TARIFF REVISION 449 



United States over that in Europe. This certainty comes from two 

 sources : first, the difference in a large number of cases, even of high- 

 protected articles, is the other vray. The foolish assumption that a 

 difference in wages per day means a precisely similar difference in labor- 

 cost of articles produced, deserves hardly the honor of a refutation ; for 

 a real index of the fact, we can not do better than note, as did Mr. 

 Carnegie, who is probably the best living authority on the subject, the 

 confessed profits of the U. S. Steel Corporation: $133,000,000 net in 

 1907, on 10,000,000 tons of steel. They thus cleared $13.50 per ton, 

 which, deducted from the selling price, leaves a cost-price lower than 

 can be equalled in any country in the world. Every penny of that 

 $13.50, above the " reasonable profit " that the world's competition 

 would allow, is obviously a gratuitous bestowal of the people's money 

 upon the trust; but our present concern with it is as a conclusive 

 demonstration of lower labor-costs here than in Europe. The same is 

 true, to a less striking extent, in the case of every product which is 

 freely exported from this country. A second reason why we know that 

 the committee will not apply this difference-in-labor-cost criterion is 

 found in the absurdity of the principle itself. The little boy in the 

 story, whose sympathies, in viewing a picture of Daniel in the den of 

 lions, were especially called out by " that poor little lion in the corner, 

 that was not going to get any of Daniel," seems particularly absurd 

 when we first hear of him; but he was quite a master in protectionist 

 logic. This criterion of labor-cost shows a very nice regard for the 

 equities among the lions who are to feed on Daniel, and no regard for 

 the prophet himself. 



It would be interesting, also, to discuss the tariff before a scientific 

 audience, as a purely scientific question, in a scientific way. This 

 would involve, probably, an examination of the evolution of a national 

 policy from a community policy, showing how each development on the 

 larger scale had been long preceded by a similar development on the 

 smaller. The question of division of labor, among members of a tribe, 

 was probably as hotly discussed in its day as is the question of promo- 

 tion or suppression of foreign trade in this ; and quite possibly the argu- 

 ments then made, on the one side and on the other, were very similar to 

 those we now hear. The reason why no record of this ancient debate 

 remains for us is doubtless that the decision was so complete and con- 

 clusive that it passed in a short time beyond the field of controversy; 

 and so we may hope for the question of to-day — when the present pleas 

 for industrial independence of nations shall have gone to join the old- 

 time pleas for industrial independence of families, just as we expect 

 national wars and war preparations and war policies to follow into 

 obsolescence the continual tribal wars and hostile proceedings of the 

 past. 



VOL. LXXIV. — 29 



