not only to the wool grower, but also to the carpet maker and to the consumers of the United States. There is no industry in this country which so splendidly illustrates the value of a protective tariff as the carpet industry, which has had such marvelous growth in the last twentythree years.

"In 1810 the entire product of carpets in this country was about 10,000 yards. The tariff of 1828 gave some encouragement, and in 1834 there were twenty carpet factories in the country, operating 511 hand looms producing annually about 1,000,000 yards of carpet. In 1860, under the low tariff, there were only 8,000,000 pounds of wool consumed in making carpets in the United States, and only 13,000,000 yards of carpet were produced, valued at a little over $7,000,000. Six thousand six hundred and eightyone hands were employed, and the wages paid were less than a million and a half dollars annually. The value of the plants in 1860 was less than $5,000,000. Under the tariff of 1867, that first protective tariff law so far as wool and the manufactures of wool were concerned, this industry grew and prospered, and in 1870 there were 215 factories in the United States, valued at over $12,500,000, consuming more than 33,000,000 pounds of wool, employing 13,000 hands, and paying in wages $4,681,000 annually, and producing 22,000,000 yards of carpet every twelve months.

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One fourth of our total consumption was imported from England in 1872. In that year there were 170 looms manufacturing body Brussels: in 1880 the manufacture had risen to 590 looms. In 1872 our product in Brussels was 1,275,000 yards; in 1880 we produced over 7,000,000 yards of Brussels carpet. In 1872 we imported 1,500,000 yards of body Brussels; in 1880 we imported only 80,000 yards. We doubled the looms for manufacturing Wiltons between 1870 and 1880.

"Now take tapestry Brussels-the poor man's carpet, if you please. In 1872 we had 143 looms; in 1880 we had increased to 1,073 looms. In 1872 we produced 1,500,000 yards of tapestry Brussels; in 1880 we produced 16,950,000 yards of tapestry Brussels. In 1872 we imported 3.670,000 yards of tapestry Brussels from England; in 1880 we imported only 100,000 yards of tapestry Brussels from England. All this time prices were being reduced. In 1872 the price of body Brussels by the wholesale was over $2 per yard; in 1880 the wholesale price had gone below $1.50 a yard, and to-day you can buy them for 93 cents a yard.

"In 1872 tapestry carpets averaged $1.46 per yard; in 1880 the price had gone down to 90 cents per yard, and to-day you can buy the best quality for 65 cents per yard. The extra super ingrain carpet which in 1872 sold for $1.20 can be bought to-day for 45 cents per yard, all wool and a yard wide. The total production of carpets in the United States (estimated) in 1880 was 39.972,000 yards; capital invested, $21,486,000; operatives employed, 30,371; paid out in wages, $6,435,000. It is estimated that to-day there are 204 carpet factories in this country, running 11,500 looms (of which 7,597 are power looms), employing 43,000 hands, in 1889 consuming over 90,000,000 pounds of wool and turning out 76,880,000 yards of carpet.

"Why, sir, in the city of Philadelphia alone there was produced 20,000,000 yards of carpet annually-16,000.000 less than the entire output of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. And all the while the price of carpet had gone down. But the ad valorem has gone up; and that is what troubles the gentlemen on the other side. It is the high ad valorems that you gentlemen advocating tariff reform keep before your eyes. You shut your eyes to the diminishing prices. The favorite assault of the Democratic free trader or revenue-tariff reformer is to parade these high percentages and ad valorem equivalents to show the enormous burdens of taxation that we impose upon the people of the United States.

"Now, let us look at this for a moment while we are passing. When steel rails were $100 a ton we had a duty on them of $28 a ton. What would be the equivalent ad valorem? Twentyeight per cent. That is not enormous. My friend from Texas even would not hold that as too high an ad valorem equivalent. But the very instant we reduced the price of steel rails to $50 a ton, because of that duty of $28, which encouraged our own producers to engage in this business-when the price went down to $50 a ton the ad valorem equivalent went up to 56 per cent.; for $28 a ton duty, with steel rails at $50 a ton, would be equivalent to 56 per cent. They are troubled about the ad valorem equivalent. They look to percentages; we look at prices. We would rather have steel rails at $50 a ton and an ad valorem equivalent of 50 per cent. than to have steel rails at $100 a ton and an ad valorem equivalent of only 28 per cent. They pursue a shadow; we enjoy the substance. What do we care about ad valorems? But you will hear of high ad valorems in this debate from its beginning to its close.

"Why, sir, when you bought a crate of ware in 1855 at $96, the ad valorem was only 24 per cent. You buy the same crate of ware to-day for $46, but the ad valorem has gone up 55 per cent. Which would you rather have, low ad valorem equivalents and high-priced goods, or high ad valorem equivalents and low-priced goods.

"What is the nature of the complaint against this bill? That it shuts us out of a foreign market? No, for whatever that is worth to our citizens will be just as accessible under this bill as under the present law. We place no tax or burden or restraint upon American products going out of the country. They are as free to seek the best market as the products of any rival commercial power, and as free to go out as though we had absolute free trade. Statistics show that protective tariffs have not interrupted our export trade, but that it has increased under them.

"In the year 1843, being the first year after the protective tariff of 1842 went into operation, our exports exceeded our imports $40,392,229, and in the following year they exceeded our imports $3,141,226. In the two years following the excess of imports over exports was $15,475,000. The last year under the tariff the excess of exports over imports was $34,317,249 So during the five years of the tariff of 1842 the excess of exports over imports was $62,375.000. the low tariff of 1846 this was reversed, and, with the single exception of 1858, the imports ex

Under

ceeded the exports (covering a period of fourteen years) $465,553,625.

“During the war and down to 1875 the imports with two exceptions exceeded the exports. From 1876 down to 1889 inclusive (covering a period of fourteen years) there were only two years when our imports exceeded our exports, and the total excess of exports over imports was $1,581,906,871 of the products of our own people more than we brought into the United States. The balance of trade has been almost uninterruptedly in our favor during the protective-tariff periods of our history, and against us with few exceptions during revenue-tariff periods. This would seem to indicate a healthful business condition with the outside world, resulting from the Republican economic system, and an unhealthful condition, where we had to send money out of the country to pay our balances under the Democratic system. The chief complaint against this bill comes from importers and consignees here, on the one hand, and the foreign merchants and consignors abroad. Why do they complain? Manifestly because in some way this bill will check their business here and increase the business of our own manufacturers and producers; it will diminish the importation of competing foreign goods, and increase the consumption of our home-made goods. This may be a good reason to influence the foreigner to oppose its passage, but is hardly a sound reason why Americans should oppose it.

"If the bill checks foreign importations of goods competing with ours, it will increase our production and necessarily increase the demand for labor at home. This may be a good reason why the cheap labor of other countries should be unfriendly to this bill, but furnishes the best of reasons why the workmen of the United States should favor it as they do. We do not conceal the purpose of this bill-we want our own countrymen and all mankind to know it. It is to increase production here, diversify our productive enterprises, enlarge the field, and increase the demand for American workmen.

"What American can oppose these worthy and patriotic objects? Others not Americans may find justification for doing so. This bill is an American bill. It is made for the American people and American interests.

The press of other countries have denounced the bill with unmeasured severity, the legislative assemblies of more than one distant country have given it attention in no friendly spirit. It has received the censure of diplomates and foreign powers-for all of which there is manifest reason-it may pinch them, but no American citizen surely can object to to it on that account. We are not legislating for any nation but our own; for our people and for no other people are we charged with the duties of legislation. We say to our foreign brethren: 'We will not interfere in your domestic legislation; we admonish you to keep your hands off of ours.'

"Contrast the imports and exports of the United Kingdom under free trade and unrestrained commerce with the imports and exports of the United States. In 1870 the total value of imports and exports of the United Kingdom was $2,663,620,718; in 1888 it was $3,336,087,844, an increase in eighteen years of $672,467,126, equivalent to 25.25 per cent.

"The total value of the imports and exports of the United States in 1870 was $917,794,421; in 1889, $1,487,533,027, an increase of $569,738,606, or an equivalent of 62 per cent., so that it will be observed that under the revenue-tariff system of Great Britain her imports and exports between 1870 and 1888 increased but 251 per cent., while under the protective system of the United States, which is characterized by our opponents as exclusive and restrictive and like a Chinese wall, the imports and exports of the United States increased between 1870 and 1889 62.8 per cent., a gain over Great Britain of nearly 37 per cent.. and we sent out in those years more than we brought in.

