“Now, to show how the Dingley duty of eight dollars per ton on steel rails taxes American railroads and hence reaches deep into the pockets of shippers and travellers on American railroads, I need only cite the fact that, during the year 1903 our American railroads purchased from the steel pool exactly three million forty-six thousand eight hundred and thirty-six tons of new steel rails (see statistical abstract, Department of Commerce and Labour). The price to _foreign_ railroads being, say twenty dollars per ton—as we _now know_—and the pool price to American railroads being twenty-eight dollars per ton, that means that the American people, _during the single year last past_, contributed a clean net profit of twenty-four million three hundred and seventy-four thousand six hundred and eighty-eight dollars to the rail pool—by reason, presumably, of their “patriotic” belief in the Dingley duties! And during the past six years—since the Dingley Bill was enacted—these same American railroads have been forced to contribute to the few members of the rail pool exactly one hundred and two million six hundred and twenty-one thousand two hundred and fifty-six dollars, or eight dollars per ton on twelve million eight hundred and twenty-seven thousand six hundred and fifty-seven tons of rails bought and used. Dividing that stupendous sum of protection profit (one hundred and two million six hundred and twenty-one thousand two hundred and fifty-six dollars) by eighty million of population, we see that the rail pool alone—to say nothing of other combinations “sheltered” by the Dingley duties—has collected a tax of exactly one dollar and twenty-eight and one-quarter cents ($1.28¼) for every man, woman, and child in America, white and coloured. “To further indicate the fabulous profits which the Dingley duties make possible to our ‘infant’ iron and steel industries, I need only cite recent and familiar records. In the spring of 1899, when the Steel Trust was in process of formation, and when it became necessary for the influential men in the steel industry to _prove_ what enormous profits the steel manufacturers were making, and thus to induce the investing public to put their money into Steel Trust stocks—then it was that Mr. Charles M. Schwab, president, wrote to Mr. Henry C. Frick, chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company, the famous letter of May 15, 1899, now public property, in which Mr. Schwab used these words:’ “‘What is true of rails _is equally true of other steel products_.... _You know_ we can make rails for less than twelve dollars per ton, leaving a nice margin on foreign business.’ “Mark you, that was in 1899, when the boom was at its zenith, when wages were highest, and when all the costs of production were far above all averages of recent boom years.