their manufactures as themselves to consume all their own food products; they would then make iron and other goods for the other half of our people, and the country would be fully supplied. Then let Kentucky and Ohio repeat the experiment, and make a market for their farm products; but who will buy their iron and their rails and other manufactures? One man can manufacture for five, but he cannot consume products for five. We already manufacture all the goods our people can use. Markets for agriculture cannot be extended at home until markets are extended for our manufactures abroad.

The fact that we import does not affect this statement, when we remember the hands always idle, and which would still be idle if we ceased importing. Mr. Wright, Chief of the Labor Bureau, in his first report, made after careful and intelligent inquiry, showed the number of the unemployed to be a million. When workers are not satisfied with their earnings, they strike. When proprietors and capitalists are not satisfied with their gains, they strike, and call it "shutting down." As the result of the two forms of labor disturbance a half-million workmen are always idle. Half of this idle half-million, when employed, can make all the dutiable goods imported.

We can produce wares for sale abroad only by lowering the cost of making them. How can this cost be lowered? Professor Dodge has indicated the method by which protection is lowering the cost of production, when he reports that "the tendency of the times is toward lower rates of wages in all kinds of industries in the United States." We think there is another and better method-lower taxes. That one-fourth of our woolenmill machinery, and the hands who work it, are now idle, is an unquestionable fact. We cannot expect to sell a yard of cloth made of four pounds of taxed wool in any market where there is other cloth to sell, because wool is not taxed by other manufacturing countries. We must, therefore, remove the tax on wool and make proportionate reduction on the cloth, thus benefiting all and injuring none. The manufacturer would have the same measure of defense which he has now. How would the change affect the wool-grower?

Let us inquire in New York, where, under protection, the

"average depreciation of farming lands is fully one-third in ten years." The sheep in that State average less than ten to a farm, and yield, in all, not more than sixty pounds of wool per farm. If the selling price of this be enhanced to the full amount of the tariff on imported wool, the benefit to the owner will be $6. Clothing bought for $15, if imported, would include, at the present rate, $6 of taxes. If made here, it would include the $6, or so much thereof as a combination of manufacturers might determine to take. The fact that manufacturers co-operate and combine to control and limit production, thus affecting prices, will not be questioned.

A ton of iron, made as ours is, of two tons of ore taxed $1.50, cannot be sold abroad, because the ore of English, German, or French competitors is not taxed; and so, for the reasons above indicated, we would remove the tax on ores, coal, wool, hemp, and the like. Selfish greed in the name of protection opposes this, hiding its real purposes, in a professed regard for the rights of labor. Labor owns no mines, no forests, gets no royalty. No friend of protection has ever had the audacity to claim for it, as regards the interests of labor, any credit beyond this: that protection increases the ability of the employer to pay higher wages, not that of itself it adds anything to wages. In this view the amount of the tax on materials is so much taken from that ability to pay wages.

The age of our protective system was recently stated in the Senate to be nearly thirty years. Macaulay tells us that

“There is a certain class of men who, while they profess to hold in reverence the great names and great actions of former times, never look at them for any other purpose than in order to find in them some excuse for existing abuses."

And so when protection finds it necessary to defend its abuses and exactions, it invokes the honored names of the fathers to justify the wrongs done after them, but which, protectionists insist, the fathers approved.

Mr. Jefferson, in his first message, said:

"Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise. Protection from casual embarrassments, however, may sometimes be reasonably interposed."

And Mr. Madison, in the first congressional debate, said:

"I am myself the friend of a very free system of commerce, and hold it as a truth that commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic. All are benefited by exchange, and the less the exchange is cramped by government, the greater are the proportions of benefit to each. The same argument holds good between nation and nation, and between parts of the same nation."

General Jackson approved a bill reducing the highest duties to twenty per cent., and in his last message declared the system then yielding a surplus "unequal and unjust." Mr. Monroe, discussing the commercial policy of that time, said, in his last message: "This policy was free and equal reciprocity. That principle has pervaded all the acts of Congress, and all negotiations of the executive on the subject." And, whatever may be said to the contrary, investigation shows that, down to the close of Mr. Van Buren's term, whenever a tariff bill had any purpose other than revenue, that purpose was no part of an original policy, but was to compensate for restrictions and burdens on our trade and commerce imposed by other nations, including England, which had not, up to that time, opened her markets to our field and other products.

