Fuming and fretting, I left the office. Every influential friend I had was appealed to in the next few hours, I maintaining stoutly that every paper in America should hear of the injustice to my “old clo’,” if I had to cross the Atlantic without it; and if I died from cold, my death would be laid at the door of the American custom-house officials. Finally, the affair was arranged. At seven o’clock next morning a friend fetched me in that rare commodity—in New York—a cab, and we drove those weary miles to the docks. My luggage was on the vehicle, my ticket in my hand. It was not the same dock as I was sailing from at ten o’clock. More palaver, more signing of documents, more swearing to the identity of the coat, more showing of frayed edges, to prove the coveted garment was not new; and the precious thing was at last handed over. An official helped me into it. Another official mounted on the box of the cab and drove with me to the next dock; he actually conveyed me—and the coat—“in bond” to my ship. He saw me up the gangway, and then—but apparently not till then—did he believe I was not going to sell the coat, and cheat the United States of a sixty per cent duty. Up to that time I had been somewhat large in my views, somewhat of a Free Trader; but after that I realised how impossible it was for England to stand out practically alone against all the other protected countries, and that if Free Trade was right, Free Trade must be universal or not at all. Why should we be the only people to be philanthropic? When they wanted to take my fur coat from me I also realised I was not really a Socialist. I did not wish to share it with anyone; and when they wanted to charge me for my own wares, I felt the injustice of England allowing tens and tens of thousands of new foreign clothes to enter our ports unchallenged, while America and other countries charge half the value of the goods received. From that moment I believed in Protection, and bade adieu to Free-Trade notions and Socialistic dreams. _We_ do the _giving_, while others do the _taking_, and the odds work against ourselves. As we can’t make the world Free Traders, let us enjoy Protection, like the rest of the world. Conscription, more practical—and especially technical—education, and the revival of apprenticeships, would do more good to England than all the Socialistic tearing to pieces of manners and customs, strikes, disorganisation, and all the rest of it. Cabinet Ministers, with their five thousand a year, and Members of Parliament, with their four hundred pounds, can afford to go on keeping the pot of discontent boiling—its very seething is what keeps them in office. Paid agitators are ruining the land.