ao4G 

 
 IS 
 
 ass 
 
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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 Price 6°* net 
 
 THE 
 
 Tariff Swindle 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN M. ROBERTSON, M.P. 
 
 Author of •' Trade and Tariffs," "The Collapse of Tariff Reform, 
 "Platform Protectionism," "The Great Question" etc. 
 
 Published BY THiCOBDl ' 
 
 WlSTMINSTER, S^W., AND 
 
 Printed by CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD., 
 
 La BeLLK SaUVAGE, LudCaII' ITdl.. r,ONI)CN. V..C.
 
 CoBDEN Club Publications. 
 
 The Revolt in Canada against the New Feudalism.! 
 
 Tariff History from the Revision of .J1907 to the Uprising I 
 of the Farmers and Graingrowers of the West in I9I0.{ 
 By Edward Porritt. Price is. net, bound in red cloth 
 and fully indexed. 
 
 The Collapse of Tariff Reform: Mr. Chamberlain's Case? 
 Exposed. By J. M. Robertson, M.P., with an Introduction! 
 by the Right Hon. Russell Rea, M.P. Price is. net,| 
 bound in red cloth and fully indexed. 
 
 My *'Two Capitals" Theory: An Interpretation. Byj 
 Adam Smith, Redivivus. Price id. 
 
 John Stuart Mill on the Protection of Infant Industries, 
 
 with a Preface by Hugh Elliot, and Introduction byj 
 James Bonar, M.A., LL.D. Price id. 
 
 The Revolt in Canada against Protection. Price id.
 
 THE 
 
 Tariff Swindle 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN M. ROBERTSON, M.P. 
 
 Author of -Trade and Tariffs," ••The Collapse of Tariff Reform,' 
 "Platform Protectionism," '•The Gnat Question," etc. 
 
 Published by the COBDEN CLUB, Broadway Court, 
 
 Westminster, S.W., and 
 
 Printed by CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD. 
 
 La Belle Sauvace, Luugate Hn,i., London, L.C. 
 
 ... ... >5l^' •. : ::•'.•. :•• :. ; : ••
 
 
 JE 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 SECTION 
 
 1. The Question of Definition 
 
 2. The Beginnings . . . . . 
 
 3. The Biographical Swindle . 
 
 4. The Historical Swindle 
 
 5. The " Free-Trade-all-round " Swindle 
 
 6. The Revenue Swindle . . . . 
 
 7. The Compensation Swindle . 
 
 8. The " Foreigner-will-Pay " Swindle . 
 
 9. The " Raw Material " Swindle . 
 
 10. The " Raw Material " Swindle No. 2 
 
 11. The " Raw Material " Swindle No. 3 
 
 12. The Colonial Preference Swindle 
 
 13. The Cheapened Food Swindle 
 
 14. The Retaliation Swindle 
 
 15. The Unemployment Swindle 
 
 16. The " Workers' Welfare " Swindle 
 
 17. The " Ruined Industry " Swindle 
 
 18. The " Large Scale " Swindle 
 
 19. The " Export of Capital " Swindle 
 
 20. The " Closed Market " Swindle . 
 
 21. The " Cocoa Press " Swindle 
 
 22. The Percentage Swindle
 
 The Tariff Swindle 
 
 § I. The Question of Defin'ition 
 
 "Say 'circle-squaring,' not swindle," objects a mathema- 
 tician, demurring to our title. "Hobbes was even a 
 quixotically honest man ; but he floundered into circle- 
 j squaring up to the very neck. They can't be all thimble- 
 J riggers." And that is obviously true. Wherefore we 
 • impugn not the men, but the movement as a totality of 
 doctrine or as a praxis. Men who squarely propound both 
 terms of a contradiction in one sentence — and many 
 tariffist candidates have done so in their addresses in the 
 recent elections — are not readily to be supposed conscious 
 . of the nature of their procedure. But a movement which 
 gets the vote of A by promising what is the negation of 
 J the promise that secures for the same movement the vote 
 of B is for all practical purposes a political swindle. And 
 that is the description of tariffism on every line of its 
 exposition. 
 
 It is a memorable fact that in this, its fourth revival 
 within half a century, British Protectionism attains the 
 very maximum of self-contradiction possible to its advo- 
 cates. In the days of the Corn Laws those laws were 
 defended with a certain effrontery for what they wore — 
 means of maintaining a wealthy landed class. When the 
 Protectionists of that day averred that high food prices 
 kept wages high, they believed it. Peel and Gladstone 
 ' both so believed; and it was Cobden's demonstration of 
 I their error that broke down Peel's defence. The old pro- 
 
 I position had really seemed true. When the young Glad- 
 
 i
 
 stone went on contending that Protection to agriculture, 
 once established for a generation, gave a vested interest 
 to the landed class, he believed it; and the proposition 
 was substantially in keeping with current political ethics. 
 When the Retaliationists of the 'seventies preached their 
 simple gospel they did not stultify it by promising at once 
 increased foreign trade and greatly reduced imports; and 
 the Reciprocitarians of the next flight were equally faith- 
 ful to the simple formula, Do as you are done by. The 
 Fair Traders of the 'eighties, it is true, soon began to 
 entangle themselves, because they somewhat protracted 
 the debate; but they too stood mainly and primarily on the 
 principle of retaliation, and did not profess to be at once 
 securing revenue from imported manufactures and exclud- 
 ing them. It is naturally in the most prolonged of our 
 Protectionist movements that the contradictions are most 
 multiplied. But that is only another way of saying that 
 what is called "Tarifif Reform " is the most self-stultifying 
 development of a primeval fallacy. A man is either 
 capable or not capable of seeing this when it is shown to 
 him. If he is not capable, so be it. The trouble is one 
 of low mental standards. If he sees it, and still continues 
 to support tariffism, the trouble is one of low moral 
 standards. Either way, consciously or unconsciously, he 
 is playing his part in a political swindle. Let us state 
 the case. 
 
 § 2. The Beginnings 
 
 Deliberate strategy certainly marks the first step in the 
 Chamberlain movement. We know from a letter by Mr. 
 Chamberlain to Lady Dorothy Nevill in 1904 that he saw 
 in an aggressive tariffist policy a means of "turning " 
 the Opposition criticism of the Government's manage- 
 ment of the war, its industrial policy in South Africa. 
 and its home policy. " Never defend yourself; always ■
 
 attack," is his maxim. And even in adopting a tariffist 
 policy he put forward ahke a spurious motive and a 
 spurious title. "Tariff Reform " is the name of the policy 
 of those who seek to reduce the tariff in the United States. 
 Mr. Chamberlain took it for a policy of imposing and 
 building up a tariff. Knowing, further, that he would be 
 supported mainly by men who wanted a tariff on food to 
 raise their rents, and men who wanted a tariff' on manufac- 
 tures to raise their prices and profits, he professed to be 
 aiming above all things at retaining the loyalty of Colonies 
 the unshakeable fixity of whose loyalty he had been loudly 
 affirming for years. The comparatively sincere Primrose 
 Leaguers who could not turn their coats with his own 
 promptitude he contemptuously characterised as fools. 
 "Good Lord! v.-hat fools they be," was his pronounce- 
 ment* when his lead failed. 
 
 § 3. The Biographical Swindle 
 
 For a man who had made the right-about-face of Mr. 
 Chamberlain, the flagrant repudiation of the economic 
 creed of a lifetime, it must indeed have been exasperating 
 to find that the Primrose Leaguers were not ready to make 
 even the half-turn of proclaiming faith in a protectionism 
 which had always been a "pious opinion" in the party. 
 For his own part, he had done his best to falsify fifty 
 years of history the better to help others in tergiversation. 
 To cover his own apostasy in his own way, he had 
 ijethought him of accusing the Cobden Club of living 
 upon the subscriptions of foreign mi.'mbers. WIkmi 
 repeatedly challenged to offer the slightest proof for his 
 false assertion, he held his tongue. "Never defend your- 
 self." There are always ignorant and heedless people 
 
 • Letter in Under Five Reif;ns, by Lady Dorothy Ncvill, iqio, pp. 
 208-9. ^''- Chamberlain appears to have echoed an expression of Lord 
 Ellenborough, "Good Lord ! what fools these bishops bo!" in a letter 
 published in Lady Dorothy Nevill's previous volume of Recollections.
 
 enough to make it unnecessary for party purposes. The 
 problem was how to make the requisite number of dupes 
 and of devotees ; and the well-tested prescription was to 
 go on reiterating and vociferating the false statement. 
 
 In his "Radical days" Mr. Chamberlain had spoken 
 of Cobden with the respect felt for him by all honest men 
 in the past half-century. Without wholly forswearing 
 himself on this score, Mr. Chamberlain proceeded to put 
 in circulation certain gross distortions of Cobden's words; 
 and these falsified quotations are to this day current coin 
 among tariffists. 
 
 I. "Mr. Cobden," said Mr. Chamberlain, ^^ based his whole 
 argument* upon the assumption, which he made in all good 
 faith, that if we adopted Free Trade it would mean free exchange 
 between the nations of the world; that if we adopted Free Trade, 
 five years, ten years, would not pass without all nations adopting 
 a similar system."! 
 
 This is an absolute misrepresentation as to date and a 
 gross distortion as to purport. In his Dundee speech of 
 January 19, 1844, Cobden expressly declared that "if 
 foreign countries exclude us, it is only a stronger reason 
 why we should throw open our ports." Only in January, 
 1846, w'hen the battle of Free Trade in corn w^as sub- 
 stantially won, did he express the belief "that if you 
 abolish the Corn Law honestly, and adopt Free Trade in 
 its simplicity, there will not be a tariff in Europe that 
 will not be changed in less than five years to follow your 
 example." As tariffists themselves are constantly point- 
 ing out, we have never "adopted Free Trade in its 
 
 * Mr. Balfour was more careful in his version of the legend. In 184b, 
 he asserts, " the leading Free Traders . . . prophesied that our example 
 would induce the whole world to adopt a Free Trade policy." — Speech of 
 May 28, 1903. But this statement, too, is absolutely wrong as regards 
 Peel, and quite misleading as regards Cobden. 
 
 t Reprint of Tariff Speeches, De La More Press, 1910, p. 184.
 
 simplicity." We could not, without abolishing our own 
 excise duties on alcoholic liquors. Peel, indeed, was 
 willing to reduce the duties on wine and brandy ; but he 
 left them on as sources of revenue and theoretically 
 possible "instruments of negotiation," and there they have 
 been ever since. Cobden's stipulation, then, was never 
 fulfilled, and his prophecy has never been falsified. In 
 point of fact, even the incomplete reform of 1846 brought 
 about immediate or speedy changes in various foreign 
 tariffs — notably those of the United States and Holland; 
 and the further steps towards Free Trade taken in i860 
 enabled Cobden to negotiate the French Commercial 
 Treaty, under which, without receding in the slightest 
 degree from the measure of Free Trade then attained, he 
 secured new concessions from France. Prussia thereafter 
 made further advances in tariff reduction. Thus Cobden's 
 carefully qualified prediction came much nearer fulfilment 
 than any of the hundred-and-one unqualified predictions 
 of Mr. Chamberlain. 
 
