So it is as between the capitalist and the wage-worker. Here and there there may be an unequal sharing as between the two in the benefits that have come by protection; but benefits have come to both; and a reversal in policy would mean damage to both; and while the damage would be heavy to all, it would be heaviest, and it would fall soonest, upon those who are paid in the form of wages each week or each month for that week’s or that month’s work.
Conditions change and the laws must be modified from time to time to fit new exigencies. But the genuine underlying principle of protection, as it has been embodied in all but one of the American tariff laws for the last forty years, has worked out results so beneficent, so evenly and widely spread, so advantageous alike to farmers and capitalists and workingmen, to commerce and trade of every kind, that the American people, if they show their usual practical business sense, will insist that when these laws are modified they shall be modified with the utmost care and conservatism, and by the friends and not the enemies of the protective system. They can not afford to trust the modification to those who treat protection and robbery as synonymous terms.
In closing what I have to say about the system of promoting American industry let me add a word of cordial agreement with the policy of in some way including within its benefits, by appropriate legislation, the American merchant marine. It is not creditable to us as a nation that our great export and import trade should be wellnigh exclusively in the hands of foreigners.
It is difficult to know if our opponents are really sincere in their demand for the reduction of the Army. If insincere, there is no need for comment, and if sincere, what shall we say in speaking to rational persons of an appeal to reduce an Army of sixty thousand men which is taking care of the interests of over eighty million people? The Army is now relatively smaller than it was in the days of Washington, when on the peace establishment there were thirty-six hundred soldiers, while there were a little less than four millions of population; smaller than it was in the peaceful days of Jefferson, when there were fifty-one hundred soldiers to five million three hundred thousand population. There is now one soldier to every fourteen hundred people in this country—less than one-tenth of one per cent. We can not be asked seriously to argue as to the amount of possible tyranny contained in these figures. The Army as it is now is as small as it can possibly be and serve its purpose as an effective nucleus for the organization, equipment, and supply of a volunteer army in time of need. It is now used, as never before, for aiding in the upbuilding of the organized militia of the country. The War Department is engaged in a systematic effort to strengthen and develop the National Guard in the several States; as witness, among many other instances, the great field manœuvres at Manassas, which have just closed. If our opponents should come into power they could not reduce our Army below its present size without greatly impairing its efficiency and abandoning part of the national duty. In short, in this matter, if our opponents should come into power they would either have to treat this particular promise of the year 1904 as they now treat the promises they made in 1896 and 1900, that is, as possessing no binding force; or else they would have to embark on a policy which would be ludicrous at the moment, and fraught with grave danger to the national honor in the future.
Our opponents contend that the Government is now administered extravagantly, and that whereas there was “a surplus of $80,000,000 in 1900” there is “a deficit of more than $40,000,000” in the year that has just closed.
This deficit is imaginary, and is obtained by including in the ordinary current expenses the sum of fifty millions, which was paid for the right of way of the Panama Canal out of the accumulated surplus in the Treasury. Comparing the current or ordinary expenditures for the two years, there was a surplus of nearly eighty millions for the year 1900, and of only a little more than eight millions for the year that has just closed. But this diminution of the annual surplus was brought about designedly by the abolition of the war taxes in the interval between the two dates. The acts of March 2, 1901, and April 12, 1902, cut down the internal revenue taxes to an amount estimated at one hundred and five millions a year. In other words, the reduction of taxation has been considerably greater than the reduction in the annual surplus. Since the close of the war with Spain there has been no substantial change in the rate of annual expenditures. As compared with the fiscal year ending in June, 1901, for example, the fiscal year that has just closed showed a relatively small increase in expenditure (excluding the canal payment already referred to), while the year previous showed a relatively small decrease.
The expenditures of the Nation have been managed in a spirit of economy as far removed from waste as from niggardliness; and in the future every effort will be continued to secure an economy as strict as is consistent with efficiency. Once more our opponents have promised what they can not or should not perform. The prime reason why the expenses of the Government have increased of recent years is to be found in the fact that the people, after mature thought, have deemed it wise to have certain new forms of work for the public undertaken by the public. This necessitates such expenditures, for instance, as those for rural free delivery, or for the inspection of meats under the Department of Agriculture, or for irrigation. But these new expenditures are necessary; no one would seriously propose to abandon them; and yet it is idle to declaim against the increased expense of the Government unless it is intended to cut down the very expenditures which cause the increase. The pensions to the veterans of the Civil War are demanded by every sentiment of regard and gratitude. The rural free-delivery is of the greatest use and convenience to the farmers, a body of men who live under conditions which make them ordinarily receive little direct return for what they pay toward the support of the Government. The irrigation policy in the arid and semi-arid regions of the West is one fraught with the most beneficent and far-reaching good to the actual settlers, the homemakers, whose encouragement is a traditional feature in America’s National policy. Do our opponents grudge the fifty millions paid for the Panama Canal? Do they intend to cut down on the pensions to the veterans of the Civil War? Do they intend to put a stop to the irrigation policy? or to the permanent census bureau? or to immigration inspection? Do they intend to abolish rural free-delivery? Do they intend to cut down the Navy? or the Alaskan telegraph system? Do they intend to dismantle our coast fortifications? If there is to be a real and substantial cutting down in national expenditures it must be in such matters as these. The Department of Agriculture has done service of incalculable value to the farmers of this country in many different lines. Do our opponents wish to cut down the money for this service? They can do it only by destroying the usefulness of the service itself.