“_So far as I am concerned, I am through with it. I intend to fight it.... I intend to fight without fear—I do not care what may be my political fate. I have had a burdensome and toilsome experience in public life now these twenty-five years. I am beginning to feel the pressure of that burden. I do not propose that the remaining years of my life, whether they be in public affairs or in my private business, shall be given up to a dull consent to the success of all these conspiracies, which do not hesitate before our very eyes to use the law-making power of the United States to multiply their own profits and to fill the market-places with witnesses of their avarice and of their greed._” But there is more than what Senator Dolliver, even, saw wrapped up in the question of protection as we are applying it. Deeper than the wrongs it is doing the poor, deeper than its warping of the intellect, is the question of the morals which underlie its operations. Simmered down to its final essence the tariff question as it stands in this country to-day is a question of national morals, a question of the kind of men it is making. The happiness and stability of the peoples of this earth have always been in strict accord with their morality—not a morality made up of rules and traditions, of do’s and don’t’s, but that living force which pervades the world of men like an ether, the only atmosphere in which self-respect can flourish, and in which the rights and happiness of the other man are as sacred as your own. Emerson saw this force everywhere, “like children, like grass”; yet, sadly enough, “like children, like grass,” its essentiality is often ignored. Men try to construct systems and work out plans in defiance of it, only to see them destroyed; they try to live without it, only to die. Activities that ask toll of our inner honor and crowd our fellow-men, that do not contribute to the general goodness and soundness of life and things, cannot endure. Every practice, law, system of religion, government or society must be finally sifted down to this: Are men better or worse for it? What does it make for, in the main, callousness or gentleness, greed or unselfishness? Are men because of it more eager for freedom of mind and joy of heart, or are they more eager for gain and material comfort?