What happens to the consumer because of the wicked and semi-barbarous paper and pulp policy is that he actually gets his daily paper at a lower price than is paid by any other man in any land upon the rolling earth. Nowhere but here is the onecent daily newspaper in successful, large existence.

Who, then, suffers? Not the consumer. Does the newspaper publisher suffer? If so, why does he not put up his price to two cents, or to five cents? Nobody can hinder him. His blank white paper costs him more, if you please, than he gets for it. How, then, does he come out with a profit? His advertisers save him and sometimes make him rich.

But are the advertisers complaining? Not that anybody hears. They are satisfied, the buyers of the journals are satisfied, and the publishers have prosperity if they deserve it. Shall we, under such circumstances, kick a hole in the protective system, bankrupt papermakers, and force a great domestic industry to emigrate?

We may safely intrust that question to the sound common-sense and the solid equity of the American people.

I come now to the consideration of an article around which the fantastic imagination of the free trader has played tricks in which ingenuity expends itself in contriving surpris ing varieties of mendacity. Ananias, Baron Munchausen and Count Cagliostro are not in the game with the delirious free trader when he sets himself to consider the homely article of wool.

TARIFF OF

1867, last 4 years......

1883, 6 years.

Recall the fact that the Government must have income. Then take the further fact that import duties upon wool and woolens have put two hundred and ninety-three million dollars in the United States Treasury within eleven years, and you have an apology for the wool duties that might be regarded as about covering the case.

Now take another fact of no contemptible significance: The presence in this country of millions of sheep means not only wool but mutton chops, and hind and fore legs, and all the other sheep-meat requirements. That the presence here of this great supply of flesh food tends to keep down the prices of other flesh food-beef, pork, poultry, and so forth-will not be questioned.

Dear Wool and Cheap Mutton. There are level-headed economists who steadfastly believe that this depression of prices produced by the domestic mutton supply has, throughout the long years, fully compensated for all the duties paid at the ports for wool and woolens. In fact, all of the wool tax has been offset completely by the decrease in the price of flesh food.

I am bold enough to assert that on my own account as a practically incontestable fact.

But, says the free trader, we should have had the sheep if wool had been upon the free list. It is always fairly safe to guess about might-have-beens. Let us grapple with some solid facts. Mark this one. The number of American sheep has always increased or decreased as

1894, less than 4 years...

1897, 12 years....

1890, less than 4 years

the wool duties were sufficient or insufficient in size. I must inflict some figures on the patient reader. Let us take a period of forty-two years, from 1867 to 1909:

These figures show, beyond controversy, that whenever the duty on wool went below eleven cents a pound American sheep were killed off and the flocks and the mutton supply-decreased. They prove that the flocks always enlarged when the duty went to or above eleven cents a pound. In other words, they supply what I may call final evidence that the American farmer will not herd sheep unless he has tariff protection enough to give him a decent price for his wool product.

This downward movement of the flock dimensions, under inadequate duty, seems to me to show that no duty at all, or free wool, will produce ultimate extermination of the American sheep. Does it not clearly indicate just that?

We grow here three hundred million pounds of wool, which is oneeighth of the world's clip. I ask reasonable men, not blinded by prejudice, but fair and wisc enough to regard a great matter in a large way, this question:

If you destroy one-eighth of the world's wool supply will not the remainder rise in price? And will not that rise take much more money out of the pockets of the consumer than all that has ever been taken by tariff duties?

It is indeed almost a question of simple mathematics. Scarcity means high prices. Moreover, what must be the condition of a mighty nation dependent for a vital necessity upon foreigners? I am convinced that the power to grow most, if not all,

of the wool we need would be cheaply purchased if we could get it only by giving bounties directly to the wool growers, as France does to her sugar-beet raisers.

Furthermore: If it be wise to spend tens of millions to help the farmer to water his fields, to kill his bugs, to improve his stock, to learn the best methods of tillage, why-oh, why, indeed! is it not worth while to levy a small duty at the ports, so that he may supply his fellow-citizens with material for clothing?

The Dimensions of the Wool Tax. What does the duty on wool amount to when the clothing reaches the consumer? What is this dreadful burden that the tariff puts upon the suffering poor man?

