cessive revenues of the government shall be immediately reduced, and as a beginning insists that the tobacco tax and the tax upon distilled spirits used in arts and manufactures shall at once be repealed. It will be for the people to say whether the party manifestly disregardful of the interests of a tax-paying public shall be retained in power and whether it will not be wise to restore the reins of government to that party which had the wisdom to frame great tax laws when they were required, and has proven its ability and willingness to lighten the burdens of taxation when the revenues were excessive.

A PROTECTIVE TARIFF.

BY HON. WILLIAM MCKINLEY, JR., M.C. FROM OHIO.

THE general question of the tariff involves higher considerations than we are wont to bring to its discussion.

Our political system differs from all others. Universal citizenship and equal suffrage constitute the foundation upon which our Republic rests, and the real and wider question, therefore, of the tariff is, What will best maintain our industrial pursuits and labor conditions suitable to the high political duties of our people and the exalted trusts which are confided. to them? That is the real question in its comprehensive view. It touches the health and progress of the Republic, for it touches the condition, moral, physical, and intellectual, of the citizen from whom it must draw its force and character and strength. You cannot affect the citizen either for good or ill without the Nation feeling it. The relation of the people to the government and the government to the people is so close and intimate, that you cannot touch the one without its being quickly felt by the other.

So long as American protective tariffs operate to foster and cherish American enterprises which are enabled to provide profitable employment to American labor, so long should American protective tariffs be upheld and defended, whether assaulted from influences at home or abroad. We cannot be healthy and vigorous as a nation, we cannot successfully lead in the race of freedom and progress, if the source of power— the people is discontented, ill fed, ill paid, and without the comforts and deprived of the healthful conditions which should be enjoyed by political equals.

It is not a question simply of whether we shall clothe ourselves in cloths manufactured from American wools or in

cloths fabricated from Australian wools, but how will the Nation at large and the individual citizen be affected by the policy which makes the latter necessary, if not inevitable.

It is not the narrow question of the cost of the clothes we wear, or the food we eat, or the lumber which gives shelter to our homes, but what will be the effect of such alleged reduced cost, and all which must follow it, upon our citizenship, and ultimately its influence upon the strength and character of our institutions. The government, which derives all its powers from the people, must be mindful of their interests, considerate of their character, and in every way possible favor their preparation for the responsibilities with which they are charged. It is a broader question than the price of the foreign or the domestic product; and while the latter may in some instances cost a little more than the former, it is of little significance when measured by the comforts and advantages which might be afforded the masses of our country, and which cannot be secured without the maintenance of an American policy.

Free trade with every other nation of the world means to us either the substantial abandonment of many of the chief industries of the country, or, if they are to survive, it means equal cost in the growth and manufacture of competing products. One of the two things must inevitably result from free trade or a purely revenue tariff.

In some departments of industry the cost of production in this country is greater than that in any other, and to remove the protection which we secure by our tariffs will either surrender our markets in those departments to our foreign competitors or, if we would hold them, we must diminish the cost of the competing products, and that means—and there can be no other result-a radical reduction in the wages of our workmen.

Our duty, therefore, is not limited to the mere question of dollars and cents, but it is deeper and more far-reaching. It involves our industrial independence and the welfare of our people. Comparisons cannot be made with other nations. This is a nation of citizens, not subjects. Whatever, therefore, will secure to the laboring masses their full share in the joint profits of capital and labor, favor the highest intelligence and

largest independence, should be adopted and become permanently a part of our national policy.

Much idle talk is indulged in about manufacturing combines and monopolies in the United States, and everything is called a monopoly that prospers; everybody who gets ahead in the world is in the minds of some people a monopolist.

We have few manufacturing monopolists in the United States to-day. They cannot long exist with an unrestricted home competition such as we have. They feel the spur of competition from thirty-eight States, and extortion and monopoly cannot survive the sharp contest among our own capitalists and enterprising citizens. There are some here and there; and yet those who shout the loudest against monopolies are usually found advocating a doctrine which, if carried into practical operation, would break down American manufactures, and give England the unbridled monopoly of American markets. English monopoly does not disturb them; it is American monopoly that distresses their souls. Under the cry of a "bounty-fed monopoly" they would transfer manufacturing from American citizens to foreign citizens.

Would it not be better that America and American manufacturers should have the monopoly of American consumption than that England should have it; and is it not to be preferred that the American laborer and the American mechanic should have the monopoly of supplying the American markets than that English laborers and English mechanics should have it?

I would that all Americans had the love of country and of home institutions that possessed the spirit of Washington. His adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis, in a letter to Thomas Carbery, dated April 7, 1839, relates an incident which well illustrates the Americanism of the Father of his Country. Says Custis: "In 1799, when in command of his last army, in which I had the honor to bear a commission, a blue coat with embroidery was the arrangement made by a board. of general officers as the costume of the chief. Washington merely asked, 'Can this affair be done in the United States?' On being told No,' that the embroidery must be executed in Europe, the venerable chief declined the whole affair instanter."

The manufacturers of this country, as a rule, are not deserving of being characterized as monopolists. They have no princely fortunes; in general they have no independent means. Their all is in the brick and mortar of their establishments, in the machinery, in the organization, in their trade: and how many of them to-day would be willing to sell out at first cost, and below first cost, if they could do it? He who would break down the manufacturers of this country strikes a fatal blow at labor. It is labor that "protection " protects.

Over three hundred millions of dollars must be raised annually from some source to meet the expenditures and obligations of the government.

This sum must be secured either by direct taxation or by duties upon imports. The former system has never been favored by our people, and has been resorted to only in case of war and great public necessity. It has never been held as a permanent system for raising revenue, but only as a temporary expedient to meet immediate and pressing exigencies for which the prevailing system of taxation was found for the time inadequate. It has been the accepted policy from the formation of the government to raise our current and necessary revenues from import duties. The only reason for a surplus in the Treasury to-day is because we continue the dual system of taxation and still retain a part of the internal-revenue or direct. system of taxation which grew out of the necessities of the war. If this were abandoned we would be able to raise the requisite revenue from customs sources, and this taxation would be lightly felt and prove less onerous than any other system.

It is only a question of time, if our surplus continues, when the internal-revenue system will be wholly abolished and our revenue be derived exclusively from duties upon imports. It can well be left with the States to tax spirits and receive the revenues derived therefrom. Whenever it becomes apparent to the public that the one or the other must yield, the internalrevenue tax will be abolished.

The division between the Republican and Democratic parties is not about the raising of revenues from import duties, but upon the class of articles on which these duties shall be im