the foreign markets, and at the same time reduce the cost to home con sumers. "It deals with a condition, not a theory." It continues protection at rates much higher than the just claims of the manufacturers or the interest of the consumers calls for, but it recognizes the artificial and unnatural conditions on which our manufacturing establishments have been built up, and it carefully avoids such reductions as would give them even a semblance of just cause for complaint. I will not go into the details of the measure now. It is sufficient to say that, if it becomes a law, the manufacturers will have protection against the right of our people to buy similar foreign-made goods of over 40 per cent., be cause that is what protection means and all it accomplishes, while all the wages they pay to their operatives does not exceed 25 per cent. on an average of the value of the home-made product, as shown by the census reports furnished by the manufacturers themselves, and as proved by the official tables heretofore referred to as part of the speech of Senator Coke.

The temptation is very great to comment upon the provisions of the Senate bill in detail, in the light of past legislation and of the conces sions made by men of all parties as to the necessity of tariff reduction, especially to show how, in the woolen and cotton and other schedules, there is an unwarranted attempt made not only to increase the rate of taxation over existing law, but to do it in the form of compound and specific duties, so as to conceal the increases so artfully devised; but that would extend this statement to an unwarrantable length. I admit that it is too long already. The flagrant injustice of the proposition will, I hope, be fully exposed when the discussion of the items is taken up in the Senate.

The proposals in the Senate bill in regard to the cotton schedule, I only propose to say now, are simply outrageous, and can not be de fended upon any principle of common decency.

No Senator will profess that manufactures, especially cotton manufactures, need any more protection now than they did ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago. Improvements in machinery have cheapened production, and diminished the number of operatives needed in these fac tories until Mr. Atkinson and all the authorities even in New England agree that one operative will produce as much now as five could with the machinery of twenty years since, which means a proportionate increase of protection to machinery. Yet as early as 1868 the Hon. N. P. Banks, then a member of the House of Representatives, laid before Congress a proposition from the New England manufacturers consenting to a reduction on woolen and cotton goods of over 25 per cent. The Record of May 7, 1868, will show that Mr. Banks, after giving in detail the reductions to which the manufacturers agreed, said:

These papers which I hold in my hand bear the official signatures of the authorized representatives of one hundred and twelve manufacturing corporations and firms of New England, in which they themselves suggest and consent to reduction of duties

upou an extended and complete list of articles of foreign manufacture which come actively and directly in competition with the industries in which they are engaged, rising from 10 to 20, 30, 40, and 50 per cent. upon the present schedule of duties upon such importations. More than a hundred and twelve corporations and firms of cotton and woolen manufacturers alone, of their own choice, and after repeated conferences, in which all the interests of the textile fabrics of this country were considered, high and low, made this proposition. As it was with the cotton manufacturers,

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so it was with the woolen manufacturers. They consented to and in a certain sense recommended, as of their own accord, a reduction of duties of from 23 to 25 per cent.

Mr. HOOKER. Will the gentleman allow me to ask him why these interests asked a diminution of the tariff?

Mr. BANKS. Because their attention had been called to the subject. It was their duty to make known to the Government what they desired. They found when they brought their representative men together from all parts of the country that the duties could be reduced and they could still pursue their vocations with more or less success, and like bonest and honorable citizens they made that declaration to the Government. And so did the wool-growers from California to New England. They assembled in the State of New York for the same purpose, and after long and anxious conference one with another and with the woolen manufacturers they agreed, as did the silk manufacturers, to what extent they would recommend a reduction of the duty.

Yet in the face of these propositions and the changes that have occurred to cheapen the production by improved machinery, after the insertion of provisions-inserted I had almost said clandestinely, in the conference report of 1883-increasing the rate on the leading cotton products in which New England was specially interested, it is now proposed to still further largely increase taxation in the interest of a few New England manufacturers; and what is true in regard to them may be said with equal propriety in regard to all the increases proposed in the Senate bill; for, so far as the leading schedules are concerned-in short, it is a bill to increase taxation in the interest of combinations of wealth rather than to reduce it in the interest of the people. The bill, it is true, deals without mercy with the sugar schedule, mainly because nine-tenths of the money collected from the sugar tax is paid into the Treasury, and none of it reaches the pockets of the New England monopolists.

