difficult as it would be for one to realize it who took up for the first time the present tariffs of the united states, they rest on a formula which as it always has been understood by the majority of the people of the country is not especially intricate or confusing. put yourself back a hundred years or so, when the country was busy with agriculture and commerce and mining. we had an enormous advantage in these pursuits. we were at a disadvantage in manufacturing. to be sure, from the start we did a little. in the nature of things we would gradually do more, and what we did would be on a solid basis. but, obviously, only the born iron-master, potter, weaver, was going to practise his trade in the new country with the foreigner importing goods cheaper than he as a rule could make them. and so we decided to encourage manufacturing by taxing ourselves.

the amount of the tax decided on was to be only enough to put our would-be manufacturers on an even basis with the foreigner. this meant what? by general consent, it meant giving our people enough to cover the difference in the cost of labor. plainly, americans were not going to work for the same wages that europeans did. there were too many ways in which they could earn more. the country was new, and men could have land of their own on easy terms. commerce called them; for, having land, we were raising foods, and europe and the orient, worn and old and privilege-ridden, 332were crying for food. they could make everything we wanted, cheap as dirt. they were eager to exchange. if we were to do our own manufacturing, we were obliged to devise a scheme which would make the wages of operatives approximately equal to those which could be earned in our natural occupations. thus protection was not adopted for the sake of producing generous wages for labor. it was adopted because the rewards to labor in the new country were already generous and promised to be more so.

there is another equally important point to remember, and that is that it was expressly understood that the duty was never to be prohibitive. it was to be one that would permit the man at home to compete with the man from abroad; no more. sensible people have always agreed that we would injure ourselves if we allowed prohibitive duties, since they would cut us off from the stimulus of competition and also from models.

the old countries had been for centuries making the goods we wanted. they knew how to do it. we needed constantly before us in our markets the educational effect of their work.

there were few, if any, at the start to deny that this taxing of ourselves to establish industries was dangerous business, undemocratic, of course—probably unconstitutional—and an obvious bait to the greedy; but they comforted themselves with the gains which they believed would speedily result. the list was tempting:

1. we were to build up industries which would supply our own needs.

2. the laborers attracted into these industries were to make a larger home market.

3. we were soon to out-rival the foreigner in cost of production, giving the people in return for the tax they had borne cheaper goods than ever the old world could give.

3334. we were to outstrip the old world in quality and variety—another reward for taxation patiently borne.

5. we were to over-produce and with our surplus enter the markets of the world.

nobody pretended to deny that if it was found on fair experiment that these results were impossible in a particular industry the protection must be withdrawn. otherwise it amounted to supporting an industry at public expense—an unbusinesslike, unfair, and certainly undemocratic performance.

but what has happened when the formula has not worked? take the failure after decades of costly experiments to grow all the wool we use, to make woollens of as high a quality and at a price equal to those of the english. fully sixty per cent of the raw wool used in the united states is brought from other lands, and a tax of 11 or 12 cents is collected on every pound of it. our high grade woollens cost on an average twice what they do in europe. the fact is, the protective dogma has not, and probably never can, make good in wools and woollens. it is one of those cases where we can use land, time, labor, and money to better advantage. the doctrine of protection as well as common humanity and common-sense orders the gradual but steady wiping out of all duties on everything necessary to the health and comfort of the people unless in a reasonable time these duties can supply us better and cheaper goods than we can buy in the world market. that time was passed at least twenty years ago in wool, but schedule k still stands. it is supported by an interpretation of the formula of protection, which, as one picks it out to-day, from the explanations and practices of the wool-growers and wool manufacturers, is only a battered wreck of its old self. it ignores utterly the time limit, the “reasonable” period in which an industry was to make good. it ignores the condition 334that the duty should not destroy fair competition. moreover, it stretches the function of the duty from that of temporarily protecting the cost of production to one of permanently insuring profits. the chief appeal of those who employ this distorted notion is not to reason at all, but to sympathy—sympathy for the american working-man. call their attention to the inequalities of the duties on raw wool, and they will tell you of the difference in the labor cost of dress goods here and in england. tell them the quality of our goods is deteriorating, and they will draw you a picture of the blessings of the american working-man. tell them that the wool schedule has taken blankets and woollen garments from the sufferers from tuberculosis, who certainly need them, and they will tell you that “the american people are better clothed than any other people in the world and their clothes are better made.” the chief capital of the stand-pat protectionist is some variation of this appeal. the hearings preparatory to the payne-aldrich bill were stuffed with them, and they were used in reply to every conceivable argument. for instance, the head of what is called the “file trust” was on the stand. it had been shown that the gentleman was selling files abroad much cheaper than at home, that he had a practically prohibitive duty, one which had reduced imports to about one per cent of the file consumption in the united states. it was also certain from his testimony that his laborers could not be getting a very large share of the duty. “do you not think,” the chairman asked him, “that if the tariff is laid in the name of labor, labor ought to get the tariff?” here is the answer he received:

“if you will pardon me for expressing one little thought, i will say that i walked down this morning from the willard, and saw a pair of horses, a beautiful cart all equipped with fruit, vegetables, and one thing and another. i can close my eyes and 335see that condition over on the continent of europe, with barefooted women in rags, with a few newfoundland dogs, or some other kind of dogs, hitched up with a string harness to the cart, and a few vegetables, that they are pulling around.”

there is no reason to doubt that the gentleman saw on pennsylvania avenue the prosperous cart he described. there is no doubt he might have found on the continent of europe his “barefooted woman in rags.” but if he had crossed over to the washington market, he would have found on its outskirts numbers of men and women, some of them white-haired, who have brought in that morning from great distances out of washington on their backs or behind tottering mules, pitiful handfuls of field flowers, wild roots, and perhaps a bunch or two of garden stuff, quite as pathetic a spectacle as the pathetic one with which he was trying to befuddle the ways and means committee. all over europe he will find as prosperous vegetable carts as those he saw in washington—all over the united states on the outskirts of the cities he will find, if he will look, women picking up coal and bits of wood along the tracks of railroads and in the yards of factories, and see them carrying their pickings home on their backs. the gentleman indeed will rarely enter or leave an american city on a railroad that he will not see something of this kind.

