Speech #580018238

I have listened attentively to the discussions and debates of the House. and have been much interested. but the reasoning and logic employed by the gentlemen on the other side of the Chamber have failed to make clear to me the exact position they occupy. They strenuously insist that the sacred schedules of the present tariff law must not be interfered with. that any modification of existing rates would imperil the prospects. and perhaps the existence. of many of our industrial concerns. would close the furnaces. shut down our factories. stop the wheels of our mills. and bring in its train of concomitant misfortunes all the evils their imaginations can conceive or their rhetoric describe. and especially they tell us would result in throwing out of employment or reduce the wages of the poor laborer. for whom they manifest such apparent con cern. When any reduction or modification of duties on the necessaries of life is mentioned. they prate much of "competition with the pauper labor of Europe." and tell us such a condition would ruin us. and that our manufactories are unable to meet such competition. I quote here from an article from the American Economist of December 25. 1903. the organ of the American Protective Tariff League. in reply to an editorial in the Springfield Republican. The editorial is as follows: Protectionism of a reasonably moderate sort. applied to a country situated as ours has been during a century past. may besald to have demonstrated its right to respectful consideration in any opposing school of thought.