The Tariff. 
 
 Farmers, Iron Workers and Laborers 
 
 THE TRINITY 
 
 OF THE NATION’S 
 
 STRENGTH, PROGRESS AND PROSPERITY 
 
 DC LICK RED DEVORE THE AMERICAN IRON AND STEEL ASSOCIATION AT CHIC A 0'. ILL, MAY 24, 1865. 
 
 HON. flMOTHY O. HOWE 
 
 EX. U. S. SENATOR AND POSTMASTER GENERAL 
 
 RE-PUBLISHED BY THE NORTHWESTERN TARIFF BUREAU OF 
 
 JOHN W. HINTON, OF MILWAUKEE 
 
 MILWAUKEE : 
 
 Wisconsin Legal News, 430 and 432 Broadway 
 1882. 
 
 337 
 6 3&tl 
 
Return this book on or before the 
 Latest Date stamped below. A 
 charge is made on all overdue 
 books. 
 
 U. of I. Library 
 
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 1RARY 
 
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J U . Mjf 132 -* 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 ■I 
 
 
 Mr President and Gentlemen: — 
 
 You will not expect from me any discussion of the technicalities 
 
 of the business which engages our attention. It is not from me that you 
 expect to be instructed as to the relative value of different ores, or the 
 comparative advantage of different methods of reducing them. I do not 
 know one ore from another; I scarcely know a foundry from a bloomary. 
 tou cannot expect me to teach what I have not yet begun to learn. 
 
 Nevertheless, I did not decline the invitation of your committee to ad- 
 dress you on this occasion I recognize in you the representation of 
 that great department of American industry which has already invested a 
 capital of about fifty millions, which employs about one hundred thousand 
 men and women, and which produces from the earth about one million tons 
 ,of iron annually. Hence, it will be readily conceded that, to use a very 
 suggestive westernism, “you are some.” 
 
 And it seems to me it might not be wholly unprofitable to spend an horn 
 upon the inquiries— what you really are, what you ought to do, and what 
 ought to be done with you. There is a type of American opinion which 
 affects to regard you merely as the proprietors of so much capital; to hold 
 also, that capital is the natural enemy of labor, and thus they agree that 
 every blow struck at you is a blow struck in defense of labor and at its 
 enemy. With all such believers the answer to the second and third in- 
 quiries are very simple. Of course if you are the inevitable and implacable 
 enemies of labor, the best thing for you to do is to die; and the best thing 
 to be done with you is to bleed you to death as soon as possible. 
 
 But surely they are mistaken who teach us either that money is the 
 natural enemy of labor, or labor the natural enemy of money. True, they 
 may be made such. But that is a false and perverted state of society in 
 which money and labor are at enmity with each other. 
 
 So construct society as that money wants no labor and that labor can 
 get no money, and you will at once create an antagonism between these 
 two members, before which one or the other, if not both, must soon fall. 
 But if you would have these two elements of the national wealth to be 
 mutual friends and not enemies, make them mutually dependent upon each 
 other — mutual help meets, each for the other. 
 
 If there is any statesman or any philanthropist who thinks that labor has 
 an unequal chance in the struggle with money, there is but one way of 
 relieving it. It is by stimulating and encouraging that use of money which 
 
 Z G OGA 
 y 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Class 
 
 337 
 
 Book Volume 
 
 H83St 
 
 ECONMIICS 
 
 Ja 09-20M 
 
ftjr i.twa 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 ( ^ ^ V <( S fi 
 
 Mr President and Gentlemen:— 
 
 You will not expect from me any discussion of the technicalities 
 
 of the business which engages our attention. It is not from me that you 
 expect to be instructed as to the relative value of different ores, or the 
 comparative advantage of different methods of reducing them. I do not 
 know one ore from another; I scarcely know a foundry from a bloomary. 
 tou cannot expect me to teach what I have not yet begun to learn. 
 
 Nevertheless, I did not decline the invitation of your committee to ad- 
 dress you on this occasion I recognize in you the representation of 
 that great department of American industry which has already invested a 
 
 capital of about fifty millions, which employs about one hundred thousand 
 men and women, and which produces from the earth about one million tons 
 of iron annually. Hence, it will be readily conceded that, to use a very 
 suggestive westernism, ‘ ‘you are some. ” 
 
 V And it seems to me it might not be wholly unprofitable to spend an houi 
 i u Po n the inquiries— what you really are, what you ought to do, and what 
 ought to be done with you. There is a type of American opinion which 
 t affects to regard you merely as the proprietors of so much capital; to hold 
 * also > that capital is the natural enemy of labor, and thus they agree that 
 every blow struck at you is a blow struck in defense of labor and at its 
 i) enemy. With all such believers the answer to the second and third in- 
 quiries are very simple. Of course if you are the inevitable and implacable 
 enemies of labor, the best thing for you to do is to die; and the best thing 
 to be done with you is to bleed you to death as soon as possible. 
 
 But surely they are mistaken who teach us either that money is the 
 natural enemy of labor, or labor the natural enemy of money. True, they 
 may be made such. But that is a false and perverted state of society in 
 which money and labor are at enmity with each other. 
 
 So construct society as that money wants no labor and that labor can 
 get no money, and you will at once create an antagonism between these 
 two members, before which one or the other, if not both, must soon fall. 
 But if you would have these two elements of the national wealth to be 
 mutual friends and not enemies, make them mutually dependent upon each 
 other— mutual help meets, each for the other. 
 
 If there is any statesman or any philanthropist who thinks that labor has 
 an unequal chance in the struggle with money, there is but one way of 
 relieving it. It is by stimulating and encouraging that use of money which 
 
 V 
 
4 
 
 7 
 
 will most diversify labor and multiply the demand for it; that is a sure 
 method of relief. It is approved not more by the teachings of the political 
 economist than by the experience of every capitalist and of every laborer. 
 
 The more money needs labor, the more independent is the latter of the 
 former, and when money is so employed as that it can no more thrive with- 
 out labor, than labor can ever thrive without money, then the two are upon 
 a level, and there is no longer occasion for sympathy with either. 
 