Notwithstanding the complaint that is made about the decadence of our foreign commerce Mulhall informs us that Great Britain's proportion in the foreign commerce in 1830 was 27-2 per cent. of the commerce of the world; but in 1870 it had fallen to 24.5 per cent., and in 1880 Great Britain's proportion was but 21.2 per cent. In 1830 the United States had but 3.7 per cent. of the commerce of the world; in 1870 it had risen to 9-2 per cent.; and in 1880 she had 11-5 per cent. of the foreign commerce of the world.

"While Great Britain lost between 1870 and 1880 13 per cent. of her trade, the United States gained 22 per cent.; and if the United States would give the same encouragement to her merchant marine and her steamship lines as is given by other nations, this commerce on the seas under the American flag would increase and multiply. When the United States will expend from her treasury from five to six millions a year, as do France and Great Britain, to maintain their steamship lines, our ships will plow every sea in successful competition with the ships of the world. Will you, gentlemen, join us in encouraging our merchant marine?

"But, Mr. Chairman, in the presence of our magnificent domestic commerce, the commerce along our inland seas, our lakes and rivers and great railroad lines, why need we vex ourselves about foreign commerce? The domestic trade of the United States is 95 per cent. of the whole of our trade. Nowhere is the progress of the country so manifest as in this wonderful growth and development. Our coasting trade more than doubled our foreign trade in 1880. Thirty-four million tons as against 16,000,000 of foreign, including all our exports and imports, carried in all the ships of the world in 1880. Our inland water tonnage was 25,000,000, our foreign 16,000,000.

"The water carriage of the United States along its coasts and its rivers is five times greater than the foreign commerce of the United States.

"Why, the movement of tonnage through the Detroit river in 1889 was 10,000,000 tons more than the total registered entries and clearances at all the seaports of the United States, and it was 3,000,000 tons in excess of the combined foreign and coastwise registered tonnage of the ports of Liverpool and London. What higher testimony do we want of the growth of our internal commerce?

"We try nations as they appear on the balance sheet of the world. We try systems by results; we are too practical a people for theory.

We know what we have done and are doing un-. der the economic system we advocate. We know that almost every month the balance of trade in our favor is in excess of $20,000,000. We know the manufactures of the United States in 1880 amounted to $1,126,000,000, as against $816,000,000 of Great Britain.

"We know that in 1887 we manufactured 3,339,000 tons of steel rails, and that the manufacturers of England turned out only 3,170,000. We know that the United States in 1887 produced 2,308,000 tons of iron and England 1,711,000 tons. On the Atlantic seaboard there will be produced this year 100,000 tons of steel shipping built in our own ports from our own material.

"Our railroad mileage and tonnage further illustrate the growth and extent of our domestic trade and commerce. In 1865 the number of miles of railroad in operation in this country was 35,085; in 1887 it equaled 150,000 miles. We now have one half of the railroads of the world. Estimating the cost of road and equipment at $35,000 per mile, the amount expended in twenty-two years equaled $4,037,495,000, a yearly expenditure of over $183,000,000. According to Poor's Manual," the total tonnage for 1882 was 360,490,375 tons; for 1883, 400,453.439 tons; for 1884, 399,074,749 tons; for 1885, 437,040,099 tons; for 1886, 482,245,254 tons; for 1887, 552,074,752 tons.

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According to the statement of Mr. Poor, the tonnage of the Pennsylvania Railroad for 1865 was 2,555,706 tons; in 1887, 30,147,635 tons, the increase equaling 27,591,929 tons; the rate of increase in the twenty-two years being nearly 1,100 per cent. The tonnage of the New York Central Railroad increased from 1,767,059 in 1865 to 14,626,951 in 1887, the rate of increase being over 700 per cent. The tonnage of the Erie Railroad in 1865 was 2,234,350, and in 1887 13,549,260, the rate of increase being over 500 per cent. The tonnage of the three roads in 1865 equaled 6,557,115; in 1887, 58,323,848 tons, the increase equaling 51,766,732, the rate of increase being very nearly 800 per cent.