any one who has observed the life of the working-man on both sides of the atlantic knows that wages, conditions, opportunities, are vastly superior as a whole in the united states. it is a new world, with a new world’s hopes. but it is only the blind and deaf who do not realize that the same forces of allied greed and privilege which have made life so hard for so many in the old world are at work, seeking to repeat here what they have done there. the favorite device of those who are engaged in this attempt is picturing the 336contrast between the most favored labor of the united states, and the least favored of europe. it is a device which “pig iron” kelley used throughout his career with utter disregard of facts. mr. mckinley followed him. in the course of his defence of the tin plate duty he read, with that incredible satisfaction which the prohibitive protectionist takes in the thought that his policy may cripple the industry of another nation, an english view of the effect the proposed duty would have in wales. “the great obstacle to tin plate making on a large scale in the states,” said the article, “is the entire absence of cheap female labor.” mr. mckinley paused and said impressively, “we do not have cheap female labor here under the protective system, i thank god for that.” and yet at that moment in the textile mills of new england, of new york, and of pennsylvania, not only were thousands of women working ten, eleven, and more hours a day, because their labor was cheap, but thousands of children under twelve years of age were doing the same.

the “american working-man” has long been the final argument in every tariff defence, the last word which routed both statistics and common-sense. this was mr. aldrich’s clincher when he worked so hard in 1909 to continue or to increase the duties of the dingley bill. “protective duties are levied for the benefit of giving employment to the industries of americans, to our people in the united states and not to foreigners,” he said, and reiterated in a variety of ways. but take mr. aldrich’s own tariff-made state and examine in detail the experiences of its laborers. rhode island is one of the most perfect object lessons in the effects of high tariffs in this or any land. an object-lesson should not be overlarge. it should be something you can see, can walk over if you will. rhode island satisfies this condition perfectly. in the matter of the protective tariff rhode island is the more useful 337as an object-lesson because she was a well-developed state when the system was applied to her. she had at the beginning of the nineteenth century flourishing farms and some 40,000 sheep. she was exporting annually between two and three millions of agricultural products. she was building many ships, and from her fine ports carrying on a varied and lively trade with other lands. she was well advanced for the time in manufacturing. long before the revolution, rhode island’s iron foundries turned out cannon and firearms, anchors and bells and all sorts of small wares. when the cotton factory came—and she had the first in the country, the slater factory of pawtucket, she was able to make her own cotton machinery. in the manufacture of woollen cloth, she took a prominent place from the start.

it was then to an all-around development that our policy of high protection was applied in this particular state. under its stimulus her manufactories have multiplied and enlarged in a truly magnificent fashion. the story of this development cannot be told here, but like all stories of rapid growth it excites and dazzles. the results are sufficient for the present purpose. in 1909 the manufacturing plants of rhode island turned out goods worth $279,438,000—about $375 for each man, woman, and child in the state. but while she has been making things to sell at this prodigious rate, she has ceased entirely to build ships and send men to sea to trade. that is, while high duties were stimulating mightily the making of all that went into ships, they were making the ships so costly to buy that nobody could afford them. rhode island had her factories, and part of the price paid was her ships—her ships and her farms, for her farms steadily and surely went to pieces. to-day she has not over 4000 sheep, one-tenth of what she raised fifty years ago. between 1880 and 1900 the improved land decreased by 17 per cent. she 338is practically dependent on the world outside for food. she buys her apples on the pacific coast, her flour in the mississippi valley, and her meat from the beef trust.

but what has the tariff to do with the neglect of the rhode island farm? everything. a farm is a family affair as no other industry is. it yields its best only when it passes down from generation to generation. tenants, however faithful, are not sufficient. it demands its own, and in rhode island its own has deserted the farm for the factory. quick fortunes seemed to lie that way. it seemed to demand neither the patience nor the drudgery; it was ready money at least, and the young men and women left the farms to the old people, and the old people died. those who followed them were but dregs of the old communities—the shiftless, the weak, the ignorant, and the unambitious. the farm yearly dropped back and it lies to-day a forlorn and unkempt relic of its old self.

all rhode island then flocked to manufacturing, until to-day the one thing in the state which sticks out above everything else is the factory. it is the factory in which capital is invested and from which dividends are drawn. it is the factory which employs the population. it has been estimated that three-fourths of the people are dependent upon the textile mills alone. the great body of breadwinners in rhode island not directly connected with the textile trades is busy administering to the wants of the textile workers. further, that portion of the population which does not belong to these industries is dependent upon other highly protected industries: on rubber, with its duty of 35 per cent, on machinery (45 per cent), on cheap jewellery (87 per cent), on silver and gold wares (60 per cent). that is, rhode island to-day is a tariff-made state, and as such should offer us ample material for an easy analysis of what the american system of protection, given full encouragement, does for a community.

