The foreign trade of Russia and of the United States increased during the past ten years, under the policy of protection, in a greater ratio than that of Great Britain under the policy of free trade; and, also, in a greater ratio than that of France, which the English claim as a free-trade ally.

Mr. Chairman, a wise tariff protects American industries and manufactures, while it does not destroy foreign competition. Prohibition is no part of the American system. It builds no wall about commerce and trade, shutting out the great world from us; it does not exclude foreign importation; it prevents monopolies from absorbing the wealth of this nation, while it encourages growth and enterprise among our own people. I have said that it encourages enterprise; it opens our mines; it erects our machine shops, our furnaces, and factories; it enlarges our cities and builds up villages.

It adds to the material wealth of the nation. It enhances the value of real estate. More than that, it gives to the farmer a ready market for the products of his farm. It brings a market almost to his very door. It imparts value to many articles which he raises which otherwise would be of little or no value; articles which it would not pay to ship to a distant market have ready sale at home. It does more than this: it furnishes employment to the laborer and subsistence to the poor, and all the while is adding to the nation's wealth.

The bill means reduced wages to operatives. It means the closest, sharpest competition among manufacturers at home with manufacturers abroad. It means the closest economy of the price in the article produced. And the very first step taken in the direction of economy on the part of the manufacturer is to reduce the wages he pays to his laborer; not because he loves to do it, but because the exigencies of his business demand it. That has always been so, and the present and future will be no exception to the past.

Mr. Chairman, self-preservation is the first law of nature, as it is and should be of nations. The general welfare is of paramount importance, and any measure which does not keep this steadily in view, which does not foster and encourage American labor and American industry, is in opposition to the great law of life, and subversive of the principles upon which governments are established. We want to be independent in that broad and comprehensive sense, strong within ourselves, self-supporting and self-sustaining in all things.

I listened attentively to the carefully considered speech of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Wood], waiting to hear

of some American interest which was demanding this new legislation, and at last I was rewarded for my patience. He sent a letter to the clerk's desk to be read from Messrs. Worthington & Co., of Jackson, Michigan, manufacturers of agricultural implements, who declared themselves in favor of the bill, and that they were able to import steel to this country, manufacture it into agricultural implements, and send it back again at a profit. This was a strange statement and entirely inexplicable until the distinguished gentleman from Michigan [Omar D. Conger], always on the alert, stated to the House that this firm, which was well known to him, did their work with the convict labor of Michigan at thirty-two cents a day. No other statement was needed. This was the only interest in the whole country over which the gentleman published as satisfied with the proposed change. Comment is unnecessary, for when we commence to employ convict labor I will concede free trade is practicable.

This committee have imposed a duty of 20 cents a bushel upon wheat and they have suffered wheat ground into flour to come into this country free: an unjust discrimination against every flour manufacturer in the land. Again, they have under their bill suffered cloths, manufactured cloths, to come into this country at 50 per cent. ad valorem; and in that same bill they allow the cloths made into clothing for wearing apparel to come in for 45 per cent. duty; a discrimination against every manufacturer of clothing, every tailor, every sewing woman the country over.

They have reduced the duty upon scrap iron, wrought and cast; and what will be the result? Why it will throw thousands of men out of employment and will wholly destroy the profession of the puddlers of the land.

The bill in some cases protects the raw material, while the manufactured article is practically free of duty or largely reduced.

They have destroyed the entire classification of wools. They suffer non-competing and competing wools to come in at the same rate of duty. They have broken down the more reasonable classifications which have been approved by the wool grower and accepted by the trade, and now they are all to come. in at the same rate, whether we grow the wool in this country or not.

Mr. Chairman, the proposed bill is a piece of patchwork and abounds in inconsistencies. It is an attempt to conciliate two schools of political science and pleases neither. It has marched

out into the broad field of compromise and come back with a few supporters, it is true, who were opposed to the original bill as reported. It is neither free trade, nor tariff reform, nor protective tariff. It has none of the virtues of either, but the glaring faults of all systems. It is an attempt to change a law which does not improve the old one. It is an experiment opposed by all experience. It introduces uncertainty into the business of this country when certainty is essential to its life.

Mr. Chairman, there never was a time in the history of this country more inauspicious than the present for the dreamer and the theorist to put into practical operation his impracticable theories of political science. The country does not want them; the business men of the country do not want them. They want quiet to recuperate their wasted forces; and I am sure I utter no sentiment new or original when I say that if this House will promptly pass the appropriation bills and other pressing legislation, following this with an immediate adjournment, the people will applaud such a course as the work of statesmen and the wisdom of men of affairs.

On May 8 John R. Tucker [Va.], a member of the Committee on Ways and Means, supported the bill.

He argued that the Constitution intended that the power to lay duties on imports should be distinctly and only a revenue power, and that the present use of it to regulate commerce and to put into the pockets of a privileged class bounties extracted from other industries is a perversion of this intention as well as violative of all principles of right and justice.

