A. It doesn’t hurt it; for, by its aid and the help of our navigation laws, there is none to hurt. The way to have ships is first to make it impossible for us to build them, and then give enough subsidy to make it possible. Now you see the little joker and now you don’t. Didn’t President Harrison almost shed tears when he hauled up the American flag on a steamer rescued from a foreign register? It isn’t possible to have Protection and have everything, but isn’t it lovely to make things impossible at much expense and then make them possible at more expense, and at last call in a President and have a melodramatic time about it? Besides all this, it employs money and promotes labor. Q. Does Protection make wages _high_ and goods manufactured _low_? A. That is what our philosophers maintain. Manufacturers are so anxious to exist here, and it is so necessary that we should have them, that they must pay high for their labor and sell its product low. To avoid paying but a little for labor, and to be prevented from selling their goods at high prices, they are even willing to maintain expensive lobbies at Washington and contribute large sums for electing Protectionists to Congress, to say nothing of “hypnotizing” doubtful or opposing senators. Q. Can the first part of the above answer be really so? A. It must be. A Protection journal had for its headlines on a Protection article the other day the statement that for many years Protection had done for manufacturers just this: It has made the wages they give _high_ and the prices they get _low_, and so they would be splendidly off if it were not for the shadow of that wicked Wilson bill. Q. Does prosperity then consist in enlarging your expenses and reducing your income? A. It always does in Wonderland and Topsy-Turvydom, and under Protection. Q. But do not “protected” manufacturers import laborers? A. Manufacturers are held by us to be benevolent. Of course they import laborers, in order that there may be more here to get the benefit of our higher wages. Q. How about invention under Protection? A. It isn’t necessary. So long as you can run the old ramshackle machinery, and be defended by the Government, you are saved the trouble of inventing newer and better methods. Some way might possibly be found if Yankee wit were once to be let loose, whereby we could compete with other nations in our manufactures, so that everybody would admit it, and then what would become of Protection? Remember constantly it isn’t the welfare of the people that is paramount; it is Protection. Q. Protection being so much more necessary than free government, free soil, free speech, and so cherubically philanthropic when compared with the dreadfulness of British Free Trade, the question arises, How shall we maintain its propaganda?