339as we have seen, it concentrates effort on one line, putting an end to agriculture and commerce. but this may not be a bad thing. if a state grows richer by specialization, is it not wiser to specialize? that of course depends upon how generally the fruits of the process are distributed, how greatly the condition of the mass is elevated, how much its happiness and health are improved. in a tariff-made state as in another the success of the system depends upon what the people at large are getting out of it; that is, what does it do for the american working-man? the first feature of the textile industry in rhode island which strikes even a casual observer is that the operatives are not americans; they are distinctly foreigners—new-come foreigners. less than 16 per cent of them, as a matter of fact, are born of what the industrial authority of the state calls “united states fathers,” the other 85 per cent are in percentages decreasing in order of their naming here: french canadians, irish, english, italians, germans, scotch, portuguese, poles, and russians, besides a considerable number classed under “other countries.” we have the surprising fact then that, as far as the benefits of the textile tariffs are concerned in rhode island, if the laborer gets them, it is a foreign laborer.

a second surprise awaits the student of these rhode island laborers blessed by protection. they are an unstable quantity. they must be constantly replaced. the “benefits” do not hold them. the success of the overseer in the textile factory has come to be judged largely by his ability to “hold labor.” one of the interesting proofs of the restlessness of the operatives is the small percentage of people in the state who own their own homes. a recent careful investigation into the housing conditions of the state shows that farm-houses aside, 75 per cent of rhode island’s population live in rented houses. that is, in one of the first settled states of 340the union, one of the most advantageously situated, one offering the best opportunities for diversified occupations, one of the richest in its per capita product and bank deposits, only a fourth of the people live in houses which they own.

but why should the laborers in an industry which the people of the united states pay so handsomely to support be restless? why in these seventy years and more of continued and constantly increasing protection have they not become a stable, settled, home-owning body of american workmen? surely that is what we have been taught to believe the tariff would do. the answer to a question of this nature is always complicated. nevertheless, in this case it is answered fairly well by a review of the conditions under which the textile operative works, the wages he receives, and the money he must expend to live.

under the most perfect conditions yet devised the making of cotton and woollen cloth is hard and wearing labor. under the conditions too general in rhode island it is exhausting and dangerous. the very atmosphere in which the work goes on is against the operative. the temperature throughout the factory runs high—80°, 90°, 100°, even, is not unusual. the work does not require this; the factory laws of england forbid the excessive temperature in which much of rhode island’s spinning and weaving is done. worse than the high temperature is the degree of humidity which prevails. without a certain moisture in the air the “work does not go well.” the result is a good deal of the time an atmosphere as oppressive as that which washington and philadelphia suffer in summer time. the ventilation in most of the factories is insufficient, and as any draft is bad for the work the windows are usually closed from end to end of the great barracks. a half hour in the atmosphere of a factory is sufficient to throw one unaccustomed to it into a steaming 341perspiration. the operative usually ends the day’s work in wet clothes.

then there is the cotton lint, or “fly,” as it is called, which literally fills the air. it is no unusual thing to find the air around the factory for a hundred or more feet literally alive with cotton shreds. there are contrivances for carrying off a certain amount of this dust, but there are few rhode island factories which have installed them, and there is no one in which, so far as i know, any energetic and scientific efforts are making to solve the terrible problem. for terrible it is. breathe a cotton-saturated air, a damp, hot air at that, for ten hours a day and consider the condition in which lungs and throat will be.

now these are conditions natural to the making of cotton and woollen cloths, conditions which can never be entirely corrected. they are hard and wearing, but they become dangerous in the extreme when combined with certain other conditions not incident to the industry, due entirely to the ignorance or the greed or the indifference of factory owners.

it is hard to believe that men who ask other men and women and children to labor ten hours a day in a dripping heat and an atmosphere alive with cotton and wool particles will be slow to furnish them abundant supplies of pure flowing drinking water; but a bucket or barrel filled from some outside source is frequently all that is furnished a floor of workers.

it is difficult to believe that factory owners would not be eager to see that these workers of theirs were furnished with comfortably heated toilet rooms, with every sanitary appliance; but all up and down the pawtucket river one finds factories with toilets that cannot by any stretch of words be called respectable.

when the day’s work is done the textile operative rarely 342has a comfortable cloak or dressing room in which to prepare for the street. if it were merely the matter of putting on a hat and coat, this would not be serious. but part at least of the clothes ought to be changed before going out. the heat, moisture, and dust under which he has worked for ten hours make it unsafe to go suddenly into the open air without dry garments. in cold weather a chill or shock is almost inevitable. but it is rare that the factory provides a dressing room. the result is that bronchitis and pneumonia are always attacking textile operatives, weakening lungs and throat and fitting the system for the white plague, which hangs like a perpetual shadow over a textile community.

now for fifty-eight hours of labor a week under these conditions what do they earn? how well equipped are their pockets to fight the exhaustion, the threatening diseases which are incident to their labor? to avoid exaggeration accept the figures for 1907, one of the occasional boom years which cotton and woollen manufacturers have enjoyed in this country. the average weekly earnings for 58 hours in cotton factories in that year were: for the carding room $7.80, for mule spinners $12.92, for speeders $10.62, for weavers $10.38. in the woollen industry the picker received $8.00, the woman spinner $7.25, the man spinner $12.91, the weavers $15.34.

if a man could make these wages for fifty-two weeks a year throughout his working life, if he had a thrifty wife and healthy children, his lot, if not altogether rosy, would be far from hopeless; he might even be able to realize the dream of a little home and garden of his own which lurks in the mind of every normal man, and which in the case of the textile operative is almost imperative if he is to have a decent and independent old age. for this man, however husky he may be at the start, however skilful a laborer, has always a short working life. there are few old men and women in textile 343factories. by 55 they are unfit for the labor. the terrible strain on brain and nerve and muscle has so destroyed the agility and power of attention necessary that they must give up the factory, where, indeed, for several years their output has probably been gradually decreasing. as almost all textile operatives are paid by the piece the wage will gradually fall off as dexterity declines. by 55, then, if not earlier, he drops out, picking up thereafter any odd job he may.

it is this short working life of the father, with the declining wage for years before it actually ends, that makes child labor an essential factor in the solving of the problem of the textile family. without the help of the child the father cannot support the family and lay aside enough to insure his own and his wife’s future. his wage, and the wear and tear he suffers, make it impossible. the child must help.

