for the same commodities in the other civilized countries of our grade; and that we believe that we have done a grand and noble thing by raising these prices, putting the whole level of life in this country on an artificial plane that much above the level of the world's market? In fact, if you should listen to a protectionist he would make you believe that this continent would not be habitable if it was not for the protective tariff that is here working this operation all the time on the American market.
I am of the opinion — I am not very confident about it — but it looks to me as if it were true that a protective tariff wears out in a little while — I mean, so far as its expected beneficial effect is concerned. Its effects are distributed, they are taken up and they are allowed for all around the market until the expected benefit to the protected people is lost and there remains nothing but the dead weight of the system itself as an interference with the industries. There is then a call for a new tariff in order to get another impulse or another fillip, as I have heard it called, to give things a new impulse, to start them on again.
That has been the history of our tariff now for one hundred years, that it has been restarted, reinvigorated from time to time in order to give a new impulse. Then in the very nature of the case, therefore, it seems to me that a new impulse is constantly required.
As I said at the outset, the tariff system seems to me to teach us to believe that a man needs a "pull" of some kind or other to make any industry a success. It is an idea that there must always be a provision of easy profit in connection with the industry that shall demand no labor or no expediture of capital to get it. That is the pure doctrine of graft. The tariff teaches us to look for a fee or a gratuity or a rake-off which will be a pure and net profit. People are told that tariff taxes are a rightful gift to the beneficiary. Those who do not get that gain seek another
