Excerpt from Notes on Fallacies Peculiar to American Protectionists, or Chiefly Resorted to in America

The name protectionist, claimed by those who openly pro claimed that their Object was to favor American capital, was then, in this case, as it is in all others, chosen with peculiar lack of skill. Protectionist is a term which does not mean a person who desires to protect some thing or some one against some attack or injury, but it means exclusively a person who desires to favor one branch of business or set of men at the cost of the rest. The protectionist is always an assailant, and Obstructionist would be the fitting name for him, but we must use the term as it is used in common language, though not without a protest.

When the argument founded on the protection of domestic capital was here in vogue, the favorite protectionist argument in England was that taxation in England was much higher than on the Continent, which, consequently, could produce cheaper than Great Britain, therefore, the cheaper produc tions of the Continent must be excluded from England, that is to say, from the English consumer, who is also made to bear higher taxation at all events, the prices of the articles he desires to consume must be raised, in order to benefit the comparatively small class of manufacturers, or actually, to create a privileged class of manufacturers. This argument is now, when the heavy war debt is weighing on us, frequently used in our country. See Fallacy 5.

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