_Reasons against protective tariff._—Against a system of protective tariffs many strong arguments are not wanting. It is contended that a tariff on iron goods, for instance, is just so much an added burden upon all consumers of iron, and, since the bulk of consumption enters into the cost of articles of universal use, the greater part of the burden is borne by the poorer classes of people, who consume as much as the more wealthy. If the restrictive tariff actually limits the introduction of foreign goods, as must be the case if it acts as a stimulant in production, the revenues received are far from being in due proportion with the cost to the people, since essentially the same tariff is paid by the consumer whether the article is imported or manufactured at home. Although it is not true that in every instance the tariff is a tax, in so far as it benefits the home manufacturer by advanced prices it must be. In so far as it operates for protection of favored industries, it certainly fails to serve the purposes of revenue. The diversity of employment evidently fostered by tariff is said to be unnatural and likely to continue expensive, and any advantages of market at home are sure to be overestimated, especially with reference to staple products of the farm, since the surplus necessarily forming a basis for prices must be sold in foreign countries without the advantage of direct exchange for articles of their own production. That is, if our tariff restrictions limit the market of a foreign people, they also limit the ability of that people to purchase the products which we are obliged to sell them. It is contended further that a rapid development of varied industries, instead of maintaining soil fertility, tends to more rapid exhaustion by making more probable the consumption of cruder products of the farm in villages and cities too remote for return of fertility, although within the same country. The development of natural resources under stimulant of a tariff is admitted by its opponents, but represented as a waste of effort, since the tendency is to withdraw capital and labor from more productive industries into less productive, and that, too, at the expense of the more productive. If factories cannot give an equal profit with farming, it is absurd to tempt capital away from the farms into factories. So, although wealth may be accumulated in showy enterprises, the people, as a whole, are less thrifty and bear unequal burdens. It is further contended that the total labor of the community, when a part is used in unprofitable development of resources, is made on the whole less productive, and therefore the people are less able to buy their neighbors’ products, and must live with diminished comforts. In that case all the haste in developing natural resources is actual waste.