A Leaf From a Protective Tariff Catechism

(OVERHEARD IN A PROTECTIVE KINDERGARTEN)

BY JOEL BENTON

Q. WHAT is Protection?

A. It is placing a duty upon foreign goods, of many kinds, to enable American makers of similar goods who “plead the baby act” to get higher prices for those goods than they otherwise would. It is compelling all the people to pay taxes to a few of the people.

Q. Why is this favor given to the few people?

A. On account of the fact that they pay so much higher wages than foreign manufacturers do and to compel them to pay still higher wages.

Q. Is this necessary?

A. It is very necessary to the Republican Party; for it gives it an issue and its chief cause for existence. When it saw accomplished, by the fortune of war, the freedom of the slave, what could be more natural and glorious than its ready espousal of anti-freedom for commerce?

Q. Are “protective” duties always just equal to the difference between our wages and foreign wages?

A. That is what our argument implies; and, if our argument is true, that is all we can ask. But how is a noble army of patriots to be maintained, and how can election expenses be met if we do not—in our tariff—treble and more than quadruple this difference often?

Q. Are high wages given by our manufacturers without an equivalent advantage in return?

A. It is true of wages, as of other things—that they are ordinarily worth their price, so that our high-priced labor is really labor of low cost. But it is a mighty convenient subterfuge to keep this fact out of sight and by this means hoodwink the poor laborer for his vote.

Q. Do manufacturers keep a lobby at Washington for securing a tariff that makes them pay high wages and yet sell their goods at low prices?

A. That is what we very often say, substantially.

Q. Can our manufacturers sell goods abroad?

A. They do very largely over other tariff walls, and bear the expense of transportation and insurance and secure handsome profits. But the question is too delicate a one to enlarge upon.

Q. Does Mexico have a protective tariff?

A. She does. The plea for it there is that it is a defense against our high-priced labor. The Mexican peons work for very low prices and at a more than correspondingly high cost. It is one of the beauties of Protection that, whether labor costs little or much, you can plead for it for either reason.

Q. Does Protection help Agriculture?

A. It puts a tariff on hay, grain, potatoes, eggs, etc. Very little of any of these commodities are imported by us. When they are imported to any extent the farmers are the chief buyers, as they are of peas, beans and other seeds for planting. By paying the duty on all these things themselves they not only feel certain there is a duty, but they have the satisfaction of knowing they are not forgotten in the great “protective” scheme.

Q. Why is Protection called the American System?

A. This was the question Daniel Webster asked Henry Clay, who so named it, when they were not in accord upon the tariff. Webster was puzzled by the name, for he knew the system was European and medieval; but “American” sounds well and makes us consistent in berating foreign things and ideas.

Q. How does Protection help commerce?

A. Commerce is so foreign we don’t need to help it. So we let it go to the miserable foreigners—what we permit to exist. It is really better to pay the two hundred million dollars we pay them yearly to carry our goods than to let that amount of money pervert our high and noble doctrine.

Q. What is meant by having the tariff “revised by its friends”?

A. That, as the English say, is a good “half-crown phrase.” But its real meaning is to oppose revising the tariff in any way whatever. Several elections have been carried by this plea, and we are still working it for all it is worth. Of course no one goes to have his shoes mended to a shoemaker who is in favor of their holes and lack of heels, and no one selects depredators of hen-roosts to watch chicken thieves; but we must not defer to ordinary rules when “the noble citadel of Protection” is in danger.

Q. Is it understood that to change the tariff injures business?

A. We always say that, and charge to Free Trade the calamity that ensues.

Q. Suppose someone tells us there has been no Free Trade, and if Free Trade existed there would be no tariff to change, and therefore no injury from tariff changes?

A. Then is the time to look wise and say little. For our main object is to make Protection the source of all good and Free Trade the cause of all evil.

Q. How did it happen that, when hides were freed from duty in 1872—and even by the McKinley bill—they were taxed under the Dingley bill?

A. Well—but—let’s see. Why shouldn’t hides enjoy prosperity? It’s certain the big cattle dealers, who use the Government pastures without cost, profit by the duty, while we can claim it helps the farmers.

Q. Why are works of art tariff?

A. Not because the artists ask for Protection. They’re such curious people that they all oppose it. So we choose to be benevolent to them in spite of their eccentric behavior.

Q. What other peculiar tricks have our Protection wise men?

A. A pretty good one is to say that we are not tied up to any present or definite “schedules,” but to remember constantly that, if any change is made in the tariff, it must be one that goes up and never one that goes down. It was a great mistake for Garfield to say, “I believe in a Protection that leads to Free Trade.”

Q. What is Reciprocity?

A. It is—well, suppose you should build a bonfire and then pour water on it, or build a levee on the Mississippi and then punch holes through it. It is a part of our consistent scheme. Blaine knew, and who can dispute Blaine?