if the children prove healthy, if they “turn out well,” if work is continuous, the little home may be secured and the modest little dream may come true. but suppose that a weaver, rushing into the cold air at the end of his ten-hour day, is chilled and has pneumonia—it happens often enough. suppose an uncovered gear or belt catches him in an incautious moment and crushes a limb or takes his scalp, or a carelessly handled machine nips off a finger—it happens all the time. carelessness? more often it is that the limit of human endurance has been passed. fatigue has ceased to be normal and has become abnormal—his mind is dulled—his nerve deadened—his muscles do not respond. the wonder is that in the shrieking, devilish uproar of the factory, a tired man can keep up his habit of caution as steadily as most of them do. suppose that, standing through the hot summer in the poisoned air of a dry closet, he falls ill of a fever. or, if he escapes all these things, suppose that the factory goes on short time—thousands of operatives all over new england have 344had their weekly wages cut in half in the last three years by short time. or, suppose that, which has happened repeatedly in rhode island, he is obliged by some intolerable condition to strike and have no wage—what happens then? that happens which is more disastrous to the family than even child labor—the wife must go into the factory. so narrow is the margin in the best of times that an illness, a shut down, disturbs the budget so that only the combined exertion of all the members of the family can save it. the mothers go into the factory, and the homes gradually go to pieces. after her ten hours at spindle or loom the woman hurries to a cold, unkempt house, which she must make comfortable and cheerful if it is to be so. is it strange that the homes of the factory mothers are generally untidy, the food poor, the children neglected? how can it be otherwise? her limit of endurance, of ambition, of joy, even of desire of life, has been passed. more appalling, she sees her ability to work falling off. almost universally, women who have worked ten years in a factory have the patent-medicine habit—they are “so tired” they “take something.” is it surprising that a few of them finally discover that they can get from beer or whiskey the same temporary strength at less cost? the surprise is not that many drink, but that more do not.

now the hope of this factory mother lies in her child, since she, like her husband, is bound to wear out at a comparatively early age. and what chance has she to bear a healthy child? they give you heartbreaking figures of infant mortality in rhode island, and everywhere one goes what one sees and hears confirms their truthfulness. the district nurses talk to you of “bottle babies,” the factory mother being, as a rule, so poorly nourished and so overworked that she cannot nurse her child. moreover, she cannot care for it. she must return as soon as possible to the factory. the doctor’s bill 345is heavy. “he” is having a hard time, the mill is running short. the baby is left to an older child if there be one, or, if there is none, it perhaps goes to one of the human institutions of the factory town—the “old woman.” the old woman may not be over 50, but the factory has got all it can out of her and the factory community utilizes her by giving her its young children to care for, paying perhaps $2.00 a week. the old woman may have borne children, but she has never had an opportunity to learn to care for them properly. she is often so deaf she cannot hear them cry and she is too poor to buy them proper food, and to boot, she may be a tippler. unless husky beyond all probability, or saved by some lucky chance—a district nurse or a sister or some other good angel—the baby dies. one should go to the cemetery to see how many die. there is nothing more pitiful in all this beautiful world than the interminable rows of little graves in the cemeteries of the factory towns.

in recent years the problems of the operative have been complicated by the soaring cost of living. almost everything he buys is higher in price, or if he insists on a standard price, the article is poorer in quality. take the very protected articles from which rhode island draws her wealth. all these 68,000 textile workers must have clothes. the price of women’s all-wool dress goods increased in providence, the centre of the industry between 1891 and 1907, over 33 per cent. there was an increase in practically all the cotton-warp goods varying from 4 to 40 per cent. underwear in which there was any mixture of wool cost a fourth more in 1907 than sixteen years before. cotton underwear was reported as stationary in price, though since 1907 it has risen. bleached muslin used for shirtings was 34 per cent dearer in 1907 than in 1891. cotton thread was 10 per cent dearer. all linens were higher, though of course the textile operatives 346cannot buy much linen. that is, their own industries are taking out of them the increase in wages which this same period has seen!

are not the conditions so hastily sketched a fairly satisfactory answer to the question with which we started out: why should not rhode island have a stable, settled, home-owning body of american workmen? the hazards are so great, the wage so low, the work so uncertain, that the american workman or the foreigner, after a few years of experience here, will not remain if he can get out. he realizes that the chances are against the operative getting on in the world. what this means is that it is not he who is getting the benefits of the protective duties which mr. aldrich says are laid for “our people in the united states.” he is barely getting a living, and getting it under conditions which make life to himself, his wife, and children a constant menace. the tax we pay on textiles never gets beyond the stockholders, who in rhode island are usually a family that for generations have run their mills and absorbed the profits—absorbed them so quietly, too, that one knows nothing of what they are save by the deceiving outward signs.

not only has the average factory owner absorbed the lion’s share of the profits, but he set his face like a flint against spending a cent of the protection he enjoys in humane efforts to make the industry more tolerable. this man, who periodically appears as a suppliant before congress, praying for a continuation of benefits which cost this whole people dearly, will not, unless driven to it by law and outraged public opinion, protect even the children who work in his mills. it took the hard-fought labor wars of the ’80’s to force from the legislature of the state (then as now held in the hollow of the hands of men who live by the beneficence of this people) a ten-hour law for children, a twelve-year age limit, and proper 347truant laws. but, the laws passed, no authorities were ever found to enforce them, for the very sufficient reason that all authorities in rhode island lived by permission of the mill owners. a bureau of industrial statistics for gathering information and a factory inspector to report on the observance of the laws which labor unions and social agencies had forced from the legislature were finally secured. the first set of inquiries sent out by the industrial bureau was treated with contempt by the manufacturers, the slater club deciding what questions it would and would not answer!

according to the first of the reports issued only one corporation in the state had its sinks properly trapped, and fever was epidemic. the factories almost invariably were fire-traps, wooden structures with low ceilings, no escapes, and often with heavy wire screens nailed over the windows. the laws governing child labor were generally ignored. and all this was only about twenty years ago. many improvements have been made since then, but they have been made too often in the face of the open or badly concealed opposition of the average manufacturer, rarely with his sympathetic co?peration. when men refuse co?peration with laws which concern the health and happiness of those whose labor makes their wealth possible, it is because of a stunted social sense. there are other shocking proofs of this defective development in the average rhode island textile manufacturer than his attitude toward humane legislation. one of them is the housing of operatives.

stories of foul, neglected tenements in rhode island factory towns, drawn from recent investigation, could be multiplied. they are another of the many good reasons why the textile manufacturer finds it hard to hold labor together. they are another of the many proofs of their unwillingness to pass on to their working-men the protection granted in the name of 348labor. take them to task for housing conditions and the general attitude is one of indignation at what they call an invasion of their individual freedom. why should they build houses for their operatives unless it pays to do so? why should they protect their operatives from grasping landlords? and if the landlord can make more from a poor tenement than a well kept one, whose business is it? it is his property.

again these mill owners practically take no responsibility for accidents. they are insured against the claims the injured may make. all that they do is to render first aid. after that the man or woman must look after himself unless fortunate enough to get free hospital treatment. if he gets an indemnity, he must either settle with the insurance company or go to court, where he is almost certain to fair badly. for instance, here are cases taken at random from the records for the september, 1905, session of the providence county courts. one is of a girl, “incapable of speaking the language,” who in 1901 lost a hand from unprotected gears and cog wheels, five years later nonsuited with costs to plaintiff!

here is a boy under fourteen who after two weeks in a mill was ordered to clean the iron cylinder of a carding machine and lost his hand. four years later he was awarded $1100 and $12.58 costs.

here is a case of a young polish girl new to the mills who in cleaning a loom while it was in operation lost parts of two fingers. she did not know it was unsafe or forbidden. she saw others doing it. the court promptly gave the company costs! one might go on for pages with these cruel wrongs.

the heartbreaking part of it is that it takes but a little imagination, but a little knowledge, of what can and is being done to ease hard industrial conditions in the world, and in a scattered way in this very state, to show one how easily unselfishness 349could redeem rhode island. if the textile manufacturers were, as a body, men of enlightened minds, if they had caught even a glimpse of that vision of a new and nobler industrial society which has convinced so many men and women in this country not only of the brutality and wastefulness of our present system, but of the entire practicability of something better, they might easily make of their state as perfect an example of what an industrial society should be as it now is of what it should not be.

this, then, is high protection’s most perfect work—a state of a half million people turning out an annual product worth $279,438,000, the laborers in the chief industry underpaid, unstable, and bent with disease, the average employers rich, self-satisfied, and as indifferent to social obligation as so many robber barons. it is an industrial oligarchy made by a nation’s beneficence under the mistaken notion that it was working out a labor’s paradise. not only is it a travesty of the principles of protection, it is a mockery of that very individualism behind which it takes refuge. individualism does not thrive at the expense of its fellows: it appreciates that the very kernel of its own existence lies in respecting and defending the rights of others. as for democracy, what vestige of it is left in either the political or industrial machine which controls the state of rhode island?

certainly the time has come when the pretence that high duties “protect” the american working-man can deceive nobody. the american working-man is not getting the duty. he pays for his higher wages by his higher productivity. it is an old and established law of industry drawn from the experience of all nations that low wages mean high cost. “the highest paid labor,” says francis a. walker, “is that which costs the employer the least.” the cotton spinner in india gets 20 pence a week—the cotton spinner in england 35020 shillings, but english cottons flood india. the iron worker in russia gets 3 roubles a week, in england four or five times as much, but it is the englishman who supplies the markets of europe. the cotton labor of egypt and india receives not over one-tenth of what the southern labor does, but it is our cotton which supplies the world. the wheat hands of the eastern world are paid from a twentieth to a fifth of what the laborers in the united states receive, but we export vast quantities in competition with the world.

the protectionist who answers every criticism of his rates by conjuring a picture of “pauper labor” is equally conscienceless in his attitude towards the relation of protection to the two most disquieting industrial phenomena of our day, the increase in the cost of living and the multiplicity of corporations which aim to become and often are monopolies. for instance, mr. whitman, whose forty years of garrulous and successful defence of the present wool schedule has made him the perfect type of the lay stand-patter, does not admit that there is such a problem as the increased cost of living. he speaks of it as “alleged.” according to mr. whitman, the newspapers have talked so much about the subject that people have been deluded into believing that the condition is actual. if there is an increased cost in living, however, the tariff has nothing to do with it. it is due to the cost of the second-class mail! “i believe it to be absolutely true,” says mr. whitman, “that the entire cost of publishing and distributing the newspapers of the united states and the magazines is one of the great contributory causes to the cost of merchandise, and is borne by the consumer.”

senator lodge who, in his way, is as typical as mr. whitman, denies that the tariff is materially related to this problem. in 1910 mr. lodge was chairman of a senate committee investigating the cost of living. he did not go quite as far as 351mr. whitman—that is, he did not dismiss the subject by declaring it merely a newspaper yarn. but he did find that “the tariff was no material factor.” his chief reason for this conclusion amounted to this: the increased cost of living is world-wide. there are several causes, therefore the tariff is not a material factor. it is much like saying that because a log jam is made up of several logs no one log has anything to do with the jam.

another curious bit of reasoning in mr. lodge’s report was this: he had offered a list of 257 articles—almost all of them protected to some extent—the prices of which he had shown to have increased between 1900 and 1909 by 14.5 per cent. out of this list mr. lodge selected fourteen articles on which the duty was highest. he found that the average increase on these fourteen articles was only 13.1 per cent. therefore, he concluded, the tariff is no material factor in the increased cost of living!

still another reason for exonerating the tariff from any guilt in the matter was this: the increase of cost in all kinds of farm products between 1900 and 1909 has been much greater than the increase of manufactured products. now, says mr. lodge, there has been practically no change in the tariffs on farm products in this period, therefore the tariff has nothing to do with increased prices.

