PROTECTIVE PHILOSOPHY.

A DISCUSSION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF

The American Protective System

AS EMBODIED IN THE MCKINLEY BILL.

BY

DAVID HALL RICE, A. M.

BOSTON :

PUBLISHED BY GEORGE B. REED.

1890.

PREFACE.

THE author has been led, by his studies of economic questions, to write the following chapters. Their purpose is two-fold: First, to present the latest and most authoritative evidence of the comparative effects of the free-trade tariff system and of the protective tariff system, in a form which will render it accessible to the student, and the business man. Secondly, to point out the economic principles which operate, under the conditions attending modern industrial production, to develop our wonderful growth and prosperity under the American protective system. The Royal Commission on the Depression of Trade in Great Britain has come to the conclusion, based on an exhaustive examination of the subject, that the industrial conditions of that country, previous to twenty-five years ago, were so different from those that have since prevailed as to afford little aid to the proper understanding of the causes which have since controlled the industries of the British people. In that I concur with them. The same may be said of our industrial conditions prior to 1860, when our present protective system began to go into effect. The very fact that the passage of a law in this country like the McKinley bill, which is made for our own people, shakes the industrial markets of Europe from the British islands to the Danube, is evidence of the mighty economic force which we have developed under the protective system. It tells us that hereafter no treatise on economics which does not comprise the contemporaneous condition of different nations, under different systems of tariffs, can be reliable. Herein is where this treatise differs from most that have preceded it. It is an attempt to collate from the best evidence, and to compare the

industrial condition of the only considerable nation existing under free-trade tariffs with that of leading nations, during the same period, which are controlled by protective systems. It is further, an attempt to deduce from this comparison the economic laws which govern our industrial prosperity; to proceed from the practical and known to the theoretical.

fail.

Herein is where the modern treatises of free-trade tariff votaries They one and all avoid giving the plain and truthful statement of the industrial condition of Great Britain, as a whole, during the last fifteen years. They fail to give that of Germany as a whole. Finally, they fail to make any fair comparison between these counties, or between them and us. Their lights upon the industrial progress of the world are all half lights, and side lights. They deal in half truths, and what they keep in the shadow is more important than what they disclose to the student of economics seeking for the truth.

Nor have protectionists any complete treatise recent enough to include these vital conditions of modern industrial history in other countries. Such a history for Great Britain was substantially wanting entirely, until the reports of the Royal Commission on Trade and Industry were published in the latter part of 1886. Previously, we had to rely largely upon the partial, partisan, and misleading statistics issued by the Cobden Club, the unreliability of which was exposed by the Royal Commission reports.

In this state of protective literature in this country, the author felt that there was still much to be said in behalf of the protective system, and new truths to be deduced in its favor.

The definition of Protection which is given in Chapter II., may provoke some criticism. That is what is desired. It may not be logically the most perfect attainable, but it is more so than any I have seen.

In conclusion, I crave the charity of the reader for any errors he may discover. These pages have been written in the time that could