The “American working-man” has long been the final argument in every tariff defence, the last word which routed both statistics and common-sense. This was Mr. Aldrich’s clincher when he worked so hard in 1909 to continue or to increase the duties of the Dingley Bill. “_Protective duties are levied for the benefit of giving employment to the industries of Americans, to our people in the United States and not to foreigners_,” he said, and reiterated in a variety of ways. But take Mr. Aldrich’s own tariff-made state and examine in detail the experiences of its laborers. Rhode Island is one of the most perfect object lessons in the effects of high tariffs in this or any land. An object-lesson should not be overlarge. It should be something you can see, can walk over if you will. Rhode Island satisfies this condition perfectly. In the matter of the protective tariff Rhode Island is the more useful as an object-lesson because she was a well-developed state when the system was applied to her. She had at the beginning of the nineteenth century flourishing farms and some 40,000 sheep. She was exporting annually between two and three millions of agricultural products. She was building many ships, and from her fine ports carrying on a varied and lively trade with other lands. She was well advanced for the time in manufacturing. Long before the Revolution, Rhode Island’s iron foundries turned out cannon and firearms, anchors and bells and all sorts of small wares. When the cotton factory came—and she had the first in the country, the Slater factory of Pawtucket, she was able to make her own cotton machinery. In the manufacture of woollen cloth, she took a prominent place from the start.