What a commentary this upon protection, which has brought to such a crisis one of the chief industries protected, and which is here confessed to have failed, after twenty years, to enable it to compete even in our own markets with foreign goods of the finer quality!  What is true of textile manufacturing is also true of many other industries.  What remedy, then, will afford the American manufacturer relief?  Not the one here suggested of increasing the manufacture of goods of finer quality, for, aside from the impracticability of the plan, this will only aggravate the difficulty by adding to the aggregate stock in the home market. * * * The American demand cannot consume what they produce.  They must therefore enlarge their market or stop production.  To adopt the latter course is to invite ruin.  The market cannot be increased in this country.  It must be found in other countries.  Foreign markets must be sought.  But these cannot be opened as long as we close our markets to their products, with which alone, in most instances, they can buy; in other words, as long as we continue the protective system.

I say, therefore, to the American manufacturer, sooner or later you must choose between the alternatives of ruin or the abandonment of protection.  Why hesitate in the decision?  Are not Canada and South America and Mexico your natural markets?  England now supplies them with almost all the foreign goods they buy.  Why should not you?  Your coal and iron lie together in the mountain side, and can almost be dropped without carriage into your furnaces; while in England the miners must go thousands of feet under the earth for those products. * * * The situation is yours.  Break down your protective barrier.  All the world will soon do the same.  Their walls will disappear when ours fall.  Open every market of the world to your products; give steady employment to your laborers.  In a little while you will have the reward which nature always gives to those who obey her laws, and will escape the ruin which many of your most intelligent opera-tors see impending over your industries.

I have not time to-day to more than refer to the ruinous effect of protection upon our carrying trade.  In 1856, seventy-five per cent. of the total value of our imports and exports was carried in American vessels; while in 1879 but seventeen per cent. was carried in such vessels, and in 1880 the proportion was still less.  In 1855, 381 ships and barks were built in the United States, while in 1879 there were only 37.  It is a question of very few years at this rate until American vessels and the American flag will disappear from the high seas.  Protection has more than all else to do with the prostration of this trade.  It accomplishes this result (1) by enhancing the price of the materials which enter into the construction of vessels, so that our ship-builders cannot compete with foreigners engaged in the same business; (2) by increasing the cost of domestic production so that American manufactured goods cannot profitably be exported; and (3) by disabling our merchants from bringing back on their return trips foreign cargoes in exchange for our products.