There are doubtless here many representatives of great American manufacturing establishments; and who should know better than they the prostrating effects upon the industries they represent of this policy of a revenue tariff, or the not much differing policy of free trade? [Cheers.] Who should know better than you that if the discriminating duties now levied, which enable our American manufacturers to maintain a fair competition with the manufacturers of other countries, and at the same time to pay a scale of living wages to the men and women who work for them, is once broken down, American competition with foreign production becomes impossible, except by the reduction of the scale of American wages to the level of the wages paid abroad? [Cheers.] Certainly you do not need to be told that that shop or mill that has the smallest pay-roll in proportion to its production will take the market. [Cheers.] Certainly you do not need to be told that the wages now enjoyed by our American workmen are greatly larger and the comforts they enjoy greatly more than those enjoyed by the working people of any other land. [Cheers.] Certainly you do not need to be told that if the American Government, instead of patronizing home industries, buys its blankets for the public service in England there is just that much less work for American workmen to do. [Cheers.] This is to me the beginning and the end of the tariff question. Since I was old enough to have opinions or to utter them, I have held to the doctrine that the true American policy was that which should maintain not only a living rate of wages, but one with a margin for savings and comfort for our workmen. I believe that policy is essential to the prosperity and possibly to the perpetuity of our Government. [Cheers.] The two propositions that now stare our working people--and our whole country--in the face are these: competition with foreign countries, without adequate discriminating and favoring duties, means lower wages to our working people; a revenue-only tariff, or progressive free trade, means larger importations of foreign goods, and that means less work in America. [Cheers.]