this same quality of argument is used in regard to the trust. there are several causes, therefore the tariff is not a cause. the tariff contributed nothing to the foundation of the standard oil company, therefore it has had nothing to do with the foundation of any other trust. frequently the stand-patter is so unfamiliar with his own formula, or so indifferent to it that he will insist that the trust is an industrial surprise—a species of highwaymen of whose presence on the road he had no warning and for whose ravages he consequently 352cannot be held accountable. if he knew his own formula, or, knowing, was willing to regard it, he would be ashamed of this sort of pleading. no evil concealed in the doctrine of protection was ever more thoroughly advertised than monopoly. at every stage, since hamilton’s time, we have been warned that it waited us just around the turn. for the last twenty-five years, especially, we have seen it pour down upon us,—an army whose ranks yearly grew thicker, stronger, and more cruel. this is the very army which we have been cautioned for decades to be waiting in ambush. there was a counter force provided, of course, for this waiting enemy—domestic competition. now, we know what has happened to domestic competition in the last thirty years in this country. freed from foreign competition—something which the doctrine never intended should happen—the home manufacturers have by a succession of guerilla campaigns, often as ruthless and lawless as those of wild indians or spanish freebooters, coralled industry after industry so completely that they could control its output, and at once cheapen the quality and increase the price.

any one who wants to know more than he already does of the power and extent of industrial monopolies in this country should read the vigorous report of attorney-general wickersham presented to congress in december, 1910. consider the relations to the vicious combinations mr. wickersham enumerates, of the protection so many of them enjoy. take away the protection of the window-glass trust, and does any one believe its high-handedness would not be gradually checked? if the tobacco trust and sugar trust and paper trust and powder trust and beef trust, all of which mr. wickersham attacks for extortions and brigandage, had to meet world competition, does anybody doubt that they would not find many of their present methods impractical? protection 353is so obvious an aid to them that it seems like insisting that two and two make four even to refer to it. but put this up to a stand-patter who knows his formula, and what do you get? why, the answer that protection was never intended to foster trusts, and therefore it cannot be that it is doing so! protection, he will tell you, provides for domestic competition, and, since it provides for it, his idea seems to be we must have it! whatever is in the formula is in practice! it is no backwoods member from a remote pennsylvania iron-and-steel district who asserts this. it is the ablest man of them all—senator aldrich himself. “i cannot conceive of such a thing as a monopoly under protection” was the substance of senator aldrich’s argument on the point in the last tariff debate, as it had been for twenty-five years.

curiously enough, the same intellect which declares that monopoly cannot exist under protection will under stress argue: take the duty from those who have formed trusts, but give it to us who have not. “in order that you may?” one feels like asking. this was a link in the argument of the gentlemen who pleaded in 1909 that schedules i and k (cotton and wool) should remain undisturbed. there is no “cotton trust”; therefore continue duties long unnecessary and wink at those which trickery forces through! true, there is no cotton trust—as yet. but how are trusts bred? does our experience show us a more fruitful father of them than cutting off foreign competition, as the new duties on the higher grade of cottons seem to have done?

how are trusts bred? is there any one left who does not know that when such privileges as prohibitive tariffs are dangled before men’s eyes they rush to seize them, build and build again, regardless of all laws of trade? is there any one left who does not know that over-stimulated production pays a penalty in half-time and shut-downs as truly as a man’s 354intemperance pays one in physical and mental exhaustion? and in the period of depression the new and weak fall into the hands of the rich and long-established. this has been the history of many a cotton factory. why should it not all end as it has in scores of other industries?

but there are other breeders of trusts. what else are the supposed agreements as to output and prices of which rumors come from the great cotton organization, the arkwright club? what else was the attempt of that club in 1909 to unite with european cotton manufacturers to restrict the consumption of cotton in order to lower its price?

but should we expect that in an industry which boasts so many men of great ability, daring, and ambition as cotton manufacturing, and in which the rewards are so tremendous, no man will ever be found strong enough to take advantage of the tendencies to combination which already show themselves and to work out a trust? why should there not be a rockefeller or a carnegie in cotton as well as in oil or steel?

the woollen industry, like cotton, pleads to be allowed to retain its high protection because it is still unshackled by combination. that is partially but not entirely true. as a matter of fact, there does exist a strong combination in this industry—the american woollen company, which has earned the popular title of “woollen trust” largely because of its trust-like methods. the woollen trust is far from being a monopoly, though it is certainly a good nucleus for one. it already controls about one-third of our domestic production of woollens and worsteds for men’s wear. its annual product is about $48,000,000. its capital is $69,000,000. all things considered, there seems to be no reason why eventually the american woollen company, if it finds a rockefeller or a carnegie, should not follow in the steps of steel and sugar and oil and turpentine and bath tubs.

355juggling the formula under which he pretends to work, denying facts or shying from them, this is your typical stand-patter. press your attack on his position, however, and you will find something more than negation. you will find an angry, alert opponent, threatening in fact, if not in so many words, to attack your position if you do not let him alone. threats have been the very essence of the power the unholy wool alliance has had for so many decades, as mr. aldrich more than once admitted in the making of the tariff of 1909.

“i say to the senator (mr. aldrich was addressing senator dolliver) that this wool and woollen schedule is the crucial schedule in this bill ... if by insidious or any other means he can induce the senate to break down this schedule, that is the end of protection, for the present anyway, in this country.”

mr. aldrich was not defending the wool duties because they were fair. he was defending them because they have back of them the solidest vote in the senate. those to whom he talked knew it, and they knew that he was warning them that if they did not support these duties they could not expect to get what they wanted, however just from the protectionist standpoint that might be.

there has always been a fraction of mr. aldrich’s party in the senate that could not be moved by threats—who if they had known enough about the tariff on which they were voting to realize that a threat was being held over them would have resented it. it is that fraction which openly confesses that they have “always voted as they were told.” the congressional record is full of such admissions. mr. aldrich could not sway them by appeals to their cupidity. he could, however, by an appeal to their loyalty to the doctrine, to their hatred of their political opponents. for years he has silenced those who had qualms about a duty by a sneering allusion to “democratic talk.” “we heard all of that from 356mr. vest in 1890,” was his answer to senator dolliver’s criticism of the wool schedule. when it came to revising the duties on tin plate the stand-patters tried the same argument—“false to protection.” the shame of it finally drew from senator dolliver this outraged protest:

