Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/24

20 was a carrying State, she wanted free-trade; now a manufacturing State, she desires protection. That is all natural enough; men wish to protect their interests, whatsoever they may be. But no talk is made about protecting the labour of the rude man, who has no capital, nor skill, nothing but his natural force of muscles. The foreigner underbids him, monopolizing most of the brute labour of our large towns and internal improvements. There is no protection, no talk of protection for the carpenter or the bricklayer. I do not complain of that. I rejoice to see the poor wretches of tho old world finding a home where our fathers found one before. Yet, if we cared for men more than for money, and were consistent with our principles of protection, why, we should exclude all foreign workmen, as well as their work, and so raise the wages of the native hands. That would doubtless be very foolish legislation—but perhaps not, on that account, very strange. I know we are told that without protection, our hand-worker, whose capital is his skill, cannot compete with the operative of Manchester and Brussels, because that operative is paid but little, I "know not if it be true, or a mistake. But who ever told us such men could not compete with the slave of South Carolina who is paid nothing? foreign capital; perhaps our own labour against the "pauper of Europe;" why not against the slave labour of the Southern States? Because the controlling class prefers money and postpones man. Yet the slave-breeder is protected. He has, I think, the only real monopoly in the land. No importer can legally spoil his market, for the foreign slave is contraband. If I understand the matter, the importation of slaves was allowed, until such men as pleased could accumulate their stock. The reason why it was afterwards forbidden I think was chiefly a mercantile reason: the slave-breeder wanted a monopoly, for God knows and you know that it is no worse to steal grown men in Africa than to steal new born babies in Maryland, to have them born for the sake of stealing them. Free labour may be imported, for it helps the merchant-producer and the merchant-manufacturer. Slave labour is declared contraband, for the merchant slave-breeders want a monopoly.