Therefore the home market should be preserved. The price of cotton will not be fixed here until we are able to manufacture the major part of the crop at home. Asiatic competition can only be met by an American tariff. and can not be overcome by providing a low standard of money to pay for whatever we have to sell. The absurdity of free coinage as a protection against oriental industrial rivals can not well be concealed. We might with almost equal propriety be invited to introduce an Asiatic plague. and have it just as logically urged. on the ground that it has long prevailed in Asia and yet they have not all died there. Instead of a remedy. free coinage of silver would be an aggravation of a sorry condition. offering. as it would. to American wage earners a standard silver dollar. though known to be depreciated to half of its former value. and forcing the American people to accept that depreciated standard of money for all of their immense annual productions. The feeble pretense that the free coinage of silver dollars on the present ratio of 16 of silver to 1 of gold would not deprive silver money of its parity with gold never became respectable by its repetition. and is no longer serviceable even in the support of a wild and ponderous experiment.
Identified stereotypes
Asiatic competition can only be met by an American tariff.