Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-09-22
ELIOT ON THE TARIFF.
He Says Protective Tariff Is Bad Bus.
 mess and Bad Ethics.


 ed in the United States since the civil war has done little good in the way of building up new industries, just as patents and other monopolies may, but 1t has done immeasurable harm to American industries and commerce and is likely to do more and more harm as time goes on. In the first place, 1t has postponed and obstruct- ed the effective entrance of American products into the markets of the world. Many American industries including the fundamental industry of agriculture, produce much more salable material than can possibly be sold in the United States, and all these industries must sell their sur plus products outside the United States at great disadvantage be- cause the products have paid high du- ties on the raw or partially manufac- tured materials which enter into them, on the implements or machin- cry which were used in producing them and on the structures which sheltered and distributed them. AS a country which produces in normal years much more grain, meat and cotton and many more manufactured goods than it can consume, it is the interest of the United States to de- velop for itself world markets under the most favorable conditions possi- ble. The tariff prevents or obstructs the attainment of those favorable conditions
 Secondly, the tariff wall and the refusal of American registry to for eign built vessels have together de- stroyed the American ocean carrying trade, once valuable American in- dustry. A nation which prohibits the importation of the natural exports of other nations or, what amounts to much the same thing, charges higher duties than other manufacturing na- tions charge on foreign raw or un- finished products, cannot maintain a profitable carrying trade with oth- CT nations. The ocean carrying trade will be possessed by the freest trad ing nation or nations. Subsidies alone can never restore the lost car rying trade. for where there is no steady, profitable exchange of pro- ducts across seas there can be no profitable ocean carrying trade. Tie national government might as we'll subsidize railroad trains between two parts of this country which had no exchangeable products.
 Again, the high tariff is the ac- cepted democratic way of conferring privileges by law on individual men or small classes of men. Sometimes the privileged men are really few in number. At other times the privilee- ed class may be fairly numerous and yet an insignificant proportion of the total population. Despotic and aris- tocratic governments have long prac- ticed the creation by law of privileg- ed or favored men of classes. The American democracy has abolished, or had nothing to do with, the an- eient privileges of nobles, court fa- vorites, sinecure holders and commer- cial adventurers by royal monopoly charter, but has been more than ready to create privileged manufac- turers by tariff legislation, in spite of the fact that equality before the law has been theoretically the very foun- dation of American government and society.
 The enactment of few indiyid- uals or of small class at the expense of the bully of the community and with no benefit 10 the state is, how ever, not the worst result of the pro- tective policy. The worst result is the legal violation by the republic it. self of fundamental equity, and this result is aggravated by the falsely altruistic arguments used in support of the tariff. The man who acts un- justly for reasons which seem to him benevolent or humanitarian is more dangerously poisoned than the man who is unjust for straight selfish req sons and admits to himself just what he Is doing and why. The fallacies of protection are all the worse be- cause they are covered with the nau- seous slime of a pretended altruism. In short the chief objection to pro- tective legislation is a moral one namely. that it diminishes the enter prise, self reliance and sense of jus tice of the population as a whole. That legislation is a serious mental and moral evil which has been for fifty years working injustice at