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Mr. Poor estimates that the net tonnage of 1887 of all the railroads in the country equaled 412.500,000. The number of gross tons moved in 1887 on all the railroads of the United States per head of population equaled 9 tons. In 1865 the gross tonnage moved equaled only 2 tons per head. The same authority estimates that the value of the total net tonnage of the railroads of the United States is equal to the sum of $13,327,830,000, and at this estimate the value of the tonnage moved in 1887 equaled $222 per head of the population of the country.

"The increase in value of the railroad tonnage of the country in 1887 equaled $1,660,000,000, or $960,000,000 in excess of the value of the exports for the same year. Could all this have been secured under your economic system Would they have been possible under any other than the protective system?

"We have now enjoyed twenty-nine years continuously of protective tariff laws-the longest uninterrupted period in which that policy has prevailed since the formation of the Federal Government-and we find ourselves at the end of that period in a condition of independence

and prosperity the like of which has never been witnessed at any other period in the history of our country, and the like of which has no parallel in the recorded history of the world.

"In all that goes to make a nation great and strong and independent we have made extraordinary strides. In arts, in science, in literature, in manufactures, in invention, in scientific principles applied to manufacture and agriculture, in wealth and credit and national honor, we are at the very front, abreast with the best and behind none.

"In 1860, after fourteen years of a revenue tariff, just the kind of a tariff that our political adversaries are advocating to-day, the business of the country was prostrated, agriculture was deplorably depressed, manufacturing was on the decline, and the poverty of the Government itself made this nation a by-word in the financial centers of the world.

"We neither had money nor credit. Both are essential; a nation can get on if it has abundant revenues, but if it has none it must have credit. We had neither, as the legacy of the Democratic revenue tariff. We have both now. We have a surplus revenue and a spotless credit. I need not state what is so fresh in our minds, so recent in our history, as to be known to every gentleman who hears me, that from the inauguration of the protective tariff laws of 1861, the old Morrill tariff-which has brought to that veteran statesman the highest honor and will give to him his proudest monument - this condition changed. Confidence was restored, courage was inspired, the Government started upon a progressive era under a system thoroughly American.

"With a great war on our hands, with an army to enlist and prepare for service, with untold millions of money to supply, the protective tariff never failed us in a single emergency, and while money was flowing into our Treasury to save the Government, industries were springing up all over the land-the foundation and cornerstone of our prosperity and glory.

"With a debt of over $2,050,000,000 when the war terminated, holding on to the protective laws against Democratic opposition, we have reduced that debt at an average rate of more than $62,000,000 each year, $174,000 every twenty-four hours of the last twenty-five years, and what looked to be a burden almost impossible to bear has been removed under the Republican fiscal system until now it is $1,020,000,000, and with the payment of this vast sum of money the nation has not been impoverished. The individual citizen has not been burdened or bankrupted. National and individual prosperity have gone steadily on until our wealth is so great as to be almost incomprehensible when put into figures.

"The accumulations of the laborers of the country have increased, and the working classes of no nation in the world have such splendid deposits in savings banks as the working classes of the United States.

"Listen to its own story. The deposits of all the savings banks of New England in 1886 equaled $554,532,434. The deposits in the savings banks of New York in 1886 were $482,686,730. The deposits in the savings banks of Mas

sachusetts for the year 1887 were $302,948,624, and the number of depositors was 944,778, or $320.67 for each depositor. The savings banks of nine States have in nineteen years increased their deposits $628,000,000. The English savings banks have in thirty-four years increased theirs $350,000,000. Our operatives deposit $7 to the English operative's $1. These vast sums represent the savings of the men whose labor has been employed under the protective policy which gives, as experience has shown, the largest possible reward to labor.

"There is no one thing standing alone that so surely tests the wisdom of a national financial policy as the national credit, what it costs to maintain it, and the burden it imposes upon the citizen. It is a fact which every American should contemplate with pride that the public debt of the United States per capita is less than that of any other great nation of the world. Let me call the roll: Belgium's public debt, per capita, is $72.18; France, $218.27; Germany, $43.10; Great Britain, $100.09; Italy, $74.25; Peru, $140.06; Portugal, $104.18; Russia, $35.41; Spain, $73.34; United States, $33.92 on a population of 50,000.000; and now, with our increased population, the per capita would be under $25. England increased her rate of taxation between 1870 and 1880 over 24 per cent., while the United States diminished nearly 10 per cent.

