efforts at effective law-making go on, to say to the manufacturers combined in Trusts: “As you will not let the people have the benefit of home competition, you shall not have the benefit of protection from foreign competition. The tariff duties on your articles shall therefore be promptly done away with. You shall not eat the cake and have it too.” This policy will be unquestionably just and at the same time effective in going straight to the mark.
To be sure, the attempt may be made to defeat this relief too, by forming combinations controlling the production and sale of the articles concerned all over the globe, as has been done in the case of copper. But it is evident that such world-wide coalitions are extremely difficult to organize. They are possible only when the number of producers is comparatively small, and then only when production for the market requires a very large capital at the start. But even then they are apt to be broken into somewhere on the face of the earth by somebody who is strong enough, and finds it to his interest to do so. At any rate, the prompt admission of foreign competition, where home competition is artificially cut off, is a remedy surer of immediate effect than any other within sight. As shown by the example of the Standard Oil Trust, it may not prevent combinations for the control of production, but it will in almost every case prevent extortion by the artificial raising of prices if the articles concerned are at all produced abroad.
The protected interests which, as to their standing in public opinion, have so long relied upon the charm of captivating cries, should not be blind to the fact that the springing up of Trusts has put upon the tariff question a new face. The Trust is extortion undisguised. It bluntly bids the people “Stand and deliver.” The efforts to obscure the relationship between Trust and protective
