it would be expedient to establish or stimulate the manufacture of certain commodities, no one under a free government would venture openly to justify such, action, except on the ground that public welfare would be thereby promoted, although practically such justification in the United States has long since ceased to be other than a pretense and a cover for the promotion of private interests. Suppose, for example, that the manufacture of the commodity which it is proposed to stimulate is tin plate, and it is decided that the desired result can be best attained by giving the domestic manufacturer the difference between what his product will sell for in a free market and what he can make it for say—fifteen million dollars per annum—it would seem to be only simple justice that the state should fairly and honestly pay the sum representing this difference, and raise the money,[1] not by a tax on the consumers of the product artificially maintained, who are no more interested in the matter than all other citizens, but by a levy upon the community at large, in the same equitable manner as it raises money to defray its other expenses. In short, if any industry can not live without state aid, and it is for the public welfare that it should live, let the state directly subsidize it, and not maintain it by allowing private interest arbitrarily to exercise the great sovereign power of taxation[2]
- ↑ A written public statement made by a Senator of the United States (George F. Hoar), in 1892, that an assertion by the National Democratic party of the United States in its presidential platform of that year that "the Federal Government has no constitutional power to enforce and collect tariff duties except for the purpose of revenue only," was equivalent to an unveiling of an opinion that "the American people alone, of all civilized nations, have no power to do anything for the encouragement of their own industries," displayed an amount of ignorance and misconception of the powers and objects of the Government he served which, to say the least, was discreditable to its author.
- ↑ "Granting that it is expedient for the Government to spend money in the maintenance or the promotion of the iron manufacture, for example, it must be expedient also that the public should know the exact amount which it costs annually, just as it is expedient that the public should know exactly how much the army and navy costs, or how much the annual improvement of rivers and harbors costs. No view, however broad, of the province of government can furnish an excuse for concealing the expense of any great national undertaking. . . . But there is no trace of this expenditure in the national accounts. . . . Next, it must be said that any fund of large amount, raised and distributed in this way, must of necessity prove a corruption fund. By this I do not mean a fund distributed in bribes to individuals or organizations, but a fund the existence of which must be constantly present to the mind of the lazy, the improvident, or incompetent, as something to fall back on if the worst come to the worst. Suppose the national appropriations for the purpose of protecting manufacturing industry were made in the ordinary way by a distinct vote of Congress; were made, for instance, as the appropriations for the promotion of the carrying trade—the steamship subsidies, as they are called—are made in the shape of an annual maximum sum. Suppose this sum were paid over to the corporations or individuals engaged in each manufacture on their giving proof that they were carrying on a bona-fide business. Suppose that to each were given as much as would meet the loss, as shown by his books, incurred by him in competing with foreigners in the home markets. . . . The