Q. What is Free Trade?

A. It is any scale of duties for any purpose that is the least bit lower than the Dingley bill. Everything that preceded that “bravest tariff ever made” is Free Trade. If some day Protection should climb to loftier heights, those who should oppose it by the lower Dingley bill would be Free Traders.

Here a boy, who got surreptitiously into the class, asked this unauthorized question:

Q. But you say this country has prospered under almost unbroken Protection. Now, since everything tariff-like before the Dingley bill is either Free Trade or Free Tradish, why is not all our prosperity up to the passage of that owing to Free Trade?

A. A boy cannot be expected to understand the flexibility of our nomenclature or the grandeur of a great principle. We are struggling to help “American Industries.” Must so little a thing as mere consistency stand between us and our friends? Boys should be seen and not heard.

Q. What is meant by American Industries?

A. Mainly manufactures. Of course these, and all protected interests, represent only from 5 to 8 per cent. of the real and total industries of the country. But they are the ones having large capital and power—the ones that can hire attorneys and maintain a lobby, and that have abundant “fat for frying” when important elections are at hand. Doesn’t “American Industries” sound well, if you only mouth it right, and roll it from the editorial pen and the platform often enough?

Q. How about the industries that are left out, or get merely nominal Protection?

A. The question is quite irrelevant. What more can they ask than to live in a “protected” country and be saved from Free Trade?

Q. Why do we protect woolen goods, and then de-protect manufacturers by “protecting” wool?

A. For the same reason that the boy cuts off a shoestring on one end and ties the cut-off piece on the other end. It amuses the boy and very likely helps us to get rid sooner of a foreign shoestring.

Q. Mention the value of Protection to American shipping.

A. It doesn’t hurt it; for, by its aid and the help of our navigation laws, there is none to hurt. The way to have ships is first to make it impossible for us to build them, and then give enough subsidy to make it possible. Now you see the little joker and now you don’t. Didn’t President Harrison almost shed tears when he hauled up the American flag on a steamer rescued from a foreign register? It isn’t possible to have Protection and have everything, but isn’t it lovely to make things impossible at much expense and then make them possible at more expense, and at last call in a President and have a melodramatic time about it? Besides all this, it employs money and promotes labor.

Q. Does Protection make wages high and goods manufactured low?

A. That is what our philosophers maintain. Manufacturers are so anxious to exist here, and it is so necessary that we should have them, that they must pay high for their labor and sell its product low. To avoid paying but a little for labor, and to be prevented from selling their goods at high prices, they are even willing to maintain expensive lobbies at Washington and contribute large sums for electing Protectionists to Congress, to say nothing of “hypnotizing” doubtful or opposing senators.

Q. Can the first part of the above answer be really so?

A. It must be. A Protection journal had for its headlines on a Protection article the other day the statement that for many years Protection had done for manufacturers just this: It has made the wages they give high and the prices they get low, and so they would be splendidly off if it were not for the shadow of that wicked Wilson bill.

Q. Does prosperity then consist in enlarging your expenses and reducing your income?

A. It always does in Wonderland and Topsy-Turvydom, and under Protection.

Q. But do not “protected” manufacturers import laborers?

A. Manufacturers are held by us to be benevolent. Of course they import laborers, in order that there may be more here to get the benefit of our higher wages.

Q. How about invention under Protection?

A. It isn’t necessary. So long as you can run the old ramshackle machinery, and be defended by the Government, you are saved the trouble of inventing newer and better methods. Some way might possibly be found if Yankee wit were once to be let loose, whereby we could compete with other nations in our manufactures, so that everybody would admit it, and then what would become of Protection? Remember constantly it isn’t the welfare of the people that is paramount; it is Protection.

Q. Protection being so much more necessary than free government, free soil, free speech, and so cherubically philanthropic when compared with the dreadfulness of British Free Trade, the question arises, How shall we maintain its propaganda?

A. We must first of all be very careful to say that Free Trade is British. Of course Magna Charta, including trial by jury and many other good things, are British too, but we mustn’t lose so good a stock argument. It is true, also, that England has prospered far more under Free Trade than she ever did under Protection. But the glorious Blaine accounted for that by saying that Free Trade might be good for England, but it must never come here. In other words, two and two make five or six over there, but here they fail to make four.

Q. What next must we do?

A. As our country has been very prosperous from its commencement, and we have had more or less Protection within that period, the best way is to say that all this has happened “under Protection.” It has happened under other things, too, both good and evil, because it couldn’t happen over them. But never let us forget that it was all caused by Protection. The very slight fact that our country was most prosperous when we had very low revenue duties is purely accidental and irrelevant. In Mr. Blaine’s history of his career in Congress he described the period of our greatest prosperity. But there was no election in view then, and he was careless enough to say that this period coincided with what is called the period of the Free Trade tariff of 1846. It was a dreadful mistake, because the statement was altogether too true, and Protection has no use for that which is merely true.

