22 THE FORGOTTEN MAN AND OTHER ESSAYS
lected at the port of entry. Under this device the government says: "I do not want the revenue, but I will lay the tax so that you, the selected and favored producer, may collect it." "I do not need to tax the consumer for myself, but I will hold him for you while you tax him."
(F) "A Protective Duty is not a Tax."
15. There are some who say that "a tariff is not a tax," or as one of them said before a Congressional Committee: "We do not like to call it so!" That certainly is the most humorous of all the funny things in the tariff controversy. If a tariff is not a tax, what is it? In what category does it belong? No protectionist has ever yet told. They seem to think of it as a thing by itself, a Power, a Force, a sort of Mumbo Jumbo whose special function it is to produce national prosperity. They do not appear to have analyzed it, or given themselves an account of it, sufficiently to know what kind of a thing it is or how it acts. Any one who says that it is not a tax must suppose that it costs nothing, that it produces an effect without an expenditure of energy. They do seem to think that if Congress will say: "Let a tax of ——— per cent be laid on article A," and if none is imported, and therefore no tax is paid at the custom house, national industry will be benefited and wealth secured, and that there will be no cost or outgo. If that is so, then the tariff is magic. We have found the philosopher's stone. Our congressmen wave a magic wand over the country and say: "Not otherwise provided for, one hundred and fifty per cent," and, presto! there we have wealth. Again they say: "Fifty cents a yard and fifty per cent "ad valorem"; and there we have prosperity! If we should build a wall along the coast to keep foreigners and their goods out, it would cost something. If we maintained a navy to blockade our own coast for the same
