/AVE! 
 
LETTERS 
 
 ON 
 
 FREE TRADE 
 
 AND 
 
 PROTECTION 
 
 BY 
 
 F.'B. NASH, JR. 
 
 BED WING: 
 BED WING PBINTING 00. 
 1886. 
 
CiAmcJ 
 
 W 
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2013 
 
 http://archive.org/details/lettersonfreetraOOnash 
 
FREE TRF\DE 
 
 — £THE2_ 
 
 TRUE POLICY FOR AMERICA 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 O MANY admirable pamphlets have been published in 
 favor of this proposition, it seems, perhaps unneces- 
 sary that there should be more. But in this as in 
 every peaceful reform the only hope of progress is by 
 continual agitation of the subject, and a continuous presen- 
 tation of its principal features and reasons to the public, in 
 every possible way. It is evident that these publications 
 have failed to reach the eye of the very classes most interested 
 in the matter. That is the fact whatever the reason. The 
 farmers of the country, the laborers, the personal service men, 
 the vast body of men engaged in transportation service — 
 these classes that especially owe it to themselves to study 
 thoroughly this most important and vital of our public ques- 
 
4 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 tions — seem to be the very ones who have not done so. How 
 to reach them is the problem. It appears a simple one, yet 
 so far it plainly has not been solved. One must accept this 
 conclusion, or else be driven to the inference that this is the 
 most gullible people under the sun. 
 
 In the following letters I have aimed to cover the main 
 ground in the entire question of Protection versus Free 
 Trade. In the place of treating one phase thereof, I have 
 tried to touch on all the main points at issue between Keve- 
 nue .Reformers and Protectionists. I have availed myself of 
 others' work and others' facts in these pages, giving credit 
 for same. It has been my design to be instructive rather than 
 original; and my aim, to crowd all the evidence I could into a 
 small space, and at the same time keep up the interest. With 
 this much, by way of preface, we will plunge into the subject 
 at once, and ask,— 
 
 WHAT IS PROTECTION? 
 
 "Protection" is the name given to that governmental 
 policy which lays a tax on imports from foreign countries, 
 not simply to raise a revenue for the needs of government, 
 but with a view to prevent those imports, and so compel 
 Americans to buy what they want of Americans. Its object 
 is to foster American manufactures and mines regardless of 
 the cost to the consumer. True, it justifies itself by the as- 
 sumption that this is all the better for the consumer. But 
 that is begging the whole question. 
 
 Practically, by its so-called protective tariff, the United 
 States says to every one of its citizens: "My child, your au- 
 gust Government does not permit you to buy what you need 
 where you can get it the cheapest, but insists you shall buy 
 of Mr. John Smith, and take your chances as to his prices. 
 For Mr. Smith is an American, so are all ths rest of you, but 
 that is of no consequence whatever. 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 5 
 
 "Now, Mr. Smith may, and in fact does, charge you in 
 some cases nearly twice as much as an Englishman or a 
 Frenchman would charge you for the same or a better article; 
 but by and by, if you will only be patient, the Smith family will 
 enlarge its borders and grow so rich and strong (at your ex- 
 pense) as to compete with each other like good brothers. 
 They will cut each other's prices, and each other's throats; 
 and so, after two or three trifling centuries, they will actually 
 do you the great favor of selling you their goods as cheaply 
 as anybody in Europe. 
 
 "It is true, at present, and for the last twenty-five years, 
 Mr. Smith has charged you about $1.75 for a shirt you could 
 buy for $1.00 if you were allowed to do so. But you are 
 greatly mistaken if you suppose it to be to your interest to 
 get that shirt for $1.00 instead of $1.75. Behold! I show you 
 a great mystery! I alone am able to understand this majestic 
 mystery of patriotism; for, you should know, John Smith is 
 our infant. Do you see — An Infant! whom I take under my 
 especial care and protection. His business must be fostered 
 and petted, or the whole country will go to the dogs. As for 
 the most of you, you must scratch around and get on the 
 best you can. If you do happen to go to the wall, the coun- 
 try can stand it. You don't amount to much, any way. Then, 
 come to think about it, you shant go to the wall ! I will not 
 have any wall for you to go to; understand? There shall be 
 but one wall in this country, and that is the great Chinese- 
 American wall I have built around these United States to keep 
 away the goods of Europe — those naughty goods that are 
 not American. 
 
 "You must take care of yorself. J. Smith can't do this, 
 so I must do it for him. It costs you an awful lot of money 
 to do it in the way I choose to do it— by forcing you to buy 
 his goods. And you may think he ought to stand on his own 
 
6 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 legs, like the rest of you; but if you think that you are an 
 impudent donkey, and know nothing about these important 
 matters. 
 
 "I know it is a fact that the great mass of you have gotten 
 on in the world wonderfully by yourselves, and in spite of 
 the untold millions I have taxed you for Mr. Smith's sake. 
 I say to you, your prosperity is all caused by these many 
 millions I have taxed you to protect him. I tell you that if 
 I had not taxed you in this way, you could not possibly have 
 gotten on as you have. You can not understand, may be, 
 that the more you have to pay him for his wares, the more 
 you get, somehow, for yourself, and the better you are off 
 generally. That is a part of the mystery quite too deep 
 for you. 
 
 "Some foolish children amongst you, run about to tell you 
 how much this costs you; that you area fool to submit to it; 
 that there is a better way I have never yet fairly tried. But 
 these pestilent fellows are Utopians — do you hear? Uto- 
 pians ! They are dreadful creatures, these Utopians. They are 
 zealous people who are always finding fault and throwing 
 ugly facts in my face, and insulting your kind, paternal Gov- 
 ernment. They have multitudes of facts to throw at me, and 
 they do not properly respect my feelings. They insist on 
 
 calling an axe an axe, actually, and , well, we won't go 
 
 into that matter now. What do facts amount to anyway? I 
 tell you I know it is the best as it is, and there's an end. 
 
 "They assure you that for every John Smith there are 
 nineteen other nobodies, like themselves and you; that the 
 Smith baby, being near one hundred years old, ought to be 
 a rather tough infant by this time. They tell you it is tyr- 
 anny to tax twenty for the sake of one; that it is folly to 
 collect my taxes in the roundabout way I so admire; espec- 
 ially when that way costs you four dollars for every dollar of 
 
PKOTECTION AND FBEE TRADE. 
 
 7 
 
 revenue I get from you; and that I ought to tax you directly 
 as the separate States do. Then they persist in calling it an 
 outrage that I should have special legislation favoring the 
 Smith Infant. They add insult to injury by saying that I fail 
 to protect the poor child after all; that I have slain some 
 important members of the family; that John Smith can take 
 care of himself as well as anybody else, and would be as well, 
 or better off, if I were to let him take his chances with the 
 rest of you and stop coddling him. They say this Chinese 
 wall idea is barbarous, un-christian and un-American; that 
 there is no patriotism in supporting such ancient follies. 
 
 "Finally they tell you that my custom houses are the root 
 evil in the way of Civil Service Eeform; that I ought to come 
 down to a tariff "for revenue, and finally abolish my dear 
 custom houses altogether. And I don't know how many 
 more equally idiotic statements, they call axioms, they have 
 to fling at me, and back them all up by mountainous facts. If 
 there is anything I dispise, it is an axiom, especially on this 
 subject! Yes, it certainly is dreadful to be an Utopian, instead 
 of the good-natured, submissive, American fool that you 
 ought to be. 
 
 "In conclusion I tell you, if the facts are on their side, 
 which I don't grant, so much the worse for the facts to be in 
 such company. Finally J. Smith pays the tax as well as 
 you; better than that, the foreigner pays it; better still, nobody 
 pays it, there is no such tax. What do you think of that 
 way of cutting the knot for you? I am Alexander the 
 Great, and greater ! His Gordian Knot was nothing to the 
 many knots of my great American policy of Protection. As 
 I told you before, it is a great mystery; so now I tell you it 
 
 is the champion knot. I alone can cut it, and , well, I 
 
 will not have it cut. Who runs this Government anyway? I 
 will tell you, my child: J. Smith, Esq., runs this Govern- 
 
8 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 ment, and he lives in Pennsylvania, and New England, and 
 New York, with sundry relations scattered about the land. 
 Great is J. Smith of the Americans! And what are you go- 
 ing to do about it, anyway?" 
 
 This is practically the kind of grimly humorous instruc- 
 tion and apology our paternal Government condescends to 
 give us. It throws "Do-the-Boys-Hall" in the shade entirely. 
 
 To tax a nation for the purposes of "protecting" the busi- 
 ness of any part thereof, is paternal government with a ven- 
 geance. Yet that is the distinct meaning of Protection. It 
 is a claim by government to intrude upon all the purchases 
 by consumers of manufactures, and to dictate to everyone 
 the store they shall go to to buy. Protection, then, is a 
 special class legislation. It is the carrying the proposition 
 (which no one disputes) that the government has a right to 
 lay taxes sufficient for its expenses in its own way, to an ex- 
 tremity which is a plain usurpation of its powers — that is to 
 a systematic taxation to assist one kind of business at the 
 expense, or regardless of, all other business and labor 
 whatever. 
 
 It may be answered that government has that right if it 
 choses to exercise it. Then if that be so, government has a 
 right to do simply as it choses with the property of anyone 
 and everyone; that is, it may be a bare-faced robber of in- 
 dividual rights. 
 
 How is it possible such a plan could be imposed on an 
 intelligent people? The answer is, they have not been in- 
 telligent in this matter as a whole, and so for a century the 
 Protection Tail has been allowed to wag the great American 
 Dog. 
 
 WHAT THE PROTECTIVE TAKIFF COSTS THE FARMER AND 
 OTHER CONSUMERS. 
 
 By the census of 1880, out of a total of 17,392,099 persons 
 
PROTECTION AXD FREE TRADE. 
 
 9 
 
 engaged in some occupation, 7,670,493 were engaged in agri- 
 culture, or nearly 45 per cent, of the whole mass of workers 
 of the land. Of the exports to foreign lands for that year 
 agriculture furnished $683,000,000, or the great bulk of our 
 exports. 
 
 Agriculture then, is by so much the most important of 
 American industries that none other can be compared with 
 it for a moment. It is the foundation of all else, and lies at 
 the base of all our prosperity. The farmer is the Atlas figure 
 holding up the burdens of the land. But all this and more 
 of the same is but saying what everyone knows sufficiently 
 now. I simply allude to it as a reminder in what is to come. 
 One would naturally infer, if farmers make up so vast a 
 part of our population, and are so fundamental to everything 
 else, that their interests and wishes would largely guide the 
 legislation of the country on the practical matters of tariff 
 and taxation, since these must necessarily bear the hardest 
 on them. 
 
 On the contrary, we find as a fact that, for the last ninety 
 years, the legislation of the country on the tariff has been 
 continuously and systematically in utter disregard of their 
 interests, oftentimes so recklessly heedless of them as to 
 amount to contempt. 
 
 'The agricultural interests have been systematically dis- 
 pised at Washington, in effect, whatever the intentions of 
 Congress. This is sufficiently shown by the fact that the 
 protective tariff has risen, with fluctuations of course, from 
 8% P©r cent, ninety years ago to an average of 44 per cent. 
 (1883). The infant industries of this country, after ninety 
 years of fostering, are just five times as infantile as at the 
 start, taking the amount of tariff imposed as a gauge. 
 
 But why is this so? The farmer is the American Samson, 
 grinding the corn, not of his enemies, but of his friends, too 
 
10 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 blind to his own interests to make his power felt; and, for 
 why disguise the truth, too ignorant of those interests to 
 care to protect himself against the tariff shark of Pennsyl- 
 vania and the East. He goes on voting for men to misrepre- 
 sent him at Washington, with a calm good-nature that is 
 simply marvelous. He allows the manufacturing interest 
 to sit down on him just as it pleases, and seems to enjoy be- 
 ing sat upon. It is largely his own fault. He ought to 
 know better and does know better. He ought to insist on his 
 representative at Washington looking after, and fighting for 
 his interests just as the Pennsylvania men, whether Demo- 
 crats or Republicans, look after the interests of their 
 constituencies. If he does not do this, whose fault is it but 
 his own in the main ? It is his fault, and the fault of the 
 townsmen to whom he is as the very breath of life. 
 
 The late Morrison Bill was but an humble petition sent in 
 to Congress to relieve, by just a little tiny bit, the burdens 
 of the farmer and others of the unprotected (about nineteen- 
 twentieths of the population), and we saw it overthrown, and 
 trampled on by a majority utterly regardless of the best 
 good to the greatest number. Yet the farmer is responsible, 
 more than anybody else, for that same Congressional ma- 
 jority. The blind Samson will go on and grind the corn of 
 his false friends just as long as he permits them to make 
 him do so, and no longer. 
 
 Agriculture is the great, lusty interest of the land, and it, 
 in the main, pays the bills of a protective tariff. Agricul- 
 ture is strong. It needs no cradles from government, and it 
 gets none, as regards the great mass. It asks no odds, and 
 stands on its own legs. All very well. The trouble is, the 
 protected industries, instead of standing on its own legs, 
 climb on its shoulders, and are carried by it. Agriculture, 
 because it is strong, because it can not be protected, must 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 11 
 
 pay the cost of protecting the weak industries. "The essence 
 of protection is the support of the weak industries by a taxa- 
 tion on the strong industries." 
 
 The protectionist asserts that manufactories cannot live 
 in this country without a protective tariff. It is for them to 
 prove this assertion, which is utterly false, we believe, yet he 
 asserts it, and Congress asserts it by its acts. If this asser- 
 tion were true, what does it amount to? To this, that as 
 manufacturers can not pay here like any other business, they 
 must be subsidized by government; they must be paid a 
 premium out of some system of taxation. That is protec- 
 tion. That is just what is done. They are subsidized in- 
 dustries to which somebody pays a premium for conducting 
 their own business. If this is not true, why do they ask for 
 protection and a subsidy? " Only let us net, say 25 per cent, 
 more than we can get in the open market of the world, (which 
 the farmer must take) and we can get on then, we think." 
 Their request being granted, and a tariff muzzle properly 
 put on the open market, it follows as a sequence, that if any- 
 body gets the said 25 per cent., they must get it. But who 
 pays it? Somebody must. This subsidy must come from 
 some one — somewhere. Who is that someone? Let us see: 
 he must be the foreigner who sends his goods here to sell, or 
 the manufacturer here in America, or the consumer. There 
 is nobody else concerned. Does the foreigner pay it? No; 
 since the tariff he pays goes to the Government and he gets 
 it back from the consumer. That is the Government's share 
 in the transactions of a protective tariff. It will be, more or 
 less, as imports are more or less. It is, by the way, all the 
 Government can get out of the tax. Does the protected 
 interest, the manufacturer, pay it? No; he gets it. 
 That is his sole reason for asking for it. If it is not profita- 
 ble to him, it can be profitable to no one. What is the use 
 
12 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 of it? Why burden others in that ease? Why should he be 
 always whining and lobbying at Washington, for what pro- 
 tection he has, and ever greedy for more, ever more? If it is 
 a burden on him, why should he be always striving to keep 
 it up? The question is a plain business one, and answers 
 itself. 
 
 Then who does pay it? There is nobody left but the con- 
 sumer. The consumer is the unprotected of the land; he 
 only forms a paltry nineteen-twentieths of the population, it 
 is true, and, therefore, is not entitled to any notice, relief or 
 help. He must foot the bill ; and a very pretty little bill it 
 is, annually. We will try to find out what it comes to in our 
 next letters. And if we return to the opening figures, we 
 will see who is the principal consumer. For another great 
 class of middle men who serve the farmer, belong to this 
 class. Agriculture being the great business of America, the 
 one which supports all the others and furnishes the staples 
 of exchange with the outer world — agriculture pays the bill 
 in the main. But the protected interests say: "We pay our 
 share as well as others, of the tax, and out of our profits we 
 are able to pay more back to the farmer for his goods. It is 
 all right all around, and helps us all." Partly true, partly 
 false. He does pay his part of the tax, so far as he con- 
 sumes manufactured goods. He does not pay the farmer 
 any more foi his products on account of the tax. The farm- 
 er's products are sold by the Liverpool market. But the 
 answer seems good and plausible. It is so good we will il- 
 lustrate it, and thus: 
 
 Here are twenty men; one is a manufacturer, the others 
 of various occupations. The nineteen say, "We can get on 
 by ourselves; we ask no help." The other one, the twentieth, 
 says, " But I must have a bonus, or I can't conduct my busi- 
 ness. I must have a subsidy. I n^ust be protected or that 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 13 
 
 horrible creature, the foreigner, will eat me up. And how 
 can you possibly get on without me? Your prosperity de- 
 pends all on me, and our great American eagle will die right 
 away if I can't conduct my business." So the nineteen, be- 
 cause they are generous, or because they are fiercely pa- 
 triotic, or because they are very simple, agree to that, and 
 say, " We will tax each one of us $5.00, and that will give us 
 a fund to pay you a subsidy." So the one pays $5.00 and 
 the nineteen pay .$95.00. Every man is taxed alike. There 
 is a fund of $100. The nineteen get nothing. Where does 
 the $100 go to? Who gets it? The protectionist calmly 
 says it does not go at all. Nobody gets it; or else he says 
 the workingman. Nevertheless the fact remains that the tax 
 is imposed and collected as a subsidy, and the one is the 
 subsidized party. 
 