 It seems to me more sensible to regard you as the employers of one 
 hundred thousand laborers— American laborers— producing from an ore, 
 worth nothing in its natural state, a million tons of iron annually, worth 
 forty millions of: dollars — to hold 3 7 ou collectively responsible for the con- 
 tinual employment of that labor, and personally responsible for the pay- 
 ment of it I therefore think the “American Iron and Steel Association” 
 an institution to be cherished and not destroyed Certainly it seems to me 
 if he who causes two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before 
 can be called a public benefactor, much more must they be so regarded 
 who from a mass of unused mineral, annually produce a value of not less 
 than forty millions. 
 
 The American people have just subdued the first, and I trust the last, 
 great revolt against popular sovereignty 
 
 The rebellion with which they had to struggle was not only the most 
 wanton, the best matured and the most formidable that ever assailed a 
 people, but the victory of the people is also the most complete. 
 
 The capitol of the insurgents, after four years spent in fortifying it. was 
 taken, not by siege, but by assault. Of four great rebel armies, not one 
 was dispersed; but each one in terror was surrounded, and compelled, with 
 their General at their head, to surrender as prisoners of war. And the 
 rebel chief himself, flying from the halter which would not be cheated of 
 its just dues, was captured not exactly in theJast ditch where he threaten- 
 ed to be found - but if we may credit prisoners’ accounts of rebel destitu- 
 tion, he was probably caught in the last petticoat which his wife’s wardrobe 
 could supply. 
 
 When a few weeks since the army of Lee was driven from Eichmond, 
 but had not yet surrendered, our enemies upon the other side of the Atlan- 
 tic. chuckling over the hope of prolonged guerilla strife, clamored with the 
 prediction that the United States had but just emerged upon the second and 
 most difficult stage of the war. The peril with which they so pleased them- 
 selves is already passed. Guerillas and soldiers are alike disarmed, and 
 await the justice or the mercy of the government they assailed. Neverthe- 
 less I do think the danger which now confronts us is graver than any we 
 have yet encountered. 
 
 The storm through which we have been struggling has cast us upon a 
 mountain of debt. The United States will owe on the first day of July 
 next, not less than three thousand millions of dollars. The fact should 
 sober, but not appal us. 
 
 This debt must be paid — there is no alternative. ; It must be paid. Every 
 
5 
 
 dollar, principal and interest, .must be paid. Repudiation ! American integ- 
 rity has set its heel upon repudiation, and it and its authors are hereafter 
 for all time infamous. 
 
 Repudiation was whipped with the rebellion. It will be gibetted with its 
 Chief. It will be sent back with -its twin furies, Slavery and Secession, to 
 that Tartarus from which they all sprung. Henceforth the word has no 
 place in the American Lexicon. A people who offered up their lives in de- 
 fense of their freedom, will not hesitate, if need be to sacrifice their estates, 
 to save their honor. This immense debt is to be paid And what is equally 
 certain is, that the American people must work it out. 
 
 It cannot be paid by the currency now in circulation It cannot be paid 
 by the transfer of existing values. The money, the manufactures, the 
 minerals, the meadows and the muscle of the nation — These are not the 
 treasures with which the public debt is to be liquidated . These are 
 the implements by which the means of paying the debt must be earned— 
 the National debt stands charged upon the national industry. It must be 
 worked out. 
 
 Such being the stern necessity resting upon American labor. The ques- 
 tion I put to you, the question which in my judgment cannot be answered 
 too soon by the American People is this, — Shall that labor be exposed to 
 unrestricted competition with the half- paid labor of Europe, or shall it be 
 secured in the franchise of supplying the American market so far as it can, 
 of ministering to American wants, and developing American resources 
 so far as it may ? 
 
 At different periods in the former history of our country, a policy has 
 been strenously urged upon it, denominated “Free Trade.” The advocates 
 of that policy instruct us to buy where we can buy for the least money, 
 regardless of the question how we are to pay. They tell us it is unwise to 
 pay $30 for a ton of iron in Pennsylvania when we can procure the like in 
 Staffordshire for $20, or to pay ten cents for a pound of cotton in Lowell 
 when we might procure the same in Manchester for eight cents 
 
 They persuade us that all duties imposed upon importation for the pur- 
 pose of what is called “protection,” is a burthen upon the consumer; that 
 every encouragement given to American manufacturers— is a direct injury 
 done to American Agriculture The theory is specious; the policy plausi- 
 ble. It has always received in my judgment, much too large a share of 
 the public favor. But whatever may be its intrinsic merits, it seems to me 
 now, if ever, the American people should make up their minds, definitely 
 either to adopt or reject it. Any policy is better than no policy. Chronic 
 free trade is better than intermittent protection. I think it better to tell 
 the American farmer at once to produce what he can, and to sell wherever 
 he can find a purchaser, than to offer him a market this year in New York, 
 and send him next year to Liverpool, and leave him without a market any- 
 where the year after — better to tell the manufacturer now, to put out his fur- 
 nace fires, dismantle his mills and discharge his force, and hereafter employ 
 his money not in paying labor, but in skinning it, than to induce him by the 
 
6 
 
 promise of protection, to invest millions this year in manufacturing, only i 
 to see the whole sacrificed next year by the mandate of Free Trade. 
 Better to tell the American laborer at once to strip himself for competition 
 with the pauper of Europe, and bear up under the load of existence, as he 
 may, than to animate him to feverish exertion one year by offering him a 
 diversity of employments, and paralyzing all exertion next year by with- 
 drawing all employment. 
 
 The experience of the world has often proved that communities once 
 thoroughly instructed not to hope for anything, may long be kept quiet 
 with very little. It is the alternate kindling and quenching of hope, which 
 agitates communities and shatters States. 
 
 I have said there may be quiet when there is no hope, but there can be 
 no growth there, least of all can there be any great achievement. Nations 
 which grow, and which do, are those which certainly hope and fervently 
 believe ; with whom the fruition of to-day is the germ of to-morrow. 
 