 But the essential fact here to be insisted upon is that 
 Cobden had never "based his whole argument" on any 
 prediction about foreign consequences, and had never 
 promised an absolute adoption of Free Trade by other 
 protected countries. On the contrary, he had expressly 
 and repeatedly argued that whether or not foreign 
 countries reciprocated our policy. Free Trade would be 
 beneficial to ourselves. And, as was known to all who 
 had made any historical study of tlu' subject, i^eel 
 explicitly announced that he made the change of 1846 
 after many vain attempts to get foreign countries to 
 promise reciprocity, being convinced that retaliation merely 
 injured ourselves. "Hcjstile tariffs," Ik- declared, "so far 
 from being an argument against the removal of restrictive 
 duties, furnish a strong argument in its favour." * Three 
 
 * Speech of Jan. jy, 1846.
 
 8 
 
 years later he affirmed that "the best way to compete with 
 hostile tariffs is to encourage free imports." * 
 
 2. No less gross is the perversion of Cobden's words 
 in the following passage of Mr. Chamberlain's speech 
 at Birmingham on Nov. 4, 1903 : 
 
 "Mr. Cobden stated that the United States of America, if 
 Free Trade were adopted, 'would abandon their premature manu- 
 factures — (laughter)— that the workmen in their factories would 
 go back to the land— (laughter)— and inow I am quoting his 
 exact words) that they would ' dig, delve and plough '—(laughter 
 and cheers) — ' for us.' " 
 
 So the speaker had the exact w^ords of Cobden before 
 him when he thus catered for the laughter of ignorance 
 by distorting them. Here are the "exact words" : — 
 
 "The Atlantic States of America are increasing, and con- 
 suming more and more of the corn of their interior ; and we 
 offer them no inducement to spread themselves out from the 
 cities — to abandon their premature manufactures — in order to dig, 
 delve and plough for us; and they are more and more in a 
 condition to consume all that we produce. "+ 
 
 As Mr. Chamberlain would have explained to any 
 inquirer in his Free Trade days, the manufactures of 
 America were actually fostered by our embargo on 
 American corn, where free imports would unquestionably 
 have encouraged the rapidly increasing population of the 
 States to "spread out from the cities." The abolition of 
 our Corn Laws absolutely did have this effect as regards 
 their iron trade. But when Cobden expressly calls some 
 American manufactures premature, Mr. Chamberlain in 
 effect represents him as saying that if we established Free 
 Trade they would never ripen. 
 
 And while Mr. Chamberlain was thus scouting the 
 notion that a Protectionist country would ever let itself 
 be turned in any degree from manufactures to agriculture, 
 
 * Speech of July 6, 1849. 
 
 t Speech at London, June 18, 1845.
 
 one of his guiding philosophers, from whom he had taken 
 much of his simple lore, Sir Vincent Caillard, was catering 
 for votes for a tariff on the express ground that preferential 
 duties would induce our own Colonies to do so. "The 
 agricultural prospects in our self-governing Colonies," 
 wrote Sir Vincent, "are immense. They would thus con- 
 centrate their energies more and more upon producing 
 those commodities which they would find to he the most 
 profitable; and it may be foreseen without exaggerated 
 optimism that they w^ould rapidly adopt Free Trade with 
 the mother country."* 
 
 Thus the voters were appealed to on the one hand to 
 impose a preferential tariff in order to induce the Colonies 
 to revert from manufactures to agriculture, and, on the 
 other hand, assured that only Cobdenites were fools 
 enough to think such a thing possible. Even Mr. 
 Chamberlain, recognising perforce what the Colonies had 
 impressed on him during his term of office — that nothing 
 would induce their Protectionists to give up Protection — 
 proceeded to assume that a preferential policy on our part 
 would restrain them from extending it. This inference in 
 turn was promptly repudiated; and while the British public 
 were being fooled by both the qualified and the unquali- 
 fied predictions of the tariffist leaders here, the chief organ 
 of Australian Protectionism, the Melbourne Age, was de- 
 claring : "We are a wool-producing nation. We ought 
 to be a cloth-manufacturing nation for all those countries 
 that cannot produce wool."! Thus from the start the 
 tariffist propaganda threw dust in the eyes of the British 
 public. 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain's earlier misrepresentations of 
 Cobden and Peel were promptly exposed. With what 
 
 *" Imperial Fiscal Reform," 1903, p. 1^5. 
 
 I Passage quoted by Senator Pulsford, " Commerce ;ind I lie Empiri.," 
 1903. P- 4-
 
 lO 
 
 result? In a later speech the untruths were simply made 
 more explicit. In December, 1903, speaking at Leeds, 
 the tariffist leader thus heightened his colours : — 
 
 "The policy of Free Trade was adopted at the time on the 
 faith of -promises, -predictions and expectations which experience 
 shows have not been fulfilled. . . . Nobody denies that Mr. 
 Cobden believed — honestly believed — that if once we set the 
 example every other nation on the face of the earth would follow 
 our example, or if they did not follow it they 7vould he ruined. 
 Mr. Cobden believed and told the world that all the rest of the 
 world would dig, delve and plough for us. . . ." 
 
 To the maxim "Never defend yourself," there is added 
 the rule: "Never unsay an untruth: repeat it and 
 darken it." 
 
 § 4. The Historical Swindle 
 
 If anything is certain, thus far, it is that Mr. Chamber- 
 lain represents Cobden as having predicted a total change 
 in foreign fiscal policy, and that it never took place. That 
 is to say, by the tariffist account, foreign fiscal policy before 
 1846 was Protectionist, and it has always remained Pro- 
 tectionist. It is often hazardous to infer the logical pro- 
 cesses of Mr. Chamberlain's followers; but if they 
 understood anything from him they must have under- 
 stood this. None the less, their instructor proceeded to 
 assure them, with equal emphasis and reiteration, that 
 since we adopted Free Trade foreign fiscal policy has 
 totally changed. 
 
 That is his ostensible justification for his own change 
 of front. "Has nothing changed in thirty years? Every- 
 thing has changed. . . . Trade has changed. The con- 
 ditions with which we have to deal are altogether different 
 from the conditions with which we had to deal thirty years 
 ago."* In the next paragraph of the same speech he 
 
 * Greenock Speech of Oct. 7, 1903.
 
 II 
 
 asserts that "for something like live-and-twenty or thirty 
 years after Free Trade was . . . adopted . . . our country 
 prospered more under it than it would have done under 
 any other system. . . . But ... in the last thirty years 
 the whole conditions have changed." So that we did well 
 from 1849 till about 1880: nevertheless "the whole con- 
 ditions had changed" from about 1873; though Mr. 
 Chamberlain was a vehement Free Trader as late as 1885 ! 
 And all the while we are assured that Cobden had erred 
 in expecting other nations to adopt a Free Trade policy 
 after 1846. Then they have been Protectionist all along. 
 And yet "all the conditions have changed"! 
 
 It is safe to say that not one of Mr. Chamberlain's 
 more sincere followers has ever seen anything wrong with 
 this compound proposition. It is the capacity to swallow 
 such compounds that constitutes your average tariffist. 
 Of course there are the simple party men who shrug their 
 shoulders — and at times secretly shake their fists — at the 
 whole thing, believing none of it; but even these seem to 
 fail to realise the full beauty of the swindle. There remain 
 the astute few who know what they are about ; but to seek 
 to specify them were invidious. 
 
 § 5. The " Free-Trade-all-round " Swindle 
 
 Grosser self-contradiction than this would seem to be 
 impossible. But let the reader pause before he attempts 
 to fix the high-water mark. Turning to the positive as 
 distinguished from the negative affirmations of the tariffist 
 party, we find that, with very few exceptions, they profess 
 to be in favour of "Free Trade all rouiui." it is only (he 
 "wholly changed conditions" of foreign tarill" policy— 
 the policy which foreign nations obstinately refused to 
 change after 1846, but have somehow changed twice over 
 without being observed— that move Mr. Chamberlain .uul 
 his accomplices to propose a tariff for Britain. Let
 
 13 
 
 foreigners drop tariffs, and the British tariffist party will 
 cease from troubling. Yet if there is one other assertion 
 that they repeat more frequently than this, it is that a 
 policy of tariffs has made an end of serious unemployment 
 in foreign countries, and that only a policy of tariffs can 
 cure unemployment here. So we are to regard them as 
 labouring (i) to induce foreigners to revert to a policy 
 which makes for unemployment everywhere ; whereafter 
 (2) they will be willing to revert to the same unemploy- 
 ment-breeding policy here. On their own showing, it 
 would be a crime against labour to do any such thing. 
 But it is as friends of labour that they have made their 
 loudest and longest protestations. Of the man who makes 
 both protestations — calling for Free Trade all round, while 
 affirming that only tariffs -can prevent unemployment — 
 what shall we say? Is his defect one of low mental 
 standards, or of low moral standards ? Or of both ? 
 
 § 6. The Revenue Swindle 
 
 The reader may perhaps doubt whether any single 
 politician could affirm both terms of the contradiction in 
 question. He may suggest that it must be one set of 
 reasoners who affirm the one, and another set the other. 
 If he does, he is unduly optimistic as to the intelligence of 
 tariffists. In one district, at the last General Election, the 
 present writer counted three tariffist appeals in which the 
 candidates explicitly promised that a tariff policy would 
 (a) raise a revenue from the taxation of imported manu- 
 factures, and (b) keep those manufactures out, so as to 
 make work for the British unemployed.* This particular 
 
 * E.g., the election card of Mr. Kirkley, tariffist candidate for Jarrow 
 Division : "He [Mr. Kirkley] wishes to take the taxes of a number of 
 articles of food . . . now taxed, . . . and tax instead foreign manu- 
 factured goods which -we can make at home. . . . This policy will decrease 
 the cost of living and find work for the unemployed." So, again, Mr. 
 Hellenus Robertson, tariffist candidate in Tyneside Division, was " in favour 
 of Tariff Reform as calculated to increase employment, ... to provide a
 
 13 
 
 imbecility has permeated the whole of the current tariffist 
 movement from the start. In his Glasgow speech of 1903 
 Mr. Chamberlain expressly reckoned that an average 
 tariff of 10 per cent, on ;^ 148,000,000 of imported manu- 
 factures would yield a revenue of "nearly ^15,000,000." 
 That is to say, all the foreign goods were to come in as 
 before! And yet from first to last he and his coadjutors 
 have vociferously promised that the great object and 
 outcome of their tariff policy will be to keep out foreign 
 manufactures in the interest of the British workman. 
 
