And what has made us such a great and splendid and progressive and sensible people?
[A voice: "Free thought.">[
Free thought, of course. Back of every invention is free thought. Why does a man invent? Slavery never invents; freedom invents. A slave working for his master tries to do the least work in the longest space of time, but a free man, working for wife and children, tries to do the most work in the shortest possible time. He is in love with what he is doing, consequently his head and his hands go in partnership; muscle and brain unite, and the result is that the head invents something to help the hands, and out of the brain leaps an invention that makes a slave of the forces of nature—those forces that have no backs to be whipped, those forces that shed no tears, those forces that are destined to work forever for the happiness of the human race.
Consequently I am for the protection of American labor, American genius, American thought. I do not want to put our workingmen on a level with the citizens of despotisms. Why do not the Democrats and others want the Chinese to come here? Are they in favor of being protected? Why is it that the Democrats and others object to penitentiary labor? I will tell you. They say that a man in the penitentiary can produce cheaper. He has no family to support, he has no children to look after; and they say, it is hardly fair to make the father of a family and an honest man compete with a criminal within the walls of a penitentiary. So they ask to be protected.
What is the difference whether a man is in the penitentiary, or whether he is in the despotism of some European state? "Ah, but," they say, "you let the laborer of Europe come here himself." Yes, and I am in favor of it always. Why? This world belongs to the human race. And when they come here, in a little while they have our wants, and if they do not their children do, and you will find the second generation of Irishmen or Germans or of any other nationality just as patriotic as the tenth generation from the first immigrant. I want them to come. Then they get our habits.
Who wants free trade? Only those who want us for their customers, who would like to sell us everything that we use—England, Germany, all those countries. And why? Because one American will buy more than one thousand, yes, five thousand Asiatics. America consumes more to-day than China and India, more than ten billion would of semi-civilized and barbarous peoples. What do they buy—what does England sell? A little powder, a little whiskey, cheap calico, some blankets—a few things of that kind. What does the American purchase? Everything that civilized man uses or that civilized man can want.
England wants this market. Give her free trade, and she will become the most powerful, the richest nation that ever had her territories marked upon the map of the world. And what do we become? Nobodies. Poor. Invention will be lost, our minds will grow clumsy, the wondrous, deft hand of the mechanic paralyzed—a great raw material producing country—ignorant, poor, barbaric. I want the cotton that is raised in this country to be spun here, to be woven into cloth. I want everything that we use to be made by Americans. We can make the cloth, we can raise the food to feed and to clothe this Nation, and the Nation is now only in its infancy.
Somehow people do not understand this. They really think we are getting filled up. Look at the map of this country. See the valley of the Mississippi. Put your hand on it. Trace the rivers coming from the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies, and sweeping down to the Gulf, and know that in the valley of the Mississippi, with its wondrous tributaries, there can live and there can be civilized and educated five hundred millions of human beings.
Let us have some sense. I want to show you how far this goes beyond the intellectual horizon of some people who hold office. For instance: We have a tariff on lead, and by virtue of that tariff on lead nearly every silver mine is worked in this country. Take the tariff from lead and there would remain in the clutch of the rocks, of the quartz misers, for all time, millions and millions of silver; but when that is put with lead, and lead runs with silver, they can make enough on lead and silver to pay for the mining, and the result is that millions and millions are added every year to the wealth of the United States.
Let me tell you another thing: There is not a State in the Union but has something it wants protected. And Louisiana—a Democratic State, and will be just as long as Democrats count the votes—Louisiana has the impudence to talk about free trade and yet it wants its sugar protected. Kentucky says free trade, except hemp; and if anything needs protection it is hemp. Missouri says hemp and lead. Colorado, lead and wool; and so you can make the tour of the States and every one is for free trade with an exception—that exception being to the advantage of that State, and when you put the exceptions together you have protected the industries of all the States.