PROTECTION HAS FOSTERED UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH

Protection has brought about, on one hand, the bloated Pittsburgh millionaires, and, on the other hand, the twelve-hour day, two shifts of twelve hours each, Sunday work, increased child labor, cruel speeding, and cheerless, insanitary homes and surroundings. Such is the work of "protection," secured by manufacturers through political alliances and United States Congresses steeped in the fallacies of protection, while cunningly claiming they are working for the benefit of American laborers. They use them as the cat's paw to draw chestnuts out of the fire for themselves. But the Lawrence strike and the train of subsequent events connected with it, even yet not ended, are opening everyone's eyes. We see the most highly protected industries employing their help at rates fixed by the competition of the world, while selling their goods at such prices as the tariff enables them to charge and yet just keeping out imported goods or restricting almost entirely their importation. The whole country is awakening to realization of the fact that a gradual reduction of the tariff to a revenue basis (which is free trade) will benefit everyone.

PROTECTION DOES NOT RESULT IN CHEAPNESS

In the celebrated Report on Manufactures to Congress by Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury in

1791 he admitted that "as often as a duty upon a foreign article makes an addition to its price it causes an extra expense to the community for the benefit of the domestic manufacturer." He argued that it is for the interest of society to submit to this temporary expense on account of the eventual cheapness that would ultimately result. The trouble is that "the eventual cheapness" that is to result from protection never comes. The same argument was used in or about 1864, when protection began to be talked about again. We were told that it was to be temporary and moderate. After half a century no one hears anything more about the temporary character of protection. Instead of being moderate, protection has become immoderate, ever asking for more and more. As to the cheapness to be brought about by protection, where is it? The United States has become the dearest country in the world to live in.

PROTECTION DOES NOT CAUSE PROSPERITY

It is a common thing for protectionists to cite census figures showing the increase in wealth of our country and then to say that it is due to protection. But this is what they are to prove, and they forget that in order to prove it they must prove how much the country would have increased in wealth under free trade (meaning a tariff for revenue only). There is one important fact bearing on this subject,

the fact that in no period under protection has this country prospered so greatly as it did during the period from about 1840 to 1860, in which the country was the nearest to being under free trade. Of course, I do not mean that during that period we increased more in wealth than during any later period, for the population was much less and we had not yet accumulated great surplus wealth; but, proportionately, that was the period of the greatest prosperity the country ever saw. I will not repeat the bad mistake in logic made by protectionists, and claim that it was all due to free trade, but doubtless the lower duties then prevailing were one of the many causes that will account for the unexampled prosperity of that period.

PROTECTIONISTS CLAIM THAT A PROTECTIVE TARIFF INCREASES WEALTH

I quote from that protectionist authority, Stanwood:

It is not suggested that the object of a protective tariff is to encourage importations—rather, the contrary is true; but that the general effect is to increase and to diffuse wealth, and thus to create conditions that lead to larger importations.

If protection increases wealth, it is magic! All we

have to do is to tax ourselves out of all we have by heavier duties on everything-and we shall all become immensely rich!

PROTECTION IS AN APPEAL TO SELFISHNESS

It rests on false reasoning, misapplication of facts, and claims based on bad reasoning. It is arrogant, full of pretence, ever taking refuge in some new sophism as it is obliged to abandon each old one as men become convinced of its nature. It is a snare and a delusion; a fraud, because it is a system of legalized, organized robbery of the many for the benefit of the few. If any think this language is too strong, let them study the history of tariff legislation in Washington during the last thirty to forty years and let them find out for themselves how the will of the people to obtain tariff reform (meaning thereby tariff reduction) has been frustrated by chicanery and deceit, disregard of the welfare of the great body of the consumers by incompetent, unreliable Congressmen who have carried their readiness to serve the great business interests so far that when Lewis D. Brandeis was asked whom he represented, at a public hearing on the tariff, and he replied that he appeared for the consumers, the members of the committee laughed, the idea seemed so preposterous to them that anyone should represent the consumers.

PROTECTION IS ALWAYS CLAMORING FOR MORE

PROTECTION

Despite the modest claims of protectionists after the Civil War that protection was to be temporary and moderate and would soon bring lower prices, as fast as new industries should become well established, ever since then they have been ever clamoring for more and more protection. There has always been some excellent reason why protection should be continued and should also be increased, through some skillful change in the tariff or the quiet introduction of a "joker." There has always been some reason advanced to extend the sphere of protection so as to include something that before then no one ever claimed needed protection, even upon any principle of the protectionists. And, instead of taking steps to improve their processes and to increase the efficiency of their plants, the protected industries rely upon still more protection and make their inefficiency the excuse for more protection. Protectionists of the present period forget that protectionists from 1860 to 1870, and later, asked only for temporary and moderate protection. Where is the protectionist to be found now who would subscribe to such a theory of protection? Grown into giants by what they have been fed on, many protectionists now call for "protection for protection's sake," irrespective of any question of revenue.