unless the changes of trade be closely watched and the law promptly adapted to those changes. But I would make no change that should impair the protective character of the whole body of the tariff laws. Four years ago, in the Act of 1883, we made changes of the character I have tried to indicate. If such changes were made, and the fortifying of our sea-coast thus undertaken at a very moderate annual outlay, no surplus would be found after that already accumulated had been disposed of. The outlay of money on fortifications, while doing great service to the country, would give good work to many men."

"But what about the existing surplus?"

"The abstract of the message I have seen," replied Mr. Blaine, "contains no reference to that point. I, therefore, make no comment further than to indorse Mr. Fred Grant's remark that a surplus is always easier to handle than a deficit."

The reporter repeated the question whether the Presi dent's recommendation would not, if adopted, give us the advantage of a large increase in exports.

"I only repeat," answered Mr. Blaine, "that it would vastly enlarge our imports, while the only export it would seriously increase would be our gold and silver. That would flow out bounteously, just as it did under the tariff of 1846. The President's recommendation enacted into law would result as did an experiment in drainage, of a man who wished to turn a swamp into a productive field. He dug a drain to a neighboring river, but it happened unfortunately, that the level of the river was higher than the level of the swamp. The consequence need not be told. A parallel would be found when the President's policy in attempting to open a channel for an increase of exports

should simply succeed in making way for a deluging inflow of fabrics to the destruction of home industry."

"But don't you think it important to increase our export trade?"

Undoubtedly; but it is vastly more important not to lose our own great market for our own people in the vain effort to reach the impossible. It is not our foreign trade that has caused the wonderful growth and expansion of the republic. It is the vast domestic trade between thirty-eight states and eight territories, with their population of, perhaps, 62,000,000 to-day. The whole amount of our export and import trade together has never, I think, reached $1,900,000,000 any one year. Our internal home trade on 130,000 miles of railway, along 15,000 miles of ocean coast, over the five great lakes, and along 20,000 miles of navigable rivers, reaches the enormous annual aggregate of more than $40,000,000,000, and perhaps this year $50,000,000,000.

"It is into this illimitable trade, even now in its infancy, and destined to attain a magnitude not dreamed of twenty years ago, that the Europeans are struggling to enter. It is the heritage of the American people, of their children, and of their children's children. It gives an absolutely free trade over a territory nearly as large as all Europe, and the profit is all our own. The genuine free-trader appears unable to see or comprehend that this continental tradenot our exchanges with Europe-is the great source of our prosperity. President Cleveland now plainly proposes a policy that will admit Europe to a share of this trade." "But you are in favor of extending our foreign trade, are you not?"

"Certainly I am, in all practical and advantageous ways, but not on the principle of the free-traders, by which we shall be constantly exchanging dollar for dime. Moreover,

the foreign trade is often very delusive. Cotton is manufactured in the city of my residence. If a box of cotton goods is sent two hundred miles to the province of New Brunswick, it is foreign trade. If shipped seventeen thousand miles around Cape Horn to Washington Territory it is domestic trade. The magnitude of the Union and the immensity of its internal trade require a new political economy. The treatises written for European states do not grasp our peculiar situation."

"How will the President's message be taken in the South?"

"I don't dare to answer that question. The truth has been so long obscured by certain local questions of unreasoning prejudice that nobody can hope for industrial enlightenment among their leaders just yet. But in my view the South above all sections of the Union needs a protective tariff. The two Virginias, North Carolina, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia have enormous resources and facilities for developing and handling manufactures. They cannot do anything without protection. Even progress so vast as some of those states have made will be checked if the President's message is enacted into law. Their senators and representatives can prevent it, but they are so used to following anything labelled 'Democratic' that very probably they will follow the President and blight the progress already made. By the time some of the Southern States get free iron ore and coal, while tobacco is taxed, they may have occasion to sit down and calculate the value of Democratic free-trade to their local interests." "Will not the President's recommendation to admit raw material find strong support?"

"Not by wise protectionists in our time. Perhaps some greedy manufacturers may think that with free coal or free

iron ore they can do great things, but if they should succeed in trying they will, as the boys say, catch it on the rebound. If the home trade in raw material is destroyed or seriously injured railroads will be the first to feel it. If that vast interest is crippled in any direction the financial fabric of the whole country will feel it quickly and seriously. If any man can give a reason why we should arrange the tariff to favor the raw material of other countries in a competition against our material of the same kind, I should like to hear it, Should that recommendation of the President be approved it would turn one hundred thousand American laborers out of employment before it had been a year in operation.

"What must be the marked and general effect of the President's message?"

“It will bring the country where it ought to be brought -to a full and fair contest on the question of protection. The President himself makes it the one issue by presenting no other in his message. I think it well to have the question settled. The Democratic party in power is a standing menace to the industrial prosperity of the country. That menace should be removed or the policy it foreshadows should be made certain. Nothing is so mischievous to business as uncertainty, nothing so paralyzing as doubt."

VIEWS ON THE TARIFF.

BY

HON. WILLIAM MCKINLEY, JR.,

OF OHIO.

[From his speech in House of Representatives, May 18, 1888.]

The House being in Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union, and having under consideration the bill (H. R. 9051) to reduce taxation and simplify the laws in relation to the collection of the revenue - Mr. McKinley said:

MR. CHAIRMAN: Our country is in an anomalous situation. There is nothing resembling it anywhere else in the world. While we are seeking to find objects to relieve from taxation, in order that we may relieve an overflowing Treasury, other nations are engaged in exploring the field of human production to find new objects of taxation to supply their insufficient revenues. In considering the situation that thus confronts us, and the bill that is presented here as intended to relieve it, it is well that we should understand at the beginning the things upon which all are agreed.

They are, first, that we are collecting more money than is required for the current needs of the Government; and