, if the duty be a tax upon the consumer, all 
 the people of the United States 96 1 cents per capita annually to protect 
 a few sugar-planters in Louisiana. 
 
 The duties paid upon imported wool have averaged about 41 percent.; 
 the duty on sugar as the law now stands is 83 per cent. 
 
 There is another thing in this connection worthy of note. The wool 
 industry not only is an important industry in nearly every Northern 
 State, but it gives employment to white laborers, to the laborers who 
 are not only citizens of the United States in name, but in fact, who are 
 independent and intelligent, whose votes count for as much in the con- 
 trol of public affairs as the votes of the millionaires; men who work or 
 decline to work as interest or caprice dictates; men who constitute the 
 rery foundation upon which the superstructure of our political fabric
 
 35 
 
 teats the farmer, the herder, and the shearer, who all share in the 
 profits of the business. 
 
 But the profits of the sugar industry in Louisiana and other Southern 
 States go alone to the planters. The men who plant and cultivate and 
 harvest and crush the cane are free only in theory, they are citizens 
 only in name, they enjoy only such civil rights as the dominant class 
 chooses to accord to them. As to political rights, they are permitted 
 to exercise none where their votes would affect the result. They must 
 work for such wages as are offered. They are not even allowed, in 
 many cases, to freely dispose of the wages earned. They are compelled 
 to take it in barter, and, between low wages, excessive profits of the 
 planter, and interest paid to the employer, the laborer receives only 
 starvation wages. If they combine for an improvement of their condi- 
 tion, strike for better wages, they are forced into submission. 
 
 The protection afforded by the tariff on imported sugar, on account 
 of the peculiar social, business, and political condition of the South, 
 is in no sense a tariff to protect American labor, but a tariff which 
 taxes 60,000,000 of people at the rate of nearly $1 per capita annually 
 to enrich a few men, many of whom tried to destroy the Union in order 
 to construct upon the ruins of the fabric a Confederacy, the corner-stone 
 of which should be slavery and free trade, and who now, disregarding 
 the Constitution and laws of the United States, are depriving the 
 former slaves of their political rights and have reduced them to a con- 
 dition little better than slavery. 
 
 Let me make another suggestive comparison. The bulk of the cane 
 sugar is raised in Louisiana; all the balance of the domestic product is 
 raised in two or three Southern States. It is all the product of the South. 
 There were in 1887 only 9, 241, 440 sheep in the thirteen Southern States ; 
 of these 4,761,831 were in Texas. The total number of sheep in the 
 United States is 44,759,314. The total number of sheep in the South- 
 ern States is only about one-fifth of the whole number in the United 
 States. The three Pacific Coast States have more sheep than the thirteen 
 Southern States. New Mexico has nearly as many sheep as Texas, while 
 California exceeds Texas by about 2,000,000. 
 
 THE STJKPLUS REVENUE. 
 
 The surplus revenue has been exaggerated magnified for political 
 purposes to advance the free- trade policy. For this purpose appropria- 
 tions demanded by public necessity and in the interest of economy have 
 been withheld. Money has been hoarded in the vaults of the Treasury 
 or deposited with favored banks which shoiald have been used in carry- 
 ing on public improvements and paying off the interest-bearing debt. 
 In some remarks I made in the Senate on December 21, 1887, 1 called 
 attention to the fact that the surplus revenues were being overstated 
 and to some objects of national and public importance to which the 
 surplus could be profitably applied. If Congress had then adopted a 
 policy which would have distributed among the people the surplus reve- 
 nues, after providing for the sinking fund, by expenditures for the im- 
 provement of rivers and harbors, the erection of necessary public build- 
 ings, the survey of the public lands, and the construction of coast 
 defenses, it is more than probable that the present stringency of money 
 and consequent depression of the farming interest would not havearisen. 
 
