PROTECTION DOES NOT COVER ALL INDUSTRIES

In many industries, from the very nature of the case, protection cannot be applied. This is true where the product is bulky, making the freight across the ocean an important element in the cost, and this applies particularly to those cases where the value of the article is low when compared with its bulk. In other cases the monopoly for a limited time resulting from the grant of a patent or the superior ingenuity of the American inventor and mechanic tends to protection against importation. Thus, in making boots and shoes, woodenwares, wagons, carts, agricultural tools and machines, railroad and street railroad cars, the cheaper wallpapers, pianos, telephones, etc., we succeed without protection. Protection cannot be applied to the professional classes, including not only lawyers, judges, doctors, and ministers, but also teachers, architects, and engineers -in fact, nearly all persons living on salaries or wages. There are also many mechanical pursuits outside the range of protection, such as carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, plumbers, house painters, porters, drivers, railroad employes, workmen, servants, etc., etc., who are not protected, yet manage to get along without it. Without protection most all of them get more pay than is paid anywhere in Europe, because the demand is greater.

OUR SUPERIORITY CALLS FOR PROTECTION AGAINST THE INFERIORITY OF FOREIGNERS

During the course of a public debate on the tariff a protectionist asked whether the great automobile business of this country could have been started or could now be maintained without protection. The question shows how pervasive and perverse the infection of protection has become. Here was a new business that suddenly came into existence in all civilized countries at the same time. Then it was not the usual case of some one in this country trying to start a business, new here, but well established abroad. It was a brand new business everywhere. Yet with all our boasted superiority as to our superior inventive ability, our better fed, more highly educated, abler engineers and more intelligent mechanics-in spite of these and all the other of our advantages fondly claimed by us to give us superiority over the rest of mankind—we are so weak, miserable, and deficient that we must be protected against the inferiorities of the inhabitants of other lands in undertaking a business that is as new to them as it is to us.

In spite of our superiority we must be protected against the inferiorities of the rest of mankind. This is the protectionist doctrine in reductio ad absurdum. There is more logic in the claim made in Europe that their inferiority (i. e., lower wages) calls for protection against our superiority.

THE PULING CRY OF PROTECTION

We boast we are the most favored country on this planet; that our institutions are the best and we are the smartest people on earth. Inconsistently with these magnificent claims of superiority, protectionists keep up unceasingly their pitiful cry about our infant industries, and that we must have protection against the poor, miserable, half-fed workmen of Europe, the inefficient pauper laborers who are yet our inferiors. Protectionists pose as perpetual supplicants for charity, with no regard for the manly independence we associate with American character. The great overgrown industries, organized mostly as trusts, the richest business organizations of the world, beg, whine, and cry before Congress and the country with false pretences and sophisms and are perpetual mendicants for more and ever more "protection." Lawyers, doctors, ministers, farmers, laborers, even street sweepers, support themselves and their families and pay their taxes, while these giants of the earth, in their insatiate greed, beg for and accept charity from their countrymen and live as parasites upon them. They claim even yet to be infant industries still needing pap from the public in the form of protection, but they can only be so regarded now upon the supposition that they are in their second childhood. Where is the American sense of humor we are so proud of? We pride

ourselves on being such a capable, able nation. We go about with a chip on our shoulder claiming to be the biggest, the brightest nation on earth, able to do anything we undertake and to beat all Europe in business enterprise. Then, forgetting all our boasting, we turn right round and whine that we are so weak and inefficient that we cannot compete against "the pauper labor of Europe;" that our industries will perish without protection; that our stalwart, well-fed, well-educated, well-clothed, well-housed Americans, surpassing in these respects the citizens of all other nations, cannot compete with these inferiors unless protected from them by the exclusion of their products! I repeat, where is the American sense of humor in protectionists, those advocates of special privilege to the stronger?

PROTECTION CLAIMS IT BENEFITS US TO EXCLUDE GOODS MANUFACTURED AT LESS COST

ABROAD THAN HERE

But suppose they could be obtained for nothing, would it benefit us to exclude them? Is it not evident that the nearer we can get to obtaining them for nothing, i. e., the lower the cost, the greater the benefit to ourselves? To hold otherwise would be to maintain that it is not the goods that we want, but the making them. Is it the goods or the manufacturing that the consumers-that is, the whole Amer

ican people want? Protectionism says that without protective duties foreign goods would come into this country and be sold so cheap that similar goods could not be made here at a profit. But, I repeat, is it the goods themselves or the process of making them that we all want?

PROTECTIONISTS ALARMED AT PROPOSAL TO REMIT
DUTIES ON BUILDING MATERIALS, TO AID
FIRE-STRICKEN CITIES

After the great fire in Chicago it was deemed desirable to lighten the burden of the great expense of rebuilding by an act of Congress rebating the duties on materials used for that purpose. The next year came the great fire in Boston, and, naturally, the rebuilders of Boston wanted the same rebates. But meanwhile protectionists had taken alarm at this rift in the lute. The question arose again when San Francisco was in the same sad plight. If it had helped these people to take off the duties on imported building materials, why would it not benefit other people, who wanted to build, to take off the duties? And if this would help other people intending to build, why would it not help all the people to reduce the duties on all the other imports they use? For it certainly is an obstacle to the success of every American (except those who receive this prize money, paid by all consumers-that is, everybody) that in