If I am right in maintaining that the Constitution vested this power to "lay and collect" (coupling those two words together so that there should be no duty laid which was not to be collected), I next inquire what is a revenue tariff as contradistinguished from a protective tariff, which uses the revenue power for another and a different purpose? On this point I read from an article which I have printed elsewhere.

In all the modes of taxation which may be adopted upon all articles of consumption, the quantum of revenue raised is the result of two factors: the rate of tax and the amount of consumption. The amount of consumption may be regarded for practical purposes as the proper factor, for under a tariff the consumption will regulate the import, and in excises the consumption will limit the production. So that in every tariff the revenue derived from each article will be the result of the duty multiplied by the

amount of import and in every excise the tax multiplied by the quantum of product.

In the case of the tariff system, it follows that as the rate of duty increases the amount of consumption on importation will decrease. When the duty is nothing, the revenue will be nothing, however great the importation. When the importation is nothing the revenue will be nothing, however great the duty. And as the importation falls off with the increase of the rate of duty, until the duty becomes prohibitory, by so increasing the price of the import as to prevent any consumption, it follows that between the point of no duty and the prohibitory rate there will be an ascending scale of revenue to a maximum point of revenue and a descending scale of revenue from that maximum point to the point of prohibition. So that on either side of that duty, which raises the maximum revenue on any article, there will be a lower and a higher duty which will raise the same amount of revenue.

Therefore, as no higher duty ought to be laid than is needed to raise the requisite revenue on any particular article, it follows that the true revenue duty is the lowest duty which will bring the required revenue. To lay the higher duty to obtain the required revenue, instead of the lower, which will achieve the same result, is an oppressive violation of right, in making the burden heavier than the needs of the Government require for its support. Such higher duty is not a revenue measure, but is a needless limitation upon consumption, oppressive to the citizen and an improper restriction upon freedom of commerce. In other words, the lowest rates of duty which will secure the required revenue may be termed a revenue tariff; the highest rates securing the same will be a protective tariff. The former enlarges consumption, the latter diminishes it, and both bring the same amount of revenue. The one decreases the comforts of the people by decreasing ability to consume; the other increases their comforts by enlarging their capacity of consumption.

In view of what I have said these rules may be laid down as within the spirit of the Constitution: first, no duty should be laid higher than the maximum revenue point; second, that under that maximum revenue point luxuries may be made to pay a higher rate of duty than necessaries; third, that it is more just to have an ad valorem duty, and, where that is impracticable because of danger to revenue from frauds in invoices, that the specific duty should be so laid upon the article by classification as to make it as nearly as possible equivalent to an ad valorem duty; and, fourth, that, unless necessary for revenue, raw materials may be admitted free of duty in the interests of the manufacturer as well as of the consumer of the products from such materials.

It is in this view that I hold the protective system contrary to the true spirit of the Constitution, because

First. If the power to lay and collect duties be granted to raise revenue from imports, it cannot be in accord with the spirit of the power so to use it as to prevent imports and defeat revenue.

Second. Nor can it consist with a grant of power to raise revenues for the Government to use this power as a means of extorting bounty from one class to be lavished on another.

Third. Nor can this system, so unjust and unequal, be sanctioned by a constitution whose preamble declares it was formed to establish justice," and "to secure the blessings of liberty" to the people of all the United States.

Fourth. And besides, as the Constitution forbids that any tax or duty shall be laid upon articles exported from any State, and as a restriction upon imports by duties operates by indirection to restrict exports, as if the duties were laid upon them, it is contrary to the true purpose of the Constitution by such indirection to accomplish an end which cannot be done, but is forbidden, by any direct means. It is an evasion of a prohibition and kills the spirit by a seemingly strict conformity to the letter of the Constitution.

Tested by the principles already advanced, I ask is the existing tariff a revenue tariff?

To speak algebraically, you may formulate the amount of revenue by an equation, as I have already shown; revenue equal to the duty multiplied by the import. Now, as the duty increases the import will decrease, and vice versa. Therefore, it is not improper to say, as has been so often said by political economists-I think as far back as Adam Smith-that two and two do not always make four, in political economy. You do not double your revenue when you double your duty; you very often double your revenue by halving your duty. The great error that has been made, in my judgment, by the honorable gentleman from Massachusetts [Nathaniel P. Banks], who spoke yesterday, and by the estimate of the Secretary of the Treasury and Dr. Young at the Bureau of Statistics, is in supposing that the revenue under the present law will be decreased because of a reduction of duties under the proposed bill. In many cases the revenue will be increased on account of that rduction.

The question we come now to consider is whether, tested by the rules which I have laid down, the present tariff-not the bill proposed here is a revenue measure. Why, sir, I will show that so far from being a revenue measure the framers of that tariff and those who now support it seem to prefer it because it does not (in many cases) raise any revenue. The present tariff is such that in the statistical tables all along the column of duties you will find the figures very high, but in the column in reference to the quantum of revenue you will find the amount sometimes down to zero, or a few hundred or a few thou