it entailed great loss to the United States.
How to deal with this condition was the problem for the next Congress
to solve.

On the 31st of August, in response to an inquiry from the editor
of the "Citizen," a newspaper published in Urbana, Ohio, I wrote
the following letter in regard to the policy of protection to
American industries by tariff laws:

"A protective tariff was the first measure provided by the first
Congress of the United States. No nation can be independent without
a diversity of industries. A single occupation may answer for an
individual, but a nation must be composed of many men of many
employments. Every nation ought to be independent of other nations
in respect to all productions necessary for life and comfort that
can be made at home. These are axioms of political economy so
manifestly true that they need no demonstration. The measure of
protection is a proper subject of dispute, but there should be no
dispute as to the principle of protection in a country like ours,
possessing almost every raw material of nature and almost every
variety of productions. We have prospered most when our industries
have been best protected. The vast variety of our manufactures,
now rivaling in quantity those of countries much older than ours,
is the result of protection.

"Every President, from Washington down to Jackson, inclusive,
declared in favor of the principle of protection. Every eminent
statesman of the early period, including Calhoun, favored this
policy. The owners of slaves, engaged chiefly in the production
of cotton, became hostile to protection, and, with those engaged
in foreign commerce, were the representative free traders of the
United States. Now that slavery is abolished and the south has
entered upon the development of her vast natural resources, and it
has been proven that our foreign commerce is greater under protective
laws, there should be no opposition in any portion of our country
to the protection of American industry by wise discriminating
duties.

"The principle of protection should be applied impartially and
fairly to all productions, whether of the workshop or the farm.
The object is to diversify employment and to protect labor, and
this protection should be impartially applied without respect to
the nature of the production. All experience has established the
invariable fact that domestic production, by inducing competition,
in a brief period, lowers the price of