covered long ago that the tariff is a game of grab. They have simply grabbed what they could in competition with others. They are under no delusions respecting infant industries and American systems, or other mildewed and moss-grown catch-words of a past generation. They have no higher reverence for the arts of spinning and smelting than for those of shearing, and quarrying, and wood-chopping. They know a dollar when they see it. They find it more confortable to have the dollar in their own pockets than to muse over it in some other man's. Fine phrases regarding the state of general beatitude which results from multiplying spindles and forges at their expense are in their eyes such frightful rubbish that they would knock the whole. tariff system into kindling wood without a moment's hesita tion, if the doctrines of Henry Clay were revived, and put in force by taking the duties off the raw materials of manufactures. Their contention is that we have as many spindles and forges as can be profitably employed now; at all events, that the reasons for framing a tariff with a view to increasing the number of them no longer exist, and hence that a reduction of the duties on raw materials means simply a diversion of their earnings to other people's tills. There is a good deal of force in this view. Nevertheless it is important that the bill should be pushed to a general debate in Congress and the country in order that the people may understand how great a change has taken place, in the grounds upon which protection is defended, during the past twenty years. If the country after a full discussion is ready to sanction the policy of taxing itself in order to give profitable employment to common laborers rolling logs in the forests or digging in ore beds and coal mines-newly arrived perhaps from Italy, Belgium, or Hungary,-so let it be. But let us have the discussion at all events.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

PROTECTION DOGMAS.*

BY HON. WM. M. SPRINGER.

I

HAVE been somewhat amused, at times, at the arguments

used by gentlemen on the other side, the advocates of the protective system, in order to sustain their theories. From these arguments I have heard enunciated as among the great principles of protection the following propositions: First. That it is the duty of the Government to protect American laborers from competition with the "pauper labor" of Europe by the imposition of duties on articles manufactured abroad which will compensate for the difference in the price of labor in this country and Europe. This is called "filling the gap" between the wages of home and foreign labor.

Second. That the amount of duty required in order to "fill the gap" must be such as will cause the price of articles manufactured at home to be increased to the amount of the duty on the imported article of like character.

Third. That the imposition of import duties does not increase the cost of imported articles; that the foreign manufacturer pays the duty for the privilege of selling his goods in this country.

Fourth. That the imposition of duties on imported articles will have the effect to reduce the cost of like articles manufactured in this country.

March 3, 1883, House of Representatives.

All the advocates of the protective system in this House. have either asserted this doctrine or have acquiesced in the assertion of it by others. It is claimed that protection has cheapened prices of iron and steel and articles made from them; that it has cheapened the price of wool and the manufactures of wool and cotton and of all of the protected articles. From these fundamental "principles" the following deductions may be drawn:

First. Protection increases prices of articles manufactured in this country.

Second. Protection decreases the prices of articles manufactured in this country.

Third. Protection is absolutely necessary in order to "fill the gap" between the wages of home and foreign labor.

Fourth. Protection reduces the prices of home productions and thus widens "the gap" which it was intended to close.

Fifth. Protection both closes and widens "the gap."

Sixth. Protection protects our home labor against the "pauper labor" of Europe.

Seventh. Protection reduces the prices of home labor below the prices paid for "pauper labor" of Europe.

Mr. Speaker, "these great principles of protection," and the logical deductions therefrom, prove the fallacy of the protective system and confound and overwhelm its advocates. No arguments that the advocates of revenue reform can produce so completely answer protection fallacies as do protection arguments themselves. Place their arguments in juxtaposition and their fallacies at once appear. I leave the protective system where its advocates have placed it. Its fundamental "principles" are like certain chemicals; kept separate they are harmless, mixed together they explode.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

PROTECTION REDUCES PRICES.*

BY PROFESSOR ROBERT E. THOMPSON, M.A., Professor of Social Science in the University of Pennsylvania.

THE

HE object and the effect of protective duties, then, is to enable the home producer to furnish the manufactured goods more plentifully and cheaper than before the duty was imposed. Though it were true," ," says Alexander Hamilton, "that the immediate and certain effect of regulations controlling the competition of foreign with domestic fabrics was an increase of price, it is universally true that the contrary is the ultimate effect of every successful manufacture. When a domestic manufacture has attained to perfection, and has engaged in the prosecution of it a competent number of persons, it invariably becomes cheaper. Being free from the heavy charges which attend the importation of foreign commodities, it can be afforded cheaper, and accordingly seldom or never fails to be afforded cheaper in process of time than was the foreign article for which it is the substitute. The internal competition which takes place soon does away everything like monopoly, and by degrees reduces the price of the article to the minimum of a reasonable profit on the capital employed."

So well ascertained and so necessary is this result as regards the profits of manufacture that Professor Thorold

*Political Economy. Phila., Porter & Coates.

Rogers alleges it as a reason against protection "Unless the State were to go so far as to grant a monopoly of production to one or a few individuals whom it protects, it could not prevent the operation of that economic law which reduces profits, other things being equal, to an equality. Manufacturers crowd into the protected occupation, and the benefit intended to be secured by the policy of the government is distributed and annihilated by competition." Mr. Rogers does not seem to be aware that this is the very "benefit intended to be secured." But we have his word as to how that policy does and must work,-above all that it involves no monopoly.

"Competition being always free," says McCulloch, "among home producers, the exclusion of any particular species of foreign manufactured goods cannot elevate the profits of those who produce similar articles at home above the common level, and merely attracts as much additional capital to that particular business as may be required to furnish an adequate supply of goods."

Neither of these two authors, it will be perceived, concedes that prices are brought down by protection to the foreign rate; but they both show that the foolish clamor as to the excessive profits of the protected manufacturer has nothing to go upon. Mr. D. A. Wells flatly contradicts his English teachers when he says: "It not unfrequently happens that the imposition of a tax in the form of a tariff on an imported article is made the occasion for very greatly and unnecessarily advancing the price of a corresponding domestic product."

What are the reasons for this final reduction in price? It is because the obstacles to cheap production have been overcome, and the home producers are competing for the home market. These obstacles are manifold. (1.) The lack of security deters the manufacturer from putting his capital into a large undertaking. He has to make great outlays,