Januaet 17, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



103 



contention that "the foreigner pays the 

 tax," made by the extreme protectionists 

 in framing the McKinley and Dingiey 

 laws, may find verification in specific in- 

 stances, where the foreigner would prefer 

 to hold a market already acquired, even at 

 a lower rate of profit, rather than to sacri- 

 fice a plant built entirely or chiefiy for 

 supplying that market. Cases of this kind 

 do not, of course, justify the attempt by 

 political legerdemain to impose upon other 

 nations the fiscal charges of the state. In- 

 deed, to the enlightened cosmopolitan they 

 appear a rather undignified and pitiftil de- 

 vice to rob somebody else to obtain one's 

 daily bread. But the fact can hardly be 

 disputed that the operation of those simple 

 economic harmonies which were the dream 

 of Mill and Bastiat and Cobden is essen- 

 tially hampered by the inability of capital 

 and labor to move instantly from one place 

 to another or from one employment to 

 another. 



A nation which has built up even an 

 artificial system can not perhaps afford to 

 throAv down the structure at a blow. It 

 may be demonstrable that the sooner it is 

 destroyed the more fully will come into 

 operation the principle that labor finds 

 its most efficient employment under the 

 system of free competition. But if the 

 existing capital of the nation is invested, 

 as in the case of the United States, in 

 manufacturing establishments to the ex- 

 tent of thousands of millions of dollars, 

 too great a sacrifice may be involved in 

 abandoning enterprises suddenly, even 

 where the capital invested in them was 

 misapplied. Hence practical statesmen, 

 whatever their theoretical views, have in 

 but few cases proposed the sweeping aboli- 

 tion of protective tariff laws. Changes 

 which will afford free raw materials to 

 manufacturers, and will reduce excessive 

 profits and unnecessary exactions upon the 

 customer, can undoubtedly be made with 



wisdom in this and most other protective 

 countries. The appeal to throw down the 

 structure, however, must almost inevitably 

 be treated by practical statesmen, like the 

 quantity theory of money and the theory 

 of the free movement of capital, as repre- 

 senting what might be desirable if econ- 

 omic forces operated in a vacuum, but 

 what is rarely, if ever, attainable in the 

 world of practical affairs. 



The science of political economy can 

 afford to recognize these limitations upon 

 its application to practical affairs, with- 

 out yielding that devotion to abstract truth 

 which gives charm to the work of its 

 greatest exemplars. If there have been 

 conflicts in the past between men of theory 

 and men of action, they have been largely 

 due to this failure to recognize the restric- 

 tions imposed by actual conditions, the dis- 

 position to insist that a fundamental truth 

 once demonstrated should be accepted by 

 all men, without regard to limitations of 

 time and space, just as the great teachers 

 of Christianity have sometimes urged that 

 the existing social order should be forsaken 

 and that Christ's mandate should be put 

 in immediate force, to sell all that one 

 hath and give to the poor. The practical 

 theologian knows as well— perhaps better — 

 than' the political economist, that these 

 principles are not of immediate applica- 

 tion in their extreme form and that if the 

 world can be guided steadily towards those 

 heights where truth lies, it will make more 

 rapid progress than by preaching the im- 

 practicable in a world of practical men 

 and practical affairs. It is the duty of the 

 political economist to continue to preach 

 these fundamental truths which have 

 been worked out by the masters of the 

 science within the past two centuries, but 

 this need not lead him to reject and spit 

 upon the practical considerations which the 

 statesman has to face in applying abstract 

 principles to mundane conditions. 



