PROTECTIONISM TWENTY YEARS AFTER[1]
I THINK it must be now nearly twenty years since I have made a free-trade speech or been able to take share in a free-trade dinner.
When I was invited here this evening I thought I would try to come for the pleasure of hearing the gentlemen, especially the members of Congress, who were announced to speak here. I have been so out of health that it has been impossible for me to sit up evenings or to attempt public speaking in the evenings, but things are going a little better and I will make an attempt to say a little—not very much, as the hour is now late.
Thirty-five or forty years ago I became a free trader for two great reasons, as far as I can now remember.
One was because, as a student of political economy, my whole mind revolted against the notion of magic that is involved in the notion of a protective tariff. That is, there are facts that are accounted for by protectionism through assertions that are either plainly untrue or are entirely irrational. The other reason was because it seemed to me that the protective tariff system nourished erroneous ideas of success in business and produced immoral results in the minds and hopes of the people.
I cannot say that I have got any more light on the matter within the last twenty years; it looks to me still as if the great objections to protectionism were these two. No man who enjoys the benefit of a protective tariff, as he believes, can ever tell whether he gets back anything for
- ↑ Address at a dinner of the committee on Tariff Reform of the Reform Club in the city of New York, June 2, 1906.
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