Page:Karl Marx - Free Trade - tr. Florence Kelley (1888).djvu/16

 12 longer so to-day. Let us take another example from the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury for 1887:

"Improvement in recent years in the machinery employed in combing wool has so changed the character of what are commercially known as worsted cloths that the latter have largely superseded woollen cloths for use as men's wearing apparel. This change … has operated to the serious injury of our domestic manufacturers of these (worsted) goods, because the duty on the wool which they must use is the same as that upon wool used in making woollen cloths, while the rates of duty imposed upon the latter when valued at not exceeding 80 cents per pound are 35 cents per pound and 35 per cent. ad valorem, whereas the duty on worsted cloths valued at not exceeding 80 cents ranges from 10 to 24 cents per pound and 35 per cent. ad valorem. In some cases the duty on the wool used in making worsted cloths exceeds the duty imposed on the finished article." Thus what was protection to home industry yesterday, turns out to-day to be a premium to the foreign importer; and well may the Secretary of the Treasury say: "There is much reason to believe that the manufacture of worsted cloths must soon cease in this country unless the tariff law in this regard is amended " (p. xix.). But to amend it, you will have to fight the manufacturers of woollen cloths who profit by this state of things; you will have to open a regular campaign to bring the majority of both Houses of Congress, and eventually the public opinion of the country, round to your views, and the question is. Will that pay?

But the worst of protection is, that when you once have got it you cannot easily get rid of it. Difficult as is the process of adjustment of an equitable tariff, the return to Free Trade is immensely more difficult. The circumstances which permitted England