objection to protection, that it compels the consumer to pay more for
goods than they are really worth, ostensibly to help the business of a
producer. Now consumers constitute the vast majority of the people. The
producers of protected articles are few in comparison with them. It is
true that most men are both producers and consumers. But, for the great
majority, there is little or no protection for what they produce, but
large protection for what they consume. The tariff is principally levied
upon woollen goods, lumber, furniture, stoves and other manufactured
articles of iron, and upon sugar and salt. The necessities of life are
weighted with the burden. It is out of the necessities of the people,
therefore, that the money is realized to support the protective system.
I say, Mr. Chairman, that it is beyond the sphere of true governmental
power to tax one man to help the business of another. It is, by power,
taking money from one to give it to another. This is robbery, nothing
more nor less. When a man earns a dollar it is his own; and no power of
reasoning can justify the legislative power in taking it from him except
for the uses of the government.

Yet, Mr. Chairman, the present tariff takes hundreds of millions of
dollars every year from the farmer, the laborer, and other consumers,
under the claim of enriching the manufacturer. It may not be much for
each one to contribute, yet in the aggregate it is an enormous sum. For
many, too, it is very much. The statistics will show that every head of
a family who receives four hundred dollars a year in wages pays at least
one hundred dollars on account of protection. Put such a tax on all
incomes and the country would be in a ferment of excitement until it was
removed. But it is upon the poor and lowly that the tax is placed,
and their voices are not often heard in shaping the policies of tariff
legislation. I repeat, the product of one's labor is his own. It is his
highest right, subject only to the necessities of the government, to do