 This nation, we have already seen, has something to do. It has a debt to 
 pay. And so I think, instead of bidding it to hope nothing, it is wiser to 
 bid it ‘ ‘ hope all things, to believe all things, and to hold fast that which is 
 good.” But what is good ? Certainly it seems to me good in times like 
 these, when so much is to be achieved, not to restrict the field of effort, 
 but to expand it. 
 
 The champions of free trade have always loudly asserted that it was es- 
 sential to the agricultural interests, that all direct protection given to the 
 American manufacturer, was an inherent wrong done to the American 
 farmer. The state I live in is essentially an agricultural state. I profess 
 myself devoted to her welfare. I will therefore be the last to attack a 
 policy necessary to the well-being of the agricultural interests. 
 
 Nay, I think in whatever community I might chance to live, I could 
 never anywhere be unmindful of the interests of agriculture. I regard 
 that as the one vocation which, more than any other in the whole circle of 
 human labor, concerns us all. 
 
 No matter in what channel your own individual effort may be specially 
 directed, the labor of the farmer precedes it, and makes it possible. In 
 whatever temple the industry of nations may be gathered, agriculture 
 must form the grand porch to it. Through it alone can any industry enter 
 upon the gaze of the world. 
 
 Without agriculture there can be no manufactures, no commerce, no 
 mechanism nor art, no science nor song. 
 
 Then is protection given to domestic manufactures, an injury done to 
 agriculture ?• To prove the affirmative of this, volumes of tables have at 
 different times been published for the purpose of showing that duties im- 
 posed upon foreign manufactures, with a view to the protection of our own. 
 enhance the cost of the protected article to the farmer who is the principle 
 consumer. Columns of figures have been piled up before us, to show the 
 price of specific commodities at periods where our legislation favored pro- 
 tection, and of the same articles where our legislature favored the policy of 
 
7 
 
 free trade. I do not reproduce these tables for two reasons: 1st, they do 
 not establish the fact of enhanced prices, and 2d, that is not the material 
 fact to be considered. 
 
 They do not establish the fact of enhanced prices, because they are op- 
 posed by other tables equally voluminous, and by other figures equally im- 
 posing, showing that manufactured articles are cheaper in our markets 
 under the policy of protection, than under that of free trade. I do not re- 
 ject their testimony upon either proposition. On the contrary I accept it 
 upon both. It seems very clear to me that at different times, and under 
 different circumstances, the same policy must exhibit both results. It seems 
 very clear to me that the immediate effect of protective duties must be to 
 enhance the price of the article protected, else the duty will not be protec- 
 tive. But it by no means follows that the ultimate effect will be. the same 
 as the immediate effect 
 
 It might be well that the organized capital and labor engaged in the iron 
 manufactures of Scotland and Wales, might be able to prevent the unor- 
 ganized capital and labor* of the United States from erecting a single fur- 
 nace in Pennsylvania or Michigan, and yet, when labor and capital had 
 properly organized, iron might be produced from the mines of Pennsylvania 
 and Michigan as cheaply as it could be delivered there from the mines 
 of Lanarkshire or Monmouthshire. Indeed/ in 1740, when Great Britain 
 had more ore and more fuel and as much unemployed labor as she now 
 has, the whole Empire produced but 17,350 tons of iron. If England had 
 never given to that interest any protection, you would not now require any 
 protection against the iron manufactures of that nation. 
 
 But ample protection was afforded, and the result is that England, Scot- 
 land and Wales, with an area less than double that of Pennsylvania, pro- 
 duced in 1855 no less than 4,399,836 tons, or nearly two-thirds of the yield 
 of the whole world, and can undersell the world. But our mineral de- 
 posits are much richer than those of England, as our territory is larger; fuel 
 here is as much more abundant; our climate as healthy; our population 
 as hardy ; our days as long. 
 
 If we please to say that we will not buy the product of British mines, 
 but will develope our own, I do not understand why eventually iron could 
 not be supplied from our foundries, as cheaply as from those of our rival. 
 I do not see why a like policy, tried upon a better theatre, should not yield 
 at least as good results. 
 
 But the vital question with the American farmer is not “can he buy as 
 much iron or as much cloth for twenty dollars, under the policy of protec- 
 tion as under that of free trade,” but it is “can he buy as much with twenty 
 bushels of wheat or of corn ?” British Guineas and American Eagles are 
 not among the crops cultivated by the farmer of Wisconsin and Illinois. If 
 they were, and if they cultivated nothing else, it would be well for him to 
 consider whether he could buy his spades and shirts for less money in 
 Birmingham and Manchester, or in Lawrence and Pittsburg. But he raises 
 on the contrary, corn and wheat, and pork and beef, and when he has con- 
 
8 
 
 clusively settled the point, that he can do more with twenty dollars undei 
 the free trade policy than under the opposite, it will be necessary for him 
 to consider under which system he can get the twenty dollars for the least 
 grain and meat. If you hire your manufacturing done in England, then 
 you must send your bread and wheat to feed the operator and to pay for his 
 work. There it will find its market; there its value will be regulated, but 
 not its price. Between the man who raises corn in Illinois and the man 
 who eats it in Staffordshire, an army of traders, forwarders, common car- 
 riers and brokers intervene, all of whom must be employed in, and paid for, 
 taking the corn to market What the charges are for this service I am un- 
 able to state. But I notice that wheat which is bought in Chicago at $1. 10 
 is sold in New York at $1 58, currency, and in Liverpool at $1.95, gold, 
 worth $2.50 -What it cost to. collect the wheat in Chicago from the pro- 
 ducer, or to distribute it to the consumer from Liverpool, is more than I 
 know. 
 
 But it is very clear that the further we send our produce to market, the 
 more it costs to get to market, and if it be marketed in England the farmer 
 receives not more than one-third of what the consumer pays; the other 
 two-thirds being pocketed by the traders, the commission merchants and 
 forwarders, for protits, commissions and freights. But the farmer is told 
 that he does not pay these charges; that he finds a purchaser at home and 
 gets his price, and |ill this accumulation of profits is paid by the con- 
 sumer in England./ 
 
 The conclusion seems to me a mistaken one. England pays $2 50 per 
 bushel for your wheat, because it is worth that to feed to the operatives 
 who do your manufacturing. If it is worth that sum to feed to the 
 operatives in England, why is it not worth as much for the same use 
 here ? Nay, more, about one-fourth of the prime cost of the fabrics 
 the farmer gets in exchange is made up of provisions. The manufacturer 
 pays $2.50 per bushel for Illinois wheat, and charges it over at that price 
 to the fabrics he returns in exchange. Thus it happens that the wheat 
 which the farmer takes to Chicago, and sells at one dollar and ten cents, 
 he buys back in Liverpool at $2.50, in the shape of English fabrics, and 
 pays freight, commissions and multiplied profits upon the return cargo 
 
 During the fiscal year ending June 30th, 1861, the last year during 
 which our foreign trade was not seriously affected by the war, we import- 
 ed about sixty-nine millions of cotton, woolen and iron fabrics. The 
 whole of that cotton was raised in our own country. The whole of the 
 wool and iron we ought to have raised. Thus American industry is exhibi- 
 ted in the unenviable attitute of sending its own cotton, iron and wool to 
 England to be manufactured. We paid freight, profit and charges to every 
 man who touched it; we sent our own provisions across the ocean to feed 
 the labor which worked it up; we paid freight, profit and charges on them; 
 and we bought the finished goods back again, paying similar charges on 
 those. 
 
 But we are told that we find' it profitable even in this extravagant pro- 
 
9 
 
 i fcedure, because we can employ European labor to do our manufacturing 
 jjo much cheaper than we can employ our own. Yet the question remains, 
 can we work men and women in England cheaper than we can work them 
 here ? But we are told the men and women are in England and not here 
 That here we have neither the capital, nor the labor to do our own manu- 
 facturing. 
 
 £ls it not easier to import the workmen than to import the work of his 
 life-time ? Is it not easier to import the labor and the capital, if needed, 
 which produced the sixty -nine millions, than to import that amount of 
 merchandise annually, during the life of the producer? But you say the 
 capital a’nd the labor is wanted, and is at wotk them qpd will not come 
 here. Yet it is wanted there, because! ydolgo tfcfe^ef to , use, it. It is employed 
 there, because you go there <o pay it. But if instead of subjecting your- 
 selves to the enormous sacrifices you do in order to manufacture goods in 
 England, you refuse to purchase a dollar’s worth there— then the capital 
 and labor which produced that value is unproductive, and will be unem- 
 ployed. If then you say to that unemployed capital: “with each million 
 ’ you invest in the United States, in sites, in buildings and in power, you 
 can secure as much productive capacity as you do with those millions in- 
 ' vested there/”) I think, it will be glad to come here, as much of it does 
 [ now come,-#t5r Railroad, Banking and Mercantile uses. 
 
 Last winter I had the pleasure of dining v with a party of gentlemen in 
 Washington, among whom was one largely engaged in the manu- 
 facture of spool thread in England. The gentleman whose guests we were 
 — himself a banker, and one of the ablest men it has been my good fortune 
 , to meet — told me that unless the United States reduced the duty on cotton 
 thread, it was the opinion of that manufacturer, that their firm would be 
 tcompelled to transfer a portion of their business to this country. 
 
 And if you then say to that starved and toil-spent laborer, American 
 days have as many hours in which to work as English days, and American 
 nights have as many hours in which to rest; you can make as much 
 ’ cloth in an hour upon the Mississippi as upon the Mersey; you can buy as 
 much food in Chicago for one dollar as you can buy in Liverpool for two; 
 l and you can sell your cloth for fifty per cent, more in the former market 
 ; than in the latter. Proclaim such a gospel to them, and Europe will wit- 
 • ness such an exodus of her crowded populations, as has not been seen 
 -since those “great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, 
 and from beyond Jordan,’’ went out to hear the older gospel, and that 
 only one fuller of beatitudes than this I now teach, that which Christ him- 
 f self preached from the mountains. /Thus the restrictions we would impose 
 1 upon the importation of foreign fabrics, would become, the conduit through 
 which we would draw off the surplus of foreign labor; )and the protection 
 we would decree to the industry of this nation woulcf become a means of 
 blessing to the labor of all nations. And so America would become, in a 
 double sense, “the home of the free and the asylum of the oppressed.” 
 
 “Then,” to use the words of the Earl Derby, in speaking of the Am- 
 
10 
 
 erican people, “there will be open to them again, not merely the same- 
 course of power and prosperity which they have heretofore pursued, but i 
 they will pursue that course of power and prosperity for the general hap- 
 piness of mankind.” 
 
 Nothing is more certain to my mind, than that if we mean American 
 agriculture shall ever prosper, we must plant manufactures by its side. I 
 myself remember when Maine, the state in which I was raised, was not a 
 manufacturing state, and yet Massachusetts was. And I well remember 
 in those years, that caravans of our young men and young women went 
 annually to Massachusetts and found employment in the factories gnd on 
 the farms of the latter state, while the forests of Maine were unfelled, her 
 splendid water falls were unoccupied, and her soil, as good as that of 
 Massachusetts, was untilled. 
 
 What I have seen in the history of Maine, we have all read in the history 
 of England. For centuries England regarded the landed interest as the 
 one deserving her special, almost her only, care Her mines were utterly 
 rejected, manufactures were frowned upon, everybody was encouraged to 
 raise bread and meat. 
 
 In the reign of Charles II, the copper mines of Cornwall were untouched, 
 “nor,” says Macaulay, “did any land owner take them into account in 
 estimating the value of his property.” 
 
 Iron was early manufactured in England. Strabo says that in his time 
 iron was brought frojn England into Greece. But Macaulay says, “its 
 manufacture had been regarded with no favorable eye by the government, 
 and by the public.” He added, “The rapid consumption of wood excited 
 the alarm of politicians as early as the reign of Elizabeth; there had been 
 loud complaints that whole forests were cut down for the purpose of feed- 
 ing the furnaces, and the parliament had interfered to prohibit the manufac- 
 turers from burning timber. ” 
 
 And yet the manufacture which so alarmed the agricultural interest was 
 so insignificant, that at the close of the reign of Charles II, nearly 17 cent- 
 uries after Strabo died, it was supposed to yield only about ten thousand 
 tons annually, and we have seen that nearly a century later, the yield was 
 but a little over seventeen thousand tons. But while agriculture was thus 
 protected against the encroachments of mining and manufactures, how did 
 it work ? Let Macaulay answer: 
 
 “In the year 1665,” says he, “the value of the produce of the soil far ex- 
 ceeded the value of all the other fruits' of human industr 3 T . Yet agri- 
 culture was in what would be now considered as a very rude and imperfect 
 state. The arable land and pasture land were not supposed by the best 
 political arithmetician of the age, to amount to much more than half the 
 area of the kingdom. The remainder was supposed to consist of moor, 
 forest and fen. These computations are strongly confirmed by the road 
 books and maps of the seventeenth century. From those maps and books 
 it is clear that many routes which now pass through an endless succession 
 of orchards, hayfields and beanfields, then ran through nothing but heath, 
 swamp and warren. 
 
11 
 
 “In drawings of English landscapes made in that age for the Grand Duke 
 Cosmo, scarce a hedgerow is seen, and numerous tracts, now rich with cul- 
 tivation, appear as bare as Salisbury Plain. At Enfield, hardly out of 
 sight of the smoke of the capital, was a region of fivo and twenty miles in 
 circumference, which contained only three houses and scarcely any en- 
 closed fields. 
 
 “Deer, as free as in an American forest, wandered there by thousands. 
 It is to be remarked that wild animals of larger size were then far more 
 numerous than at the present time. The last wild boats, indeed, which 
 had been preserved for the royal diversion, and had been allowed to ravage 
 the cultivated land with their tusks, had been slaughtered by the ex- 
 asperated rustics during the license of the civil war. The last wolf that 
 has roamed our island had been killed in Scotland a short time before the 
 close of the reign of Charles the Second. But many breeds now extinct 
 or rare, both of quadrupeds and birds, were still common. The fox, 
 whose life is in many counties held almost as sacred as that of a human 
 being, was considered as a mere nuisance Oliver St. John told the Long 
 Parliament that Strafford was to be regarded, not as a stag or a hare, 
 to whom some law was to be given, but as a fox who was to be snared by 
 any means, and knocked on the head without pity. This illustration 
 would be by no means a happy one if addressed to country gentlemen of 
 our time; but in Saint John’s davs there were not seldom great massacres 
 of foxes to which the peasantry thronged with all the dogs that cou’d be 
 mustered; traps were set; nets were spread; no quarter was given; and to 
 shoet a female with cub was considered a feat which merited the gratitute 
 of the neighborhood. The red deer was then as common in Gloucestershire 
 and Hampshire as they now are among the Grampian Hills. On one oc- 
 casion, Queen Anne, on her way to Portsmouth, saw a herd of not less 
 than five hundred. The wild bull with his white mane was still to be found 
 wandering in a few of the southern forests, the badger made his dark and 
 tortuous hole on the side of every hill where the copsewood grew thick. 
 The wildcats were frequently heard by night wailing round the lodges of 
 the rangers of Whittlebury and Needwood. The yellow-breasted Martin 
 was still pursued in Cranbourne Chase for his fur, reported inferior only to 
 that of the Sable. Few Eagles measuring more than nine feet, between 
 the extremities of the wings, preyed on fish along the coast of Norfolk. 
 On all the downs, from the British Channel to Yorkshire, huge Bustards 
 strayed in troops of fifty or sixty, and were often hunted with greyhounds. 
 The marshes of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire were covered during some 
 months of every year by immense clouds of Cranes.” 
 
 Such was the state of agriculture in England when she had no manu- 
 factures. 
 
 Down to a period later than this, manufactures have no place in the 
 history of England. And yet wheat, flour and fresh meat could only be 
 eaten by the wealthy. The horses of England were computed to be worth 
 only about fifty shillings each. 
 
 Sir John Fenwick, speaking of the horses of that country which has since 
 produced Childers and Eclipse, declared that “ the meanest hack ever im- 
 
ported from Tangier would produce a finer progeny than could be expected 
 from the best sire of native breed.” 
 
 British manufactures are in fact the growth of the last century, and in 
 that time the growth of agriculture has kept even pace with the growth of 
 manufactures. During the last century, Parliament has passed more than 
 four thousand acts for the enclosure of so many portions of those waste 
 commons, and Macaulay estimates that a fourth part of England has in 
 that time been turned from a wild into a garden. 
 
 Instructed by such lessons, an eminent American writer upon political 
 science, declares “that manufactures always precede and never follow the 
 creation of a real agriculture. In the absence of the former, all attempts 
 at cultivation are limited to the work of tearing out and exporting the soil 
 in the form of rude products. The country that pursues this policy, always 
 ending in the exportation , or annihilation of men.'' “Give to Turkey,” he says, 
 “the power to develope her vast natural resources — enable her to make 
 her own cloth — and a real agriculture will then arise that will render the 
 plains of Thrace and Macedonia even more productive.” 
 
 And again, speaking of Brazil, the same author says: “Agriculture is the 
 last of all the sciences to attain development. It follows always in the 
 wake of manufactures, and if Brazil would improve her cultivation, she can 
 do so on no other condition than that of placing the hammer and the loom 
 in the neighborhood of the plough and the harrow.” 
 
 If you seek a policy for this country, which shall most effectually dwarf 
 development here, and most vigorously repress the hope of labor every- 
 where, which dooms all American labor to the cultivation of the soil, and 
 besides, to a dependence upon Europe for its means and its market, and at 
 the same time discourages the emigration of foreign labor, hopelessly 
 binding it to its present unrequited toil, the policy of free trade will do it. 
 
 But for myself, I cannot help but look hopefully on the immense resources 
 of our country, yet undeveloped — her forests yet unfelled, her prairies and 
 fields yet unploughed, her mines unworked, her unrivalled water falls 
 clamoring for employment. I think them all designed for the use of man. 
 I look for men to use them. 
 
 I think it wrong to dedicate this great country to one branch of industry 
 alone — rather let all industries find their home here. 
 