 If the candid reader still hesitates to believe in such 
 systematic self-stultification, let him turn to the mass of 
 the tariffist propaganda which preceded the promulgation 
 of the Budget of 1909. It habitually proceeded on the 
 assumption that "Free Trade finance " could not raise the 
 money required to pay the Old Age Pensions promised 
 by the Free Trade party. Mr. Balfour, in particular, made 
 the "frigid and calculated " prediction that "the Radicals " 
 could not find the revenue required. His party, he 
 claimed, alone could. And the means was to be a tariff, 
 the revenue from which would be raised mainly from 
 imported manufactures. For at least two years before, he 
 and his followers had been talking of "broadening the 
 basis of taxation," in order not only to raise the money 
 needed for social reforms, but to provide for the ever- 
 increasing cost of armaments. Perhaps there was some 
 "division of labour" in the business of swindling the 
 electorate. While some "leaders" dwelt mainly on the 
 revenue that was to be raised by a tariff, others confined 
 themselves more or less to promising that the tariff would 
 keep out the goods that were to yield the revenue. But the 
 
 source of revenue at the expense of the foreigner, to enable this country 
 to hold her own in the markets of the world, and to consolidate the British 
 Empire." Thus the tariff was to keep out goods and let them in, to he 
 on for Colonial preference, and ofT as a result of bringing down other 
 tarifTs — all at the same time.
 
 14 
 
 average man-at-arms complacently made both promises. 
 Was it that the platformists had no more intelligence than 
 the thousands of bemused electors whom they duped? In 
 many cases, probably they had not. If the imputation be 
 resented, however, it can be at once withdrawn, and the 
 explanation of low moral standards substituted for that 
 of low mental ones. 
 
 In this connection, by the way, let it be noted that 
 Mr. Chamberlain in 1903 expressly proposed to "remit 
 other taxation" with the ;^i5, 000,000 that were to be 
 raised from a tariff on manufactures. In 1903, then, 
 Mr. Chamberlain had no notion of finding money by 
 tariff to pay for either Old Age Pensions or armaments. 
 These were afterthoughts ! 
 
 § 7. The Compensation Swindle 
 
 What, then, were Mr. Chamberlain's remissions to be? 
 The particular problem is, if possible, even more obscure 
 than the general problem as to why Mr. Chamberlain 
 turned Protectionist. When he made his proposal to tax 
 imports of food, he proceeded to show that for every penny 
 of taxation he put upon bread and butter and beef and 
 cheese and eggs, he would take a penny off tea and sugar 
 and tobacco. The sum obstinately refused to add up as 
 he proposed; but there the prospectus was. When thus 
 engaged in showing that all the extra taxation involved 
 by Colonial Preference would be made up to the masses 
 by the remissions on tea and sugar and tobacco, Mr. 
 Chamberlain and his friends quite omitted to suggest any 
 compensations for the increase in the prices of manufac- 
 tured goods set up by the tariff, which was to raise 
 ;^i5, 000,000 on them (in the act of keeping them out). 
 Increased prices of boots and clothes and cutlery and fur- 
 niture, it would seem, did not need to be compensated for ! 
 Here the candid reader may suggest that the "remis-
 
 sion of other taxation " suggested by Mr. Chamberlain 
 in the Glasgow speech was meant to balance the taxation 
 of manufactured imports. But if the taxes on imported 
 food were to be compensated for by remissions on tobacco 
 and tea and sugar, what other remissions could Mr. 
 Chamberlain have had in view ? More remissions on tea 
 and sugar and tobacco? He said nothing of that, having 
 ostensibly forgotten all about the increased cost of manu- 
 factures when planning how to counterbalance the in- 
 creased cost of food. It would seem that he must have 
 been thinking of the income tax, or possibly it was of the 
 death-duties : another device for helping the working 
 classes. 
 
 Of course there is one more hypothesis open, — to wit, 
 that after making the Glasgow speech Mr. Chamberlain 
 discovered that lo per cent, upon nothing would not 
 yield ;^ 15, 000,000; and that he had better forego that 
 handsome income than openly confess that a tariff would 
 not keep out manufactures. But this is doubtful. Most of 
 his followers have not made the discovery to this day. 
 They get on very well, they feel, with the compound 
 proposition that you should keep out foreign goods by 
 getting a large revenue from taking them in. 
 
 § 8. The " Foreigner-will-Pay " Swindle 
 
 Have we not — the candid reader may yet ask — for 
 once done the ingenuous tariffist an injustice? Is it not 
 possible that all the while he meant that "the foreigner 
 will pay" the ;^ 1 5,000,000 ? It is, indeed! He is quite 
 capable, to all appearance, of believing that the foreigner 
 will pay us ;^i5,ooo,ooo per annum on goods which wc 
 no longer take from the foreigner. Tariffist minds seem 
 to function in that way. But there is yet another little 
 difficulty. Mr. Chamberlain began his career as the Mad 
 Hatter by announcing that he would put no tax on maizC)
 
 i6 
 
 "partly because maize is a food of some of the very poorest 
 of the population, and partly also because it is a raw 
 material for the farmers, who feed their pigs on it " ; and 
 bacon was to be similarly exempt, as being also "the 
 staple food for many of the poorest." Thus he admitted 
 in effect that the foreigner would not pay the tax on corn, 
 meat, butter, cheese, and eggs. He explained, it is true, 
 that the foreigner would somehow pay some of the tax ; 
 but, in view of his unwillingness to test the point in the 
 case of bacon, the problem remains dark. 
 
 On any view, tariffist bookkeeping in the matter of the 
 various results predicted for a tariff policy remains unfit 
 to pass any auditor. // the tariff on manufactured imports 
 raises the prices by the full amount, and yields the full 
 lo per cent, of revenue, nothing is done for unemploy- 
 ment, and the working classes are burdened by the 
 ;^I5, 000,000. // "the foreigner pays," there is no 
 raising of prices : the goods come in as before ; nothing 
 is done for unemployment; nothing is done for the manu- 
 facturer who wants prices raised ; and the nation gets only 
 the comfort of screwing the fifteen millions out of the 
 detested foreigner. As the said foreigner necessarily takes 
 our goods — or other foreign goods purchased by our goods 
 — in exchange for those he sends us, he will, by the same 
 necessity, take fifteen millions' worth less of our goods 
 than formerly, and, in the terms of the tariffist case, 
 unemployment to that amount will be created in this 
 country. Such are the boons in store for labour when 
 it turns as mad as the Hatter and returns a tariffist party 
 to power. 
 
 To be sure, there would be the fifteen millions of 
 revenue which might be expended by the tariffist govern- 
 ment in public works over and above Old Age Pensions 
 and the expenditure that would otherwise have to be pro- 
 vided for out of other revenue. And the working-man
 
 17 
 
 who believes that a tariffist government would so act, 
 and would not relieve the income tax and the super-tax and 
 the death-duties by the fifteen millions in question — such 
 a working-man, in a word, has his course clear before 
 him. He should give his vote and influence to the tariffist 
 party. 
 
 Lest, however, such a working man should be so near 
 the line of idiocy as to take for granted that the foreigner 
 would pay the fifteen millions on the goods we import, it 
 may be as well to remark that if he can believe that he 
 may as well believe all the rest. The "manufactured" 
 goods which we import are for the most part only partly 
 manufactured — as leather, chemicals, dyes, paper, and 
 metals — and are virtually raw material for our industries. 
 Of the forty or fifty millions' worth of finished goods 
 which we take from the foreigner, much is incapable of 
 being manufactured by us. Turkish rugs and Japanese 
 wares, for instance, are really not producible in Britain. 
 Of the rest, the bulk is bought by us precisely because it 
 happens to be cheaper than home-made goods; a good 
 many things being so cheap that our own manufacturers 
 do not care to try to make them. In respect of goods 
 already so cheap, the foreigner simply cannot pay a duty 
 of 10 per cent. : if he did he would have no profit left. 
 So the tariff would simply make a number of cheap things 
 dearer for poor people and a number of dear things still 
 dearer for rich people. And, as there would be shrinkage 
 of demand in both cases, the resulting revenue would 
 perhaps amount to the price of a Dreadnought or two at 
 the outside. 
 
 Of course, if we are to tax leather and paper and bar- 
 copper and chemicals and dyes and pig-iron and steel, 
 there would be at first a larger haul. And the price of it 
 would be wholesale unemployment in all the trades using
 
 i8 
 
 the dearer material, and dearer boots for the unemployed 
 and other workers. Whereafter there would be the due 
 fall in imports — and in the accruing revenue. 
 
 § 9. The "Raw Material" Swindle 
 
 Let us not forget that one school of tarififists, led or 
 typified by Mr. Bonar Law, professes to meet a trouble- 
 some criticism by putting yet another spoke in the wheel 
 of the Mad Hatter, so to speak. People concerned in the 
 shipping trade, even when inclined to tariffist views by 
 reason of the primordial passion for "hitting back," dimly 
 perceive that if a tariff is going to keep out a quantity of 
 foreign goods, there will be a failure of incoming cargoes, 
 with the result of making trouble for outgoing cargoes, 
 even if such be forthcoming. People who think a little 
 farther realise that if fewer goods are imported there must 
 be a corresponding fall in exports, since one pays for the 
 other. It is thus difficult to get a vote for tariffs (as dis- 
 tinguished from a mere vote for Toryism) from shipping 
 men of fair intelligence, save in so far as they harbour a 
 hope that any loss they may incur on cargoes will be 
 made good to them by subsidies. 
 
 Mr. Bonar Law, accordingly, proceeds to explain that 
 the object of tariffists is not at all to lessen the amount of 
 our imports, but simply to change their character. By 
 taxing imports of manufactures we will make it hard for 
 these to come in; and raw materials will come instead. 
 Mr. Law, it will be observed, has mastered part of the 
 alphabet of the economics of international commerce, 
 which is more than can be said of some of his colleagues.* 
 
 In Mr. Law's hands, however, the creed of the Mad 
 
 * The present writer once made Mr. Balfour very angry by such a 
 remark. He would, therefore, explain that it was never intended to refer 
 to Mr. Balfour, who probably sees through the absurdity of most tariffist 
 arguments as well as anybody. 
 
