294 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



it would be expedient to establish or stimulate the manufacture of 

 certain commodities, no one under a free government would ven- 

 ture openly to justify such, action, except on the ground that 

 public welfare would be thereby promoted, although practically 

 such justification in the United States has long since ceased to be 

 other than a pretense and a cover for the promotion of private 

 interests. Suppose, for example, that the manufacture of the 

 commodity which it is proposed to stimulate is tin plate, and it is 

 decided that the desired result can be best attained by giving the 

 domestic manufacturer the difference between what his product 

 will sell for in a free market and what he can make it for say 

 fifteen million dollars per annum it would seem to be only sim- 

 ple justice that the state should fairly and honestly pay the sum 

 representing this difference, and raise the money,* not by a tax on 

 the consumers of the product artificially maintained, who are no 

 more interested in the matter than all other citizens, but by a levy 

 upon the community at large, in the same equitable manner as it 

 raises money to defray its other expenses. In short, if any indus- 

 try can not live without state aid, and it is for the public welfare 

 that it should live, let the state directly subsidize it, and not main- 

 tain it by allowing private interest arbitrarily to exercise the 

 great sovereign power of taxation, f 



* A written public statement made by a Senator of the United States (George F. Hoar), 

 in 1892, that an assertion by the National Democratic party of the United States in its 

 presidential platform of that year that " the Federal Government has no constitutional 

 power to enforce and collect tariff duties except for the purpose of revenue only," was 

 equivalent to an unveiling of an opinion that " the American people alone, of all civilized 

 nations, have no power to do anything for the encouragement of their own industries," dis- 

 played an amount of ignorance and misconception of the powers and objects of the Gov- 

 ernment he served which, to say the least, was discreditable to its author. 



f " Granting that it is expedient for the Government to spend money in the maintenance 

 or the promotion of the iron manufacture, for example, it must be expedient also that the 

 public should know the exact amount which it costs annually, just as it is expedient that 

 the public should know exactly how much the army and navy costs, or how much the an- 

 nual improvement of rivers and harbors costs. No view, however broad, of the provmce of 

 government can furnish an excuse for concealing the expense of any great national under- 

 taking. . . . But there is no trace of this expenditure in the national accounts. . . . Next, 

 it must be said that any fund of large amount, raised and distributed in this way, must of 

 necessity prove a corruption fund. By this I do not mean a fund distributed in bribes to 

 individuals or organizations, but a fund the existence of which must be constantly present 

 to the mind of the lazy, the improvident, or incompetent, as something to fall back on if 

 the worst come to the worst. Suppose the national appropriations for the purpose of pro- 

 tecting manufacturing industry were made in the ordinary way by a distinct vote of Con- 

 gress ; were made, for instance, as the appropriations for the promotion of the carrying 

 trade the steamship subsidies, as they are called are made in the shape of an annual 

 maximum sum. Suppose this sum were paid over to the corporations or individuals en- 

 gaged in each manufacture on their giving proof that they were carrying on a hona-fide 

 business. . Suppose that to each were given as much as would meet the loss, as shown by 

 his books, incurred by him in competing with foreigners in the home markets. . . . The 