"We lead all nations in agriculture, we lead all nations in mining, and we lead all nations in manufacturing. These are the trophies which we bring after twenty-nine years of a protective tariff. Can any other system furnish such evidences of prosperity? Yet in the presence of such a showing of progress there are men everywhere found who talk about the restraints we put upon trade and the burdens we put upon the enterprise and energy of our people. There is no country in the world where individual enterprise has such wide and varied range and where the inventive genius of man has such encourage

ment.

"There is no nation in the world, under any system, where the same reward is given to the labor of men's hands and the work of their brains as in the United States. We have widened the sphere of human endeavor and given to every man a fair chance in the race of life and in the attainment of the highest possibilities of human destiny.

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To reverse this system means to stop the progress of the republic and reduce the masses to small rewards for their labor, to longer hours and less pay, to the simple question of bread and butter. It means to turn them from ambition, courage, and hope, to dependence, degradation, and despair. No sane man will give up what he has got, what he is in possession of, what he can count on for himself and his children, for what is promised by your theories.

"Free trade, or, as you are pleased to call it, revenue tariff,' means the opening up of this market, which is admitted to be the best in the world, to the free entry of the products of the world. It means more-it means that the labor of this country is to be remitted to its earlier condition, and that the condition of our people is to be leveled down to the condition of rival

countries; because under it every element of cost, every item of production, including wages, must be brought down to the level of the lowest paid labor of the world. No other result can follow, and no other result is anticipated or expected by those who intelligently advocate a revenue tariff. We can not maintain ourselves against unequal conditions without the tariff, and no man of affairs believes we can.

"Under the system of unrestricted trade which you gentlemen recommend, we will have to reduce every element of cost down to or below that of our commercial rivals or surrender to them our own market. No one will dispute that statement, and to go into the domestic market of our rivals would mean that production here must be so reduced that with transportation added we could undersell them in their own market, and to meet them in neutral markets and divide the trade with them would mean that we could profitably sell side by side with them at their minimum price.

“First, then, to retain our own market under the Democratic system of raising revenue by removing all protection would require our producers to sell at as low a price and upon as favorable terms as our foreign competitors. How could that be done? In one way only, by producing as cheaply as those who would seek our markets. What would that entail? An entire revolution in the methods and condition and conduct of business here, a leveling down through every channel to the lowest line of our competitors; our habits of living would have to be changed, our wage cut down 50 per cent. or upward, our comfortable homes exchanged for hovels, our independence yielded up, our citizenship demoralized.

These are conditions inseparable to free trade; these would be necessary if we would command our own market among our own people, and if we would invade the world's markets harsher conditions and greater sacrifices would be demanded of the masses. Talk about depression, we would then have it in its fullness. We would revel in unrestrained trade. Everything would indeed be cheap, but how costly when measured by the degradation which would ensue! When merchandise is the cheapest men are the poorest, and the most distressing experiences in the history of our country-ay, in all human history-have been when everything was the lowest and cheapest measured by gold, for everything was the highest and the dearest measured by labor. We want no return of cheap times in our own country. We have no wish to adopt the conditions of other nations. Experience has demonstrated that for us and ours and for the present and the future the protective system meets our wants, our conditions, promotes the national design, and will work out our destiny better than any other."

In opposition to the measure, Mr. Mills, of Texas, said: "There are two opposing opinions, supported by the two opposing parties into which the people of the United States are divided, with reference to the proper construction of laws imposing taxes on imports. The Democratic party maintains that taxes should be imposed on such articles and at such rates as will bring the required revenue for an honest

and economical administration of the Government with the least possible restrictions upon importations, the least possible limitation upon exportation, and the least possible interference with the private business of the people.

The Republican party maintains that taxation ought to be imposed on such articles and at such rates as will produce the largest possible restriction on importation consistent with the production of the necessary revenues for the support of the Government. With the Republi-, can party the primary object in imposing taxes upon imports is, in the frank language of the committee who have reported this bill, to check importation. The secondary object is to obtain the required revenue from the smallest amount of importation and as far as possible from competing articles.