 What a lovely piece of financiering. Truly protection 
 is a great mstitution — it is so American, you see. But who 
 pays for it? If protection is good for the one, it should ap- 
 ply to the twenty, also, to be fair. If the manufacturer is 
 allowed to compel the farmer to "pay $1.75 for a woolen shirt 
 he could get of an Englishman for $1.00, the manufacturer, 
 or somebody, should be compelled to pay the farmer $1.75 
 for a bushel of wheat that the Englishman can get for $1.00, 
 or else let the farmer trade his bushel of wheat for the shirt, 
 and so be done with it. 
 
 SOME PAKTICULARS. 
 
 The moment a tariff is placed on imports, that moment 
 the price of the imports to the consumer is raised by so 
 much. If this tariff was so placed as barely to raise the 
 necessary revenue for government, it would yet be protective 
 in its operation up to the amount of the tariff. A tariff is 
 simply a tax on imports; and when that tax is laid, not only 
 
14 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 for purposes of revenue, but with a new to either prohibit 
 foreign goods, or heavily handicap them, it becomes a "pro- 
 tective tariff," so-called. That sort of a tariff is expressly 
 devised to prevent Americans buyiug manufactured goods 
 in a natural way, or where they could buy them for the 
 least money, and to compel them to buy of American manu- 
 factories at a greatly enhanced rate. 
 
 A good illustration of the way in which it works is shown 
 in the comparatively small item of matches. Two years ago 
 we paid twenty-five cents for three boxes of matches, or ten 
 cents for a single box. The tax was reduced, if my memory 
 serves me well, three-fourths of a cent a box. (And now you 
 cas get matches at one cent a box.) Of course it is not 
 claimed that the reduction of the tax alone is responsi- 
 ble for reduction, in a ten-fold degree, in the price of matches, 
 but the price of matches came down at a run, with the tax, 
 as all will remember. 
 
 This enhanced price, if you get foreign goods, goes to the 
 Government; if you get domestic goods, it goes to the manu- 
 facturer thereof as his bonus for profit, or to cover bad 
 business, including strikes, gluts of market, stoppage of 
 mills, and especially the enhanced cost of production inev- 
 itable from our dunderhead tariff. For example, the duty 
 on woolen wearing apparel and woolens in general, is a dou- 
 ble duty. There is first a specific duty of thirty-five cents 
 per pound; then, in addition there is an ad valorem duty of 
 thirty -five per cent. Now, take a suit of underclothing that 
 can be landed at New York for $3.00. This $3.00 is the nat- 
 ural price for the same, and if the Government took off its 
 tariff, that is what it would cost there. But the duty, as im- 
 posed, will add about $2.40 to the cost of the suit. So now 
 the "protection," or unnatural price becomes $5.40. Out of 
 this amount the Government gets $2.40 as revenue. Now, if 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 15 
 
 that was the case all the way through, it would be endurable; 
 but the price of a similar suit made in America is forced up to 
 $5.40, and Government gets none of the surplus; it all goes 
 to the manufacturer. And the great bulk of the woolens we 
 use are made here. All this extra price we pay for the boon 
 of protection. But the worst is yet to be seen in the case of 
 blankets. "In 1882 the value of blankets imported was 
 $8,877. The duty collected was $6,864, showing an average 
 tax of 77 per cent." This was a prohibitory tax practically. 
 There are no blankets imported to speak of. Yet in that 
 year the American people bought at least $20,000,000 worth 
 of blankets, and the tribute to the manufacturers was about 
 $8,000,000. 
 
 I grant it will not always follow that the price of domes- 
 tic goods will be increased by the full amount of the tariff. 
 For competition comes in to modify the cost more or less, 
 and sometimes reduces it considerably below the tariff mar- 
 gin. But it does follow that the price of all goods is raised 
 as a rule. A suit of clothing bought in England was brought 
 to me last summer. It cost $10.50. The same suit could 
 not be bought here for less than $25.00 or $30.00. The 
 average rise in price caused by the tariff is variously esti- 
 mated to average from one-fourth to two-thirds of the duty. 
 Now let us look at some of the results : 
 
 "The home production of cotton fabrics for 1880 was 
 $210,950,383. Average duty, 40 per cent. Government rev- 
 enue from cotton about $7,000,000. Tribute to manufacturers, 
 about two-thirds of the duty; $45,000,000. That is, for every 
 dollar of revenue to Government from the tariff, six dollars 
 went to the manufacturers. In 1880 the value of our do- 
 mestic woolen manufactures was $268,894,935. Average 
 duty on woolen then (and now) 65 per cent. Tribute to man- 
 ufacturers, at 40 per cent., $76,000,000. The Government 
 
16 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 revenues from woolen goods in that year was but $18,000,000. 
 Ratio, $1.00 to Government to $4.00 for manufacturer". — 
 McAdam. 
 
 There are worse cases even than these. For instance : In 
 1880 the value of carpets made in the United States, was 
 $31,792,802. The duty collected on imported carpets was 
 $832,305. The duty, 64 per cent., was practically prohibitive 
 and the Government secured very little revenue from it. But 
 the extra cost of carpets to this people was $10,000,000, or 
 $1.00 to Government to $9.00 for manufacturers. 
 
 The result in steel rails was worse still. For every $1.00 
 Government derived as duty on these, $13 was paid as a 
 tribute to the American manufacturer. When the Michigan 
 Central and the Canada Southern railways laid their 
 tracks one-half mile apart, in 1872, the American road cost 
 $3,000 per mile more than the Canadian, just because it had 
 to pay $27.00 more per ton for its rails. All of which the 
 farmer, and the merchant who sells to the farmer, had to 
 bear, in increased freight and expenses. 
 
 The railroads of the country have been fearfully more 
 costly than there was any occasion for. All this results 
 from the tariff; and all this increases the consumer's expense, 
 and decreases the farmer's income especially, by enhanced 
 figures. 
 
 The following table will show the rate per cent, of duty 
 in 1880, on the most important goods: 
 
 Cotton goods 40.13 per cent. 
 
 Iron and steel 34.40 
 
 Woolen goods 66.74 
 
 Silk and goods thereof 50. " 
 
 Glass 53.77 
 
 Salt 49.90 
 
 These are given as specimens. The total value of manu- 
 
PROTECTION AND IEEE TEADE. 
 
 17 
 
 factored goods in the United States consumed at home 
 amounted that year to 85.250,000,000. On a great deal of 
 this sum the tariff did not increase price. A great many ar- 
 ticles, so-called, manufactured, such as flour and feed, 
 are not affected in price by the tariff. We export them, we 
 do not import them. The average rate of duty on dutiable 
 goods was 41.70 per cent, in 1880, assuming what is very rea- 
 sonable, that the average increase in price of manufactured 
 articles amount to only one-fourth of the duty, then the in- 
 creased cost of our home-made goods amounted to 8547,000,- 
 000 per year. Moreover, this means so much additional 
 capital involved in the business of handling them; and on 
 this additional capital must be raised an extra twenty-five 
 per cent, for retail and wholesale profits, which means a tax 
 of 8136,000,000 more. This last is all sheer waste. Govern- 
 ment gets nothing from all this vast sum. 
 
 This sum of about 8700,000,000 is what the consumers of 
 America pay annually for the priceless boon of a protective 
 tariff. 
 
 • Well, now the census rjroves on examination that one-half 
 of the male and female workers of America are directly en- 
 gaged in agriculture. Another fourth are indirectly so en- 
 gaged, since they get their living from some kind of service 
 more or less connected with direct agriculture. But just 
 taking those engaged directly in farming, we find that the 
 cost of the tariff to them in 1880, was 8350,000,000 annually, 
 at the very lowest; on which some of them received back a 
 very small per cent, of the whole. The wool-growers and 
 sugar-raisers alone reaped any benefit in increased prices. It 
 is a pretty little bill the farmer pays for the lovely schemes 
 of protection. 
 
 Did you know that in 1860, the farmers comprised one- 
 half the population of the United States, and owned one-half 
 
IS 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 the wealth? And that in 1880 they still made up nearly half 
 the population, but owned only one quarter of the wealth of 
 the land? That is, the hardest worked half of the population 
 increased their property four billions of dollars; the other 
 half increased theirs twenty-four billions of dollars, or six 
 times as much. And beyond a doubt the huge and wasteful 
 tariff tax is to a large extent responsible for this tremendous 
 difference in accumulation. This twenty years comprised 
 the period of highest tariff, and also of greatest expansion of 
 the farming interest. There will never be another period 
 when the farming interest will cover so much new ground, 
 and open up so much new and fertile land. And yet agri- 
 culture accumulated only fifty per cent, on its capital in this 
 period of immense national expansion, while the other half 
 of this people accumulated (saved) 300 per cent, on theirs, 
 and lived on the fat of the land, if anybody did, beside. 
 
 The farmer has been on the down grade in America in 
 influence, power, wealth, and self-respect as well — this long 
 time. He has worked the hardest of all its people, and has 
 the least to show for it. He has borne the heaviest burden 
 of this grotesque and unjust tariff tax. We would think he 
 would wake up, and see what is the matter with him and his 
 business. And it looks as if he was about to do just that. 
 
 N. B. — Four billions saving for the hardest worked half 
 of our people in twenty years: Twenty-four for the other 
 half in same period. Where will the farmer be after an- 
 other such decade or two? 
 
 The great bulk of this huge tax falls on the farmer, and 
 always must. Besides, this system of so-called protection 
 burns the farmer's candle at both ends. While it piles up 
 the cost of everything he needs, and adds grievously and 
 sometimes doubly to the price of everything he must buy, it 
 hurts him also in regard to what he sells, for it cuts tfff and 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 19 
 
 keeps down the world's demands for bis products. If we 
 had direct and free trade with all the world, the demand for 
 the American farmer's goods would be immensly increased. 
 For that matter, so also would be the demand for the Ameri- 
 can manufactures be increased in a far greater ratio. Trade 
 between nations is simply "swapping" goods, as a whole. 
 The simpler and more direct the fashion of the trade, that is, 
 the more Government keeps its hands off, the better for the 
 trade. 
 
 But ours is the paternal government par excellence. It 
 interferes with our purchases, and compels us to buy of the 
 high-priced American manufacturer, by either prohibiting 
 or handicapping the foreign manufacturer's wares. And 
 what is all this senseless tyranny for, we ask? If there were 
 any real and great good to be had from it, we could console 
 ourselves somewhat. If it were true that the workingmen 
 of the land were helped, we could resign ourselves to the out- 
 rage. But the reverse of all this and more is true. What 
 have we to show for nearly a century of wasteful and costly 
 protection? Our manufacturers to-day receive just five times 
 as much protection as at the beginuing. They need that 
 much more soothing syrup of bonus to-day, and we cannot 
 get it reduced. Our merchant marine, as we will show in a 
 subsequent letter, has been protected down to its very grave, 
 and ruined. 
 
 The protective system does not increase wages to the 
 workingman, but it does increase the cost of living most 
 grievously. Labor has never been protected in these United 
 States, nor can be, until immigration is prohibited or taxed. 
 Wages, so long as there is absolute free trade in labor, can- 
 not be affected by any tariff whatever. It is the greatest 
 humbug that was ever thrown out for a bait to a generous 
 people. It is the most astounding piece of self-deception 
 
20 
 
 PROTECTION" AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 possible. Protection is a great load on the back of all the 
 workers of the land. 
 
 We have shown what is the direct cost to consumers of 
 this system, and hinted at the indirect damage to the farmer 
 in decreasing the demand for his products, which form the 
 great bulk of our exports. And we may look in vain for any 
 resulting erood to him whatever. For all it costs him, for all 
 it injures him, he gets no return, nor ever can. 
 
 Besides, the whole system of indirect taxation is wasteful 
 and false. It turns the pyramid of taxation upon its point 
 instead of its base. For by this method government is sup- 
 ported by a tax on what we eat, drink and wear, and use 
 personally, not on what we own. An illustration will show 
 what this means : 
 
 Win. Vanderbuilt, at his death, owned one two-hundred 
 and fiftieth part of all the wealth of this country. He ought 
 therefore to have paid that proportion of the government 
 tax, called revenue. What did he pay in reality? He paid 
 the tariff on wnat he consumed, just like the poorest laborer 
 of the land. And he paid more, as he consumed more. 
 Practically he paid no more to government for its protection 
 of his property than he would have paid had he owned 
 nothing. Yet that too is a part of the great American policy, 
 which the western farmer has been supporting and voting for 
 at Washington, all these years, and is voting for to-day. 
 
 When will the great unprotected wake up? When will 
 he bestir himself to do his duty to himself and the nation? 
 
 WHAT IS IT ALL FOE? WHO AEE THE PEOTECTED? 
 
 We have considered a few of the items of cost, to the in- 
 dividual consumer, of the protective system. It is unneces- 
 sary to pursue that department of our study in detail. It is 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 21 
 
 enough to say simply that almost everything we use is made 
 costlier to us by this system. 
 
 The free list contains nothing of importance, save coffee 
 and tea. On these articles there is no duty — probably be- 
 cause they axe in no sense American industries — and hence 
 there can be no beggarly whining for aid from some petty 
 little clique. Yet it would seem, if revenue is the object of a 
 tariff, these very articles are the ones to tax, as the entire tax 
 would go solidly to the Government. 
 
 Apart from these, every article of common consumr tion 
 is taxed so heavily that the cost of living is greatly increased. 
 All articles of wearing apparel, all kinds of hardware and 
 machinery, all sorts of manufactured articles, in short, are 
 taxed with a view to protection. The aggregate cost is simply 
 enormous. The farmers of Minnesota are just now greatly 
 exercised over the railroad tariffs, and justly so; but the 
 protection tariff is a far greater burden upon them than the 
 railroads. 
 
 The question at once comes up, What is it all for? What 
 is the object in taxing the people for the support of the Gov- 
 ernment in such a way that it costs them four times as much 
 in the aggregate as the Government gets by the system of 
 taxation? It seems plainly, on the face of it, the most costly 
 way of raising revenue that could be devised, and again we 
 say, Where is the reason for it? Well, the reason given is: 
 "Protection of American industries." You look at that an- 
 swer sideways, and all around, and it begins to look like an 
 invitation to lift yourself by your bootstraps. Well, that is 
 about what it comes to. How a people are going to be en- 
 riched and assisted, as a whole, by heavy and ruinous taxa- 
 tion could never appear to any sane mind, one would think ; 
 yet that is the protectionist's position if he has any. He is 
 welcome to the burden of proof of such an absurdity. It 
 
22 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 would seem apalling enough to stagger anyone, yet this is 
 the substance of the protectionist arguments: That taxation 
 is what has made this country so great and prosperous; that 
 taxation is the secret spring of all our growth and greatness. 
 Taxation is the secret of America and her might. But for 
 the protective system of taxation the business of the country 
 would at once go into chaos and ruin; and many more 
 equally distracted assertions, accompanied by much so-called 
 patriotic gush and declamatory warnings. 
 
 Now it would seem very simple and reasonable to let the 
 gas out of such preposterous assertions, by the puncture of 
 one axiomatic proposition: That we are a prosperous and 
 rich and great people in spite of taxation, not because of it. 
 That seems plain enough, does it not? It cannot make me 
 any richer to tax me, say $200 per annum, on my house. Yet 
 for a century we have been denying this statement, and to- 
 day the Government is acting on the belated protectionist 
 assertions as above given. Of course it does not put it to 
 itself, or wish us to look at it in this disrespectful way. All 
 these naked absurdities are covered up with the beautiful 
 and patriotic cloak of "Protection to American industries and 
 workingmen." 
 