 1
 
 19 
 
 Hatter becomes even more delirious than before. When 
 the new item is added we get a prospectus Hke this : 
 
 1. By a tariff on all manufactured imports we shall 
 raise a handsome revenue. 
 
 2. True, we are going to keep the goods out, so that 
 there can be no revenue from them. 
 
 3. But then we shall get more raw materials instead, 
 so that there will be work for all, and no extra revenue 
 will be needed. 
 
 And no doubt there are electors who can swallow this, 
 as they have swallowed the preliminary compound bolus. 
 
 But again the comparatively sane onlooker is per- 
 turbed. How is Mr. Law going to secure that when we 
 keep out manufactures we shall get raw material instead ? 
 What raw material ? And what manufactures are to be 
 kept out? At once the plot thickens furiously. In the 
 Tyneside region Mr. Bonar Law is understood to have 
 promised that when the day of tariffs comes there will be 
 no duty on imported steel goods such as go to the making 
 of ships. Of course, the local steel-makers would like to 
 have such duties, but the ship-builders would not; and 
 there are more ship-builders than steel-makers. The 
 upshot is obvious. 
 
 In standing recently for the Bootle Division, however, 
 Mr. Law felt bound to conciliate above all men the ship- 
 owner.^, who were uneasy about future cargoes; and for 
 their benefit he elaborated the attractive theory that a tariff 
 would positively increase their traffic, inasmuch as it would 
 keep out steel, and instead of steel they would have to 
 bring in cargoes of iron ore, which are so much bulkier ! 
 So steel is to be taxed — for Liverpool purposes. If the 
 tariffist constituents of the present writer in Tyneside 
 Division should feel wounded by this cruel desertion of 
 them by their guide, philosopher and friend, he can but 
 suggest patience. When Mr. Law next visits Tyneside he
 
 20 
 
 will probably feel free (having been safely elected for 
 ♦Bqotle) to promise once more to safeguard steel imports 
 from duty. And if the shipowners who dwell in Bootle 
 should thereupon feel hurt, they also must be counselled to 
 be patient — till next election. 
 
 A strict concern for accuracy in prediction, however, 
 suggests the caveat that even on Tyneside Mr. Law may 
 see fit to get off the fence on the side of the shipowners 
 of that region, and to promise them a tariff which shall 
 cause iron ore to be substituted for pig-iron and steel in 
 incoming cargoes. In that case, it is to be feared, the 
 shipowners must just be left to settle things with the ship- 
 builders as best they can. It will take some time, during 
 which the Free Trade members may still hope to sit. 
 
 § 10. "Raw Material" Swindle No. 2 
 But even if the tariffist ship-builders and shipowners 
 remain dutifully silent about Mr. Law's equivocal treat- 
 ment of them, other people, and especially working men, 
 have cause to press further the question about that extra 
 raw material. To the latter he has promised that his policy 
 will give them more work. Instead of merely doing skilled 
 work on iron and steel, making machinery, and engines 
 and ships, they will have the privilege of smelting more 
 iron ore. It may occur to some of the more inquisitive 
 to ask what will follow. At present we can export many 
 millions' worth of machinery, ships and locomotives 
 because we get our iron and steel, whether home-made or 
 imported, cheaper than do our competitors under tariffs. 
 We import steel only in so far as it comes cheaper in that 
 way; and, with the open door, even a small import serves 
 to prevent any great raising of prices by a ring of home 
 producers. If, however, we are forced to import iron ore 
 instead, the resulting iron and steel must become dearer. 
 Making our ships and locomotives and machines and tin-
 
 21 
 
 plates of costlier material than before, we shall be unable, 
 however much the tarififists would like it, to sell our pro- 
 ducts as cheap as before — unless, indeed, we are to play the 
 celebrated part of the "foreigner" who "pays" by selling 
 cheaper abroad. Unless we adopt the latter unpopular 
 alternative, we should simply be undersold in foreign 
 markets, whereupon, however inconvenient it might be for 
 the tariff-makers, there would follow extensive unemploy- 
 ment. Mr. Law's policy, then, would result in giving 
 some more employment to unskilled workers in smelting 
 iron ore, and throwing idle three times as many skilled 
 workers. In which case the employment even of the iron 
 smelters, engaged in making unsaleable iron and steel, 
 would seem likely to be precarious. 
 
 If any unsophisticated artisan of tariffist leanings 
 should find a difficulty in following this argument, he 
 may perhaps master another aspect of the case. Let us 
 suppose that Mr. Law's policy should succeed in keeping 
 out the whole ;^i50,ooo,ooo worth of manufactured and 
 partly manufactured goods that now enter our ports in a 
 good year, and that in their stead will come extra raw 
 materials of all kinds to the same total value. Let us 
 further make the liberal assumption that all these extra 
 raw materials will be worked up into finished goods. 
 Who is to buy them ? They will be worth, roughly, 
 ;^300,ooo,ooo or more. There is a market for half that 
 amount of finished goods. Even if no unemployment 
 should follow, can the same market or markets absorb 
 twice the amount ? 
 
 Let the unsophisticated inquirer remember that the 
 foreign producers of all the finished goods that wo have 
 assumed to be excluded will be wanting to sell those at 
 almost any price in foreign markets, so that we shall be 
 limited to the home market. Is any working man who is
 
 capable of following an argument through three steps 
 capable also of believing that the home market can absorb 
 the doubled product resulting from the importation of raw 
 material instead of finished goods ? If such there be, their 
 place in the scheme of things is clear. They are the 
 natural prey of the tariffist — so long as they remain at 
 large. 
 
 § II. "Raw Material" Swindle No. 3 
 And still we have not exhausted the complications of 
 the "raw material "swindle. On nothing was Mr. Chamber- 
 lain more peremptory, more indignant over doubt or 
 challenge, than in regard to his pledge that tariffists would 
 "never tax raw material." That pledge, as we have seen, 
 has been skilfully circumvented as regards the virtual "raw 
 material " of many industries. Leather is the raw material 
 of the boot-maker ; but the tanners of Bermondsey have 
 been assured that it shall be taxed when the day of tariffs 
 comes. The anxious inquirer, seeking to make sure of a 
 really raw material, would naturally hope to find it in, 
 say, hops. Did not Mr. Chamberlain avow that maize is 
 raw material for farmers who feed their pigs with it ? 
 As a matter of fact, flour is a raw material for the cotton 
 manufacturer, and Mr. Chamberlain is determined to tax 
 that because it is a human food as well. And oats, the 
 food of horses, are to be taxed because they are also human 
 food, as is maize. Thus from the first there is hopeless 
 confusion in the proposed discrimination. But at least 
 hops are not food as they stand, whereas they are 
 certainly raw material for the brewer; and the brewer is 
 usually a tariffist. Yet, despite the ample and able repre- 
 sentation of that great industry on the tarififist benches of 
 the House of Commons, a determined rally of the tariffist 
 party there has more than once been made in support of 
 the demand for an import duty on hops. Sir Gilbert
 
 23 
 
 Parker, pallid at Daily Mail news of vast cargoes of Ameri- 
 can hops "dumped on the shores of the Thames," called 
 for instant protective action, at the risk even of a split in 
 the tarififist ranks. Hops were to be taxed at once, with- 
 out waiting for the advent of a tariffist majority. 
 
 And why not, on tarififist principles — if it be permissible 
 to impute principles to tariffists ? Here, on the tariffist 
 view, is an industry to protect, capital to be kept at home, 
 unemployment to be averted. If chemicals and bottles are 
 to be taxed, why not hops ? And if hops are to be taxed, 
 let us further inquire, why not wool ? If the hop-grower 
 is to be protected — to say nothing of the farmer in general 
 — why not the sheep-farmer? If leather, why not hides? 
 and if hides, again, why not wool? Mr. Chamberlain, 
 we shall be again told, has barred raw material. But 
 Tvhy? Will not the foreigner pay in one case as in the 
 other ? And is the cattle-breeder to be protected, and not 
 the sheep-breeder ? If the sheep-breeder is to be protected 
 on his mutton, once more, why not on his wool ? 
 
 Then comes cotton. The actual tariffist policy for 
 cotton, as lately propounded in Lancashire, is to sub- 
 sidise cotton-growing "within the Empire," and then to 
 give a preference to the cotton so produced. If tariffist 
 proposals have any meaning, this is simply a plan for 
 taxing imports of raw cotton. And again, why not? If 
 Colonial Preference is to be more than a subsidy to the 
 growers of wheat and the breeders of cattle and the makers 
 of cheese and butter. Colonial lumbermen and cotton- 
 growers and sheep-farmers have a plain right to prefer- 
 ential duties on timber, cotton and wool. Mr. Wyndham 
 has actually proposed duties on timber : the others, surely, 
 must follow. To such anticipations the sole answer 
 appears to be the pledge of Mr. Chamberlain : "We shall 
 never tax raw material"; "except, of course, flour," he
 
 24 
 
 in effect adds. " Except, of course, hops ! " add his 
 henchmen. "Except timber," adds Mr. Wyndham. And 
 "except granite, of course," adds the chorus. Anything 
 rawer than raw granite would seem difficult to conceive. 
 But the tariffists are chronically clamouring to tax that. 
 So we seem bound to confess that in the matter of raw 
 material the tariff swindle maintains its high level of 
 completeness. 
 
 § 12. The Colonial Preference Swindle 
 To some it may seem almost brutal to raise just now the 
 sore question of Colonial Preference. Something like the 
 beginning of the end is announced from Canada. vShe is 
 arranging a reciprocity treaty with the States, under which 
 many things on both sides are to enter duty free; and the 
 ground gives way under the feet of the British tariffist. 
 To "bind the Empire together," to retain the wavering 
 loyalty of "the Colonies," by is. or 2S. on the quarter 
 of corn, and a percentage on meat and dairy produce — this 
 was the noble preliminary pretext for taxing the bread 
 and cheese and beef and butter of poverty in Britain. It 
 sounded so nobly "imperial" that Mr. Chamberlain, that 
 veteran electioneerer, counted on sweeping the country 
 with it in the early days after the war. Is that bright 
 vision for ever dispelled ? 
 
