The Triumphant Life of Theodore Roosevelt edited by J. Martin Miller

THE SECOND DAY 251
OEOWTH OF THE POSTAL FACILITIES
Take the postoffice department that reaches all of the people, and no man is
compelled to pay one penny. It is voluntary taxation. For the year ending in
March, 1861, the total revenue of the postoffice department in all the United States
was §8,500,000. Keep that in our minds; $8,500,000. How much do you .suppose it
cost to run it? Nineteen million. Took all the revenue and as much more, and one
quarter as much more from the treasury to pay for that postal service. Why, gen-
tlemen, the city postoffice of Chicago last year collected more revenue by almost
$1,000,000 than was collected by the whole department in the United States in i860.
How is it now? We have reduced postage more than one-half since 1S60 on the
average. Last year the postal revenues were $134,000,000, as against .§8,000,000 in
i860. Keep that in your mind—$134,000,000. And the whole service only cost
§138,000,000. We had a deficit of §4,000,000—3 per cent—and we would not have
had that deficit had it not been that under the lead of the Republican party—looking
out for the welfare of all the people and conducting the government from a business
standpoint—under the lead of McKinley, followed by Roosevelt, ruial free delivery
was established that cost §io,ooo,oco. Great heavens! The Republican party from
1S60 until this moment moves out, does what good common sense dictates, and the
country grows to it. Well, now. I will drop that department.
IS THE PARTY OF PROTECTION
The Republican party is a national party and believes in diversification of our
industries and the protection of American capital and American labor as against the
cheaper labor elsewhere on earth.
What do the other people believe in? For sixty years went out the cry of free
trade throughout the world—free ships upon the sea. Then a tariflf was demanded
for revenue only. The opposition always has denounced the RepuDlican policy of
protection as robbery, and, whenever clothed with power, whatever its pretenses, it
has thrust a dagger into the very heart of protection.
Oh, well, aren't they going to change? Let us see. Just before the close of the
last Congress New York's eloquent son, Bourke Cockran, a member of the house of
representatives, got the floor, and he preached an old-fashioned Democratic ser-
mon—free trade and all that kind of thing—and he did it well, and there came from
the minority side of that house, without exceptions, such cheering and crying and
hurrahing and applauding as I never witnessed before in that house of representa-
tives, because at last they had the pure Democratic faith delivered to them.
OPPOSITION LACKS DEFINITENESS
They are trying to draw sets together from Nebraska and throughout the coun-
try. New England, New York, and the South ; trying to satisfy people that they