Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/559

Rh When complaint was made that the protective tariff, by cutting off foreign competition, obliged people to pay higher prices for the things they had to buy, the protectionists used to reply that this might be true, but only at the beginning; that under the fostering care of the protective system, a multitude of manufacturing establishments would spring up at home; that they would compete among themselves; that this home competition would soon bring down prices in the home market as much as foreign competition would have done, or even more; and that thus the people would have the benefit of a great development of home industries and, at the same time, of low prices in consequence of home competition. This had a fair and consoling sound. But when home competition begins to tell, the Trust steps in, and lets us know that industries which are protected against foreign competition by the tariff will keep up prices and maintain or raise their profits by combination among the producers, and thus protect themselves against home competition too. Thus the people are deprived of the benefit of one as well as the other, and the Trust appears as the protective idea pushed to its logical extreme.

Efforts are being made to reach the Trusts by legal prohibitions and penalties. They may ultimately succeed, but experience teaches that such attempts do not usually succeed at the beginning. We know how difficult it is to frame laws on such subjects which cannot more or less easily be evaded. The open and secret friends of the Trusts will, if they cannot prevent legislation, exert all their ingenuity to smuggle clauses into it which will prevent it from becoming effective. It will probably require much experimenting to provide laws which completely answer the purpose. In the meantime, the people will continue to suffer extortion and tyranny from the very culprits. Much more expedient will it be, while the