THE EFFECTS OF PROTECTION. 17 



and his speech on the Mills hill, which was carefully revised, con- 

 tains some interesting examples of the political and intellectual 

 effects of protection. In one place (p. 32) he asserts that "the 

 working-people of England find that competition with countries 

 employing cheaper labor is too oppressive to bear longer, and are 

 demanding to be saved from further degradation," etc. This, in 

 the face of the marvelous and universally admitted increase in 

 wages and comfort of English labor already mentioned, and also 

 in the face of the conspicuous fact that not a single prominent 

 politician in England champions protection, and that the only 

 protectionists are landlords whose rents are being reduced. In 

 the same speech (p. 27) he attacked the Administration because it 

 bought two thousand blankets for the army of an English firm, 

 when, by paying $606 more, it might have patronized an American 

 firm. Mr. McKinley's theory was that this money should not be 

 saved to the tax-payers, but should be paid, as a bounty, to the 

 American firm. On page 18 he said, " I would not allow a single 

 ton of steel to come into the United States if our own labor could 

 make it." If this is economic wisdom, why should not each State, 

 each county, take the same policy ? Mr. McKinley offers no ex- 

 planation, save that we have " one flag " ; but leaves to the imagi- 

 nation what the flag has to do with industrial success. But the 

 ne plus ultra doctrine is on page 13 : "I would rather have my 

 political economy founded on the every -day experience of the 

 peddler than the professor." In other words, the more we study 

 the subject the less we know about it. Science is a delusion and 

 snare for the impracticable. Ignorance alone is learned. We 

 should not expect to hear from Mr. McKinley that industrial 

 growth, like all organic growth, should be in the line of least 

 resistance and greatest traction, which is the opinion of a sociolo- 

 gist ; but we are hardly prepared for his assumption that labor 

 cost is identical with the rate of daily wages. I instance Mr. Mc- 

 Kinley's speech, because it is a type. On looking through the 

 other leading speeches against the Mills bill we find the same 

 neglect of facts, the same contempt for science, violence of asser- 

 tion, disregard of business principles, and coarseness of reasoning. 

 Nowhere do we find any account taken of the history of trade, the 

 prosperity of trading nations, or even the elementary fact that 

 English labor successfully competes with Indian and Chinese 

 labor five times as poorly paid. Indeed, their theory would make 

 this impossible, and therefore it can not be true. 



Another very serious indirect effect of the high tariff is that 

 the surplus revenue obtained breeds profligate schemes without 

 number. It seems to be forgotten that the Government of the 

 United States was carried on during J. Q. Adams's administration 

 — one of the best this country has seen — for about $10,000,000 a 



TOL. XXXIV. 2 