Q. There are other arguments, are there not?

A. A very decisive one is to call Free Trade a theory. For it is a theory of the Creator, who seemed to favor the idea of commerce along with civilization. But He, of course, left something for men to find out. The Chinese found out in the twelfth century that a big wall around their country would keep off nations that were savage and hostile; but the Republican Party have gone the Chinese one better and have walled off trade. No doubt some college Free Trader will ask you ironically if it is really the man who walks on his feet who is the theorist and innovator, and if the one who walks on stilts, and who tries to get everyone else on stilts, and who thinks it is a mistake that people were not born already stilted—as nations should have been already walled—is not one. But levity like this is what a great cause must not notice.

Q. What more must be said?

A. We must take pains to compare the United States with some foreign country. As we have already shown that everything good that has occurred here is wholly owing to Protection, we must take some foreign country and charge all that is bad there, such as the costly armies, the despotic or kingly rule, the dense population, the illiteracy, etcetera, to Free Trade. There are no really Free Trade countries in Europe except England, and possibly Belgium. They are protective in part. But they are foreign, and that is sufficient for the argument. Only put the excess of our benefits over theirs to the benefit of Protection, and all will be right.

Q. What shall we say about cheapness and dearness?

A. Didn’t the Apostle Paul say we must be all things to all men? If we do seem to oppose somewhat the solidarity of humanity, we meet in our arguments a variety of mental difficulties. Our Apostle Harrison went for dearness by not wanting to find a cheap coat, for fear he should find a cheap man under it. Another Apostle thought “cheap and nasty go together.” At the final period of a Presidential election, however, it is better to say that Protection makes things cheap, and our editors almost always take that cue. To be sure, if cheapness were our intention, Protection could not be established, and we could not cry out against “cheap pauper labor.” The arguments must therefore be shuffled—and cheap and dear must sometimes be taken and at other times denied. The question is more or less of a crux, but it is the beauty of the noble doctrine of Protection that all trivialities of this sort it majestically sweeps away. Not being amenable to any of the laws of human reason, it is not disturbed by such trifles as truth and consistency.

Q. But can’t we say the foreigner pays the tax?

A. We certainly can and we do. But this argument needs very cautious handling. Sometimes duties are collected through the Post-Office, when the cat is let out of the bag and the duty comes directly to the man to whom the package is addressed. If he asks to have it charged to the foreign country his goods came from, even a Republican postmaster will sometimes laugh at him. Such perverse incidents as this are what Artemus Ward might call “in-fe-lick-et-us”—very.

Q. How was it when Congress removed the tax from sugar?

A. Well—sugar isn’t everything. It won’t do to be too one-sided. We could not resist telling the public then that we had removed a heavy burden from its shoulders. We really hated to tax the foreigners so much.

Q. What can be argued about the terms Protection and Free Trade?

A. Argument is superfluous here. The very word Protection is an assumption that meets all our requirements. It forecloses argument and shuts off dispute. Who doesn’t wish to be “protected”? And how charming it sounds to say we are protected from burglars, from enemies and from the horrors of trade—that is, trade with a foreigner. It must be always understood that if you could stand near the Canada or Mexico boundary and make a good bargain on the other side—say, the purchase of a horse for fifty dollars less than you could purchase him in your own country—you would inflict upon yourself and your country just so much loss. But if you buy the horse here at a price higher by fifty dollars, or over a tariff, with the fifty dollars added, you enrich both yourself and your country. On this doctrine, which is our fundamental one, we must and can stake everything, and against it the frothy waves of Free Trade will beat in vain.

Q. Why is not Free Trade also a felicitous term?

A. Things that are in themselves good, and that are made free and abundant, are, we must admit, generally to be approved. Abundant health or abundant friendship or abundant money we have not yet thought it wise to consider objectionable. But there are exceptions to all rules. Abundant trade—or Free Trade—which is trade done voluntarily by shrewd and sane men in order to procure abundant money, is different. To have it otherwise would upset our whole system of philosophy. What was this land of the free made for, if its main purpose were not to put shackles on trade? What we want is to eat our own cake and have it too; to sell everything we can to foreigners and buy nothing from them, and finally to get fat by stewing in our own juice.

The term Free Trade—to refer to the original question—is now so asphyxiated by us, by our contempt of it, that it suggests a Pandora’s box of horrors the moment we mention it. To speak of it in this contemptuous way is really one of our strong arguments. What we want is to scream it out as a horror, to make it a bugbear. It is like telling children of some dreadful bogy lying in wait for them in the dark, or like Dr. Johnson’s experiment with the fishwoman of Billingsgate, when he called her a hypothenuse, a triangle, a parallelopipedon, and several other mathematical things of which she had not the faintest knowledge and which she consequently supposed were very bad.

No, whatever else we do, let us stick to our insistent and persistent screech against Free Trade.