"The bill which the committee have reported is a bold and unequivocal declaration of that doctrine; and, while we have heard all through our history the advantages of protection against competition proclaimed by its advocates, this bill is the first in the history of the Government that has come before the American people with its mask thrown off and with the audacity of a highwayman demanding that the people shall throw up their hands and surrender their purses. It is necessary, Mr. Chairman, to examine the proposition upon which this most extraordinary measure is founded. Is it for the benefit of the American people that importation shall be checked or hindered? Will it promote their interests to stop their trade? Will it feed more mouths; will it clothe more backs; will it give more shelter to their heads to stop them from marketing the products of their labor? For that is the position assumed by the advocates of the bill and the party which they represent.

"To check importation is to check exportation, and gentlemen may split hairs and ride sophistries just as much as they please, but no man can call to mind a trade that has ever been effected either between two individuals or between two nations where each did not give something in exchange for that which he received. You may bestow upon another something without a return; that is a gift. But no people are laboring to give their products without consideration to others. The great body of the people of the world are laboring in order to obtain profit for their toil, and when they transfer something to another it is for something received from that other in return. You can not make it any other way, and no amount of sophistry will change the plain, common-sense state

ment.

Two years ago, when Democrats told you that the country was on the edge of a dark shadow that was stretching itself over the land, that our agriculture was being pressed to the wall, that all our prosperity was based upon it, and we were recklessly draining the life current from its veins, one statesmen after another arose on the other side of the hall and asserted that our farmers were in the very heyday of prosperity, and that the mortgages on their farms were only evidences of their thrift, of the improvement of their farms, and the increase of their wealth.

But we do not hear these statements now.

These gentlemen are on their knees at the confessional now. They now tell us that there is widespread depression all through the agricultural sections of the country. The committee tell us they have spent months in a critical examination of the subject, and they have come to the conclusion that the all-pervading distress is due to a most damaging foreign competition.' They say that there is $356,000,000 worth of agricultural products imported from foreign countries and displacing that amount of American products.

"Against this most damaging competition the barriers should be put up. What are these foreign agricultural products? The first is sugar, of which we import $95,000,000 worth. What did our friends do with it? Did they put up the barriers,' as they did for woolens and cottons and iron and steel? While they were building up the tariff wall and giving protection to the manufacturers and even the refiners, they did not walk up like little men and take sugar in theirs.

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Why did they not shelter sugar against this damaging competition as they did others? Why did they not try and naturalize' this infant that is still mewling and puking in its nurse's arms? Why not put a prohibitory duty on foreign sugar and develop the industry? It might have required two or three hundred per cent. duty, but the gentleman from Ohio, speaking for his party, tells us they do not care for per cents. "But, strange to say, they have put sugar on the free list. They have removed all the barriers and exposed it to the floods of pauper sugar from foreign lands. And to soothe the coquetted and jilted sugar growers they propose to take seven millions of money that does not belong to them out of the pockets of the people to pay for the privilege of doing it.

"What is the next article embraced in the $356,000,000 of agricultural products coming in to destroy the prosperity of the farmer? Seventy-five million dollars' worth of coffee. Coffee was put on the free list eighteen years ago by a Republican Congress. Why did you not put a prohibitory duty on coffee and naturalize it in this country? It can be grown in glass houses. You do not care anything about the expense of labor in the production of an article. It is purely a question of patriotism with you, and why not make the people of the United States pay for naturalizing this foreigner from Brazil ? But while acknowledging the perilous situation in which our farmers are placed, you left coffee bravely on the free list.

"What is the next article? One of which we have heard much within the past two monthsan article called hides; perhaps you have heard of it before. During the canvass last fall in the State of Iowa, where my friend here (Mr. Gear) lives, when the Democratic party was driving in the pickets of the Republicans on the tariff question-when we were exposing the alarming and perilous condition of the farmer, cut off from his market, with his enormous surplus, what did our Republican friends do? In order to turn our flank-a great military manœuvreour friends all through the State of Iowa, on every stump, at every cross-roads, wherever there were two or three brethren assembled to