hould at all times be
scrupulously kept in view; and yet with slight reflection they will not
overlook the fact that they are consumers with the rest; that they too
have their own wants and those of their families to supply from their
earnings, and that the price of the necessaries of life, as well as the
amount of their wages, will regulate the measure of their welfare and
comfort.

But the reduction of taxation demanded should be so measured as not to
necessitate or justify either the loss of employment by the working-man
or the lessening of his wages; and the profits still remaining to the
manufacturer after a necessary readjustment should furnish no excuse
for the sacrifice of the interests of his employees, either in their
opportunity to work or in the diminution of their compensation. Nor can
the worker in manufactures fail to understand that while a high tariff
is claimed to be necessary to allow the payment of remunerative wages,
it certainly results in a very large increase in the price of nearly all
sorts of manufactures, which, in almost countless forms, he needs for
the use of himself and his family. He receives at the desk of his
employer his wages, and perhaps before he reaches his home is obliged,
in a purchase for family use of an article which embraces his own labor,
to return in the payment of the increase in price which the tariff
permits the hard-earned compensation of many days of toil.

The farmer and the agriculturist, who manufacture nothing, but who pay
the increased price which the tariff imposes upon every agricultural
implement, upon all he wears, and upon all he uses and owns, except
the increase of his flocks and herds and such things as his husbandry
produces from the soil, is invited to aid in maintaining the present
situation; and he is told that a high duty on imported wool is necessary
for the benefit of those who have sheep to shear, in order that the
price of their wool may be increased. They, of course, are not reminded
that the farmer who has no sheep is by this scheme obliged, in his
purchases of clothing and woolen goods, to pay a tribute to his
fellow-farmer as well as to the manufacturer and merchant, nor is any
mention made of the fact that the sheep owners themselves and their
households must wear clothing and use other articles manufactured from
the wool they sell at tariff prices, and thus as consumers must return
their share of this increased price to the tradesman.

I