But, whichever theory be true, it is clear that protection can add nothing to the amount of wages.  It cannot increase the amount of capital applicable to the payment of wages, unless it can be shown that the aggregate capital of a country can be increased by legislation; nor can it add to the efficiency of labor, for that depends upon individual effort exclusively.  A man who makes little in a day now may in a year make much more in the same time; his labor has become more efficient.  Whether this shalt be done depends on the taste, temperament, application, aptitude, and skill of the individual.  No one will pretend that protection can increase the aggregate of these qualities in the labor of the country.  The result is that it is impossible for protection, either by adding to the wage fund or by increasing the efficiency of labor, to enhance the wages of laboring men, a theory which I shall shortly show is incontrovertibly established by the facts.

I will now, Mr. Chairman, briefly present a few of the principal objections to a tariff for protection.  As has been shown, the basis of protection is an increase in the price of the protected products.  Who pays this increased price?  I shall not stop now to consider the argument often urged that it is paid by the foreign producer, because it can be easily shown to the contrary by every one’s experience.  I shall for this argument assume it as demonstrated that the increase of price which protection makes is paid by the consumer.  This suggests the first great objection to protection, that it compels the consumer to pay more for goods than they are really worth, ostensibly to help the business of a producer.  Now consumers constitute the vast majority of the people.  The producers of protected articles are few in comparison with them.  It is true that most men are both producers and consumers.  But, for the great majority, there is little or no protection for what they produce, but large protection for what they consume.  The tariff is principally levied upon woollen goods, lumber, furniture, stoves and other manufactured articles of iron, and upon sugar and salt.  The necessities of life are weighted with the burden.  It is out of the necessities of the people, therefore, that the money is realized to support the protective system.  I say, Mr. Chairman, that it is beyond the sphere of true governmental power to tax one man to help the business of another.  It is, by power, taking money from one to give it to another.  This is robbery, nothing more nor less.  When a man earns a dollar it is his own; and no power of reasoning can justify the legislative power in taking it from him except for the uses of the government.