6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



bill did provide ; but he simply bad a vague notion that he had 

 an illegitimate advantage which somebody was trying to take 

 away. 



But, in addition to loss of this kind, the maintenance of the 

 protection system has for a number of years resulted in a heavy 

 surplus — a taxation of the people very far beyond the require- 

 ments of our Government. This surplus, therefore, must be 

 charged up as one of the costs which the system entails ujDon the 

 people. For the past seven years this annual absorption by the 

 Government of the annual product has been very heavy. This pres- 

 ent year, it seems, the House and Senate have by systematic ex- 

 travagance succeeded in diminishing the surplus between fifteen 

 and thirty millions. But it is admitted on all sides that the sur- 

 plus fairly amounts to a sum not less than $125,000,000 annually. 

 This is ten dollars per annum for every family in the United 

 States. The total amount of the tariff taxation is about twice 

 that sum. But if we view the family solely as consumers, and 

 not at all as the recipients of protective bounty (which is prac- 

 tically a correct basis),* we have to add to this cost the enhanced 

 prices of American products, some of which have been mentioned, 

 and of which the Government gets no share. This indirect tax, 

 of which examples have been given, is variously estimated in its 

 total amount. On some articles it amounts to $13 when the tariff 

 tax amounts to $1 ; that is to say, the consumer pays out $14 in 

 enhanced prices, of which only $1 reaches the Government. On 

 the whole, this indirect levy or transfer (it can not be called a tax) 

 may be estimated to amount to about five times the tariff tax.f It 

 amounts, therefore, to about $100 per family per annum, and, with 

 the superfluous element of the tariff tax, to about $110. While 

 this estimate is largely conjectural, no one who is aware of the 

 increased expensiveness of our manufacturing, and even of our 

 agricultural processes, will doubt that the figure is very large, 

 and perhaps in excess of that named. This, be it remembered, is 

 not a tax on property but a tax on consumption. The poor man 

 pays as much on sugar and rice as the rich man. The carpenter 

 with $2 per day pays nearly as much on clothing as Jay Gould, 

 rated at $30,000 a day ; and on no article of consumption or use 

 are the rich and poor taxed in proportion to their wealth, because 

 ninety-five per cent of the poor man's income is required to pay 

 his family's living expenses, while the rich man uses a much 

 smaller proportion for that purpose. J 



* In 1886 W. C. Ford, E. B. Elliot, and Simon Newcomb, statistical experts, reported 

 to the Secretary of the Treasury their estimate of the number of persons in " protected " 

 industries. Their estimates vary from 4-'7 per cent to 5'2 per cent. 



f I believe this is Mr. Wells's estimate. 



t It is a frequently made reply to considerations like the above that, though protection 



