Yet, Mr. Chairman, the present tariff takes hundreds of millions of dollars every year from the farmer, the laborer, and other consumers, under the claim of enriching the manufacturer.  It may not be much for each one to contribute, yet in the aggregate it is an enormous sum.  For many, too, it is very much.  The statistics will show that every head of a family who receives four hundred dollars a year in wages pays at least one hundred dollars on account of protection.  Put such a tax on all incomes and the country would be in a ferment of excitement until it was removed.  But it is upon the poor and lowly that the tax is placed, and their voices are not often heard in shaping the policies of tariff legislation.  I repeat, the product of one’s labor is his own.  It is his highest right, subject only to the necessities of the government, to do with it as he pleases.  Protection invades, destroys that right.  It ought to be destroyed, until every American freeman can spend his money where it will be of the most service to him.

To illustrate the cost of protection to the consumer, consider its operation in increasing the price of two or three of the leading articles protected.  Take paper for example.  The duty on that commodity is twenty per cent. ad valorem.  Most of the articles which enter into its manufacture or are required in the process of making it are increased in price by protection.  The result is that the price of paper to the consumer is increased nearly fifteen per cent.; that is, if the tariff were taken off paper and the articles used in its manufacture, paper would be fifteen per cent. cheaper to the buyer.  The paper-mills for five years have produced nearly one hundred millions of dollars’ worth of paper a year.  The consumers have been compelled to pay fifteen millions a year to the manufacturer more than the paper could have been bought for without the tariff.  In five years this has amounted to $75,000,000, an immense sum paid to protection.  It is a tax upon books and newspapers; it is a tax upon intelligence; it is a premium upon ignorance.  So heavy had the burden of this tax become that every newspaper man in the district I have the honor to represent has appealed to Congress to take the duty off.  The government has derived little revenue from the paper duty.  It has gone almost entirely to the manufacturer, who himself has not been benefited as anticipated, as will presently be seen.  These burdens have been imposed to protect the paper manufacturer against the foreigner, in face of the confident prediction made by one of the most experienced paper men in the country, that if all protection were taken off paper and the material used in its manufacture, the manufacturer would be able to successfully compete with the foreigner in nearly every desirable market in the world.