When we reduced the sugar tax in 1883 the clamor of all of these combinations then was that we were destroying an industry that employed a large number of American laborers, principally colored men, for whose welfare they expressed great solicitude. Then, as now, the Democrats agreed only to reductions which would not cripple or destroy home products. It is true that when a sugar plantation is once destroyed it is almost impossible ever to restore it. The plant costs nearly $100 an acre, and takes years to bring it back to a profitable condition after it is once abandoned. It differs from the land upon which hemp, tobacco, and other crops of that sort are produced. They can be changed to something else without loss; whereas the sugar and rice plantations, when once abandoned, can not be used for any other pur

pose without a sacrifice of all that had been expended upon them to fit them for sugar and rice production. Therefore the Democratic party, while they cut these two products heavier than any other, wisely did it in such a way as not to seriously cripple or destroy the labor or the capital engaged in those products. Now, perhaps to punish the people of the South or to raise the clamor that they are patriotically giving the people cheap sugar, the Republican majority have taken care to add the taxes on sugar which they have reduced because they could not pocket them or turn them over to the protectionists, as nine-tenths went into the Treasury, to the products of which the monopolists pocket four fifths and the Government gets one-fifth, and they call that protecting American labor!

I am, however, glad that the Senate committee has gone to the ex tréme of protection, restriction, and destruction that it has. It makes the issue squarely before the people of the country, whether all the people are for all time to come to be treated as serfs of a few manufacturers, or whether they are to secure through a revenue tariff some. thing like equal rights in the legislation of the country hereafter. The temptation is very great also to show the indignant protests heretofore made, particularly in 1883, by leading Republican Senators, notably Senators Plumb, Ingalls, and Allison, against the tax on lumber, salt, and other things which the committee propose to perpetuate. That, however, can be done hereafter.

But I ought not to fail to state that the low revenue tariff of 1846 produced more general prosperity and progress in the development of all our industry than any protective system since devi sed has ever done. So satisfactory was its operation that when the parties met and adopted their platforms in 1856 neither party ventured to find any objection to it, and when the further reduction below 20 per cent. was made in 1857, it received the almost unanimous approval of the representatives from New England, nearly all of whom were opposed to the then administration; yet the taxation then imposed was less than half that now conceded by the so-called free-trade Mills bill, and very little over one-third of what is demanded by the bill of the Senate committee. On the 24th and 25th of March, 1870, Senator Allison, then a prominent member of the Ways and Means Committee of the House, s poke of that tariff as follows:

The tariff of 1846, although confessedly and professedly a tariff for revenue, was, so far as regards all the great interests of the country, as perfect a tariff as any that we have ever had. If any interest was depressed under the tariff of 1846, it was the iron interest. I do not believe that this interest, as compared with other interests, had sufficient advantage under that tariff; yet when we compare the growth of the country from 1840 to 1850 with the growth of the country from 1850 to 1860-the latter decade being entirely under the tariff of 1846 or the amended and greatly reduced tariff of 1857-we find that the increase in our wealth between 1850 and 1860 was equivalent to 126 per cent., while it was only 64 per cent. between 1840 and 1850, four years of which decade were under the tariff of 1842, known as a high protective tariff, but the average rate of which was about 70 per cent. below the existing rate, or 27 per

cent. under the tariff of 1842 as against 44 per cent. upon all importations under the present tariff. Our industries were generally prosperous in 1860, with the exception, possibly, of the iron interest. This was the statement of Mr. Morrill, of Vermont, on this floor during the discussion of the tariff of 1864. With regard to the condition of the steel industry in 1860, the steel manufacturers in 1866, memorializing Congress for increase of duties on steel, stated that

“It was reserved for Pittsburgh to bring about the first substantial and enduring success in the year of 1860; and encouraged by our example numerous establishments have sprung into existence, as already indicated in this paper. This shows that under the revenue tariff of 1857, which imposed only an ad valorem duty of 12 per cent. on steel, a substantial success was achieved in the steel manufacture in 1860." I have read the language of the memorial.

I regard that indorsement of the act of 1846 and of the principles of a revenue tariff as entitled to greater consideration than anything I could say. Hon. Robert J. Walker, Mr. Polk's Secretary of the Treasury, who framed the tariff of 1846, addressed a letter to the people of the United States on the 30th of November, 1867, in which he took occasion to refer to the tariff of 1846, and contrast its principles and provisions with those of the present system. After showing what amount he thought would be sufficient for the wants of the Government economically administered, he said:

This revenue of $244,000,000 a year, as a maximam, I would derive from three sources alone:

