The Reasons for Protection are numerous and mutually supporting. (1) The necessity of varied industries for the national defense has been indicated already. It was again shown in the Boer War, in which a brave people were handicapped by their being a merely agricultural population, in conflict with a great manufactur ing country. It was amply illustrated in all nations involved in the great World War. (2) The variety of industry, which Protection estab lishes, is not less necessary to defend the coun try from the perils of famine. A country which produces food only, is liable to famine and its consequent pestilences, whenever the rains are too scanty or too plentiful for the harvesting of the crops. Such a country has all its eggs in one basket, and should that fall, it has nothing to fall back upon. Ireland and India became famine countries through the destruction of their manufactures by English legisla tion and by English competition. They will remain such until they secure the independence which will enable them to enact the protection of their home industries they both desire. All the regions visited by famine in modern times — Persia, central Rus sia, northern China, northern Sweden, Asia Minor, and even some districts of our own country,— are merely agricultural communities. (3) Protection secures the general welfare of the producers of the country, by bringing each class into the neighborhood with the others, which supply its wants and demand its goods. It thus saves the cost of carrying products over land and sea to find a market and bring back, at a like cost of carriage, whatever is taken in exchange. The railroads of the country save about $5 a ton on having their worn rails con verted into new, through not being obliged to send them to rolling-mills in Europe. The farmer gets more for his crop when he has the artisan close at hand to consume it, and obtains in greater abundance what the artisan produces, even if he has to pay a higher money price for it. All this advantage is lost when a country keeps its farms on one continent and its workshops on another, and spends both strength and money in transportation which could be avoided. (4) The naturalization of varied industries by protection gives the people of the country greater liberty to choose the kind of work they prefer, and a finer opportu nity to develop their natural capacities in im proving old methods or inventing new ones. This has been especially true of America, whose people were taunted for their backwardness in Invention before this became a manufacturing country. An English manufacturer declared we could not make so much as a mouse-trap for ourselves. American inventions have lightened the burden of toil for half mankind. They have made many staple articles, such as steel, cutlery, cotton and silks, cheaper to the whole world. The American character has been dis tinctly improved by emergence out of the stage, at which farming and shipping furnished al most the only employments, and has grown in manifoldness and energy. (5) The variety of industry, at which Protection aims, is highly useful in drawing the people of the country in closer relations, and thus contributing to the unity of will and understanding, which underlie national unity. It was by the trade be tween the English colonies that the fierce prejudices of our earliest time were over come. It was through the development of foreign commerce at the expense of home trade that the Union was imperiled. As Mr. Carey showed Mr. Lincoln, our rail road lines ran only to the seashore, to facilitate exports and imports. They now run north and south as well. By the Zollverein and its foster ing of home trade, Germany was helped to national unity. The English sneered at the notion that the Germans could "spin and weave themselves into national unity," but the result came. (6) By preventing adverse balances of trade, Protection guards the national supply of solid money from being drained out of the country. Money is "not a commodity like any other," as to whose incoming and outgoing we can afford to be indifferent. It is the means of organizing labor for the conquest of nature and the production of wealth. And it is not indefinitely replaceable, as are many other com modities. To exchange it for hardwares and textiles is to exchange power itself for the pro ducts of power. Laveleye compares such an exchange with that between two parties of hunters, who should trade game for guns and ammunition, while at a distance from the basis of supply. Nor is it true, as some economists tell us, that the loss of gold and silver have no other effect than to lower prices in the country which exports them, and thus lead to a return of coin by purchasers from aboard. Prices are lowest in the countries which have the most money, because labor is organized there to the best advantage, and is thus made more produc tive. 'Start a shilling in Thibet, and it will turn up in London, It goes to where it will buy more commodities, though less labor. Therefore is it true that the gold of the world tends con stantly to the great centres of money and of manufacture, moving on the same lines with the commerce in food and raw materials. By re fusing this unequal commerce, we have ceased to be a gold-exporting country, and have thus obtained that stock of money which enables us to organize labor on a great scale, and acquire industrial power.
The Objections to Protection are many in form, but they resolve themselves into a few. (1) It is charged that 'protection is hostile to commerce. If we do not buy, we cannot sell. Thus we are deprived of the possibility of dis posing of our surplus products?) But with the single exception of England since 1846-60, all the great commercial nations have practised pro tection; and under that policy our own exports have reached a figure not equaled by any other country in the world, our rate of progress in this respect being rivaled only by protectionist Germany. In truth, nations buy of each other lust what they must, and sell all they can, and means of payment are always found. (Z) It is objected that "the interest of the consumer is that of society at large, while the interest of the producer is that of a class only. Free trade promotes the former, while protection seeks the latter. For the consumer is interested simply in getting what he uses as cheap as possible, and with this a protection duty must interfere." But "better than a low price for any article is a fair price," Mr. Lowell says. The times of especial cheapness are what we call "hard times," and even the free trader fails to rec ognize his own ideal in those times. Like other people he begins to talk of an "improvement in prices," meaning a rise. In considering the effect of protective duties upon prices it is necessary to look at both sides of the account. Nearly every one in the community has some thing to sell, and it is of small use to him to be able to buy at a low rate, if he must sell at a still lower. Ireland is a land of cheapness, but not to the advantage of its people, who cannot find a market for their labor. Nova Scotia is another country of low prices, and its people flock in thousands to Massachusetts, to seek employment at such wages as they never can earn at home and to live in comfort there.