 Well! Let us see what industries are protected, and 
 what their proportion is to the entire industry of the land. 
 If protection is good for anything, it ought to be good for 
 the whole country, and it must be. If good for a part it 
 must be good for all. That is the assertion of protection, 
 and on that assertion it has beguiled the representatives of 
 the people all these years into voting to keep up the huge 
 imposition. 
 
 We will begin with the great industry, Agriculture. Eice 
 sugar and wool are the only products of any importance 
 whose price is raised by protection. Rice, we have seen, is 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 23 
 
 heavily taxed; sugar also in a less degree. But these are 
 manufactured articles, and not merely the rude products of 
 the soil. Hence the protection afforded, perhaps. Wool is 
 raised in price by ten cents a pound. The rice and sugar in- 
 dustries are very small items in the farming of America; yet 
 the rice growers of South Carolina, the sugar interests of 
 Louisiana, have been duly at Wasnington, tearing their hair 
 before the committee on the poor little Morrison Bill, and 
 sitting down in sackcloth and ashes. They plaintively sigh 
 and patriotically bleat, "Oh gentlemen! if our subsidy is 
 lessened, by a hair, these United States (by which we mean 
 ourselves) are goiDg to be brought to the verge of ruin. And 
 the wool-raisers are howling like wolves, everywhere, for pro- 
 tection and its blessed subsidy of ten cents a pound. They 
 want more, and will take it if they can get it, of course. 
 
 The actions of these interests only show again the in- 
 tensely selfish and plundering nature of protection. Every 
 industry that reaps a bonus from it is sure to make itself 
 heard in the lobbies and before the committees at Washing- 
 ton. They begin to howl about ruin and chaos the moment 
 Reform dares to look at their fat preserves. It is human 
 nature, perhaps, but very disgusting. And meantime, the 
 great mass that is being robbed and plundered in the house 
 of their own familiar friends, sits patiently silent and endur- 
 ing, and allows tne robbers to do as they please. 
 
 But the agricultural interest, these comparatively small ex- 
 ceptions made, are absolutely ^protected; yet they include 
 forty-four per cent, of the workers of the land. True, there 
 is a tax on corn of ten cents a bushel, and on wheat of twenty 
 cents a bushel; but Congress might as well tax the Rocky 
 Mountains for revenue or protection as these. These are 
 our exports, not imports. Corn and provisions, wheat and 
 bread-stuffs, with cotton — these are our great staples, which 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 go out to pay for what we get from the outside world. In 
 1881, our exports of agricultural products amounted $730,- 
 394,943, or nearly eighty-three per cent, of our total export. 
 Agriculture must and can hoe its own row. Corn and wheat 
 and cotton, being strong, cannot be protected. They must 
 carry themselves and all the weak industries that go on 
 whining journeys to Washington besides. 
 
 After agriculture, we find there were by the census of 
 1880, 4,074,238 persons engaged in rendering professional, or 
 personal services in this country — lawyers, doctors, ministers, 
 clerks, domestics, workingmen. Besides them were 1,810,256 
 engaged in trade and transportation. Add these together 
 and you have about thirty-five per cent, more of the workers 
 of America. Were any of these "protected" by our policy? 
 Certainly not. The only way to protect them is to prohibit 
 by a tremendous tax the importation of professional men, 
 clerks servants, laborers, railroad workers of all sorts, sea- 
 men, etc., from Europe. When that is done a stop will be put 
 to the free competition of labor, just as there now is by our 
 tariff, a stop put to the free competition of manufactured 
 goods. Then, and not till then, will American workingmen 
 of all kinds, and workingwomen be protected. Labor is ab- 
 solutely free to come here as it pleases, and compete with 
 all of us who work in any of these ways. The astounding 
 thing in all this is that such a mountainous fact as this should 
 not have been seen and felt by all, long since. The amazing 
 thing is that so many of these should still be working and 
 voting for their own plundering. They have been as care- 
 less and as demurely quiet as the farmers themselves, which 
 is saying a great deal. For all these classes, representing 
 eighty per cent, of our workers, to allow the present protec- 
 tion system to be kept up, is simply to pay for organized 
 burglary, and to encourage the wanton plundering of them- 
 selves. 
 
PROTECTION AND FBEE TRADE. 
 
 25 
 
 There remains 3,837,112 of our workers in 1880 to be ac- 
 counted for. There were 2.739.907 persons engaged as man- 
 ufacturers, or skilled workmen. Of these only 52,207 are 
 classified as manufacturers. Of the balance of 2,587,700 
 classified as workmen, all carpenters, bricklayers, masons 
 seamstresses and others, are as entirely unprotected as the 
 workers spoken of above. And as the result of very careful 
 computations by skillful and competent men, we find finally 
 that only 837,112 of these are "protected" by our tariff, and 
 many of them only partially. We are getting the rabbit cor- 
 nered, and a very small rabbit he proves, for all the billions 
 of dollars he has cost the American workers. We find then 
 finally, that out of a total of 17,392,099 workers in these 
 United States in 1880, only 837,112, or about five per cent, 
 (that is to say one in twenty") are "protected" by our fright- 
 fully costly system. What a case for iEsop's fable of the 
 mountains laboring to bring forth — a mouse. Twenty taxed 
 for the sake of paying a subsidy, called protection, to one. 
 
 Why, there are more women working as domestic servants 
 in America than all the protected workers put together. 
 There were 1,075,653 female servants, utterly unprotected 
 against "the pauper labor of Europe" as our protectionist 
 friends (save the mark) contemptuously phrase the honest 
 labor of people quite, as good as ourselves; and yet they are 
 taxed heavily on every yard of cloth, or ribbon, on, in fact, 
 almost everything they have to buy. Moreover, there were 
 280,000 women working as seamstresses, dress-makers, ready- 
 made clothing, and shirt and cuff makers, etc. Many of 
 these are the most sorrowful workers in the land, scarce 
 earning a pittance that may keep soul and body together, in 
 tears and penury, and awful temptation — yet every one of 
 these pathetic workers is taxed to pay a bonus to the man- 
 ufacturer, or the mine owners, etc. 
 
26 
 
 PROTECTION AND FKEE TRADE. 
 
 The conclusion to all this is simple enough; and it is 
 this: Our protective tariff is a monstrous perversion of the 
 taxing power of the government. It is wasteful, it is fright 
 fully costly, it is utterly unrighteous, it is tyrany. The Gov- 
 ernment has the right to tax us for its necessities; no one 
 disputes that right; but that it has the right to tax us for 
 the support of other men's business, is an assumption of 
 power, every free man should protest against as an invasion 
 of his rights, and a restriction of his liberty. 
 
 Protection is an organized attempt to make life harder 
 and costlier than God and nature meant it to be. As such it 
 is a complete success, for that is all it does or can do — make 
 life and living harder and costlier to the great mass of 
 workers. 
 
 DOES PROTECTION PROTECT THE W0RK1NGMAN? — WAGES 
 AND W T OEKERS. 
 
 It has been, and is to-day, continually asserted that the 
 protective system increases wages, and so improves the con- 
 dition of the w T orkingmen in the protected industries and all 
 over the land. Indeed this assertion, boldly persisted in 
 these many years, has so imposed on the country, and 
 even on those who make such assertions, as to utterly befog 
 the whole matter, and induce Americans to accept econo- 
 mical falsehoods for vital truths. 
 
 If this assertion were true, it would not afford any justi- 
 fication for the grievous burdens and injuries inflicted on 
 the principal industries of the land by the tariff. Nothing 
 can justify an enormous tax on all of the workers of America 
 in order to benefit one man out of every twenty, or one man 
 out of ten. Nothing can excuse the plundering by Govern- 
 ment enactment of an entire nation just to build up special 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 27 
 
 industries; in other words, to pay subsidies to a small por- 
 tion of that nation for conducting their own business. No 
 good reason, economical, sentimental, or patriotic, can be 
 given to excuse this crime against even-handed justice to all. 
 It is well to be reminded at the start of what we have to say 
 on wages, of the facts of our last letter, and of these simple 
 propositions which appeal to every man's sense of justice; 
 especially is this true when we see that there is no way to 
 end these burdens and subsidies save by the radical applica- 
 tion of the axe. If one could see any end to this oppressive 
 system he might wait patiently. But we find at the close of 
 nearly a century of protective tariff taxation, that, so far 
 from getting any relief, we are handicapped five times as 
 heavily as at the start. Protection commenced with eight 
 and one-half per cent, of tariff, and to-day it has forty-two 
 per cent., and cries for more, ever more. 
 
 This being said, we return to the aforesaid assertion, and 
 confront it with an absolute denial. The assertion that this 
 system increases wages and improves th^ condition of the 
 American workingmen is so false and shallow as to be ridic- 
 ulous. It is a heresy against common sense and facts, which, 
 nevertheless is yet firmly believed by the masses. One of 
 these days our children will look upon this belief in us, as we 
 regard our grandfather's belief in witches. They will smile 
 at our century-old delusions as we smile at the "Salem days" 
 of New England. 
 
 In this matter of wages, as in every other department, the 
 facts are all against the protectionists. These last are never 
 tired of talking of their being practical men, when, in fact, 
 they are the wildest theorists in the country. They have 
 not one fact to back them up, except this, that in spite of all 
 the damage and loss they have cost and are costing Ameri- 
 can labor, they have not been able to ruin it. American labor 
 
28 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 has carried the huge protectionist load on its stalwart shoul- 
 ders and lived and prospered in spite of it. 
 
 For what are the facts in this labor problem? What are 
 the controlling agencies in establishing wages? Wages are 
 determined by the law of supply and demand first. When 
 there is much work to be done, and few men comparatively 
 to do it, wages will be high. This has always been the case 
 in America, and consequently wages have always, been high 
 here. Where there is a great demand for men, there their 
 labor will be well paid. There is more work to be done, 
 more work to be had in these United States than anywhere 
 else in the world. And our wages are the highest on the 
 average. 
 
 There is a sequence to this fact, which develops another 
 of the factors in high wages. That sequence is this: Where 
 there is so much work to be done, there a man must do a 
 great deal in a day, he must accomplish more than elsewhere 
 is accomplished, aud he does do just this. Tbis gives us an- 
 other fact, that where the labor is scarce, and the work to 
 be done great, there a man does more work and accomp- 
 lishes more. Hence we see the apparant contradiction, that 
 high wages are really the cheapest labor; that countries 
 which pay high wages have a corresponding high production 
 which more than makes up the difference. A man accom- 
 plishes more here than anywhere else in the world. The 
 very man who, in Italy will do no more than his companions, 
 will accomplish in America three times as much. The 
 amount a man may do is conditioned by the tools ho works 
 with, by what his companions call a day's work, by what 
 custom demands, by the natural advantages or disadvantages 
 of the country he lives in. In all those respects the advant- 
 age is on the side of America. Hence this cry about the 
 "pauper labor of Europe" overwhelming us, is arrant non- 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 29 
 
 sense. This so-called pauper labor can never compete with 
 the high priced labor of England and these United States. 
 If it could, Italy would be sending us our manufactures. An 
 English American farmer lately told me that he had seen 
 eight men engaged in doing the work in a harvest field in 
 England which two men would do here. 
 
 Another great element in high wages here is our abun- 
 dance of rich and easily worked land. This makes agricul- 
 ture our greatest bnsiness. It employes one half the Nation, 
 and is able to give good wages for work done. Being the heav- 
 iest employer, it doas more than any other one cause to force 
 up wages to a high standard, and then insists on a big day's 
 work to correspond; and by ihe best of tools enables a man 
 to multiply himself three-fold. 
 
 Still another element, or factor, in high wages is— the 
 rtyle of living. The American workman lives higher and 
 better than his European compeer. He has a better home, 
 a happier family, batter prospects, a higher hope of improv- 
 ing his condition. All this makes him more energetic, more 
 hopeful, more workful, if I may com a word. And as a mat- 
 ter of fact, however he works, he accomplishes more than 
 any other workman. 
 
 Protection has nothing to do with any of these elements 
 which are the factors in the wage problem. The protective 
 tariff does not add one cent to the workingman's wages; it 
 does increase in a fearful ratio his burdens and expenses. 
 And if it affects his wages at all it is disastrously, for it 
 cuts off the demand for our products. Every step in reduc- 
 ing the tariff is a widening and enlarging of our market, an 
 increasing of the demand of our wares, a help to build up 
 better wages, and a happier, more comfortable home, and 
 style of living for the workingman. 
 
 The natural tendency in this country is to pay the highest 
 
30 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 wages for labor, for reasons just stated. If protection has 
 affected this tendency at all it has been by way of checking 
 it. It can be shown by facts, that the unprotected industries 
 with us pay the highest wages very decidedly; whereas the 
 workmen in the highly protected industries of metals, wool- 
 ens, cottons aud mining, receive the lowest wages. In re- 
 gard to the cotton and woolen operatives in particular, these 
 are actually getting, in many instances, lower wages than 
 are received for the same work in England. Yet the pro- 
 tectionists assure us this taxation is all for the betterment 
 of American labor. Wages in 1883 were not only lower than 
 in 1860, in the woolen manufactories, protected by an aver- 
 age duty of sixty-five per cent., but were actually ten per 
 cent, lower than for the same work in England, while their 
 living was twenty per cent higher. The American workers 
 who get the highest wages, higher than their class anywhere 
 else, are in the unprotected industries. Another fact: Wages 
 in the protected industries of the United States were better 
 nnder the very low tariff of 1857, than they have ever been 
 since. Are we to infer from this that our tariff helps labor 
 and adds to its wages, or the reverse? 
 
 If we really want to know what the relative effect of free 
 trade and protection are upon our wages, we must go out of 
 our country for a test case. We must go and examine the 
 results of these radically different policies on two peoples 
 side by side, who are living under comparatively the same 
 economic and social conditions. Such an opportunity we 
 have wonderfully apt in all its aspects, in Great Britain and 
 Germany. The former is the only country in the world 
 which raises its revenue in a strictly scienti fic manner. It is 
 the free trade country, par excellence. On the other hand, 
 Germany is the radically protective country of Europe. Both 
 have a swarming population, sending out hosts of emigrants 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 31 
 
 annually. Both are heavily laden with a powerful and 
 numerous and costly aristocracy. In many respects they 
 are similar in character and faith. Now here, if anywhere, 
 the protective policy should prove its assumptions and 
 claims. And here, of all places, is where you find the lie 
 direct, given to all these claims by the facts. So much the 
 worse for the facts, say the American protectionists, that is, 
 such as condescend to inquire into the facts in this case, for 
 most of them are supremely ignorant of these facts. 
 
 In every particular, without a single exception, the facts 
 are against Germany and protection. The deductions of 
 Schoenhof, after an exhaustive study of the subject, are that, 
 "English wages are fully 50 per cent, above those of Ger- 
 many, and on the average, at least 30 per cent, above those 
 of France. Besides, the English working week is one of 56 
 hours, whilst that of Germany is from 66 to 72 (often 78) 
 hours, and that of France 72 hours. Yet the latter guard 
 themselves by protective tariffs, not against their weaker 
 rivals, but against the country which pays the highest 
 wages and for the shortest hours." 
 
 Since free trade became the British policy, wages in Eng- 
 land have advanced an average of ninety per cent., and 
 pauperism has decreased fifty per cent., and population 
 has increased fifty per cent., crime decreased sixty-six 
 per cent. Yet Disraeli and the Tories made the most dis- 
 mal forecasts of the gloomy results to follow Cobden's free 
 trade ideas. They croaked just like their American brethren 
 of to-day who are forty years behind times, of the chaos and 
 ruin that was going to over-flow the land if enlightened and 
 Christian ideas of trade and revenue should prevail. 
 
 France, which stands midway between Germany and 
 England in this regard, maintains a similar position in wages 
 and work; and while her workmen do less work per man 
 
32 
 
 PKOTECTION AND FBEE TRADE. 
 
 than those of England, they do by far the better work, and 
 the more durable. France would doubtless soon be a free 
 trade country, but for the necessity of enormous taxation 
 imposed on her by her continental surroundings; and while 
 we have much to learn from Great Britain in manufacturing, 
 we have nothing to learn from highly protected Germany. 
 "From all oilier nations who were represented at the expo- 
 sition (1876) we found something worth learning— from 
 Germany nothing. The lo»v-priced labor of Germany 
 must be protected against the high-price I labor of England 
 and America. 
 
