All Rhode Island then flocked to manufacturing, until to-day the one thing in the state which sticks out above everything else is the factory. It is the factory in which capital is invested and from which dividends are drawn. It is the factory which employs the population. It has been estimated that three-fourths of the people are dependent upon the textile mills alone. The great body of breadwinners in Rhode Island not directly connected with the textile trades is busy administering to the wants of the textile workers. Further, that portion of the population which does not belong to these industries is dependent upon other highly protected industries: on rubber, with its duty of 35 per cent, on machinery (45 per cent), on cheap jewellery (87 per cent), on silver and gold wares (60 per cent). That is, Rhode Island to-day is a tariff-made state, and as such should offer us ample material for an easy analysis of what the American system of protection, given full encouragement, does for a community. As we have seen, it concentrates effort on one line, putting an end to agriculture and commerce. But this may not be a bad thing. If a state grows richer by specialization, is it not wiser to specialize? That of course depends upon how generally the fruits of the process are distributed, how greatly the condition of the mass is elevated, how much its happiness and health are improved. In a tariff-made state as in another the success of the system depends upon what the people at large are getting out of it; that is, what does it do for the American working-man? The first feature of the textile industry in Rhode Island which strikes even a casual observer is that the operatives are not Americans; they are distinctly foreigners—new-come foreigners. Less than 16 per cent of them, as a matter of fact, are born of what the industrial authority of the state calls “United States fathers,” the other 85 per cent are in percentages decreasing in order of their naming here: French Canadians, Irish, English, Italians, Germans, Scotch, Portuguese, Poles, and Russians, besides a considerable number classed under “other countries.” We have the surprising fact then that, as far as the benefits of the textile tariffs are concerned in Rhode Island, if the laborer gets them, it is a foreign laborer.