The Government could float a two per cent. bond at par, and if it issued enough bonds to pay for all the roads the annual interest charge would be no greater than we now pay for carrying the mails.
Can you do nothing about this, Mr. President? Is your strong arm powerless to defend the people against this high-handed robbery?
Mr. President, your administration is now paying the Oceanic Steamship Company $45,000 per year to carry mails to the semi-savages of Tahiti. This island is under French control. French steamers offered to carry these mails for $400 per year. Your administration refused the offer, and continued to pay an American Corporation $45,000. Did you know this, Mr. President? Is there nothing you can do about it? Must the taxpayers be plundered of $44,600 every year simply because an American Corporation wants the money?
Mr. President, is it right that to China and Japan American-made cloth should be sold cheaper than we Americans can buy it? Is it right that we should have to pay more for implements to work our fields with than the South American farmer pays for the same tools? For a hundred years our manufacturers have been protected from foreign competition in the home market; they charge us higher prices in this home market than are paid by any other people on earth; they organize this monopoly into a Trust, and then they take their surplus goods into foreign markets and sell them to foreigners at a lower price than they sell to us. Is that right, Mr. President?
How can this evil be corrected? How can the Trusts be curbed?
By putting on the Free List every article which is sold abroad cheaper than it is sold here, and every article which enters into the necessary makeup of the Trust.
Mr. President, under your administration corporate wealth escapes national taxation, as it has done for the past thirty years.
Under Abraham Lincoln, the railroads and the manufacturers paid a federal tax.
They pay none now.
Under Abraham Lincoln, the vastly overgrown Insurance Companies and Express Companies paid a federal tax.