Mr. GRIMES. So far as the amendment under consideration relates to building stones, I take no interest in it and have nothing to say. If Senators rePresenting the States along the Atlantic coast choose to put a tax upon building stone, so as to increase the expenses of dwellings, and other buildings in the cities and in the villages of the country they represent, and thereby increase rents, be it so. I do not know that the section of country that I rePresent has any particular interest in it. But I have a slight interest, as the people of the State of which I am a citizen have, in the subject of grindstones. Grindstones are of general use. There is not a manufactory of iron or steel or a machine shop or a respectable sized farm in the country that does not use grindstones. I am well aware that if we put this tariff upon imported grindstones it is not going to bring a singleogrindstone to the section of country where I live. A region of country adjacent to that in which the Senfrom Ohio lives has now an entire monopoly of that trade, and during all the time I have lived in the West I have never seen a grindstone from any other place than from the neighborhood of Berea, in Ohio. There may be quarries from which they are occasionally wrought or wrought to some is In Ot worth a tithe I is the labor on it this no raw material extent elsewhere: but I never heard, until the Senfrom Michigan told us today, that there was one in the State of Michigan. The Senfrom Ohio has not told us that these Berea quarries are in a languishing condition. I understand that on the contrary they are very prosperous; and it is within my own knowledge that during the last 2 years an establishment in the town in which I live has been obliged to wait from 2 to 3 months to have an order sent to Berea for grindstones filled. I understand also from the Senfrom Michigan that the grindstone manufactory in his State is exceedingly pros perous, for he says it has drawn a large amount of population from Canada over into Michigan in order to work in that grindstone quarry. I apprehend, therefore, that so far as protection is concerned, upon the argument submitted by the Senfrom Michigan and the Senfrom Ohio, there is not much to be said in favor of the proposition. There is another thing to be taken into consideration, that under the law as it now stands and it is not proposed to modify it, so far as I know this is a manufacture that pays no internal duty whatever. Therefore, if the Senfrom Ohio is successful in preventing the influx of these articles from abroad, just to that extent he diminishes the revenue of the country. That is a consideration which, it occurs to me, it would be well for the Senate to ponder. The Senator tells us that he desires an increase of the wages of the laborer and he is going to exalt and dignify labor, and this bill is the panacea by which it is to be accomplished. The Senfrom Maine very well inquired of him whether there were not other laborers in this country beside those in the machine shop and those in the quarry. Sir, the labor ofte country is done upon the farms. The basis of our products, of all our commerce, and of all our manufactures is dug out of the earth by the farmers. Now, let us see what is proposed by this bill; and I call the attention of the Senfrom Ohio, who is an ardent advocate of the whole of the bill and all its principles, to its consideration for one moment, and then ask him whether he proposes to put an additional burden upon the farmers of the country by requiring them to pay an additional price for grindstones; for, as I said before, although we shall not in the section of country where I live, nor will he in the State of Ohio, see a single imported grindstone, yet the im: position of this tax upon the importation of grindstones is going to be an excuse for those who own the quarries in Ohio and Michigan to increase the price of the article they now furnish in exactly the same proportion that we increase the duty. In this bill we declare that all agricultural implements imported into this country shall pay a duty of 35%. We declare that no farmer ial put up a fence around his farm, or put up a house or any necessary outbuildings from any foreign lum ber, unless he shall contribute the sum of 2 dollars 1000for that. Then we have another clause saying the Canadian farmer, who is raising agricultural productions in competition with our farmers just across the line, shall be permitted to come into the States, get his agricultural implements on this side, and take them at a price with the duty off. That is one of the provisions of the bill; so that the farmer in the British Provinces gets every agricultural implement, his hoes, his rakes, his plows, his harrows, his mowing machines, and his reaping machines, and even his axes, free of all i. impositions of duty imposed by this or any other tariff bill, and he can send in the produce that he raises in competition with the American farmer, and to his detriment. That is called protection to American industry, protection to American labor! It is true, the bill proposes to lay a small duty upon agricultural products ten cents a bushel on barley, not 1/2 the price it would cost to transport a bushel of barley from the State where I live to the city of NewYork or Boston, which is the common market both of the Canadian and the Iowa farmer; and 20 cents a bushel on wheat, which is not enough to pay the cost of transportation, the Canadian farmer having the advantage of being so much nearer to the NewYork and Boston market than we are. And yet on the heels of that, with all the advantages given to the farmers of the British Provinces by this bill, which the Senfrom Ohio has announced himself in favor of, it is proposed now