Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1896-10-31

What is a protective tariff? How car
| illustrate it to you? Well, suppose
start To build IA wooden mill in thi!
country and you start To build one il
Scotland or England. You pay 81
DAY Tor labor; | pay 81. from the TIM
the first shovel Of dirt is thrown III
from The ground to lay the foundation
OF your mill until that mill has beer
finished and is in running order. Youi
mill has cost you S100, 600 mine has cost
me $4,000 So long as We run those
( mills you are running an interest ac-
count nf 100000 and ! am paying it on
500, 900 When you go to hire your
employees. you pay them 81 a day,
( while | pay mine overe here 81 a day.
When We have produced our material,
you come over here and lay down a yard
of your cloth beside mine. Mine has
cost me 81 yard, yours has cost you
: but little more than 81.
One of three things must occur:
either you drive me out of the market
! l. have got 10 close my mill. turn my
employees out into idleness. or / have
got To reduce the rate of wages in this
| country down to the rate that is paid
on the other side, or l must have pro-
tective tariff to protect me against il.
| lApplause) What do we say to our
friend on the other side? We don't tell
him that he shan't come into this
country to sell his goods. Not by any
means. But we say to him. you pay
only half as much wages as we do
Now, you may come into our market.
but you must do this before you do it:
you mist take just the difference be-
tween .h,a which in,
your country and the wages which we
pay in our country and drop it into
Unelet Sans treasury to help pay the
running expenses of this government
tApplause.)
Our opponents tell us, Mr.. Bryan
and his crowd. that we must have free
coinage of silver at the ratio of Is ounces
of silver to one ounce of gold, without
limit. They say the people of this
country are suffering for free silver. ]
suppose. my friends. that eight months
ago today there was no intelligent man
n this country who believed our oppo-
nents had any more chance to elect their
candidate for president in this year of
grace 1896 than they had to so to the
moon on a rainbow. They had made a
bad record with the new policy which
they established. They are not fools
any more than we. They knew the
people of this country would not Swal-
low that again if they knew it, so they
sought to treat us as the mother does
her child when she wants it to take a
pill by sugar coating it, but the pill is
there all the same. So they expect they
can coat their bill of free trade, silver
coat it, and make the people swallow it
again in 1896. A new issue must be
raised. and so this free silver issue was
raised.
But our free silver friends say they
are going to help the debtor pay off his
debts by increasing the amount of cir
culating medium through the free COIN
age of silver. Now, my free silver
friends. when you do that. have you
looked into that proposition? We have
today in this country about $625. OOO.-
900 worth of gold: we have a little less
value than that in silver. Will the gold
remain in circulation after you have
given us free coinage of silver at the
ratio of Is to |? There is no instance
in the record of nations where it has
been attempted to circulate the two
coins upon parity of coin value, that
is. each having the same value to pay
debts and dues. where one has more in
trinsic value than the other. but the
best dollar goes out of circulation. 1t
is very easy to see why. Why suppose
that in 1873 you owed me $4,000 and
you had 10000 silver dollars to pay me
with and they We're worth 1O4 cents,
would you give me the $1,000 silver dol
lars? If you had a financial head YOU
would sell them for the bullion value.
that is $1.04 and you would put the
four per cent premium in your pocket
and give me the $4,000, would you not i?
Our silver friends say that we hold
the present silver dollar up to parity
with gold To be sure. but because. as
my friend said that was Uncle Sans
dollar. He coined it out of his own sill
YER. He promised TO hold it at a parity
with gold. and he has held it at parity
with gold. A gold dollar stands behind
every silver dollar in circulation today.
Applause) There isn't a man here
who has got silver dollar but that he
can get gold for ii ut the bank. or il he