With all his earnestness as a protectionist, he kept the interests of labor predominant in his consideration of this subject. For instance, in some remarks upon the lumber tariff, he said: "It is perfectly well known that the great value of lumber is in the labor and the transportation, and while we in the United States are paying our laborers (in lumber) $2 a day, they are in the British Provinces paying but from 75 cents to $1 per day." And he steadily voted for such protection of the lumber trade as would enable producers engaged in that business to pay large wages, and opposed every suggestion which looked to impoverishing or pauperizing the American artisan. He uniformly upheld American industry and labor of every kind against the competition of the world. He felt that the highest civilization can only be secured through that policy of industrial diversification which brings consumer and producer side by side, and he favored giving it the widest possible scope. He frequently declared, "I cannot vote to discriminate against any particular branch," and he firmly believed in protecting everything his country could produce. His vigilance in caring for all interests and his grasp of the practical details of tariff legislation will appear from one or two brief citations from speeches made in 1867 on proposed modifications of the Morrill tariff. The duty on pig-metal was then $9 per ton, and it was proposed in the new bill to admit scrap-iron on the payment of a duty of $3. On this proposition Mr. Chandler said: