The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1872-04-19

wanna, IN the f1OuSe OF Representatives.
March 10th, 1872, in Answer to the Free
Trade Argument of MIR. Kerr.
Those who are old enough to remember
lS57-'G0, and prominently those who can
remember lS34'40 as | can, when for
nine months walked the streets of my ma
tive city, and would have been glad to earn
half dollar on any day, and could find
no man who could give me work or wages,
though enjoyed the reputation of being a
quick and skillful workman; it was the
first year Of freedom from my indentures,
and grieyed that had not come into the
world one year later than had done, that
the home Of the worthy gentleman to whom
had been mdentured might have sheltered
me during those terrible months |; keenly
do remember the agony / endured at find
ing that upon attaining manhood
had become charge upon MEM
bers OF ray family who cheerfully
supplied my simple wants and kept me
from despair-those, | say, who can re-
member the eras referred to, who are now
in business, will be admonished by the
passage of such a law to take in sail. No
new hands will be employed, or new enter
prises entered upon. The immigrant COM
ing here will find himself idle, and the tide
of immigration will ebb. Gradually the
people in employment will be discharged, as
cheap goods from Belgium, France, the Zoll-
verein, and Great Britain crowd the more
costly domestic goods out of the market. /
query, sir, whether the mechanics of the
United States will call that system
free trade which must inevitably
deprive them of % market for
their skill and labor, the only pro-
perty they have to sell. Will they not
rather regard it as foreign monopoly ?
And then, what Then will begin con-
traction, sir, contraction such as Congress
could not inaugurate by direct financial
legislation. And why During the last
eleven years, under protective tariff, with
the duties increased by the difference be-
tween paper and gold, our industries have
expanded, and the increased cost of arti-
cles to the consumer has largely gone in
increase of wages to the laborer. Our
laborers are not indolent, or dissolute, or
drunken. They know the value of home.
They cherish wife and children. They
dream of leaving behind them little home
in which the widow and orphan children
shall be domiciled after the dread sum
moner shall have called them hence. And
to secure this they make timely provision.
Go to the savings banks of New
England, New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, or OF the Western states,
where cheap lands tempt to another
form of investment, and you will find that
the amount deposited by our laborers is
more than the entire volume Of greenbacks.
1t is now invested by the savings banks in
bonds and mortgages on real estate, in
government loans, and the loans Of corpo-
rate companies. If these deposits should
be withdrawn, as they must be when an
influx of cheap foreign goods shall deprive
our laborers OF work, mortgages must be
called in, bonds must be sold, and the
commercial classes who will be simultane-
ously called upon for heavy payments, and
deprived of usual bank accommodations,
will feel the effects. The working people
of this country have ON deposit nearly four
hundred million dollars. Compel them by
throwing them into idleness to draw
upon their reserve, to eat up their
deposits, and where will your capitalist or
your business men get the money with
which to conduct business, now derived
from savings banks, or find paying mar
ket for heavy importation? Congress
cannot by any other means compel such
contraction of bank loans as would occur
in one year if it should deprive the labor
ing people Of work in the mines factories,
forges, and furnaces of this country, and
throw them upon their deposits in the
savings banks.
The gentleman from Indiana may say
his bill docs not involve such consequences.
4 <lSo& Iaart L
my opinion honestly as he ex-
presses his. And as proof Of the
correctness Of my position | cite the ex-
perience of the periods to which have re-
ferred. cite Ireland as a perpetual wit
ness, and Turkey as another. India fur
nishes, perhaps, still more striking proof
that free trade lis but another name for
British monopoly. Ireland has enjoyed
free trade, and what is she? Where are
her eight millions of people? In 1910
they were happy upon the green isle. All,
sir, one million of them went to the grave
from starvation and disease resulting from
inadequate food and other millions have
fled, and the takers of the last CEN
sus found little more than five
millions of them upon the island.--
Turkey! Why, sir, the system under which
Turkey has been made the sick man OF
Europe, and is kept in condition which
allows no conyalescence, is tender to her
people compared with that which the gen.
tleman from Indiana would infiict upon us.
Turkey imposes eight per cent. taxes on
her products and levies eight per cent. pro-
tectiye duties and there she is, the hope
less dependent of Great Britain, who has
shaped her legislation for half century.
The gentleman, while grudging eight per
cent. protective duties, would maintain
S140,000,000 of internal taxes, would inn
pose high duties on every element of life
and manufacture that we cannot produce
and would reduce toa revenue standard, y
as he calls it, the duties ON all things thai
we do produce. In his own emphatic Ian
guage, ne would protect nothing - no
sir, not even the right of the American
Iaborer to home and food!@
find that | have trespassed very fal
upon the patience Of those who have don't
me the honor to listen to me at this lat,
hour of the day, and | shall not go furthe
except to say to the gentleman that if it b,
true that the duty on coal, which produces
100000 a year, imposes, as he says it does
tax Of sls 900, 600 on the people, Their
is a worse hardship imposed upon tn
miners of that coal and other laborers b,
the duties paid on agricultural products
for find by examining the tables that il
-. ~ ~ OF DSE 0QS On into 4 u, tra.c,,r,