industries.[1] New England taxes Ohio and Pennsylvania on all the cottons and woolens which it sells to them. What is the net final result? It is mathematically certain that the only result can be that (1) New England gets back just all she paid (in which case the system is nil, save for the expense of the process and the limitation it imposes on the industry of all), or, (2) that New England does not get back as much as she paid (in which case she is tributary to the others), or, (3) that she gets back more than she paid (in which case she levies tribute on them). Yet, on the protectionist notion, this system extended to all sections, and embracing all industries, is the means of producing national prosperity. When it is all done, what does it amount to except that all Americans must support all Americans? How can they do it better than for each to support himself to the best of his ability? Then, however, all the assumptions of protectionism must be abandoned as false.
33. In 1676 King Charles II granted to his natural son, the Duke of Richmond, a tax of a shilling a chaldron on all the coal which was exported from the Tyne. We regard such a grant as a shocking abuse of the taxing power. It is, however, a very interesting case because the mine owner and the tax owner were two separate persons, and the tax can be examined in all its separate iniquity. If, as I suppose was the case, the Tyne Valley possessed such superior facilities for producing coal that it had a qualified monopoly, the tax fell on the coal mine owner (landlord); that is, the king transferred to his son part of the property which belonged to the Tyne coal owners. In that view the
- ↑ The wool growers held a convention at St. Louis May 28, 1885, at which they estimated their loss by the reduction of the tax on wool in 1883, or the difference between what they got by this tax before that date and after, at ninety million dollars (New York Times, May 29). If that sum is what they lost, it is what the consumers gained. They are very angry, and will not vote for any one who will not help to re-subject the consumers to this tribute to them.
