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.

"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 production. 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.]

CHAPTER XV.

LIBERTY AND LABOR.

"The hope of the Republic is in a citizenship that is faithful to home and family and devotedly loyal to country."

"Mr. President, Members of the Illinois State Federation of Labor, of the Trade and Labor Assembly of Chicago, and My Fellow-Citizens: I am glad to join with you in observing this, our one hundred and nineteenth National anniversary, that we may gather fresh inspirations in the cause of human freedom and equality and dedicate ourselves anew, in common with our fellow-citizens everywhere, to the good work of maintaining the free Government which our fathers inaugurated more than a century ago. No city in America has a better right or a better reason to rejoice at its majesty and strength than Chicago, and no citizens of any city in any State should celebrate it with more zeal and joy than her working people, who have done so much to make Chicago the great inland metropolis of our country, whose marvelous progress is the admiration and wonder of the world.

"We are a Nation of working people; some one

has said that Americans are born busy, and that they never find time to be idle or indolent. We glory in the fact that in the dignity and elevation of labor we find our greatest distinction among the nations of the earth. The United States possesses practically as much energy or working power as Great Britain, Germany, and France combined, so that the ratio of working power falling to each American is more than that of to two people of any other nation. But with our improved and superior machinery each American laborer is enabled to accomplish, relatively, still more than his European competitor. The American laborer not only does more and better work, but there are more skilled, intelligent, and capable artisans here now in proportion to the total population than in any other country of the world. No other country can boast of so great a percentage of producers among her instructed population, and none other can point to so large a number of enlightened and educated citizens. The census statistics of 1890 place the number of our citizens over ten years of age engaged in gainful occupations at 22,735,000, while Sir Michael G. Mulhall, the noted English statistician, refers to the fact that no other civilized country could ever before boast of 41,000,000 instructed citizens. Indeed, we may find in the able review of the industrial activities of our country recently published by this distinguished authority many striking texts for patriotic contemplation. He states very frankly: