Economic supremacy

“ No, I mean that economic policy which is best calculated to promote, together with the physical well-being, also the moral health of the people, and thus to strengthen the foundations of our institutions of democratic government. There is little danger that this nation will not be rich, but there is danger that it may be rich and rotten.
I have always been in sympathy with some of the objects which the protectionists profess to have in view. I believe in diversification of the occupations and industries of the people as an element of enlightenment and progress. ”

“ Repeal the taxes on raw materials and manufactures; remove those dead weights that now cloy the springs of national industry; and you will give circulation to capital, employment to labour, and augment to a great extent the wealth of the kingdom. Thus will this great nation, in peace, still maintain her ascendancy in every art and manufacture, whilst at the same time, by the accumulation of capital, she lays the sure foundation of victory in war! Thus may the people of this realm be once more employed in various trades, and prosperity and quiet bless the land! ”

“ Our courts of justice, our financial institutions, our methods of trade, and our schools of all grades are examples of social harmonies which found their form by long conflict, and settled down to smooth action by custom. The financial institutions and the methods of trade belong to the economic system. The system of production is modern and new. ”

“ Our exports will increase. Our balance of payments position will improve. And we will have forged across the Atlantic a trading partnership with vast resources for freedom.
If, on the other hand, we hang back in deference to local economic pressures, we will find ourselves cut off from our major allies. Industries--and I believe this is most vital--industries will move their plants and jobs and capital inside the walls of the Common Market, and jobs, therefore, will be lost here in the United States if they cannot otherwise compete for its consumers. ”

“ But if we change terms, and rejecting this equivocal and fluctuating idea of a balance of trade, consider whether commerce has contributed to the wealth and prosperity of the United States, or has been the cause of the distress they are now enduring, the evidence will at once strike us as more intelligible, and the conclusion as more certain. Agricultural improvements, building houses and raising up cities, manufacturing improvements and ship building, are among the strongest proofs of a permanent increase of national wealth and prosperity. ”

“ That, while providing revenue for the support of the general government by duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imposts as to encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country; and we commend that policy of national exchanges which secures to the workingmen liberal wages, to agriculture remunerative prices, to mechanics and manufacturers an adequate reward for their skill, labor and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and independence. ”

“ But in practice the system works quite otherwise, for all these countries that develop their resources with our money aim at developing an export trade and selling goods to us, and as they have not yet reached the point of economic altruism at which they are prepared to sell goods for nothing, the increase in their production means an [Pg 61] increasing demand for our commodities and our services. And in the meantime the interest on our capital and credit, and the profits of working the machinery of exchange, are a comfortable addition to our national income. ”

“ Only let us have an agriculture relieved of the artificial burdens put upon it; a manufacturing industry liberated of the taxes which make production. costly; a commerce free to get ships, and carrying merchandise challenging the competition of the world; let us have a free field and a fair chance for American enterprise, labor and invention, and this Republic will not only remain one of the first granaries of the earth, but advance with giant strides to become the greatest industrial and commercial nation of the age—aye, the greatest the world has ever known. ”

“ The restoration of the consuming power of the 300 millions and more made destitute by the war, the restoration of the world’s power of production in agriculture and in manufacture, the gradual lifting of the heavy burden of public debt, the reduction of taxation, the restoration to normal of the international exchanges, and the extension of international credits, are all subjects for study and recommendation by trained economists and experienced men of affairs. ”

“ Trade had developed under the new rule, and had expanded with improved means of communication. Capital had begun to accumulate, and the moneyed classes were in favour of a government that would support public credit and refrain from extortion. The mass of the people were contented, prices being cheap, wages on the rise and employment brisk. ”

“ By protective duties and bounties on exportation, by subsidies of all sorts to manufactures and national navigation, by the acquiring of transmarine colonies, by the creation of privileged commercial companies, by the inspection of manufacturing processes, by the perfecting of means of transportation and the suppression of interior custom-houses, every state strives to increase its means of production, to close its market to its competitors, and to make the balance of trade incline in its favor. ”

“ With what exultation have we seen a free commerce delineating our wide-spreading canvass with all the representations of national prosperity! With what anguish do we behold commercial restrictions wrenching the pencil from this successful artist, and obliterating the work! Our commerce, both before and since the revolution, increased the national prosperity, with undeviating progress, and we are exchanging its solid benefits for restrictions, bounties, exclusive privileges, and monopolies, recommended by recondite and intricate speculations about the balance of trade. ”

“ The largest diversity of industry is most productive of general prosperity, and of the comfort and independence of the people.
We therefore demand that the imposition of duties on foreign imports shall be made, "not for revenue only," but that in raising the requisite revenues for the government such duties shall be so levied as to afford security to our diversified industries and protection to the rights and wages of the laborer, to the end that active and intelligent labor, as well as capital, may have its just reward, and the laboring man his full share in the national prosperity. ”

“ In Europe and America, where capital has been concentrated in great commercial and manufacturing establishments, and free institutions prevail almost as the natural consequence, industry is everything; and those who direct and command it are, happily, looked up to as the source of the wealth, the strength, the virtue, and the happiness of the nation. The concentration of capital in such establishments may, indeed, be considered, not only as the natural consequence, but as the prevailing cause of the free institutions by which the mass of the people in European countries are blessed. ”

“ Thus in this empire we see what we must always see under an adequate and judicious system of protection, that a proper tariff not only improves, refines, and diversifies the labour of a country, but enlarges its commerce, increases the prosperity of its agricultural population, renders the people better and better able to contribute to the support of the Government, and raises the nation to a position of independence and real equality among the powers of the globe. ”

“ I saw a business system which had grown up under free competition and equality of opportunity passing into trusts and other combines derived from the acquisition of lands containing the best supplies of coal, iron, oil, and other important raw materials, supported by railroad and banking connections and by tariffs directed against outside competition. ”

“ We renew and emphasize our allegiance to the policy of protection as the bulwark of American industrial independence and the foundation of American development and prosperity. This true American policy taxes foreign products and encourages home industry; it puts the burden of revenue on foreign goods; it secures the American market for the American producer; it upholds the American standard of wages for the American workingman; it puts the factory by the side of the farm, and makes the American farmer less dependent on foreign demand and price ”

“ Raised in unrivaled prosperity, we inherit an economy that is still the world's strongest, but is weakened by business failures, stagnant wages, increasing inequality, and deep divisions among our people. ”

“ American shipbuilding and carrying capacity increased; foreign markets sought for products of the soil and manufactories, to the end that we may be able to pay these debts. Where a new market can be created for the sale of our products, either of the soil, the mine, or the manufactory, a new means is discovered of utilizing our idle capital and labor to the advantage of the whole people. But, in my judgment, the first step toward accomplishing this object is to secure a currency of fixed, stable value; a currency good wherever civilization reigns ”

“ And when not only the East, but all the now undeveloped countries, confront, with surplus products in their hands, the old industrial nations, capitalistic production will have attained its maximum development. ”

“ The vision of industrial supremacy has come to the giants who lead American industry and finance. But it can never be realized unless the laborers are here to do the work,—the skilled laborers, the common laborers, the willing laborers, the well-paid laborers. The present forces, organized however cunningly, are not large enough to do what America wants; but there is another group of laborers, 12,000,000 strong, the natural heirs, by every logic of justice, to the fruits of America's industrial advance. ”

“ The man who has a dollar in his pocket knows that speculators and gold-gamblers cannot, by some juggle, take five cents or ten cents from its value, in twenty-four hours, as they could a few years ago. The public burdens have been largely reduced. Our exports far exceed our imports, and our balance-sheet with the world shows an immense sum in our favor. The boom of business is heard in the land. The preachers of calamity are out of date. Commerce, industry, enterprise, capital, labor, all feel the impulse of substantial prosperity running through every artery of public and private activities. ”

“ Now that the people had a government that could raise revenue, pay its debts, regulate trade with foreign nations and between the states, enforce its laws, and provide a uniform currency, confidence returned. Men felt safe to engage in business, and as a consequence trade and commerce revived, and money long unused was brought out and invested. Banks were incorporated and their stock quickly purchased. Manufacturing companies were organized and mills and factories started ”

“ These various reforms constitute, so to say, the negative side of the modern commercial prosperity which this country built upon the foundations of her world-wide empire; and, in order to get a complete outline of the position which we at present occupy, we must now revert briefly to the positive side of the subject; we must find out where the great modern wealth has come from, and on what it has been based. Freedom of trade no doubt did much to call wealth and enterprise into being ”

“ But still suffer me to enquire whether we are not happily circumstanced and actually able to manage some principal manufactories with success, and increase our wealth by increasing the labour of the people, and saving the surplus of our earnings for a better purpose than to purchase the labour of the European nations. ”

“ For, it is only with the produce of its labor and capital that one country can demand, or can obtain, in exchange, the produce of the labor and capital of another. The idea that the lowering of wages can increase, or the increase of wages can diminish, the trade of a country, is as baseless as the idea that the prosperity of a country can be increased by taxes on imports, or diminished by the removal of restrictions on trade. ”

“ I believe that policy is essential to the prosperity and possibly to the perpetuity of our Government. [Cheers.] The two propositions that now stare our working people—and our whole country—in the face are these: competition with foreign countries, without adequate discriminating and favoring duties, means lower wages to our working people; a revenue-only tariff, or progressive free trade, means larger importations of foreign goods, and that means less work in America. ”

“ Combinations of capital organized into trusts to control the conditions of trade among our citizens, to stifle competition, limit production, and determine the prices of products used and consumed by the people, are justly provoking public discussion, and should early claim the attention of the Congress. ”

“ Not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation, with a view to those great objects, ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These comprise the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing, and defense. ”

“ In the next twenty, ten, and even five years we shall be in a struggle for industrial and commercial supremacy. There must be skilled, expert workmen to direct and educated leaders to organize, and more than all, there must be integrity and character that will not yield to the temptations of money making. ”