Mr. Mills made an effective argument from Mr. Wright’s report by comparing the labor cost in the manufacture of many leading necessities of life with the duties which the manufacturers were fighting for in the name of labor. “I find in this report,” said Mr. Mills, “one pair of 5–pound blankets. The whole cost as stated by the manufacturer is $2.51. The labor cost is 35 cents. The tariff is $1.90. Now here is $1.55 in this tariff over and above the entire labor cost of these blankets.... Here is one yard of flannel weighing 4 ounces; it cost 18 cents, of which the laborer got 3 cents, the tariff on it is 8 cents. How is it that the whole 8 cents did not get into the hands of the laborer?... One yard of cashmere, weighing 16 ounces costs $1.38. The labor cost is 29 cents; the tariff duty is 80 cents. One pound of sewing silk costs $5.66; the cost for labor is 85 cents; the tariff is $1.69. One gallon of linseed oil costs 46 cents; the labor cost is 2 cents; the tariff cost is 25 cents. One ton of bar iron costs $31.00. The labor cost is $10.00. The tariff fixes several rates for bar-iron and gives the lowest rate $17.92. One ton of foundry iron costs $11.00; the labor costs $1.64; the tariff is $6.72. None of these tariffs go to the laborer. The road is blocked up. They cannot pass the pocket of the manufacturers. This “great American” system that is intended to secure high wages for our laborers is so perverted that all its beneficence intended for the poor workingman stops in the pockets of his employer and the laborer only gets what he can command in the open market for his work.” Now admitting that Mr. Mills was too sweeping in his conclusion, there is no escaping the truth or the meaning of the figures. The price of all sorts of necessary manufactured articles was increased by the duties, rarely to their full amount to be sure, but yet much beyond what was necessary to put the domestic manufacturer on an equal footing with the foreigner. Somebody got the extra profit, and it was not the workingman. But the workingman paid the extra price. Mr. Mills illustrated it in this way. “Suppose,” he said, “that a laborer who is earning a dollar a day by his work finds a suit of woollen clothes he can buy for $10.00 without the tariff. Then the suit can be procured for 10 days’ work, but the manufacturer goes to Congress and says, ‘I must be protected against the man buying this cheap suit of clothes,’ And Congress protects him by putting on a duty of 100 per cent, or $10.00. Now it will require the laborer to work twenty days to get this suit of clothes. Now tell me if 10 days of his labor have not been annihilated?”