An ordinary suit of $15 or $20, made wholly of wool, contains from seven to eight pounds of that material. The duty is II cents a pound and, therefore, the tax on such a garment is from 75 cents to 90 cents. The suffering poor man aforesaid, and the joyful poor or rich man, pays that much on, say, three suits a year, for the sake of his beioved country,, of the horny-handed farmer, of the mutton butcher, the United States Treasury and the good old cause generally.

I put the tax at $2 or $2.75 per annum, and small indeed it seems when we consider the resounding, far-reaching, long-drawn-out and long-continued ululations which it has brought from the vocal organs of free-trade complainants. One might think, from the volume of the racket made, that the wool tax appropriated quite half of the afflicted poor man's income. It amounts, probably, in a year to what he pays for tobacco in a month.

This is the duty on raw wool; now, how about the cloth that consumes the wool? I will put the facts in this torm: An all-wool cloth sold for $1 a yard gives a profit of 5 cents a yard to the manufacturer: not a robber portion, surely! When the cloth goes into a suit of clothing that profit will not equal 17 cents. Thus:

In a three-piece suit retailed for $12, the cloth-all wool-costs about $3. In a similar suit sold for $15 the cloth costs $3.75. In a $20 suit it costs $5, and in a $30 suit $7.50.

Surely here is not strong temptation to stuff the fabric with cotton and shoddy, of which we hear such wild free-trade lamentations. I do not say that cotton and shoddy never are used; but then, either the cloth is sold for cotton and shoddy, at cotton and shoddy prices, or the dealer is a knave; and even conditions of free trade would not avail to stop rascality. England, with free trade, produces more shoddy than any other country.

I will push the case a little closer. If these are the facts concerning the raw wool and the cloth, where lies the cause for the difference in cost between the cloth and the completed $20 garment? It lies, in my judgment, with the retailer. This gentleman, with a perfect right to do his best for himself, and requiring margin for the familiar late-season "marking-down" of suits anywhere from 25 to 50 per cent., appears to make a handsome thing for it.

I learn that he pays, $7 for a suit that he sells for $10, which means that his ordinary profit is somewhere about 43 per cent. on that one transaction. Besides, if he is a prompt payer he probably gets a discount from the wholesale dealer. On suits

:etailing at $18 and $20 he probably makes a profit of 50 per cent., and the profit will go higher as the price rises.

I find no fault with this. The suits are in most cases worth to the wearer what he pays for them. But I do protest against the injustice of holding the wool-grower, the spinner, the cloth-maker and the tariff responsible for a matter that lies solely between the suit-seller and the suit-wearer.

In any case this fact may be noted: the American workingman wears better clothing than any other man in the world of his class, because, under the protective system SO fiercely denounced, he earns more money with which to pay for his necessities. It would not be, indeed, hazardous to conjecture that American workingmen wear more unadulterated woolen stuffs than all the other working men of all other races put together.

Thus, when you look this wool and woolens monster in the face, he is not such a hideous creature after all.

The Cost of Living.

A familiar complaint against the tariff is that it increases the cost of living, making that cost much greater than it is in Europe. But what kind of living? A European laborer, who lives in a mud cabin, wears wooden shoes and eats meat twice a year, does indeed live cheaper than an American workman who-as multitudes do owns a brick house with a bathroom, a Brussels carpet, a piano and electric lights, and who wears fine clothes on all idle days. The American pays more, maybe, but he gets more; and that, dear brethren, is the only way in which any man can account for the stupendous fact that within eighty years 23,000,000 European laborers have come over here to live. They know what the difference is. They have learned where the poor man's good things are, tariff or no tariff.

But, indeed, is living here so very much dearer than it is in the best European countries? I doubt it, quality for quality.

Take a brief glance at the subject. More than 40 per cent. of a workingman's expenditure is for food; and that food, by and large, is cheaper here than in Europe is finally proved by the fact that all Eu1ope comes here to buy food.

House rent consumes about 15 per cent. of such a man's income. But there is no tariff duty on houses, and the rent is higher because the house is better. Clothes take another 15 per cent., but the larger part of men's, women's and children's clothing is cotton, and we beat the world on the three-fourths of the world's supply of cotton that we grow in American fields.