 Another fact and I will close the discussion of wages: 
 The productive capacity of an operative in these three coun- 
 tries, is shown by the following table, taking 100 as the 
 American unit: 
 
 
 COTTON 
 
 WOOL 
 
 SILK 
 
 
 100 
 67 
 27M 
 
 100 
 77 
 60 
 
 100 
 
 68 
 
 I give this table to show the superiority of the American 
 workman over all others in the amount of work done; and 
 to illustrate the folly of the fear of the "pauper labor of 
 Europe." This table explains the fact that the cotton oper- 
 ative of Massachusetts, while he receives slightly larger 
 wages per day than his English compeer, is actually paid less 
 wages for piece work. And as regards the workers in woolens 
 and metals and mining, what superiority they have in wages 
 raised, is more than counterbalanced by the extra cost of 
 living, and amount of work done. 
 
 The conclusion to all this is: That protection, so far 
 from increasing the workingman's wages, tends to decrease 
 them; while it certainly adds very greatly to the expense of 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 33 
 
 living; that free trade would tend to increase his wages, 
 while it certainly would greatly decrease the cost of living 
 to him and his. If we, in America, really want to protect 
 the workingmen of America, we may as well adopt the ideas 
 of Dermis Kearney, and have done with it. We must 
 prohibit emigration, and kick all foreign workmen out of the 
 country, and so put an end to foreign competition with our 
 workers, as the tariff prevents foreign competition with our 
 wares. We must apply the anti-Chinese ideas of the Pacific 
 Coast, not only to Chinamen but to all Europeans. When 
 that is done, we shall have arrived at the blessed American 
 Haven of Protection, in reality, for the workmen as well as 
 the manufacturer. As a matter of fact protection was, and 
 is, asked for on the grounds that wages are so high that our 
 manufacturers cannot compete with the cheap labor of 
 Europe. It is asked for, not to raise or maintain high wages, 
 but simply to indemnify the employer foi the high wages he 
 had to pay. Insteid of protecting labor, as the demagogues 
 and protectionists claim, it is simply a scheme to protect cap- 
 ital at the expense of all kinds of labor. 
 
 THE HOME MARKET FOLLY. 
 
 This is another of the preposterous claims of protection. 
 It amounts to this: That if we will kindly tax ourselves by 
 an enormous amount, and so raise a big subsidy to give to 
 the twentieth man among us, that this twentieth man will, 
 by and by, become so prosperous and numerous (thanks to 
 the bonus we pay him), that he will turn in and eat up all 
 the American farmer raises, and so sacredly preserve for 
 American stomachs only the products of American soil. 
 This home market humbug is a special bait for the American 
 farmer, and as he is supposed to be capable of swallowing 
 anything, it is taken for granted he will readily swallow this 
 also. In effect it is a renewal of the invitation to lift our- 
 
34 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 selves by the boot-straps. It says practically, "Subsidize a 
 host of artisans to settle close by the farmers. Pension an 
 army of corn and wheat consumers to come over from 
 Europe and come West from the East, to consume your pro- 
 ducts. Pay to the employers of this host a bonus for manu- 
 facturing goods at a loss, and out of their profits they will 
 pay you more for your wheat and corn, your butter and eggs, 
 and milk and berries and potatoes, etc." Now this is just 
 what we are doing; under compulsion of our Government 
 we are paying enormous sums annually, to induce foreigners 
 to come and buy our farm products in America instead of in 
 Europe. The great unprotected is asked to make up the 
 losses of all these people, who, we are told, can't make goods 
 here without a loss, that they may give the farmer better 
 prices out of their gains. Does he get better prices after 
 fulfilling his portion of the contract? He pays more for his 
 woolens and cottons by a large sum, more for his hardware 
 and machinery, more for his hats, caps, boots and shoes; 
 more for his teaching and government and law; more for his 
 necessities, more for his pleasures, more for his freights and 
 general expenses; more for his shroud and his coffin — and. 
 all for nothing. 
 
 For he gets no higher price for his products in return for 
 all this. The price of these is established in Liverpool just 
 the same as before. And it is no great concern to the farmer 
 where his wheat and pork are eaten, or by whom, so that he 
 gets his money for it. Not only does he fail to receive any 
 benefit for it all, he is actually damaged, because, by this 
 subsidy business he is forbidden to trade directly with a 
 great portion of the outside world. So the demand for and 
 the price of wheat that he has to sell is actually reduced by 
 this protection bonus of which he pays the most. A few mar- 
 ket gardeners may be stimulated and supported, but as to the 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 35 
 
 mass of farmers, it is simply impossible to protect them. 
 Their market is the broad world, governed by the law of sup- 
 ply and demand. Here is one of the root errors of this home 
 market humbug. The other is to be found in this simple state- 
 ment : That protection does not protect. Of course this is the 
 denial direct; but that is just what revenue reformers, and free 
 traders assert and insist on; that, so far from stimulating 
 the honest and permanent growth of American manufactories, 
 our tariff handicaps and hinders them; that instead of fos- 
 tering the best interests of artisans and mechanics and man- 
 ufacturers, it injures them; that free trade will do more to 
 build up a home market than protection, and not charge 
 anybody a cent for it; that free trade will give an increased 
 demand for the farmer's products by allowing direct trade 
 with all the world, and besides, save costs of freight, insur- 
 ance and exchange, and while conferring this blessing, will 
 remove the ruinous burdens of protection from his weary 
 shoulders; that free trade will deal out exact justice to all 
 business alike, will make the rich pay their share of govern- 
 mental support by taxing property, instead of hungry 
 stomachs and shivering bodies; that free trade will strike 
 at the very roots of civil service corruption and so in- 
 sure civil service reform for good and all, by cutting 
 down the tree that bears the villainous fruits of cor- 
 ruption; that free trade will reduce everybody's expenses, 
 and instead of injuring, will add to the comfort and pros- 
 perity of us all; that free trade is in the line of political 
 progress, and the Christian theory of international relations, 
 and commerce. Free trade is not the milleDium; it is simply 
 improvement all along the line. 
 
36 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 DOES PEOTECTION PROTECT?— OUR MARINE. 
 
 There was a time when our seamen had a world-wide 
 fame and our sails were seen on every sea. At present they 
 do not "whiten the ocean" any to speak of, and we have no 
 carrying trade worth mentioning. The famous marine that 
 was the pride of America, is gone; it has been protected 
 to death. 
 
 In 1825 American vessels carried 92% per cent, of the for- 
 eign trade of the country. In 1860 they carried 663^ per 
 cent of the same. In 1884 they carried only 17 per cent., 
 and still we are going on the down-hill grade in this Na- 
 tional interest of transcendent importance. Our decadence 
 on the sea has become so painfully evident that, weary of 
 apologyzing for it, tired of hoping for betterment, we have 
 come to laugh at everything pertaining to the American com- 
 mercial marine and navy as a huge practical joke. It may be 
 fine philosophy to turn our disgrace into a jest. Let those in- 
 dulge in it who wish; but it smacks of sour grapes, when a 
 great Nation with every natural advantage given it of God to 
 excel on the ocean, quietly sits still and looking on the ruins 
 of its most vital interests, turns to jesting over it. 
 
 America has practically abandoned the sea and allows 
 other countries to carry her enormous trade for her and to get 
 the pay for the same. She has lost her great nursery for 
 seamen ; she is simply ridiculous in the figure she cuts on the 
 great highway of the world. 
 
 Would it not be wiser to inquire into the reason for this 
 lamentable decline and see if a halt cannot be called? Would 
 it not be more becoming to nurse a righteous wrath at such 
 a disgraceful state of things than to pass puerile "witticism," 
 long since stale and tiresome? Is it a matter for laughing 
 that last year, according to one estimate, $128,000,000 went 
 into foreign ship owners' pockets, and to the supporting and 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 37 
 
 educating of the seamen of Britain, France, Germany, Scan- 
 dinavia, and the Mediterranean States? It would appear diffi- 
 cult to find anything funny for Americans in such a stupen- 
 dous fact and loss. 
 
 Never was there a land better situated and endowed to be 
 the great naval power of the world. Never was there a race 
 better adapted to the sea, or one that has bred better seamen. 
 Never was there a country so abundantly provided with the 
 material for ship-building in the rough; and yet, with all 
 these patent facts staring us in the face, with an enormous 
 coast line, an enormous trade, and a superabundance of fine 
 harbors besides, we have nothing on the sea to speak of. 
 Here is a mighty industry, and a vitally important one for 
 National defence, in which America ought to be first amongst 
 her equals, but in which she is actually and utterly insig- 
 nificant. 
 
 Our loss has been others' great gain. In 1860 America 
 had a tonnage (entire) greater by a fifth than Britain; to-day 
 no one would be so insane as to suggest even a comparison. 
 If there is anything to mortify our Natianal pride, this ought 
 to do it. If there is any interest of America that needs doc- 
 toring and helping it is this. At present we are sitting 
 around the death bed of the American marine and finding it 
 very amusing. It reminds one of Nero fiddling over burn- 
 ing Rome. 
 
 "In the last ten years," says Mr. Blaine, the prince of pro- 
 tectionists, "the value of the products carried between this 
 and other courtries has excaeded $11,000,090,000 a year, out 
 of the carrying of which somebody has made $110,000,000 
 per annum — a sum far larger than the interest on the 
 National debt. And who has made this money? Everybody 
 except the United States." And his panacea would be more 
 subsidies and protection. That, too, right in the face of 
 
88 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 the fact that under the blight of protection, which i 
 one kind of subsidy, our foreign tonnage has declined fror 
 4,400,000 to about 500,000 tons, while the British tonnage en 
 gaged in the American trade, under free trade has increase( 
 500 per cent in the same period. "This," said Bowker, "if 
 like curing a man dead drunk with brandy by giving him ; 
 horn of whisky." 
 
 What are the causes of the destruction of this magni 
 ficent and vital industry, this great element of a home mar 
 ket? The direct answer generally given is — The war, anc 
 iron ships. But the war has been over these twenty years 
 and we ought to make as good iron ships as anybody, or 
 failing in that, buy iron ships as cheaply as other people. 
 
 The real cause of it all, is the protective system and its 
 results. And here is the proof of the assertion: Grant, tc 
 begin with, that the civil war, by its Alabamas, compelled 
 our marine to take refuge under foreign flags for safety. 
 Business knows no sentimentalities. And so, when Amer- 
 ican ship-owners could get no insurance, and were in daily 
 fear of the destruction of their ships, they took the natura] 
 course of registering under the foreign flags, or discontinu- 
 business. This, so to speak, obliterated our foreign tonnage. 
 But, the war over, it should naturally have returned to its 
 own house, and would have done so but for the laws of the 
 United States. 
 
 For monumental legislative foolishness, we can safely 
 challenge modern times to furnish any parallel to the folly 
 of our navigation laws. They lie before me as I write. It is 
 to be regretted space will not allow their insertion. But 
 their effect is this : They forbid the American to buy ships 
 abroad for registry imder the American flag; no foreign-built 
 ship can be sailed under that flag; no ship owned in part or 
 in whole by any foreigner, can be sailed under that flag. 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 39 
 
 Now follw up these facts by the other facts caused by 
 our protective system, and you will see the reason why we 
 cannot have iron steamshiDS as cheaply and easily as other 
 nations. For there is a tax on every article (almost) that 
 enters into the construction of the modern steamship; a tax 
 imposed by our protective tariff on raw materials and man- 
 ufactured products also. Consequently these ships cannot 
 be built in America, save at a far greater cost than elsewhere. 
 And you may be sure no civilized country, save ours, has 
 such idiotic navigation laws. As ships cannot be bought 
 abroad; as iron ships, the only ships that can compete for 
 the foreign trade, cannot be bought in this country, save at 
 this very great advance over what foreigners pay for the 
 article, we take the consequences. That is, we have no ships 
 to speak of, for simple business reasons; hence we have and 
 can have no carrying trade, we have no marine worthy of the 
 country. 
 
 What is more, we never can have any revival of our 
 marine till these laws are repealed. They are protective in 
 their nature and animus. You see, the dominant idea in 
 them is to protect American industries. Hence to reiterate 
 Americans are forbidden to buy ships where they can be had 
 the cheapest. Hence, (and here is where protection cuts its 
 own throat in this particular) Americans are forbidden the 
 raw and manufactured materials with Avhich to build ships 
 where they can be had the cheapest. Hence Americans own 
 no ships, build no ships, have no carrying trade, and never 
 can have under the present conditions. Hence the decline 
 of American steamship, and the American merchant fleet. 
 
 The condition of our marine is the most striking illustra- 
 tion we have of the blundering selfishness of protection. No- 
 where else does it show its tendency so clearly, for nowhere 
 has it been so great an incubus as here. It has been more 
 
40 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 than that here, it has been not merely a load, to carry with 
 groans, but destruction. Nowhere else has it so completely 
 contradicted and defeated itself. Nowhere else does it fur- 
 nish so absolute a denial by fact of its absurd claim to foster 
 American interests and create a home market. For it has 
 ruined one of our greatest and most vital interests, and de- 
 stroyed a great fraction of the home market. If our marine 
 were what it would have been if simply let alone, if our ship 
 building were what it ought to be, and would have been ere 
 this under free trade, here would have been a great depart- 
 ment of labor for mechanics and seamen, a very great mar- 
 ket for our products at home, a very great addition to our 
 wealth and income, a very great addition to our National 
 defence and reputation and influence in the world. 
 
 Starting out on its purely selfish principle, protection 
 has accomplished the absolute reverse of what it intended. 
 It is useless to deny this statement, for the facts all prove it. 
 It is of itself enough to condemn the system of protection, 
 by showing the falsity of its claims, and proving its ignorant 
 and norraw-minded provincialism, and its unworthiness to 
 be the guiding principle of our legislation. If our Congress 
 had been all these years studiously trying to build up for- 
 eign Nations in general, and Great Britain in particular (for 
 she has bean the greit gainer by oar folly), it could not pos- 
 sibly have been more successful than it has been. 
 
 Our navigation laws are simply barbarous. Our protec- 
 tive tariff has ruine 1 our ship building, and that in spite of 
 the abundance, convenience, and excellence of our building 
 material. 
 
 What our ocean interests need, or, in other words, what 
 America needs, is simply liberty to buy ships where they are 
 cheapest; liberty to get ship material at the lowest price. 
 When we have this freedom we shall gradually regain our 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 41 
 
 lost trade, and trade directly ourselves with all the world. 
 We must be free to take our goods anywhere and bring back 
 freely the goods of other Nations in exchange, and thus have 
 cargos both ways. This, and not subsidies, is the hope of 
 our marine— the only hope. And this asks for no taxation; 
 but instead, releaves us of the greatest tax we bear. 
 
 This freedom, and not subsidies, has built British com- 
 mercial supremacy on the sea. We can never contest this 
 supremacy without the same freedom— and this means free 
 trade. 
 
 DOES PROTECTION PROTECT ? — OUR MANUFACTURERS. 
 
 This very important question is answered in the affirma- 
 tive in the "of course" style by the protectionists, and yet it 
 is annually becoming more and more evident that our tariff, 
 instead of protecting our manufacturers, is smothering them. 
 The tariff feather-bed of a would-be paternal Government, is 
 too much of a feather-bed for the health of our petted "in- 
 fant industries." 
 
 With that wonderful faculty for blundering so character- 
 istic of all our legislation on this great matter, our Congress 
 made a great mistake at the very start. Professedly aiming 
 at the encouragement of manufactures, we have all the time 
 covered them with the wet blanket of a tax on raw materials. 
 Now, if you go to the continent of Europe amongst the 
 strongly protective Nations there, yon will notice at once 
 that not one of them have been so silly as to lay a tax on 
 raw material. France, Canada, Germany, Holland, while all 
 more or less given to the foolishness of "protection," so- 
 called, are yet all of them wise enough to let in raw ma- 
 terials free. We are the only civilized Nation, except possi- 
 sibly Spain, that is so consumately silly as to tax the raw 
 material for our maunfactures. 
 
42 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 The tax on raw material ranges from 35 to 65 per cent, 
 on wool; from, in short, 20 to 65 percent, ad valorem on hemp, 
 iron, chemicals, copper, glass, coal, etc. Now is it not at once 
 apparent to the most prejudiced mind that our manufac- 
 turers, with this fearful handicap to start out with, can 
 never compete with foreign makers, who all in common re- 
 ceive their raw material free? Is it not plain that if this 
 raw material tax amounts in some cases to more than the 
 tariff on the manufactured article for the same, and in all cases 
 (except cotton) wipes out almost all the tariff margin of pro- 
 tection — is it not clear that instead of helping, our tariff is 
 hindering our manufacturing industries? For instance: 
 Here are two men, John Bull and Uncle Sam, who start out 
 in the making of woolen goods. J. Bull gets his raw wool 
 free of tax, wherever he can buy it the cheapest, and gener- 
 ally trades the made goods for the raw wool. Under these 
 simple conditions of common sense and freedom to use 
 nature's gifts, J. Bull has prospered mightily in his woolen 
 manufactures, although his government does not try to pro- 
 hibit foreign goods, but simply says to him, "paddle your 
 own canoe; I keep my hands off of you and your rival 
 equally." 
 
