Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1912-12-03
4 yCANNY SCOTS VIEW
OF THE TARIFF GHOST


need protection, t0hich is an everlasting mistake
and needed only for infant industries. When
started ia the steel business did not make
pound of steel; nol0 zoe make more than all the
s0OrId combined. Food should neUer be tdred
Don't ,oorTy about the tariff. 1t roiH take care
of itself"
These are not the words of free-trader a polit-
ica theorist nor of Democrat. They are the we'll
weighed words of a canny levelheaded man of af
fairs, great Captain of Industry Carnegie
Whether Mr.. Carnegie has more discernment or sim
ply more candor than many Of his peers in wealth.
he has certainly hit of truth which forcing itself
into almost universal acceptance The time was
and not very long ago. when the protective tariff
was held up a fetish on which the country's bust
ness fortunes depended absolutely. The very /sug
gestion that certain schedules be revised downward
would send shivers through of gentlemen here
and there and large portion of the general public
would feel responsive chill of apprehension. The
remarkable fact is that these good people, many of
them at least sincerely believed that the nations
welfare required just such a tariff system had
developed under Republican rule and that effort
to -readjust that system to conditions and
needs would prove disastrous
The fact that a man of Mr. Carnegie's insight
and Affiliations comes out patty and says that PRO
lection" is needed only for infant industries that in
divers instances it is everlasting mistake and
from such a source shows how far the country's
mon thought has progressed from old prejudicesl
NThe present day pleas for continuance of high
tariff survivals of a time apd of circumstances
Nthat vanished more than a century ago. Gentlemen
talk as if all the clocks OF the world had stood still
for a hundred years, as if the United States we're
still a struggling urchin, if manufacturers
we're weaklings that must be coddled and care
fully fed from the spoon of paternal government
ipfor
have grown up into giants and that plan of pro
lection which originally perhaps made for common
prosperity has now become means of common OPP
preston.
The truth is what was protection" in the outset
has at length become patronage patronage to few
particular interests at the expense of general bust
growth and of the people in their rank and file
Against what does the Republican tariff protect the
great trusts that sell their products cheaply n
European markets than at home? Does business
that can successfully compete With it's rivals all
the earth need to be pampered and fonded by the
government of its own land? Does the combination
that holds monopoly of certain necessares of life
need to be buttresse by federal tax laid upon mil
lions of consumers?
The only for high protective tariff as
Mr. Carnegie frankly declares, lies in conditions
which for the part have ceased to exist in
United States. Taken as a whole. the tariff has
and has developed into barrier to industrial
expansion as we'll a burden upon the majority
of people Even among those interests it is de-
signed to help it fosters regime of inefciency and
breeds spirit of childish dependence that is ener
waiting and altogether unwholesome
Y What does Democracy purpose to do with this
system that has been built up for the partisan bene-
fit of, liberal contributors to Republican campaign
funds? Certainly, there is thought of smashing
it at reckless blow; for, plan that has evolved
through long decades and that has interlaced itself
with the country's whole business fabric cannot be
safely torn asunder at one session of Congress or
in the course of administration
Nor is there any serious thought Of putting
American trade upon absolutely free basis Were
it practicable, it would be splendid thing for the
ports of this nation be open the trade of all the
world but long the expenses of the federal gov
eminent borne through indirect taxation there
must be duties collected at the ports
The task confronting the Democratic Congress
is therefore, not of establishing free trade or
even of putting the tariff exclusively upon basis of
revenue only 1t is the businessike task of readjust
ing the system that operates for the patronage