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
There is another question to which the Republican party has
committed itself, and on the line of which it has accomplished, as
I believe, much for the prosperity of this country. I believe the
Republican party is pledged and ought to be pledged to the doctrine of
the protection of American industries and American labor. I believe
that in so far as our native inventive genius--which seems to have
no limit--our productive forces can supply the American market, we
ought to keep it for ourselves. And yet this new captain on the bridge
seems to congratulate himself on the fact that the voyage is still
prosperous notwithstanding the change of commanders; who seems to
forget that the reason that the voyage is still prosperous is because
the course of the ship was marked out before he went on the bridge and
the rudder tied down. He has attempted to take a new direction since
he has been in command, with a view of changing the sailing course of
the old craft, but it has seemed to me that he has made the mistake of
mistaking the flashlight of some British lighthouse for the light of
day. I do not intend here to-night in this presence to discuss this
tariff question in any detail. I only want to say that in the passage
of what is now so flippantly called the war tariff, to raise revenue
to carry on the war out of the protective duties which were then
levied, there has come to this country a prosperity and development
which would have been impossible without it, and that reversal of this
policy now, at the suggestion of Mr. Cleveland, according to the line
of the blind statesman from Texas, would be to stay and interrupt
this march of prosperity on which we have entered. I am one of those
uninstructed political economists that have an impression that some
things may be too cheap; that I cannot find myself in full sympathy
with this demand for cheaper coats, which seems to me necessarily to
involve a cheaper man and woman under the coat. I believe it is true
to-day that we have many things in this country that are too cheap,
because whenever it is proved that the man or woman who produces any
article cannot get a decent living out of it, then it is too cheap.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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