ceased their senseless talk of thirty years ago about "British gold" sent over here to be lavishly, and, of course, corruptly, used to break down protection; of assessments made by the Cobden Club to furnish funds for that purpose; of professors in our colleges under British pay to cajole Americans into acceptance of free trade. It is well to refresh our memories occasionally with recollections of these abandoned absurdities of protectionists, that we may point to them as reasons for disregarding the new absurdities they present to us from time to time. Already the nonsensical idea that "the foreigner pays the tax" has passed away and is so well nigh forgotten that many of my younger readers will probably admit that they have never heard of it. It will be followed into forgetfulness by the absurd idea, so pleasing to Mr. Taft and others who should know better, that the difference in the cost of production here and abroad is the measure of protection required by the American workman. The cost of production under what circumstances? Of the bestequipped factory or shop, or of the worst-equipped one? Of the one managed with the highest efficiency, or of the one managed with the lowest, or none at all? Of the industry carried on by a trust with millions of watered stock, or of that carried on with payment of dividends only upon actual capital? What is the measure of protection required under this test in those many cases in which the cost per

unit is less in the United States than abroad, even though the daily rate of wages is higher? The test proposed by these impractical men, the theorists, is an impossible one and has been thoroughly riddled by the arguments of free traders, especially by those of Representative Redfield, of Brooklyn, N. Y., in his speeches in Congres and on the stump.

"THE COST OF PRODUCTION HERE AND ABROAD'

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Which cost of production? Which cost here? Which cost abroad? Which two costs shall be com pared? The cost to the producer who is the most favorably situated? Or to the one least favorably situated? Or the average cost of production? If so, how is it possible to ascertain it? How is it to be determined? Take, for instance, the cost of wool. In that part of the country where sheep roam at large and the wool is the principal or only part of the industry sold, the cost is one thing. In another part of the country where the mutton is sold at a profit that pays for the whole outlay the amount resulting from the sale of the wool is all profit and the wool costs nothing. The test is an impossible one. Even the American Protective Tariff League has admitted that "production cost in our own country is so widely variant as to be of little value." And Mr. Taft's so-called Tariff Board has stated, “As is well known, wages or earnings are not necessarily

an index of the labor cost of any particular process of manufacture. The labor cost per yard depends on the relation between wages and output," and "frequently it is found that high wages and low labor cost go together."

FREE TRADE IS FAVORABLE TO THE MAXIMUM OF

PRODUCTION

Free trade (meaning a tariff for revenue only) would bring the production of the world to a maximum by allowing the citizens of every country to produce whatever they might find by experience they could produce at the least expense, and to sell or exchange it wherever they could to the best advantage for what the citizens of those countries could find in the same way, through experience, that they could produce at the least expense. This is in accordance with fact and nature; is no theory. From this it follows that free trade means abundance and cheapness, while protection means scarcity and dearness. Protectionists claim that goods and products must not be allowed to come into this country and be sold at low prices, because similar goods, etc., could not then be made here with profit. They think, then, that it is the making of the goods that we want to secure, not the goods themselves. But this attitude of protectionists is an admission that goods may be

too plentiful and cheap and that protective duties will make them less plentiful and more costly. The duty, then, is in the interest of scarcity and consequent dearness. It is, therefore, at the expense of the consumer and adverse to his interest. Free trade (meaning a tariff for revenue only) recognizes the rights of property, the right to freedom of choice and action, the right to buy where everyone pleases and to sell where he pleases, Protection says, You shall not buy in a foreign market, even though you may find there what you want at a lower price and of better quality, unless you pay a penalty for it, a tax called a duty, to prevent your buying in that market. The protectionist says that his system will establish a new industry here, and then we shall no longer be dependent upon Europe for the products of that industry, and this will give employment to American laborers and will raise their wages so that they can compete with "the pauper labor of Europe." But the argument used in Europe is just the opposite. They say there that they must have protection to enable their laborers to compete with the high-priced laborers in the United States. We are not informed by protectionists why the more efficient, resourceful, skilled laborers of our country should need protection against the pauper, inefficient, ignorant laborers of other countries. There is obviously more in the claim that they need protection against us.

A NEW INDUSTRY IS NOT DUE TO PROTECTION

As a further illustration of the springing up of a new industry take the hat industry of New England as given in Gallatin's Report of 1810, in an appendix:*

A girl in the town of Wrentham, on the Rhode Island border, found that she could make a straw hat as good as the imported ones then in fashion. Soon every girl in the region made her own hat, and the industry of making them for sale was quickly established and grew to large proportions. Four thousand persons were employed in the manufacture of hats in Massachusetts alone. A million and a half hats were made, of which three-fourths were sold beyond the state. Women's straw bonnets and straw hats were made in Norfolk County in the same state in great numbers.*

A dealer in gold leaf picked up from the floor a spool of tape that rolled down from his mother's lap. As he handed it back to her it suddenly occurred to him, "Why not wind strips of gold leaf, in various widths, on spools, and save much waste of the gold?" He took out a patent, carried on the business, and made a fortune out of it. Inventive genius gives rise to new industries, and protection does not,

* Gallatin's Report, 1810, in American State Papers; Finance, vol. 2, p. 439; and cited in Stanwood, American Tariff Controversies in the Nineteenth Century, vol. 1, p. 130.