There were those at the time, and the present writer was one of them, who foresaw and foretold just what has actually happened, namely, that both allies in this scheme of popular plunder were going in to their own death as well as in to the impoverishment of their countrymen. How would any level-headed man, capable of seeing beyond the point of his nose, have prognosticated in the premises? Something like this: it takes many kinds of wools mixed, say six or eight, to make the best woollen cloths, and several kinds to make good cloths at all; the United States could only furnish two or three kinds, and these in quite limited quantities; the tariff-taxes would raise the price of the foreign wools by just so much, to the detriment of the manufacturers, who could no longer buy the foreign wools, needful for good cloths, and must consequently drop down to inferior cloths in their mills, using shoddy and cotton and what not: how will that affect the market for native wools, especially the fine Ohio and Vermont wools? Only as the manufacturers are prosperous in making good cloths that find a quick and wide market at home, can the growers find a good market for their wool; from these heavy taxes on their material and machinery and lumber and dye-stuffs and so on, the manufacture will surely droop, and employ itself on poor goods from cheap materials, and the market for native fleeces will droop in consequence, and the prices of home-wools will go down and down and down of necessity.
Precisely this has happened. The gold prices of wool were never before so low in this country as since the unholy alliance of 1867, and as a rule they have gone down lower and lower and lower. Why? Because the manufacturers could not, under the tax-laws of their country which they themselves had egged on, make the cloths demanding the native fine wools. Sheep-raising became unprofitable. Millions of fine-woolled sheep were slaughtered in a few years for their pelts and mutton in Ohio alone. The following official table from the Department of Agriculture exhibits the relative number of sheep in thirteen States of the Union, at the two epochs 22 years apart:—
| States. | Feb. 1867. | Feb. 1889. |
| Maine | 895,884 | 547,725 |
| Vermont | 1,335,980 | 365,770 |
| New York | 5,373,005 | 1,548,426 |
| Pennsylvania | 3,456,568 | 935,646 |
| Kentucky | 933,193 | 805,978 |
| Virginia | 700,666 | 435,846 |
| Missouri | 1,005,509 | 1,109,444 |
| Illinois | 2,764,072 | 773,468 |
| Indiana | 3,033,870 | 1,420,000 |
| Ohio | 7,159,177 | 4,065,556 |
| Michigan | 4,028,767 | 2,134,134 |
| Wisconsin | 1,664,388 | 793,146 |
| Iowa | 2,399,425 | 540,700 |
| 34,750,504 | 15,475,839 |
The effect of the tariff-taxes on wools, accordingly, even during a period when the population of the country increased 65 per centum, has been to diminish the number of sheep in the hands of the farmers by more than one-half. The wool clip in the entire country has indeed increased since 1867, but it has been in Texas and on the free ranges of the extreme boundaries of civilization in the West, where about one pound in three of the gross fleece is clean wool, and the most favorable estimate of the present clip would only suffice to clothe about one-half of the people of the country. Does this look like becoming "independent" of the rest of the world in the matter of woollen clothing for our great People? Will our folks never learn that there is nothing "dependent" in Buying and Selling, that the more any individual or nation Buys and Sells the more independent they become of course, and that the hermit in his poverty-stricken cell is the best image of Protectionism?
The extra barriers heaped up in 1867 against foreign woollens not only did not lessen their importation, but in connection with the discouragements thrown upon the domestic manufacture as just explained increased the importations; so that, in 1877, imports of woollen goods stood at $25,000,000; and in 1882 had increased to $42,000,000, the latter being an increase in one year, from 1881, of 34 per centum. The people must be clothed at some rate, and many people will have good cloth at any cost; and the whole result of this imbecile policy of Prohibitions on wool and woollens has been demonstrated right before our eyes, (1) to kill off the sheep, (2) to compel the manufacture of poor goods, (3) to multiply foreign woollens in domestic use, and (4) to double in general the cost of clothing the American People. It is difficult to say whether the grangers as a class, or the manufacturers as a class, or the consumers of woollens, are more put out by this state of things. They are all in the slough together, and have only themselves to thank for their condition. And it is growing worse and worse. As a mere and small example, less than one-half the amount of woollen machinery is now in operation in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, that was running here 15 years ago; and three-fourths of all the woollen manufacturers doing business in the County have failed in the 20 years just now past. In one word, it is no compensation to one industry for artificial burdens piled upon it, to pile corresponding burdens upon other industries affiliated with it. All legitimate industries everywhere are intimately affiliated with each other.
