I am opposed to every line of this bill which provides for the free admission of manufactured articles which we can and do produce ourselves. I am opposed to free trade with all the world and with countries paying their workmen but onethird or onehalf the wages which American workmen receive for producing these same articles. I am for protection because of the difference in the wage scale between this country and the countries of Europe and Asia. and because I want to see the American laboring man protected against the calamity of being degraded to the level of the poorly paid European wage slave. of the Mexican peon. or the Asiatic coolie. If this bill ever became a law. its inevitable result would be either the lowering of American wages in the affected industries to the European or Asiatic level or the total ruin of these industries and the complete shutting down of hundreds of American manufacturing establishments. This bill will give employment to outside labor and will lock out American labor. And it would be a very shortsighted view to assume that the manufacturers and their employees would be the only sufferers. for in truth their losses would fall upon the farmers with the same crushing force. for the simple reason that the men employed in the factories are the farmers most numerous customers.
Identified stereotypes
European workers are described as 'wage slaves' who would degrade American wages.