The difference between trimming a hedge and cutting it down Uncle Sam, "Now don't come around tellin' me that story about cuttin' down the hedge and bein' eat up by the free-trade b'ars" / / W.A. Rogers.

Political cartoon showing Thomas Brackett Reed as a boy, crying to Uncle Sam, with another boy pulling small wagon "pig iron, Kelley," while President Grover Cleveland trims "tariff, the protection hedge" to reduce the "surplus".
Illus. in: Harper's weekly, 1888 Aug. 4, p. 568.