“is it possible,” he said, “that a man, because he voted for the allison tin-plate rate of 1889 and heard poor mckinley dedicate the first tin-plate mill in america, can be convicted in this chamber of treachery to the protective tariff system, if he desires that schedule re?xamined, after seeing the feeble enterprise of 1890 grown within a single decade to the full measure of this market-place, organized into great corporations, overcapitalized into a speculative trust, and at length unloaded on the united states steel company, with a rake-off to the promoters sufficient to buy the rock island system? if a transaction like that has made no impression upon the mind of congress, i expose no secret in saying that it has made a very profound impression on the thought and purpose of the american people.”

in this outburst of senator dolliver we have the heart of the insurgent revolt against stand-patism. in essence it is a revolt against years of betrayal of the principles the stand-patters were pretending to uphold, of solemn-faced defence of things which are not so, of silencing critics by sneers and threats. and for what? that those who support them by votes and campaign donations may monopolize the great industries of this land and pile increasing burdens on the backs of its humble toilers.

is it any wonder that as men understand the real meaning of the system they declare, as did senator dolliver:

“so far as i am concerned, i am through with it. i intend to fight it.... i intend to fight without fear—i do not care what may be my political fate. i have had a burdensome and toilsome experience in public life now these twenty-five years. i am 357beginning to feel the pressure of that burden. i do not propose that the remaining years of my life, whether they be in public affairs or in my private business, shall be given up to a dull consent to the success of all these conspiracies, which do not hesitate before our very eyes to use the law-making power of the united states to multiply their own profits and to fill the market-places with witnesses of their avarice and of their greed.”

but there is more than what senator dolliver, even, saw wrapped up in the question of protection as we are applying it. deeper than the wrongs it is doing the poor, deeper than its warping of the intellect, is the question of the morals which underlie its operations. simmered down to its final essence the tariff question as it stands in this country to-day is a question of national morals, a question of the kind of men it is making.

the happiness and stability of the peoples of this earth have always been in strict accord with their morality—not a morality made up of rules and traditions, of do’s and don’t’s, but that living force which pervades the world of men like an ether, the only atmosphere in which self-respect can flourish, and in which the rights and happiness of the other man are as sacred as your own. emerson saw this force everywhere, “like children, like grass”; yet, sadly enough, “like children, like grass,” its essentiality is often ignored. men try to construct systems and work out plans in defiance of it, only to see them destroyed; they try to live without it, only to die. activities that ask toll of our inner honor and crowd our fellow-men, that do not contribute to the general goodness and soundness of life and things, cannot endure. every practice, law, system of religion, government or society must be finally sifted down to this: are men better or worse for it? what does it make for, in the main, callousness or gentleness, greed or unselfishness? are men because of it 358more eager for freedom of mind and joy of heart, or are they more eager for gain and material comfort?

the troubled face of to-day is chiefly due to the realization that so much of our achievement does not stand the morality test—does not make the right kind of men. here is where the trust fails. a standard oil company violates a man’s self-respect and outrages the rights of the other man. the harsh judgment of the world is due to that. the gathering into a few hands of what nature made for all, weakens equally the sense of justice in the individual and limits the natural freedom of his fellow, and doing so must cease. here, too, is the final case against the doctrine of protection. as we know it, it operates in defiance, and often in contempt, of the imperative moral demand that all human activities improve, not injure, those concerned, that men be better, not worse, for them. the history of protection in this country is one long story of injured manhood. tap it at any point, and you find it encouraging the base human traits—greed, self-deception, indifference to the claims of others. take the class chiefly involved in making a tariff bill—the suppliants for protection. we have seen in previous chapters the ends they seek, the methods they employ. what kind of men does this make? it makes men deficient in self-respect, indifferent to the dignity and inviolability of congress, weak in self-reliance, willing to bribe, barter, and juggle to secure their ends. all this is on the face of the activities of men who run their business through congress.

there is another moral angle of this matter which must be faced. these men who tremble at the idea of unprotected business, what kind of producers does it make of them? quality is a moral issue. a man’s handicraft is the final test of his integrity: let it be slovenly and unfinished, let it be showy but unsound, let it never get beyond a first stage of 359value, let it be turned to quantity, not value, and you have a measure of the man’s character. moreover, you have a contaminating thing. people forced by conditions to use dishonest goods, who find their shoes quickly falling to pieces, their coats quickly threadbare, their food adulterated, their rented rooms out of repair, who are forced to pay for things without virtue, quickly lose all sense of quality. they never give it because they never see it. can an employee who knows that his employer adulterates his fabrics and covers up imperfections regardless of the interests of the consumers, be expected to continue to care for the quality of his own work? there is a universal outcry against the poor workmanship the day laborer gives—the lack of interest in the work—but can he be expected to care if his employer does not? at the very basis of the laborer’s general indifference as to whether he gives a full day of honest work or not lies a widespread indifference among business men as to the quality of the output of their factories and shops.

if there were no other case to-day against protection, as we apply it, it ought to fall in more than one industry, on the deterioration of quality it has encouraged, in the ambition it excites to turn out quantity, not give value. moreover, this vicious result hits the poor man. we can make as good woollen textiles in the united states as are made anywhere in the world; we do make many of them—at double the price that they cost abroad; but cutting off all competition in cheap goods as our tariff does, enables the domestic manufacturer to ignore the quality of these goods as he could not do if he were subjected to proper foreign competition. he knows he can sell what he turns out. there are no other goods for the poor man to buy; the cheaper he can make them the better; they will have to be replenished the oftener, and so trade will be encouraged! so flagrant has this offence 360against sound morals become in cloth manufacturing that in the last two years there has developed an organized revolt against it among manufacturers of clothing. and this attack has been based by certain of them on the sound ground that it is unethical.

