Speech #500087885

The $523.000.000 of farm products that were exported and sold in a foreign market. 1887. at the rate we consume at home. will supply the demands of 10.000.000 people in such products. This is the trade our Republican friends say is but a bagatelle. and ask the farmers. who compose 30.000.000 of our population. to surrender in the interest of a few hundred manufacturers. who employ. all told. not to exceed 1.500.000 men. many of whom have been imported under contract from foreign countnes and are to return to their homes when the contract expires. If it be true. as my Republican friend from Ohio says it is. that that portion of the farmers products exported abroad and sold in a foreign market in competition with the pauper labor of Europe and other countries decreases the price of that portion sold at home (which statement I do not contradict). then I challenge any gentleman upon the floor of this House to show how it is possible for a high protective tariff to protect the farmer so long as he has to export any portion of his product to be sold in competition with such pauper labor. If the American farmer can afford to go 3.000 miles with his product. pay storage. freightage. insurance. and commission thereon. and sell in compettiton with the cheaper labor and cheaper lands of the Old World. and if these foreign producers. with the product of their pauper labor. can not drive the product of the American farmer out of their own markets at home. what earthly chance would they have to compete with the American farmer in his home market from three to five thousand miles away? No sane man would presume they would have any. Hence this clamor for a home market does not come from the farmer. nor from the laborer. but from the owners of a few hundred tariffprotected industries.