John Sherman

You have gone through all these years of public life without a stain upon your honored name.

Whenever tariff duties are levied at a higher rate than sufficient to compensate our laboring men in the different rates of wages they are fairly entitled to receive, then I am against the tariff act.

Whether the cost of the necessities are increased or diminished by this policy is a matter of comparative indifference, so that the people are employed at fair wages in making or producing all the articles that can be profitably produced…

My object has always been to seek to advance the interests of American workingmen in all kinds of industries, whether mechanical, agricultural, scientific or otherwise.

I insisted that the object of protection--the employment of American labor--was of more importance than the price of food or clothing, though I believed, with Mr.

The platform upon which he was elected was "That an adequate protection to American industry is indispensable to the prosperity of this country; and that an abandonment of the policy at this period would be attended with consequences…

If American labor is actively employed there can be no difficulty in the laborer obtaining the necessaries of life.

The larger the product of American labor the greater is the wealth and comfort of American citizens.

If our needs can be supplied by American labor it is a mutual advantage to both the laborer and producer.

I insisted that the magnitude of domestic production and the opportunities to labor were matters of greater importance than the prices of commodities.

When the wheat of a farmer is worth only fifty cents a bushel or his cotton only seven cents a pound it is to him a calamity, not an object of desire but a misfortune.

When cheapness comes by discoveries, by inventions, or by new industrial processes, the people ought to share in those benefits, but as a rule mere cheapness of things is not a benefit to the people of the United States, especially when…

By the terms of this bill I think the treaty is violated, and I, for one, do not propose to vote for the conference report on that ground.

But it is done upon certain terms and conditions, that in respect to those who are here now they shall be treated as all other peoples are treated; that no discrimination shall be made against them; that no prejudicial mark shall be put…

Here is a treaty by which China, the most populous nation in the world, agreed that the United States may exclude the class of people of China that we do not want here, making a discrimination against them among all nations of the world.

We have agreed by this treaty not only that we would not discriminate against them in our legislation, but that we would permit these laborers to remain in the position of persons 'of the most favored nation.' . . .

The question is now whether, in the fact of the language of the treaty of 1880, it is our right--not our power, but our right according to the treaty--to make this exceptional legislation for people who are now here under existing law.

I care nothing about the exclusion of Chinese laborers from our country, because I believe their habits are inconsistent with our civilization, and, as soon as we can get rid of them properly, according to the treaty, I am willing to do so.

This inaugurates in our system of government a new departure, one I believe never before practiced, although it was suggested in conference that some such rules had been adopted in the old slavery times to secure the peaceful and quiet…

I look upon the introduction of Chinese laborers through Canada as not only an insult to our country, but it seems to me an almost designed insult by the Canadian authorities to allow a class of people who are forbidden by our laws to come…

They believe that that will degrade the money of our country, reduce its purchasing power fully one-third, destroy the bi-metallic system which we have maintained for a long period of time, and reduce us to a single monometallic standard…

I, representing a state nearly central in population, have tested the sense of the people of Ohio, and they, I believe, are by a great majority, not only of the party to which I belong but of the Democratic party, opposed to the free…

Everybody is deeply interested in the standard of value by which we measure all the productions of the labor and all the wealth of mankind.

It affects every man, woman and child in our broad land, the rich with his investments, the poor with his labor.

No question before the Senate of the United States at this session is at all to be compared with it in the importance of its effects upon the business interests of the country.