 High authorities in the tarifhst ranks assure us that 
 it is not. They will "bate no jot" in their high crusade. 
 So there is stfll due motive for inquiring whether the 
 great Colonial Preference plank in the tarififist platform 
 escapes the fatality of fraud that corrodes all the others. 
 And the inevitable answer would seem to be that it is as 
 rotten as any. 
 
 Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, it will be remembered, pre- 
 dicted in his versatile way that his policy would have the 
 effect of forcing down the hostile tariffs of foreign countries.
 
 25 
 
 That, in fact, was one of his main objects; and many of 
 his more guileless followers (and some others) have habitu- 
 ally protested that they are tariffists only in order to force 
 Free Trade on a recalcitrant world. Mr. Balfour in 1904 
 claimed that "the party which desires to use negotiations 
 for diminishing foreign tariffs has a Free Trade end in 
 view."* Lord Lansdowne's "big revolver" was excogi- 
 tated to that end. Tariffs are to make an end of tariffs, 
 or at least to lower tariffs. And if so for Britain, so also 
 for Canada. Yet, when there comes the news of the 
 Reciprocity Treaty between Canada and the United States, 
 what a scream rends the air over our own tariffist camp ! 
 It does, indeed, occur to Mr. Austen Chamberlain, in the 
 intervals of the screaming, to point proudly to the sur- 
 render on the part of the United States as a triumphant 
 proof of what a defensive policy of tariffs can do. The 
 American aggressor is at last humbled. But why, on 
 that view, does Mr. Austen Chamberlain regret the 
 triumph ? If a main object of the Canadian tariff was to 
 compel the States to surrender, why these screams from 
 British tariffists ? 
 
 The confusion is worse confounded by Mr. Lyttelton, 
 who obliviously protests that it is all the fault of the British 
 Government that the American arrangement has ever come 
 about ! After a generation of tariff' war, the Canadians, 
 he tells us, had "lost all hope " of a peaceful settlement 
 with the States ! Such is the faith of one leading tariffist 
 in the creed professed by other leaders. 
 
 Sore was the task of the front-bench tariffists who in 
 the House of Commons recently had to pretend that they 
 passed no blame on Canadian politicians. In spite of 
 themselves, the blows they aimed at Mr. Asquith glanced 
 off on Sir Wilfrid Laurier — all because his big revolver 
 had actually hit something at last ! But Sir Wilfrid may 
 with little difficulty retaliate on his retaliationist friends. 
 * Speech at Manchester, Jan. 11, 1904.
 
 26 
 
 On their own showing", they were either swindling him 
 from the start or swindling their fellow-countrymen. 
 Their big revolver was expressly schemed to bring down 
 foreign tariffs. As soon, then, as it did its work, and 
 foreign tarifTs were lowered, they stood committed to 
 laying the revolver aside. That is to say, the British tariff, 
 having done its work, was to be taken off. That is to 
 say, there was to be no more Colonial Preference ! 
 
 It may certainly be urged that Mr. Joseph Chamberlain 
 and Lord Lansdowne either never really meant to drop 
 their tariff should it prove successful, or never really 
 believed for a moment that it would compel foreign 
 countries to lower their tariffs. It would be impossible to 
 say "No" to either contention. On that view, then, the 
 tariffist leaders were not swindling the Canadians : they 
 were only swindling the British. Let the tarifiists take a 
 referendum on the question ; it is for them to answer it. 
 
 Only a word need be added for the benefit of the 
 unsophisticated inquirer. Mr. Austen Chamberlain and 
 Mr. Lyttelton both contrived to be wrong on the Reci- 
 procity question, even in flatly contradicting each other. 
 Mr. Chamberlain was wrong in describing the American 
 appeal for reciprocity as a surrender to the pressure of the 
 Canadian tariff. Outside pressure never did and never 
 will break down a tariff, save by way of a ruinous tariff 
 war, after which the parties return to the status quo ante 
 helium on both sides. Mr. Lyttelton was wrong in ascrib- 
 ing the arrangement to the refusal of the British Govern- 
 ment to negotiate preferential terms with Canada. The 
 American movement is part of the revolt of the people of 
 the United States against their own tariff, which is making 
 life harder for the mass of them in the midst of abundance 
 than it is for the people of little England. That revolt 
 fully revealed itself in the last congressional election, when
 
 27 
 
 the tariffist party was utterly defeated after a long tenure 
 of power. The offer to Canada would have been made all 
 the same had a preferential arrangement already been 
 framed between Canada and the ^Mother Country. And 
 if there be any British tariffists capable of believing that 
 in that event the Canadians would have refused the offer 
 of the United States, they must just be congratulated on 
 their thorough adaptation to the exigencies of their cause. 
 
 § 13. The Cheapened Food Swindle 
 One of the notable achievements of the tariffist mind was 
 the pretence that Free Traders had promised to keep food 
 always cheap, and that when the price of bread rose, by 
 reason of shortage of the world's crop, that promise had 
 been broken. This precious proposition is a useful illus- 
 tration of the calibre of the ordinary tariffist intelligence. 
 It is literally too stupid to be the work of intelligent 
 knaves. The average working man, without help, can see 
 that the Free Traders' promise was to keep food as cheap 
 as possible, and that it actually remains always cheaper 
 than it can be in tariffed countries which have to import 
 wheat. The working man below the average, who cannot 
 reason to that extent, is, of course, the due victim of the 
 tariffist propaganda. 
 
 But since that achievement the tariffist leaders have 
 actually made the promise that the Free Traders did not 
 make. They have promised, that is to say, that a tariff 
 will actually lower the price of wheat to an unprecedented 
 degree. The argument, which has been put forth in the 
 House of Commons by Mr. I.yttelton, and elsewhere by 
 many others, runs briefly thus: "A preferential duty on 
 wheat will so stimulate wheat-growing in the Colonies that 
 in a few years' time the Colonial supply will be far in 
 excess of the whole British demand, and prices will be 
 lower than ever before."
 
 38 
 
 Once more we must recognise a kind of play of intelli- 
 gence which cannot well be classed as aiming at deceit. 
 The proposition amounts to predicting that the stimulus 
 of a preference of is. or 2s. per quarter would lead the 
 wheat-growers of Canada, Australia and India to extend 
 their production till they made wheat a drug in the market, 
 and would continue indefinitely to keep it so, thus ruining 
 themselves. This virtual attribution of lunacy to the agri- 
 cultural populations of India and the Colonies is not the 
 output of a crafty intelligence, though even the original 
 theorist could hardly be the fool fhat his theory required 
 the Colonial farmer to be. But this comic-opera theory, 
 once propounded, is vended more or less by the whole 
 tariff party, and becomes part of the general swindle. 
 
 It would spoil the effect of the statement to dwell on 
 the fact that, in the terms of the situation set forth, the 
 feeding of Great Britain would depend solely on the 
 Colonial and Indian harvests, and that their simultaneous 
 failure would mean British famine, inasmuch as our other 
 main sources of supply would have ceased. When wheat 
 was at "slaughter prices" year after year in our market 
 even for preferred Colonial sellers, Argentine and European 
 growers would not sow for that market at all. But the 
 excuse for mentioning this economic consideration is that 
 the tariffist argument often expressly indicates failure to 
 perceive it. Yet, when we ask the tariffist to apply his 
 own principles further, and put a preferential duty on wool, 
 thereby stimulating our colonists to multiply their sheep 
 till both their wool and their mutton bring prices down 
 to the lowest possible level, we are simply told that tariffists 
 "will never tax raw material." Not even to make raw 
 material cheap ! 
 
 The permanently interesting point is the fine simplicity 
 with which our tariffists plan a future in which our
 
 39 
 
 colonists are avowedly to be induced to ruin themselves 
 by over-production of wheat. And in this connection 
 there is to be noted the simplicity of the swindle played 
 upon our own farmers. One of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's 
 many starting points was the proposition that agriculture 
 had been ruined by Free Trade, and that a tariff would 
 restore it. This "pledge " is supposed to hold good along- 
 side of the other prediction under notice — that preference 
 will so stimulate Colonial production as to make wheat 
 cheaper than ever before. All the while, tariffist candi- 
 dates in agricultural constituencies get votes on the express 
 promise that a tariff will put money in the farmer's 
 pocket. 
 
 This pledge they may pretend to justify on the score 
 that the proposed duties on meat and dairy produce will 
 raise the prices of these foods. But while they are so 
 promising, their accomplices in the industrial constitu- 
 encies are promising that "food" will be no dearer. Mr. 
 Chamberlain's plan, it will be remembered, was to under- 
 take that the tea and sugar duties should be reduced, and 
 likewise the duty on tobacco. But meanwhile Mr. Asquith 
 has actually halved the sugar duty, as Mr. Chamberlain 
 proposed to do, besides reducing the tea duty. If the 
 latter is further reduced during the present Parliament 
 there will be nothing left, save tobacco, on which com- 
 pensation can be given as against tariff duties on food 
 and manufactures. 
 
 But even this is not all. At the South vShields by- 
 election in iQio the tariffist candidate not only assured 
 the electors that their food would not be made dearer by 
 a tariff : he declared that the farmer had no need of help. 
 Agriculture (under Free Trade!) was really doing so well 
 that protection was unnecessary. Thus the industrial vote 
 is catered for by promises of cheap food and more work,
 
 30 
 
 while the agricultural vote is obtained by promises to tax 
 imported farm produce and raise its price. And while 
 many tariffists are doubtless capable of believing that both 
 things can be done together, intellectual charity seems to 
 dictate the conclusion that there must be some in the party 
 intelligent enough to realise that it is carrying on a 
 swindle. 
 
 § 14. The Retaliation Swindle 
 If there is one decently honest inspiration at work in 
 the tariff movement it is the desire to "hit back." The 
 primeval instinct of retaliation is the wind that best fills 
 the tariffist sails, though profit-seeking is the fuel for the 
 steam power that primarily propels the vessel. Mr. 
 Chamberlain, accordingly, took good care to appeal to 
 the pugnacity of his countrymen in starting the move- 
 ment. But when it comes to showing that retaliation will 
 pay, the old fatality asserts itself. No one has planned 
 a more complete cancelment of the principle of retalia- 
 tion than that embodied in Mr. Chamberlain's "compen- 
 sation " scheme. 
 
 One of the items in that, as we have seen, is a reduction 
 of the duty on tobacco; and now that sugar is out of the 
 question, and tea likely soon to be, the one remission — 
 apart from liquor duties — open to the tariffist to offer is 
 on tobacco duties. He is apparently quite ready to cheapen 
 both whisky and tobacco — that is, to make narcotics cheap 
 while he makes food dear, all the while professing to be 
 a hot patriot, an empire-builder, and a champion of 
 national defence. Such are the moral and scientific lights 
 of the Large Englander. He would tax the child's bread 
 and butter and cheapen the father's smoke and drink, thus 
 breeding an "efficient " race of fighters. 
 
