Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/171

 had not written the communication; it was written by the editor of a protectionist newspaper in Cleveland, and the response which Johnson sent was one of the simplest and clearest expositions of the evils of protection I ever read. I had read it when it was published, and had been delighted, but it was not for a dozen years that I was able to tell Johnson of my delight, and then one day as he and Dr. Frederic C. Howe and I were at luncheon I spoke of the letter. He laughed.

"It was a great letter, wasn't it?" he said.

"Indeed it was," I replied.

"A wonderful letter," he went on. "You know, it completely shut them up around here. The editor of that paper tried for weeks to reply to it, and then he gave it up, and he told me privately some time afterward that he was sure the theory of protection was right, but that it wouldn't work on women's cloaks. Yes, it was a great letter." And then with a sigh, he added: "I wish I could have written such a letter. Henry George worked on that letter for days and nights before we got it to suit us; I'd think and think, and he'd write and write, and then tear up what he had written, but finally we got it down."

Henry George was the great influence in his life, as he has been the influence in the lives of so many in this world. Johnson had been a plutocrat; he had made, or to use a distinction Golden Rule Jones used to insist upon, he had "gathered," by the time he was thirty, an immense fortune, through legal privileges. Johnson's privileges had been tariffs on steel, and