But

and you will always find wages higher here than there. this is not because of the effect of legislation, but as a result of the peculiarly favorable conditions for labor which we enjoy politically and territorially.

The protectionist, starting with the proposition that wages are higher here, maintains that there should therefore be protection to American labor in order that it may not be brought into competition with the pauper labor of the Old World. My mind reaches the very opposite conclusion. The fact that we have high-priced labor here, better wages for labor here than abroad, is conclusive evidence to me that we do not need protection, and that what we do need is the speedy opening of the markets of the world.

High-priced labor means efficient labor, skilled labor, intelligent labor, productive labor. Pauper labor means inefficient labor, unskilled, unintelligent, unproductive labor. Let competition come between high-priced labor and pauper labor, and pauper labor will always go to the wall. I can understand why the poorly-paid laborers of the Old World should get down on their knees and lift up their hands and pray for protection against the high-priced labor of America; but I can not understand why the high priced, efficient, productive labor of America should beg protection against the products of the pauper labor of the world.

Mr. Chairman, it is inevitable that when competition comes between these classes of labor, high-priced labor must always win the victory. I will mention an instance which will illustrate my meaning. Gunny-bags are made out of jute, and this manufacture is carried on very largely in Calcutta by the cheapest labor in the world, the women getting from five to eight cents a day and the men from seventeen to twenty cents. Within a short time, as I have been informed, a gentleman has started the business of making gunny-bags in one of the eastern cities. He has built a structure, obtained his machinery, and he pays

women employees eighty cents to one dollar a day, men one dollar and twenty-five to one dollar and fifty. Yet with this high-priced labor he has almost gotton control of the gunny-bag market in South America and this country. He says if you will let him have jute free he will undersell the Indian pauper labor in the streets of Calcutta itself.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE TARIFF.

BY HON. WM. P. FRYE.*

R. PRESIDENT:

MR.

The Senator from Texas [Mr.

Coke] on Tuesday last used the following language: "The word protection should be expunged from our vocabulary. It means monopoly; it means exclusive privilege; it means subsidy; it means that all shall be taxed and made to pay tribute to the favored few. It means combinations and lobbyists; a diversion of legislation from legitimate channels from the great public interest to the interests of a few favored ones. It means a wholesale robbery of the people, and especially of the American workingman, in whose behalf it is invoked."

The Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck] in his speech, indicated very clearly that his opinion was, that protection was simply a pliant tool of New England monopolists, and his colleague [Mr. Williams] succeeding him, declared it was a legalized tyranny. Mr. President, you may consult the Democratic party for the last sixty years, go back to the heyday when Mr. Hayne of South Carolina declared in the United States Senate that protection would prove to the country worse than an Egyptian plague, and that free trade would abound in blessings next to the Christian religion, and come down to now, and you will find that it has denounced a protective tariff as "robbery," as "plunder,"

*Speech in the United States Senate, February 10, 1882.

as "a system of swindling," as "a means by which to make the rich richer and the poor poorer," as a specter grim and ghastly which takes its place at the head of every poor man's breakfast-table, which scowls at him every time he lights his pipe, and yet, sir, right in the teeth of these sav. age denunciations, fidelity to truth compels me to declare that I am a protectionist from principle. If there was no public debt, no interest to pay, no pension list, no army and no navy to support, I still should oppose free trade and its twin sister, "tariff for revenue only," and favor protective duties..

Mr. President, it seems to me that protection is absolutely essential to the encouragement of capital, and equally necessary for the protection of the American laborer. Capital needs the former more than the latter, I admit, for capital can easily take care of itself. If it gains no adequate returns in one business, it can readily seek it in another; if it reaps no profit at home, may try new fields abroad; may even let all effort alone, hide itself in Government bonds, and, enthroned there in perfect security, draw regularly its interest. Capital, too, is fearfully timid. The distinguished Senator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] a few days since declared that there was nothing in the world so easily frightened as money. And yet the prosperity of the country imperatively demands its constant use, its investment in every industrial enterprise. The opening of mines, the forcing from the hiding places of the earth coal, iron, and copper, the smelting of ores, the erection of forges, foundries, and factories, the employment of men who must work or starve, demand its help. To inspire it with the requisite courage, to induce it to a useful activity, I would encourage it. But the labor of this country beyond that of any other demands protection against the cheap labor of Europe, for the laborer here has responsibilities, duties, and necessities unknown there. His wages can never go down to theirs without

absolute destruction to him and imminent danger to the Republic. The large majority of our men must earn their bread by the sweat of the brow. Under our Constitution they are the Government. How can hungry men govern? How can a half-paid, half-fed, half-educated citizen rightly and intelligently understand and perform the duties of citi zenship? He must have good food, enough of it, good clothing, school-houses for his children, comforts for his home, and a fair chance to improve his condition. To this end I would protect him against competition with the half-paid laborers. of European countries who have never enjoyed his privileges, experienced his comforts, shared his duties and responsibilities, to whom his very necessities would seem luxuries.

The Senator from Texas joins issue with me on this question of labor, and in the same speech declares: "But it is said that much higher wages are paid to American operatives than to European workmen, and that to enable the manufacturers to pay these higher wages they must have a protective as distinguished from a purely revenue tariff, in order to exclude European competition. Do American manufacturers pay their operatives higher wages? Nominally and ostensibly they do, but really and in fact they do not." That is a most amazing declaration. If it is right, I am wrong; if it is right, every conclusion of the argument of the Senator from Texas is entirely logical and legitimate. If that declaration made by the Senator is false in fact, then the three hours' argument founded upon it is an entire fallacy. Now, sir, I hold in my hand a book entitled "The State of Labor in Europe," printed by authority of Congress, "reports from United States consuls," and the Senator from Texas may take it, turn from blank leaf to blank leaf, he may read every page from beginning to end, and I defy him to point to one single statement of fact, to one single table of statistics, which does not prove conclusively that