One of the most enduring and popular lines from Benjamin Harrison remains this remark:
I cannot always sympathize with that demand which we hear so frequently for cheap things. Things may be too cheap. They are too cheap when the man or woman who produces them upon the farm or the man or woman who produces them in the factory does not get out of them living wages with a margin for old age and for a dowry for the incidents that are to follow. I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth or shapes it into a garment will starve in the process.
Given to a crowd in Vermont on August 28th, 1891, shortly after the McKinley Tariff went into effect. There were earlier versions, included below:
“[I am not in] sympathy with this demand for cheaper coats, which seems…necessarily to involve a cheaper man and woman under the coat.”
Report of the Benjamin Harrison Memorial Commission p. 141
“I think I saw the other day, in one of our Indianapolis papers, a good overcoat advertised for $1.87, and it must be a pretty mean man that wants to get one for a dollar…whenever the market price is so low that the man or woman who makes the article cannot get a fair living out of making it, it is too low.”
Life of Gen. Ben Harrison p. 295 quoting a speech of December 20th, 1887.
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