 Uncle Sam, however, is one of those fellows commonly 
 called "smartys." And so, under the impression he is hurt- 
 ing J. Bull, Monsieur Crapeaud, et aL, he lays a tax on 
 everything indiscriminately. He builds a Chinese wall, in 
 the shape of a tariff, and fondly fancies that he is "getting 
 the bulge," as he classically puts it, thereby, on the outside 
 world. Well, how does his Chinese wall work? If success- 
 ful, it ought to prohibit foreign manufactures from getting 
 into this country. Does it do this? Not at all. How does 
 it work in woolen goods? It makes Uncle Sam's raw wool cost 
 from two and a half to twelve cents per pound more than it 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 43 
 
 costs J. Bull and breaks him up right in the start And in 
 1880, while J. Bull sent to other lands $100,000,000 of woolen 
 goods, Uncle Sam sent out only $200,0o0 of the same. More- 
 over while J. Bull exported or sold three times as much as 
 he imported or bought of woolens, Uncle Sam bought 175 
 times as much as he sold. ( He sold §200,000 of woolens and 
 bought $350,000,000.) 
 
 One would think this would have made Uncle Sam very 
 sick about his woolen business, and when you come to re- 
 gard his manufactures of all kinds you discover the same set 
 of facts. You would naturally suppose that he, being one 
 who prides himself on his "cuteness," would investigate and 
 find out what the matter is. Nothing of the kind. He hugs 
 his delusion the closer to his breast, and wants to put an- 
 other story on his Chinese wall. Like Solomon's fool, he is 
 wiser in his own conceit than seven men who can render a 
 reason. He has kept up this suicidal foolishness for a cen- 
 tury, and his wall is six times as high as at the start. Never- 
 theless it fails to keep out foreign manufactures, and the 
 only "bulge" he gets on others by his over-reaching smart- 
 ness, is precisely the kind of a bulge a mis-shapen hump- 
 backed cripple has on the statue of the Apollo Belvidere. 
 The only way in which the American protective tariff has 
 operated is to more and more restrict the American manu- 
 facturer to his own country, and more and more stimulate 
 the business and prosperity of his foreign rivals. For, if one 
 will only look at the facts and be ruled by them, the conclu- 
 sion could only be of one nature. The trouble with America 
 has been, and is to-day, that it permits itself to be deceived 
 by the claims of protectionists that protection is necessary 
 for our labor, our manufacturers, and our youthful country. 
 America takes all these assertions as solemn truths — and 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 that, although all the facts and experience and all the fig- 
 ures unite to contradict these assertions. 
 
 For the facts say that in every case where a Nation has 
 taken the scales from its eyes, and adopted more liberal 
 ideas about trade and commerce, immediate, great and per- 
 manent improvement has followed. Within ten years after 
 the abolition of the last vestige of trade barbarism, commonly 
 called protection, the exports of Great Britain were doubled, 
 and to this day the increase has been kept up, and is in excess 
 of the increase of her population. France enjoyed "protec- 
 tion," of a prohibitive tariff up to 1868. At that time compar- 
 ative free trade took its place (absolute in regard to raw ma- 
 terials). The results are seen in the fact that the exports of 
 France in 1873, immediately after a ruinous war, were nearly 
 double what they were in 1860. And the exports of both of 
 these countries are mainly those very products of their home 
 industries which we paralyze here in America by a heavy tax 
 on raw materials. 
 
 Germany, even highly protected Germany, long ago saw 
 the ruinous folly of this raw material tax and abolished it. 
 It took Prussia a long time to get this wisdom impressed 
 upon the north German Zollverein; but the good work was 
 done, and its effect was the same as in the case just presented. 
 And although Germany is hard put for revenue, and in com- 
 mon with France is forced to lay heavy taxes through the 
 tariff which she would gladly remit if she could, nevertheless 
 she will not tax the raw material of her manufactures. Only 
 recently, when an effort was made to tax wool in the Reich- 
 stag, the answer was, that it was impossible to levy such a 
 tax. These three Nations are the ones of whom at first or 
 second hand, we buy nearly all our imports. What trade we 
 have with South America is mainly through them. What a 
 humiliating confession we have in this fact. 
 
PROTECTION AND FEEE TRADE. 
 
 +5 
 
 We have stated that protection in order to really protect 
 our laborers and our manufacturers, must prohibit emigra- 
 tion for the protection of the first; and must prohibit impor- 
 tation of foreign goods to protect the last. It does not even 
 pretend to do the first, and it fails miserably in its efforts to 
 do the last. Since 1860, while England, France and Ger- 
 many were removing the raw material taxes, we have been 
 following the highly protective policy on nearly all things, 
 raw and manufactured. As we have seen, their exports have 
 doubled, while ours remained stationary, or decreased. In 
 fact, our exports of manufactures are so small as to be un- 
 worthy of mentioning beside these other Nations. We send 
 nothing, or next to nothing, abroad, but our unprotected and 
 heavily burdened agricultural interests. 
 
 "In 1860 our exports of industries now protected were 
 nearly seven per cent.; in 1872 they were not quite four per 
 cent.; in 1880 they were about five per cent." This is a mag- 
 nificent showing, is it not, to result from nearly a century of 
 protection, with the last twenty-five years by far the heav- 
 iest? This is a wonderful result to secure from all the sys- 
 tem has cost us. 
 
 And through it all we have continued to import heavily, 
 and most heavily of the very articles most heavily protected, 
 viz : — Woolens, silks, iron and steel, cottons, flax, hemp, tin, 
 leather and chemicals; so it is clearly true that protection 
 has failed to protect. Of metals and textile fabrics, the most 
 heavily protected, we imported about $200,000,000 in 1880, 
 despite the tariff; and at the same time we exported $24,000,- 
 000 of the same; and in 1883 we imported $225,000,000 of 
 these. And here, as bearing on the statement that by our 
 raw material tax we neutralize all the benefits claimed to 
 inure from protection, we would mention the fact that nearly 
 one-half of our exports of manufactured metal and textile 
 
46 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 goods in this year were cottons, and that in cottons the raw 
 material is free. 
 
 To sum up the statements of this letter: First — protec- 
 tion fails to protect our manufactures, since in spite of it we 
 continue to import in immense quantities manufactured 
 goods, and especially those we aim to protect the heaviest or 
 prohibit the most, while our exports of made goods sink into 
 utter insignificance beside those of France and Germany, 
 and into absolute nothingness beside those of Great Britain. 
 Second — Protection has not protected and does not now pro- 
 tect our infant industries (100 years old), because it taxes 
 heavily the raw materials from which our manufacturers 
 must make their goods. And thus by this tax on raw ma- 
 terial our tariff paralyzes these very industries it claims to 
 foster; and so burdens them by the enhanced cost of mater- 
 ials as to make it impossible for them to compete with their 
 rivals. 
 
 Obviously, therefore, the first step in revenue reform 
 should be to make absolutely free all raw material. 
 
 It is too late now to discuss the question as to whether in 
 the past our tariff system has assisted manufactures or not. 
 So long as our manufactures were unable to supply the home 
 demand, it may have been beneficial to a few thousand 
 among our millions. But now the situation is this: Our 
 manufactures have outgrown in capacity the home demand 
 and they must have foreign markets to provide them full 
 employment, and these they can never have under our tariff. 
 The only persons greatly benefited to-day, are our raw 
 material monopolists. These reap nearly all the profits. 
 Take pig iron as an instance. No country in the world is so 
 generously provided with raw iron as the United States, and 
 nowhere can it be produced any cheaper than right here. 
 Yet the tariff tax protection on pig-iron amounts to $7.00 per 
 
PROTECTION AND FBEE TRADE. 
 
 47 
 
 ton, none of which goes to the laborer, or the manufacturer. 
 It all goes to the producer of raw iron. 
 
 It ought to be clear beyond any need of argument that 
 with this high tax on raw iron our manufacturers of iron and 
 steel can never compete with their foreign rivals who get 
 their pig-iron free of duty. The result of it comes simply to 
 this: That they are getting no benefit from the protection 
 they fancy necessary to their existence. They are really 
 smothered by it, and hence the whole country is harmed, for 
 our iron manufacturers are in a position to export enor- 
 mously if they could be freed from the tax on pig-iron. If 
 they could run at full blast much more work would be af- 
 forded, more wages would be paid to the laborers, and more 
 profits accrue to the manufacturers. But as it stands, when 
 our mills run at full speed, their only market bemg at 
 home, it is soon glutted. Then they shut down and both 
 capital and labor is forced to be idle. 
 
 And here is one secret of the failure of the policy of pro- 
 tection: Most of the profits our manufacturers receive from 
 the enhanced price paid by consumers here, are used up in 
 paying, first, the raw material tax; second, the losses caused 
 by the frequent depressions and stoppages which are the fatal 
 sequeiices of unnatural interference with business. 
 
 Says Mr. Sargent, a hardware manufacturer of New 
 Haven: "Nothing prevents the American manufacturer from 
 successfully competing with the European manufacturers in 
 all the markets of the world in which they would meet on 
 an equal footing, except the protective tariff on materials, 
 which prevents the free exercise of their judgment in select- 
 ing them wherever found and from bringing them to their 
 factories at free trade prices." Elsewhere he says: "The 
 market price of the pig-iron in this country, that costs the 
 producer no more than it costs the producer in foreign coun- 
 
4- 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 tries, averages more than fifty per cent, higher than our for- 
 eign competitors pay." And the facts are about the same 
 with all other common metals used in manufactures. 
 
 He claims that "with free trade in raw material the Amer- 
 ican mechanics and workmen, under the guidance of enter- 
 prising American manufacturers, need not fear any compe- 
 tition, and need no protection that is not in their own level 
 heads and strong arms." And concludes: "Unless American 
 manufacturers are soon relieved from the burden of the 
 protective tariff on raw materials, so that they can employ a 
 very largely increased number of people in manufactures 
 for export, the workingmen of this country will soon be 
 sharply competing for employment with 'the pauper labor of 
 Europe' working at their side. With free trade in raw ma- 
 terials, the manufacturers of this country would be able to 
 employ all the increasing surplus of labor in the country, 
 and meet successfully the manufacturers of Europe without 
 lowering the present condition of our wage earners, but sup- 
 ply them with a better living through the reduced cost of 
 merchandise under freedom trade." 
 
 As a commentary on the American dread of competition 
 with Europe's cheap labor, and also on the claims of pro- 
 tection as to wages and workers, it should here be said, that 
 the manufactures we do export are almost entirely those 
 articles in which the principal cost consists of labor or finish* 
 Whereas merchandise of metals, the principal cost of which 
 consists in coarse material, cannot be and are not exported 
 at all. And this is a land blessed beyond all others in raw 
 metals. 
 
 Says James Means, the famous Boston boot and shoe 
 maker, in an address to his employes giving them his reason 
 for condemning the protective system as injurious to labor- 
 ers and the whole country: "The only 'peotection' which 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 49 
 
 the American workingman needs is protection from the Gov- 
 ernment, which now grinds him down with needless taxes 
 upon his necessaries of life. When our labor is relieved of 
 these taxes, its products will be reduced in cost as to be sal- 
 able in the markets of the world, and our unemployed labor 
 will find work; but while the oppression remains, thousands 
 must be idle, because our goods are shut out from foreign 
 markets by the wall which protectionists have built around 
 our country." And he gives as the one reason why his own 
 manufacturing has not suffered as others, the fact that raw 
 hides have escaped tariff taxation and so are free. 
 
 Even a slight examination into the burdens under which 
 our woolen manufacturers labor ought to suffice to convince 
 anyone that, so far from protecting, our tariff is hindering 
 them. What tha burden of the tax on raw wool amounts to 
 alone, is sufficient to stifle this most important department 
 of manufacturing. Schoenhof estimates that a pound of 
 scoured foreign grown wool costs from thirty- five to forty 
 cents more to the American than the Englishman; that is, 
 the tax amounts to from 37^ to 77 per cent, on the raw ma- 
 terial. But this is not all. There is a tax of 75 cents per 
 ton on coal, to benefit the Pennsylvania mine owners. Hence 
 the coals of Nova Scotia cannot be used, but our manufac- 
 ture^ must buy of Pennsylvania, and the coal owners there 
 are very careful never to let the output of coal amount to a 
 glut, and so make and keep their own price. 
 
 But besides these disadvantages, our wonderful tariff adds 
 terribly to the cost of the American wool manufacturer's 
 machinery. Iron is taxed 60 per cent., bar iron 75 per cent., 
 and steel 45 per cent., and, of course, this enhances greatly 
 the cost of his finished machinery as against his British 
 rival. 
 
 Again, the cost of his factory buildings is very much 
 
50 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 greater. His "niachineryjand buildings," the same authority 
 maintains, "cost fully twice as much." And this of course 
 doubles his interest charges, and increases his taxes. Else- 
 where Schoenhof says: "It would be a moderate estimate to 
 say that protection adds fully 75 cents to the cost of a yard of 
 cloaking that is now (1884) sold at prices ranging from 31.75 
 to &2.00 per yard." 
 
 Is it not perfectly clear that this tremendous dead weight 
 of extra cost is enough to at once forbid American competi- 
 tion with foreign woolens? All this tax on raw wool, coal 
 machinery, buildings, with the increased interest and taxes 
 is a sheer, dead load, a fearful handicap. And it is all due 
 to our protective tariff so called. The woolen manufacturers 
 need only to pray to be delivered from their over-zealous 
 friends. Give them this wool at the same rate others abroad 
 get it, and abolish all the taxes on all raw materials that en- 
 ter into their business, and they would soon, or at once, be 
 able to make woolens as cheaply as their foreign competitors. 
 Allow them a moderate tariff protection for a time if you 
 wish, until they can settle down to the new conditions, and 
 they would soon practically abolish the need of importing 
 foreign woolens; or, if that should continue in a decree ow- 
 ing to the demands of taste and fashion, it would be far 
 more than made up to them by the foreign markets that 
 could then buy and would buy their goods. They could then 
 attord to sell their goods at prices as low as the lowest. And 
 that achieved, who doubts the American manufacturer would 
 hold his own with the world? 
 
 These facts and arguments apply with more or less force 
 to all our manufacturing industries. But America seems 
 crazed on this subject of protection and will not listen to 
 reason, apparently. Signs are not wanting, however, which 
 allow the hope that suicidal raw material taxes may soon be 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 51 
 
 abolished, and so the incubus removed from our manufac- 
 turing interests. 
 
 Grant that protection has artificially stimulated the 
 woolen and iron industries for a time, and rushed much more 
 ;apital than was needed into mills, yet the end has invariably 
 )een over-production, and ruinous competition, followed by 
 eaction, stoppages, and in many cases utter ruin; and all the 
 vhile this great Nation paying the bills, in greatly enhanced 
 prices, for everything, to no use. The fearful prostration of 
 hese industries in 1875-79, was owing to these causes, when 
 •rotection was at its climax. Nothing saved us then but 
 >ur agricultural interests and fine crops. All the way 
 hrough it is one dismal story of delusion, folly and loss; — 
 he unprotected industries carrying on their giant shoulders 
 he protected ones. And these, the result of what an hon- 
 stly indignant manufacturer calls, "a system that grinds 
 geryone, does cruel injury to a whole Nation of working 
 eople, and good to no one but a few monopolists and tax- 
 atherers. It may be safely asserted that the corruption 
 £ our politics is largely due to protection, and the mania for 
 ■overnment aid and subsidies engendered thereby." 
 
 The facts given in this letter anyone can verify for him- 
 >lf if he really wants to.. They are certainly sufficient to 
 low that our manufacturers can get along as well if not 
 itter, if free to act for themselves in the world without any 
 iternal coddling, especially when this so called protection 
 lly acts to keep them in the infant state. Infantile they 
 ill be forever under present conditions of "our well-bal- 
 lced tariff" — save the mark. Only give our arts and man- 
 'actures free material all around and they will leave the 
 iiculous state of babyhood suprisingly soon. Our com- 
 erce would revive then, also, and all the rest of our many 
 iling millions would be relieved of their worst burdens of 
 xation. 
 