 But it is as a retaliationist that he most triumphantly 
 exhibits his sagacity. The main source of our tobacco
 
 31 
 
 supply is the United States, the industrial country which 
 has the highest tariff against our manufactures. If, then, 
 we lower the tobacco duties we shall positively be limiting 
 the chief existing means of retaliation which we possess 
 against America. Clamouring to be allowed to hit back, 
 our tariffist plans to curtail the hitting power that we 
 have actually ready. 
 
 It is such unaffected displays of imbecility that form 
 the best available defence for the tariffist against all 
 imputations of deliberate deceit. Can such folly, it may 
 be asked, be compatible with imposture ? It is really a 
 fine question. 
 
 § 15. The Unemployment Swindle 
 Next to the instinct of retaliation, the great stand-by of 
 the tariffist movement, as regards the mass of the elector- 
 ate, is undoubtedly sympathy with unemployment. But 
 for the plea that tariffs will "make work" for the British 
 workman by keeping out foreign manufactures, very few 
 working men could ever have been induced to support 
 tariffist candidates. And it is only because the heads of 
 so many working men are about as soft as their hearts 
 that they have been captured even by that plea. All along, 
 as we have seen, the promise to make work by keeping out 
 foreign goods has been accompanied by the promise to 
 raise a large revenue on those very foreign goods — that 
 is, to let them in as before. Certainly the tariffist working 
 man is no swindler, whatever his teachers may be. Accord- 
 ing to Carlyle, the gull has always in him something of 
 the rook; but that is gratuitous pessimism. 
 
 The man who is capable of swallowing simultaneously 
 both promises — the promise of revenue from imported 
 goods and the exclusion of the goods that yield the revenue 
 — is, of course, not a hopeful subject for enlightenment at 
 other points. But even he might perhaps be awakcnrci if
 
 32 
 
 he could give a little intelligent attention to the facts about 
 unemployment in home and foreign history. In the light 
 of these, the impudence of the quack nostrum attains to 
 the status of farce. In the first half of the nineteenth 
 century, when, according to our tariffist romancers, British 
 "supremacy " in manufactures was undisputed, the amount 
 of unemployment in Britain, decade by decade, was any- 
 thing from two to five times what it has ever been under 
 Free Trade, and the amount of resultant misery and despair 
 was past all comparison. This is matter of simple history, 
 demonstrable beyond dispute. But never for a moment 
 have the tariffist Press and platform ceased to promise that 
 a reversion to tariffs will mean "work for all." Mr. 
 Chamberlain, who used to recite the historic facts by way 
 of answer to the Protectionists, simply shelves the facts 
 and vociferates the fable he used to deride. 
 
 Another overwhelming exposure of the fable is supplied 
 by the industrial statistics of the United States. It was in 
 that stronghold of Protection that the industrial collapse 
 of 1907-9, like so many previous depressions, began. Half 
 a million workers were thrown idle in one week ; and things 
 went from bad to w^orse, till, through the greater part of 
 1908, one in three of the trade unionists of New York 
 State was out of work, and, by the repeated testimony of 
 Times correspondents in the States, the unemployed 
 throughout the country numbered between three and four 
 millions. All the while the tariffist Press and platform 
 here continued to affirm that "Tariff Reform means work 
 for all." When it was too futile to talk of the States, play 
 was made with delusive figures from Germany, where also, 
 by 'a host of witnesses, it was testified that the unemploy- 
 ment was the worst that had been known since 1880, when 
 the new tariff threw 400,000 men idle. 
 
 In point of fact, statistics show from year to year that,
 
 33 
 
 alike in good years and bad, there is more unemployment 
 in the United States than in Britain. Tarififists talk of 
 the demand for labour in the States in 1907, and at the 
 same time, in their engaging way, tell stories of Britons 
 who had gone to the States and returned to spend at 
 home the money they had earned by the high American 
 wages. Those very visits were the results of unemploy- 
 ment in American industries. Even in a good year 
 American factories, as a result of the system of syndicates 
 and restricted production, are frequently closed for months. 
 Whatever demand there may be for unskilled labour in 
 new railway construction and otherwise, the factory hand 
 is, as such, thrown idle. Being thus without work for 
 many weeks in the year, and being indisposed to seek 
 work as a navvy or lumberman or farm labourer in his 
 idle spell, the British-American had need earn higher 
 wages while he does work, and he frequently returns to 
 Britain to live on his savings precisely because he can 
 live here so much more cheaply. And all this is in- 
 genuously paraded as proof that tariffs secure "work for 
 all " ! 
 
 § 16. The "Workers' Welfare" Swindle 
 
 Not (jnly was unemployment to be prevented by a tariff 
 that should make everything dearer; wages were to rise. 
 When nothing else availed to allay the fears of the 
 Conservative working man about increased cost of food, 
 he was assured that he would have "more money to buy 
 it with." By way of further persuasion, he was assured 
 that the wages of German workers had risen more per 
 cent, in thirty years than had those of I*]nglish workers. 
 
 And yet, to this day, no tariffist statement is more 
 common than the protest that what is rccpiircd is pro- 
 tection from "unfair competition," which is further delincd 
 to be the importation of goods produced by "sweated
 
 34 
 
 labour" or under "bad labour conditions." That is to 
 say, labour in tariffed countries — whence the goods in 
 question come — is worse paid and worse conditioned than 
 in Free-Trade Britain. Which is perfectly true — the one 
 true thing, in fact, affirmed on the tariffist side. But 
 now the compound proposition is that British workmen, 
 being better off under Free Trade than continental work- 
 men under tariffs, are to vote for a tariff in order to be 
 as well off as the foreigner. 
 
 In vain, we are told, is the net spread in the sight of 
 the bird. But there are types of unfeathered biped, it 
 would appear, to whom the rule does not apply. 
 
 § 17. The "Ruined Industry" Swindle 
 
 A mysterious satisfaction is taken by tariffists in alleging 
 that in a country where population, income and revenue 
 are continually increasing, industries are constantly being 
 ruined by "unfair foreign competition." If the site of an 
 old glass-work can be anywhere shown to be occupied as 
 a shipbuilding yard, the glass-work goes to swell the list 
 of ruined industries, and the new shipbuilding yard is 
 thoughtfully ignored. The point of the argument lies 
 in the fact that a tariff policy demonstrably does more to 
 set up destructive competition within any given country 
 than any importation of foreign goods can. 
 
 The candid reader will see, on reflection, that the 
 natural effect of a tariff on any manufacture is to bring 
 into the industry protected an increased amount of capital, 
 which seeks to benefit by the new or heightened monopoly. 
 The result has been, both in Germany and the United 
 States, an internecine competition in a number of industries 
 such as has never been witnessed in Britain under Free 
 Trade. The first step is over-production ; the next, the 
 formation of cartels and syndicates. Leading men in the 
 suffering industry invite others to join them in a policy
 
 35 
 
 of restriction of production and increase of prices. Any 
 man who refuses to join is deliberately ruined by the 
 others, who undersell him till he has to shut shop. Thus 
 a struggling manufacturer can often make more money 
 by closing his factory than by running it. The higher 
 prices thus enforced are paid by the fellow-countrymen of 
 the protected producers — the only people who can be made 
 to pay them. And this is the end in view among our in- 
 genuous tariff-mongers, who assure us that "the foreigner 
 will pay." If the protected producers continue to export, 
 it is necessarily at far lower prices than they charge at 
 home. In a word, the tariff-ridden consumer pays for the 
 free-trading foreigner, who gets his imported goods the 
 cheaper because of the extortion practised by tariffist 
 producers on their own people. 
 
 In Germany a prominent result of the tariff on iron 
 and steel has been a desperate struggle between the works 
 which simply produce steel and iron and the works which 
 both produce the metal and work it up in machinery and 
 otherwise. The result has been "ruined industries" by 
 the dozen. But no tariff tripper is known to have seen 
 one. 
 
 In Sweden, Austria, France and other tariffed countries 
 the total output of many industries has receded hopelessly 
 where that of Britain has enormously increased. Of these 
 the tariffist historian writes not and recks not. 
 
 § 18. The "Large Scale" Swindle 
 
 Mr. Bonar Law used to make play with a pleasing pro- 
 position to the effect that a tariff enabled a manufacturer to 
 beat free-trading rivals in export by giving him the secure 
 command of his b.ome market, for which he is able to 
 manufacture "on a large scale," whereas the free trader, 
 having no secure ninrlsct, is bound to manufacture; on a 
 small scale. It was, he declared, an economic law which
 
 36 
 
 economists in the past had failed to note. When 
 Lancashire manufacturers, stupefied by the proposition, 
 asked whether it was alleged that either foreign factories 
 singly or foreign cotton exports in general were greater 
 than British, Mr. Law readily explained that cotton is 
 an exception to his rule, because Britain "got the start" 
 in that industry. Mr. Law's law is thus a law unto itself. 
 As regards manufactures and exports, Britain had the 
 start of Germany in woollens and iron and machinery as 
 well as in cotton, and would thus seem, on Mr. Law's 
 secondary theory, to be pretty safe all round. 
 
 As regards the United States the puzzle becomes acute. 
 They grow the raw material and protect their market of 
 eighty millions of people, and their export of cotton goods 
 is a small fraction of the British.* If "start" so com- 
 pletely blocks the operation of the law, what exactly does 
 it amount to? 
 
 Striving to work it out, we at once realise that on 
 Mr. Law's principles what counts is not the size of the 
 market so much as the size of the factory. If, that is to 
 say, Switzerland, with a population of three millions, 
 should reduce her cotton factories to the number of six, 
 while the LTnited States, with their population of eighty 
 millions, had five hundred factories or more, the Swiss 
 manufacturers, having each half a million customers to 
 supply, would be able to produce on a far larger scale than 
 the American, who had each only 160,000 "secure" 
 customers. Then Switzerland might easily beat the 
 United States in exporting power, with a twenty-seventh 
 part of their population ? 
 
 *" The American, to start with, had the whole of the American market. 
 In addition to that, he had the whole of the English market ; and the 
 keynote of commercial success was to obtain the largest market." Thus 
 Mr. F. E. Smith, at Bedford, on Oct. 6, 1909. Let the reader see how the 
 keynote sounds in cottons, woollens and linens.
 
