Robert G. Ingersoll - 1833-1899
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL ON PROTECTION, FREE
TRADE, AND LABOR
Circa 1896
Robert G. Ingersoll - 1833-1899
Webmaster's note: Robert G. Ingersoll was one of America's more colorful political figures, social thinkers, and orators of the latter part of the nineteenth century. When remembered at all, he is often referred to as the "Great Agnostic," due to his (then) politically incorrect views on religion. The following excerpt is taken from a speech given in Chicago and New York, probably in the year 1896, while on the stump on behalf of incumbent Republican president William McKinley who was up for re-election. The purpose here is to illustrate the argument for protection and against free trade as articulated a little over a century ago.
The argument for protection won out in 1896 and until post World War II internationalism took Washington by storm. Protection, of course, is one of the few legitimate functions of a limited republican government, and its rationale nothing short of what was once considered economic common sense. The role of government is to protect its soil and citizens from invasion — whether by foreign armies, unwanted immigration, or import invasion — to protect our national marketplace within our own borders, and preserve conditions conductive of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Under our present new international order globalist policies (which have been in high gear only since the disintegration of the Soviet Union), free trade has won out against the protective tariff. Today the results (if not the causes), are becoming clear even to some of the most politically and economically challenged minds. Unfortunately, most of our mis-representatives in Washington still don't get it.WRC
Give us Protection and Prosperity
Do not cheat us with free trade dreams
Do not deceive us with debased coin
...Then there is another question -- the question of the
tariff. I admit that there are a great many arguments in favor of free trade,
but I assert that all the facts are the other way. I want American people as far
as possible to manufacture everything that Americans use.
The more industries we have the more we will develop the American brain, and the
best crop you can raise in every country is a crop of good men and good women --
of intelligent people. ...I want to keep this market for ourselves.
A nation that sells raw material will grow ignorant and poor; a nation that manufactures will grow intelligent and rich. It only takes muscle to dig ore. It takes mind to manufacture a locomotive, and only that labor is profitable that is mixed with thought. Muscle must be in partnership with brain.
I am in favor of keeping this market for ourselves, and yet some people say: "Give us the market of the world." Well, why don't you take it? There is no export duty on anything. You can get things out of this country cheaper than from any other country in the world. Iron is as cheap here in the ground, so are coal and stone, as any place on earth. The timber is as cheap in the forest.
Why don't you make things and sell them in Central Africa, in China and Japan? Why don't you do it?
I will tell you why. It is because (American) labor is too high; that is all. Almost the entire value is labor. You make a ton of steel rails worth twenty-five dollars; the ore in the ground is worth only a few cents, the coal in the earth only a few cents, the lime in the cliff only a few cents -- altogether not one dollar and fifty cents; but the ton is worth twenty-five dollars; twenty-three dollars and fifty cents labor! That is the trouble. The steamship is worth five hundred thousand dollars, but the raw material is not worth ten thousand dollars. The rest is labor.
Why is labor higher here than in Europe? Protection. And why do these gentlemen ask for the trade of the world? Why do they ask for free trade? Because they want cheaper labor. That is all; cheaper labor. The markets of the world! We want our own markets. I would rather have the market of Illinois than all of China with her four hundred millions.
I would rather have the market of one good county in New York than all of Mexico.. What do they want in Mexico? A little red calico, a few sombreros and some spurs. They make their own liquor and they live on red pepper and beans. What do you want of their markets? We want to keep our own. In other words, we want to pursue the policy that has given us prosperity in the past.
We tried a little bit of free trade in 1892 when we were all prosperous. I said then: "If Grover Cleveland is elected it will cost the people five hundred million dollars." I am no prophet, nor the son of a prophet, nor a profitable son, but I placed the figure too low. His election has cost a thousand million dollars. There is an old song, "You Put the Wrong Man off at Buffalo;" we took the wrong man on at Buffalo. We tried just a little of it, not much. We tried the Wilson bill -- a bill, according to Mr. Cleveland, born of perfidy and dishonor -- a bill that he was not quite foolish enough to sign and not brave enough to veto. We tried it and we are tired of it, and if experience is a teacher the American people know a little more than they did.
We want to do our own work, and we want to mingle our thought
with our labor. We are the most inventive of all the peoples. We sustain the
same relation to invention that the ancient Greeks did to sculpture. We want to
develop the brain; we want to cultivate the imagination, and we want to cover
our land with happy homes...
And another thing we want is to produce great men and great women here in our
own country; then again we want business. Talk about charity, talk about the few
dollars that fall unconsciously from the hand of wealth, talk about your
poorhouses and your sewing societies and your poor little efforts in the
missionary line in the worst part of your town! Ah, there is no charity like
business. Business gives work to labor's countless hands; business wipes the
tears from the eyes of widows and orphans; business dimples with joy the cheek
of sorrow; business puts a roof above the heads of the homeless; business covers
the land with happy homes.
...Let all the wheels whirl; let all the shuttles fly. Fill the air with the
echoes of hammer and saw. Fill the furnace with flame; the molds with liquid
iron. Let them glow.
...Plow the fields, reap the waving grain. Create all things that man can use. Business will feed the hungry, clothe the naked, educate the ignorant, enrich the world with art -- fill the air with song.
Give us Protection and Prosperity. Do not cheat us with free
trade dreams. Do not deceive us with debased coin.* Give us good money -- the
life blood of business -- and let it flow through the veins and arteries of
commerce.
And let me tell you to-night the smoke arising from the factories great plants
forms the only cloud on which has ever been seen the glittering bow of American
promise. We want work, and I tell you to-night that my sympathies are with the
men who work, with the women who weep. I know that labor is the Atlas on whose
shoulders rests the great superstructure of civilization and the great dome of
science adorned with all there is of art. Labor is the great oak, labor is the
great column, and labor, with its deft and cunning hands, has created the
countless things of art and beauty.
I want to see labor paid. I want to see capital civilized
until it will be willing to give labor its share, and I want labor intelligent
enough to settle all these questions in the high court of reason. And let me
tell the workingman to-night: You will never help your self by destroying your
employer. You have work to sell. Somebody has to buy it, if it is bought, and
somebody has to buy it that has the money. Who is going to manufacture something
that will not sell. Nobody is going into the manufacturing business through
philanthropy, and unless your employer makes a profit, the mill will be shut
down and you will be out of work. The interest of the employer and the employed
should be one. Whenever the employers of the continent are successful, then the
workingman is better paid, and you know it. I have some hope in the future for
the working- man...
Something has been done for labor. Only a few years ago a man worked fifteen or
sixteen hours a day, but the hours have been reduced to at least ten and are on
the way to still further reduction. And while the hours have been decreased the
wages have as certainly been increased. In forty years -- in less -- the wages
of American workingmen have doubled. A little while ago you received an average
of two hundred and eighty-five dollars a year; now you receive an average of
more than four hundred and ninety dollars; there is the difference. So it seems
to me that the star of hope is still in the sky for every workingman. Then there
is another thing: every workingman in this country can take his little boy on
his knee and say, "John, all the avenues to distinction, wealth, and glory
are open to you. There is the free school; take your chances with I the
rest." And it seems to me that that thought ought to sweeten every drop of
sweat that trickles down the honest brow of toil.
So let us have protection! How much? Enough, so that our income at least will
equal our outgo. That is a good way to keep house. I am tired of depression and
deficit. I do not like to see a President pawning bonds to raise money to pay
his own salary. I do not like to see the great Republic at the mercy of anybody,
so let us stand by protection.
*Ingersoll was a hard money man (gold standard), against the Populist free-silver movement championed by the Democratic challenger to McKinley, William Jennings Bryan.
