high enough to keep out foreign goods. What they want is not protection, but prohibition. The history of the tariff is, therefore, a history of the struggle between those who want a tariff for revenue (which, as we shall see, is free trade) and those who want a tariff for protection, even prohibition if necessary, to keep out foreign goods; and of the legislation enacted for the purpose of bringing about one or the other of these results.

Like the word "protection," the words "free trade" have many meanings. Primarily, they suggest freedom, the opposite of slavery, i. e., liberty, the right to trade as one wills, without restraint or limitation. Such a conception of free trade is in keeping with our free institutions and with all the great principles of freedom of the Anglo-Saxon blood-a part of the very being of Englishmen and Americans, like free speech, a free press, free schools, a free ballot, a free church and churches. In the abstract, free trade is the application in economics of the principle of the freedom, the right, the liberty, of every member of the community to carry on any legitimate business as he pleases, with freedom to buy in any market and to sell in any market, free from interference. This is absolute free trade;

not, however, the free trade that is found anywhere between states, except within the United States. It is incompatible with the existence of a custom house where duties are collected upon imports to furnish funds for the expenses of government. We find, therefore, that the words "free trade" are used politically in a very different and much narrower sense. As opposed to protection, free trade means trade or commerce subject only to such duties on imports at the custom house as are necessary to raise revenue for the expenses of government; as opposed to that system, known as protection, that imposes duties on imports ostensibly to raise revenue for the expenses of government, but in reality to stimulate home production and to diminish, and finally to put an end to, the importation of such imports.

That eminent authority, David A. Wells, who began public life as an ardent protectionist, but who became a more ardent free trader, as the result of his practical experience and greater knowledge, defined free trade as the right of every man to exchange freely the products of his labor and services in such a way as may seem to him most advantageous, subject only to such restrictions as the State may find it necessary to impose for the purpose of revenue or to maintain the public health. Conversely, he defined it as the denial of the right of a free government to take arbitrarily from anyone any portion of the product of his labor, services, or skill,

for the benefit of another, without making compensation therefor.

The following definition is acceptable to free traders, and as it comes from a representative protectionist of high standing, it should also be acceptable to protectionists. I quote from the Philadelphia American of August 7, 1884:

The term free trade, although much discussed, is seldom rightly defined. It does not mean the abolition of custom houses. Nor does it mean the substitution of direct for indirect taxation, as a few American disciples of the school have supposed. It means such an adjustment of the taxes on imports as will cause no diversion of capital from any channel opened or favored by the legislation which enacts the customs. A country may collect its entire revenue by duties on imports and yet be an entirely free trade country, so long as it does not lay those duties in such a way as to lead anyone to undertake any employment or make any investment he would avoid in the absence of such duties. Thus, the customs duties levied by England, with a very few exceptions, are not inconsistent with her profession of being a country that believes in free trade. They either are duties on articles not produced in England, or they are exactly equivalent to the excise duties levied on the same articles if made at home. They do not lead anyone to put his money into the home production of an article, because they do not discriminate in favor of the home producer. It is, therefore, no

concession to the protective principle when the Democratic platform says that "since the foundation of the government, custom house duties have furnished its main source of revenue" and "this system must continue." A protective duty, on the other hand, has for its object to effect the diversion of a part of the capital and labor of the people out of the channels in which it would run otherwise, into channels favored or created by law.

I use the term "free trade" in the same sense that protectionists use it in when they say that England is a free trade country. The trouble with them is that they do not stick to that sense.

INSTANCES OF WANT OF UNDERSTANDING THAT FREE TRADE MEANS A TARIFF FOR REVENUE ONLY

In a speech before the Senate, April 29, 1909, Senator Rayner said:

The Senator from Rhode Island, in a brief discussion that took place a few weeks ago over the practice that obtained before the finance committee, boldly stated in this presence that a tariff for revenue and free trade were identically one and the same thing. This is the first time that I have ever heard the proposition thus announced. I have never come across a passage upon the pages of political economy; I have never heard a practical expert or statistician treat the subject from this standpoint. I have always considered that free trade between

this country and other countries meant the abolition of custom house duties, and, if I am permitted to say so, I think that the Senator confuses fair competition with free trade.

What a strange state of mind this shows! Here is Senator Aldrich, the great leader of the high protectionists, always ready to raise a duty, who admits (correctly) that free trade means a tariff for revenue. On the other hand is Senator Rayner, a Democrat, opposed to protection, who has never heard that a tariff for revenue and free trade are identically one and the same thing! It would be no more astonishing had he stated that he had never heard that England is a free trade country!

In 1883 J. G. Carlisle had not grown to an understanding of the term "free trade." He said:

In the broad and sweeping sense which the term usually implies, I am not a free trader. I will add that in my judgment it will be years yet before anything in the nature of free trade would be wise or practicable in the United States. When we speak of this subject we refer to approximate free trade which has no idea of cutting the growth of home industries, but simply of scaling down the inequalities of the tariff schedules where they are utterly out of proportion to the demands of that growth. After we have calmly stood up and allowed monopolies to grow fat, we should not be asked to make them bloated. Our enormous surplus revenues