Protection has given work and wages to the mechanic and a market to the farmer. The interests of all laborers in America--all men who work--are identical. If the farmer pays more for his plow he gets more for his plowing. In old times, when the South manufactured nothing and raised only raw material--for the reason that its labor was enslaved and could not be trusted with education enough to become skillful--it was in favor of free trade; it wanted to sell the raw material to England and buy the manufactured article where it could buy the cheapest. Even under those circumstances it was a short-sighted and unpatriotic policy. Now everything is changing in the South. They are beginning to see that he who simply raises raw material is destined to be forever poor. For instance, the farmer who sells corn will never get rich; the farmer should sell pork and beef and horses. So a nation, a State, that parts with its raw material, loses nearly all the profits, for the reason that the profit rises with the skill requisite to produce. It requires only brute strength to raise cotton; it requires something more to spin it, to weave it, and the more beautiful the fabric the greater the skill, and consequently the higher the wages and the greater the profit. In other words, the more thought is mingled with labor the more valuable is the result.
Besides all this, protection is the mother of economy; the cheapest at last, no matter whether the amount paid is less or more. It is far better for us to make glass than to sell sand to other countries; the profit on sand will be exceedingly small.
The interests of this country are united; they depend upon each other. You destroy one and the effect upon all the rest may be disastrous. Suppose we had free trade to-day, what would become of the manufacturing interests to-morrow? The value of property would fall thousands of millions of dollars in an instant. The fires would die out in thousands and thousands of furnaces, innumerable engines would stop, thousands and thousands would stop digging coal and iron and steel. What would the city that had been built up by the factories be worth? What would be the effect on farms in that neighborhood? What would be the effect on railroads, on freights, on business--what upon the towns through which they passed? Stop making iron in Pennsylvania, and the State would be bankrupt in an hour. Give us free trade, and New Jersey, Connecticut and many other States would not be worth one dollar an acre.