Fallacy G: that because some kinds of prosperity sometimes accompany and follow after Protectionism, therefore they are caused by it. This is at once the commonest and the hollowest of the forms of false argumentation employed in this country to bolster up a monstrously unjust Privilege. The rapid growth of Chicago, for example, in the ten years following the first imposition of the Morrill tariff-taxes, was often referred to, as if the Taxes caused the Growth. Admitting for argument's sake, what would be the height of folly to admit in reality, that these Taxes were among the causes of that Growth, how absurd to refer to one antecedent the result of one hundred or one thousand antecedents! So of the growth of national population in the twenty years following the Wool and Woollens Tariff of 1867: population increased about 65 per centum in that interval: tariff-taxes on most of the necessaries of life increased in the same interval just about in the same proportion: was there any tie of Cause and Effect as between the rise of taxes and the rising tide of population? Any tendency in the one to bring the other? Because one thing follows another in point of time, is that any proof that the second is the result of the other in point of cause?
In the old classification of Logical Fallacies this particular one was called by the Romans "post hoc ergo propter hoc," that is, after something therefore on account of that thing. The thoughts and the speech of civilized men have always been full of some form of this incongruity of inference; but it is the stock in trade, the staple and body of protectionist argumentation. But it is utterly devoid of any significance whatever. Unless some natural tie of connection can be shown, as between precedent and consequent, unless it can be probably shown that nothing but the precedent could cause the consequent, unless taxes are adapted in their very nature to increase riches, unless repeated subtractions can be shown to be the same thing as multiplied additions, then all this sickening talk of cheapening prices and intensified activities and diffused popular blessings under an odious scheme of subtle taxes that only take and can never give, is to be treated with a silent and pitying contempt, whether used by the duped or the duping. A good instance of this empty form of reasoning,—much better because more uniform than any one ever sought to be applied in the realm of Trade,—would be this: the Day has uniformly followed after the Night ever since the dawn of Time, and therefore the Night is the cause of the Day!
It has been indeed hard work to destroy the commerce utterly of a great People by legal restraints however multiplied and by mountain-barriers however piled up, and some prosperity has pushed itself into prominence after all these and in spite of all these. Behold! cry the logical protectionists, behold in such prosperity the effects of our beautiful legislation! Immeasurable areas of fertile land to be had by all Immigrants for the asking; endless deposits on every hand of coal and of all the useful and precious metals; primeval forests and streams leaping with power from their mountain springs to mill-wheel and intervale; commodious land-locked ocean harbors on every side but one, and vast chains of inland "unsalted seas"; a salubrious climate, and an ingenious, well-trained people; self-organized and liberal governments, guaranteeing all rational liberties to the people—but one; all these antecedents and accompaniments go, as it were, for nothing in the minds and on the tongues of some of our citizens, as causes of accruing prosperity, in comparison with (as a cause) the commercial bondage at the one point possible under our liberal and blessed institutions.
These are seven of the fundamental Falsities of Protectionism. They might easily be made seven times seven, and even seventy times seven. But not one of them is to be forgiven. They are unpardonable sins against Science and Liberty and Progress. Any radical and comprehensive Falsehood, like Protectionism, practically contradicts the Truth at innumerable points. The test of any proposed truth is its harmony with other and acknowledged truths: the test of any suspected error is its contradiction to such truths. Enough has now been said to settle the place of any pretended right of a part of the people commercially to enslave the other part, and ultimately themselves also.
It only remains in this chapter, in the fourth place, to indicate briefly at a few points the course of Opinions in relation to commercial Restrictions and Prohibitions in general, such as exist at present in their most exaggerated forms within the United States, on the part of those best entitled by study and intellect and opportunity to form and formulate a candid judgment in such matters.