The country was practically in such a condition now, and the true response to those declarations warranted the repeal of the internal revenue taxes to the extent proposed by his bill. He favored now, as he had always done, a total repeal of the internal revenue taxes.
In the bill which he introduced he proposed to sweep all these taxes from the statute books, except a tax of fifty cents on whiskey, and he would transfer the collection of that tax to the customs officials if that was found to be practicable.
With Albert Gallatin, he regarded excise taxes as offensive to the genius of the people, tolerated only as a measure of emergency, and as soon as the occasion for them had passed away they should cease to exist.
Gallatin and Jefferson had secured the repeal of the internal taxes, and relieved the people from their annoyances and the hordes of officials clothed with dangerous power. If this internal revenue system was abolished to-day we would have no surplus revenue to scare the country, while the administration of public affairs would be rendered purer and better. His bill proposed a revision of the tariff on the principle believed to be in harmony with the authorized declarations of the Democratic party in their last convention.
Those declarations clearly recognized the fact that a difference existed in the cost of production of commodities in this and other countries on account of a higher rate of wages in the United States, and declared for a duty ample to cover that difference. There was a cardinal principle which must cover every intelligent revision of the tariff. Labor in this country received a much larger share of what was annually produced than in any other country, and this advantage to labor could only be maintained by giving to the industries protection equal to that difference.
He quoted from Edward Atkinson that since the end of the Civil War, and yet more since the so-called panic of 1873, there had been greater progress in the common welfare among the people of the United States than ever before. The statements of Mr. Atkinson would seem to settle the question as to whether we should adhere to the benevolent policy of protecting home manufactures. It demonstrated unmistakably the truth that, to increase wages, products must be increased, for in the end wages were but the laborer’s share of products.
While a dollar might buy more in another country than here, a day’s labor here would obtain more of the comforts of life than anywhere else. Under free trade this advantage to labor disappeared. It was impossible it should be otherwise. If the tariff itself did not give higher wages to the laborer, it did preserve from foreign competition the industries from which the laborer received his wages. He wished to refer to a few fundamental propositions which had been maintained throughout this debate, and which appeared to exercise and control influence over the opinion of men.
First. That the duties were always added to the price to the consumer.
On articles not produced in this country, this doubtless was true as a general rule, and measurably true on articles in part produced in this country, but not in sufficient quantities to supply the home market. But on all commodities produced in sufficient quantities to supply the home market, a different principle controlled. In these things competition determined the price, and the foreign producer came into this market, where the prices were fixed, and the duties were what he paid for the privilege of coming into the market. Another erroneous proposition was that duties on articles produced in this country were a tax or bounty which the consumer paid to the manufacturer, by means of which the manufacturer derived large profits. If this were true, it was not easy to see what justification there was for the committee bill any more than for the present tariff law. But that it was erroneous seemed apparent on a closer examination of the laws of trade. Adam Smith long ago had laid down the proposition that larger profits in one industry than in another could not long prevail in the same country. The United States formed a world of its own. Would it be possible that one class of consumers would pay a perpetual tax to another?
Suppose last year we had manufactured $1,000,000,000 worth of products less than we actually did, and had gone abroad to supply our deficiency, expecting to pay for the goods with our agricultural products—we had sold Europe last year all of the wheat and corn the continent could take—who could tell what prices Europe would have paid if we had thrown upon her markets $1,000,000,000 worth of agricultural products in excess of the quantity we had sold. The farmer and manufacturer in this country must depend almost exclusively upon our home market.