But what has happened when the formula has not worked? Take the failure after decades of costly experiments to grow all the wool we use, to make woollens of as high a quality and at a price equal to those of the English. Fully sixty per cent of the raw wool used in the United States is brought from other lands, and a tax of 11 or 12 cents is collected on every pound of it. Our high grade woollens cost on an average twice what they do in Europe. The fact is, the protective dogma has not, and probably never can, make good in wools and woollens. It is one of those cases where we can use land, time, labor, and money to better advantage. The doctrine of protection as well as common humanity and common-sense orders the gradual but steady wiping out of all duties on everything necessary to the health and comfort of the people unless in a reasonable time these duties can supply us better and cheaper goods than we can buy in the world market. That time was passed at least twenty years ago in wool, but Schedule K still stands. It is supported by an interpretation of the formula of protection, which, as one picks it out to-day, from the explanations and practices of the wool-growers and wool manufacturers, is only a battered wreck of its old self. It ignores utterly the time limit, the “reasonable” period in which an industry was to make good. It ignores the condition that the duty should not destroy fair competition. Moreover, it stretches the function of the duty from that of temporarily protecting the cost of production to one of permanently insuring profits. The chief appeal of those who employ this distorted notion is not to reason at all, but to sympathy—sympathy for the American working-man. Call their attention to the inequalities of the duties on raw wool, and they will tell you of the difference in the labor cost of dress goods here and in England. Tell them the quality of our goods is deteriorating, and they will draw you a picture of the blessings of the American working-man. Tell them that the wool schedule has taken blankets and woollen garments from the sufferers from tuberculosis, who certainly need them, and they will tell you that “the American people are better clothed than any other people in the world and their clothes are better made.” The chief capital of the stand-pat protectionist is some variation of this appeal. The hearings preparatory to the Payne-Aldrich Bill were stuffed with them, and they were used in reply to every conceivable argument. For instance, the head of what is called the “file trust” was on the stand. It had been shown that the gentleman was selling files abroad much cheaper than at home, that he had a practically prohibitive duty, one which had reduced imports to about one per cent of the file consumption in the United States. It was also certain from his testimony that his laborers could not be getting a very large share of the duty. “Do you not think,” the chairman asked