is none of the latter to be had, everything is dear to him. The price is of the smallest consequence, however cheap, if it is beyond his reach. If my only means is my labor, and that is unemployed, whether things are cheap or dear is of little moment to me.

"The manufacturers of New England, and more particularly the skilled labor employed by them, need a Protective Tariff, and require it equally with the industries and labor of other States. It is imperatively demanded, not only here, but in every section of the Union, if the present price of labor is to be continued and maintained. Your industries cannot compete successfully, even in this market, with the industries of England, France, Belgium and Germany, without a tariff, so long as the price paid labor here exceeds the price paid labor there from 50 to 75 per cent. This inequality can only be met by a tariff upon the products of cheap labor, high enough to compensate for the difference. You cannot compete except upon equal conditions and with like cost of the competing product. Free trade will either equalize the conditions by reducing your labor to that of the rival laborer on the other side, or it will close your factories and workshops and destroy home production and competition.

"Free trade means cheap labor, and cheap labor means diminished comforts-diminished capacity to buy, poor and enfeebled industries and a dependent condition generally. And every step taken in

the direction of free trade, beginning with free raw material, is an advance, and a very long one and a very straight one, in the direction of reduced wages and a changed condition of the American workingman, not confined to the labor engaged in preparing raw materials for use, but will widen, and in the end enter every department of labor and skill.

"I would secure the American market to the American producer [applause], and I would not hesitate to raise the duties whenever necessary to secure this patriotic end. [Applause.] I would not have an idle man or an idle mill or an idle spindle in this country if, by holding exclusively the American market, we could keep them employed and running. [Applause.] Every yard of cloth imported here makes a demand for one yard less of American fabrication.

pro

"Let England take care of herself; let France look after her interests; let Germany take care of her own people, but in God's name let Americans look after America! [Loud applause.] Every ton of steel imported diminishes that much of home duction. Every blow struck on the other side upon an article which comes here in competition with like articles produced here, makes the demand for one blow less at home. Every day's labor upon the foreign products sent to the United States takes one day's labor from American workingmen. I would give the day's labor to our own, first, last, and all the time, and that policy which fails in this is opposed

to American interests. To secure this is the great purpose of a Protective Tariff. Free-traders say, give it to the foreign workman, if ours will not perform it at the same price and accept the same wages. Protectionists say no, the workingmen say no, and justly and indignantly resent this attempted degradation of their labor, this blow at their independence and manhood.

"The party that tries to lead us back will be buried beneath popular indignation. [Applause.] From whom does this complaint come? It comes from the scholars, so-called [laughter], and the poets, from whom we gladly take our poetry, but whose political economy we must decline to receive; from the dilettanti and would-be diplomatists, the men of fixed incomes; it comes from the men who 'toil not, neither do they spin' [great applause], and from those who do not gather into barns' [laughter], who have no investments except in bonds and mortgages, who want everything cheap but money, everything easy to secure but coin, who prefer the customs and civilization of other countries to our own, and who find nothing so wholesome as that which is imported, whether manners or merchandise, and want no obstructions in the shape of a tariff placed upon the free use of both. [Applause and laughter.]