We Republicans firmly believe that if there be one feature or element of right and power within the spirit and scope of the Constitution of the United States, and clearly vested in Congress, it is the right and power to impose duties for the purpose of protecting American industries and American labor. The very first tariff act, approved July 4, 1789, one hundred and twenty-three years ago, declared that one of its purposes, one of its objects, one of its inducing motives, was "the encouragement and protection of manufactures." Washington approved and signed that bill. Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe--all of them of the generation that framed the federal Constitution--recognized the existence of the power to protect and recommended the protection of American industries. But the American people are now asked in 1912 to vote for a party and a platform which repudiate both the _right_ and the _power_ of Congress to protect American workmen, farmers and manufacturers. It is impossible in this outline of issues adequately to discuss the principles and policy of a protective tariff. The details of that important and vital subject must be taken up and analyzed at other times. Generalizations would be of little value. The facts are readily at hand, and they demonstrate that the material welfare of the country and of nearly every class and section has been promoted by the protective policy, and it will continue to be so promoted. Although we may now be willing to face free competition with Europeans, we cannot be blind to the menace and danger of free competition with Asiatics. Just across the Pacific ocean, with constantly cheapening freight and passenger rates, are populations of 50,000,000 in Japan, 450,000,000 in China, 300,000,000 in India--800,000,000--who will furnish efficient labor at wages ranging from 10 to 30 cents a day for twelve hours' work on the same kind of machines at which American men and women are now working. Shall we open the flood-gates? Shall we elect as President the historian who, but a few years ago in the quiet and impartial atmosphere of his study, declared to the world his sympathy for needy Asiatics and his opinion that "the Chinese were more to be desired, as workmen if not as citizens, than most of the coarse crew that came crowding in every year at the eastern ports"?