with high, low, or no protection, in the unprecedented demand prevailing during the last four years on every continent. If other nations had been less busy, our tariff barrier might have been of more use.

It was Settling That the Tariff Needed. The fact is that what the tariff needed in 1897 was settling. It was already, though called free trade in the loose language of politics, a highly protective law compared with the tariff of 1862.1 If its protective features had been left untouched as fixed in 1894, and needed revenue raised by duties on such commodities as tea and coffee, who can doubt that a settling of the question by reënacting the old law, changed in name from Wilson to Dingley, would have affected business more favorably than it was? If the trouble with Spain had come a year earlier, the tariff question might have been dropped without action, to turn attention to the war. If so, the law then in force having been enacted by the tariff reform party, though largely amended by protectionists, trou

1 1 Average Rate of Different Tariffs.-Under the Wilson tariff of 1894 the average rate collected in 1895 on all dutiable imports was 41.75 per cent of their value abroad. Under the so-called free trade tariff of 1857 this rate fell lowest in 1861, to 18.84 per cent. It was 32.62 per cent in 1862 under the Morrill tariff, which, though enacted mainly for revenue, as shown by the discussion over it in Congress, is regarded as having established the protective policy. The highest average under the Walker revenue tariff of 1846 was 27.38 per cent in 1852. Under the war tariffs this average rose highest in 1869, to 48.69 per cent. In 1830 it was 61.69 per cent. It rose highest of all in 1813, to 69.03 per cent, but fell to 6.84 per cent in 1815, wholly by changes in quantities of goods imported. (Roberts, 127.) Under the Morrison tariff of 1883 this average rose highest in 1887, to 47.10 per cent; under the McKinley law of 1890 to 50.06 per cent in 1894; and under the Dingley law of 1897 to 50.21 per cent in 1899. Specific duties, being a fixed sum per pound or yard, are simpler to collect than ad valorem duties of a percentage on value. But specific duties are desired by protected interests because as price falls the duty with them becomes higher and higher.

blesome agitation of this question might have ceased for a long time.

Future Uncertainty Checks Enterprise. A business capable of self-support can prosper without special favor, but ordinarily it cannot without certainty as to the government's policy. For this reason an approaching change of the tariff, either upward or downward in rates, causes business men to delay extensive building or buying, until the proposed change has been completed, and its effects have been seen in prices and trade. Despite the great promises made in 1896 of what higher protection would do for industry, and despite the removal of the silver danger, manufacturers seemed as much afraid of tariff revision upward in 1897 as they were afraid of its revision downward in 1893. Thirteen months after Mr. McKinley's election, with two seasons of large crops here and of shortage abroad, a prominent protectionist of Jackson said: "Well, confidence [in money] has returned, if prosperity hasn't." There was not much improvement of industry until the close of 1897. After reduction or removal of its protective duty, settling the agitation, an industry will adjust itself to its new conditions, though undesired and protested against, and proceed at once to make the best of them, while before the settlement it must wait to see which course to take, avoiding future contracts as far as practicable.

CHAPTER XV.

THE TARIFF QUESTION AS IT STANDS TO-DAY.

Tariff Reformers Desire to Avoid Crippling Industries. Though recognizing that free trade is the ideal condition, permitting exchange of every producer's product for whichever of the world's commodities will be most valuable here, and giving equal rights to all, with special privileges to none, - American economists and tariff reformers, as a rule, desire to reduce and remove the protective duties gradually, that the industries so long favored may have time to adjust themselves to unaided or less aided self-support.

Will Unsound Claims be Candidly Given Up? - Perhaps it is not now expecting too much of self-seeking human nature, to hope that protected interests, to some extent at least, will candidly give up palpably unsound claims and excuses, and in a spirit of compromise honestly make the best of tariff reform, instead of tending petulantly to discredit it by suspending work and making a show of hard times. As stated before, an old industry's continued need of protection, the claim as to higher wages being untenable, shows that it is out of place in this country, or has not made good use of its tariff favor to reach self-support.

We May Long Sustain Losses from Protection, reaping from unwise sowing in the past. "At least five per cent certainly not more than

of the labor force of the country,

ten per cent, is now engaged in enterprises which could

not continue to exist if protection should be removed entirely." Perhaps the most important of these are in woolen and silk manufacturing. In cotton manufacturing, and the iron industries, strong concerns would be little harmed (many of them benefited), but weak concerns, unable to produce at low cost, would doubtless be closed.

To Avoid the Shock of Destroying a Business, these weaker industries must be carried a long time on the tariff tax. If the public had never started them with protection, it would not now have them on its hands. Those producers are blameless who had no part in securing enactment of the protective duties upon which they depend. In a settled movement toward practical free trade, or low duties, persons in these industries might gradually give them up if self-support seemed out of reach. Only by being carried can an unfit business survive. It is out of place, like an ox upon the sea.

How Could Displaced Men Find Work?—If all protection were removed suddenly, this five or ten per cent of American labor and capital would eventually find employment in our resources, and wages would then continue as before, soon to be gradually raised-in goods enjoyed, by removal of the private tax from prices; in money also, from free trade's effect to increase the employer's net income, with cheaper materials and wider markets. In a period of weak demand for goods, suspension of these industries, causing an over-supply of labor, would quickly lower wages in some lines, and might add seriously to the depression. But if the change were made in a time of brisk demand, the labor released, if able to move quickly, might at once find work without fall of wages, as do men thrown out by improved ma1 Bullock, 1897, page 365.

chinery, and as do the many thousands of men disbanded at the close of a war. Besides, as explained on page 323, opening our market would raise foreign price, until increase of their capacity enabled foreign producers to supply us at the low price previously charged. Hence, price here would not fall at once by the full amount of the duty removed. With goods we are prepared to produce unaided, removal of the duty might so increase sales as not only to give consumers the maximum enjoyment, but also to give producers, at home and abroad, an equal price yielding to each of ours a total profit greater than that under the artificial price before.

The Tariff Question Has Begun to Settle Itself.-Fortunately, the tariff question has at last made a start toward settling itself. Some claims of protectionists must necessarily be abandoned now, since the recent rise of our leading protected industries to a position of world supremacy, with admitted need of foreign markets, and with labor cost per unit of product notoriously lower than in England. Thomas B. Reed, one of the ablest protectionists, said in 1894: "Tariff duties become a dead letter when we are able to compete with the outside world." Moreover, national revenue needs to be lessened, in view of an unprecedented surplus in the treasury. Prudent statesmen of the party in power have desired to reduce appropriations, not because the country could not easily raise if necessary double its present national revenue, but because unwise expenditure is corrupting, affording opportunity of gain to people by whose influence the expenditure may be brought about. A full treasury is a source of continual temptation. Coming from compulsory taxes, it is not the same evidence of success that it is in a private business, whose