52 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 WHAT DOES FREE TEADE PROMISE? 
 
 It is necessary to pass by, as unworthy of serious con- 
 sideration, the assertion of protectionists, that if we reform 
 our tariff so as to eliminate the protective element and idea ? 
 we shall be "flooded" with the tons of goods which foreigners 
 would at once bring over here to give away to us, so as to 
 break down our industries. If they wanted to do this, or 
 dreamed of such an absurd piece of business, they could do 
 it now as well as then. All they would have to do, would be 
 to let us have their goods free at New York, leaving us to 
 pay their duty. It would ruin all the manufacturers of 
 Europe in one year, would this precious scheme. It is too 
 childish to receive further notice. 
 
 The "diversity of industries" argument is met by the sim- 
 ple statement, that revenue reform with ultimate free trade 
 in view, would build up, not destroy, this diversity of indus- 
 tries which all agree is so desirable for every nation. 
 
 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 
 
 The reform of the civil service would be the natural se- 
 quence of free trade. Everyone knows what a figure this 
 question of the reform of our service has cut in the politics 
 of late years. An enormous amount of labor, thought, 
 speech and printer's ink has been expended in the effort to 
 bring it about. In spite of all this it is difficult to see 
 wherein any real reform of our civil service has been accom- 
 plished. Success in this most laudible political and public 
 aim seems as far off as ever, or nearly so. Everyone who 
 has studied the practical workings of our civil service sees at 
 once how liable our customs service is to be turned into a 
 great organ of partisan politics, and that it has been the 
 principal source of our political corruptions. In fact, our 
 custom houses are the very center of the whole matter; and 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 33 
 
 I so long as there are so many custom house offices to be filled, 
 a so long as our complicated and absurd tariff makes all these 
 4 custom house officials necessary, just so long will civil ser- 
 3 vice reform be impossible. 
 
 I All the efforts to bring about this reform in the past have 
 ] failed because they did not go at the root of the matter. Our 
 i civil service doctor's have been treating the patient's symp- 
 „ toms, instead of looking for the cause of the disease and re- 
 I moving it. You cannot cure a man of ague who lives in the 
 j center of a pestilent swamp. You must either drive the man 
 put to a healthier air or you must abolish the swamp. Well, 
 our custom houses are the miasmatic swamps to our civil ser- 
 vice. If you want a healthy service, freed from and separate 
 from corruption, abolish the swamps. 
 
 The proper way to reform a tree that has produced evil 
 fruit, and in spite of every care and cultivation continues to 
 produce evil fruit, is to cut it down and cast it into the fire. 
 Abolish the custom houses and you accomplish civil service 
 reform at once. The cure is radical; but the only way to treat 
 ,a tumor that poisons a patient's system is to remove it — to cut 
 it out. This can be done only in one way, and that is by 
 commencing a reform of the tariff which shall lead first to 
 the abolition of raw material duties, then to a tariff for rev- 
 enue, and ultimately to free trade. I submit it is an object 
 worthy of any man's patriotism to work for such a clean, 
 clear cut, practical program; for, when accomplished, it 
 would not only purify our civil service, but it would make a 
 great saving of expense. It would put a stop to the wasting 
 of millions iu building and keeping up our custom houses; 
 it would save millions of direct expense for the salaries of 
 these officials (which in 1870 amounted to eight millions of 
 dollars); and, more than all this, it would save the people 
 of this country the hundreds of millions annually taxed out 
 
 • 
 
54 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 of them by the indirect and senseless cost of our present 1 
 protective tariff, so called. 
 
 MANUFACTUKEKS. 
 
 Free trade brought about' in a reasonable, gradual way, 
 instead of harming our manufacturers, would be the greatest 
 possible blessing to them. For it would remove all the 
 present heavy burdens upon them, remove tax on materials, 
 lessen the cost of building, machinery and interest, and 
 throw open the markets of the world to our made goods. 
 We have become too great a manufacturing people to bear 
 any longer the swaddling clothes of the protective policy. We 
 must do something to assist our manufactures, and free trade 
 alone can do that. Any fair mind which is disposed to do 
 the evidence in the case justice, must see that protection 
 from its selfishness and glaring contradictions cannot pro- 
 tect our manufacturers. All the supposed benefits derived 
 from the high prices to the consumer of made goods, are 
 offset or over-balanced by the enhanced cost of production 
 that by our protective system is forced on the manufacturer. 
 The straight- jacket of protection must be removed. 
 
 IjABOK. 
 
 Free trade would assist the great mass of the workers of 
 the land at once and permanently. Wages, as we have seen, 
 are not determined by tariff, but by the laws of supply and 
 demand, the productiveness of the labor itself, the style of 
 living and the natural advantages of this country in its 
 great supply of good cheap land and abundance of every 
 kind of material. What the tariff can and does affect is the 
 purchasing power of money, and this it affects disastrously 
 for the laborer, no matter what his labor may be. 
 
 Says Prof. Sumner: "The truth in regard to protection 
 
 1 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 55 
 
 is, that it lessens the amount of comfort and well-being of 
 the whole people compared with what they might have had 
 for the labor and capital expended by them. They have less 
 and poorer food, clothing, light, fuel, house-room, books, ed- 
 ucation, leisure, etc., etc., than they might have had, taking 
 the hours they labor, the capital at their disposal and the re- 
 sources of the land as they are. But the scale of comfort is 
 so high on the average, in a new country with its fresh re- 
 sources, that the people do not appreciate how much better 
 off they ought to be than they are. A man in distress will 
 make energetic efforts to get what he might have; a man in 
 comfort will count the cost of securing" something more, and 
 he may submit rather fight. 
 
 "Free trade will come about here by the gradual growth 
 of the conviction that protection is all a mistake from begin- 
 ing to end — for the protected as well as the others; and then, 
 when the people go back to read the platitudes with which 
 our contemporaries satisfy themselves about protection, they 
 will feel the same astonishment that we do, that it took past 
 generations so long to learn religious toleration, free speech, 
 free pi-ess, or any other development of liberty." 
 
 Free trade will not only add greatly to the comfort and 
 well-being of the laborer, but it will also tend in this way 
 to lessen the stern and growing hostility of labor against 
 capital. By relieving the unprotected host of our people of 
 the present weight of indirect protective taxation, and thereby 
 cheapening all they need and enlarging all their facilities 
 and comforts, it will tend to make them more contented with 
 their lot and less given to strikes and trades unions, and so 
 the general peace and prosperity of all classes would be 
 assured. 
 
 Free trade will not only assist our industries, but will 
 add to them by opening the only possible way to the revival 
 
56 
 
 PKOTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 of one of the very greatest and most neecessary of our in- 
 dustries, our commercial marine, the carrying trade, and 
 ship building. 
 
 This latter is uecessarily one mainly of assertions. These 
 assertions, however, have all been argued over and consid- 
 ered in previous articles; it is both unnecessary and out of 
 the question to reproduce these arguments with their .back- 
 ing of facts here. 
 
 THE MORAL, SIDE. 
 
 Free trade is in the line of political progress. Jt is a 
 practical carrying out of the Christian doctrine that all men 
 are brethren. The idea in protection is that we should aim 
 solely at a selfish development of our own interests, and 
 with this selfish aim it naturally ends in failure to accom- 
 plish that aim. The object of protection is to abolish im- 
 ports regardless of the cost - to our people, and yet while the 
 duties are twice as high as those of any other Nation we are 
 the heaviest importers of manufactured goods of them all. 
 Protection takes the position, that Nations are natural ene- 
 mies. Free trade, on the contrary, holds that Nations, in- 
 stead of being natural enemies, are natural friends; and that 
 in a universal prosperity and reciprocity of tralo, each Na- 
 tion will find its own best estate. 
 
 The moral question which lies at the very roots of free 
 trade, is, after all, the one argument that outweighs all 
 others. "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, 
 do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets." 
 This rule of the great Master of Christendom applies pro- 
 foundly to this whole matter. Says Sherman: "He who ad- 
 vocates a protective tariff is worse than the Jews of old. He 
 would teach us to hate not only our enemies, but our neigh- 
 bors and friends also. His gospel is, 'Curse them that bless 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 you, hate them that do good to you, have no dealings with 
 them that pray for you.' For all the hatred of protectionist 
 teachers is directed against Christian Nations, and the more 
 closely any Nation is allied to us in religion, the more they 
 strive to poison the minds of our people against it. They 
 gloat over exaggerated accounts of the sufferings of foreign 
 workmen, caused by the reduction of American demand for 
 their products. Their avowed object is to starve out the 
 workingmen of Europe, and to force them to leave their own 
 land to come here and compete directly with American labor. 
 
 "The whole system of so called protection, although cov- 
 ered with a more respectable veil, and supported by multi- 
 tudes of well-meaning Christian men, has its roots in the 
 same narrow spirit of selfishness which sustained slavery, 
 and will, I hope within my short lifetime, be bauished from 
 this Christian land." 
 
 WHAT IS TO BE DONE ABOUT IT? 
 
 As a summary of the position of revenue reformers re- 
 gafding this whole question, it should be said that they 
 m lintain this simple proposition: The United States has 
 prospered in spite of the great burdens, and injustice and 
 foolishness of the protective tariff. Our great extent of ter- 
 ritory comprising every clime, and such a variety of produc- 
 tions, has enabled us, in connection with the other resources 
 and advantages of a new and wealthy land, to carry all this 
 and prosper in spite of it. We have had absolute free trade 
 between the States themselves. This alone would have, and 
 has, saved us. 
 
 Bnt this alone will not do hereafter. Already we are be- 
 ginning to have some of the social troubles, and labor and 
 economy liffi mlties of older 1 mds. The Chines w ill i lea 
 
58 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 will have to come down, and we must look to a wider market 
 for our manufacturers md hence a wider field for our labor 
 and capital than simply our own country. We must look 
 forward to entering directly and sternly into competition for 
 the South American and Mexican markets in particular, and 
 other markets in general. 
 
 It is a notorious fact that every town of any importance 
 is anxious, for obvious reasons, to have raannfacturing con- 
 cerns established in their midst. But how can this be done, 
 except in a small way here and there, in the west especially, 
 so long as there are to-day more manufacturing establish- 
 ments than there are markets for their wares. That is, our 
 capacity to manufacture is already gone beyond the home 
 demand. Beyoad question a wider field must be had. In- 
 stead of sending only a pittiful fraction of the goods bought 
 by the Spanish and Brazilian- American States, we should 
 send the lion's share. We bonght $176,000,000 of their pro- 
 ducts in 1880, and in return sold them only $58,000,000 of 
 our own; and of this small amount only one-third consisted 
 of manufactures. This is all we sell to a neighboring popu- 
 lation as large as our own, almost. Of Brazil we bought 
 fifty-two millions and sold but eight and one-half millions; 
 of Cuba we bought sixty-five millions, and sold eleven mil- 
 lions; the balance we paid by exchange on London, taken 
 in payment for our cotton and other farm products. What 
 a humiliating commentary on our enterprise and economic 
 policy? We want and must have more room for our wares 
 and our labor if we are ever to become a greater manufac- 
 turing people, and we can only get this by the open path, 
 of tariff reform, and never by the blind alleys and costly 
 waste of subsidies to shipping and manufactures. 
 
 What, then, should we do to relieve our toilers of the 
 useless burdens of protection, and give our capital and labor 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 59 
 
 this wider field? To accomplish both of these great and 
 wise ends, is annually becoming more and more necessary. 
 And the obvious and only way is to enter upon a gradual 
 and systematic revision of our tariff, with free raw material 
 as the first step; the end being to attain this revision with 
 as little disturbance as possible to vested interests, and so 
 permitting them to have time to accommodate themselves 
 to the new and coming state of free trade. There should be 
 no rash and wild plunges, and nobody advocates such. 
 
 WHAT IS A TARIFF FOR REVENUE? 
 
 A tariff for revenue is a taxation on imports, with the one 
 distinct object of collecting sufficient money for the needs of 
 Government. It would be levied for that end, and yet 
 would or might be so arranged as to afford what Henry Clay 
 called "Incidental Protection." It should, however, aim to 
 be levied only on such imports as would afford the Govern- 
 ment the greatest amount of revenue, with the least amount 
 of indirect tax on the people. 
 
 WHAT IS FREE TRADE? 
 
 If such a tariff as the above was levied, with this feature 
 added and taken into account in the levy, viz., that an excise, 
 or internal, duty is to be laid so as to take away or offset any 
 protection or subsidy to any particular business, so to leave 
 them all standing alone and alike with the same chances — 
 that would be practical free trade. 
 
 If all custom duties, custom houses and offices, were 
 abolished, and the funds for governmental needs supplied 
 by a direct tax apportioned to the different States on a basis 
 of population, and collected by these States as they collect 
 their own taxes — that would be free trade in its simplicity. 
 Ideally, it is the most natural, the most economical, the most 
 honest, and hence the best. Nor is there anything Utopian 
 
60 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 in the general Government doing just what the States have 
 always done; however, it may suit some to sneer at it. We 
 think it all right in the State, county and town taxation that 
 it should be direct, why not equally so for the Governmental 
 tax? A man knows just what he is paying then. And how 
 long would we submit to a direct tax to pay somebody a 
 bonus to do their business? With direct taxation the peo- 
 ple of this country would Dot tolerate protection a single 
 year; but we submit for a century to an indirect tax far 
 heavier, for precisely the same purpose. To show up pro- 
 tection in all its brazen injustice, one single direct tax, to pay 
 its subsidies, would suffice to open the eyes of every man in 
 the land. And yet if protection is to continue, that is the 
 only honest and far the most economical way of keeping it 
 up, for the people. Fancy the looks and the rage of the 
 very men who now so obstinately persist in admiring and 
 supporting this system, when the tax list came in. So much 
 for the bonus to the wool-growers, so much for the manu- 
 facturers of this and that, so much for the rice and sugar 
 raisers, and so on ad infinitum. What a howl of indignation 
 would be heard from Fundy's Bay to Rio Grande's tide. 
 
 But though the direct tax is perfectly feasible and the 
 best in every way, yet it is impracticable because we are not 
 yet sufficiently advanced in economic science to see it and 
 demand it. 
 
 Hence a scientific tariff, with protection thoroughly elim- 
 inated, should be aimed at as the only probable or possible 
 goal just now. 
 
 WHAT IS TO BE DONE ABOUT IT? 
 
 The only live questions in practical politics to-day are 
 those pertaining to tariff and admiuistrative reform, control 
 of railroads, and the money question. There is but one way 
 the ordinary citizen hag of expressing his wishes on these 
 
PKOTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 61 
 
 subjects, of which you may say at the start, party names and 
 lines show no distinct definition. The terms "Democrat" 
 and "Republican" do not define a man's position on any of 
 these great practical issues. The parties are all mixed up 
 on them. As the outcome of this State of things we get no 
 reform or improvement in the tariff in particular. Much 
 talk and word-fuming in the political platforms of both par- 
 ties have ended in the battle-smoke of elections. 
 
 A man's vote at caucus and at the ballot-box, backed by 
 his personal influence and devotion, is the only way he has 
 of expressing himself. The only hope of progress in any re- 
 form is in continual agitation of the subject and a continual 
 presentation of its principal features and reasons to the pub- 
 lic in every possible way. 
 
 For this reason these letters have been written in the 
 hope that the attention of some at least may be called to tar- 
 iff reform; their duties to themselves and the Nation. In a 
 greater degree than any other section of our common country 
 the northwest is injured, oppressed and discriminated against 
 by this so called protective system. And if its reform and 
 ultimate overthrow is ever to be brought about, it can only 
 be when the West shall have made up its mind to end the 
 wHole system and .shall insist on its representatives in Con- 
 gress doing battle in working and voting (as the representa- 
 tives of Pennsylvania do for her interests regardless of party 
 names and lines) for its interests, its rights, and its convic- 
 tions. To-day these are the real interests, and sooner or 
 later these will be the convictions of the Nation. 
 
 Free trade is fair play to all alike, and plants itself on 
 these simple propositions, namely: First, that I have the 
 right to sell what I have to sell where I can get the best 
 price for it. Second, that I have the right to buy what I 
 need where I can get it the cheapest. 
 
62 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 OPINIONS OF SOME GREAT AMERICANS. 
 
 Commerce should be as free as the winds of heaven. — 
 Patrick Henry. 
 
 There is no greater enemy to trade than constraint. — 
 Franklin. 
 
 In the first place I own myself the friend of a very free 
 system of commerce, and hold it as a truth that commercial 
 shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic. — 
 Madison. 
 