 The senior Senator from Connecticut [Mr. HAWLKY] the other day 
 presented in the Senate a statement of the estimated probable revenues 
 and appropriations for the next fiscal year. I will incorporate it in 
 my remarks. It is as follows: 
 
 Estimated revenues, $450,400,000. That includes post-office revenues. Per 
 tontra, probable appropriations, exclusive of deficiencies, $323,000,000; perm*-
 
 36 
 
 nent appropriations, including sinking fund, $101,600,000; probable deficiency 
 a guess, but a guess from the best judges of what it will be $31,000,000. That 
 makes on the other side $455,600,000. But add proposed appropriations reported, 
 to the Senate and not included in probable deficiency return of direct tax, 
 817,500,000, which we have passed and sent to the other House ; Blair bill, 87,000.- 
 000; French spoliation claims, which the courts hare adjudged that we owe, and 
 we owe as trulyas we oweour board bills, 1,742,000; naval ships, 87,000,000; in- 
 creased pensions, 835,000,000, aa the committee has told you here. This aggre- 
 gate makes $68,242,000, and added to $455,600,000 it makes proposed appropria- 
 tions 8523,842,000. The estimated revenues being 8450,400,000, there is in view a 
 probable deficit, if that be anything like truth, of 873,442,000. 
 
 This statement does not include all the proposed appropriations. On 
 the other hand, the Blair bill has probably been defeated for this Con- 
 gress, and it is not likely that some of the other appropriations will 
 be made, at least to the amount stated. But some of them will be, 
 including the item for pensions, and it is possible that some of the esti- 
 mates will be exceeded. These figures are worthy of the attention of 
 those who are immediately intrusted with the tariff legislation, and 
 of those who are demanding a great reduction of the revenues. 
 
 HOW ABE PENSIONS TO BE PAID IF THE TREASURY IS DEPLETED? 
 
 The Senator from Indiana, after advocating a revenue policy which 
 would inevitably impoverish the country, empty the Treasury, and 
 prevent any further increase of pensions and of the list of pensioners, 
 and after enumerating certain measures which he supposed would rem- 
 edy the existing agricultural depression, said : 
 
 In the interest of the farmer I would add a liberal policy of pensions. 
 
 And adds: 
 
 But for the large sums which for years have been distributed by the Pension 
 Office, and thus reached nearly every neighborhood in the United States and 
 gone into general circulation, the present financial crisis among the farmers and 
 laborers would have come at an earlier day. 
 
 I am, the party to which I belong is, and the members of the Senate 
 on this side of the Chamber are in lavor of recognizing the just claims 
 of the men who, when the Union was assailed, the national existence 
 threatened, and republican institutions imperiled in the interest of 
 human slavery, carried the flag to victory, overthrew the great rebell- 
 ion, and saved the Union. We are in favor of caring for them in their 
 old age and decrepitude, and for their widows and orphans, not as a 
 charity to them, but as the discharge of an obligation. Their necessi- 
 ties and just claims should be the measure of our response to their de- 
 mands. Whatever is just, whatever is equitable, whatever is dictated 
 by patriotism and grateful recognition of the services of the Union sol- 
 diers should be done, even if it should become necessary to increase tax- 
 ation and the public debt. 
 
 But it appears to me that the argument that distributing the public 
 revenues among the people in the way of liberal pensions is a public 
 blessing, is the weakest of all the arguments in favor of pensions. The 
 same argument may be made in lavor of other expenditures of the 
 revenues for public purposes. The .Republican party, while it favors 
 just and liberal pensions for the Union soldiers, and would discharge 
 every obligation to them and to those dependent upon them, is in favor 
 of maintaining sufficient revenues to enable the obligations of the Gov- 
 ernment to them to be met, knowing that if large disbursements are to 
 be made for pensions the ability of the Government to meet them must 
 be maintained. 
 
 RIVER AND HARBOR IMPROVEMENTS. 
 
 This reference to the suggestion of the Senator from Indiana, of lib- 
 eral pensions for the relief of the farmer, is made in part as an intro- 
 duction to something I desire to say in regard to another expenditure
 
 of public moneys, which not only distributes them among the people, 
 and thus benefits the farmer, but is of direct and lasting benefit to the 
 farmers and producers of the country, but which, like increased appro- 
 priations for pensions, can not, or at least will not, be made unless the 
 Government maintains a tariff policy which affords a sufficient revenue 
 for the purpose. Already what is termed the extravagance of Congress, 
 both in regard to pensions and appropriations for rivers and harbors, is 
 being denounced in and out ot Congress, and it is evident that the con- 
 dition of the Treasury is to be used as an argument against large ap- 
 propriations for these purposes. 
 
