Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/84

60 to the poor man who looks with a troubled mind at this new increase in the cost of everything? “Be patient, friend, and never grow weary in paying. We must persevere in making every one his contribution to nurse our infant industries until they are strong.” The poor man may curiously inquire how old these infants are. He looks into the history of his country, and finds that several of them were no babies when in 1789 the government first began to nurse them, but were then satisfied with so little that at present it would seem no feeding at all. But he finds that the infants throve lustily, and that many of them grew strong enough to take care of themselves. He will be surprised to see that after 1816, when they were treated as infants again, they relapsed into the habits of infants, complaining and crying that they could not stand alone, and constantly clamoring for more and more nursing. It will startle him to find that after 1846, when the infants were curtly told to stand up and walk alone, they suddenly felt they could do so, and actually did walk on splendidly, and showed even a spirit of proud manliness, disdaining to ask for further support. He will be still more astonished to find that, when during our civil war they were offered compensation pap, the tall, vigorous fellows at once fell into the childish ways again, growing constantly more helpless, until now, a hundred years after they received the first nursing, these huge, fat, voracious, bawling monsters are put into a most gorgeous, gigantic baby carriage and fed with gold spoons at other people's expense.

This is also a proper time for the poor man to remember another argument addressed to him by the protectionist in the nature of a promise: that in a short time the manufacturers would compete among themselves, and that home competition would make prices lower than foreign competition could ever make them. This promise is