8 Ilousatonic Agricultural Society. 



would never have taken place but for the persistent attempts of the 

 protectionists to rob the masses of this country, and especially its ag- 

 ricultural masses, for the supposed benefit of a few. ^^ By their fruits 

 ye shall knoic themP 



The phrase just used, namely, "the supposed benefit of a few," 

 was deliberately chosen. For it is very easy to see and to show that 

 protective duties, enormously burdensome as they are to the people 

 at large, do not benefit at all manufacturers as a whole class. Some 

 of the shi'ewdest and most unscrupulous ones who manage to get 

 duties on to raise the price of their own products, and at the same 

 time to keep off their own raw material and necessary supplies, are 

 greatly benefitted peeuniarity; that is to say, thej^ pass their hat 

 round in tlie community like mendicants .and compel by law every- 

 body to drop their contributions into it, and escape so far as possible 

 by law from di'opping then- own contributions into the hats of their 

 fellow-mendicants ; but wherever there is a protective system, as with 

 us, many different interests must be protected at the same time, both 

 in order to rally votes and influence enough to get protection for any, 

 and also to keep votes and influence enough together to maintain it 

 for all, and, consequently, for the most part, the protected interests 

 have to pay protective duties, or rather the enhanced home prices 

 caused by protective duties, and soon have reason to pray to be de 

 livered from their friends, for they find that they have to pay under 

 protection more than they get under it. The woolen manufacturers, 

 for example, while they get an extra price under the tarifl:' for their 

 woolens, have at the same time to pay an extra price for their wools, 

 machinery, dyestuffs, lumber, iron, steel, and so on, all of which are 

 "protected" also. It is a matter of easy demonstration, that the 

 woolen manufacturers as a whole class (the carpet-men are an excep- 

 tion) pay out two dollars under the present tariff for every one dollar 

 they get back. It is largely so with most other protected interests ; 

 and they all without exception lose the foreign market for theii' sui'- 

 plus through the folly of keeping out by law the foreign products 

 that would gladly buy the said surplus. We can not sell unless we 

 are willing to buy, inasmuch as all selling is at the same moment buy- 

 ing and all buying at the same moment selling. As a matter of fact, 

 the United States are selling less of manufactured goods abroad than 

 they sold in 1860. What the woolen men want, and what the paper 

 men want, and what the cotton men want, and what our manufactur- 

 ers as a whole body want, is foreign markets ; and these they can never 

 get until our own ports are open to foreign products to exchange 

 against our own products. So that, when the farmers make up their 

 minds to throw off the tariff burdens that weigh them down, the^^ can 

 have the satisfaction of knowing that they are throwing burdens (on 

 the whole) off the manufacturers also. The free traders of this coun- 

 try are fighting a battle in behalf of the manufacturers themselves, 

 (selfishness is always short-sighted) as well as in behalf of the farmers. 



That protective duties are a great burden to all those who are 

 called on to pay the prices resulting from them, is proved in no way 

 more conclusively than by the reluctance of protectionists themselves 



