Then there is another question—the question of the tariff. I admit that there are a great many arguments in favor of free trade, but I assert that all the facts are the other way. I want American people as far as possible to manufacture everything that Americans use.
The more industries we have the more we will develop the American brain, and the best crop you can raise in every country is a crop of good men and good women—of intelligent people. And another thing, I want to keep this market for ourselves. A nation that sells raw material will grow ignorant and poor; a nation that manufactures will grow intelligent and rich. It only takes muscle to dig ore. It takes mind to manufacture a locomotive, and only that labor is profitable that is mixed with thought. Muscle must be in partnership with brain. I am in favor of keeping this market for ourselves, and yet some people say: "Give us the market of the world." Well, why don't you take it? There is no export duty on anything. You can get things out of this country cheaper than from any other country in the world. Iron is as cheap here in the ground, so are coal and stone, as any place on earth. The timber is as cheap in the forest. Why don't you make things and sell them in Central Africa, in China and Japan? Why don't you do it? I will tell you why. It is because labor is too high; that is all. Almost the entire value is labor. You make a ton of steel rails worth twenty-five dollars; the ore in the ground is worth only a few cents, the coal in the earth only a few cents, the lime in the cliff only a few cents—altogether not one dollar and fifty cents; but the ton is worth twenty-five dollars; twenty-three dollars and fifty cents labor! That is the trouble. The steamship is worth five hundred thousand dollars, but the raw material is not worth ten thousand dollars. The rest is labor. Why is labor higher here than in Europe? Protection. And why do these gentlemen ask for the trade of the world? Why do they ask for free trade? Because they want cheaper labor. That is all; cheaper labor. The markets of the world! We want our own markets. I would rather have the market of Illinois than all of China with her four hundred millions. I would rather have the market of one good county in New York than all of Mexico. What do they want in Mexico? A little red calico, a few sombreros and some spurs. They make their own liquor and they live on red pepper and beans. What do you want of their markets? We want to keep our own. In other words, we want to pursue the policy that has given us prosperity in the past. We tried a little bit of free trade in 1892 when we were all prosperous. I said then: "If Grover Cleveland is elected it will cost the people five hundred million dollars." I am no prophet, nor the son of a prophet, nor a profitable son, but I placed the figure too low. His election has cost a thousand million dollars. There is an old song, "You Put the Wrong Man off at Buffalo;" we took the wrong man on at Buffalo. We tried just a little of it, not much. We tried the Wilson bill—a bill, according to Mr. Cleveland, born of perfidy and dishonor—a bill that he was not quite foolish enough to sign and not brave enough to veto. We tried it and we are tired of it, and if experience is a teacher the American people know a little more than they did. We want to do our own work, and we want to mingle our thought with our labor. We are the most inventive of all the peoples. We sustain the same relation to invention that the ancient Greeks did to sculpture. We want to develop the brain; we want to cultivate the imagination, and we want to cover our land with happy homes. A thing is worth sometimes the thought that is in it, sometimes the genius. Here is a man buys a little piece of linen for twenty-five cents, he buys a few paints for fifteen cents, and a few brushes, and he paints a picture; just a little one; a picture, maybe, of a cottage with a dear old woman, white hair, serene forehead and satisfied eyes; at the corner a few hollyhocks in bloom—may be a tree in blossom, and as you listen you seem to hear the songs of birds—the hum of bees, and your childhood all comes back to you as you look. You feel the dewy grass beneath your bare feet once again, and you go back in your mind until the dear old woman on the porch is once more young and fair. There is a soul there. Genius has done its work. And the little picture is worth five, ten, may be fifty thousand dollars. All the result of labor and genius.
And another thing we want is to produce great men and great women here in our own country; then again we want business. Talk about charity, talk about the few dollars that fall unconsciously from the hand of wealth, talk about your poorhouses and your sewing societies and your poor little efforts in the missionary line in the worst part of your town! Ah, there is no charity like business. Business gives work to labor's countless hands; business wipes the tears from the eyes of widows and orphans; business dimples with joy the cheek of sorrow; business puts a roof above the heads of the homeless; business covers the land with happy homes.
