GRANT'S SIXTH ANNUAL MESSAGE, DECEMBER 7, 1874.

I would suggest to Congress the propriety of readjusting the tariff so as to increase the revenue, and at the same time decrease the number of articles upon which the duties are levied. Those articles which enter into our manufactures, and are not produced at home, it seems to me, should be entered free. Those articles of manufacture which we produce a constituent part of, but do not produce the whole, that part which we do not produce should be entered free also. I will instance fine wools, dyes, &c. These articles must be imported to form a part of the manufacture of the higher grades of woolen goods.

Chemicals used as dyes compounded in medicines, and used in various ways in manufactures, come under this class. The introduction, free of duty, of such wools as we do not produce would stimulate the manufacture of goods requiring the use of those we do not produce, and, therefore, would be a benefit to home production. There are many articles entering into "home manufactures" which we do not produce ourselves, the tariff upon which increases the cost of producing the manufac tured article. All the corrections in this regard are in the direction of bringing labor and capital in harmony with each other, and of supplying one of the elements of prosperity so much needed.

GARFIELD'S INnaugural adDRESS, MARCH 4, 1881.

The interests of agriculture deserve more attention from the Government than they have yet received. The farms of the United States afford homes and employment for more than one-half our people, and furnish much the largest part of all our exports. As the Government lights our coasts for the protection of mariners and for the benefit of commerce, so it should give to the tillers of the soil the best lights of practical science and experience. Our manufactures are rapidly making us industrially independent, and are opening to capital and labor new and profitable fields of employment. Their steady and healthy growth should still be maintained.

ARTHUR'S FIRST ANNUAL MESSAGE, DECEMBER 6, 1881.

The tariff laws also need revision, but that a due regard may be paid to the conflicting interests of our citizens, important changes should be made with caution.

ARTHUR'S VETO OF THE RIVER AND HARBOR BILL, AUGUST 1, 1882.

The extravagant expenditure of public money is an evil not to be measured by the value of that money to the people who are taxed for it. They sustain a greater injury in the demoralizing effect produced upon those who are intrusted with official duty through all the ramifications of Government.

ARTHUR'S SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE, DECEMBER 4, 1882.

The present tariff system is in many respects unjust. It makes unequal distributions, both of its burdens and its benefits. This fact was practically recognized by a majority of each House of Congress in the passage of the act creating the Tariff Commission. The report of that commission will be placed before you at the begin. ning of this session, and will, I trust, afford you such information as to the condition and prospects of the various commercial, agricultural, manufacturing, mining and other interests of the country, and contain such suggestions for statutory revision as will practically aid your action upon this important subject.

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If the tax on domestic spirits is to be retained, it is plain, therefore, that large reductions from the customs revenue are entirely feasible While recommending this reduction, I am far from advising the abandonment of the policy of so discriminating in the adjustment of details as to afford aid and protection to domestic labor. But the present system should be so revised as to equalize the public burden among all classes and occupations, and bring it into closer harmony with the present needs of industry.

Without entering into minute detail, which, under present circumstances, is quite unnecessary, I recommend an enlargement of the free list so as to include within it the numerous articles which yield inconsiderable revenue, a simplification of the complex and inconsistent schedule of duties upon certain manufactures, particularly those of cotton, iron and steel, and a substantial reduction of the duties upon those articles, and upon sugar, molasses, silk, wool and woolen goods.

ARTHUR'S FOURTH ANNUAL MESSAGE, DECEMBER 1, 1884.

Our system of tax and tariff legislation is yielding a revenue which is in excess of the present needs of the Government. These are the elements from which it is sought to devise a scheme by which, without unfavorably changing the condition of the workingman, our merchant marine shall be raised from its enfeebled condition and new markets provided for the sale, beyond our borders, of the manifold fruits of our industrial enterprises. The problem is complex, and can be solved by no single measure of innovation or reform.

The countries of the American continent and the adjacent islands are, for the United States, the natural marts of supply and demand. It is from them that we should obtain what we do not produce, or do not produce in sufficiency, and it is to them that the surplus productions of our fields, our mills, and our workshops should flow under conditions that will equalize or favor them in comparison with foreign competition.*

For President Cleveland's opinions on this question, see chapter entitled “Cleveland on the Tariff."