There was among our early statesmen one whose great name protection may rightfully summon to its aid, Alexander Hamilton. He believed in protection, but did not believe in our form of government. He declared, in the constitutional convention, that "the people are turbulent and changing, seldom judge or determine right," and that "none but the rich and well-born will ever maintain good government." His plan of protection was simple and direct: a tariff for revenue, with a bounty added for the manufacturer. But Hamilton was no hypocrite, and never claimed that protection, direct or indirect, was intended to in-~~~~ crease, or did increase, the wages of labor.

Earlier statesmen were politicians as well, and, in view of the varied emergencies of their time, it is not surprising that in the writings of most of them, on a question still unsettled after a century of discussion, expressions may be found which either party to the controversy may claim as favoring its own side. Certainly it is no cause of surprise that protection makes such

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claim.

The limit to what it claims is found in what it takes. Yet its claims are hardly more extravagant than its statements of alleged facts.

With other inexact statements comes this from far-distant France, that the repeal of the tobacco tax will bring great relief to the growers of tobacco. The growers of tobacco are not now, nor have they ever been, taxed. Until manufactured, there is no tax on tobacco. But this extravagance of statement ought not to surprise us, since Addison wrote, "There is something nobly wild and extravagant in great geniuses.'

Statements come from the Senate Chamber that wool needs to be further taxed for protection, and that liquor and manufactures of tobacco need relief from taxation, because on these it is alleged to be a tax burden on the leaf, on barley, and on corn. This senatorial statement is made in forgetfulness of the fact that the production of tobacco and of malt liquors taxed has outgrown the production of wool protected, and that corn is turned into whisky in sufficient quantities without further encouragement. From the same source we are advised, and asked to believe, that protection, through existing laws, puts a higher tax on articles of voluntary use, luxury, and ornament, so that taxes shall be assessed on those best able to pay. Silks are named among such articles of luxury. Yet it is known to the Senate that the average rate on woolens is 67 per cent., on silks 49 per cent., and the tax on such lower-priced woolen goods as are in use among common people is double the rates on the finest silks.

There is apparently some confusion among protectionists as to what articles are luxuries. "Those who can afford to indulge in expensive tropical fruit, such as potatoes, will not feel themselves at all aggrieved by the payment of this duty," was the reason once given by Senator Morrill for a "large" duty on that expensive tropical fruit, potatoes.

Again, in the Senate, the value of wool imports for 1883, amounting to $8,915,149, has been compared with their value for 1887, which was $18,206,988, and the increase attributed to the reduction of the wool duty in 1883. In 1883 we imported 70,575,478 lbs. In 1884, the first year after the reduction, imports

went up to 78,350,651 lbs. In 1885, the second year after the reduction, imports fell to 70,596,170 lbs., and the value was less than in any year since 1879. In 1887 we imported 114,404,173 lbs., or nearly double the quantity imported in 1883. In 1880, three years before the reduction, 128,131,749 lbs. of wool were imported, exceeding in value by $7,316,281 the imports of 1887. If reducing the duty in 1883 caused 114,404,173 lbs. to be imported in 1887, what caused the importation of 128,131,749 lbs., or 13,727,576 lbs. more, in 1880, under the higher duty? Dutiable imports were in 1882 208,000,000 lbs., and customs receipts were $88,000,000 greater than in 1878, under the same law. Thus the senatorial statement omits many essential facts, and hence is misleading; this so capable a man as Senator Sherman can hardly fail to perceive.

As the basis of every argument in support of its policy or in defense of the present rate of tariff taxation, Protection assumes that the development of the country and its increased wealth are the result of that policy. The cause of the increased wealth, with whatever degree of prosperity comes to us, lies in our better form of government, in the vastness of our country, and in its limitless resources. These were all ours when the tax in the price of our coats was but half what it now is. Neither is the growth of the wealth of a country always evidence of the increasing prosperity of its people. It was recently shown, on the authority of Mulhall, that while in less than fifty years Ireland's population has fallen from more than eight millions to less than five millions, the aggregate wealth of that stricken country has been largely augmented, and that, besides wealth, which is in few hands, Ireland had grown in nothing but the number of her poor and the burden of taxation.

Another assumption is, that any substantial modification of the rate of taxation will bring ruin to manufacturing industries, to be followed by the decay of all others, and this because of the higher cost of our labor.

When one of the recently proposed tariff modifications was under consideration by the Ways and Means Committee, several miners of coal gave testimony, from which it appeared that the earnings of some were as low as twenty dollars a month, while