But Randall was dealing with a bigger force and a bigger man in 1883 than he realized. John G. Carlisle, his opponent, was probably the nearest approach to a statesman then in the United States Congress. Born on a Kentucky farm, he had spent the days of his early youth at farm work, the nights over books. He had become a school teacher and in his leisure had read law. Admitted to the bar, he had continued to study until he was called the ablest lawyer in the state. Admitted to the state legislature, he had become a leader of his party by force of knowledge and intellectual vigor. Carlisle had first entered the House in 1877, fourteen years after Randall, and he immediately made a deep impression on the country by his thorough mastery of subjects, his clearness of statement, his gravity and candor in argument, and his freedom from the trickery and deceits of partisan politics. In the spring of 1882 he made a speech against a Tariff Commission which, as an argument for thorough tariff reform, was one of the ablest of the period. It really framed a strong logical position for the Democrats. His speech in 1883 when the Kelley Bill was under consideration gave his position in the tariff: “In the broad and sweeping sense which the term usually implies I am not a free-trader,” he said. “I will add that in my judgment it will be years yet before anything in the nature of free trade would be wise or practicable in the United States. When we speak of this subject we refer to approximate free trade which has no idea of cutting the growth of home industries, but simply of scaling down the inequalities of the tariff schedules where they are utterly out of proportion to the demands of that growth. After we have calmly stood up and allowed monopolists to grow fat we should not be asked to make them bloated. Our enormous surplus revenues are illogical and oppressive. It is entirely undemocratic to continue these burdens on the people for years and years after the requirements of protection have been met and the representatives of these industries have become incrusted with wealth.” That is, Carlisle saw clearly that certain evils inherent in high protection, evils against which Garfield and all the Republican tariff reformers had so often warned, were becoming realities. The word monopoly was already in everybody’s mouth, for at this time the impossibility of preventing the over-production and consequent depressions which are the logical results of an artificial stimulus like a high tariff, except by some artificial check like a combination to limit output and hold up prices, had been completely demonstrated.