it is but a step from indifference to the quality of goods, to indifference to the lot of those who make the goods. the tariff is laid to help and protect the working-man. according to the protectionist argument a tariff-made state like rhode island, a tariff-made city like pittsburg, should produce the happiest, most prosperous, best conditioned working-men and women in the country. we have seen something of what the tariff has done in rhode island. in pittsburg it has worked contrasts between labor and capital still more violent. it has produced on one hand an absentee landlord, the “pittsburg millionnaire,” and on the other a laborer, whose life as pictured by one of the most careful investigations into living conditions ever made in this or any country, the pittsburg survey, is made intolerable by a twelve-hour day, sunday work, cruel speeding, and cheerless and unsanitary homes. this pittsburg survey is the most awful arraignment of an american institution and its resulting class pronounced since the days of slavery. it puts upon the pittsburg millionnaire the stamp of greed, stupidity, and heartless pride. but what should we expect of him? he is the creature of a special privilege which for years he has not needed. he has fought for it because he fattened on it. he must have it for labor. but look at him and look at his laborer and believe him if you can.

this, then, is the kind of man the protective system as we practise it encourages: a man unwilling to take his chances in a free world-struggle; a man whose sense of propriety and loyalty has been so perverted that he is willing to treat the 361congress of the united states as an adjunct to his business; one who regards freedom of speech as a menace and the quality of his product of less importance than the quantity; one whose whole duty toward his working-man is covered by a pay envelope. this man at every point is a contradiction to the democratic ideal of manhood. the sturdy self-reliance, the quick response to the ideals of free self-government, the unwillingness to restrain the other man, to hamper his opportunity or sap his resources, all of these fine things have gone out of him. he is an unsound democratic product, a very good type of the creature that privilege has always produced.

but this man would be impossible were it not that he has the backing of politicians and law-makers. behind and allied with every successful high tariff group is a political group. that is, under our operation of the protective doctrine we have developed a politician who encourages the most dangerous kind of citizenship a democracy can know—the panicky, grasping, idealless kind. this is the most serious charge that can be made against the man who holds or seeks office, that he injures the quality of the citizen.

the man who is a candidate for congress in any district, city or country, has two courses open to him: he can appeal to greed or to the ideal. he has the opportunity to discuss with his constituents the questions and measures of his day and to win them by the enthusiasm he awakens for ideals. he has equally the opportunity to win them by the promises he makes—the promises of individual local benefits, like pensions and public buildings, or the promise of securing protection for local industries. take the case of “pig iron,” kelley—a man who clung to protection with the passionate faith of a fanatic, who saw in it the great panacea for the country’s poverty, who believed himself an incorruptible man, and yet who allowed the protectionists of both parties 362in his own philadelphia district to return him without effort on his part, because they knew he would get for them what they wanted. mr. kelley, honest man as he thought himself to be, educated his constituents in the pernicious notion that a congressman’s first business is to look after their business. the hopelessly sordid mental and moral attitude of pennsylvania toward politics is due chiefly to the training in selfishness which for sixty years her congressmen have given her. throughout this period those who sought her suffrage have held up the promise of protecting taxes. vote for us and we will take care of you. one of the most immoral of the many immoral trades which belong to the period of our civil war was the bargain the state made with the republican party to support the union in return for the duties they wanted on their manufactures. for years almost the sole appeal made by candidates to the people of the state has been selfish. they have had a steady education in the notion that government is something from which to get a personal advantage. is it strange that the pennsylvanian should come to regard all public undertakings, even the building of a state capitol, as legitimate prey? it is a logical enough chain from the instructions of thaddeus stevens and “pig iron” kelley to a tariff-made pittsburg, blind to the appalling inhumanity of her mills, or to the shameless looting of a great state building. once the appeal to men’s greed is the established rule of a state’s politics, the inevitable outcome is every degree and species of baseness. on the other hand, a people trained by its leaders to think of the general good, to consider principles and ideals as of first importance to national life, to feel that our fundamentals must be preserved before everything else—such a people will rise to any height of enthusiasm and sacrifice.

the legislator who is so indifferent to the moral effect of 363his appeal on the country’s citizenship, who refuses to see the connection between the appeal to selfishness and corruption such as that which in 1884, 1892, and partially in 1910 swept the republican party from power, can hardly be expected to be nice about the methods he employs to get the things he has promised. indeed, there is political necessity for just such methods as have been discussed in the previous chapters of this book. they are a part of the whole, perfectly consistent with the appeal, not a whit more immoral. if mr. aldrich promises the cotton manufacturers of new england to support their demands, allowing them to raise the money and do the work to re?lect him, can you expect him to do less than he did in the payne-aldrich bill—allow a tricky revision of the cotton schedule to go through?

let us admit that reasonable people must not expect in a popular government to arrive at results save by a series of compromises. as long as men disagree as to what is desirable to accomplish, as well as on the methods which are to be employed in getting what they all agree to be desirable, each successive step comes by one side agreeing to take less than it believes should be given, and the other yielding more than it believes wise. no reasonable person can expect the protective system to be handled without compromises, backsets, and errors of judgment, but he can expect it to be handled as a principle and not as a commodity. the shock and disgust come in the discovery that our tariffs are not good and bad applications of the principles of protection, but that they are good or bad bargains. dip into the story of the tariff at any point since the civil war and you will find wholesale proofs of this bargaining in duties; rates fixed with no more relation to the doctrine of protection than they have to the law of precession of the equinoxes. the actual work of carrying out these bargains is of a nature that would revolt any 364legislator whose sensitiveness to the moral quality of his acts has not been blunted—who had not entirely eliminated ethical considerations from the business of fixing duties. and this is what the high protectionist lawgiver has come to—a complete repudiation of the idea that right and wrong are involved in tariff bills. there is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral. but this is the man the doctrine of protection, as we know it, produces, and therein lies the final case against it,—men are worse, not better, for its practice.