, 1923-10-09

President Mckinley at Buffalo, in September
1901, in the last public utterance he made, said:
by sensible trade arrangements, which will
not interrupt our home production, we shall ex-
tend the outlets for our increasing surplus. We
should take from our customers such of their
products as we can use without harm to our
industry and labor,
In recent years., nternationalists and free
traders, both enemies of the American policy of
protective tariff, have persistently misrepresent-
ed President McKinley's last utterance by omit
ting from their references to his Buffalo speech
the two sentences quoted above. They have claim
ed that in his last speech he admitted the UNI
wisdom of our protective policy and urged his
countrymen to abandon it and permit our mar
kets to be invaded by foreign producers.
As the above quotation clearly shows in his
last public address President Mckinley was I'M
'alterably opposed to any economic policy which
injured American industry and labor, and re.
manned as stauch a friend of the protective tariff
system as he was when he was in congress and
led the fight for the enactment of the Mckinley
tariff.
In the presidential campaign of 1920, Senator
Harding, speaking as the Republican candidate
said, relative to the need of protecting our home
markets.
"The American people will not heed today, be-
cause world competition is not yet restored;
but the morrow will soon come when the world
will seek our markets and we must think oil
American eminence."
In his first message to congress, assembled in
special session, President Harding, speaking of
the necessity of a protective tariff, said
"One who values American prosperity and
maintained standards of wage and living can
have no sympathy with the proposal that easy
entry and the flood of imports will cheaper our
costs of living. 1t is more likely to destroy our
capacity to buy"
Again, in his message to congress in December
1921, urging the early enactment of a permanent
tariff, President Harding took cognizance of the
of international bankers, importers
and proleaguers that in order to promote Eu-
Iropean trade we should permit our home mar
Ikets to be exploited and should sacrifice our own
industrial eminence in order to restore normal
exchange and prosperity to other nations. Upon
that point, President Harding said.
Sensible of every obligation of humanity,
and finance, linked, as they are, in the
present world condition, it is not to be argued
that we need destroy ourselves to be helpful to
others. With all my heart L wish restoration to
the peoples blighted by the awful world war,
but the process of restoration does not lie in our
acceptance of like conditions. = + 1t is not an
unworthy selfishness to seek to save ourselves
when the processes of that salvation are not only
not denied to others, but commended to them.
We seek to undermine for others no industry by
which they subsist; we are obligated to permit
the undermining of none of our own which make
for employment and maintained activities"
"The morrow of world competition" which Mr..
Harding forsaw in 1920 is upon us. The alterna-
tive which he said would be presented to Amer
lea when that day arrived is DelOre us-tne al
formative of America first or surrendering Amer
lean interests. World competition has never been
as keen as it is today.
The only safeguard against this menace is pro-
lection in the form of tariffs. Fortunately the
Republican party foresaw those conditions and
provided a safeguard for American industries
by the enactment of the Fordney-McCumber tar
iff. There is not the least doubt that our indus
tries would be PROSTATE and America today
would be i'll the midst of hard times were it not
for this Fordney-M tariff.
The proof of this is that other countries which
have not such protection have unemployment
Industrial and commercial failures, stagnation
of business, want and suffering on every hand to
n degree never before experienced. In those coun-
tries the wisdom of President Harding's state
ment that a flood of imports, instead of cheaper
ing costs of living, destroys a peoples capaciy
to buy altogether, is being demonstrated. No one
factor has contributed so much to Americas
present prosperity as the protective tariff. 1t is
no time TO listen to the internationalists and free
traders who would sacrifice American interests
Ito enrich Themselves