Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/87

Rh cheaper production. If they do not, I, for one, will be as ready to repeal this law as I am now to vote for it.

What? Not one word about the anti-trust law as a remedy? Not one. That shows what faith Senator Sherman has in its efficiency. What, then, did the Senator's anxious appeal mean? Simply this:

Protective manufacturers, this tariff law delivers the consumers of this country into your hands. Under it you can, if you are wicked enough to do so, “combine and confederate in order to cheat the people of that which they have a right to enjoy,” and thereby immensely enrich yourselves. But I pray you to have mercy upon them. Do not yield to the temptation here offered to you: abandon your greed for the rapid gain of wealth, and permit your profits to be cut down by free and fair competition. Be good, be generous, be self-denying. Content yourselves voluntarily with less than this law enables you to get. But, if you do rob the people by extorting exorbitant prices, as this high tariff tempts you to do, I for one shall be ready to repeal it.

This was a cry of nature, doing honor to the Senator's heart. But, if such evils are to be apprehended, would it not have been wise to consider before the passage of such a law whether we have a moral right to make laws which give any class of men the power, for their own benefit, “to cheat the people of that which they have the right to enjoy”? Lead us not into temptation is a good old prayer. I know among the manufacturers there are as many good and high-minded men as in any other class. But I fear the temptation offered by this tariff law will prove too strong to not a few of them. Some may even have had their quiet chuckle over the Senator's appeal to their generosity. Why, at the moment the Senator was speaking, the papers reported a new trust in process of formation. No, there are hosts of men aching to make