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to deceive, and actually does deceive, honest men who are stupid or ignorant. But the raw-material dodge will not be very effective I hope. It ought to be easier to see through the thin disguise, behind which this thoroughly disingenuous scheme seeks to hide itself. Tell me that New England manufacturers believe in their present dissertations on the subject of free raw material! Does a shoe manufacturer believe that leather is a raw material? Yes

one that should be admitted free - one against which he needs no protection. Does the tanner believe that hides are a raw material? Yes -one against which he needs no protection. And so with woollen and cotton goods. But Western grazers are not such fools as the grain growers; and if India discovers how to grow cotton, Southern planters will show quickly enough that they have profited by a generation of "protective" campaigning, and will prove to the entire satisfaction of every one, except of Connecticut manufacturers, that there is no raw material in the world but untilled soil. And they too will say -let us have free raw material! They will even be consistent enough to admit that, although "niggers" are a raw material, they also - should be free.

The truth is that those things of which people think when they speak of raw material are the very ones as to which " protective" tariffs can be defended with the greatest show of plausibility. If it were necessary to tax some people in order that commodities of a certain kind may be produced in the country up to a certain stage of perfection, the kind of things to be so produced should evidently be a necessary kind, in the first place, and in the second

place, the stage of production which should be thus provided for is that which is most necessary to the process, and this would generally be that, too, which takes longest to reach, starting from the untilled soil, or from the unborn cattle, or from the unopened mine. If it is necessary to raise articles of consumption by taxation, that is, at a loss, the things so raised should be necessary things; and, whatever else these may be, they are the very ones thought of as raw material. In case of war, when the supply of necessaries from the outside might be cut off, which would it take longest to produce, shoe factories or hides, supposing neither are at hand to begin with? Which would take longer, to establish iron foundries, or to prospect the country from one ocean to the other for mines? So the only defence that can be made of a tariff at all applies only to raw materials with force, and to other stages of production with decreasing force.

Yet there are groups of persons abroad, and making themselves heard with all the eagerness that springs from self-interest, trying to conjure the people out of the frying-pan into the fire. For heaven's sake, when we emerge from this pestiferous tariff swamp, if ever we do, let it be into the light, and not into darkness made darker by the presence of manufacturers. Of course, it is possible that the road to genuine tariff reform may lie through free raw material, but it is exceedingly improbable. A people who will be deceived by this device is more likely doomed to everlasting darkness. Intellectually, it is a worse device than "protection"; and what promise is there, or hope, that a people, by going from bad to worse, will become better?

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