Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1909-04-17
AMERICAN TARIFF LAWS.
XXF-Protection Propaganda
BY FREDERIC J. HASKIN

have sufficient motive to put up the
money required for an out-of-season
campaign In behalf OF a low tariff. 1t
Is always hard enough for the low tariff
people to get money sufficient to carry
them through campaign, much less
to wage the war between elections.
Only a few times in the history of the
country has 1t been different.
The constant fight in favor of pro-
lection before the people was begun
about 1920. New York and Philadelphia
had societies pledged to the support of
home industries, and the test which
determined their attitude toward pol
itician was whether he would wear
American made clothes. Similar socie-
ties sprang UP In other states, and the
politician who opposed them had hard
sailing afterward. Even presidents of
the United States found 1t advisable, IL
not necessary, that they become MEM
bers. About this same time the petit
ton and memorial, to congress was
freely brought into requisition, and
that body might well have concluded
that the world was on fire for protec-
ton If they had judged by the number
of long papers presented whose breath
has long since been squeezed ,out of
them by their Incorporation In the big
volumes of the American state papers.
At one point a Philadelphia high tariff
society took Virginia low tariff Assoc
citation to task for advocating free
trade and the argumentative fur few
for many weeks.
Then, as now, the tariff was largely
a local issue, and when the southerner
had something to protect he labored for
protection as assduously as any other
man. The propagandists knew this full
well, and always sought to take advan-
tage of the situation. This sort of cru
SADIE did not suit the free trade advo-
Gates of that day, and many OF them
took the propagandists severely to task
for 1t. OF their work in 1920 one MEM
Der said: Their unfounded and ia
fiammatory statements have pervaded
every part of the Union. Each member
of the present congress has been de-
luged with enough stuff to fill two
large volumes"
The high tariff publicity campaign
which resulted in the passage of the
bill of denominations was the greatest
that had yet been undertaken. The
country was fairly deluged with protec-
| ton literature. Hezekiah Niles and
Matthew Carey had come to the stage
of action, and they trained their most
powerful guns on the free trader. Niles
had started his Register In Baltimore
years before. but 1t was coming into his
own. A man perfectly sincere in his
convictions, with no selfish interest in
termixed Herewith, he made the
american system" the passion of his
! life. He made Niles Register the recog
nized authority on all tariff matters,
and acquired an influence perhaps never
before or since enjoyed by any tariff
writer.
Matthew Carey went at It in diff
ferent way. He was the greatest
pamphleteer protection has ever had.
In one OF his later pamphlets he states
that he had written and published
| fifty-seven booklets on protection, ag-
gregating some 1895 pages, besides
many essays, circulars, memorials and
newspaper articles. He charged the
manufacturers whom he had helped by
his work with being ungrateful, and
when they refused to pay him $50 for
expenses incurred he published the let
tiers of gratitude they had written him
alongside of their answers to his re-
quests for compensation.
| From the days of Carey and Niles
down to the present time the output of
| literature in favor of protection has
never been allowed to fall off, The
manufacturers of the country con-
tribute literally to the propaganda, and
in addition to this use their own in
strumentalities to reach the public. At
the present time a leading manufac-
turer of automobiles is sending broad
| cast to the press a liberal supply of
| high tariff literature, and others are
following his example.
! When one looks over the list of publ
cations dealing directly and indirectly
with the tariff, as shown by the indices
of the library of congress, he Is as
| founded by their vast number They
range all the way up from a ten-page
pamphlet to 600-page book, and from
| that up to ten-volume set. Nearly all
of this literature Is controversial, and
most of it bears the mark of the par
tisan and the politician, rather than
that of the student and the historian.
| In all the vast array there are not over.
| half dozen books whose statements
are not more or less tinged by partisan
bias. The protection literature bears a
proportion of more than two to one as
compared with the free trade literature.
| The propaganda has justified its exist
| ence many times over to those respon-
sible for it. Representing as II does
the most incessant and complete mis-
lsionary effort ever made by any politl-
cal party in any country, 1t has also
yielded fruits beyond the richest dreams
of avarice. Whether the doctrine of
+, protection is right or wrong, 1t has
| been hammered so deeply into the
minds of the people that at the present
time it seems not to be a question of
protection or free trade, but of the
degree of protection. The propagan-
dists have taught the nation to forget
the old idea that protection should be
| temporary thing and to regard 1t as
permanent principle.
Copyright, 1909. by Frederic j. Haskin)