But as the first mills and factories were established, these discoveries were made: In building a mill in England the laborers and mechanics could be hired at wages from twenty to forty per cent. lower than prevailed on this continent. The cost of machinery, most of it being brought from Europe, was also greater. Foreign manufacturers could hire their capital from the immense reservoir of Europe, where it had been accumulating for centuries, at from four to six per cent. interest. Here the borrower must pay eight or ten per cent. or even higher. There was another and even graver matter presented to the consideration of the pioneer manufacturer. Labor in Europe was cheap--so cheap that, combined with abundant capital and low interest, it enabled the foreign manufacturer to pay two ocean transportations and yet undersell an American competitor at the very door of his own mill. Should the American mechanic be asked to toil for the pauper wages of Europe? Should it be the policy of this government to gather about its factories the hungry-eyed, ill-clad, impoverished, ignorant and hopeless crowds which are found in the manufacturing towns of the old world? Could American institutions endure this? Where the people are all agriculturists, except under very extraordinary circumstances they need never want for food, and such circumstances are rarely chargeable to misgovernment or to bad laws. The farming classes are widely scattered; they are conservative and self-reliant, not given to mobs and outbreaks, nor to obeying the will of self-constituted leaders as do men gathered in great masses. But the men of mills and shops and factories, unless they are well paid, must suffer; and when they suffer their discontent threatens society itself. Despotic governments may apply the gag of a bayonet or the silence of a musket ball, but this is not possible in a republic resting upon the uncompelled support of all the people. Plainly, if a government, constituted as is this, is to be preserved, the mechanics, the laborers in mills and mines, in shops and factories, must be paid enough to support themselves and their families in comfort, to educate their children and to permit the thrifty to make savings. If the time ever comes when the millions of American workers upon whose assent this government exists are reduced to the condition of the pauper labor of Europe, this republic and its golden promises of freedom will most certainly ignobly perish from the face of the earth. From such circumstances and ideas as these sprang the doctrine, accepted by almost all of the earlier statesmen of the republic, that the revenue system of the United States must be so modeled as to stimulate domestic manufactures, protect them from ruinous foreign competition, and promote that diversification of industry which is so essential to the prosperity and independence of free labor.