Q. Can the first part of the above answer be really so?
A. It must be. A Protection journal had for its headlines on a Protection article the other day the statement that for many years Protection had done for manufacturers just this: It has made the wages they give high and the prices they get low, and so they would be splendidly off if it were not for the shadow of that wicked Wilson bill.
Q. Does prosperity then consist in enlarging your expenses and reducing your income?
A. It always does in Wonderland and Topsy-Turvydom, and under Protection.
Q. But do not “protected” manufacturers import laborers?
A. Manufacturers are held by us to be benevolent. Of course they import laborers, in order that there may be more here to get the benefit of our higher wages.
Q. How about invention under Protection?
A. It isn’t necessary. So long as you can run the old ramshackle machinery, and be defended by the Government, you are saved the trouble of inventing newer and better methods. Some way might possibly be found if Yankee wit were once to be let loose, whereby we could compete with other nations in our manufactures, so that everybody would admit it, and then what would become of Protection? Remember constantly it isn’t the welfare of the people that is paramount; it is Protection.
Q. Protection being so much more necessary than free government, free soil, free speech, and so cherubically philanthropic when compared with the dreadfulness of British Free Trade, the question arises, How shall we maintain its propaganda?
A. We must first of all be very careful to say that Free Trade is British. Of course Magna Charta, including trial by jury and many other good things, are British too, but we mustn’t lose so good a stock argument. It is true, also, that England has prospered far more under Free Trade than she ever did under Protection. But the glorious Blaine accounted for that by saying that Free Trade might be good for England, but it must never come here. In other words, two and two make five or six over there, but here they fail to make four.