cost is what? Just $10. So the poor fellow does not have to go back to work ten days more to get that suit of clothes. He takes the suit with him and pays for it just $10. . .

And now, Mr. Chairman, I never knew of a gentleman engaged in this business who sold his clothes without a profit. And there is the same $10 suit described by the gentleman from Texas that can be bought in the city of Boston, can be bought in Philadelphia, in New York, in Chicago, in Pittsburgh, anywhere throughout the country at $10 retail the whole suit, coat, pants, and vest, and 40 per cent. less than it could have been bought in 1860 under your low tariff and low wages of that period. It is a pity to destroy the sad picture of the gentleman from Texas which was to be used in the campaign, but the truth must be told. But do you know that if it were not for protection you would pay a great deal more for these clothes? I do not intend to go into that branch of the question, but I want to give one brief illustration of how the absence of American competition immediately sends up the foreign prices, and it is an illustration that every man will remember. My friend from Missouri (Mr. Clardy), who sits in front of me, will remember it. The Missouri Glass Company was organized several years ago for the manufacture of coarse fluted glass and cathedral glass. Last November the factory was destroyed by fire. Cathedral glass was their specialty. Within ten days from the time that splendid property was reduced to ashes the foreign price of cathedral glass advanced 28 per cent. to the American consumer. Showing that whether you destroy the American production by free trade or by fire it is the same thing; the price goes up to the American consumer, and all you can do is to pay the price the foreigner chooses to ask.

THE POOR MAN'S BLANKETS

Now, the gentleman had a lot of blankets here the other day. The very climax of the gentleman's speech was reached when he came to a description of the American blankets, and the enormous burdens that the tariff laid upon the poor man's bed and covering. . . .

Now, Mr. Chairman, what did these same blankets cost in 1860 under a revenue tariff, under the free-trade domination of this country by the Democratic party? What did we pay for the same

?

blankets that year as contrasted with what we pay now? The blanket that sells to-day for $1.02 sold in 1860 for $2. The blanket that sells now for $1.45 sold in 1860 for $2.25. The blanket that sells now for $1.90 sold in 1860 for $3.50. The blanket that sells now for $2.58 sold for $3.75 in 1860. The blanket that sells now for $4.35 sold for $7.50 in 1860. The blanket that sells for $5.85 now sold for $10.00 in 1860. The blanket that sells now for $6.80 sold for $14 in 1860. . . .

...

The weekly earnings of the spinner in 1860 could buy three pairs of cheap blankets for one week's work. The spinner under American protection in 1888, for the price of one week's work can buy fifteen pairs of blankets. Talk about productive capacity! Think about buying capacity! The spinner buys his blankets for one half what they cost him in 1860; and he gets two and a half times as much for his labor in 1888 as he got in 1860. Do you wonder these men do not like your bill? Do you wonder these men condemn the action of the committee for not listening to their protests? Why, you are preparing here to-day-and that is the purpose and effect of this bill-you are preparing here to reduce the scale of American wages.

THE UNITED STATES BUYING FOREIGN BLANKETS

On the 25th of March, 1887, the United States Government advertised for bids for the purchase of blankets for the use of the medical department of the Army. This was in 1887, under the present Administration. There were foreign bids and there were American bids. Now, if the President is right in saying that the duty is added to the cost, then the foreign cost, duty added, ought to be just equal to the American price. Now, what are the facts of this transaction? As I have said, there was a foreign bid, and there was an American bid. The foreign bid was for a four-pound blanket for medical purposes, to be furnished for $2.25%. For the same four-pound blanket for the same purposes, the American bid was $2.56, there being a difference of 30 [sic] cents. Who do you suppose got the contract? There was a foreign bid, and an American bid, and the difference between the bids was 30 cents on each blanket. Now tell me which manufacturer, the American or English,

got the contract? Is there anybody here who would not have given it to the American, there being a difference of only 30 cents between the bids?

