averaged 20.5 per cent. Every protectionist of today would admit that these rates were to produce revenue only and not to protect. Propose these rates now to any protectionist and he would answer that under them all the mills and manufacturing establishments in the country would have to close. Yet we not only prospered under these low tariffs for revenue only, we actually grew rich faster under them than we ever have since then under high protective duties. Even then the country had outgrown the necessity for protection.

WHAT PROTECTION CLAIMS

The protectionist starts out with the assumption that he has a panacea for the ills of the nation; that he understands political economy and its laws better than its teachers and consequently commerce and the laws of trade, and he knows better how business should be run than people do when left to run it themselves; that, instead of leaving the intercourse of mankind and the interchange of their products to the free play of men's wants and their ability to meet them, he can better their exchange. He assumes that, left alone, merchants engaged in commerce will blunder, and therefore he, who knows how to make things go better, proposes to take a hand. He tells us the way to do this is to pick out a lot of ordinary men, elect them to Congress and

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st of then let them impose such tariff duties upon all the oduce people as will best subserve the interests of those these who are to be thus benefited, under the advice and swer guidance of these interests, and to make such changes aring from time to time as these beneficiaries may inform close. Congress from time to time are necessary for the ariffs improvement of their different businesses, under the nder plea that this will diversify our industries, will be pro only moderate and temporary, will reduce prices in the end, will protect infant industries, will raise wages, will keep out goods produced by cheap pauper labor abroad, will develop our resources, etc. It is with all due respect to members of Congress that I speak of them as ordinary men, for, although there are always members with marked ability, natural leaders of men, it would be easy to pick out a tter body of much better, abler men at home who never are elected to Congress. Certainly the body of men constituting the Congress of the United States from time to time is not fitted to pass upon questions of economics that experts cannot agree upon, and certainly no rational method has ever been followed by Congress in determining tariff rates. The very fact that Congress, from time to time, has created commissions of experts to ascertain what these rates should be, shows that Congress recognizes its own inability to solve the problem. The further fact that the valuable reports and suggestions of these many commissions have not been adopted by Con

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gress, but have been treated as the footballs of politics, to be kicked and banged about, furnishes further proof of the incapacity or the inability of Congress to determine the problem, so long as the protected interests are allowed to frame the schedules or to have a voice in passing upon the rates suggested by disinterested experts.

Beginning with the admitted necessity of increasing the revenue to meet the enormous expenses of the Civil War, after years of successful administration of the finances of the country under a tariff which, if not purely a tariff for revenue only, was one approaching that condition and would be so considered now by protectionists, rates were raised, and, foreseeing that such increases in rates would be more or less protective in nature, it was urged that the increase would be moderate in amount and temporary only. Excise duties were imposed at the same time, under the new name of "internal revenue taxes," as we were still near enough to the Revolution for the term "excise duties" not to be pleasant to American ears. Excuses were offered to placate the feeling that the special privileges to be accorded to manufacturing interests through protection were undemocratic and un-American. We were told that we must build up new industries and supply our own wants, and thus create large home markets. We were assured that goods would become cheaper, of better quality, of greater variety, and we were to

have a surplus that would be sold all over the world. It was conceded that unless these results followed, the protected industries would be carried on at the expense of the whole people, and this was certainly an undemocratic proceeding, entirely at variance with American principles of government. But after half a century these results have not followed. On the contrary, duties have kept on going higher and higher, while internal revenue duties have been made lower and lower without regard to maintenance of any equivalence between the two systems, under the guidance of the protected interests. The appetite for protection grew and it was found to be easier to make money by sending men to Congress who would grant still further concessions of the special privilege of levying a tribute upon consumers, than by following old fashioned business ways. The "infant industries" of our country have grown to be giants, and they have used their power and wealth unlawfully to coerce Congress into giving them more and more, while in return for favors received, they have contributed to the campaign funds of our political parties, sometimes at the same time to those of both parties, until we have been in dire danger of falling into a condition of government controlled by the trusts. The rapacity of the protected industries has kept on increasing from year to year. The history of tariff legislation by Congress during the last fifty years is a story of ever

increasing greed and corruption, until it has become a national disgrace. The successive tariff revisions of 1883, 1890, 1894, 1897, and 1909 all tell the same disgraceful story of log-rolling, of jokers, of trickery, deceit, and fraud.

INFLUENCE OF BUSINESS INTERESTS IN LEGISLATION

One of the evil consequences of protectionism that has imposed upon the country protective tariff after protective tariff, with ever-increasing duties, has been the constantly increasing recognition of business interests in framing tariff schedules. As Miss Tarbell says:*

Moreover, it was demonstrated clearly in 1883 that the size of the duty is according to the size of the organization. The quinine makers, even with Mr. Kelley's help, were unable to get their product off the free list, where it had been put in 1879, but they were a feeble folk-only four of them in the country! The pottery people, on the contrary, received an advance of some thirteen per cent on their wares, for they were strong in Ohio and New Jersey. Mr. Joseph Wharton, standing alone, had to submit to a reduction of fifty per cent on his nickel; standing with iron men he suffered a reduction of only four per cent on his pig iron. It was a great lesson in the value of organization and numbers. *The Tariff in Our Times, p. 132.