fabric, he may do the same. The telephone is a new industry. What measures the gain of it? Is it the "employment" of certain persons in and about telephone offices? The gain is in the satisfaction of the need of communication between people at less cost of time and labor. It is useless to multiply instances. It can be seen what it is to "create an industry." It takes brains and energy to do it. How can taxes do it?
38. Suppose that we create an industry even in this sense — What is the gain of it? The people of Connecticut are now earning their living by employing their labor and capital in certain parts of the industrial organization. They have changed their "industries" a great many times. If it should be found that they had a new and better chance hitherto undeveloped, they might all go into it. To do that they must abandon what they are now doing. They would not change unless gains to be made in the new industry were greater. Hence the gain is the difference only between the profits of the old and the profits of the new. The protectionists, however, when they talk about "creating an industry," seem to suppose that the total profit of the industry (and some of them seem to think that the total expenditure of capital) measures their good work. In any case, then, even of a true and legitimate increase of industrial power and opportunity, the only gain would be a margin. But, by our definition, "a protective duty has for its object to effect the diversion of a part of the capital and labor of the people out of the channels in which it would otherwise run." Plainly this device involves coercion. People would need no coercion to go into a new industry which had a natural origin in new industrial power or opportunity. No coercion is necessary to make men buy dollars at ninety-eight cents apiece. The case for coercion is when it is desired to make them buy dollars at one hundred and one cents apiece. Here the statesman with his
