Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/90

66 silly device of “the new secession in the House of Representatives,”—how long people will dance to these tunes and pay the fiddler, I shall not undertake to predict. But I believe it will not be very long. We are constantly told that this is now a very prosperous country. Is it true? Unquestionably, some people are prosperous, very,—so prosperous, indeed, that Mr. Butterworth, a Republican, could say on the floor of Congress: “There are industries in this country in which the dividends have been enormous. I can name upon my ten fingers men whose combined profits in the last decade have exceeded those of all the agriculturists of any State in this Union.”

There are among us not only prosperous men, but prosperous classes. But the prosperity of a country in the true sense depends no less on the distribution of wealth than on the creation of it. Do you think you can make the American farmers, the largest class of all, believe that they belong to the prosperous ones? You hear them loudly bewailing their constantly growing indebtedness, and in anxiety for their future you see them wildly groping about for measures of relief. That is no sign of prosperity nor contentment. To whatever cause they may to-day ascribe their troubles, they cannot long fail to see that it is a losing business to sell their staples at the low prices determined by the increasing competition of the whole world, while being obliged to purchase all their necessaries at prices artificially enhanced by our high tariff. No, a disadvantage felt by a majority of our population is bound at last to tell.

Another feeling will tell that, growing up among the wisest of our manufacturers, a grab-game tariff like ours is, in the long run, not only not a help, but rather an obstacle to a healthy development of their industries. You must not be surprised if at some day not far distant the manufacturer of New England joins hands with the