“plus a reasonable profit.”  It openly guarantees profit to the men who come and ask favors of Congress.  The old idea of a protective tariff was designed to keep American industries alive and, therefore, keep American labor employed.  But the favors of protection have become so permanent that this is what has happened:  Men, seeing that they need not fear foreign competition, have drawn together in great combinations.  These combinations include factories (if it is a combination of factories) of all grades:  old factories and new factories, factories with antiquated machinery and factories with brand-new machinery; factories that are economically and factories that are not economically administered; factories that have been long in the family, which have been allowed to run down, and factories with all the new modern inventions.  As soon as the combination is effected the less efficient factories are generally put out of operation.  But the stock issued in payment for them has to pay dividends.  And the United States government guarantees profit on investment in factories that have gone out of business.  As soon as these combinations see prices falling they reduce the hours of labor, they reduce production, they reduce wages, they throw men out of employment,—­in order to do what?  In order to keep the prices up in spite of their lack of efficiency.

There may have been a time when the tariff did not raise prices, but that time is past; the tariff is now taken advantage of by the great combinations in such a way as to give them control of prices.  These things do not happen by chance.  It does not happen by chance that prices are and have been rising faster here than in any other country.  That river that divides us from Canada divides us from much cheaper living, notwithstanding that the Canadian Parliament levies duties on importations.

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But “Ah!” exclaim those who do not understand what is going on; “you will ruin the country with your free trade!” Who said free trade?  Who proposed free trade?  You can’t have free trade in the United States, because the government of the United States is of necessity, with our present division of the field of taxation between the federal and state governments, supported in large part by the duties collected at the ports.  I should like to ask some gentlemen if very much is collected in the way of duties at the ports under the particular tariff schedules under which they operate.  Some of the duties are practically prohibitive, and there is no tariff to be got from them.

When you buy an imported article, you pay a part of the price to the Federal government in the form of customs duty.  But, as a rule, what you buy is, not the imported article, but a domestic article, the price of which the manufacturer has been able to raise to a point equal to, or higher than, the price of the foreign article plus the duty.  But who gets the tariff tax in this case?  The government?