small ones than small ones do to large ones. Or are the protected interests really afraid to take their own prescription? We suspect they would be, and, in fact, could not be hired to take it.
But it is the impending truth—which will some day, and I think very soon, filter into the farmer's mind—that alone can save him. When he sees that he, and he most of all, is bled for others, and for their private gain, he will cease to believe in enforced phlebotomy. When he finds out that the word "protective," so far as he is concerned, is an abominable misnomer, and should be translated "destructive," there will be heard a voice from the farms that will give the system so long delusively described its deathblow. Years ago the farmer's boy, when he went to school, was taught that the business of the United States consisted of "agriculture, manufactures, and commerce." It has long since ceased to be an equal tri-division. Agriculture and commerce, as they once were, are things of the past. The one has been made unprofitable beyond description; the other is now impossible, except in a reduced way, under an alien flag. Ship-building is "protected" to death, and the American money that goes toward having it done abroad simply builds ships that, in case of a war, can be turned against our own shores and our depleted navy. But we have—as trophies of our absurd Chinese system—manufactures (none too flourishing, if the men engaged in them know) and a "protective" tariff.
The long endurance of the superstition on which "protection" is based has had two bulwarks the necessity for revenues extraordinary, and the power of money, contributed by directly interested parties. An economically administered government should break down the first, and the force of facts the second.
As we hold in derision now the discovery of the philosopher's stone and perpetual motion, so future generations will look upon this fetich of our time, and not without unspeakable amazement. They will see a generation here and now that is trying to lift itself over the fence by standing in a corn-basket and pulling upward on the handles. The wonder will not be so much that they tried, as it will be that for so long a time they supposed they were successfully performing this impossible feat.
