FREE TRADE AND CHRISTIANITY.
Question. Who will be the Republican nominee for President?
Answer. The correct answer to this question would make so many men unhappy that I have concluded not to give it.
Question. Has not the Democracy injured itself irretrievably by permitting the free trade element to rule it?
Answer. I do not think that the Democratic party weakened itself by electing Carlisle, Speaker. I think him an excellent man, an exceedingly candid man, and one who will do what he believes ought to be done. I have a very high opinion of Mr. Carlisle. I do not suppose any party in this country is really for free trade. I find that all writers upon the subject, no matter which side they are on, are on that side with certain exceptions. Adam Smith was in favor of free trade, with a few exceptions, and those exceptions were in matters where he thought it was for England's interest not to have free trade. The same may be said of all writers. So far as I can see, the free traders have all the arguments and the protectionists all the facts. The free trade theories are splendid, but they will not work; the results are disastrous. We find by actual experiment that it is better to protect home industries. It was once said that protection created nothing but monopoly; the argument was that way, but the facts are not. Take, for instance, steel rails; when we bought them of England we paid one hundred and twenty-five dollars a ton. I believe there was a tariff of twenty-eight or twenty-nine dollars a ton, and yet in spite of all the arguments going to show that protection would simply increase prices in America, would simply enrich the capitalists and impoverish the consumer, steel rails are now produced, I believe, right here in Colorado for forty-two dollars a ton.
After all, it is a question of labor; a question of prices that shall be paid the laboring man; a question of what the laboring man shall eat; whether he shall eat meat or soup made from the bones. Very few people take into consideration the value of raw material and the value of labor. Take, for instance, your ton of steel rails worth forty-two dollars. The iron in the earth is not worth twenty-five cents. The coal in the earth and the lime in the ledge together are not worth twenty-five cents. Now, then, of the forty-two dollars, forty-one and a half is labor. There is not two dollars' worth of raw material in a locomotive worth fifteen thousand dollars. By raw material I mean the material in the earth. There is not in the works of a watch which will sell for fifteen dollars, raw material of the value of one-half cent. All the rest is labor. A ship, a man-of-war that costs one million dollars— the raw material in the earth is not worth, in my judgment, one thousand dollars. All the rest is labor. If there is any way to protect American labor, I am in favor of it. If the present tariff does not do it, then I am in favor of changing to one that will. If the Democratic party takes a stand for free trade or anything like it, they will need protection; they will need protection at the polls; that is to say, they will meet only with defeat and disaster.
Question. What should be done with the surplus revenue?
Answer. My answer to that is, reduce internal revenue taxation until the present surplus is exhausted, and then endeavor so to arrange your tariff that you will not produce more than you need. I think the easiest question to grapple with on this earth is a surplus of money.