60. (_g_) If the congressmen are determined to elevate the comfort of the population by taxing the population, then every new ship load of immigrants must be regarded as a new body of persons whom we must “elevate” by the taxes we have to pay. It is said that an Irishman affirmed that a dollar in America would not buy more than a shilling in Ireland. He was asked why then he did not stay in Ireland. He replied that it was because he could not get the shilling there. That is a good story, only it stops just where it ought to begin. The next question is: How does he get the dollar when he comes to America? The protectionist wants us to suppose that he gets it by grace of the tariff. If so he gets it out of those who were here before he came. But plainly no such thing is true. He gets it by earning it, and he adds two dollars to the wealth of the country while earning it. The only thing the tariff does in regard to it is to lower the purchasing power of the dollar, if it is spent for products of manufacture, to seventy cents. 61. Here, again, then, we find that protective taxes, if they do just what the protectionist says that they will do, produce the very opposite effects from those which he says they will produce. They lessen wealth, reduce prosperity, diminish average comfort, and lower the standard of living. (See § 30.) CHAPTER III PROTECTIONISM EXAMINED ADVERSELY 62. I have so far examined protectionism as a philosophy of national wealth, assuming and accepting its own doctrines, and following them out, to see if they will issue as is claimed. We have found that they do not, but that protectionism, on its own doctrines, issues in the impoverishment of the nation and in failure to do anything which it claims to do. On the contrary, an examination in detail of its means, methods, purposes, and plans shows that it must produce waste and loss, so that _if it were true, we should have to believe that waste and loss are means of wealth_. Now I turn about to attack it in face, on an open issue, for if any project which is advocated proves, upon free and fair examination, to be based on errors of fact and doctrine, it becomes a danger and an evil to be exposed and combated, and truth of fact and doctrine must be set against it. 1. _PROTECTIONISM INCLUDES AND NECESSARILY CARRIES WITH IT HOSTILITY TO TRADE OR, AT LEAST, SUSPICION AGAINST TRADE_ (_A_) RULES FOR KNOWING WHEN IT IS SAFE TO TRADE. 63. Every protectionist is forced to regard trade as a mischievous or at least doubtful thing. Protectionists have even tried to formulate rules for determining when trade is beneficial and when harmful. 64. It has been said that we ought to trade only on meridians of longitude, not on parallels of latitude.