Fuel calls for 9 per cent. of the man's income, and we have coal in illimitable quantities, the laborer's supply being unaffected by the tariff. Light consumes 5 per cent. and our cil is the cheapest of all lights. About 16 per cent. is spent for sundries, car-fares, church and club dues, newspapers, magazines and personai enjoyment, with none of which has the tariff anything to do.

I take the libertty, therefore, of doubting whether living here really costs more, surely not much more, than it does in Europe, if you consider what a man gets out of it in this better country. If the world holds a poor man's Paradise, as

suredly here it is in this tariffafflicted, solidly protected but rich and glorious and surpassingly happy country of ours.

I say that the theorists who never come into contact with industry, who have never penetrated below the skin of the facts, who would rather find fault than be fair-the academic people, the people who merely work it out in their minds with their eyes shut-these are the folks who scoff at and denounce tariff protection and make all the stir and fuss about the injustice of a splendid, century-old national policy.

Finally: The accusation is urged that the Republican party promised to revise the tariff downward and failed to make good.

No such promise was given. The plank in the platform is too long for insertion here, but I will let President Taft-in his speech at Winona -tell the truth about it.

"The promise of the Republican platform was not to revise everything downward. I did not promise that everything should go downward. The proposition of the Republican party was to reduce rates so as to maintain a difference between the cost of production abroad and the cost of production here, insuring a reasonable profit to the manufacturer on all articles produced in this country... I did not agree, nor did the Republican party agree, that we would reduce rates to such a point as to reduce prices by the introduction of foreign competition."

The Tariff an Artificial Device. The plank referred to promised to consider the "difference in the cost of production" between this country

and other countries. But who shall with precision determine that difference? There is one difference as between us and England, another in the case of Germany, and quite another in the case of Japan. And all the time these differences are fluctuating with costs of material and other costs.

What we require are duties high enough to cover all cases and all upward and downward movements. We want the protective principle firmly established and in continuous operation, so that our own producers may conduct their business in peace and with decent profits.

Judging by the successive Congressional elections, that is what also the great majority of the American people require.

Often I have heard the objection made to the protective system that "it is artificial." It is indeed! Artificial! Why, civilization and law and government are artificial! The only unartificial and perfectly natural people are the naked Africans at this moment running about the torrid zone eating one another and having, one would think, a mere minimum of fun.

All the arts and sciences, all books and pictures and vehicles and machinery are artificial. Our railroad trains, telegraphs, telephones, electric lights, our houses and clothes and churches and other comforts. are artificial. Fertilization of the earth, improving the quality of fruits, breeding fine animals by selectionin short, all the things that make life secure, pure, progressive, uplifting and happy, come to us not by nature but by artifice.

The tariff is indeed "made ground." It is not unlike the Hoiland dikes, which also are artificial.

The dikes keep out the sea, and the law keeps out anarchy, and the tariff keeps out destructive foreign competition.

Were these defenses not in existence, the sea would flood the Dutchmen, anarchy would swamp our nation, and the foreigner would shut our mills and force our people into idleness, as millions are at this very moment idle in the free-trade Eden of England.

The American free trader, who abhors artifice and who wants to live the life of a simple child of Nature, will have to go off to the African cannibals, or hie him to a desert island where he can have his own sweet will all by himself.

FIGURES ON THE TARIFF.

The operations of the Payne-Aldrich tariff law for one year show that the average ad valorem rate of duty paid on imports of all classes was 1.66 per cent. lower than under the Dingley law, which was in force for the previous year. The comparison was made by the bureau of statistics of the department of commerce and labor for the years ended June 30, 1909 and 1910. The recent revision of the tariff has been the subject of so much dissension in political circles that these figures are expected to attract wide attention. The comparison deals with the II great groups of imports-lumber, sugar, fruits and nuts, liquors, chemicals, silk manufactures, cotton manufactures, iron and steel, tobacco, wool and manufactures and fibres and manufactures-which aggregate about two-thirds of the total dutiable imports into the United States. It is demonstrated by the comparison that more than $100,000,000 worth of goods was imported in 1910 under the new law in excess of the total in 1909 under the Dingley law; that the revenues in the last year exceeded those of 1909 by about $30,000,000, and that the average ad valorem rate of duty paid was only 41.49 as compared with 51.15 under the old law.