Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/226

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS

more for them than he can by selling them here ; and he has the right to do it.

Gentlemen talk about a home market. What is a market? A market is where you buy and where you sell. If you say the market to which you allude is only that market in which I shall buy, then it is only half a market. A market is a place where you go to sell and where you go to buy. Restrictive protective tariff forces the American people to buy in the highest market on earth, and forces the great agricultural class which exports $700,000,000 worth of their prod- ucts every year to sell in the cheapest markets on the earth.

When you tax that Minnesota farmer or that Georgia farmer 50 per cent, on what he seeks to bring in return for his own goods, you are diminishing the purchasing power of that which he sells, and you are inflicting an injury upon him to that extent.

But, say my friends on the other side, we want an American system. We w^ant an American system, too ; but we differ as to what constitutes the American system. The Democratic idea of an American system is the largest liberty of all the people consistent with the individual rights of ever}'' person.

The idea of our Republican friends of an American system is a Chinese wall that will force our people to trade with themselves, and not permit them to trade with anybody else. Let us not forget that the same wall that shuts

192

�� �