Any other policy would mean ruin and bankruptcy to the country. The greater the producing power of the people the more independent and wealthy would the country be.
Mr. Randall next entered into an explanation of the principles upon which his bill had been constructed. He said that in fixing the duties the rates had been adjusted as nearly as possible to cover the difference in the margin of cost of production here and abroad. In working out the details of the bill it had been his purpose to lower duties wherever possible.
Between the extreme free trader on one hand and a prohibitory tariff on the other there were intermediate positions. One of them was to fix a revenue line on imports just high enough to realize a sufficient revenue for the needs of the Government. Another was to make the tariff sufficiently high to cover the difference of cost of production in this country and other countries. To lower the rate of duty when that line was passed must be to increase the revenue. To raise the rate of duty when the line of maximum revenue was reached would result in a decrease of duty.
Any computation that did not take these facts into account would be utterly worthless. It might safely be assumed that when the importation of any line of merchandise steadily increased from year to year, and there was no good reason why those goods could not be produced in this country, and the result of the increased importations had been to suppress our manufactures, it was proof positive that the duty should be increased.
Otherwise it might be assumed that the duties were quite high enough. And when the duties were high enough to permit the existence of trusts to raise the prices of the commodity, the duty should be reduced as closely as possible to the line. He stated distinctly that if it could be made to appear in any case that the measure he proposed conferred more protection than was needed to cover the cost of production, he was ready to lower it. If in any instance the rate was too low to cover that cost, he was ready to raise it.
Monopolies existed without the tariff. The standard oil trust, the whiskey trust, and the cotton-seed oil trust, and others that he could mention—the greatest trusts in the whole country—were not protected by the tariff. He was for the protection of labor, not in one State merely, but in all States.
He was for the protection and maintenance of that system that allows to labor a larger proportionate share of its products than was realized in any other country or under any other system.
The late Secretary Manning had signalized his accession to the control of the Treasury Department by a more thorough examination of the economic questions of the day than had been made by any of his predecessors. His reports and public utterances were marvels of honest, conscientious, and effective labor.
He had strongly urged the necessity for the substitution of specific for ad valorem duties. The Custom House officers charged with the collection of the revenues had given valuable and emphatic testimony in favor of the change. The present Secretary of the Treasury had taken the same grounds. (At this point Mr. Randall quoted extensively from Secretary Fairchild’s utterances on the subject. He then proceeded with his description of the objects of his own bill.) Certain provisions of the metal schedules, he said, had been very sharply assailed, and he devoted some time to answering the speakers who had attacked his measure.
He took up the schedules relating to steel rails, and quoted figures at length to sustain his action in fixing the duties at the rates he proposed in his bill. The duty on cotton ties, he said, was one of the inconsistencies of the present tariff. It was only fair that they should pay a duty as hoop iron and as an article of manufacture. The present law was a positive discrimination against the home manufacturer and in favor of the foreign producer. The rate of wages in England in cotton tie manufactories was hardly one-half of the wages paid in such manufactories in Pittsburg.