TARIFF REVISION 443 



creases, just as it increases his, by adding to the price of the article 

 sold. Thus the same agency that helps him at one end hinders him at 

 the other, and the hindering is usually greater than the helping. Wliy ? 

 Not because the tariff rates are proportionately greater on the material 

 he buys than on the wares he sells, for they are in most cases less ; but 

 because an}i:hing that forces him to charge a higher price for his prod- 

 ucts in order to get the same profit from the manufacture and sale of 

 each, must at the same time diminish the number he can sell. The 

 wise manufacturer, like other sellers, looks for " small profits and quick 

 returns," but returns are not quick when even a small profit necessi- 

 tates a liigh price. 



There are additional reasons, worthy of consideration, why the 

 tariff is no such aid to manufacturers in general as it was designed and 

 is claimed to be. It is not possible to depend for success on the favor 

 of any government, autocratic or popular, and at the same time lead as 

 vigorous and normal a career as when independent. One eye must be 

 kept all the time on the business, and the other eye on the seat of 

 authority— St. Petersburg or Washington. Part of the savings must 

 be spent in keeping friends at court, or a lobby in the national capitol ; 

 or a subsidized press. Every congressional election must bring a fresh 

 expense — a "frying of fat," as one United States senator termed it. 

 But besides this waste of power, the cause in which it is incurred must 

 suffer to an incalculable extent from the corruption which often at- 

 tends (^and is always suspected, whether discovered or not) the enact- 

 ment of legislation from which individuals may derive a profit. Any 

 deterioration of political morality tends to lower the self-respect of 

 every citizen, and hurts business by lowering the public credit on 

 which it is based. There is no proof that revisions of the tariff have 

 been undertaken for the sake of the rewards that might be secured by 

 those in charge of them, from the " favored industries " whose fortunes 

 they are so powerful to make or mar ; and probably there have been no 

 such strokes of legislative enterprise in our history. But it is interest- 

 ing to observe that the " friends " of the tariff, in whose hands we are so 

 often exhorted to leave the entire office of amending it, have actually 

 made a great many more revisions, generally upward — done many 

 times more " tariff tinkering " — than ever have the friends of the mass 

 of the people who bear the tariff's cost. The next revision will also be 

 of the same character — by the friends of the system. 



It is dangerous to invade the citizen's natural rights. The priv- 

 ilege enjoyed by some producers, of having all others taxed for their 

 profit, delightful though this privilege may be to the possessor, is not a 

 natural right, nor can years of undisturbed possession make it so. But 

 the right to buy wherever one wishes to buy at the least attainable 

 cost is one of the natural rights. The question of liberty of purchase 

 is the same as of liberty of any other kind. There are the same ex- 

 cuses for restricting it, the same motives for maintaining it. To be 



