The products of our mines for the year 1872 were about $62,000,000, and for the last four years have been nearly $200,000,000. The value of petroleum produced in the United States for the year 1872 was not less than $60,000,000, a large portion of which was shipped to and sold in foreign countries, and to that extent should be reckoned as money in our dealing with foreign nations. In 1862 the balance of trade was against us to the amount of about $250,000,000. After absorbing the produce of our mines, and our petroleum, the net balance against us was not less than $120,000,000. This balance had to be paid in coin or in the issue of new bonds. At no time since the enactment of the present tariff has the balance of trade been in our favor. Thus, notwithstanding the high duty paid, and the protection afforded by the tariff, our demands for foreign manufactures increase to such an extent as to threaten the nation with bankruptcy. According to official reports, the amount of coin in the country in 1868 was $350,000,000. The products of the mines since that date amount to $200,000,000. The amount of coin now in the country is reported less than $250,000,000, and most likely will not amount to $200,000,000. Protection to a small band of monopolists has caused an annual decrease in the amount of coin in the country equal to the excess of imports over exports. A few owners of factories and furnaces are being benefited and enriched by protection; the prices of manufactured articles have increased on an average about fifty per cent. The wages of operatives and laborers have increased but twelve per cent; the exports of manufactured articles have decreased; the value of imports has increased; the ocean commerce of the nation has been destroyed; the prices of the agricultural products of the country are reduced to a point that has blasted the prospects of the farmer, and made it difficult for him to live; the country is being drained of its precious metals, and an irredeemable currency has become the only circulating medium; values are unsettled, and the country is threatened with financial ruin--all to afford protection to home manufacturers and corporations. Protection is but another name for the systematic plunder of the farmer, laborer, and all the industrial interests of the country, by a class of monopolists that should be classed with corporations, stock jobbers, and Wall street brokers, and who are, in part at least, composed of the same men who control the corporate interests of the country. CHAPTER XXV. PATENT RIGHTS AND THEIR ABUSES.