Maintain — and if necessary widen — the protective tariff; reject the Democratic 'competitive tariff for revenue'

The Tariff Commission should promptly investigate individual commodities so affected by currency depreciation and report to the President any increase in duties found necessary to equalize domestic with foreign costs of production.

We favor the extension of the general Republican principle of tariff protection to our natural resource industries, including the products of our farms, forests, mines and oil wells, with compensatory duties on the manufactured and refined products thereof.

First: I am squarely for a protective tariff. I am against the proposal of "a competitive tariff for revenue" as advocated by our opponents. That would place our farmers and our workers in competition with peasant and sweated-labor products from abroad.

The Republican Party originated and proposes to maintain the protective tariff on agricultural products. We will even widen that tariff further if it is necessary to protect agriculture. Ninety percent of the farmer's market is at home, and we propose to reserve that market to him.

The bargain these countries wish to make is to lower our tariff on agricultural products in exchange for lowering their tariffs on our industrial goods. American industrial leaders, realizing the needs of the American farmer, do not want to be a part of such bargains.

There is no measure in the whole economic gamut more vital to the American workman and the farmer today than the maintenance of the protective tariff. I stand on that principle.

The grass will grow in streets of a hundred cities, a thousand towns; the weeds will overrun the fields of millions of farms if that protection be taken away. Their churches, their hospitals, and their schoolhouses will decay.

Beyond the possibilities of adjustment by the Tariff Commission, we will widen the protective tariff by legislation if necessary to protect agriculture. Our oils and fats are suffering, entirely unnecessarily, from foreign imports of these commodities. The American market should be and must be reserved for the American farmer at all times--whether emergency times or normal times.

Our first and immediate duty now is to repair these breaches in order that agriculture may resume a march forward parallel with industry within the next 30 days. That we shall do, either through the flexible tariff provision or, if necessary, through legislation. We propose to preserve the American market for the American farmer.