man of the Committee on Ways and Means in 1862, Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, himself a protectionist, and certainly in favor of the protection of the great interest of Pennsylvania, iron. He made a pledge upon this floor in 1862 that those additions of duties upon manufactured articles imported in this country were made necessary because of the internal revenue taxes. Both he and Mr. Morrill, subsequently Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, declared that the act of June 30, 1864, was a temporary measure, a war measure, and was not intended as a measure which should remain upon the statute-book as a protective tariff in the time of peace.

Senator SHERMAN, of Ohio, 1867:

In considering so complicated a subject as a tariff, nothing can be more deceptive than the application of such general phrases as a "protective tariff," "a revenue tariff," "a free trade tariff." Every law imposing a duty on imported goods is necessarily a restraint on trade. It imposes a burden upon the purchase and sale of imported goods and tends to prevent every importation. The expression, "a free trade tariff," involves an absurdity. If you converse with intelligent men engaged in the business of manufacturing they will tell you that they are willing to compete with England, France, Germany, and all the countries of Europe, at the old rates of duty. If you reduce their products to a specie basis, and put them on the same footing they were on before the war, the present rates of duty would be too high. It would not be necessary for scarce any branch of industry to be protected to the extent of your present tariff law. They do not ask protection against the pauper labor of Europe, but they ask protection against the creation of your own laws.

JAMES G. BLAINE, Secretary of State, 1881 :

The wages of spinners and weavers in Lancashire and Massachusetts, according to the foregoing statements, were as follows per week:

Spinners--English, $7.20 to $3.40 (master spinners running as high as $12); American, $7.07 to $10.30.

Weavers-English, $3.84 to $8.64, subject, at the date on which these rates were given, to a reduction of 10 per cent.; American, $4.82 to $8.73.

The average wages of employes in the Massachusetts mills is as follows, according to the official returns: Men, $8.30; women, $5.62; male children, $3.11; female children, $8.08. According to Consul Shaw's report, the average wages of the men employed in the Lancashire mills on the 1st of January, 1880, was about $8 per week, subject to a reduction of 10 per cent; women from $3 40 to $4.30, subject to reduction of 10 per cent.

The hours of labor in the Lancashire mills are 56, in Massachusetts mills 60 per week. The hours of labor in the mills in the other New England States, where the wages are generally less than in Massachusetts, are usually 66 to 69 per week.

Undoubtedly the inequalities in wages of English and American operatives are more than equalized by the greater efficiency of the latte: and their longer hours of labor. If this should prove to be a fact in practice, as it seems to be proven from official statistics, it would be a very important element in the establishment of our ability to compete with England for our share of the cotton-goods trade of the world.

From these returns it is seen that every American spindle consumes 66 pounds of raw cotton, while each British spindle consumes only 32 pounds, or less than one-half the American consumption per spindle.

it thus appears that each American operative works up as much raw material as two British operatives, turns out nearly $1.50 worth of manufactures to the British operative's $1 worth, and even in piece goods, where the superior quality and weight of the American goods are so marked, the American operative turned out 2.75 yards to 2.50 yards by the British operative.

Senator P. B. PLUMB, of Kansas, Jan. 17, 1883:

I do not ask that any duty shall be increased. No one raising anything within the State of Kansas and no manufacturer in that State asks for an increase of duty on anything. We do ask that a ring-if I may use that expression without offense-a collection and combination of interests located upon the eastern frontier of this country, near to the seat and source of power, easily accessible to tariff commissions and easy to get their ears, shall not have their own way

about everything of this kind, entirely irrespective of the sections of this country remote from the seat and sources of power.

Mr. President, some of us has got to be consulted before this bill finally passes, and some of us will be consulted after the bill has passed in regard to the reasons for the action or nonaction taken. I say now to the persons who have the run of this thing, to those who have had control and are better posted, and have been able by arts and by various processes to do those things which were not thoroughly understood-I beg of them to consider that the people are watching this proceeding and that they want no higher taxes, but lower taxes, and that in giving the protection for American industry they want to give a decent chance to a class of people who, by reason of their calling, cannot be protected at all, but who have got to take their chances in the markets of the world for their products, hard products to raise, expensive products to get to market, and in the production of which there is the smallest margin of profit. I was talking with a farmer from Massachusetts to-day about this thing. He said he had as good a farm as there was in the old Bay State, and yet he said that he could barely make both ends meet, and he complained to me that one of the reasons why he could not do so was because everything else that surrounded him was so much protected that it simply took the difference between profit and loss in his calling and left him a very slim chance indeed from year to year.

JOHN A. LOGAN, in the House, April 18, 1870:

Now when the gentleman, who seems to be the protector to an especial manner of the great labor interests of the conntry, speaks of this protection being the protection of the labor of this country, I ask him: Does not every farmer and mechanic in this broad land make use of iron in all kinds of labor? The 4,000,000 men that have been freed recently are laborers, are producers, not manufacturers. They are not men of skilled labor; they evidently are not the men who are protected. And then there are the men in the Northwest who produce corn, wheat, oats, pork and beans, etc.; they are producers and consumers, and are not protected; and it is they who pay this large amount of money into the pockets of the manufacturers of this article. And when a gentleman stands upon this floor and tells me that this high, this extraordinary high tariff is for the protection of the laboring men of this country who are not skilled laborers, I tell him I do not understand how he can possibly substantiate such a theory.

Judge THOMAS M. COOLEY, of Michigan, in "Constitutional Limitations":

Constitutionally a tax can have no other basis than the raising of revenues for public purposes, and whatever governmental exaction has not this basis is tyrannical and unlawful. A tax on imports, therefore, the purpose of which is not to raise revenue, but to discourage and indirectly prohibit some particular import for the benefit of some home manufacturer, may well be questioned as being merely colorable, and, therefore, not warranted by constitutional principles.

So much for the past attitude of the Republican party; what is its present position? Where Garfield was for that protection which led to free trade, Harrison supports the McKinley Bill with its higher rate of impost duties than the Morrill Bill, passed only as a war measure to save the Union. Where the Republican platform of 1868 declares that it is due to the labor of the nation that taxation shall be reduced; and where the Republican platform of 1884 pledges the party to correct the inequalities of the tariff, the Republican platform of 1892 boldly avows the doctrine of high protection, while asserting that the McKinley Bill has cheapened the prices of manufactured articles. Following is the Republican tariff plank adopted at Minneapolis, June, 1892 :

"We reaffirm the American doctrine of protection. We call attention to its growth abroad. We maintain that the prosperous condition of our country is largely due to the wise revenue legislation of the Republican Congress.

We believe that all articles which cannot be produced in the United States, except luxuries, should be admitted free of duty, and that on all imports coming into competition

with the products of American labor there should be levied duties equal to the difference between wages at home and abroad.

We assert that the prices of manufactured articles of general consumption have been reduced under the operations of the Tariff Act of 1890.

We denounce the efforts of the Democratic majority of the House of Representatives to destroy our tariff laws piecemeal as is manifested by their attacks upon wool, lead and lead ores, the chief products of a number of States, and we ask the people for their judgment thereon."

The McKinley tariff went into effect on the 4th of October, 1890. What are its effects?

It has by the high duties imposed upon competing products been of great benefit to the “Trusts" already in existence when it passed, at the same time it has made possible the formation of others.

Since the McKinley Tariff went into effect there have been wage reductions in nearly every industry on the products of which increased duties were imposed.

The following table contains merely a few instances of the many wage troubles following the enactment of the McKinley Tariff Law: