The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1888-03-29

it for mechanical purposes"
Extract from Senator Sherman's
speech in reply to President Cleve-
lands Free Trade message:
The wisdom of protection to domes-
tic manufactures has been delnonstra-
ted by the lights of experience during
and since the war.
1t has produced the most bounteous
stream Of revenue, enabling us to
meet all the vast expenditures of the
war, to sustain and improve the pub
lie credit, and to rapidly reduce the
public debt without severity or dis
tress.
It has so increased and diversified
our domestic manufactures that they
have grown to the enormous sum Of
seven thousand million dollars, includ-
ing every article of necessity or desire,
and yet in every stage Of it's growth
has reduced the cost to the consumer
more and more.
In spite of false prophesies it has
increased our foreign commerce SO
that our exports and imports COM
bined, including specie, amounted to
the sum Of S1,5O4,OOO,OOO during the
last fiscal year, greater far than during
any year of lower duties, and double
that Of our foreign commerce prior to
1860.
This American policy Of protection
has been adopted and followed by all
European nations except Great Brit
ain, and has been approved and cop
led by the ablest statesmen Of Europe,
including Bismarck and Cavour. 1t
has even been adopted and copied by
all the dependencies Of Great Britain.
Our neighbor, Canada, when armed
by the parent government with auton-
omy and power to make laws for
itself, has adopted our policy in near
ly all its details, has almost copied our
tariff laws, and in some Of the sched-
ules, especially that Of metals, has lit
orally adopted our rates. Australia
and all the dependencies of great Brit
ain armed with self-government are
closely following our line of policy,
and thus have grown rapidly in
strength and population. It is the
desire of the people Of Ireland to gam
the consent of Great Britain that she
may, by home rule, protect her indus
tries and thus restore her waste places
and recover her wandering population.
Great Britain alone pursues the pol
icy Of free trade, only because by GEN.
turies Of projection she has so estab-
lished her manufactures that she can
compete with all the nations Of the
world. She is purely commercial
nation, with her ships on every shore
with her hand of power grasping pos
sessions and markets for her surplus
manufactures in every part Of the
habitable globe. But even in England
there is a growing party demanding
restriction upon the importation of
the products of Germany. France, and
Belgium. When in some distant flu.
ture this Republic may have so estab-
lished our industries we may profit by
her example. Until then l prefer to
follow the lights Of our experience,
not to be deluded by the sophisms of
free trade, but to preserve our home
market for domestic productions,
looking forward to the time when
competition at home may open the
markets of the world to our manufac-
turers. Even now we can, if we will,
by wise commercial regulations with
Canada and Mexico and the South
American States, extend the market
for our home manufactures over vast
regions, exchanging tools and imple-
ments, cotton goods, and furniture for
sugar and coffee and other tropical
productions in the south, and lumber,
timber and furs in the north.
Senators, we do not appreciate as
we ought the commanding position
now held by the United States among
the nations of the world. We do not
need to learn lessons of political econ
omy from the mother country, for the
experience of one hundred years has
taught us that our continental posi-
ton, our vast undeveloped resources,
our diversified soil, climate, and pro-
ductions, our free institutions, found
ed upon the equality and rights Of cit
liens, bound together by the same
language, religion, and laws, demand
a line of public policy which less fa-
vored nations, watching each other
and jealousy curbed by "the balance
of power" are not free to adopt. Our
ancestors won independence from
these thralls. Our fathers won the
freedom Of the ocean and proclaimed |
the doctrine Of continental exemption
from European aggressions. We in
our day have tested the strength Of |