 I cannot unite with those who exclaim, “America for white men,” my cry 
 is rather “ all men for America.” 
 
 Let us lift ourselves out of this atmosphere of mere blind prejudice. I 
 put it to you, who ought to know something about the value of human 
 forces— did you ever know anything so monstrously stupid as that, a peo- 
 ple who were forced to strain every sinew to the verge of cracking, to save 
 their own lives from armed rebellion, should yet object to negroes fighting 
 for them? Marvellous as that seems, I can tell you something even more 
 marvellous. There were, two years since, when we required a million of 
 men for military purposes, and unlimited millions for industrial purposes, 
 men who seriously argued, that we ought to export four millions of indur- 
 ated muscle, mured and educated to toil, for no reason under God’s 
 
 « 
 
 \ 
 
13 
 
 Heavens, save that it was out of style, and offended our tastes. Fashion, 
 I suppose, must be allowed to dictate the color of a dress, for it was always 
 done so. But it never attempted to dictate the color of a barn shovel. 
 Why should it control in the complexion of him who makes or uses the 
 shovel. 
 
 How must the genius of America regard us when she sees us sending to 
 the uttermost ends of the earth for hoes to do our planting with, and send- 
 ing also the men and women who use them to the ends of the earth. 
 Sending labor into all the world, and buying its products from all the 
 world? 
 
 Oh Gentlemen! I fear you will think me visionary and fanatical, but I 
 must say one thing to you, if I perish for saying it. Look at this young 
 giant country of yours spanning a continent. Figures cannot calculate, nor 
 can imagination conceive the stretch of its capabilities. 
 
 If you watch, you may feel it writhe with dormant energies longing for 
 exercise; if you listen you may hear it everywhere, bursting with pent 
 up life, as if Spring time here was a monthly, and was indigenous to the 
 soil. You are for the time stewards of all this capacity. 
 
 In a hundred ways peculiar to Himself, God is pressing you with the 
 question, will you develop that capacity, or will you smother it? And if you 
 will develop it, the one thing, I ache to say to you in spite of the peril at 
 which I know such things are said, is this: you never can fitly develop this 
 country; no never, until you recognize every human being who can wield 
 a spade or drive a shuttle, and who will do it, as of right belonging to the 
 brotherhood of man. 
 
 Don’t tell me that millions of these creatures disgrace that brotherhood. 
 I know that. I know that. Whose fault is it? Whose fault is it that there 
 are rotten beams in the house in which you dwell, whose mouldering smell 
 offends you? The fault of him who made the house. Whose fault is it 
 that folly and shiftlessness and depravity exist in society, if it be not the 
 fault of those who make society? A rotten beam cannot be cured, but 
 must be replaced. A defective member of society may be cured. The 
 society which surrounds Victoria is the outgrowth of that which surrounded 
 Charles II. You w T ho have wealth and learning, and observation— you wdio 
 have power and influence — you who are generals in the fight, w ho sit upon 
 the high lands with glasses to your eyes, you are responsible for the move- 
 ment of the army, and you must so direct it as to save it. Do you despise 
 the mole because in spite of its constant flutter of motion, it really makes 
 but little progress? How do you know if it could see like the lynxs, it 
 would not spring like the lynx? If you think the “masses,” as we call 
 them, grovel, get off from them. Let them stand up— lift them if neces- 
 sary. Give them to see. “Let there be light.” The first order which the 
 Omnipotent ever issued is still in force. Obey it. 
 
 Don’t mistake me. I am a leveler! But I want to level up, not dowm. 
 
 I know that in physical geography the mountains are bare, rugged and 
 wild, while the valleys alone teem with verdure .and fruit. 
 
 But it is otherwise in the social geography. There culture is found on 
 
14 
 
 the heights, and sterility in the lowlands — consequently I would have the \ I 
 low places elevated, and all that is lofty, stand. Is that a dream? Can 
 not that be realized? Look upon this planet, upon which God's Providence 
 has dropped you. See how incomplete it is. How much there is, after all, 
 to be done. Is it possible that in such a world any man with clear vision 
 and good digestion need suffer from want. 
 
 The American farmer must remember that so long as he consents to a 
 free interchange of commodities with foreign labor he must work for foreign 
 prices/ While he raises bread and meat to exchange for British manufac- 
 tures, he is as much in the employ of the British manufacturer as the oper- 
 ative himself. He does not indeed work by the day,- but by the piece. 
 
 The men who regulate the wages of the factory hand will control the 
 wages of the farm hand. And no one must imagine that while they dole 
 out to the former wages which barely support existence, they will pour out 
 to the latter wages which will command wealth. If they have not loved 
 the English operative whom they have seen, how shall they love the 
 American farmer whom they have not seen ? 
 
 Cl am therefore for having the work of the United States done in the 
 United States, and I favor the importation of men rather than of material, of 
 workmen rather than of their products^ 
 
 But there is another reason why I think this question is now pressed upon 
 our attention with unusual force and solemnity. The debt to which I have 
 already alluded, is now for the most part held at home. It exists mainly 
 in the shape of government bonds, drawing what is considered in Europe a 
 high rate of interest. Nevertheless they have found but a very reluctant 
 market on the other side of the Atlantic. The Almighty, who will have 
 even “the wrath 6f men to praise him,” has so ordered that our enemies 
 have been compelled to serve our cause by decrying the stability of our 
 government and declaiming against the worthlessness of our credit. So it 
 has happened most fortunately for us that our debt has been left upon our 
 own hands. It is distributed throughout the country— God grant that it 
 may remain there. While it remains with us it constitutes a part of the 
 national resources, the earning of which must help pay the interest and 
 the principal of the debt. While it remains with us there is no danger but 
 the debt will be paid No corporation, I take it, ever yet failed or ever will 
 fail to pay its debts if it owes nothing beyond the circle of its stockholders 
 and if its stockholders are personally liable for its debts. 
 
