Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 October 1884 — A TARIFF FOR PROTECTION. [ARTICLE]

A TARIFF FOR PROTECTION.

Remarks of Hon. James G. Blaine at Bellaire, Ohio. The question of a tariff for protectton ia primarily of interest to the latiortng man. The original material that enters into any fabric constitutes a very small element la the cost of' that fabric. If you take a steamship that costs ssi 0,000 when she Is launched, the material in her costs ?.\ouo. the labor >433.000. If you take a ton of, pig iron that sells in your market today for S2O the material that goes into it does not cost originally over 90 cents; $ 9.10 is labor. I ment on these iaots, which might be var.ed indefinitely, for illustration in many departments; to show that it a tariff for protection is primarily or especially of interest to any bne, it is to laboring man (cries of “ You’re right”), and if tlie laboring man will nqf protect himself wi'-h his vote, how can he ask others to do it. (Cries wf "That’s , so," and cheers.! The effect of a tariff for protection to not a question of speculation. It to a question of fact, a question on which yon can appeal to figures. You are citizens of the State of Ohio. . lou have a new city which has grown up here within the last fifteen years. You are one ot the evidences of the great growth of the State. Ohio is the third State in the Union in population and in wealth, and I have had occasion to say at other meetings to-day what I now say to you and what I beg to Impress npon your minds. I want yon to take two epochs in the history of Ohio. Take first the year 1860. Your State was then about sixty years old. It was seventy-three .years then from the time Ohio was organized i s a part of the Northwest Territory'. In those seventy-three years of Territorial and State existence the citizens of Ohio have accumu ated wealth to the amount of sl,loo,uoo,tXM>. The United States census of 1860 shows that the total wraith of Ohio was then a little over eleven hundred millions, a very large sum of, money. In ism the industrial and financial policy of the United Mates was changed by the incoming ot the Republican party, and in consequence of that change a protective tariff was enacted, which has L>een ever since in force. In 1880, twenty years after the cen-us of which I have just spokien. another census was taken, and it was found that in those twenty years the aggregate wealth ot the State of Ohio had increased from 5-1.100,i4M,i)0 >to SiJ.Mc.oliOj 00. You had added to your wealth in those twenty years double as much as had been created in the sev-enty-three preceding. You had added upon an average of $100,000,000 per year to the permanent capitalized wealth of your State [applause], and that was done largely by virtue of and in pursuance of the effect of the protective tariff up on toelabor and the industries of your State. [Renewed applause ! Do you want that to continue ? [Crien of "Yes. yes?”j- Do you want to have any experiments tried upon it? ['No, no."l Do you want Congress to be convulsed with the question so as to unsettle values and check enterprise and frighten capital, and generally, to produce a condition of uncertainty throughout all the financial and business interests ot the Unite.! States? ["No, no, no."J Why? Look at wiiat has been the effect simply of the Morrison tariff bi 11... They did not get it through the House of Representatives even, but they kept the country in turmoil and agitation, and thus effected injuries to the interests of every laboring man and every capitalist in the United States. [“That’s true! That's true!”! Do you want to organize, not merely a change in the tariff, for that might be done, but do you want to organize a perpetual Congressional agitation of that question? [“No!” "No!"] If you do not, the matter to in your own hands. [Great cheer — ing.T Ohio has the power to command that it shall not be. Yon have the power to join in that command, and the opportunity will be given you on the 14th day of Oct. through your Individual ballots. [Prolonged cheering.]

Mr. Blaine’s Speech at Grafton, XV. Va. As your distinguished Chairman has intimated, I am not a stranger to your State. I have known it personally for more than forty years, and I have known this section of it well. I was born on the banks of yonder river, a few miles below the point where it enters Pennsylvania, and you do not need to lie told by me that there was always unity ot feeling among the inhabitants of the Monongahela Valley. But Ido not sec before me the West Virginia which I knew in my boyhood. The West Virginia of forty years ago was comparatively a wilderness; the W est Virginia of to-day is a prosperous industrial center in the United States. West Virginia, as an independent commonwealth, began hex existence during the civil war, and at that day the most, liberal estimate ot total property, according to the United States census, did ncA exceed $180,000,000. In 1870 the census gave you an aggregate of $190,000,000, and In 1880 It showed that you possessed capitalized wealth to the amount of $350,000,000. From the close of the war to the year 1880 West Virginia had, therefore, gained in wealth the enormous sum ot $250,000,000. You have fared pretty well, therefore, under Republican administration. Probably some political opponent does me the honor to listen to me, and I. would ask him, as a candid man, what agency was it that nerved the arm of industry to smite the mountains ami create this wealth In Virginia? It was the prot tective tariff and financial system that gave you good money. Before the war you never had circulating in your midst a bank bill that would pass current 500 miles from home; you do not to-day have a single piece of paper money circulating in West Virginia that is not good all around the globe; not a bill that will not pass us certainly in the money markets of Enrope as in New York or Baltimore, so that the man who works for a day’s wages knows, when Saturday night comes, that he is to be paid in good money. Under the protective tariff your coal industries and your Iron industries and the wealth of your forests have been brought out, and it is for you, voters of West Virginia, to say whether you want this to continue or whether you want to try tree trade. I make bold to say, with all respect, that there is not a Democratic statesman on the stump in West Virginia conspicuous enough to be known to the nation (I speak only ot those I know) who advocates a protective tariff; not one. I go further. I do not know a Democratic statesman who will not acknowledge that a tariff for protection is constitutional, and, therefore, as honest men, they are bound to approve it. The Morrison tariff bill would have struck at the Interests of West Virginia in many vital respects, and it is an amazlngfact that Representatives in Congress from West Virginia voted for that bill. There to a good old adage which I beg to recall to your minds, that God helps those who help themselves, and if West Virginia is not willing to sustain a protective tariff by her vote and her influence sne must not expect it to lie sustained for her by others. If she wants the benefit of a protective tariff shg nyist give to a protective tariff the benefit of her support. I am glad that lam addressing a Southern people, a community that were slave-holders, a community made up of those who were masters and those who were slaves. But I am addressing a slave State no longer. lam appealing to the new South, and I am appealing to West Virginia not to vote upon' a tradition or a prejudice, not to keep her eyes to the rear, but to look to the front and to the future. And it I could lie heard I would make the same appeal to other Southern States— to old Virginia, to North Carolina, to Georgia, to Alabama, to Tennessee, and to Louisiana. They are all interested in a protective tariff, and the questton is, which do they prefer, to gratify a prejudice or to promote general prosperity? West Virginia can lead the way. She can break this seemingly impregnable barrier of the solid South. Solid on what? Solid on a prejudice; solid on a tradition; solid upon doctrines that separate the different portions of the Union. Wtereas I invite you to join in a union not merely in form, but a union in fact, and take your part in the solution of the industrial and financial problems of the time. If West Virginia takes that course on Oct. 14 she will do much to settle the controversies that now agitate us. The repeal of the protective tariff, according to the terms of the Morrison bill, would cost West Virginia a vast sum of money. Retn cen 1870 and 1880 you gained in this State $160,000,000; between 1880 and 1890 you will gain much more with a tariff for protection; but I ask any business man if he believes you can do it with free trade. Here I close my words of counsel, leaving the action to you. I leave you, not as a community influenced by sectional feeling, but as a community broadly national. I leave you as a State allied on the one side to Pennsylvania, and on the other to Ohio, as much as you are to Virginia and Kentucky. I leave you as a State that stands in the van of the new South, inviting the whole South to join in a great national movement which shall in fact and in feeling, as well as in form, make us a people with one U nlon, one Constitution, and one destiny. 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