Premises of Free Trade Examined; Also Reviews of Bastiat's Sophisms of Protection, of Professor Sumner's Argument Against Protective Taxes, of Professor Perry's Farmers and the Tariff, of Professor Sumner's Speech Before the Tariff Commission and of Progre (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1883 Excerpt: ...no means certain that this artificial direction is likely to be more advantageous to the society than that into which it would have gone of its own accord." Thirty years ago Mr. John Stuart Mill repeated this argument, with variations, thus: --"There can be no more industry than is supplied with materials to work up and food to eat. Self-evident as the thing is, it is often forgotten that the people of a country are maintained and have their wants supplied, not by the produce of present labor but of past. They consume what has been produced, not what is about to be produced. Now of what has been produced, a part only has been allotted to the support of productive labor; and there will not and cannot be more of that labor than the portions so allotted (which is the capital of the country) can feed and provide with the materials of production." "Yet, in disregard of a fact so evident, it long continued to be believed that laws and governments, without creating capital, could create labor." In the article under review, Professor Sumner repeats and varies the argument thus: --"Any, favor or encouragement which the protective system exerts on one group of its population must be won by an equivalent oppression exerted on some other group. To suppose the contrary is to deny the most obvious application of the conservation of energy to economic forces. If the legislation did not simply transfer capital it would have to create capital out of nothing. Now the transfer is not simply an equal redistribution;;there is loss and waste in the case of any tax whatsoever. There is especial loss and waste in the case of a protective tax. We cannot collect taxes and redistribute them without loss; much less can we produce forced monopolies and disto...