Speeches of Benjamin Harrison, Twenty-third President of the United StatesHarrison, Benjamin
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Speeches of Benjamin Harrison, Twenty-third President of the United States
Harrison, Benjamin
Harrison, Benjamin, 1833-1901; Speeches, addresses, etc., American; United States -- Politics and government
The Republican party holds that a protective tariff is
constitutional, wholesome, and necessary. We do not offer a fixed
schedule, but a principle. We will revise the schedule, modify rates,
but always with an intelligent provision as to the effect upon
domestic productions and the wages of our working people. We believe
it to be one of the worthy objects of tariff legislation to preserve
the American market for American producers, and to maintain the
American scale of wages by adequate discriminative duties upon foreign
competing products. The effect of lower rates and larger importations
upon the public revenue is contingent and doubtful, but not so the
effect upon American production and American wages. Less work and
lower wages must be accepted as the inevitable result of the increased
offering of foreign goods in our market. By way of recompense for
this reduction in his wages, and the loss of the American market, it
is suggested that the diminished wages of the workingman will have an
undiminished purchasing power, and that he will be able to make up
for the loss of the home market by an enlarged foreign market. Our
workingmen have the settlement of the question in their own hands.
They now obtain higher wages and live more comfortably than those of
any other country. They will make choice of the substantial advantages
they have in hand and the deceptive promises and forecasts of these
theorizing reformers. They will decide for themselves and for their
country whether the protective system shall be continued or destroyed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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