 37 
 
 Switzerland, nevertheless, has not developed this power 
 of underselling, which, on Mr. Law's principles, would 
 enable her to obliterate British competition. Britain, with 
 Free Trade, continues to beat alike the large and the small 
 factories of the United States and Germany, Switzerland 
 and France, in the production of cotton goods; and British 
 cotton factories continue to be on the average much larger 
 than German, despite the large "secure market" of the 
 German producer, though there remain relatively small 
 and relatively large factories in each of the countries 
 specified. The only possible conclusion would seem to 
 be that Mr. Law has been talking pure nonsense. But 
 it all serves to run the tarfff swindle. 
 
 § 19. The "Export of Capital" Swindle 
 
 In chronological order the crv of "export of capital" 
 is the latest manoeuvre of the tariffist movement. In point 
 of folly and (or) fraudulence it is the most consummate. 
 The development of tactics has been something like 
 this : 
 
 Empire in danger : needs binding together. 
 
 British trade declining year by year. 
 
 Tariff will bind Empire and revive trade. 
 
 Tariff will raise revenue and keep out goods which 
 yield it. 
 
 Tariff will broaden basis of taxation, anyhow. 
 
 Tariff will check emigration (to the Empire). 
 
 Tariff will cure unemployment, anyhow. 
 
 Tariff will f)r('vent export of capital. 
 
 It is hard to say wliich [)ropo,sitioii is now in circula- 
 tion. Canada has discounted the binding formula; trade 
 returns confute the fable of decadence; "Free Trade 
 finance" confounds tariffist prognostications; unemploy- 
 ment falls to a low percentage, and (lie I-'ree Trade Govern- 
 
 4()21i5rj
 
 38 
 
 ment plans a real remedy for the future. But the fate of 
 the "export of capital" cry is fully the most pathetic of 
 all. 
 
 As simple swindle, to begin with, it is matchless. Let 
 the reader reflect for a moment on the alleged phenomenon 
 and he will realise that export of capital means either 
 increase of exports or check of imports, or both. Only in 
 goods can we convey large quantities of w^ealth abroad : 
 even the Tariff Reform League has a glimmering of the 
 fact that we cannot export many millions of our gold with- 
 out speedily recalling it. If, then, we lend, say, a hundred 
 millions to foreign countries, it must be mainly by way of 
 exported goods, which are the produce of British labour. 
 Exported goods must be paid for either by a return of 
 goods to the same value or by treating them as lent capital, 
 upon which interest comes in annual percentage, also re- 
 presented by goods. 
 
 More export of capital, then, means (a) more export of 
 British goods or (b) taking a relatively small amount 
 of goods in return by way of annual interest instead of 
 the full equivalent at once. Tariffists profess to desire 
 both (a) increase of exports and {b) decrease of imports. 
 Thus "export of capital" is for the time being the very 
 thing their theory demands; and they denounce it as the 
 "end of all things." 
 
 Some tariffists, it is true, of late bethought them of 
 reversing their old argument and affirming that we were 
 not importing enough. Germany, whose excess of exports 
 over imports was formerly the theme of their praise, was 
 now declared to be increasing her imports faster than w^e, 
 and thereby proving the superiority of a tariff policy. 
 But even this theorem, which really never reached the 
 great heart of the tariffist party, is also put out of action 
 by the figures of recent British imports. The explanation 
 is, of course, simple. Besides being the greatest exporter
 
 39 
 
 of manufactures, Britain is already the largest holder of 
 foreign debt, the greatest sea carrier, and the chief marine 
 underwriter. For her carrying and insuring services, as 
 well as for the interest on her investments, she must be 
 paid in imports; and thus the devotion of even a large 
 amount of annual exports to the placing of loans leaves 
 a far larger surplus of imports due to Britain than to any 
 other State. 
 
 If, indeed, a tariffist were to bethink him to argue that 
 the devotion of exports to the purposes of a foreign loan 
 means a balancing reduction of exports when interest 
 begins to arrive, inasmuch as the imports which pay 
 interest do not exchange against fresh exports, he might 
 make a semblance of a case against "export of capital." 
 But the answer is instant. If spare British capital is 
 denied, say, to Canada or Argentina when either seeks 
 to raise a loan for railway construction, the chances are 
 that the materials for such railway construction will be 
 purchased elsewhere than in Britain. In any case, refusal 
 to invest abroad must tend to check demand for our 
 exports. The foreign borrower wants money to buy 
 materials with as well as to employ labour, and on both 
 lines he is a potential purchaser. 
 
 Needless to add, British capital does not go abroad 
 to the extent of stinting British industry of needed capital. 
 The pretence to the contrary is one of the stock fictions 
 of tariffism. It is only unsound or doubtful concerns that 
 cannot borrow the capital they need. The very exporta- 
 tion of capital means demand for products, and demand 
 for their products enables producers to borrow. Thus 
 exportation of capital involves home investment of capital. 
 
 So much for the theoretic side of the question. On the 
 practical side the answer to the tariffist pretence is still 
 more decisive. In the first place, Mr. Balfour's adoption 
 of the cry is in Hat contradiction of his own declaration of
 
 40 
 
 1903. When, in 1909, Mr. Asquith expounded the 
 <'Conomic law of export of capital, and added, "long may it 
 continue," Mr. Balfour joined the rank and file of his party 
 in crying "Shame!" Did Mr. Balfour know no better 
 than the mob of his followers? Let his own words of 
 1903 answer him. Predicting that in future, under Free 
 Trade, Britain will have to export an immense amount of 
 manufactures to pay for "the corn and meat and raw 
 material which of necessity it is obliged to import," he 
 observed that "this effect is at present disguised by the 
 fact that we have enormous investments abroad, that we 
 are a creditor country on a great scale. . . . But as 
 far as I understand the modern tendencies of industry, 
 there is a stream running now the other way. . . . ■ — a 
 movement which seems to tend in the direction of making 
 us the debtors of the United States." * Here our foreign 
 investments are treated as a great advantage, which Mr. 
 Balfour fears we may lose ; and in the Economic Notes on 
 Insular Free Trade he actually expresses the view that 
 our large foreign investments are in general beneficial. 
 He warns us, however, against supposing that their 
 magnitude is due to Free Trade. We owe them, he says, 
 rather to the fact that we were "first in the industrial 
 field " ; and he implies a fear that we may not be able to 
 keep them up.f So the doctrine denounced when put 
 forth by Mr. Asquith is the express "conviction" held by 
 Mr. Balfour in 1903. Tergiversation could no further go. 
 And now comes, for the tariffist, the unkindest cut of 
 all at the hands of callous fate. Even while he was 
 engineering his outcry, lo ! there arose in France and 
 Germany the very same outcry as regarded the export of 
 capital from these protected countries. Everything that 
 
 *" Speeches on Fiscal Reform," 1906, p. 33. Speech of May 28, 1903. 
 t Pamphlet cited, § 29.
 
 41 
 
 ^vas said to be happening in Britain as a result of Free 
 Trade was declared to be happening in France and 
 Germany, despite their high tariff walls. Capital was 
 going abroad and leaving home industries inadequately 
 supplied ! Within the past few months there have actually 
 been proposals to deal with the trouble in those countries 
 by legislative means. Exit, then, "export of capital " from 
 the tariffist's selection of claptrap cries. 
 
 And here, once more, economic reason explains his 
 predicament. A protected country is positively 77iOTe 
 likely, other things being equal, to invest its capital 
 abroad than a Free Trade country. Its tariff puts obstacles 
 in the way of a return of goods for goods. Wherever, 
 then, it exports to a country that has little raw material 
 to send it of the kind it wants, its exporters have a special 
 inducement to leave their credits to be invested in the 
 country that took their goods. We say, "other things 
 being equal." In virtue of her Free Trade system, Britain 
 has become, as aforesaid, the greatest exporter of manu- 
 factures, the greatest sea carrier, and the greatest under- 
 writer; hence her predominant power of investment abroad. 
 Putting no tariff wall in the way of imports, she does 
 nothing to force foreign investment of her credits. But 
 countries which do discourage imports are alwavs tending 
 to make their credits abroad remain unrealised; and hence 
 the vehement outcry in I'"" ranee and Germany, which has 
 absolutely cried down the similar clamour of (he (ariHists 
 in Britain. 
 
 That particular swindle, in short, has had lo be with- 
 drawn from (he tarifhst bill. But surely its history should 
 not pass unrecorded. 
 
 § 20. Till-: "Closeo Mark'kt" Swindle. 
 Few tariffist cries are more familiar than the most false 
 of all : "All protected markets are closed to us." Often
 
 it goes the length of "All foreign markets are closed to us." 
 It is one of the mysteries of tariffism that even the dullest 
 of listeners can be otherwise than derisive as to this par- 
 ticular statement. Of all the countries in the world, we 
 export the largest amount of manufactures. Where do 
 they go? Into the sea? Doubtless the average tariflfist 
 thinks they are mainly absorbed by "the Empire." Mr. 
 Chamberlain at his start set up the belief that the pro- 
 portion of our exports to the self-governing British 
 Dominions was steadily increasing, and the proportion 
 of our exports to foreign countries steadily falling. The 
 actual percentage figures are, for the years 1902 to 1909 
 inclusive : To Foreign Countries, 62, 62, 63, 66, 68, 68, 
 67, 68; to the Self-Governing Dominions, 21, 20, 18, 15, 
 15, 15, 15, 16; to India, 12, 12, 13, 13, 12, 12, 13, 11; to 
 other British Possessions,. 5, 6, 6, 6, 5, 5, 5, 5. But that 
 by the way. 
 
 Naturally, high tariffs tend to prevent imports of 
 manufactured goods. "Tend to," we say, for they can 
 only partially succeed. In the year 1908 the United States 
 actually imported nearly as much of manufactured goods 
 (the figures were ;^i20 and ;^ioo millions respectively) as 
 did Britain. Without a tariff they would doubtless have 
 imported more; but there the fact stands. But to anyone 
 save a born tariffist, one would think, the thought would 
 suggest itself that if foreign tariffs keep out some British 
 goods, they must also keep out the goods of other protec- 
 tionist countries. The question is not whether Germany 
 keeps out a quantity of British manufactures, but whether 
 she takes less from us than from France ; and so with 
 France in turn. 
 
 What are the facts ? Germany in 1907 took from 
 Russia, who supplies her with great quantities of food 
 and raw material, produce to the value of 1,130 million 
 marks. From the United States, also mainly in food and
 
 43 
 
 raw material, she took 1,319 million marks' worth. From 
 Britain she took only 976 millions' worth. But from 
 France she took only 453 millions' worth ; and France is 
 the industrial rival with whom comparison should be 
 made. 
 
