“The question of tariff revision, speaking broadly, stands wholly apart from the question of dealing with the trusts. No change in tariff duties can have any substantial effect in solving the so-called trust problem. Certain great trusts or great corporations are wholly unaffected by the tariff. Almost all the others that are of any importance have as a matter of fact numbers of smaller American competitors; and of course a change in the tariff which would work injury to the large corporation would work not merely injury but destruction to its smaller competitors; and equally of course such a change would mean disaster to all the wage-workers connected with either the large or the small corporations. From the standpoint of those interested in the solution of the trust problem such a change would therefore merely mean that the trust was relieved of the competition of its weaker American competitors, and thrown only into competition with foreign competitors; and that the first effort to meet this new competition would be made by cutting down wages, and would therefore be primarily at the cost of labor. In the case of some of our greatest trusts such a change might confer upon them a positive benefit. Speaking broadly, it is evident that the changes in the tariff will affect the trusts for weal or for woe simply as they affect the whole country. The tariff affects trusts only as it affects all other interests. It makes all these interests, large or small, profitable; and its benefits can be taken from the large only under penalty of taking them from the small also.” There is little for me to add to this. It is but ten years since the last attempt was made, by means of lowering the tariff, to prevent some people from prospering too much. The attempt was entirely successful. The tariff law of that year was among the causes which in that year and for some time afterward effectually prevented anybody from prospering too much, and labor from prospering at all. Undoubtedly it would be possible at the present time to prevent any of the trusts from remaining prosperous by the simple expedient of making such a sweeping change in the tariff as to paralyze the industries of the country. The trusts would cease to prosper; but their smaller competitors would be ruined, and the wage-workers would starve, while it would not pay the farmer to haul his produce to market. The evils connected with the trusts can be reached only by rational effort, step by step, along the lines taken by Congress and the Executive during the past three years. If a tariff law is passed under which the country prospers, as the country has prospered under the present tariff law, then all classes will share in the prosperity. If a tariff law is passed aimed at preventing the prosperity of some of our people, it is as certain as anything can be that this aim will be achieved only by cutting down the prosperity of all of our people.