US Presidency
1892

A Democratic Congress holding this view can not enact, nor a Democratic President approve, any tariff schedule the purpose or effect of which is to limit importations or to give any advantage to an American workman or producer. A bounty might, I judge, be given to the importer under this view of the Constitution, in order to increase importations, and so the revenue for revenue only is the limitation. Reciprocity, of course, falls under this denunciation, for its object and effect are not revenue, but the promotion of commercial exchanges, the profits of which go wholly to our producers. This destructive, un-American doctrine was not held or taught by the historic Democratic statesmen whose fame as American patriots has reached this generation'certainly not by Jefferson or Jackson. This mad crusade against American shops, the bitter epithets applied to American manufacturers, the persistent disbelief of every report of the opening of a tin-plate mill or of an increase of our foreign trade by reciprocity are as surprising as they are discreditable.