438 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



will ensue before any true adjustment of duties can be made to 

 present conditions, although, both political parties now agree that 

 great changes are absolutely necessary. How can we separate this 

 question from party politics ? 



It has always seemed to me very absurd, even grotesquely so, 

 that men who are accustomed to put confidence in each other in 

 the conduct of all their private affairs as well as in their town and 

 city work ; who trust each other in every walk of life ; who serve 

 together on boards of directors in savings banks, insurance com- 

 panies, trust companies, and the like, and who adjust all differ- 

 ences of judgment in a reasonable manner, yet when this subject 

 of tariff legislation comes up impute to each other, or else sus- 

 tain newspapers that impute to each other, every form of insincer- 

 ity, untruth, fraud, and malignant selfishness. 



There is nothing so foolish as the imputations which are put 

 upon the advocates of free trade by their opponents, except the 

 corresponding imputations put by their opponents upon the mass 

 of the advocates of protection, of lack of care or consideration for 

 the public welfare. The masses are sincere on either side, however 

 time serving and incapable their political representatives may be. 



Conceive what the conditions of this country would be if the 

 ideas which the Cobden Club represents had not prevailed, and if 

 our wheat and dairy products were boycotted as our pork is in 

 Germany ; or if our cotton were taxed as it was before the mar- 

 kets of Great Britain were made free. In 1880 there were nearly 

 eight million men occupied in agriculture ; now there are ten 

 million, more or less. In 1880 seventeen per cent of the product 

 of agriculture found a home market only by sale for export ; now 

 about twelve per cent. If we did not exchange this product for 

 other products, we could not sell it. If we could not sell it for 

 export, over a million men would be driven from the field to the 

 factory and to the workshop. 



When I listen to the foolish talk of partisans on either side, 

 and witness the ill-judged contention on the tariff question, I am 

 sometimes inclined to exclaim, " A plague on both your houses ! " 

 Is it not time that this method of imputing wholly selfish or bad 

 motives should cease, and that any one or every one who indulges 

 in it should be held in contempt as an example of intellectual 

 stupefaction ? 



It was well said by President Cleveland when he so bravely 

 brought the subject to an issue, " What we have to deal with is a 

 condition and not a theory." 



Let us consider this condition, find out exactly what it is, and 

 then see what we have to do in the matter, each man on his own 

 account. 



I have never known any intelligent advocate of a tariff for 



