Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/556

522 countries which have protective tariffs, it cannot possibly be true that the relative rates of wages are determined by the existence or non-existence of a protective tariff system. The Republican argument that, if the tariff be disturbed, the wages of American workingmen must fall in consequence, is thus clearly set at naught by notorious facts.

I shall not theorize upon the wages question, but simply mention the further facts, that such a measure as the removal of duties from raw materials has never resulted in a reduction of wages; that wages in the United States considerably rose during the low-tariff period from 1846 to 1861; that wages have also risen since that time, but most in the unprotected industries, and that wages in England have risen since the beginning of the free-trade period between twenty and one hundred and fifty per cent. Tariff protection is therefore not at all a condition sine qua non of a rise in wages. Moreover, every candid and reflecting observer understands that in the United States the rate of wages is largely affected by the abundance of fertile, cheap and easily accessible lands and an almost infinite variety of natural resources offering labor, ample opportunity and reward; that American industrial labor is distinguished by a superior inventive genius, skill and productive energy which make it intrinsically more valuable than foreign labor; that, in other words, the American workingman earns more than the workingman of the Old World, because he generally produces more; and that the American rate of wages will not only be maintained, but will have the best chance of being increased, if American industry be given a larger field of operation by relieving it of those impediments which in a great measure exclude it from the markets of the world.

It is avowedly the Republican plan of campaign to frighten the public mind with a picture of a destructive collapse of our manufacturing industries and of the