y kept prices down to a normal level; that so long as one state
could compete with all the others in the United States, and all the others
compete with it, there would be only that kind of advantage gained which
is gained by superior brain, superior economy, the better plant, the
better administration; all of the things that have made America supreme,
and kept prices in America down, because American genius was competing
with American genius. I must add that so long as that was true, there was
much to be said in defence of the protective tariff.

But the point now is that the protective tariff has been taken advantage
of by some men to destroy domestic competition, to combine all existing
rivals within our free-trade area, and to make it impossible for new men
to come into the field. Under the high tariff there has been formed a
network of factories which in their connection dominate the market of the
United States and establish their own prices. Whereas, therefore, it was
once arguable that the high tariff did not create the high cost of living,
it is now no longer arguable that these combinations do not,--not by
reason of the tariff, but by reason of their combination under the
tariff,--settle what prices shall be paid; settle how much the product
shall be; and settle, moreover, what shall be the market for labor.

The "protective" policy, as we hear it proclaimed to-day, bears no
relation to the original doctrine enunciated by Webster and Clay. The
"infant industries," which those statesmen desired to encourage, have
grown up and grown gray, but they have always had new arguments for
special favors. Their demands have gone far beyond what they dared ask for
in the days of Mr. Blaine and Mr. McKinley, though both those apostles of
"protection" were, before they died, ready to confess that the time had
even then come to call a halt on the claims of the subsidized industries.
William McKinley, before he died, showed symptoms of adjustment to the new
age such as his successors have not exhibited. You remember what the
utterances of Mr. McKinley's last month were with regard to the policy
with which his name is particularly identified; I mean the policy of
"protection." You remember how he joined in opinion with what Mr. Blaine
before him had said--namely, that we had devoted the country to a policy
which, too rigidly persisted in, was proving a policy of restriction; and
that we must look forward to a time that ought to c