April 7 I do not prize the word, “cheap”. It is not a badge of honor. It is a symbol of despair. Cheap prices make for cheap goods; cheap goods make for cheap men; and cheap men make for a cheap country. William McKinley, 25th President, 1897-1901- From his speech, "Protection and Revenue", at Music Hall, Cleveland, Ohio, October 5, 1889.-McKinley, a member of congress at the time, was campaigning for the Republican party and its policies of tariffs and taxation a month before the Presidential election of Benjamin Harrison. He states, "There has always been in the United States a political party that favored a strict construction of the Constitution, that stood in opposition to internal improvements and to a protective tariff, that believed in class and caste and obstruction; and there has always been, on the other hand, a party that stood for the largest liberty, for the full development of the country,...and for the maintenance of a protective tariff and the widest opportunities for American aspiration...If Madison and Hamilton, Clay and Webster stood for a system of taxation that would bear most lightly upon the people, and least retard our industrial development, so the Republican party stands today for precisely the same system...To give intelligent judgment upon this question it is necessary that we should rightly understand what constitutes a revenue tariff, and exactly what is meant by a protective tariff. Now, a revenue tariff, as the very term implies, is a tariff for revenue only, a tariff which has no purpose, except putting money into the Treasury for public purposes. A protective tariff, while raising revenue, it has consideration for the occupations of our own people. It has concern for our agricultural and mechanical development...Every time you bring a competing product into the United States it takes the place of a like quantity of the American product...(and) while you are securing an overflowing Treasury you are bankrupting our own industries, destroying our own investment, and depriving American working men of the labor which belongs to them. - They (proponents of revenue tariff) say "everything would be so cheap" if only we had free trade. Well, everything would be cheap and everybody would be cheap. I do not prize the word cheap. It is not a word of hope; it is not a word of comfort; it is not a word of cheer; it is not a word of inspiration! It is the badge of poverty; it is the signal of distress...when things were the cheapest, men were the poorest...Why cheap merchandise means cheap men, and cheap men mean a cheap country; and that is not the kind of country our fathers founded, and it is not the kind their sons mean to maintain. We want labor to be well paid; we want everything we make and produce to pay a fair compensation to the producer. That is what makes good times.-From "Speeches and Addresses of William McKinley", Copyright D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1893, pages 368-380.