The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States / Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death.

by John Clark Ridpath

“‘Commerce, Mr. Chairman, links all mankind in one common brotherhood of mutual dependence and interests, and thus creates that unity of our race which makes the resources of all the property of each and every member. We can not if we would, and should not if we could, remain isolated and alone. Men under the benign influence of Christianity yearn for intercourse, for the interchange of thought and the products of thought as a means of a common progress toward a nobler civilization....

“‘Mr. Chairman, I can not believe this is according to the Divine plan. Christianity bids us seek, in communion with our brethren of every race and clime, the blessings they can afford us, and to bestow in return upon them those with which our new continent is destined to fill the world.’

“This, I admit, is a grand conception, a beautiful vision of the time when all the nations shall dwell in peace; when all will be, as it were, one nation, each furnishing to the others what they can not profitably produce, and all working harmoniously together in the millennium of peace. If all the kingdoms of the world should become the kingdom of the Prince of Peace, then I admit that universal free-trade ought to prevail. But that blessed era is yet too remote to be made the basis of the practical legislation of to-day. We are not yet members of the ‘parliament of man, the federation of the world.’ For the present, the world is divided into separate nationalities; and that other divine command still applies to our situation: ‘He that provideth not for his own household has denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel;’ and, until that better era arrives, patriotism must supply the place of universal brotherhood.

“For the present Gortschakoff can do more good to the world by taking care of Russia. The great Bismarck can accomplish more for his era by being, as he is, a German to the core, and promoting the welfare of the German Empire. Let Beaconsfield take care of England, and McMahon of France, and let Americans devote themselves to the welfare of America. When each does his best for his own nation to promote prosperity, justice, and peace, all will have done more for the world than if all had attempted to be cosmopolitans rather than patriots. [Applause.]

“But I wish to say, Mr. Chairman, that I have no sympathy with those who approach this question only from the stand-point of their own local, selfish interest. When a man comes to me and says, ‘Put a prohibitory duty on the foreign article which competes with my product, that I may get rich more rapidly,’ he does not excite my sympathy; he repels me; and when another says, ‘Give no protection to the manufacturing industries, for I am not a manufacturer and do not care to have them sustained,’ I say that he, too, is equally mercenary and unpatriotic. If we were to legislate in that spirit, I might turn to the gentleman from Chicago and say, ‘Do not ask me to vote for an appropriation to build a court-house or a post-office in your city; I never expect to get any letters from that office, and the people of my district never expect to be in your courts.’ If we were to act in this spirit of narrow isolation we should be unfit for the national positions we occupy.

“Too much of our tariff discussions have been warped by narrow and sectional considerations. But when we base our action upon the conceded national importance of the great industries I have referred to, when we recognize the fact that artisans and their products are essential to the well-being of our country, it follows that there is no dweller in the humblest cottage on our remotest frontier who has not a deep personal interest in the legislation that shall promote these great national industries. Those arts that enable our nation to rise in the scale of civilization bring their blessings to all, and patriotic citizens will cheerfully bear a fair share of the burden necessary to make their country great and self-sustaining. I will defend a tariff that is national in its aims, that protects and sustains those interests without which the nation can not become great and self-sustaining.

“So important, in my view, is the ability of the nation to manufacture all these articles necessary to arm, equip, and clothe our people, that if it could not be secured in any other way I would vote to pay money out of the Federal Treasury to maintain government iron and steel, woolen and cotton mills, at whatever cost. Were we to neglect these great interests and depend upon other nations, in what a condition of helplessness would we find ourselves when we should be again involved in war with the very nations on whom we were depending to furnish us these supplies? The system adopted by our fathers is wiser, for it so encourages the great national industries as to make it possible at all times for our people to equip themselves for war, and at the same time increase their intelligence and skill so as to make them better fitted for all the duties of citizenship both in war and in peace. We provide for the common defense by a system which promotes the general welfare.

“I have tried thus summarily to state the grounds on which a tariff which produces the necessary revenue and at the same time promotes American manufactures, can be sustained by large-minded men, for national reasons. How high the rates of such a tariff ought to be is a question on which there may fairly be differences of opinion.

“Fortunately or unfortunately, on this question I have long occupied a position between two extremes of opinion. I have long believed, and I still believe, that the worst evil which has afflicted the interests of the American artisans and manufacturers has been the tendency to extremes in our tariff legislation. Our history for the last fifty years has been a repetition of the same mistake. One party comes into power, and believing that a protective tariff is a good thing establishes a fair rate of duty. Not content with that, they say: ‘This works well, let us have more of it,’ and they raise the rates still higher, and perhaps go beyond the limits of national interest.

“Every additional step in that direction increases the opposition and threatens the stability of the whole system. When the policy of increase is pushed beyond a certain point, the popular reaction sets in; the opposite party gets into power and cuts down the high rates. Not content with reducing the rates that are unreasonable, they attack and destroy the whole protective system. Then follows a deficit in the Treasury, the destruction of manufacturing interests, until the reaction again sets in, the free-traders are overthrown, and a protective system is again established. In not less than four distinct periods during the last fifty years has this sort of revolution taken place in our industrial system. Our great national industries have thus been tossed up and down between two extremes of opinion.