ments going to show that protection would simply increase
prices in America, would simply enrich the capitalists and impoverish
the consumer, steel rails are now produced, I believe, right here
in Colorado for forty-two dollars a ton.

After all, it is a question of labor; a question of prices that
shall be paid the laboring man; a question of what the laboring
man shall eat; whether he shall eat meat or soup made from the
bones. Very few people take into consideration the value of raw
material and the value of labor. Take, for instance, your ton of
steel rails worth forty-two dollars. The iron in the earth is not
worth twenty-five cents. The coal in the earth and the lime in
the ledge together are not worth twenty-five cents. Now, then, of
the forty-two dollars, forty-one and a half is labor. There is
not two dollars' worth of raw material in a locomotive worth fifteen
thousand dollars. By raw material I mean the material in the earth.
There is not in the works of a watch which will sell for fifteen
dollars, raw material of the value of one-half cent. All the rest
is labor. A ship, a man-of-war that costs one million dollars--
the raw material in the earth is not worth, in my judgment, one
thousand dollars. All the rest is labor. If there is any way to
protect American labor, I am in favor of it. If the present tariff
does not do it, then I am in favor of changing to one that will.
If the Democratic party takes a stand for free trade or anything
like it, they will need protection; they will need protection at
the polls; that is to say, they will meet only with defeat and
disaster.

_Question_. What should be done with the surplus revenue?

_Answer_. My answer to that is, reduce internal revenue taxation
until the present surplus is exhausted, and then endeavor so to
arrange your tariff that you will not produce more than you need.
I think the easiest question to grapple with on this earth is a
surplus of money.

I do not believe in distributing it among the States. I do not think
there could be a better certificate of the prosperity of our country
than the fact that we are troubled with a surplus revenue; that we
have the machinery for collecting taxes in such perfect order, so
ingeniously contrived, that it cannot be stopped; that it goes
right on collecting money, whether we want it or not; and the
wonderful thing about it is that nobody complains. If nothing else
can be done with the surplus re