Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/217

 REED

detracts not one iota from the fame of Alex- ander Bell that a dozen men were close on his track. It has been so in every great invention. I say, therefore, that it was the diversification of our industries that has stimulated inventions. Otherwise all the inventive power of America would have run to waste; and when a man cal- culates the wonders of American inventive genius he knows where some of our wealth comes from. As a further proof that invention is born of necessity, tell me why great inventions never come until the world is in such shape as to enjoy them ? What would the Crusaders have done with railroads? There was not money enough in the world to travel or merchandise to keep them going a week.

Here let me meet one other question, and let me meet it fairly. We are charged with having claimed that the tariff alone will raise wages, and we are pointed triumphantly to the fact that the wages of France and Germany, pro- tected by a tariff, are lower than England, free of all tariff, and to America with a tariff and still higher wages. We have never made such a claim in any such form. Free-traders have set up that claim for us in order to triumphantly knock it ovv?r. What we do say is, that where two nations have equal skill and equal appliances find a market of nearly equal size, and one of them can hire labor at one-half less, nothing but a tariff' can maintain higher wages, and that we can prove.

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