Page:Forgotten Man and Other Essays.djvu/108

100 Illustrations of this occur all the time. Objection has been made to the introduction of machines to stop the smoke nuisance because they would interfere in the competition of anthracite and bituminous coal. People have resisted the execution of ordinances against gambling houses because said houses "make trade" for their neighbors. The theater men recently made an attempt to get regulations adopted against skating rinks — purely on moral grounds. The industries of the country all run to the form of combinations. Our wisdom is developed, not in the great art of production, but in the tactics of managing a combination, and while we sustain all the causes and all the great principles of this system of business we denounce "monopoly" and "corporations."

(S) That a "Worker may Gain More by Having his Industry Protected than he will Lose by Having to Pay Dearly for what he Consumes. A System which Raises Prices all round — like that in the United States at present — is Oppressive to Consumers, but is most disadvantageous to those who Consume without Producing anything, and Does Little, if Any, Injury to those who Produce More than they Consume."

140. This is an English contribution to the subject dropped in passing by a writer on economic history. It is a noteworthy fact that the "historical economists" and others who deride political economy as a science do not desist from it, but at once set to work to make very bad political economy of the "abstract" or "deductive" sort.