The free trader fixes attention on one side of the account, to the neglect of the other. Nor is the consumer, in the long run, obliged to pay higher prices because of pro tection. Mr. Greeley used to challenge the free traders to mention a single article whose manu facture had been protected for 14 years, with out falling in price below the point at which it has stood. All kinds of commodities in this country are cheaper to the consumer than they were before the enactment of the Morrill Tariff. The national consumption of all has increased far more rapidly than the increase of the population. (3) It is alleged that "Protec tion is but a method of forcing a hot-house growth of industries, which would have come to us naturally, when our density of population warranted the transition from farming to manu factures. The latter arise when there is a real need and demand for them, without any inter ference on the part of government." This state ment is not supported by any historic instances of this natural growth. Every nation, which now possesses such industries, made its begin nings under Protection. Every great industry that is fighting for the markets of the world was built up by protective duties. Qn the other hand, everyone admits that the want of manufactures is the root of the misery of Ireland and of India. The governmental commission to in vestigate the cause of Indian famines reported, in 1885, that nothing but the diversion of a large part of the labor of the people to manu factures would put an end to them. The need of both countries is beyond question, for in both the density of population has passed the point at which people can live by the soil. But neither of them possesses the power of trans forming mere need into effective demand, by native legislation. How long are they to wait for that "natural growth?" (4) Adam Smith's argument from the beneficial effects of what he called "natural liberty° supposes that "indi vidual self-interest is enough to secure all the industrial growth that any country needs or should want. If everyone be left free to do as he will with his own, he will do what society needs to have done.° Those who repeat this argument are never willing to apply it to other forms of the state's activity, which affect in dustry. They do not propose to have the mer chants of each seaport keep its harbor in con dition by their individual or even their united action. They dare not assert that individual self-interest has not inflicted deep and lasting injury of our country in the devastation of its forests, the destruction of its game, and espe cially the extirpation of insect-destroying birds. They sustain the government in making the coinage of money and the carrying of letters public monopolies, and punishing all who in vade either. They have ceased to look to pri vate self-interest for the maintenance of a school system adequate to our national need. They make all these exceptions to their own theory, and the protectionist adds one more. Adam Smith's principle, however, has great truth. It is the rule, and all these other things are the exception. The protectionist differs from the free trader in that he has no panacea or cure-all to offer to the public. He has only a specific for a single social defect, and he alleges in its favor that it interferes as little as possible with personal liberty. (5) It is objected that °protection favors the manufac turers at the expense of their laborers and of the farmers of the country." As for the laborers, protection does not set aside the law which Carey, Bastiat and Atkinson have shown to govern the distribution of profits. The laborer's share of the joint-product of capital and labor constantly increases, while that of the capitalist constantly diminishes. Protec tion makes that joint-product greater with every expansion of industry, and thus secures to the workman a higher standard of living and a greater opportunity to save. Between 1860 and 1880, the wages of labor, measured in the power to purchase the staple commodities, more than doubled in this country. While free labor in America was once little if anything above the slave's level, as to the enjoyment of the necessaries and comforts of life, it is now on the highest level that it ever has attained in history. The superior condition of American labor was shown by an investigation carried out by our own government in 1911, and still more strikingly by one conducted by the British Board of Trade through the English consuls in 1912. The London Times sums up the result, "The workman in America enjoys an enormous advantage over his fellow in England. . . . He earns two and a quarter times as much money, and works shorter hours for it, so that his hourly rate of earning is as 240 to 100. Against that enormous difference in wages there is something to be set in the way of expenditures, . . . but the cost of living is only as 152 to 100. The advantage in re gard to the cost of food is less than it looks. A workman living on the American scale pays only 25 per cent more for his food than he would in England.° The Board of Trade it self says, "The margin is clearly large, making possible the command of the necessaries and minor luxuries of life greater than that enjoyed by the corresponding class in this country.* The farmer is directly cared for in the tariff, be ing secured by the great market for his produce which our manufacturing districts furnish him. From that market the protective tariff shuts out his Canadian competitor, in spite of the demand of our free traders, seconded by some short-sighted manufacturers, that we shall re turn to the reciprocity which existed from 1854 till 1867. The farmer is also benefited in directly by having his market for produce brought into his neighborhood, thus making his exchanges more equal. As an English newspaper put this years ago, °when the western farmer in America had free trade, he gave a pound of butter for a pound of nails. But under protection he gets 14 pounds of nails for his pound of butter? (6) It is alleged that °protection favors the formation of trusts, and thus destroys that domestic competition, which the protectionist himself relies upon to secure reasonable prices? Yet a large number of our trusts, beginning with the Standard Oil Com pany, are almost independent of the tariff. Of the rest, very few have been able to secure such a control of production as to have the power to dictate and of these several avoid attempting it. Their especial product is as cheap as before the trust was formed, their new gains coming from the saving of ex penses. Others still are international trusts, of the sort that would be sure to abound if we abandoned protection. Nor are the countries which practise free trade characterized by un limited competition among producers. Wherever the trades-union has obtained the control of the rate of wages and of the hours of labor, capital ists have been led to combine for mutual pro tection. They naturally think that they cannot afford to buy labor in a close market and sell their product in an open one. Unified control has come to be the rule in the great English in dustries, and they have improved upon our ex ample by including the workingmen in their arrangements for adjusting prices and wages.