Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1891 — WHY I AM A PROTECTIONIST. [ARTICLE]

WHY I AM A PROTECTIONIST.

By Hon* Henry M. Hoyt, Ex-Gov-ernor of Pennsylvania. I am a ‘'Protectionist’, because tbe welfare and happiness of the people in America depend on their ability to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences and comforts which our manufacturers supply. There is no other source of adequate supply for many such commodities except American Manufacturers, so that the American manufacturer is more indispensable to the American people than tbe American people is to the manufacturer. While American labor is more efficient and more productive than labor elsewhere, it yet remains ineontestibly true that there are thousands of commodities which cannot be made by our artisans in competition with low priced labor elswhere. If the laborers here are to consume this class of manufactured goods, the industries which produce them mustbeshielded from destructive competition or the producer most lire in some other country, Hbe lire* here he must

either make them or go without them; he cannot buy them, for the reason that there is no “ something else” he can do by which he can earn the purchase money for the foreign article. Nobody but an economic idiot would now contend that the Protective duty adds a “soumarque” to cost of the commodity. Its only effect is -to give the market to the American producer. The Free-Trader may beat about’ the bush with his speculation, dogmatism, sophistries, and insolence, but the root of -the matter lies within the compass of the foregoing proposition of facts.