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"Charity, says the adage, begins at home. Charity the Independent Amer-
ican laborer scorns to ask, but he has the right to demand that justice shall
begin at home. In his name and in the name of common sense and common
honesty I ask that the American Congress will not force upon the American
laborer an inferior dollar which the naked and famishing laborers of India and
China refuse to accept."--JAMES G. BLAINE, in the Senate, Feb. 7, 1878.

REPUBLICAN TEXT BOOK

FOR THE CAMPAIGN OF

1898.

PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY OF THE

REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE,

WASHINGTON, D. C.

"Nothing should tempt us-nothing ever will tempt us-to scale down the
sacred debt of the nation through a legal technicality. Whatever may be the
language of the contract, the United States will discharge all of its obligations
in the currency recognized as the best throughout the civilized world at the
time of payment." — PRESIDENT MCKINLEY, from address to the National
Association of Manufacturers, January 27, 1898.

EDITOR'S NOTE.

The statements and figures used in this book have been taken from the latest data contained in the regular Department publications of the Government. They are believed to be accurate, so that speakers and writers may quote them with every assurance of finding them reliable. Revenues under the Dingley tariff act are shown distinct from revenues derived from the sale of the Pacific Railways and the war-revenue act, and comparisons with the Wilson act are made strictly upon the relative merits of the two measures. Editorial comment has been sparingly undertaken. Beyond explanations deemed necessary to make them intelligible, the statistics speak for themselves.

FREDERICK F. SCHRADER,

از

Editor.

AD VALOREM vs. SPECIFIC DUTIES.

The farmers have been protected from unreasonable and unjust importations of agricultural products from Canada, Mexico, and other foreign countries. The greatest change, however, that can be found in the bill is the substitution of specific rates for ad valorem. The demand for this change comes not alone from Republicans. Honest Democrats and honest importers have united with Republicans and all classes of manufacturers in asking the Ways and Means Committee to do away with the system of ad valorem rates and restore specific duties, so that the system of undervaluation, by which the Government has been robbed of millions of money, may be stopped, and honest importers placed on an equality with dishonest ones importing goods into this country and placing them on our markets.-Hon. Albert J. Hopkins, of Illinois.

AMERICAN MACHINERY.

Why We Can Undersell European Manufacturers.

Many years ago Sir Edmund Beckett, then president of the British Horological Institute, said: "There can be no doubt in the mind of any one who understands machinery that this (referring to the American Waltham Watch Company) is the best as well as the cheapest way of making machines that require precision and uniformity, and although labor is dearer in America than here, this machinery enables them to undersell European watches of the same quality."

AMERICA'S COMMANDING POSITION.

Our position is supreme. Our country lies midway between the East and the West. "Westward the course of empire takes its way," and in its progressive march our Republic-"Time's noblest offspring is the last"-stands at the culminating point where the advancing tide of Western power meets the refluent wave of Eastern antiquity. It arches and dominates the continent. Its Eastern shore stretches over three thousand miles along the Atlantic. Its Western shore-with its outpost, soon to be, at fair Hawaii-faces the Pacific and the Orient which are to be the theater of a new and splendid commerce. With the Isthmian canal constructed and under our undisputed control, as it must be, wedding the two oceans, practically giving us a continuous coast line and cutting

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