Page:Forgotten Man and Other Essays.djvu/50

 be throwing on them the risk of working your mine, which you are afraid to take yourself."

Iron man (aside). — "I have not talked the right dialect to this man. I must begin all over again. (Aloud.) Mr. Statesman, the natural resources of this continent ought to be developed. American industry must be protected. The American laborer must not be forced to compete with the pauper labor of Europe."

Statesman. — "Now I understand you. Now you talk business. Why did you not say so before? How much tax do you want?"

The next time that a buyer of pig iron goes to market to get some, he finds that it costs thirty bushels of wheat per ton instead of twenty.

"What has happened to pig iron?" says he.

"Oh! haven't you heard?" is the reply. "A new mine has been found down in Pennsylvania. We have got a new 'natural resource.'"

"I haven't got a new 'natural resource,'" says he. "It is as bad for me as if the grasshoppers had eaten up one-third of my crop."

45. That is just exactly the significance of a new resource on the protectionist doctrine. We had the misfortune to find emery here. At once a tax was put on it which made it cost more wheat, cotton, tobacco, petroleum, or personal services per pound than ever before. A new calamity befell us when we found the richest copper mines in the world in our territory. From that time on it cost us five (now four) cents a pound more than before. By another catastrophe we found a nickel mine — thirty cents (now fifteen) a pound tax! Up to this time we have had all the tin that we wanted above ground, because beneficent nature has refrained from putting any underground in our territory. In the metal schedule, where the metals which we unfortunately possess are taxed from