 How does the improvement of rivers and harbors benefit the farmer ? 
 Experience has demonstrated that water routes are the only effectual 
 cheapeners and regulators of railroad charges. The tendency is to the 
 consolidation of railroad lines; and what are intended as competing 
 lines of railroad when constructed often become parts of existing sys- 
 tems, and, instead of cheapening freight charges and proving beneficial 
 to the farmers and consumers, only add to their burdens. But wherever 
 railroad lines come in competition with free and unobstructed water 
 ways no combination is possible, and the cheapest water transportation 
 becomes the rate for transportation by rail as well. 
 
 The cost of transportation is an onerous tax upon producer and con- 
 rmer, and it is the part of wise statesmanship to endeavor to reduce 
 it to the minimum by improving and utilizing the great water ways 
 which nature has abundantly provided for us in such a way as to pro- 
 mote the freest competition in our internal carrying trade. We have 
 a grand system of water transportation, which is already of incalcula- 
 ble value to the people, which should be adequately improved by the 
 General Government. It is time we realized that we have a great 
 country, great in territory, in resources and possibilities for the future, 
 and by wise legislation help to lay broad and deep the foundations of 
 our future prosperity. 
 
 The farmers and producers have come to understand at least in the 
 State I have the honor in part to represent that the money expended 
 for the improvement of riveis and harbors is spent directly for their 
 benefit; that river competition and improved harbors will lessen the 
 cost of transportation, and that whatever does this increases the price 
 of everything they have to sell and lessens the cost of everything they 
 have to buy. They have learned by disappointing experience that in- 
 sufficient appropriations, instead of being economical, are wasteful and 
 extravagant. The less the cost of transportation the more the producer 
 receives. 
 
 The market price is composed of, or at least represents, two elements: 
 the cost of production and the cost of delivery; and often the cost of 
 transportation forms a large part of the commercial value of the product 
 at the place of consumption. Unfortunately for the farmer who pro- 
 duces the Avheat and the wool, the market price of wheat and wool is 
 not fixed by the cost to him of the production and of transportation, 
 but he must compete in the foreign market with the wheat and wool 
 growers of other countries, and even in the home market with foreign 
 wool. He can not control the cost of transportation. He must be con- 
 tent to receive for his labor and the use of his capital what is left of 
 the selling price of his product at the place of delivery after the cost of 
 transportation is paid, whether it is fair compensation or not. Low 
 rates of transportation not only benefit the producer and the consumer, 
 but stimulate production, develop the resources of the country, in- 
 crease the amount of transportation, and increase the individual and 
 aggregate wealth of the country.
 
 38 
 
 If time would permit I could show, in like manner, how a protective 
 policy which stimulates industry and gives employment to labor in 
 manufacturing pursuits drawn from agriculture, and thus lessens com- 
 petition to the farmer and at the same time furnishes him a market for 
 his surplus products, supplies the Government with revenues, and en- 
 ables it to undertake public works which directly and indirectly bene- 
 fit the farmer. 
 
 Take one instance more. Once the Government relied to a great ex- 
 tent for current expenditures upon the proceeds of sales of public lands, 
 and then the object of the Government in disposing of the lauds was 
 to realize as much revenue as possible from them. But, with the ad- 
 vent of the Republican party to power, and with the tariff which at 
 once started the country upon the highway of prosperity and tilled 
 the public Treasury, the policy of the Government has been changed, 
 and now free homes upon the public domain are given to all citizens 
 who will avail themselves of the gift 
 
 HOW SHOULD THE REVENUE BE REDUCED? 
 