 With me it is a fundamental axiom, it is interwoven with 
 all my opinions, that the great interests of the country are 
 united and inseparable; that agriculture, commerce, and 
 manufactures will prosper together or languish together, and 
 that all legislation is dangerous which proposes to benefit 
 one of these without looking to consequences which may fall 
 on the others. * * * Gentlemen tell us they are in favor 
 of domestic industries; so am L They would give it protec- 
 tion; so would I. But then domestic industry is not 
 confined to manufactures. The employments of agriculture, 
 commerce, and navigation are all branches of the same do- 
 mestic industry; they all furnish employment for American 
 capital and American labor. And when the question is 
 whether new duties shall be laid for the purpose of giving 
 further encouragement to particular manufactures, every 
 reasonable man must ask himself both whether the proposed 
 new encouragement be necessary, and whether it can be 
 given without injustice to other branches of industry. * * 
 * Sir, the general sense of this age sets, with a strong cur- 
 rent in favor of freedom of commercial intercourse and un- 
 restrained individual action. Men yield up their notions of" 
 monopoly and restriction as they yield up other prejudices, 
 slowly and reluctantly; but they cannot withstand the gen- 
 eral tide of opinion.— Daniel Webster, in House, 1824. 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 63 
 
 New England, sir, has not been a leader in this [protec- 
 tion] policy. On the contrary, she held back herself and 
 tried to hold others back from adopting it, from the adop- 
 tion of the Constitution to 1824. Up to 1824 she was accused 
 of sinister and selfish designs, because she discountenanced 
 the progress of this policy. * * * The opinion of New 
 England up to 1824 was formed in the conviction that, on 
 the whole, it was wisest and best, both for herself and others, 
 that manufactures should make haste slowly. She felt a re- 
 luctance to trust great interesests on the foundation of Gov- 
 ernment patronage; for who could tell how long such 
 patronage would last, or with what steadiness, skill, or 
 perseverance it would continue to be granted? * * * 
 The shipping interest of this country requires only an open 
 market and a fair chance. Everything else it will do for 
 itself. But it has not a fair chance while it is so severely 
 taxed in whatever enters into necessary expense of building 
 and equipment. In this respect its rivals have advantages 
 which may in the end prove decisive against us. — Daniel 
 Webster, in Senate, 1828. 
 
 Exorbitant duties tend to render other classes of the corn- 
 unity tributary, in an improper degree to the manufactur- 
 g classes, to whom they give a premature monopoly of the 
 rkets. — Alexander Hamilton. 
 The doctrine that duties of import cheapen the price of 
 e articles upon which they are levied seems to conflict with 
 e first dictates of common sense. The duty constitutes a 
 art of the price of the whole mass of the article in the mar- 
 et. It is substantially paid upon the article of domestic 
 anufacture as well as upon that of foreign production, 
 pon one it is a bounty, upon the other a burden; and the 
 peal of the tax must operate as an equivalent reduction of 
 e price of the article, whether foreign or domestic. We 
 
64 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 say, so long as the importation continues, the duty must be 
 paid by the purchaser of the article. — John Quincy Adams, 
 report on manufactures, 1835. 
 
 Against what, then, is protection asked? It is against 
 low prices. The manufacturers complain that they cannot 
 afford to carry on their pursuits at prices as low as the pres- 
 ent; and that unless they can get higher, they must give up 
 manufacturing. The evil, then, is low prices; and what they 
 ask of Government is to give them higher. But how do they 
 ask it to be done? * * * By putting down competition, 
 by the imposition of taxes on the products of others, so as to 
 give them the exclusion of the market, or at least a decided 
 advantage over others; and thereby enable them to sell at 
 higher prices. Stripped of all disguise, this is their request; 
 and this they call protection. Protection, indeed! Call it 
 tribute, — levy, —exaction, — monopoly, — plunder; or, if these 
 be too harsh, call it charity, assistance, aid — anything rather 
 than protection, with which it has not a feature in common. 
 — Calhoun, 1842. 
 
 The constitutional power of Congress to lay and collect 
 taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, does not authorize the ] 
 laying of a prohibitory duty or a duty in which revenue is m 
 sacrificed to the object of protecting the manufacture of the « 
 commodity taxed. * * * A direct tax or excise, not for 
 revenue but for protection, clearly would not be within the 
 legitimate object of taxation; and yet it would be as! 
 much so as a duty imposed for a similar purpose. — Robert J. 
 Walker, Secretary of the Treasury. 
 
 The protective policy is the policy of wrapping up more 
 days' work in a woolen blanket, not of putting more blankets 
 into a day's work. A protective tariff is a question regard- 
 ing the enhancement of the profits of capital and not the 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 65 
 
 augmentation of the wages of labor. — Robert J. Walker, re- 
 port, 1845. 
 
 The system of unequal taxation, of pampering the pro- 
 ducers of a particular article, who are few, at the cost of the 
 consumers, who are many, has been a fruitful source of 
 misery in most of the civilized Nations of modern times. 
 After it had become the object of the abhorence of the 
 friends of freedom everywhere else, it was introduced, chiefly 
 under the auspices of Mr. Clay, into the United States. The 
 tariff of 1828, justly styled by Mr. Webster "a bill of abomi- 
 nations," carried this system to its height, and the conse- 
 quent reaction at the south brought into jeopardy our Union 
 and republican institutions. * * * You are told that the 
 labor of the country deserves and should have "protection." 
 You are told that there is such a thing as an American sys- 
 tem, and that that system should be followed out in order 
 to protect American interests. Very well. All these are fine 
 sounding phrases, and I could give such a meaning to each 
 one of these phrases that I should give it my cordial assent. 
 It is not the words to which I object, it is the idea cloaked 
 under these words, and which is not the natural meaning of 
 the expressions. That labor should have the market of 
 America — my creed goes farther than that. I say that Amer- 
 ican labor should not be confined and restricted to the mar- 
 ket of America. The man who talks of giving and securing 
 to American labor the market of America generally means 
 something which he does not say, and it is the separation of 
 the American market from the foreign market; it is the 
 adoption of a system of restriction which ties down American 
 labor, instead of extending its sphere. — Robert Rantoul, of 
 Massachusetts, 1848. 
 
 What you call protection amounts, therefore, simply to a 
 system of equal robbery; taking from one house interest to 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 pay another. When you have done this you say that you 
 have framed an equal tariff law, and that its equal protec- 
 tion is diffused over all the different interests. I say that 
 this is illogical; it is absurd. You must change your theory 
 of a tariff or else you must perpetually fail in your effort to 
 gain a system that shall actually make the United States 
 rich. If that is your object, you must diminish the cost of 
 the production of your manufactures; and when you have 
 done that you have taken a great step toward protecting 
 both the manufacturers and the people of the United States. 
 But if we go on in the present plan of adding to the cost of 
 everything we produce, there is not another conutry on the 
 face of the globe that will contribute one cent to enrich the 
 people of the United States or be able to buy a single article 
 of our production. — John A. Kasson, (Rep.) July U, 1866. 
 
 With the high tariff men, I am for promoting 'American 
 industry;' and with them I am for bringing the producer and 
 consumer as near together as practicable. Nevertheless I 
 am an absolute free-trader. I would have no custom house 
 on the face of the earth. Never will Government be admin- 
 istered honestly and frugally until the cost of administrating 
 it is paid by direct taxation. And never will government be 
 confined within its proper limits until its sole office shall be 
 to protect persons and property. — Gerrit Smith, 1867. 
 
 National selfishness is as much more to be deprecated 
 than personal greed, as aggregated millions are of more con- 
 sequence than the individual. Who shall rightfully inter- 
 pose barriers to the unobstructed interchange of the results 
 of human industry, invention, and skill? Assuming that 
 the interests of all Nations are the interests of each, and each 
 of all, I know not where the lines are to be drawn. If Japan 
 and China are getting sufficiently enlightened to abandon 
 their exclusiveness as against commercial interchange with 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 67 
 
 the rest of mankind, surely the United States should take 
 the lead in the adoption of a free trade policy, which, while 
 founded upon world-wide considerations, cannot fail to be 
 twice blessed —"blessing him who gives and him who takes," 
 in the spirit of mutual reciprocity and good will. — William 
 Lloyd Garrison, 1868. 
 
 Free trade is only one of the many forms of unrestricted 
 human action, which poets, philosophers, and the common 
 people worsjiip under the name of liberty, and, like freedom 
 of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of association, free- 
 dom of religious observance, is an imprescriptible right of 
 man, which guarantees his manhood and assures the num- 
 berless blessings of a high and beneficient civilization. Free 
 trade but expresses the world-old and universal practice of 
 all rational beings when it asserts— which is all it asserts— 
 that it is better for men to procure the commodities they 
 need by exchange than by production, when the exchange is 
 cheaper than the production. Go iuto our fields, our work- 
 shops, our mills, our stores, our shipping-houses, and every 
 practical man there will tell you that he would be a fool 
 who would waste ten hours' labor in producing for himself 
 what he might get from another in exchange for six hours' 
 labor. Every individual of our forty millions of people, in 
 his relations with other individuals, acts upon this principal; 
 every family in our ten millions of families, in its relation to 
 other families, acts upon this principle; every township of 
 our many thousand townships, in its relation to other town- 
 ships, acts upon this principle; every State of our thirty- 
 eight States and nine Territories, in its relation to other 
 States and Territories, acts upon this principle: and yet the 
 principle is pronounced a heresy, and the application of it 
 to that larger agglomeration of men called the Nation, is re- 
 sisted as if it were something new, unprecedented, dangerous, 
 and awful!— William Cullen Bryant. 
 
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 Beecher— Cooper Union Address, 12mo, 4 p 
 
 Address of New York Free Trade Club to Young Men 
 
 of United States, 12 mo ,6 p 
 
 Shearman— Destroying Our iVlancfaetures, 12mo, 6 p.. . 
 
 What is Our Tariff, 12mo, 4 p 
 
 Short T.dks. (Leaflets. Assorted) 
 
 .$3 00 
 1 50 
 1 50 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 69 
 
 BOOKS OX POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 The following books, selected from the lists of various 
 publishers, may be recommended to those wishing to study 
 up the Free Trade question, and kindred economic and gov- 
 ernmental subjects: 
 
 The Wealth of Nations: Adam Smith. Putnam. 12mo. 796 p.. cloth. SI 25 
 
 The standard and foundation book of free trade. 
 Political Economy: Prof. A. L. Perry. Scribner. 12mo. 248 p., cloth. 1 50 
 
 Economics: J. M. Sturtevant. Putnam. 12mo, cloth 1 75 
 
 Political Economy: Francis A. Walker. Holt. 12mo, 490 p.. cloth. . 2 25 
 
 Political Economy: H.Fawcett. Macmillan. 12mo. 658 p., cloth 3 00 
 
 Political Economy: J. S. Mill. Appleton. 2 vols., 12mo. 615, 603 p.. 
 
 cloth 4 00 
 
 Of the above. Mill's elaborate work is the chief authority for 
 those who wish to study thoroughly; Fawcett's a briefer and 
 simpler statement of Mill's principles; Walker's, the latest 
 and most comprehensive work: and Perry's and Sturtevant's, 
 the shortest and easiest books. 
 Primer of Political economy: W. S. Jevons. Appleton. 16mo, 134 p., 
 
 cloth 45 
 
 Simple, and very good as far as it goes. 
 History of Political Economy: J. A. Blanqui. Putnam. 8vo., 597 p., * 
 
 cloth 3 50 
 
 This most important work, by the French economist, traces 
 • economic ideas and systems from the Greeks to the present 
 day. Introduction by D. A. Wells. 
 Essavs on Political Economy: F. Bastiat. Putnam. 12mo, 302 p.. 
 
 cloth 1 25 
 
 Sophisms of Protection : F. Bastiat. Putnam. 12mo, 31;'; p., cloth.. . 1 00 
 This greatest of French free-traders stands alone for the clear- 
 cut, every-day lllustrtjons and the lively satire of his books. 
 What is Free Trade: Emile Walter. Putnam. l2mo, 158 p.. cloth. . . . 75 
 
 An adaptation of Bastiat's essays, with American facts. 
 History of Protection in the United States: W. G. Sumner. Putnam. 
 
 8vo. 64 p., cloth 75 
 
 A clear, historical statement of the origin and changes of tariff 
 legislation, applied as an argument against protection. 
 History of the Free Trade Movement in England: A. Mongredien. 
 
 Cassell. Himo, 188 p., cloth 50 
 
 A brief, interesting sketch, valuable in answering Protectionist 
 cavils. 
 
 Our Merchant Marine: D. A. Wells. Putnam. 12mo. 225 p., eloth 1 00 
 
 A history and review of the navigation laws, and the consequent 
 decadence of American shipping. 
 Free Land and Free Trade: S. S. Cox. Putnam. 16mo, 126 p.. cloth . . 1 00 
 "The lessons of the English Corn Laws applied to the United 
 States." 
 
70 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 The tariff laws, with Treasury decisions and regulations, indexes, 
 etc., are given in Heyl's "United States Duties on Imports" (8vo, about 
 500 p.), endorsed by the Treasury Department, published by W. H. Mor- 
 rison, Washington. 
 
 A brief synopsis of the tariff with actual amounts of duties paid and 
 ad valorem rates will bp found in Spofford's "American Almanac" for 
 the current year, published by the American News Company, at 25 cents, 
 in paper. 
 
 Readers desiring to go further in economic and political literature, 
 are referred to the classified descriptive list of books on "Political 
 Economy and Political Science," published in a 25-cent pamphlet by 
 the Society for Political Education, 4 Morton Street, New York City. A 
 pamphlet of "Subjects and Questions" for debate on these topics, is 
 also published by that society, at 10 cents. 
 
 The Million is a weekly free trade paper published by H. J. Philpott, 
 Des Moines, Iowa, at 50 cents a year. 
 
 The American Free-Trader is published mid-monthly, at 50 cents a 
 year, by A. L. Earle, 137 Broadway, New York. 
 
 The books and leading pamphlets scheduled may be had by post on 
 receipt of price, from G. P. Putnam's Sons, 27 West Twenty-third Street, 
 New York, or through most booksellers. 
 
 THE ANTI- PROTECTIVE -TARIFF LEAGUE 
 OF MINNESOTA. 
 
 OFFICERS. 
 
 President, 
 
 Hon. Gordon E. Cole, - - Faribault, Minn. 
 
 First Vice President, 
 Hon. Eugene M. Wilson, - Minneapolis, Minn, 
 
 Second Vice Presides t, 
 Hon. B. B. Herbert, - - Red Wing, Minn. 
 
 Corresponding Secretary, 
 John W. Willis, Esq., - - St. Paul, Minn. 
 
 Recording Secretary, 
 Capt. James D. Wood, - - St. Paul, Minn. 
 
 Treasurer, 
 
 C. E. Rittenhouse, Esq., - * St. Paul, Minn. 
 
 All communications should be addressed to the Presi- 
 dent or Corresponding Secretary, St. Paul, Minn. 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 71 
 
 CONSTITUTION. 
 This association shall be known as the Anti-Protective 
 Tariff League of Minnesota, and its object shall be by every 
 laudible means to advance free trade sentiment, and to labor 
 to secure the nomination and election to Congress and the 
 State Legislature those who favor the gradual reduction and 
 ultimate abolition of all tariff rates levied for purposes of 
 protection. 
 
 BY-LAWS. 
 
 L — OFFICERS. 
 
 The officers of this league shall be a President, two 
 Vice Presidents, Recording Secretary, Corresponding Sec- 
 retary and Treasurer, who together with three other mem- 
 bers of said league, shall constitute an executive committee. 
 All the above named officers shall be by ballot elected at the 
 regular meeting of such league on the first Wednesday of 
 April in each year, and shall hold their respective offices for 
 .one year thereafter, and until their successors are duly 
 elected. A vacancy occurring in any office may be filled at 
 any meeting by a special election. 
 
 II. — MEETINGS. 
 
 This League shall meet on call of said executive commit- 
 tee, which may be called together by the President of said 
 League whenever he shall deem best and shall be called to- 
 gether by said President on petition signed by a majority 
 of said committee. 
 
 III. — SUBORDINATE LEAGUES. 
 
 Subordinate Leagues may be formed by the adoption of 
 the principles embraced in the constitution of the State 
 League and each League so organized, consisting of not less 
 than ten members shall be entitled to elect one representa- 
 tive to the State League who thereby shall be construed a 
 
72 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 member of that League with all the rights and privileges of 
 membership. 
 
