Again he said: "Those arts that enable our nation to rise in the scale of civilization bring their blessings to all, and patriotic citizens will cheerfully bear a fair share of the burden necessary to make their country great and self-sustaining. I will defend a tariff that is national in its aims, that protects and sustains those interests without which the nation cannot become great and self-sustaining.... So important, in my view, is the ability of the nation to manufacture all these articles necessary to arm, equip, and clothe our people, that if it could not be secured in any other way I would vote to pay money out of the federal treasury to maintain government iron and steel, woollen and cotton mills, at whatever cost. Were we to neglect these great interests and depend upon other nations, in what a condition of helplessness would we find ourselves when we should be again involved in war with the very nations on whom we were depending to furnish us these supplies? The system adopted by our fathers is wiser, for it so encourages the great national industries as to make it possible at all times for our people to equip themselves for war, and at the same time increase their intelligence and skill so as to make them better fitted for all the duties of citizenship in war and in peace. _We provide for the common defence by a system which promotes the general welfare...._ I believe that we ought to seek that point of stable equilibrium somewhere between a prohibitory tariff on the one hand and a tariff that gives no protection on the other. What is that point of stable equilibrium? In my judgment, it is this; a rate so high that foreign producers cannot flood our markets and break down our home manufacturers, but not so high as to keep them altogether out, enabling our manufacturers to combine and raise the prices, nor so high as to stimulate an unnatural and unhealthy growth of manufactures. "In other words, I would have the duty so adjusted that every great American industry can fairly live and make fair profits, and yet so low that, if our manufacturers attempted to put up prices unreasonably, the competition from abroad would come in and bring down prices to a fair rate."