Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/310

290 But why should you sit still and sullenly silent while a fight is going on against the oppressive policy of high protective duties on imports, which has burdened you as well as us enormously, increasing the cost of so many of the necessaries of life and of the requisites of labor, and is thus continually taking money from the pockets of the many to put it, not into the public treasury of the people, but into the pockets of the privileged individuals and corporations, whom it benefits? Do you not feel its exhausting weight in every shirt and coat that covers your backs; in the shoes that protect your feet; in every pound of iron and steel in your agricultural implements; in every lock and bolt that fastens your doors; in every shingle-nail in the roof of your houses that shields you from rain and sunshine, and in every grain of salt you eat? You must have discovered by this time, by practical experience, the fallacy of the favorite argument addressed by protectionists to an agricultural people, that the artificial fostering of certain branches of industry will benefit the great agricultural interest by providing a home market for agricultural products. The farmer need only put his hand into his own pocket, or look at the price-lists of agricultural products, to ascertain that while the protective policy enormously enhances the price of almost everything the farmer is obliged to buy, the price of that he has to sell is no higher, nay, in many instances rather lower, than before, and it requires but little experience in the art of ciphering to discover that this is a losing business. More than this, the man who looks beyond the horizon of the farm must by this time have been struck by the fact, that under this same system of protection our ship-building has been annihilated, our commercial flag is disappearing from the seas, and our export trade is crippled and enormously overbalanced by our imports, while our coasts and frontier