 But it seems to me there is imminent danger that this debt will not long 
 remain in our own hands. The stability of our government is already as- 
 sured. It is already demonstrated by events, the most conclusive of all 
 witnesses, that as against open force, this is the strongest government 
 that man has yet devised Events have transpired within the last four 
 years, and even within the last sixty days, which would have shattered any 
 other government to atoms. They have simply driven us more Jfifmly to- 
 gether. The s' ability of our government is assured; our enemies acknow- 
 ledge that. It seems to me inevitable that our securities must soon be 
 eagerly sought for abroad. Indeed we are already told that three hundred 
 
15 
 
 millions of our five-twenty bonds are owned in Germany alone. We are 
 already told that with the decline of gold, and our reviving credit, foreign 
 exchange was in our favor. Nay, it seems to me certain that when our 
 stocks are taken day after day, to an amount ranging from thirteen to 
 thirty millions, they must be purchased in view of a foreign demand. If 
 those bonds are transferred to Europe in exchange for cash, which is 
 brought here, we can have little objection to make. We shall have the 
 money in our pockets instead of the bonds in our port-folios. But when 
 they are saleable in Europe for money, they are negotiable for goods. 
 They become not only a purchasable, but a purchasing commodity. 
 
 Injurious and ruinous as I believe the policy of free trade to be to a 
 country like this at all times, yet, in ordinary times, the people have one 
 protection against its ill effects. England is shrewd enough to know that ’ 
 an agricultural people who go four thousand miles to market their products 
 and buy their fabrics, are limited in their ability to pay. Hence, so long as 
 we purchasa solely in reliance upon the anticipated yield of our agriculture, 
 our credit and consequently our ability to buy is limited. Your annual 
 purchases must be measurably controlled by your annual earnings. That 
 control no longer exists. We have, as I said, an accumulated capital of 
 $3,500,000,000. Our ability to buy is ten-fold of what it ever was. Europe 
 has a double incentive to deal with us, she wants a market for her goods, 
 and she wants to get hold of our bonds. When those bonds shall have 
 been transferred to Europe, and we have consumed their value in her pro- 
 ducts, then the nation will have nothing to show for them, and still will have 
 them to pay. I confess I look not without alarm to our foreign commerce 
 for the next six months. If the debt of England was held abroad no' 
 sensible man believes it could ever be paid. If the American debt shall 
 come to be transferred to foreign holders in exchange for the products of 
 foreign labor, which we ought to produce here, and shall thus be spent in 
 riotous living, who can look upon our future without misgiving ? Who is so 
 daring as that his fears will not suggest a day when the powers of Europe 
 may combine to collect the suspended debt of America, as some of them 
 recently combined to collect the suspended debt of Mexico. 
 
 Already you have noticed that those organs of British sentiment which 
 have exhibited most hostility to us during this great struggle, now, as they 
 take occasion to correct their position, congratulate us upon our past 
 achievements and flatter us with predictions of coming glory, are careful 
 to accompany their predictions with the expressed condition that we shall 
 “adopt liberal tariffs ” Let them not be disappointed. Give them a 
 liberal tariff A tariff liberal first of all to that indomitable Ameiican mus- 
 cle which ha«, by its great agony and bloody sweat, for the second time 
 achieved its independence; it demands at your hands employment and re- 
 muneration. L beral most to that mass of enthralled and oppressed labor, 
 which in Europe waits for emancipation and transmigration. 
 
 It was formerly the habit of those who assailed the cause of domestic 
 manufacture to denounce them as “monopolies,” and I regret to find in one 
 of the newspapers of this city an extract from the New York Commercial 
 
Advertiser , which gives some evidence that the habit is not yet wholly 
 abandoned. 
 
 I produce the extract because it indulges in this very habit, and because 
 also it has reference to the very occasion on which we are assembled. It 
 is as follows: — 
 
 “The partisans of protection, apparently fearing that the end of that 
 policy is approaching, have lately shown unusual activity. The National 
 Iron and Steel Association have just published a call for their next quarter- 
 ly meeting, which is to be held in Chicago the 24th instant. We call the 
 attention of the people of Chicago to that meeting, at which, it is said, 
 matters of very grave importance will be brought forward for consideration* 
 which forbodes no good to the people of the United States, for meetings of 
 monopolists are rarely held except with a view to increase or perpetuate 
 existing unjust legislative privileges.” 
 
 Undoubtedly gentlemen! monopolists have existed; undoubtedly they do 
 still exist. Elizabeth gave to one favorite the right to deal in currants, to 
 another the right to deal in salt, to another the right to deal in iron, and 
 each of those patents excluded every other subject of the realm from 
 participating in the trade. James I, by similar patents, confined five-sixths 
 of the whole trade of England to the city of London, and the whole trade 
 of London was confined to about 200 citizens. The State of New Jersey 
 has conferred upon a single railway company the right to carry passengers 
 within her limits. These are monopolies. They are shackles upon individ- 
 ual effort, and direct discouragements to public enterprise. But is that a 
 monopoly by which the people of a country reserve to themselves the 
 right to do their own work, leaving every individual in the country at liber- 
 ty to engage in it or not as he chooses ? * 
 
 If you were asked to confer upon a single company, or a single community 
 the right to make iron, or roll it, to spin cotton, or weave it, that would be 
 a monopoly, and that you ought to resist. But you are asked simply to de- 
 clare that the people of the United States may do the manufacturing for the 
 United States. We know, indeed, that only a portion of the people will en- 
 gage in it, notwithstanding all are free to do so. But if that portion of the 
 people who engage in manufactures are to be stigmatized as monopolists, 
 why should not that portion who engage in commerce or in agriculture be also 
 stigmatized in the same way ? If you use fabrics, somebody must make 
 them. If they are not made here, they will be made abroad. Is a foreign 
 monopoly more acceptable to us than a domestic one? But you say we are 
 asked to impose high duties, and thus to confine our manufacturing to our 
 own country, and that is the creation of exclusive privilege. Yes, but on the 
 other hand you are asked to impose no duties, and that will confine our 
 manufacturing to foreign countries. The mandate of free trade, as much 
 as that of protection, results in the same kind of exclusive privilege. 5 
 
 The difference is this. The latter excludes the labor of foreign countries, 
 while the former excludes the labor of our own. A people, standing before 
 the awful responsibilities which confront us, ought to quit that style of 
 argument. If we can’t show protection to be a bad thing, let us abandon 
 
17 
 
 the effort to give it a bad name. Whatever wrongs may result from the 
 policy of protection, monopoly is not one of them. 
 
