honest protection is right and a condition of American prosperity.
A tariff high enough to give American producers the American market when they make honest goods and sell
them at honest prices but low enough that when they sell dishonest goods at dishonest prices, foreign
competition can correct both evils; a tariff high enough to enable American producers to pay our workingmen
American wages and so arranged that the workingmen will get such wages; a business tariff whose changes
will be so made as to reassure business instead of disturbing it--this is the tariff and the method of its making
in which the Progressive party believes, for which it does battle and which it proposes to write into the laws of
the land.
The Payne-Aldrich tariff law must be revised immediately in accordance to these principles. At the same time
a genuine, permanent, non-partisan tariff commission must be fixed in the law as firmly as the Interstate
Commerce Commission. Neither of the old parties can do this work. For neither of the old parties believes in
such a tariff; and, what is more serious, special privilege is too thoroughly woven into the fiber of both old
parties to allow them to make such a tariff. The Progressive party only is free from these influences. The
Progressive party only believes in the sincere enactment of a sound tariff policy. The Progressive party only
can change the tariff as it must be changed.
These are samples of the reforms in the laws of business that we intend to put on the Nation's statute books.
But there are other questions as important and pressing that we mean to answer by sound and humane laws.
Child labor in factories, mills, mines and sweat-shops must be ended throughout the Republic. Such labor is a
crime against childhood because it prevents the growth of normal manhood and womanhood. It is a crime
against the Nation because it prevents the growth of a host of children into strong, patriotic and intelligent
citizens.
Only the Nation can stop this industrial vice. The States cannot stop it. The States never stopped any national
wrong--and child labor is a national wrong. To leave it to the State alone is unjust to business; for if some
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The Art of Public Speaking
States stop it and other States do not, business men of the former are at a disadvantage with the business men
of the latter, because they must sell in the same market goods made by manhood labor at manhood wages in
competition with goods made by childhood labor at childhood wages. To leave it to the States is unjust to
manhood labor; for childhood labor in any State lowers manhood labor in every State, because the product of
childhood labor in any State competes with the product of manhood labor in every State. Children workers at
the looms in South Carolina means bayonets at the breasts of men and women workers in Massachusetts who
strike for living wages. Let the States do what they can, and more power to their arm; but let the Nation do
what it should and cleanse our flag from this stain.
Modern industrialism has changed the status of women. Women now are wage earners in factories, stores and
other places of toil. In hours of labor and all the physical conditions of industrial effort they must compete
with men. And they must do it at lower wages than men receive--wages which, in most cases, are not enough
for these women workers to live on.
This is inhuman and indecent. It is unsocial and uneconomic. It is immoral and unpatriotic. Toward women
the Progressive party proclaims the chivalry of the State. We propose to protect women wage-earners by
suitable laws, an example of which is the minimum wage for women workers--a wage which shall be high
enough to at least buy clothing, food and shelter for the woman toiler.
The care of the aged is one of the most perplexing problems of modern life. How is the workingman with less
than five hundred dollars a year, and with earning power waning as his own years advance, to provide for
aged parents or other relatives in addition to furnishing food, shelter and clothing for his wife and children?
What is to become of the family of the laboring man whose strength has been sapped by excessive toil and
who has been thrown upon the industrial scrap heap? It is questions like these we must answer if we are to
justify free institutions. They are questions to which the masses of people are chained as to a body of death.
And they are questions which other and poorer nations are answering.
We progressives mean that America shall answer them. The Progressive party is the helping hand to those
whom a vicious industrialism has maimed and crippled. We are for the conservation of our natural resources;
but even more we are for the conservation of human life. Our forests, water power and minerals are valuable
and must be saved from the spoilers; but men, women and children are more valuable and they, too, must be
saved from the spoilers.
Because women, as much as men, are a part of our economic and social life, women, as much as men, should
have the voting power to solve all economic and social problems. Votes for women are theirs as a matter of
natural right alone; votes for women should be theirs as a matter of political wisdom also. As wage-earners,
they should help to solve the labor problem; as property owners they should help to solve the tax problem; as
wives and mothers they should help to solve all the problems that concern the home. And that means all
national problems; for the Nation abides at the fireside. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]