Speech #470021456

When we add to these considerations the iet that we are twentylive years ahead of themost. dvanced eountryiEnsrope in mechanical tppliances and laborsaving machinery. through which manufactures are immensely cheapened. the argument that our manufacturers need in addition to nattral advantages no farther protection in the home markets than is incidental to a purely revenue tariff becomes nanswerable. The great extent to wiich machinery is usurping the place of human labor may be inferred from the fact that while in the last twenty years the capital invested in cotton manufactures ]ias increased 220 per cent.. the increase in labor in that industry has been only 45 per cent. In the light of facts like these. what becomes of the rallying cry of the protectionists. "a. high tariff for the protection of the Anerican workitg classes against competition with E iropean pauper labor?" It stands exposed as a. frauda pretext through which capital. with the aid of noncosunmisglaborsaving machinery. under the forms of law is now. and for years has been. swelling its hoard with bounties exacted from the people. including the very "working classes" in whose name they are taken. While demanding and receiving heavy bounties from our people for protection against Eiaropean pauper labor. our mnufacturers are invadiug the heropenn markets with their products and competing successfully therin the markets. as the following extracts from English imets will show: [From the London Warehousemen and Drapers Trad Journal. July. 1877.] Nearly two years ago we nnounced the first importation into this country of. cotton cloths manifatured in America. and paid a special visit to Manchoster texamine them. We are not alarnists. and have toomuch faith in the energy and ability of our manufactures to be easily disturbed. but we were obliged to admit the e.cellenee of the American fabric. and felt it a duty to warn our Manchester friends that the quality of the now importations placed the sized manufactures of our own mills at a serious disadvantage.