1. By a tariff for revenue.

3. By an excise on wines, malt and spirituous liquors, and tobacco; abolishing all other internal taxation.

3. By a tax on our national banks, based upon just and fair equivalents.

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A tariff for revenue, as experience has shown, instead of depressing improves all industrial pursuits, including manufactures, and vastly augments the wealth of the country. Under the tariff of 1846, as shown by the census, our wealth increased from 1850 to 1860, 126.45 per cent.; whereas from 1810 to 1850 the increase was only 64 per cent.; from 1830 to 1840, 42 per cent., and from 1820 to 1830, 41 per cent. So, also, from 1850 to 1860 our agricultural products increased 95 per cent. and our manufactures 87 per cent., being in both cases nearly double any preceding ratio of increase. So, also, our exports, imports, and revenue nearly tripled in the same period of time, and our domestic trade rose nearly in the same ratio. This augmented ratio is not the result of increase of population, which from 1850 to 1860 was less than 36 per cent. The Irish famine was supposed by my opponents to account for the increase the first year, although the decreased price paid abroad that year for our cotton nearly equaled the additional sum paid by England for our breadstuffs and provisions. But the next year and the next, before any gold had reached here from California, our exports and revenue went on augmenting in a corresponding ratio, rising in eight years from $22,000,000 under the tariff of 1842, to $64,000,000 under the tariff of 1816.

I think Mr. Walker answers fully the boast of the great feat accomplished by the Morrill tariff, by "transforming ad valorem duties into specific," in the following sentence:

There is another insuperable objection to the specific system, namely, that it unnecessarily and invariably taxes labor vastly more than capital, and the poor in a much greater proportion than the rich, upon the goods consumed. Under the system of specific duties of so much per pound, or yard, or gallon, etc., the specific duty is the same. The rich, who purchase the costly article bearing only the same specific

duty, pay, in proportion to value, less than one-half of what is paid by the poor, who purchase a cheaper and less costly article. If we take all the costly articles purchased by the rich bearing under the present tariff the same specific duty as the inferior article bought by the poor, we will find the difference against them exceeds $20,000,000 a year. Such is the immense additional tax exacted from labor under the system of specific duties.

Think of the injustice of a system under which the laboring man pays 90 per cent. tariff tax on the only kind of blankets he can afford to buy, while the wealthy pay less than 60 per cent. tax on such as they use and in like proportion for all else. How long would a law stand in the State of New York that taxes the residence of Mr. Vanderbilt or Mr. Stewart, worth $2,000,000, no more than the residence of their coachman, worth $2,000? That is specific taxation. Ad valorem, or a fair per cent. tax on each according to its value, is the system adopted by the American people in all their State governmental affairs, and is the only just system. Mr. Walker but expresses the views of all disinterested intelligent men when he says:

Our present system of taxation is the most onerous ever imposed upon any people, and is utterly destructive of the prosperity of our country.

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Our present tariff is most unequal, oppressive, and unjust. It is grievously onerous upon agriculture, commerce, navigation, ship-building, etc. The present tariff, besides the tax of $150,000,000 a year upon imports, the duties on which are paid by the people into the Treasury in gold, exacts another tax of at least $350,000,000 a year in the enhanced prices of rival protected domestic articles. This can be readily proved by comparing the prices current in gold of such domestic articles with the prices of similar articles produced in other countries. Thus, the tariff taxes the people of the United States to the extent of $500,000,000 a year, of which only $150,000,000 goes into the Treasury, and the remaining $350,000,000 go into the pockets of the protected classes.

Mr. Walker understood too well the real purpose of the clamor about protection to American labor and the wages of operatives to be deceived by it. He knew that the $350,000,000 of taxes taken from the people which did not reach the Treasury went into the pockets of the protected classes, and not into the pockets of their operatives. He made a great report to Congress on the 11th day of December, 1848, which I wish every laboring man in the United States could read, whether he works in a factory or on a farm. Even Senators would be benefited by its perusal.

On the subject of specific and ad valorem duties Mr. Walker says: If the importation of protected articles would rapidly decrease when the foreign were high in price and specific duties operated as a protection, under the tariff of 1842 from 41 to 243 per cent. (per Table H, compiled from Treasury returns in 1844), what must not have been the decline of importation and revenue when the foreign article fell, as it has in many cases, 50 per cent., bringing up the specific duty from 41 to 82 and from 243 to 436 per cent. This fact illustrates another objection to the specific duty, namely, that although it professes to be stationary, it is in fact constantly augmenting from reduced prices of foreign articles. Experience proves that from improved machinery, new inventions, and reduced cost of production the foreign articles are constantly diminishing in price, while the specific duty remaining unchanged it is continually increasing in ratio as an equivalent ad valorem, and the