Is there any gentleman on this floor who would send abroad to get a pair of blankets merely to save 30 cents on them, thus taking away from the American manufacturer and the American farmer and the American laborer that much business? However that may be, that contract did go abroad. English labor, with foreign wool, made those 2,000 blankets for the use of our army. American labor was boycotted and they came in without paying any duty. The Government took advantage of a law that stands on the statutebook and admitted them free of duty. There being so little revenue in the Treasury, it was necessary, of course, to save every penny, so they took advantage of that law which permits the United States to bring in goods free of duty.

Mr. Chairman, I wish that this Government of ours, which is supported by its own people, and not by foreigners, would patronize its own people. I think that is an example of patriotism which should be set by those charged with public administration. I wish the men who pay the taxes to support this Government, to pay the President's salary and other expenses of the Government, would be patronized when the Government has anything to buy, don't you? And are you not a little ashamed of this transaction, all of you? I do not know whether the like was ever done under any former administration or not; but it never ought to be done, except in time of war or great public necessity, by any future administration of any party.

ΤΗ

XXIV

REED: SPEECH ON THE MILLS BILL1

'HE system we believe in is called protection, and is founded upon the doctrine that a great nation like ours, having all varieties of climate and soil, will be richer, more independent, and more thrifty, and that its people will be better fitted to enjoy the comforts and luxuries of peace, and better situated to endure the calamities of war, if its own people supply its own wants.

I do not purpose to defend protection. Its vast growth within the last quarter of a century defends it better even than eloquent orations. It was born with the Republic. It is the faith and practice of every civilized nation under the sun save one. It has survived the assaults of all the professors of the "dismal science" called political economy. It has stood up against all the half knowledge of learned men who never had sense enough to transmute their learning into wisdom.

On the face of the earth to-day there are but two sets of people who believe in free trade, whether pure and simple or disguised as revenue reform, and those two are the masked majority of the Committee on Ways and Means and their followers, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with Ireland suppressed.

Russia, the granary of Europe, has abandoned free trade, with the striking result that whereas, in 1876, before the duties were raised, she bought eight million hundred-weight of British metals and paid therefor thirty million of dollars (eight for thirty), she got the same quantity in 1884 and paid only seventeen million for it (eight for seventeen). Three dollars and seventy-five cents per hundredweight before tariff, and $2.12 after. Austria, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and the Dominion of Canada, that child of Britain herself,

1 Thomas B. Reed (1839-1902), Speech on the Mills Bill, in the House of Representatives, May 19, 1888. .

have all joined the army of protection. It is the instinct of humanity against the assumptions of the book men. It is the wisdom of the race against the wisdom of the few.

Perhaps the best argument I can make for protection is to state what it is and the principles on which it is founded.

Man derives his greatest power from his association with other men, his union with his fellows. Whoever considers the human being as a creature alone, by himself, isolated and separated, and tries to comprehend mankind by mathematically adding these atoms together, has utterly failed to comprehend the human race and its tremendous mission.

Sixty millions even of such creatures without association are only so many beasts that perish. But sixty millions of men welded together by national brotherhood, each supporting, sustaining, and buttressing the other, are the sure conquerors of all those mighty powers of nature which alone constitute the wealth of this world. The great blunder of the Herr Professor of political economy is that he treats human beings as if every man were so many footpounds, such and such a fraction of a horse-power. All the soul of man he leaves out.

Think for a moment of the foundation principles involved in this question, which I now ask, Where does wealth come from? It comes from the power of man to let loose and yet guide those elemental forces the energy of which is infinite. It comes from the power of man to force the earth to give her increase, to hold in the bellying sail the passing breeze, to harness the tumbling waterfall, to dam up the great rivers, to put bits in the teeth of the lightning. Foot-pounds and fractions of a horse-power will never do this. It takes brains and the union of foot-pounds and fractions of a horsepower working harmoniously together.

To grasp the full powers of nature, to reap the richest wealth of the world, we must utilize the full power of man, not merely muscles and brains, but those intangible qualities which we call energy, vigor, ambition, confidence, and courage. Have you never remarked the wonderful difference between a sleepy country village, lying lazily alongside an unused waterfall, where more than half the energy of the people was lost for lack of the kind of work they wanted to do; where, whenever three men met together in the road, the rest looked