 Gentlemen! You may have thought me, in a portion of these remarks, 
 somewhat impracticable and utopian. I am myself concious of a slight 
 exposure in that direction. But I will in conclusion submit a few observa- 
 tions as practicable as a pile driven drill. 
 
 And first, let me say to you, if you want a tariff for protection, you must 
 in that case get it. Don’t you go to sleep upon that popular fallacy, ex- 
 ceeding soft as it is, that, because a thing ought to be done, therefore it 
 will be done. 
 
 Pope’s aphorism, that “whatever is, is right” is extremely agreeable, as a 
 lullaby, but it will hardly do for capitalists to invest their money in. 
 
 If you would have duties imposed for the protection of American industry 
 you must ask for them. Congress is composed of men. And they are 
 representative men. They do not like to do what their constituents do not 
 demand. For they may get punished for it. I cannot promise that if you 
 seek in Congress you shall find; but I can safely promise that if you do not 
 seek, and seek diligently, you will not find anything very good unless you 
 are lucky. A member of Congress cannot always foreknow just what his 
 constituents will approve, and a prudent one will be very apt to wait, to 
 learn what they ask for, rather than to investigate for the purpose of as- 
 certaining what they need. / 
 
 Besides, you must not forget that there is an interest opposed do yours as 
 I considered it here. It is a large, active, commanding interest. I mean the 
 commercial interest; that interest which bears not as much upon the volume 
 of production, as upon its movement, which lives not by the creation of 
 commodities, but by transferring them from one place to another. Whether 
 much or little be produced, commerce desires it all to be active; and the less 
 bulky the product, the more sprightly commerce expects it to be. The 
 oftener it is handled, and the farther it is carried, the larger the tolls pock- 
 eted by commerce, and the less of the commodity left to the producer. 
 
 This interest is your antagonist, and it is a powerful one. I do nof; dis- 
 guise from you that the odds are against you. Over eleven hundred millions 
 of dollars were returned in 1860, as invested in the construction of railroads 
 in the United States. Besides, the tonnage of the United States was over 
 five millions of tons. Here is a total investment of 1,500 millions in the 
 forwarding business. The interest on this and the cost of running and 
 keeping in repair will amount to not less than $250,000,000 annually. This 
 must be paid by manufacturers and farmers, by those who create commod- 
 ities to sell, and who must move them until they find a market. So you see 
 it costs us about four times as much to do our marketing as it does in time 
 of peace to support our government. 
 
 And a curious feature about this commerce is this, that the more it has 
 to do the higher it charges for its work. Where agriculture has a great 
 many bushels to sell, it asks but little for each bushel. But the more 
 bushels commerce has to carry, the more it exacts for carrying a bushel. 
 But you must not imagine, that because this commercial interest is at some 
 
18 
 
 points in antagonism to yours, that it, therefore, is in antagonism to all 
 human interests. 
 
 Commerce has its legitimate vocation, and is a necessity. Its true vocation 
 is to exchange what you do create and don’t use, for what you can’t create 
 and do want. If you employ it for other purposes, it is your fault, and not 
 the fault of commerce. It exists, and must exist and will ask to do all it 
 can. And if it can persuade the Illinois farmer, that his wheat can never 
 make flour, until it has been to Birmingham and back, it violates no statute 
 in doing so. Our penal codes are not yet aimed at humbug. I regret that 
 it is so. There is no crime I would be as willing to see punished capitally. 
 But so it is. Humbug has protection which labor has not, and humbug 
 thrives as labor never will, until it is amply protected. Don’t abuse the 
 carpenter who persuades you to allow a great deal of ornament to the finish 
 of the house, which has no real beauty or use. Pay his bill and be wiser 
 next time. 
 
 And if Commerce persuades the Western farmerthat his welfare depends 
 upon his going to Lynn for his shoes, and to Manchester for his shirts why 
 let us hope he will go pleasantly and enjoy his journey. I do think it 
 wrong to be so credulous. I do think it wrong to practice on such credul- 
 ity, but then I think it wrong to be so credulous. If you say it is knavish to 
 practice such deception, I say it is foolish to be mislead by it. If you say 
 such folly can't be helped, I say it can be helped as easily as such knavery 
 can. If you say God made the fool and He is not responsible, I answer, 
 the same God made the knave. I don't believe the God we worship made 
 either, but they somehow exist in spite of Him. 
 
 I don’t ask you to make war upon the commercial interest, but simply to Dok 
 out for it. It would rather bring our iron from England than from Michigan, 
 because it can make more money by doing it. And it shows this feeling, 
 and will be aided in this enterprise by a large foreign commercial interest, 
 also employed in our carrying business. 
 
 The total tonnage of vessels entering at, and clearing from the ports of the 
 United States during the year ending June 30th, 1861, was something more 
 than fourteen millions, of this nearly four and one-half millions were foreign. 
 The owners of this tonnage will add their testimony to that of your own 
 fellow citizens, who would persuade you that our farmers cannot support 
 manufactures except at a great distance from them. And to all this will be 
 addrd the fierce exclamations of the whole body of foreign mill owners, 
 loudly protesting against the il liberality of attempting to secure to American 
 labor, better wages than are paid to British labor. 
 
 In the contest of this triple alliance, your only support is to be found in 
 the agriculture of the country, And unfortunately it happens that not 
 every farmer is educated in the whole science of political economy. Moreover 
 the argument in favor of free trade is patent and palpable. The direct effect of 
 protective duties upon the price of manufactured commodities is rarely appre- 
 hended. Observation teaches that. It requires calculation, inductive reasoning 
 and faith, to disclose the ultimate effect of the same, both upon manufactured 
 products and upon agricultural. 
 
 Wot upon these points alone, but upon all points, the American people need a 
 higher education. Teach them — “give them line upon line and precept upon 
 precept.” Be patient and be brave.