Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/67

Rh the ever-increasing demand for more, more; the rapid growth of appetite on eating; four great tariff acts, not counting the war measure, during a time covering one man's active business life, each one thought sufficient at the time, each one found too low after a little while; stability in the laws affecting business always loudly insisted upon to be the most desirable, and that stability always disturbed by a demand for higher duties; “tariff tinkering” always fiercely condemned as a contrivance of the evil-disposed, and then tariff tinkering recklessly carried on by the protectionists themselves; and thus the tariff duties driven up from an average of 8½ to 24½, to 32½, to 43⅓. Whence this uncertainty and unrest?

For the explanation of such phenomena, I like to turn to the friends of the system. In a speech delivered in 1870, my highly esteemed friend, Senator Morrill, one of the most eminent of American protectionists, spoke as follows:

It is a libel to charge, as it has often been charged, that protection is always increasing the demand for further legislative favors. The facts are all the other way. Experienced manufacturers are always moderate in their demands. Only those unskilled or working with inferior machinery clamor for extravagant protection; and such extravagances may be properly rejected, just as the clamor in the opposite direction may be rejected. Prudent men know that large protection rouses a host of wild and reckless competitors, who flourish for a day and go down with a crash, carrying with them even those whose more prudent management deserved success.

My esteemed friend can certainly not have meant to say that tariff duties were constantly raised, during the period I have mentioned, without being asked for by manufacturers and others believing themselves benefited by protection. That they were so asked for, and even