CHAPTER XIII.

DEMOCRATIC SECRETARIES OF THE TREASURY.

The Principles Laid Down by Democratic Finance Officers on the Tariff Question.

I.

AS SHOWN BY DANIEL MANNING, CLEVELAND'S FIRST SECRETARY, IN HIS

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT, 1885.

Like our currency laws, our tariff laws are a legacy of war. If its exigencies excuse their origin, their defects are unnecessary after twenty years of peace. They have been retained without sifting or discrimination, although enacted without legislative debate, criticism, or examination.

A horizontal reduction of 10 per cent. was made in 1872, but was repealed in 1875, and rejected in 1884. They require at your custom-houses the employment of a force sufficient to examine, appraise, and levy duties upon more than 4,182 different articles.

Many rates of duty begun in war have been increased since, although the late Tariff Commission declared them "injurious to the interests supposed to be benefited," and said that a "reduction would be conducive to the general prosperity." They have been retained, although the long era of falling prices, in the case of specific duties, has operated a large increase in rates. They have been retained at an average ad valorem rate for the last year of over 46 per cent., which is but 24 per cent. less than the highest rate of the war period, and is nearly 4 per cent. more than the rate before the latest revision.

Some rates have been retained after ruining the industries they were meant to advantage. Other rates have been retained after effecting a higher price for a domestic product at home than it was sold abroad for. The general high level of rates has been retained on the theory of countervailing lower wages abroad, when, in fact, the higher wages of American labor are at once the secret and the security of our capacity to distance all competition from "pauper labor," in any market. All changes have left unchanged, or changed for the worst, by new schemes of classification and otherwise, a complicated, cumbrous, intricate group of laws which are not capable of being administered with impartiality to all our merchants.

II.

THE SAME PRINCIPLES ENFORCED IN HIS SECOND ANNUAL REPORT,

MADE IN DECEMBER, 1886.

One proud fact attests the substance of our prosperity, and is the guaranty as well as proof of our power to hold against all competition the markets of the United States for everything we choose to dig or fabricate or grow, and to command and control for our surplus products, against all rivals, any foreign market.

We pay to labor the highest wages in the world. Highly-paid labor signifies the most efficient labor-signifies that high wages are the most profitable wagessignifies that the high rate is earned. The highest wages to the laborer thus involve and imply the lowest percentage of labor-cost in the product. But, other things being equal, the lowest percentage of labor-cost in any product is the guaranty that competition is outstripped.

The low wages of pauper labor signify least efficiency, which is but another name for highest percentage of labor-cost in the product. Other things being equal, it is obvious that high wages can never be paid unless it is profitable to pay them, and it can only be a good business to pay the highest wages, because the efficiency of those who earn them vindicates its superiority by the reduction of labor-cost in the product.

EFFICIENCY OF HIGH-PAID LABOR.

High wages to labor and cheaper product are correlative terms. Low wages to labor and a costlier product are correlative terms. The one implies the other wherever labor competes with labor upon otherwise equal ground. What pauper stands any chance competing with the intelligent artisan? The "pauper labor-of-Europe" cry is a bugaboo, except that, in truth, our war-tariff taxes favor "pauper-labor" at the expense of American labor. Its products are not fenced out by our tariff laws. They come in because we ourselves destroy our own easy power of successful competition, even in our home market. By tariff taxes on raw materials we fence in our own surplus products, making them cost too much to compete at home, and, of course, too much to compete abroad, with manufactures from untaxed raw materials. In Mexico, Central and South America, we can, of course, make no better headway against European competition than at home. Diplomacy is not an acceptable substitute for trade and its laws. Our highly-paid labor ensures the lowest percentage of labor cost in the product, but our tariff taxes upon raw materials handicap American manufacturers with the highest percentage of cost of material in the product. The result is that capital and labor united in our American industrial products, despite our advantage in the most highly-paid and efficient labor, are put into a hopeless competition with the industrial products of other nations, none of which taxes raw materials. The advantage we possess in the most efficient and highly paid labor in the world is nullified by the self-imposed disadvantage of tariff taxed raw material, with which our labor is inwrought.

OUR SUICIDAL TAXES ON RAW MATERIALS.

