The result of continuous protection to any interest of the country may be exemplified by the application of it to something which comes directly home to us. Suppose that there are some gardeners on the upper part of Manhattan Island who appeal to the city authorities for protection against the gardeners of Long Island, New Jersey, &c., because their soil being not so fruitful as that of Long Island and New Jersey, they cannot afford to sell their vegetables as low as those can be sold which are produced outside. Thereupon a tax of twenty-five per cent. is levied by the city upon all foreign vegetables sold in the market. The result is, that all purchasers of vegetables in the city are forced to pay the additional cost merely to enable a few insignificant persons to pursue a calling which they would otherwise abandon for some other which they could pursue without protection. This, though a common illustration, exemplifies the operation of special protection in all its phases. It enables the few to pursue callings at the expense of the many without returning to that many any adequate benefit.
The trouble with our manufacturers is, that they want to get rich too fast. They are not willing to begin a new business in a way proportionate to their small means, and from this grow gradually into large producers as the manufacturers of other countries have done. They want to be able to employ labor and pay much larger prices than are paid to those laborers who toil in unprotected industries. Nor is the laborer any better off in the general result. The laboring classes of the country are not so well off under the present system of high prices as they were before the war, which indicates that the advance in wages has been more than counterbalanced by the increase in the prices of the laborers’ necessities. As a general proposition, it is true that low prices are more favorable to the laborer than high prices; and that, under a system of protection to special favored interests, those interests become rich at the expense of the laborer; or, in more general terms, the rich become richer and the poor poorer with each succeeding year.
Such is the general argument against protective duties; but it does not by any means follow that all protection should be immediately abandoned and Free Trade become at once and fully inaugurated. This would be as grossly unjust to all these interests which have been encouraged into existence by the present system, as that of protection was to the common industries. What should be done is this: Unrestricted commerce, which would allow of the natural demands of a country being supplied, without restrictions of any kind, should be laid down as the true principle, and a gradual approach from present protective measures to freedom be inaugurated. No immediate jump—nor even rapid advance that would produce misfortune to any branch of industry, should it be attempted—but an approach, running through a sufficient number of years to allow of the adjustment of industries, should be the course. Under such a system all the various industries of the country would gradually equalize, and the laborers and employers in each would approach an equal footing. The farmers of the rich Western prairies would no longer be able to complain of the discrimination of government in favor of the cotton, woolen and iron manufacturers of the sterile East. Whether this policy is immediately adopted by government or not, it certainly will be, when the rapidly increasing West shall become the dominant power in it. Better that steps looking to it should be at once adopted than that it come after awhile upon an unprepared country, which course has been so often erroneously pursued to the destruction, demoralization and discouragement of those classes of industries which require consideration in their youth from the strong arm of the government; to accord which is not only for the interests of the country, but which is also its duty to its acknowledged citizens; the error heretofore having been that the consideration thus extended has been at the expense of a part of the citizens of the country and not at the expense of the country as a whole.
Equality to all the citizens of the country can only be possible where there is no special discrimination on the part of government toward any, whether that discrimination is in the form of specific protective duties, unequal levies of taxes, or through devices of law; or, in other words, equality is an impossibility so long as special legislation is allowed either in our State or National councils.
PAPERS ON LABOR AND CAPITAL.
NO. XVII.
The great object of a republican form of government is to arrive at that condition wherein all the people constituting its citizens will stand upon a perfect equality in all things, which can be effected by government. A government cannot determine that each citizen shall have equal capacity to apply and make use of the rights, privileges and immunities which it guarantees to its people, but it can determine that each citizen shall have an equality of right to these benefits, the perfect attainment of which must rest with the citizen.
The question of Labor and Capital, as was said before, is included in the greater and more important question of a Common Equality, or an equality which is predicated upon the fact that all mankind are brethren. A republican form of government should find its fountain in this fact, and all its causes should be governed by its deductions. All the means of providing for the administration of the government, for its maintenance and for the correction of any existing abuses, should be formulated with this one greatest of all human possibilities ever in view. Thus formulated, its practices would ever tend to bring all the people into a comprehension of it, which comprehension is now scarcely existent except in meaningless words, which are dealt from pharisaical pulpits. In our last number the practice of protection to favored interests was considered, with reference to its general effect upon other unfavored industries; the unequal working of the system of levying duties does not stop with generalities; it extends and touches a still more vital point, and one which the people are more sensitive upon than almost any other. The laying of specific duties upon imported goods and wares is an indirect way of taxing that portion of the people who consume such imported goods and wares. It not only makes it possible for the protected interest to exist at the expense of other interests which consume, but by this operation the government obtains revenue which is an indirect tax gathered from those who are compelled to pay the advanced prices which the levying of duties implies. The amount obtained by such unequal and indirect methods of revenue for the last fiscal year was the enormous sum of $194,448,427, every dollar of which was in reality but an additional tax drawn from the individuals who purchased such imported merchandise. This manner of levying taxes would not matter so much as a system of taxation did it fall equally upon the taxable property of the country, upon which general taxes are levied, but nearly $100,000,000 of the above sum was collected upon woolens, cottons, sugar, molasses, coffee and tea, of all of which the poorest in common with the richest are almost equal consumers.
Laborers of the United States! How like you this manner of filching your hard-earned dollars, under the specious, fraudulent name of “protection to home industries.” It is no wonder that your hard-earned wages will scarcely supply your families’ necessities, when you are compelled to pay such a sum upon the most common staple articles of general consumption. It is no wonder you are continuously laborers, never being able to become producers upon your own account, when you, who should not, and, under general principles of taxation would not be called upon to pay a single dollar as a direct tax, are thus burdened.
Thus it will be seen that the levying of specific duties on imported goods is a most unequal and iniquitous manner of taxing the poor laboring classes of the country to support the government, which is administered to all intents and purposes in the interests of the rich, and under which the really poor become poorer every year.