Mr. JONES, of Nevada. Mr. President, so far as a tariff has the effect of reducing prices in any country, it is not by reason of the levying of any certain percentage of duty on the imported goods. The first effect of the tariff certainly always must be to raise prices. The fundamental theory of the tariff is--whether it be correct or not I am not now discussing--that by that tariff you place the price of manufactured goods up to a range at which they can be produced in the country in which the tariff is levied, and upon the level of the range of wages and manner of living which obtain in that country. By so doing, if you have a proper volume of money, you set all your people at work, and keep them at work at a variety of occupations. In such case every forge, furnace, and factory becomes a school, every machine-shop an academy, and every cunning device and invention becomes a lesson, teaching the people how to deal with the subtle forces of the universe. So far as this country is concerned the theory of the tariff is that 65,000,000 people should have a varied and complete system of manufactures, which should supply practically all their own wants, instead of an abnormal proportion of them being driven into the single occupation of farming and relying on foreign manufacturers to supply such finished products as they need. To draw out and develop the aptitudes of a people a large variety of occupations is indispensable. When all men are employed at their aptitudes new inventions multiply, progress is accelerated, and the secrets of nature are more rapidly unfolded. Hence the McCormick reaper; hence the sewing-machine, that great instrument which clothes the world, because of the discovery that the eye of the needle should be at the point; hence the air-brake, the telegraph, the electric light, and thousands of other inventions that a protected people originate and develop, which would perhaps not have been originated or might have been long delayed if it had not been for the discouragement to imports caused by the tariff, and the encouragement to our people to go into manufactures by which their varied talents are drawn out and cultivated. There is no doubt that eventually as our conditions improve, increasing numbers of our people will by degrees emerge from agricultural and enter manufacturing pursuits. A tariff, by stimulating the organization and development of industries, trains men to greater skill and perfection of workmanship in a variety of departments, and with greater skill comes greater efficiency of labor, and so greater economy of time. In that way the prices of certain products are in time reduced; but that is not a reduction of which any one complains. The true cause of the present discontent will not be found in the protective tariff, but in the exactions of the single gold standard.