“The accumulations of the laborers of the country have increased, and the working classes of no nation in the world have such splendid deposits in savings banks as the working classes of the United States. Listen to their story: The deposits of all the savings banks of New England in 1886 equaled $554,532,434. The deposits in the savings banks of New York in 1886 were $482,686,730. The deposits in the savings banks of Massachusetts for the year 1887 were $302,948,624, and the number of depositors was 944,778, or $320.67 for each depositor. The savings banks of nine States have in nineteen years increased their deposits $628,000,000. The English savings banks have in thirty-four years increased theirs $350,000,000. Our operative deposits $7 to the English operative’s $1. These vast sums represent the savings of the men whose labor has been employed under the protective policy which gives, as experience has shown, the largest possible reward to labor. [Illustration: PRESIDENT McKINLEY WITH HIS G.A.R. POST.] [Illustration: From a photograph taken for and used by courtesy of Chicago Inter Ocean.] “Free trade, or as you are pleased to call it, ‘revenue tariff,’ means the opening up of this market, which is admitted to be the best in the world, to the free entry of the products of the world. It means more—it means that the labor of this country is to be remitted to its earlier condition, and that the condition of our people is to be leveled down to the condition of rival countries, because under it every element of cost, every item of production, including wages, must be brought down to the level of the lowest paid labor of the world. No other result can follow, and no other result is anticipated or expected by those who intelligently advocate a revenue tariff. We cannot maintain ourselves against unequal conditions without the tariff, and no man of affairs believes we can. Under the system of unrestricted trade which you gentlemen recommend, we will have to reduce every element of cost down to or below that of our commercial rivals, or surrender to them our own market. No one will dispute that statement; and to go into the domestic market of our rivals would mean that production here must be so reduced that with transportation added we could undersell them in their own market; and to meet them in neutral markets and divide the trade with them would mean that we could profitably sell side by side with them at their minimum price.