Take blankets also for example. The tariff on coarse blankets is nearly
one hundred per cent. ad valorem. They can be bought in most of the
markets of the world for two dollars a pair. Yet our poor, who use the
most of that grade of blankets, are compelled to pay about four
dollars a pair. The government derives little revenue from it, as the
importation of these blankets for years has been trifling. This tax
has been a heavy burden upon the poor during this severe winter, a tax
running into the millions to support protection. Heaven save a country
from a system which begrudges to the shivering poor the blankets to make
them comfortable in the winter and the cold!

Secondly, protection has diminished the income of the laborer from his
wages. The first factor in the ascertainment of the value of wages is
their purchasing power, or how much can be bought with them. If in one
country the wages are five dollars a day and in another only one dollar,
if the laborer can in the one country with the one dollar, purchase more
of the necessary articles required in daily consumption, he, in fact,
is better paid than the former in the other who gets five dollars a day.
Admit for a moment that protection raises the wages of the laborer, it
also raises the price of nearly all the necessaries of life, and what he
makes in wages he more than loses in the increase of prices of what he
is obliged to buy. As already stated, a head of a family who earns $400
per year is compelled to pay $100 more for what he needs, on account of
protection. What difference is it to him whether the $100 are taken out
of his wages before they are paid, or taken from him afterward in the
increased price of articles he cannot get along without? In both cases
he really receives only $300 for his year's labor. The statistics show
that the average increased cost of twelve articles most required in
daily consumption in 1874 over 1860 was ninety-two per cent., while the