orld. 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 circumstances 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 glass 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