FURTHER ILLUSTRATION OF THE PERSISTENCE OF THIS FALLACY

Every once in a while we meet a statement going the rounds of the newspapers that Lincoln said, “I don't know much about the tariff, but I know this much: when we buy manufactured goods abroad we get the goods and the foreigners get the money. When we buy the manufactured goods at home we get the goods and the money, too."

I have a better opinion of Lincoln than to believe he ever made such a foolish statement until proof he did so is shown me. When and where did he say it? What was the rest of what he said?

This fine sample of bad reasoning assumes that we pay for imported goods in money and that it is a bad thing to have the money go out of the country, whereas it is economical, if the goods can be manufactured more economicallly abroad than here, to import them. Doubtless cucumbers, melons, and grapes could be raised under glass at the North Pole, but it would be more economical for anyone living there to import them from the United States or elsewhere, even if he did have to send his money out to pay for them, for it would cost him more than the money he would send out, to raise them at his home.

PRO

CHAPTER V

FREE TRADE

FREE TRADE IS PRACTICAL

ROTECTIONISTS call themselves "practical men and brand free traders as "theorists." If the absolute free trade existing in the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the great lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, is a theory—if the supremacy of England in commerce through free trade is a theory-what do protectionists call a fact?

Absolute free trade is the natural condition of mankind everywhere. It is no theory, but an actual fact until theorists came along and introduced an artificial system miscalled protection. Professor Sumner calls absolute free trade "a mode of liberty." It has existed throughout the United States ever since 1789, and no one realizes it until he stops and thinks about it, just as we naturally breathe without realizing it until something calls our attention to it. Free trade, like liberty, is absence of restraint or oppression. Just as the Frenchman spoke prose all his lifetime and never knew it until he was told, so we, everywhere in the United States, buy and sell

wherever we please within our great country. We have absolute free trade and no one realizes it until his attention is called to it.

FREE TRADE IS AN ACTUAL FACT

It is an actual fact and so natural that we take it for granted and suppose it always has been so. The average American is surprised to find that the necessity for it was one of the causes leading to the formation and adoption of our Constitution, for until then our colonies and States protected themselves against each other, each colony or State passing such protective laws as it chose. Pennsylvania and Massachusetts tried to benefit their citizens by a tax on products brought in from other States. New York sought "protection" for its farmers through a tax on produce from Connecticut. An interesting chapter could be written on the vagaries of the methods resorted to by the different colonies to carry on trade with each other in such a way, through protective legislation, that the merchants and traders of each colony or State should make all they could out of their neighbors and that those neighbors should make nothing out of them— quite in the most approved style of protectionism. The adoption of the Constitution put an end to all these schemes, and hitherto undreamt of prosperity furnished proof of the falsity of the position now taken by those

theorists called protectionists that free trade is a theory that can only be brought about gradually.

It would be as reasonable to apply the word "theory" to the Protestant Reformation, or to law reform, or to anti-slavery, or to the separation of church and state, or to popular rights or to any other campaign in the great struggle which we call liberty and progress, as to apply it to free trade.*

To call free trade a theory is a part of the general misconception or misrepresentation of the real meaning of words and things that forms so prominent a part in the mental processes of protectionists. England growing richer and richer year after year under free trade, although all the time importing more than she exports (or, to speak more accurately, than her inhabitants import and export) is a theory, according to protectionists. I prefer to call it fact and to brand as theorists those who deny it.

FREEDOM THE ONLY SAFE WAY

Emerson said:

The basis of political economy is non-interference. The only safe rule is to be found in self-adjustment of demand and supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, 7 and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws;

give no bounties; make equal laws; secure life and property, and you need give no alms,

*"Protectionism" by Prof. W. G. Sumner, p. 11.

We find that the exports from free trade England (meaning that England has a tariff for revenue only) are six times what they are from the United States. Reduce our tariff to reasonable limits and we shall become a great exporting and importing country, for we have now so developed our industries that we can produce at low cost were it not for the expenses entailed upon us through protection. Freedom from slavery, freedom of church from state, of state from church, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and other ordered forms of regulated freedom and liberty were all theories at one time. Doubtless a Turk would tell you they are all theories now; beautiful, iridescent dreams incapable of fulfillment. We prefer to call them facts.

FREE TRADE HAS TWO MEANINGS

England is generally looked upon, even by protectionists, as a free trade country. They do not mean by this that she has no custom houses and levies no duties on imports. They mean that she has a tariff for revenue only. Then, why do they not use the term "free trade" in the same meaning in all their arguments? Instead of doing so they perversely turn about and say that "free trade means the abolition of all custom-house duties. Is this fair? It is to be hoped that in course of time protectionists will cease their misrepresentations, just as they have