tures on protectionism. This turned out to be a good thing, for the contrast was marked.
But Sumner's influence on the tariff and sound money was not confined to undergraduates. The New York Free Trade Club, and later its successor, the Reform Club, which for many years constituted the center of agitation against protectionism, were largely dominated by men who had come under his teaching and influence in one way or another.
The absence of the qualities which make the successful politician was as marked in Sumner as was the presence of those qualities which make the scientific man and teacher. When men seek to attain political ends they necessarily look for allies; and if they are opposed to those in power they cast their eyes on the discontented, the unsuccessful under the present regime, and bid for their support by offering what they believe will prove attractive. Political affairs are necessarily a series of compromises. The need of allies to make a majority prevents logical progress, and in political life an old evil is rarely eradicated without the planting of some seeds of a new evil. The politician must be a compromiser. Sumner was no compromiser. I heard him once speak of himself as a popular agitator; but his agitation consisted in pointing out to his fellow-citizens the folly of what they were doing. I do not believe he ever undertook to tell them what they should do. He never set up to be a statesman. Certainly he never attempted the politician's rôle, which is quite apt to be to point out to a part of the people how they can collect some unearned advantage from another part of the people.
Sumner continually called attention to the difference between the task of the political economist and patient
