448 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



the broad ground of principle. Fundamentally illogical, it is clumsy 

 as a means of raising revenue, incurably inequitable in its application 

 to the business of the country, corrupt and demoralizing in the way it 

 is made into law, in the relation it forms between the government and 

 the citizen, and in its creation of vested rights that too soon become 

 vested wrongs. Hence arises a natural difficulty in discussing such a 

 subject. Tariff revision? The only suitable revision is to revise it 

 out of existence, except upon luxuries and articles coming under in- 

 ternal revenue taxation. It is difficult, also, to give serious attention to 

 a complicated scheme of what Bastiat has so happily called " negative 

 railways " — duties whose sole object is to increase the " friction of ex- 

 change," to heap up obstacles to commerce in the place of those which 

 railways, steamship lines and good roads are provided and constructed 

 to remove. 



Considerably more force might be given to this general discussion 

 by taking up some individual articles, such as iron and steel, or borax, 

 or lumber, or wool, or hides, and applying the argument to it alone. 

 Or a particular manufacturing business might be taken, as agricul- 

 tural implements, or shoes, or carpets, and the effect of protecting its 

 raw material be individually considered. Although the general prin- 

 ciple applies throughout, it is quite natural that its illustrations should 

 be easier to draw, and clearer to see, in some lines than others. Par- 

 ticular cases have been the theme of the weeks recently spent, and 

 pages on pages printed, in the investigation by the Ways and Means 

 Committee of Congress. With a general impression that that com- 

 mittee is likely to do as little as it can, it may nevertheless be fairly 

 complimented on the interesting body of testimony it has heard and 

 published. 



Since the problem of tariff revision, here and now, is largely one of 

 psychotherapy — how to " minister to a mind diseased " — since the only 

 evil in tariff reduction is a direct result of the expectation of 

 evil from it, just as panics result from a disappearance of con- 

 fidence — the Ways and Means Committee method of looking for a 

 solution may not be so hopelessly bad, after all. It is of vital concern 

 to escape the general panic that might follow from the conviction of 

 many men that lower duties would play havoc with them; and it is 

 therefore proper enough to see and hear those men, and thus ascertain 

 how delicately cases like theirs must be treated. Individually, no 

 doubt, minds of this type are as little significant as the separate organ- 

 isms that are collectively the cause of trichinosis, or typhoid, or cholera; 

 but, like the same weak or undeveloped organisms, their number may 

 be enough to give them a grave importance. Among the things that 

 were with certainty predicted of this Ways and Means inquiry was that 

 it would not recommend or introduce any measure that would reduce the 

 percentage of protection to the excess of labor-cost of production in the 