 The Republican party says by placing articles which we do not pro- 
 duce on the free-list, by repealing the tobacco tax and tax on alcohol 
 used in the arts and reducing the tariff on sugar. How does the Demo- 
 cratic party propose to reduce the revenue? The revenue of the Govern- 
 ment is principally derived from duties on imports and irom internal- 
 revenue taxes. The total annual revenue derived from these sources 
 is something over $300, 000, 000. Of this about $212, 000, 000 is derived 
 from duties on imports, and nearly $100, 000, 000 from internal-revenue 
 taxes, mainly from tobacco and spirits. The Democratic party does not 
 propose to remove the war or internal-revenue taxes; that would re- 
 duce the revenue without benefiting British manufacturers and with- 
 out injuring American industry or removing protection to the Amer- 
 ican laborer. To secure votes in the tobacco -growing States they did 
 yield in the Mills bill to the demands of the tobacco-planters for a 
 reduction of taxes on tobacco and cigars. But they propose to obtain 
 the principal reduction of the revenue by reduction of the duties upon 
 imports, not upon articles which we do not produce at home, but, so 
 far as possible, by the reduction of duties upon articles which our own 
 people manufacture. The revenue at present derived from tariff duties 
 may be divided as follows: About fifty-eight millions from sugar, nearly 
 fifty millions from luxuries, and about one hundred millions from man- 
 ufactured articles, woolens, cotton fabrics, clothing, steel, and various 
 products of the looms, factories, furnaces, mills, and shops, and about 
 twelve millions from whafr the free-traders term raw material. Raw 
 materials as used by them embraces wool. For the same reason that 
 the Democratic party does not propose to repeal the internal-revenue 
 taxes, namely, that the repeal of such taxes would not permit inter- 
 ference with the manufacturing interests of the country, they propose 
 to retain protection to the sugar industry. They say that the sugar 
 produced in the United States is so small a portion of the whole amount 
 consumed that the fact that the price of the domestic product is in- 
 creased by the amount of the duty on imported sugar (which is not ad- 
 mitted) is not objectionable like the duty upon wool, which, collected 
 on a hundred millions of pounds of imported wool, increases the price 
 alao of three hundred millions of pounds of the domestic product. 
 
 The $50,000,000 received from duties on luxuries, as it is paid alto- 
 gether by the rich, all parties agree must not be touched. This leaves 
 aa the only alternative the reduction of revenue to be made from the 
 $100,000,000 derived from manufactured articles and from raw ma-
 
 ""'' > j 007 
 
 terials, and the policy of the party, as unequivocally and emphatically 
 stated in President Cleveland's message and in the annual reports of 
 the Secretaries of the Treasury under his administration, is to make the 
 necessary reduction of the revenue in this direction. If this policy 
 should be carried out, what sources of revenue would be left? The 
 internal-revenue tax, duty on sugar, and the duty on luxuries, that 
 is all. 
 
 The Democratic policy strikes at the whole system of protection to 
 American industries, threatens the destruction of our American man- 
 ufactories and the prosperity of the entire North. Is it any wonder 
 that in foreign countries, and especially in England, it is popular? Why 
 should it not be? It is the policy which Great Britain has advocated 
 for the United States for many years, which she endeavored before the 
 Revolution to enforce in the colonies, which she has enforced in Ireland 
 and India, where she has the power, which her manufacturers and cap- 
 italists have spent millions of dollars to promulgate in the United States, 
 and which even now they are contributing to advance a policy which, 
 if it ever prevails, which may God grant it may not, will open up to 
 the manufacturers of England the markets of sixty-odd millions of peo- 
 ple, who consume more of the products of labor than any other equal 
 number of people in the world. 
 
 In the United States the land required for manufacturing purposes, 
 for raising agricultural products, the build ings and other improvements 
 used for carrying on the great industries, the tools and machinery, the 
 profits of the manufacturers and returns for the capital invested, the 
 savings of the laborer, whether invested in a house or placed in a sav- 
 ings-bank, or loaned on bond and mortgage, are taxed, and bear their 
 proportion of the public burdens. They contribute to support a State 
 government, maintain a county organization, build and keep in repair 
 highways, to support municipal governments, and to support schools. 
 The more prosperous the business, the more it contributes. 
 
