The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume VIII Part 33

That is to say, we become thinkers as well as workers; muscle and mind form a partners.h.i.+p.

I don't believe that England is particularly interested in the welfare of the United States. It never seemed probable to me that men like G.o.dwin Smith sat up nights fearing that we in some way might injure ourselves. To use a phrase that will be understood by theologians at least, we ought to "copper" all English advice.

The free traders say that there ought to be no obstructions placed by governments between buyers and sellers. If we want to make the trade, of course there should be no obstruction, but if we prefer that Americans should trade with Americans--that Americans should make what Americans want--then, so far as trading with foreigners is concerned, there ought to be an obstruction.

I am satisfied that the United States could get along if the rest of the world should be submerged, and I want to see this country in such a condition that it can be independent of the rest of mankind.

There is more mechanical genius in the United States than in the rest of the world, and this genius has been fostered and developed by protection. The Democracy wish to throw all this away--to make useless this skill, this ingenuity, born of generations of application and thought. These deft and marvelous hands that create the countless things of use and beauty to be worth no more than the common hands of ignorant delvers and shovelers. To the extent that thought is mingled with labor, labor becomes honorable and its burden lighter.

Thousands of millions of dollars have been invested on the faith of this policy--millions and millions of people are this day earning their bread by reason of protection, and they are better housed and better fed and better clothed than any other workmen on the globe.

The intelligent people of this country will not be satisfied with President Cleveland's platform--with his free trade primer. They believe in good wages for good work, and they know that this is the richest nation in the world. The Republic is worth at least sixty billion dollars. This vast sum is the result of labor, and this labor has been protected either directly or indirectly. This vast sum has been made by the farmer, the mechanic, the laborer, the miner, the inventor.

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 circ.u.mstances 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed? 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.

If a man will think of the connection between all industries--of the dependence and inter-dependence of each on all; of the subtle relations between all human pursuits--he will see that to destroy some of the grand interest makes financial ruin and desolation.

I am not talking now about a tariff that is too high, because that tariff does not produce a surplus--neither am I asking to have that protected which needs no protection--I am only insisting that all the industries that have been fostered and that need protection should be protected, and that we should turn our attention to the interests of our own country, letting other nations take care of themselves. If every American would use only articles produced by Americans--if they would wear only American cloth, only American silk--if we would absolutely stand by each other, the prosperity of this nation would be the marvel of human history. We can live at home, and we have now the ingenuity, the intelligence, the industry to raise from nature everything that a nation needs.

_Question_. What have you to say about the claim that Mr. Cleveland does not propose free trade?

_Answer_. I suppose that he means what he said. His argument was all for free trade, and he endeavored to show to the farmer that he lost altogether more money by protection, because he paid a higher price for manufactured articles and received no more for what he had to sell. This certainly was an argument in favor of free trade. And there is no way to decrease the surplus except to prohibit the importation of foreign articles, which certainly Mr.

Cleveland is not in favor of doing, or to reduce the tariff to a point so low that no matter how much may be imported the surplus will be reduced. If the message means anything it means free trade, and if there is any argument in it it is an argument in favor of absolutely free trade. The party, not willing to say "free trade"

uses the word "reform." This is simply a mask and a pretence.

The party knows that the President made a mistake. The party, however, is so situated that it cannot get rid of Cleveland, and consequently must take him with his mistake--they must take him with his message, and then show that all he intended by "free trade"

was "reform."

_Question_. Who do you think ought to be nominated at Chicago?

_Answer_. Personally, I am for General Gresham. I am saying nothing against the other prominent candidates. They have their friends, and many of them are men of character and capacity, and would make good Presidents. But I know of no man who has a better record than Gresham, and of no man who, in my judgment, would receive a larger number of votes. I know of no Republican who would not support Judge Gresham. I have never heard one say that he had anything against him or know of any reason why he should not be voted for. He is a man of great natural capacity. He is candid and unselfish. He has for many years been engaged in the examination and decision of important questions, of good principles, and consequently he has a trained mind. He knows how to take hold of a question, to get at a fact, to discover in a mult.i.tude of complications the real principle--the heart of the case. He has always been a man of affairs. He is not simply a judge--that is to say, a legal pair of scales--he knows the effect of his decision on the welfare of communities--he is not governed entirely by precedents--he has opinions of his own. In the next place, he is a man of integrity in all the relations of life. He is not a seeker after place, and, so far as I know, he has done nothing for the purpose of inducing any human being to favor his nomination. I have never spoken to him on the subject.

