ever they yield revenue. It cannot be too strongly insisted upon that revenue and protection are inconsistent. If a tariff really "protects" it yields no revenue. If a tariff yields a revenue it does not protect." One year lately one pound of copper was imported and paid a duty of five cents. That tariff really "protected" copper, and made every American consumer pay the same price as if he imported his copper, to the enrichment of the copper mine owners, the depletion of our natural supply, and the loss of revenue by our government, while the immense quantities of copper sent abroad were sold at a lower price to all foreigners. Such is protection!

All the chief commercial cities of the country increased greatly in population from 1840 to 1850 and the whole country enjoyed a period of great development and prosperity. I will not follow the bad reasoning of protectionists and claim that this was all due to the tariff. The causes of national prosperity and depression are too many, too intricate and profound, too unknown, and, perhaps, unknowable, for anyone to pick out one cause, the tariff, and to make it the one and only cause of our prosperity, our panics, and our periods of depression.

THE TARIFF OF 1857

The increasing surplus was the chief cause of still

further reductions in the tariff of 1857. Blaine, in Twenty Years in Congress, says:

The principles embodied in the tariff of 1846 seemed for the time to be so entirely vindicated and approved that resistance to it ceased, not only among the people, but among protection economists, and even among the manufacturers, to a large extent. So general was the acquiescence that in 1856 a protective tariff was not even suggested or even hinted at by any one of the three parties which presented presidential candidates. . . . The Act was well received by the people, and was indeed concurred in by a considerable proportion of the Republican party.

This tariff was voted for by one Senator from each of the states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, and by both Senators from Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts- staunch Republicans. Sumner left his sick bed at home and went to Washington to vote for the measure. Wilson, supporting the bill in the Senate, said:

We of New England believe that hemp, flax, silk, lead, tin, copper, hides, linseed, and other articles should be duty free. We are for the reduction of the revenue to the actual wants of an economical administration of the Government for the depletion of the Treasury, now full of hoarded gold.

It is refreshing to dwell for a few moments upon a period in the history of our tariff legislation when the nation was not so tariff-mad as it has since become.

Politics did not enter into the question when this tariff was adopted, for there was a general agreement that a reduction was necessary. The members from Pennsylvania were the only ones showing any desire to the contrary. The division into schedules and ad valorem duties, as in the act of 1846, was retained. Cotton goods were transferred to Schedule C, with a duty of twenty-four per cent, and certain raw materials were admitted free.*

From this examination of the alleged necessity for protection in this country, after study of Stanwood's forceful book, written from the point of view of a protectionist, with study of Taussig's impartial book, written from the point of view of a free trader, one believing in a tariff for revenue only, the conclusion is forced upon us that in the three great industries of cotton, wool, and iron (including steel) there has been no necessity for protection for nearly a century. We had outgrown all necessity for protection and were on the road to a real tariff for revenue only. There was no economic reason for a return to protection.

*Limitation of time and space prevent our following the history of the changes in our tariff system since 1857. It may be found in Stanwood's work on the tariff, Taussig's Tariff History of the United States, and Miss Tarbell's The Tariff in Our Times.

CHAPTER XVII

THE REMEDY

A GENERAL HALLUCINATION IN FAVOR OF PROTECTION OBSESSES THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

So possessed of the hallucination in belief in pro

tection have we become that there are immense areas in our country where protection is accepted without question (and, of course, without knowledge) as part of the established order of things, like the rising of the sun or the Christian religion, and the daring individual who would question either of these settled things would be looked upon as more or less wanting. In these areas of our country no school book is used that presents any view of economics except that of protection, which is always taken for granted. All Republican officialdom, especially in Washington, has the same attitude on the subject. Information having a favorable bearing on protection is more easily obtained than that bearing on free trade. It may be but natural that almost every ruling in any department of the government extends to the utmost limit in favor of protection. This is particularly so with respect to the vigorous examination the baggage of everyone, even including

Americans returning home, is put through upon entering the country.

The administration in Washington is there to attend to its duties in governing the country, yet it has found time to warn the Iron and Steel Trust of the danger it was running in selling here for thirtyfive dollars what it sold abroad for twenty-two dollars a ton.

DECADENCE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

It is only a few years ago that a photograph was taken of Mr. Roosevelt surrounded by some of the leading members of the Republican National Committee, possibly members of the Executive Committee, all standing on the steps of the White House. It required but little knowledge of current events in the country at large to enable one to realize that among the group thus standing with the man now posing as the leader of a reform movement were several men who, if they had received their just deserts, would have served a sentence in prison. To this pass, principally through the corrupting influence of protectionism, the alliance of big business interests and politics, has come the great party of moral ideas, the Republican party, that saved the Union and emancipated the slaves!

The tone of lofty superiority and complacent conceit of protectionism was well illustrated by the attitude of Chairman Payne when tariff hearings