 Home industries, diversified labor, increased manufactured products, 
 all help, by increasing the amount and value of taxable property, to 
 bear these public burdens and to decrease the burden to be borne by 
 any one member of society. The duty which is levied upon foreign 
 products at the custom-house for the support of the General Govern- 
 ment is but an equivalent for the State, county, city, and school taxes 
 levied in this country upon the plant of manufacturers and product of 
 labor. What is proposed by the free-trader or the advocate of a tariff 
 for revenue only ? It is to place our manufacturers at a disadvantage 
 with the foreign manufacturers, by admitting to this country the prod- 
 ucts of foreign labor untaxed to compete with the products of domestic 
 labor, which in every stage, from the raw material to the finished 
 product, has in some manner been subject to taxation. 
 
 But, says the Democratic party, 
 
 BUY WHEBE YOU CAN BUY CHEAPEST; 
 
 obtain what you consume at the lowest price, no matter how reached. 
 The great argument made against protection is that we shall be able 
 with free trade to get from abroad at a lower cost articles which we 
 now produce for ourselves under the protection of the tariff. Once re- 
 move the barrier against the cheap-labor products of foreign countries 
 which has been erected by a protective tariff, and, as surely as water 
 seeks its level, the prices in the United States, not only of labor prod- 
 ucts but of labor itself, will find a level with the prices of those com- 
 modities in the countries where they are cheapest. 
 The law of supply and demand is as certain as the laws of nature. 
 
 DOLPH
 
 UCSB LfBRARY 
 
 40 
 
 Let ns see where this principle of buying where you can buy cheapest 
 would lead us. There is scarcely a product of human industry that, 
 owing to more favorable conditions of climate, cheaper lands, or cheaper 
 labor, can not be produced cheaper in some portion of the world than 
 in the United States, unless we are willing to cheapen labor in the 
 United States to the standards in Europe and Asia. To buy where we 
 can buy cheapest would be to buy our wool of Australia, the Argentine 
 Republic, Africa, Asia, and Turkey; our woolen fabrics of England 
 and Germany; our cotton fabrics of Great Britain and other European 
 nations; our iron and steel of Great Britain and Germany; our fish of 
 Canada; in a word, to transfer our workshops and factories across the 
 sea to give employment to the laborers of other countries. 
 
 The enterprising woolen manufacturer would purchase his wool of 
 Australia and manufacture it in China with Chinese labor. If admit- 
 ted duty free, clothing manufactured by cheap labor under the opera- 
 tion of the ' ' sweating system ' ' in Great Britain or by Chinese labor in 
 China could be purchased cheaper abroad than at home. Even our 
 wheat would eventually be purchased from India and our great agri- 
 cultural interests destroyed, as has been the case in Great Britain, 
 However broad our philanthropy may be, however much we may sym- 
 pathize with the laborers of other countries, charity should begin at 
 home. 
 
 In dealing with humanity we owe our first duty to our own country 
 and our own countrymen. It is the duty of the Government to protect 
 its citizens in the enjoyment of their rights upon land and sea wherever 
 they may rightfully go. This duty of the Government is but the cor- 
 relative of the duty of the citizen of allegiance to his Government. 
 Though it may be powerless at this time to do so, it is the duty of the 
 Government to secure to every citizen of the Republic, white or black, on 
 every foot of American soil, civil and political rights which the Constitu- 
 tion guaranties to him; to see that he enjoys rights of life, liberty, and 
 the pursui t of happiness ; that he receives the fruit of his own labor ; that 
 when he has a right to vote he is not intimidated or driven from the 
 polls, and when he has voted that his vote shall be honestly counted. 
 So it is the duty of the Government to protect the laboring men of the 
 United States against the cheap labor of Asia and the pauper labor of 
 Europe, to dignify labor, and to secure the independence and to promote 
 the intelligence, of the American laborer; to protect the American la- 
 borer not only against the admission into this country of laborers who 
 work for starvation wages, but from the products of cheap labor every- 
 where. The Democratic party has entirely abandoned the principle of 
 protection to American industries and to American labor. Urged on by 
 the solid South, and cheered on by British manufacturers and free- 
 traders, the Democratic party stands to-day, like Samson stood in the 
 temple of the Philistines, with its arms around the pillars of American 
 industry, blind, waiting only for strength to pull down the great struct- 
 ure which has been so many years in building, and which, if it does 
 fall, will bring ruin and distress upon the country, and will grind the 
 Democratic party to powder.