In the West he has developed great strength, in fact, his popularity has astonished even his best friends. The great ma.s.s of people want a perfectly reliable man--one who will be governed by his best judgment and by a desire to do the fair and honorable thing. It has been stated that the great corporations might not support him with much warmth for the reason that he has failed to decide certain cases in their favor. I believe that he has decided the law as he believed it to be, and that he has never been influenced in the slightest degree, by the character, position, or the wealth of the parties before him. It may be that some of the great financiers, the manipulators, the creators of bonds and stocks, the blowers of financial bubbles, will not support him and will not contribute any money for the payment of election expenses, because they are perfectly satisfied that they could not make any arrangements with him to get the money back, together with interest thereon, but the people of this country are intelligent enough to know what that means, and they will be patriotic enough to see to it that no man needs to bow or bend or cringe to the rich to attain the highest place.

The possibility is that Mr. Blaine could have been nominated had he not withdrawn, but having withdrawn, of course the party is released. Others were induced to become candidates, and under these circ.u.mstances Mr. Blaine has hardly the right to change his mind, and certainly other persons ought not to change it for him.

_Question_. Do you think that the friends of Gresham would support Blaine if he should be nominated?

_Answer_. Undoubtedly they would. If they go into convention they must abide the decision. It would be dishonorable to do that which you would denounce in others. Whoever is nominated ought to receive the support of all good Republicans. No party can exist that will not be bound by its own decision. When the platform is made, then is the time to approve or reject. The conscience of the individual cannot be bound by the action of party, church or state. But when you ask a convention to nominate your candidate, you really agree to stand by the choice of the convention. Principles are of more importance than candidates. As a rule, men who refuse to support the nominee, while pretending to believe in the platform, are giving an excuse for going over to the enemy. It is a pretence to cover desertion. I hope that whoever may be nominated at Chicago will receive the cordial support of the entire party, of every man who believes in Republican principles, who believes in good wages for good work, and has confidence in the old firms of "Mind and Muscle,"

of "Head and Hand."

--_New York Press_, May 27, 1888.

LABOR, AND TARIFF REFORM.

_Question_. What, in your opinion, is the condition of labor in this country as compared with that abroad?

_Answer_. In the first place, it is self-evident that if labor received more in other lands than in this the tide of emigration would be changed. The workingmen would leave our sh.o.r.es. People who believe in free trade are always telling us that the laboring man is paid much better in Germany than in the United States, and yet nearly every s.h.i.+p that comes from Germany is crammed with Germans, who, for some unaccountable reason, prefer to leave a place where they are doing well and come to one where they must do worse.

The same thing can be said of Denmark and Sweden, of England, Scotland, Ireland and of Italy. The truth is, that in all those lands the laboring man can earn just enough to-day to do the work of to-morrow; everything he earns is required to get food enough in his body and rags enough on his back to work from day to day, to toil from week to week. There are only three luxuries within his reach--air, light, and water; probably a fourth might be added --death.

In those countries the few own the land, the few have the capital, the few make the laws, and the laboring man is not a power. His opinion in neither asked nor heeded. The employers pay as little as they can. When the world becomes civilized everybody will want to pay what things are worth, but now capital is perfectly willing that labor shall remain at the starvation line. Compet.i.tion on every hand tends to put down wages. The time will come when the whole community will see that justice is economical. If you starve laboring men you increase crime; you multiply, as they do in England, workhouses, hospitals and all kinds of asylums, and these public inst.i.tutions are for the purpose of taking care of the wrecks that have been produced by greed and stinginess and meanness--that is to say, by the ignorance of capital.

_Question_. What effect has the protective tariff on the condition of labor in this country?

_Answer_. To the extent that the tariff keeps out the foreign article it is a direct protection to American labor. Everything in this country is on a larger scale than in any other. There is far more generosity among the manufacturers and merchants and millionaires and capitalists of the United States than among those of any other country, although they are bad enough and mean enough here.

But the great thing for the laboring man in the United States is that he is regarded as a man. He is a unit of political power.

His vote counts just as much as that of the richest and most powerful. The laboring man has to be consulted. The candidate has either to be his friend or to pretend to be his friend, before he can succeed. A man running for the presidency could not say the slightest word against the laboring man, or calculated to put a stain upon industry, without destroying every possible chance of success. Generally, every candidate tries to show that he is a laboring man, or that he was a laboring man, or that his father was before him. There is in this country very little of the spirit of caste--the most infamous spirit that ever infested the heartless breast of the brainless head of a human being.

_Question_. What will be the effect on labor of a departure in American policy in the direction of free trade?

_Answer_. If free trade could be adopted to-morrow there would be an instant shrinkage of values in this country. Probably the immediate loss would equal twenty billion dollars--that is to say, one-third of the value of the country. No one can tell its extent.

All thing are so interwoven that to destroy one industry cripples another, and the influence keeps on until it touches the circ.u.mference of human interests.

I believe that labor is a blessing. It never was and never will be a curse. It is a blessed thing to labor for your wife and children, for your father and mother, and for the ones you love.

It is a blessed thing to have an object in life--something to do-- something to call into play your best thoughts, to develop your faculties and to make you a man. How beautiful, how charming, are the dreams of the young mechanic, the artist, the musician, the actor and the student. How perfectly stupid must be the life of a young man with nothing to do, no ambition, no enthusiasm--that is to say, nothing of the divine in him; the young man with an object in life, of whose brain a great thought, a great dream has taken possession, and in whose heart there is a great, throbbing hope. He looks forward to success--to wife, children, home--all the blessings and sacred joys of human life. He thinks of wealth and fame and honor, and of a long, genial, golden, happy autumn.

Work gives the feeling of independence, of self-respect. A man who does something necessarily puts a value on himself. He feels that he is a part of the world's force. The idler--no matter what he says, no matter how scornfully he may look at the laborer--in his very heart knows exactly what he is; he knows that he is a counterfeit, a poor worthless imitation of a man.

But there is a vast difference between work and what I call "toil."

What must be the life of a man who can earn only one dollar or two dollars a day? If this man has a wife and a couple of children how can the family live? What must they eat? What must they wear?

From the cradle to the coffin they are ignorant of any luxury of life. If the man is sick, if one of the children dies, how can doctors and medicines be paid for? How can the coffin or the grave be purchased? These people live on what might be called "the snow line"--just at that point where trees end and the mosses begin.

What are such lives worth? The wages of months would hardly pay for the ordinary dinner of the family of a rich man. The savings of a whole life would not purchase one fas.h.i.+onable dress, or the lace on it. Such a man could not save enough during his whole life to pay for the flowers of a fas.h.i.+onable funeral.

And yet how often hundreds of thousands of persons, who spend thousands of dollars every year on luxuries, really wonder why the laboring people should complain. They are astonished when a car driver objects to working fourteen hours a day. Men give millions of dollars to carry the gospel to the heathen, and leave their own neighbors without bread; and these same people insist on closing libraries and museums of art on Sunday, and yet Sunday is the only day that these inst.i.tutions can be visited by the poor.

They even want to stop the street cars so that these workers, these men and women, cannot go to the parks or the fields on Sunday.

They want stages stopped on fas.h.i.+onable avenues so that the rich may not be disturbed in their prayers and devotions.

The condition of the workingman, even in America, is bad enough.

If free trade will not reduce wages what will? If manufactured articles become cheaper the skilled laborers of America must work cheaper or stop producing the articles. Every one knows that most of the value of a manufactured article comes from labor. Think of the difference between the value of a pound of cotton and a pound of the finest cotton cloth; between a pound of flax and enough point lace to weigh a pound; between a few ounces of paint, two or three yards of canvas and a great picture; between a block of stone and a statue! Labor is the princ.i.p.al factor in price; when the price falls wages must go down.

I do not claim that protection is for the benefit of any particular cla.s.s, but that it is for the benefit not only of that particular cla.s.s, but of the entire country. In England the common laborer expects to spend his old age in some workhouse. He is cheered through all his days of toil, through all his years of weariness, by the prospect of dying a respectable pauper. The women work as hard as the men. They toil in the iron mills. They make nails, they dig coal, they toil in the fields.

In Europe they carry the hod, they work like beasts and with beasts, until they lose almost the semblance of human beings--until they look inferior to the animals they drive. On the labor of these deformed mothers, of these bent and wrinkled girls, of little boys with the faces of old age, the heartless n.o.bility live in splendor and extravagant idleness. I am not now speaking of the French people, as France is the most prosperous country in Europe.

Let us protect our mothers, our wives and our children from the deformity of toil, from the depths of poverty.

_Question_. Is not the ballot an a.s.surance to the laboring man that he can get fair treatment from his employer?

_Answer_. The laboring man in this country has the political power, provided he has the intelligence to know it and the intelligence to use it. In so far as laws can a.s.sist labor, the workingman has it in his power to pa.s.s such laws; but in most foreign lands the laboring man has really no voice. It is enough for him to work and wait and suffer and emigrate. He can take refuge in the grave or go to America.

In the old country, where people have been taught that all blessing come from the king, it is very natural for the poor to believe the other side of that proposition--that is to say, all evils come from the king, from the government. They are rocked in the cradle of this falsehood. So when they come to this country, if they are unfortunate, it is natural for them to blame the Government.