“First, then, to retain our own market under the Democratic system of raising revenue, by removing all protection, would require our producers to sell at as low a price and upon as favorable terms as our foreign competitors. How could that be done? In one way only—by producing as cheaply as those who would seek our markets. What would that entail? An entire revolution in the methods and conduct of business here, a leveling down through every channel to the lowest line of our competitors, our habits of living would have to be changed, our wages cut down fifty per cent. or more, our comfortable homes exchanged for hovels, our independence yielded up, our citizenship demoralized. These are conditions inseparable to free trade; these would be necessary, if we would command our own market among our own people; and if we would invade the world’s markets, harsher conditions and greater sacrifices would be demanded of the masses. Talk about depression—we would then have it in its fulness. We would revel in unrestrained trade. Everything would indeed be cheap, but how costly when measured by the degradation which would ensue! When merchandise is the cheapest, men are the poorest; and the most distressing experiences in the history of our country—aye, in all human history—have been when everything was the lowest and cheapest measured by gold, for everything was the highest and the dearest measured by labor. We have no wish to adopt the conditions of other nations. Experience has demonstrated that for us and ours, and for the present and the future, the protective system meets our wants, our conditions, promotes the national design, and will work out our destiny better than any other. “With me, this position is a deep conviction, not a theory. I believe in it and thus warmly advocate it, because enveloped in it are my country’s highest development and greatest prosperity; out of it come the greatest gains to the people, the greatest comforts to the masses, the widest encouragement for manly aspirations, with the largest rewards, dignifying and elevating our citizenship, upon which the safety and purity and permanency of our political system depend.” But the year of his supreme success was also the year of his enemies’ seeming triumph. His congressional district in Ohio, three times vainly gerrymandered with the aim of throwing him out, had finally been so arranged as to make his re-election impossible. It was the end of his career in the House. Yet it was only the vestibule of a greater eminence. The people of Ohio made him their Governor. And when the lighter duties of four years in the state executive mansion had recuperated his powers, the nation made him its candidate for President, and elected him on an issue that meant bravery, progress and wise statesmanship.