Speech #510129575

President. in the discussion of this bill it has been boldly announced by those having it in charge that the purpose of the bill is to check importation. to exclude foreign goods from competition with American products. and that the raising of revenue for the support of the Government is a mere collateral incident. that protection is its prime moving purpose. aud the English and meaning of this is that the American manufacturers. combined into trusts which destroy competition at home and protected by the tariff against foreign competition. are left free to compel the payment. by our people of any price they may choose to place on their products. aAd to dole out to their laborers such wages as their pleasure may dictate. Not a day has passed since this bill has been under consideration that Senators on the other side of the Chamber have not been warned that when the high and for the most part prohibitory duties of this bill shall (as they necessarily will) exclude foreign competition. our people who consume manufactured products will be left at the mercy of soulless trusts to be plundered at will. but they have been deaf to argument. logic. and entreaty alike. as they have adopted paragraph after paragraph of the bill in the interest of trusts and monopolies. Nonconsuming laborsaving machinery. the most perfect in the world. admitted to be greatly superior to any in Europe. turns out 951 per cent. of our manufactured products. while only 4. per cent. of them is the product of manual labor. yet 62 per cent. ad valorem is the average rate of taxation under the tariffand the customs administrative bills. which we are informed by the advocates of this bill is levied for the protection of American labor against the pauper labor of Europe. A continuous stream of this same pauper labor is now and has been for years pouring through our ports at the invitation of our manufacturers to compete in our mills and factories with American labor. until the American laborer is a rare exception among the workers in these industries. While free trade in labor exists to the fullest and freest extent. tariff duties are piled mountain high upon foreign goods fort lie protection of American manufacturing capita]. Not one dollars worth of foreign goods can come into this country from abroad without paying an exorbitant tariff tax. but laborers by the hundreds of thousands to displace American laborers pour in.