We do not want any populistic philanthropy. We want no fiat philosophy. We want no silver swindles. We want business. Wind and wave are our servants; let them work. Steam and electricity are our slaves; let them toil. Let all the wheels whirl; let all the shuttles fly. Fill the air with the echoes of hammer and saw. Fill the furnace with flame; the moulds with liquid iron. Let them glow.
Build homes and palaces of trade. Plow the fields, reap the waving grain. Create all things that man can use. Business will feed the hungry, clothe the naked, educate the ignorant, enrich the world with art—fill the air with song. Give us Protection and Prosperity. Do not cheat us with free trade dreams. Do not deceive us with debased coin. Give us good money—the life blood of business—and let it flow through the veins and arteries of commerce.
And let me tell you to-night the smoke arising from the factories' great plants forms the only cloud on which has ever been seen the glittering bow of American promise. We want work, and I tell you to-night that my sympathies are with the men who work, with the women who weep. I know that labor is the Atlas on whose shoulders rests the great superstructure of civilization and the great dome of science adorned with all there is of art. Labor is the great oak, labor is the great column, and labor, with its deft and cunning hands, has created the countless things of art and beauty. I want to see labor paid. I want to see capital civilized until it will be willing to give labor its share, and I want labor intelligent enough to settle all these questions in the high court of reason. And let me tell the workingman to-night: You will never help your self by destroying your employer. You have work to sell. Somebody has to buy it, if it is bought, and somebody has to buy it that has the money. Who is going to manufacture something that will not sell. Nobody is going into the manufacturing business through philanthropy, and unless your employer makes a profit, the mill will be shut down and you will be out of work. The interest of the employer and the employed should be one. Whenever the employers of the continent are successful, then the workingman is better paid, and you know it. I have some hope in the future for the workingman. I know what it is to work. I do not think my natural disposition runs in that direction, but I know what it is to work, and I have worked with all my might at one dollar and a half a week. I did the work of a man for fifty cents a day, and I was not sorry for it. In the horizon of my future burned and gleamed the perpetual star of hope. I said to myself: I live in a free country, and I have a chance; I live in a free country, and I have as much liberty as any other man beneath the flag, and I have enjoyed it.
Something has been done for labor. Only a few years ago a man worked fifteen or sixteen hours a day, but the hours have been reduced to at least ten and are on the way to still further reduction. And while the hours have been decreased the wages have as certainly been increased. In forty years—in less—the wages of American workingmen have doubled. A little while ago you received an average of two hundred and eighty-five dollars a year; now you receive an average of more than four hundred and ninety dollars; there is the difference. So it seems to me that the star of hope is still in the sky for every workingman. Then there is another thing: every workingman in this country can take his little boy on his knee and say, "John, all the avenues to distinction, wealth, and glory are open to you. There is the free school; take your chances with the rest." And it seems to me that that thought ought to sweeten every drop of sweat that trickles down the honest brow of toil.
So let us have protection! How much? Enough, so that our income at least will equal our outgo. That is a good way to keep house. I am tired of depression and deficit. I do not like to see a President pawning bonds to raise money to pay his own salary. I do not like to see the great Republic at the mercy of anybody, so let us stand by protection.
There is another trouble. The gentleman now running for the presidency—a tireless talker—oh, if he had a brain equal to his vocal chords, what a man! And yet when I read his speeches it seems to me as though he stood on his head and thought with his feet. This man is endeavoring to excite class against class, to excite the poor against the rich. Let me tell you something. We have no classes in the United States. There are no permanent classes here. The millionaire may be a mendicant, the mendicant may be a millionaire. The man now working for the millionaire may employ that millionaire's sons to work for him. There is a chance for us all. Sometimes a numskull is born in the mansion, and a genius rises from the gutter. Old Mother Nature has a queer way of taking care of her children. You cannot tell. You cannot tell. Here we have a free open field of competition, and if a man passes me in the race I say: "Good luck. Get ahead of me if you can, you are welcome."
And why should I hate the rich? Why should I make my heart a den of writhing, hissing snakes of envy? Get rich. I do not care. I am glad I live in a country where somebody can get rich. It is a spur in the flank of ambition. Let them get rich. I have known good men that were quite rich, and I have known some mean men who were in straitened circumstances. So I have known as good men as ever breathed the air, who were poor. We must respect the man; what is inside, not what is outside.