Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/89

Rh “confidence game” practiced upon the American people? Nor has it the public good for an excuse; for the same history teaches us that the country was most generally and harmoniously prosperous, progressive and contented in all its interests, agricultural, commercial and industrial, during the periods when the tariff was lowest.

But what now? Republican protectionists insist that the tariff is firmly established for ten years. It has ceased to be an issue, says one. It is history, says another. How blind those are who do not wish to see the truth! Even if the opponents of this tariff let it alone, its friends and beneficiaries will not. Why, the conference report on this tariff bill was still pending in the Senate, the child was not yet fairly born, when a Representative already introduced a bill in the House to raise the duties on binding twine. More than ever will the incompetents and speculators rush into manufacturing, and, getting into difficulty, clamor for higher duties to help them on. More than ever will greedy candidates for millionairedom seek to improve their opportunities and clamor for higher duties. More than ever will, under this jumble of inconsistencies, one protected industry be clogged and hampered by the protection given to another, and clamor for higher duties. The demand for higher and higher duties will irresistibly assert itself, unless the great mass of the people, rise up against this system of injustice and extortion, and call a halt in thunder tones.

When will this be? How long so many people will permit themselves to be befogged by those well-worn sophistries about the infants to be nursed, the home market for the farmer and the tariff as the only support of the workingman's wages; how long they will suffer themselves to be diverted from their true interests by the past record of a “grand old party,” by the stale demagogue screech about the rebel brigadiers, or the more recent