Complete Life of William McKinley and Story of His Assassination: An Authentic and Official Memorial Edition, Containing Every Incident in the Career of the Immortal Statesman, Soldier, Orator and PatriotEverett, Marshall
History
Complete Life of William McKinley and Story of His Assassination: An Authentic and Official Memorial Edition, Containing Every Incident in the Career of the Immortal Statesman, Soldier, Orator and Patriot
“Free trade in the United States is founded upon a community of
equalities and reciprocities. It is like the unrestrained freedom and
reciprocal relations and obligations of a family. Here we are one
country, one language, one allegiance, one standard of citizenship, one
flag, one Constitution, one Nation, one destiny. It is otherwise with
foreign nations, each a separate organism, a distinct and independent
political society, organized for its own, to protect its own, and work
out its own destiny. We deny to those foreign nations free trade with us
upon equal terms with our own producers. The foreign producer has no
right or claim to equality with our own. He is not amenable to our laws.
There are resting upon him none of the obligations of citizenship. He
pays no taxes. He performs no civil duties; he is subject to no demands
for military service. He is exempt from State, county and municipal
obligations. He contributes nothing to the support, the progress and
glory of the Nation. Why should he enjoy unrestrained equal privileges
and profits in our markets with our producers, our labor and our
taxpayers? Let the gentleman who follows me answer. We put a burden upon
his productions, we discriminate against his merchandise, because he is
alien to us and our interests, and we do it to protect our own, defend
our own, preserve our own, who are always with us in adversity and
prosperity, in sympathy and purpose, and, if necessary, in sacrifice.
That is the principle which governs us. I submit it is a patriotic and
righteous one. In our country each citizen competes with the other in
free and unresentful rivalry, while with the rest of the world all are
united and together in resisting outside competition as we would foreign
interference.
“Free foreign trade admits the foreigner to equal privileges with our
own citizens. It invites the product of foreign cheap labor to this
market in competition with the domestic product, representing higher and
better paid labor. It results in giving our money, our manufactures and
our markets to other nations, to the injury of our labors, our trades
people and our farmers. Protection keeps money, markets and manufactures
at home for the benefit of our own people. It is scarcely worth while to
more than state the proposition that taxation upon a foreign competing
product is more easily paid and less burdensome than taxation upon the
noncompeting product. In the latter it is always added to the foreign
cost, and therefore paid by the consumer, while in the former, where the
duty is upon the competing product, it is largely paid in the form of
diminished profits to the foreign producer. It would be burdensome
beyond endurance to collect our taxes from the products, professions and
labor of our own people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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