The total value of our domestic exports for the last fiscal year was almost exactly $666,000,000, of which 86 per cent. were the products of our fields, forests, fisheries and mines, and 16 per cent. only were the sum total of manufactured products in which American labor was inwrought.

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Prolonged war tariff taxes, incompetent and brutal as a scheme of revenue, fatal to the extension of our foreign markets, and disorderly to our domestic trade, have, in the last resort, acted and reacted with most ruinous injury upon our wage earners. As the more numerous part of our population, our wage earners are of course the first, the last, and the most to be affected by injurious laws. Every gov ernment by true statesmen will watchfully regard their condition and interests. If these are satisfactory, nothing else can be of very momentous importance; but our so-called protective statesmanship has disfavored them altogether. Encumbering with clumsy help a few thousand employers, it has trodden down the millions of wage earners. It has for twenty-one years denied them even the peaceable fruits of liberty.

UNTAX THE CLOTHING OF SIXTY MILLION PEOPLE.

I respectfully recommend to Congress that they confer upon the wage earners of the United States the boon of untaxed clothing, and in order thereto, the immediate passage of an act simply and solely placing raw wool upon the free list.

Of course, a repeal of the duty on raw wool should be followed by, but need not wait for, a compensating adjustment of the duties on manufactured woolens, whilst our manufacturers are learning the lesson that with the highest paid and most efficient labor in the world, with the most skilled management and the best inventive appliances, they need fear no competition from any rivals in the world, in home or foreign markets, so long as they can buy their wools free, of every kind.

But the common daily clothing of the American people need not be taxed; therefore, it ought not to be taxed; to free their clothing of taxes will finally reduce, by half, their expense for one of the three great necessities of life, and thus enlarge honestly and justly the income of every wage earner in the United States.

III.

THE THEORIES LAID DOWN BY SECRETARY FAIRCHILD ON TARIFF ABUSES IN ANNUAL REPORT, DECEMBER, 1887.

There is left only the revenue from customs taxation to be considered. Here is where the reduction should be made, and while reducing, advantage should be taken of the opportunity to reform the abuses and inequalities of the tariff laws. Add to the free list as many articles as possible. Reduce duties upon every dutiable article to the lowest point possible; but in ascertaining these possibilities the present situation of labor and business must always be kept in mind.

While not admitting that labor elsewhere can injure labor as a whole in this country by giving it clothing and tools at less cost than it can make them here for itself, no more than the sun, the winds, the waters, and, indeed, all of the forces of nature injure the labor of the world because they do for mankind far more of man's work than he does himself, yet it must be admitted that the cheaper labor of other -countries might now injure a portion of the labor of this country if the articles made by the former were admitted here upon terms which would enable our people to buy them for the prices at which they are sold in other countries. If this obligation, which it is claimed that labor as a whole has assumed toward labor engaged in particular industries in this country, does exist, it should be sacredly kept, however unwise and ill-considered we may believe its assumption to have been; and whether the existence of this obligation is admitted or not, the fact of this present employment of a portion of the laborers of the country should always be in mind when making changes in the tariff, to the end that their interests may not suffer thereby.

REGARD FOR INTERESTS ESTABLISHED UNDER THE LAW.

Under the encouragement offered by the tariff laws, large sums of money have been invested in manufacturing enterprises, and the capital thus invested must also be remembered, for it is important to the country that it should receive reasonable reward, and its power to pay fair wages to the labor which it employs depends upon its own prosperity. But it must also be borne in mind that it was no part of the alleged compact, nor should it be claimed on any other ground, that the labor engaged in the tariff-protected industries should be rewarded beyond the general labor of the country, due allowance being made for skill and experience, or that the capital invested in them should return vast fortunes to its owners.

The country was promised the benefit of whatever competition might naturally arise among the manufacturers when they should be once established, and to this it has a right. The tariff laws are the country's laws; they do not belong to any section or to any class; their amendment should be approached in a spirit of justice, and with full consideration of all of the obligations which exist between sections of the country toward each other, and of those engaged in one pursuit toward those engaged in other pursuits, but it should also be approached with courage, and with a determination to dispose of this business in the same way that other business is disposed of, and with full regard to the rights and equities, as well as the interests of all concerned.