212. Protection Universal.-"Free foreign trade" is, on its face, a term of complaint, which implies the pre-existence of some legislative policy which is charged with restricting foreign trade. The argument between tariff protection and free foreign trade, therefore, opens with protection in possession, i. e., embodied in the statutes and jurisprudence of the following nations, viz. :

Free foreign trade (so called) has dominated England for only forty years, out of the three hundred and fifty years in which England has had an international trade. During these forty years, the proportion of revenue, collected by duties on foreign trade in England, has been greater than in any other country, except the United States. Fully half the amount of revenue collected by England is, as we have seen, protective of the domestic manufacturer (of tobacco, gold leaf, and the like), and peremptorily destructive to the producer of domestic leaf tobacco. A tariff which forbids one industry, and protects another by a duty whose strictly protective portion is three or four-fold the value in foreign countries of the article on which it rests, is very far from being a non-interference with industry.

Protection holds that "possession" of all countries, which is "nine points" not only in law but in logic. This universality of protection proves it to be a "natural" element in government— just as profit is in trade. With the same readiness with which we would predict that "given two producers, each of whom has a surplus of what the other needs, they will trade," so we may also affirm that, "given two nations, whose people trade with

*If to these we add the nations which would gladly enact protective tariffs if permitted by English bayonets to do so, the list would be doubled by the addition of China, Japan, and India. And if to these we add those countries the chief part of whose commercial ascendency was won under and through protective policies, it would add the Netherlands and Great Britain. If we add those which still practice partial tariff protection to home industry and armed military protection to foreign trade, Great Britain would stand chief and facile princeps among protective nations,

ALL NATIONS PROTECT.

607

each other in competing commodities, each nation will seek, by duties, to protect its own producers in its own markets, to the extent of deriving a revenue from taxes on the importation of the commodities of their rivals." Protective tariffs between nations whose manufacturers, traders, farmers, or other producers compete, are as natural as trade itself is between persons or nations whose productions differ. A free foreign trader can only, with the same logic, charge a protectionist with obstructing the natural laws of trade, as a protectionist can charge every free trader with seeking to obstruct the natural principles of government. The uniform action of all other nations in levying protective tariffs, sustained by nine-tenths of the record. of Great Britain herself, proves "protection" to be as natural, inevitable, and necessary an element, in government, as exchange is in Industry. On a question of this kind the universal man knows more than the one man, and universal usage establishes natural law. Just as it is a law of nature that all governments shall practice coercion towards the disobedient, and that all peoples shall render homage to those in power, so is it a law of nature that all nations, whose people have international trade in competing merchandise, shall protect their own people by discriminating duties. They have always done so, and they always will. None should be so grateful to them for doing so as those whose function is criticism, since if it were possible that governments could cease to levy protective tariffs, the function of those economists, who reduce criticism or fault-finding to a system, would, so far as this question is concerned, be gone. Those who live by finding fault, like those who live by finding diamonds, should be grateful for what they find.

This chapter should have made apparent to the student the distinction between criticism as a force in society, and Policy, Action, Human Nature, or whatsoever we choose to call the existing and governing social forces. The enactment of protective statutes represent the latter, the clamor of free-trade pedants and theorists for the abolition of these statutes the former.

Protection is the mountain. It is eternal. Free trade is the mirage. If it advances it dissolves. It can only make with protection the same kind of an issue as the non-existing and impossible makes with the universal, natural, and inevitable. It is a fight between something and nothing. Protection is an economy; free trade is a give-away, a waste. Protection is constructive; free trade is destructive. Free trade may be talked,

while one is out of office. Protection must be practiced, the instant one comes into office, or inevitable disaster ensues.

Protection investigates, consults, harmonizes, unites. Free trade disintegrates, divides, slanders, besmirches, and disorganizes. Protection collects facts. Free trade is oracular, pompous, and issues dogmas. This chapter opened with several refreshing extracts from free-trade criticisms. It closes with a note containing the overweening criticism, by an English manufacturer, of great wealth, eloquence, and social power, upon the stupidity of Americans, in pursuing that policy which, in England, renders a John Bright possible. The silent but effective answer to Mr. Bright's urgency that Congress should be “wise and righteous" is found in the practical illustration which British free trade affords of wisdom and righteousness, in its career at home and in India, Ireland, Turkey, China, and Japan. If Americans had 600,000,000 of barbarians where we could train our guns upon them, if they demanded the right to trade with their countrymen in preference to buying of ourselves, then we too might aspire to teach "wisdom and righteousness" in the English way. In the absence of these barbarian aids, we have to be quite humble. British righteousness and British wisdom, both of which blend in British free trade, are beyond our present reach.

*Mr. L. U. Reavis of St. Louis recently received from Rt. Hon. John Bright of England the following letter:

ONE ASH, ROCHDALE, Feb. 6, 1888. DEAR SIR.. As to the disputes between labor and capital, surely your monstrous tariff provokes, if it does not justify, your strikes and labor insurrections.

...

If your Congress insists on burdening your whole population to give profit to your manufacturers, surely the workmen may as justly insist on protection to their labor. Whilst your tariff is in force you need not expect your workmen to be wise. Protection, which means robbing somebody, will not content itself with enriching manufacturers, but will be called in to give higher wages and shorter hours of labor to your workmen.

Congress should become wise and righteous, before it can expect the artisans and laboring classes to make progress in that direction.

Yours very truly,

MR. L. U. REAVIS, St. Louis, Mo., U. S. America.

JOHN BRIGHT.

CHAPTER XV.

ECONOMY OF PROTECTION.

213. How a Tariff May Protect Producers.

DUTIES ON IMPORTS MAY PROTECT THE PRODUCERS, TRADERS, TRANSPORTERS, BANKERS, LAND-OWNERS AND LABORERS OF THE COUNTRY, IMPOSING THE DUTIES IN FIVE WAYS, WHICH ARE THE FIVE POINTS OF PROTECTION, VIZ.: FIRST, WHEN, WITHOUT RAISING THE PRICE OF THE ARTICLE, THEY SHUT OUT IN WHOLE OR IN PART THE FOREIGN COMPETING ARTICLE, THEREBY SECURING TO DOMESTIC PRODUCERS THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO SUPPLY THE ARTICLE TO DOMESTIC CONSUMERS.

This occurs when the article is so largely produced at home that domestic producers are fully competent to supply it at as low prices as it can be imported, yet would lose a portion of their market if free competition from abroad were allowed. As the cheapness with which an article can be marketed often depends on the certainty of a market, it is obvious that this class of duties, by insuring to American producers a certain market, tends immediately and in the first instance to cheapness. The test of the cheapness of the American market relatively to the foreign is found in our ability to export, since no article will go abroad except to obtain a price higher, by cost and profits of transportation, than it can find at home.

The following schedules of protected articles which we both export and import shows how large is the volume of merchandise, the duties upon which do not enchance the price in the American market. Yet they protect that market, containing 63,000,000 customers, to American producers, absolutely as to the portion of foreign goods excluded by these dutes, and relatively as to the portion admitted. Since, by the terms of the proposition, the American price is the same or lower than the foreign, the whole duty on competing goods must be paid by the foreign competing producers.