This involves so many grave considerations that no party is prepared to advocate it openly.

Free-traders do not, and apparently dare not, face the plain truth--which is that the lowest priced fabric means the lowest priced labor.

On this point protectionists are more frank than their opponents; they realize that it constitutes indeed the most impregnable defense of their school.

Free-traders have at times attempted to deny the truth of the statement; but every impartial investigation thus far has conclusively proved that labor is better paid, and the average condition of the laboring man more comfortable, in the United States than in any European country.
An adjustment of the protective duty to the point which represents the average difference between wages of labor in Europe and in America, will, in the judgment of protectionists, always prove impracticable.

The difference cannot be regulated by a scale of averages because it is constantly subject to arbitrary changes.
If the duty be adjusted on that basis for any given date, a reduction of wages would at once be enforced abroad, and the American manufacturer would in consequence be driven to the desperate choice of surrendering the home market or reducing the pay of workmen.
The theory of protection is not answered, nor can its realization to attained by any such device.