It was characteristic of the man that he should in the very van of his argument place a statement that would challenge the general attention of the public, regardless of party. No reader who recognizes the significance of effective work in debate can fail to catch the value of these calm, deliberate sentences:
“If any one thing was settled by the election of 1888, it was that the protective policy, as promulgated in the Republican platform, and heretofore inaugurated and maintained by the Republican party, should be secured in any fiscal legislation to be had by the Congress chosen in that great contest and upon that mastering issue. I have interpreted that victory to mean, and the majority in this House and in the Senate to mean, that a revision of the tariff is not only demanded by the votes of the people, but that such revision should be on the line and in full recognition of the principle and purpose of protection. The people have spoken; they want their will registered and their decree embodied in public legislation. The bill which the Committee on Ways and Means have presented is their answer and interpretation of that victory, and in accordance with its spirit and letter and purpose. We have not been compelled to abolish the internal-revenue system that we might preserve the protective system, which we were pledged to do in the event that the abolition of the one was essential to the preservation of the other. That was unnecessary.
“The bill does not amend or modify any part of the internal-revenue taxes applicable to spirits or fermented liquors. It abolishes all the special taxes and licenses, so called, imposed upon the manufacture of tobacco, cigars and snuff, and dealers thereof, reduces the tax upon manufactured tobacco from eight to four cents per pound, and removes all restrictions now imposed upon the growers of tobacco. With these exceptions, the internal-revenue laws are left undisturbed. From this source we reduce taxation over $70,000,000, and leave with the people this direct tax which has been paid by them upon their own products through a long series of years.
“The tariff part of the bill contemplates and proposes a complete revision. It not only changes the rates of duty, but modifies the general provisions of the law relating to the collection of duties. These modifications have received the approval of the Treasury Department, and are set forth in detail in the report of the committee, and I will not weary you by restating them.
“We propose this advanced duty to protect our manufacturers and consumers against the British monopoly, in the belief that it will defend our capital and labor in the production of tin plate until they shall establish an industry which the English shall recognize has come to stay, and then competition will insure regular and reasonable prices to consumers. It may add a little, temporarily, to the cost of tin plate to the consumer, but will eventuate in steadier and more satisfactory prices. At the present prices for foreign tin plate, the proposed duty would not add any thing to the cost of the heavier grades of tin to the consumer. If the entire duty was added to the cost of the can, it would not advance it more than one-third, or one-half of one cent, for on a dozen fruit cans the addition would properly only be about three cents.
“We have now enjoyed twenty-nine years continuously of protective tariff laws—the longest uninterrupted period in which that policy has prevailed since the formation of the Federal government—and we find ourselves at the end of that period in a condition of independence and prosperity the like of which has never been witnessed at any other period in the history of our country, and the like of which had no parallel in the recorded history of the world. In all that goes to make a nation great and strong and independent, we have made extraordinary strides. In arts, in science, in literature, in manufactures, in invention, in scientific principles applied to manufacture and agriculture, in wealth and credit and National honor we are at the very front, abreast with the best, and behind none.
“In 1860, after fourteen years of a revenue tariff, just the kind of a tariff that our political adversaries are advocating to-day, the business of the country was prostrated, agriculture was deplorably depressed, manufacturing was on the decline, and the poverty of the government, itself, made this Nation a by-word in the financial centers of the world. We neither had money nor credit. Both are essential; a nation can get on if it has abundant revenues, but if it has none it must have credit. We had neither as the legacy of the Democratic revenue tariff. We have both now. We have a surplus revenue and a spotless credit. I need not state what is so fresh in our minds, so recent in our history, as to be known to every gentleman who hears me, that from the inauguration of the protective tariff laws of 1861, the old Morrill tariff—which has brought to that veteran statesman the highest honor and will give to him his proudest monument—this condition changed. Confidence was restored, courage was inspired, the government started upon a progressive era under a system thoroughly American.
“With a great war on our hands, with an army to enlist and prepare for service, with untold millions of money to supply, the protective tariff never failed us in a single emergency, and while money was flowing into our treasury to save the government, industries were springing up all over the land—the foundation and corner-stone of our prosperity and glory. With a debt of over $2,750,000,000 when the war terminated, holding on to our protective laws, against Democratic opposition, we have reduced that debt at an average rate of more than $62,000,000 each year, $174,000 every twenty-four hours for the last twenty-five years, and what looked like a burden almost impossible to bear has been removed under the Republican fiscal system, until now it is less than $1,000,000,000, and with the payment of this vast sum of money the Nation has not been impoverished, the individual citizen has not been burdened or bankrupted, National and individual prosperity have gone steadily on, until our wealth is so great as to be almost incomprehensible when put into figures.
“The accumulations of the laborers of the country have increased, and the working classes of no nation in the world have such splendid deposits in savings banks as the working classes of the United States. Listen to their story: The deposits of all the savings banks of New England in 1886 equaled $554,532,434. The deposits in the savings banks of New York in 1886 were $482,686,730. The deposits in the savings banks of Massachusetts for the year 1887 were $302,948,624, and the number of depositors was 944,778, or $320.67 for each depositor. The savings banks of nine States have in nineteen years increased their deposits $628,000,000. The English savings banks have in thirty-four years increased theirs $350,000,000. Our operative deposits $7 to the English operative’s $1. These vast sums represent the savings of the men whose labor has been employed under the protective policy which gives, as experience has shown, the largest possible reward to labor.
