Let me not seem, however, to undervalue that difference. Statistics, after all, do not dominate human nature; on the contrary, human nature determines the statistician's figures. Every artisan emigrant to America gains opportunities of advancement of which his European fellows know nothing. If he have brains, the way to success is open there, while it is practically barred to anything short of genius for men of his class in Europe. Our Australian colonies, where unskilled labor can earn 7s. 6d. a day, and live for a trifle, are, indeed, a paradise for the mere wage-earner, who can scarcely help becoming also a wage-saver; but America is the country which, with wage conditions such as I have attempted to portray, still offers the best possible opportunities of success, and even of great careers, to clever working men, and especially to clever mechanics. That man, however, is not worthy of a home in the great republic, who does not appreciate the higher social levels at which native labor desires to live, who is not anxious to make the most of the advantages which democratic institutions offer him, who does not, in short, ardently desire to become a "good American." There remains the question already alluded to as inextricably bound up with American labor problems: How does the American tariff affect wages? The idea that these are determinable by the tariff is the corner stone of protection in the States. The artisan has been so sedulously educated to believe that the chief object of import duties is to protect him from falling into a ruinous competition with what is called the "pauper labor of Europe," that no movement on the part of workmen in the direction of free trade is ever likely to arise in America. I am not now about to argue the question of protection, except in so far as it relates to labor; but it may be remarked, in passing, that internal competition, rather than the people, is the enemy from whom the tariff will probably receive its death blow in the future. Protection will ultimately break down by its own weight in the States. Production already exceeds demand, the cry for a "wider market" and for "raw materials free" is in every manufacturer's mouth; and if America upholds her protective legislation too long, the produce of her factories and mills will, by and by, force its way, in spite of the tariff, into the open markets of the world, but it will be through the gate of national suffering. Few people in this country are, I think, aware of the extraordinary fervor with which the doctrine that protection benefits labor is preached in the States. We are ourselves accustomed to hear the question of free trade argued only from the economic standpoint, but this is by no means so commonly the case in America. I shall try, by paraphrasing certain recent addresses of an able personal friend and enthusiastic protectionist, to illustrate the position taken by those persons who advocate the tariff, not upon economic grounds,