US Presidency
1892

Ayer, the Treasury agent in charge, estimates, as the result of careful inquiry, that the production of the current year will be 100,000,000 pounds, and that by the end of the year our production will be at the rate of 200,000,000 pounds per annum. Another industry that has been practically created by the McKinley bill is the making of pearl buttons. Few articles coming to us from abroad were so distinctly the product of starvation wages. But without unduly extending this letter I can not follow in detail the influences of the tariff law of 1890. It has transplanted several important industries and established them here, and has revived or enlarged all others. The act gives to the miners protection against foreign silver-bearing lead ores, the free introduction of which threatened the great mining industries of the Rocky Mountain States; and to the wool-growers protection for their fleeces and flocks, which has saved them from a further and disastrous decline. The House of Representatives, at its last session, passed bills placing these ores and wool upon the free list.