 IV.— QUORUM. 
 
 Fifteen members of said League shall constitute a quo- 
 rum. 
 
 V. — MEMBERSHIP. 
 
 The executive committee shall immediately upon their 
 election choose from the members of said League a commit- 
 tee of three who shall receive, decide upon and report upon, 
 all applications for membership in said League.- 
 
 VI.- PLACE OF MEETING. 
 
 The regular meetings of said League shall be held at the 
 city of St. Paul unless otherwise directed by the executive 
 committee. 
 
 VII. — FEES. 
 
 Each person becoming a member of this League shall 
 sign the Constitution and By-Laws and pay to the Treasur- 
 er the sum of Five Dollars and the fund so realized or any 
 part thereof shall be used only by direction of the Executive 
 Committee at a regular meeting thereof. No other fee dues 
 or assessments shall be required except by a vote of a major- 
 ity of the members of the League present at a meeting there- 
 of duly called; and every member shall be duly notified by 
 the Corresponding Secretary of said call; provided that no 
 fee shall be required from any delegate from a subordinate 
 League. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The duties of the President. Vice-Presidents, Secretary 
 and Treasurer shall be those that usually appertain to such 
 offices in similar organizations and at the annual meeting in 
 April the Treasurer shall present a report showing all re- 
 ceipts and disbursements for the preceding year and the 
 said Executive Committee shall act as an Auditing Board 
 thereof. 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 73 
 IX. — EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 
 
 All other things needful and proper to be done for the ad- 
 vancement of the principles and the interests of this League 
 shall be under the charge of the Executive Committee. 
 
 X. — AMENDMENTS. 
 
 Amendments to the Constitution and By-Laws must be 
 signed in writing at a regular meeting of the League and ac- 
 tion thereon must be deferred to the next regular or special 
 meeting of the League. 
 
 A vote of two-thirds of the members present shall be nec- 
 essary to adopt such proposed amendment. 
 
 MEMBERSHIP. 
 
 JAMES D. WOOD . . . Ferris Falls HARRY C ALDWELL .... St. Paul 
 
 JOHN F. NORRISH Hastings GORDON E. ('OLE. . . . Faribault 
 
 J. C. PIERCE Red Wing WM. LOUIS KELLY St. Paul 
 
 T. G. ME.-vLEY Monticello F. S. KIRKPATR1CK St. Paul 
 
 C. H. BENEDICT St. Paul E. J. HODGSON St. Paul 
 
 THOMAS E. HEENAN . . Morris J. H. BAKER Rapidan 
 
 JOHN W. WILLIS St. Paul GEO. L. BECKER St. Paul 
 
 B.B. HERBERT Red Wins E. C. STRINGER Hastings 
 
 EDMUND R. OTIS St. Paul H. H. FULLER St. Paul 
 
 O. M. HALL Red Wing WM. M. CAMPBELL.. .Litchfield 
 
 F. B. NASH. Jr., Fargo REY.S.G. SMITH St. Paul 
 
 R. L. FRAZEE Frazee City F. WEAYEKSON St. Paul 
 
 TAMS BIXBY Red Wing WALTER S. LEFEYRE. St. Paul 
 
 E. A. CAMPBELL Minneapolis G. GULBRANDSON .. Albert Lea 
 
 S. M. EMERY Lake City J. M. BOWLER Bird Island 
 
 P. J. SM ALLEY Caledonia P. H. KELLY St. Paul 
 
 H. R. WELLS Preston C. E. R1TTENHOUSE . . . .St. Paul 
 
 D. A. ROBERTSON St. Paul 
 
 ADDRESS OE THE ANTI-PROTECTIVE-TRAIFF LEAGUE OF 
 MINNESOTA. 
 
 To the People of Minnesota: 
 
 Under the existing tariff laws of the United States the 
 average rate of taxation upon dutiable imports is not less 
 than 42^2 P^r cent, of their value. This tax is levied upon 
 about fifteen hundred articles. It varies from ten per cent 
 upon diamonds to seventy-five per cent upon iron, and eighty 
 to one hundred and fifteen per cent upon woolen goods. It 
 
74 
 
 PKOTEOTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 is heaviest upon those things which are most in general use * 
 and many of which are necessaries of life. It embraces 
 nearly everything which is essential to the comfort, business 
 prosperity and existence of our people. There is scarcely any 
 article which they wear, use or consume, from the cradle to 
 the grave, (except farm products) which is not burdened by 
 an increased cost of about one-half its value by this method 
 of indirect taxation. 
 
 Originally imposed as a war measure for the purpose of 
 raising a revenue for war purposes, it has been maintained 
 during the nineteen years which have elapsed since the war 
 without any material reduction in its rates, and long after 
 the revenues it produced began to form an accumulating 
 surplus in the National Treasury. 
 
 It is no longer a tariff for the support of the Govern- 
 ment, but it is, as its advocates assert, a tariff for the 
 "protection of our infant manufactures." The revenue it 
 produces is merely an incident to the "protection" it affords. 
 It rests upon the theory that our strong and self-developed 
 industries should create and support those which are in- 
 capable of supporting themselves — that capital should be 
 diverted from remunerative enterprises and employed in 
 those which are naturally un remunerative — that a well es- 
 tablished system of pauper industries subsidized and sus- 
 tained by the enforced charity of their prosperous neighbors 
 is conducive to the public welfare — that taxation is a source 
 of profit to those who are taxed. 
 
 The object of such a tariff is to stimulate capitalists to in- 
 vest their means in manufacturing by the promise of an ab- 
 normal profit. This stimulant it supplies by taxing imported 
 goods so heavily that they canuot compete with goods man- 
 ufactured here. It artificially increases the selling price of 
 the commodity upon which it is imposed. This increase the 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 75 
 
 consumer pays— not to the Government, but to the home 
 manufacturer, to him who makes and sells the article here 
 as cheap as it can be made abroad and imported into this 
 country under the existing tariff. It is essentially a tax upon 
 all consumers for the benefit of the mill-owning capitalist 
 alone. It increases his dividends; but it adds nothing to 
 the wages of his employes. They work and are forced to 
 work for whatever their labor is worth in open market. No 
 tariff shields them from the competition of foreign labor — • 
 no legislation protects them from labor-saving machinery. 
 If the price of labor, by reason of a " strike," or its scarcity, 
 rises so high that the manufacturer can import foreign labor- 
 ers at a profit, he does so. If in the progress of invention he 
 can be supplied with improved machinery by which one 
 laborer can do the work formerly done by two, he puts it in 
 and turns out the extra laborer. It is for his iuterest io re- 
 duce the wages of labor, to cheapen production. He does 
 not divide his profits with his employes. The subsidy which 
 the tariff tax gives to manufacturing is given to the mill- 
 owners; not one dime roaches the mill- workers. 
 
 This system uninterruptedly maintained for the past 
 quarter century has borne its legitimate fruits. Those who 
 first engaged in manufacturing under protection, realized 
 enormous profits. This invited and created competition. 
 Old factories were enlarged; new ones spraug into existence. 
 Over-production was the result. Manufactured products 
 increased in quantity until the market was glutted; the fac- 
 tories could only run at a loss; they produced more than they 
 could sell. 
 
 The tax which excluded foreign competition from our 
 markets prevented us from competing in foreign markets. It 
 taxed both manufactured products and the raw materials 
 out of which they were manufactured. If we were able to 
 
7(3 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 make an article as cheaply as it could be made abroad, we 
 could not sell it as cheap, because the material out of which 
 it was made cost here fifty per cent more than it cost there. 
 Moreover, all traffic consists in the exchange of productions. 
 If we do not buy of a Nation it cannot buy of us, because it 
 has nothing but its productions to buy with. So when over- 
 production came upon us, we could not barter our surplus 
 stocks for the surplus stocks of other Nations, because our 
 custom houses stood in the way and taxed the goods we pur- 
 chased. The tariff upon imports differed only in name from 
 a taiiff ny on exports. Protection not only walled others out 
 but it walled us in. It confined us to a home market, and 
 then overstocked the market. Then the manufacturers 
 "pooled" and combined, wages were "cut" and shops "shut 
 down" until the surplus stock could be worked off. 
 
 Strikes followed. Workmen began to realize that high 
 wages left no surplus for times of depression— that the costs 
 of the week's living consumed the price of the week's labor. 
 Struggling against low wages they found themselves without 
 work, without means of suppott, without hope. Misery, vio- 
 lence and crime issued out of the "protected" industries. 
 The Molly Maguires commenced their work, and the tramp 
 began his wanderings. 
 
 Then came the "survival of the fittest." The small man- 
 ufacturers went to the wall, and were captured by the large 
 ones. Monopoly triumphed over competition. To-day our 
 leading industries are in the hands of a few monopolists. 
 High prices are maintained by an enforced limited produc- 
 tion. Dividends are "protected" by reductions of wages. 
 Home competition is crushed by the "freezing out" process, 
 and foreign competition prevented by the high tariff. 
 
 Such is the history of protection in this country for the 
 past quarter century. A system so pernicious in its effect 
 
PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 77 
 
 upon the industries it was designed to bless, could not fail 
 to cast its blighting influence over those it did not assume 
 to "protect." It has destroyed our merchant marine, stripped 
 us of our South American trade, and stimulated obher Na- 
 tions to adopt retaliatory tariffs against us. It has increased 
 the cost of transportation; burdened and handicapped every 
 legitimate and self-supporting industry, and lessened the 
 profits of agriculture. It has accumulated a large surplus 
 in the National Treasury, and invited wanton extravagance 
 and expenditures of the public funds; and above all, it has 
 increased, by nearly one-half, the cost of living to every man, 
 woman and child in the Nation. 
 
 To the people of Minnesota, dependant largely upon the 
 prosperity of our wheat-growers, the question of tariff reform 
 is of great and growing importance. The price of wheat 
 here is governed by its price in Liverpool. In 18S0, the 
 United States supplied 75 per cent of all the wheat and flour 
 •imported into Great Britain. In 1881, this was reduced to 69 
 per cent; in 1882, to 55; and in 1883, to 46 per cent. In other 
 words, the 93,000,000 bushels we sent to Great Britain in 
 1881, fell to 74,000,000 bushels in 1883. Yet the total import 
 from all countries increased frofn 136,000,000 bushels in 1881, 
 to 160,000,000 bushels in 1833. It is evident that England 
 has found other and cheaper wheat markets than our own. 
 She has found elsewhere people who are willing to exchange 
 their products for hers. Her imports from Russia increased 
 from 8,000,000 bushels in 1881, to 27,000,000 bushels in 1883. 
 From India, they increased from 2,000,000 bushels in 1879, to 
 15,000,000 bushels in 1881, and 23,000,000 bushels in 1883. 
 From Australia she received in 1883, 32,000,000 bushels, a 
 large increase over preceding years.* 
 
 *These statistics are from the Milling World, the leading miller's 
 trade journal of the United States. 
 
78 
 
 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 Is it difficult to understand 
 
 "why wheat is low?" 
 
 We are losing the market in which we have heretofore 
 disposed of our surplus crops. Instead of pursuing a liberal 
 policy towards the wheat buying Nations of Europe, and 
 securing their trade by trading with them, we have built a 
 wall of tariff duties along our coast and shut them out. 
 We have done all that we could do to induce them to test 
 the undeveloped soil of the East and seek a market there. 
 
 Whatever fluctuations may occur in the wheat market, it 
 is evident that low prices will be the average. Unless the 
 cost of production is reduced, unless they can raise wheat 
 cheaper than heretofore, there is little hope of profit to our 
 wheat growers. To do this, the cost of living, of transpor- 
 tation and of agricultural machinery must be reduced. Upon 
 each of these elements of production the existing tariff im- 
 poses its heavy burden of taxation. It taxes the farmer's 
 wearing apparel, his linen, cotton and woolen goods; his 
 shirt, coat, boots and hat. It taxes his carpets, furniture, 
 bedding and cookstove; his crockery, rice, sugar and salt; 
 the lumber, nails, paint, glass and hardware in his house; 
 his drugs, medicines and pipe; his newspaper and his Bible. 
 There is not a nail, screw or bolt, or a piece of iron, steel or 
 leather in his farm machinery, no implement or tool, not 
 even his hoe, plow, spade, scythe, nor axe, which does not 
 pay its heavy tribute to "protected" capital. The wagon in 
 which he hauls his grain, the railroad that carries it to the 
 seaboard, and the ships (if American) which transport it to 
 Europe, are likewise burdened. 
 
 The tariff has increased the cost of transportation. 
 
 It has increased the cost of farming. 
 
 It has increased the cost of living. 
 
 For twenty-four consecutive years, "protection" has been 
 
1ROTECTION AND FREE TRADE. 
 
 79 
 
 tested here. If at the close of this period it is true that the 
 favored industries are unable to support themselves — if they 
 cannot sustain even as slight a reduction of the tax as pro- 
 posed by the Morrison Bill, then the experiment is a failure. 
 If a quarter of a century of high tariffs has left these chil- 
 dren of subsidy so feeble that they cannot cast off even 
 twenty per cent of their "protecting" wraps, how many gen- 
 erations of men must live, be taxed and die before they will 
 become sufficiently robust to stand alone? A ay stem so bur- 
 densome and so fruitless of benefit, ought to be forever 
 abandoned. 
 
 It is not right to tax one man for another's gain. It is 
 not right to force the profitable industries of the Nation to 
 pay tribute to those which are by nature unprofitable. The 
 inexorable law of demand and supply which regulates the 
 price of grain and the wages of the laborer governs also the 
 manufactures. They will exist whenever there is a demand 
 for- them, wherever they will pay. The best way to protect 
 them is to give them cheap raw material, cheap machinery, 
 cheap transportation, untaxed labor, and an open market in 
 every quarter of the globe. If, with these advantages, 
 backed by American pluck, skill and ingenuity, they are un- 
 able to be self-supporting, no system of subsidies or tariffs, 
 no stimulants can ever render them so. 
 
 Revenue reform can only be secured by an emphatic and 
 determined expression of public sentiment in its favor. The 
 monopolists who have become millionaires by protection 
 are too powerful to be easily overthrown. The politicians 
 and political parties of the country are in their hands. Old 
 issues are resurrected and new ones created for the purpose 
 of concealing: and suppressing this most important of all 
 issues. Every attempt in Congress to materially reduce the 
 tariff tax has hitherto failed. A mysterious but overpower- 
 
80 
 
 FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION. 
 
 ing influence has stifled the voice and thwarted the work of 
 reform. 
 
 It is time for the people to speak. 
 
 We ask the reader to give this subject the candid and 
 thorough investigation its importance demands. The Anti- 
 Protective Tariff League of Minnesota does not seek to 
 create a new political party nor to disintegrate existing par- 
 ties. Its single purpose is to call forth such an emphatic 
 popular demand for revenue reform, that in this State 
 neither party will be able to elect to either house of Con- 
 gress, a Senator or Representative who will not vote and 
 honestly aud zealously work for reform in spite of caucus 
 dictation, party expediency and the occult influence of a rich 
 and powerful lobby. 
 
 We believe that the existing tariff taxes should be grad- 
 ually and systematically reduced until the element of "pro- 
 tection" is eliminated from them. That duties upon im- 
 ports, like all other taxes, should be levied for revenue only, 
 and only so much revenue should be so collected as is 
 necessary for the support of the Government economically 
 administered; that every business should stand upon its 
 own merits; that favoritism should be shown to none; that 
 the best way to reduce the $150,000,000 annual surplus in 
 the treasury is to reduce the taxes which create it. 
 
 We urge the organization in every town in the State of 
 local clubs for this purpose, and invite the co-operation of 
 all citizens who are ready to demand the reduction of sur- 
 plus taxation. 
 
 The Anti-Pkotective Tarife League of Minnesota. 
 
LETTERS 
 
 ON 
 
 PROTECTION • FREE TRADE 
 
 BY 
 
 F. B. NASH, Jr. i| 
 
 .with • 9 
 
 Opinions of Prominent Statesmen aiiflj 
 Writers on Political Economy. 
 
 CONTAINING ALSO 
 
 '•CONSTITUTION AND BY-LAWS, I 
 
 Officers of, and Address by. the •••>^«M^H 
 J{nti=Pr0iectiiT=<r;triff 2V;//f//r of Jjtliniic.wfit, 
 
 In pamphlet form, 80 pages; price. -10 cents eaVfc-; 100 -xj 
 copies, $5.00. Apply to a Ay officer jr member 
 
 of the League, or to Red Wir.g-Printmg Co. . "•^