 France, on the other hand, imported from Germany 
 in 1907 goods to the value of 638 million francs; but from 
 Britain 883 millions' worth ; and in this case Germany is 
 the industrial rival with whom comparison should be made. 
 
 Russia, lying coterminous with Germany, and supply- 
 ing her with grain and raw material, naturally takes more 
 from her than from Britain; but from Britain she took in 
 1907 105 million roubles' worth of goods as against 28 
 millions' worth from France. (For 1908 the figures were 
 120 and 36 millions respectively.) 
 
 For trade with Spain and Portugal, Germany and 
 Britain are pretty much on an equality as regards sea 
 carriage, and France is coterminous with Spain ; yet in 
 1907 Portugal took 18 million milreis' worth of goods 
 from England as against 10 from Germany and 6 from 
 France; while Spain took 180 million pesetas' worth from 
 Britain as against 158 from France and 98 from Germany. 
 Only in 1908, for the first time, did Spain import slightly 
 more from France than from Britain. Even Italy takes 
 nearly as much from Britain as from Germany, and much 
 more than from France or from Austria-Hungary; while 
 the last-named country takes much more from Britain than 
 frr)m Trance or Italy. 
 
 The United States, supplying us with corn and oil, 
 tobacco and cotton, meat and fruit, certainly takes much 
 less from us than we take from her; but in 1907 slu; took 
 246 million dollars' worth of goods from us as against 161 
 millions' worth from Germany, and 127 millions' worth 
 from France. Thus every one of our three leading indus- 
 trial rivals takes more j^^oods frcnn us than she does from
 
 44 
 
 either of the others. And still the tariffists affirm that pro- 
 tected markets are closed to us. 
 
 The swindle is capped when, excluding from view the 
 facts above stated, the tarifiist points to German exports 
 into Russia, Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, Roumania, 
 and Servia, as proof of the superior efficacy of a tariff 
 system for the promotion of exports. Germany trades 
 at an advantage with those countries solely because of her 
 geographical position in relation to them ; the very idea 
 of the comparison is dishonest. But to Turkey she stands 
 on much the same geographical footing as does Britain, 
 in respect of sea carriage, and how does her trade there 
 compare with ours? To Turkey she sent in 1907 goods to 
 the value of £^ millions; in 1908 ;^3 millions; in 1909 
 ;^4 millions; while the British consignments to Turkey 
 in the same years were ;^7^2> £7 and ;^7/^ millions 
 respectively. 
 
 As regards the so-called "neutral markets" of Asia 
 and South America, comparison is needless; even the 
 tariffist does not venture to pretend that we are beaten 
 there by our tariffed competitors. He stakes his case, as 
 regards markets, on the pretence that foreign tariffs are 
 "destroying" our export trade. And an hour's investiga- 
 tion will reveal to any honest and intelligent investigator 
 that the pretence is a main part of the general tariff 
 swindle. 
 
 § 21. The "Cocoa Press" Swindle 
 
 For years past, the tariffist press and party have kept 
 up a peppering fire against the Free Trade party on the 
 score of the element of protection latterly involved in the 
 incidence of the duties on imported chocolate. When the 
 cocoa duties were imposed, and for long afterwards, choco- 
 late consisted almost entirely of cocoa and sugar; and to 
 tax it at the rate on manufactured cocoa involved no in- 
 equality. Gradually, however, other ingredients, notably
 
 45 
 
 milk and cream, entered into the making of chocolate, and 
 the proportion of sugar increased; and still the compound 
 was taxed at the full cocoa rate. Thus a virtual element 
 of protection came into play where no protection was in- 
 tended ; and the duty w-as left unrevised solely because the 
 total protective element was trifling in amount, while it 
 was counterbalanced by the absence of any drawback on 
 exports, and the revision w'ould give a good deal of 
 trouble. It was, in fact, through the voluntary avowal of 
 Mr. Asquith that the fact became generally known. 
 
 As soon as the anomaly became a subject of tariffist 
 attack. Free Traders called for a revision of the duties — 
 or, by preference, for a total abolition of the duties on 
 cocoa. When the tariffists ingenuously represented the 
 accidental protective incidence of the duties as a deliberate 
 plan to enrich the eminent cocoa manufacturers who own 
 Liberal newspapers, those gentlemen expressly joined in 
 the appeal, noting that the gain they might derive from 
 the preference was trifling in comparison with the 
 hindrance laid upon them as exporters by the cocoa duty. 
 None the less they were dubbed "the cocoa press"; and 
 the attack went on, vigorously and venomously. 
 
 All the while it was perfectly well known that a number 
 of British cocoa manufacturers are Tories and tariflists, 
 and that these gentlemen desired the continuance of the 
 anomalous duty on imported chocolate. But that con- 
 sid(;ration weighed nothing uitii their fellow-tarifTists ; and 
 in the recent Barnstaple election one Tory newspaper ran 
 an entire broadsheet of protests, Cjuotations and impeach- 
 ments on the subject of the protection of chocolate. 
 
 Now comes the consummation of the (ariflist tactic on 
 the subject. Tiie Ciiancellor of the lCxche(juer, in his 
 recent Budget, responding to the ai)peals of his own side,
 
 46 
 
 announced that he would so revise the chocolate duties that 
 the element of protection would be wholly removed, at a 
 cost to the revenue of some ;^25,ooo. At the same time, a 
 drawback is to be allowed on exported cocoa and chocolate, 
 which will cost the revenue some ;^20,ooo more. 
 
 On the heels of this announcement there is published 
 a "Speaker's Companion," by Mr. R. A. Cooper, M.P., 
 setting forth "What Abolition of the Cocoa Duties 
 Means." The author of this remarkable compilation 
 intimates that he sent letters, thirty-six in all, to every 
 chocolate- and cocoa-maker in Britain, except Messrs. 
 Cadbury and Rowntree ; that twelve of the firms "are 
 emphatic that any alteration in existing duties would be 
 detrimental to the trade " ; that only one firm advocates 
 remission of the duty ; and that the others are silent or 
 are non-committal in their replies. 
 
 For his own part Mr. Cooper emphasises the fact that 
 the duty on chocolate is protective, and that the majority 
 of the manufacturers consulted "do not want Free Trade." 
 In his "Summary " he affirms (a) that "the foreigner pays 
 the tax"; (h) that "Cocoa duties are incompatible with 
 Free Trade principles"; (c) that they are "a beneficial 
 protection to a large British industry " ; {d) that the same 
 thing could be done by import duties for other industries ; 
 and (e) that "the repeal of the cocoa, tea and coffee 
 duties will deal a severe blow to British industry and to 
 the labour employed in it." 
 
 Now the murder is out. The Free Trade party has 
 been reviled on all hands for maintaining a virtual pro- 
 tection of chocolate ; and though most of the chocolate- 
 makers are tarififists, the Government is accused of main- 
 taining the duties in the interest of Liberal manufacturers 
 — who have declared that they do not want them ; while the 
 Tory manufacturers do ! Now that the protection is to
 
 47 
 
 be removed, tlie same party and the same Government are 
 to be reviled for taking it off ! 
 
 We have been denounced as Food Taxers in respect 
 of all the breakfast-table duties, which we want to remove 
 as soon as possible ; and now we are denounced as enemies 
 of British industry because we contemplate taking them 
 off! Heads, tariffism wins; tails. Free Trade loses! 
 
 There is no more perfect illustration of the collective 
 unscrupulousness of the tariffist movement. First it seeks 
 votes by assiduously denouncing alike the protective 
 element in the chocolate duty and the taxing of cocoa, 
 coffee and tea in general. Then it seeks the same votes 
 by denouncing the Free Trade party for removing the 
 protection to chocolate, and contemplating the removal 
 of the duties on tea and coffee ! The same press will make 
 the new attack as made the old ; and the whole propaganda 
 will make the right-about-face without a blush. 
 
 § 22. The Percentage Swindle 
 
 Of enumerating the items of the tariff swindle there is 
 no end. Let us close, then, with one of the most typical. 
 The character of the tariffist's mind comes out most 
 instructively, perhaps, in his processes of comparison. 
 When he would prove that a tariff policy is most conducive 
 to trade expansion, he turns instinctively to the United 
 States, which have twice our population, thirty times our 
 area, twelve times our wheat-growing power, twenty times 
 our coal and iron resources, vast stores of natural oil, and 
 vast cotton-growing and tobacco-growing power which we 
 do not possess. Carefully suppressing the fact that, never- 
 theless, the States can put up only the most trifling com- 
 petition with us in exports of cotton manufactures, he 
 points to her large total exports — mainly of raw material 
 — and says he has proved his case.
 
 48 
 
 When he turns to German}^ he fastens first on her 
 produce of iron. Since the discovery of the Gilchrist- 
 Thomas hematite-iron process, she has had far more iron 
 ore than we to produce; but the tariffist says nothing of 
 that. Mr. Bonar Law ingenuously takes the figures of 
 American and German iron production and shows that, 
 whereas we were formerly first, we are now only third. 
 And all this, he declares, is the result of the tariff. He 
 has, of course, no fear that any tariffist will ask, Why 
 does not the tariff cause France and Austria and Sweden 
 and Spain to get ahead of us ? If a Free Trader asks the 
 question, Mr. Law knows better than to answer it. 
 
 On other points of comparison, the procedure is equally 
 simple. Where it cannot be shown that another country 
 exports* more of any manufactured article than we, a careful 
 search is made for a case of greater percentage increase. 
 If w^e increase cotton exports from ;^ioo millions to 
 p^iio millions, while maritime Bohemia has increased hers 
 from ^'lo millions to £\2. millions, it is announced that she 
 has advanced by 20 per cent., and we only by 10. 
 
 The full force and beauty of the swindle may be best 
 set forth by specifying the greatest percentage rate of 
 increase in exports in recent times. It did not occur in 
 Germany, nor in the United States, nor in Britain. None 
 of these countries has in recent times increased its total 
 exports by anything like 50 per cent, in one year. That 
 achievement was all but effected, however, in 1906 by 
 Greece. In 1905 her exports were ;^3,348,ooo ; in 1906 they 
 were ;^4,94i,ooo. Germany's increase was only 11 per 
 cent. ; that of the United States only 18 per cent. ; Britain's 
 only about 14 per cent. True, Britain's increase was 
 ^^46,000, 000 — nearly ten times the whole export trade of 
 Greece; and the Greek increase was mainly a matter of 
 extra large crops of currants and olives. But, then, think 
 of the percentage !
 
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