which there is no proof, does it follow that it would be a better
system for us? We have, to begin with, in our possession, instead of a
small island a continent capable of almost every variety of natural
production and mechanical industry. This is also a new country and a
young country. We have been developing our resources rapidly for the
last hundred years, but they are still not fully developed. The policy
of the United States, although with many fluctuations, has been in the
main to develop all our natural and mechanical opportunities to their
fullest extent. The free trader is always ready with the terse
statement that, "You cannot make yourself rich by taxing yourself,"
followed by a freshly humorous allusion to lifting one's self by one's
boot-straps. He then feels that he has met the case. If political
economy and the financial policy of nations were as simple as this
argument seems to imply, life would be an easier thing both for
nations and individuals. Unluckily the problems of mankind which
engage their interests and passions cannot be solved by cheap
aphorisms. The statement of the free trader about taxing yourself in
order to grow rich has a final and conclusive sound, but it is simply
sound. There are, for example, plenty of towns in New England which
have built factories and relieved certain persons from taxation in
order to secure their capital and industry, and the additional
population and the increased taxes which have thus come to the town
have made it rich or at least richer than it was before. It is quite
possible to adjust taxes or to offer bounties or premiums in such a
way as to add to the aggregate wealth of the community.

The free trader's question is not really pertinent. The point is not
whether you will tax yourself in order to grow rich, but whether you
will so frame your tax laws and so raise your revenues as to
discriminate in favor of your own production and your own wages
against the production and wages of other countries, or whether, on
the other hand, you will let everything strictly alone and leave the
country to come out the best way it can. The general policy of the
United States has been to give encouragement to the domestic producer
and manufacturer, and maintenance to high rates of wages, by laying
duties in such a way as to discriminate in their favor against those
outside. The result, speaking broadly, has been to put the United
States as a competitor into countless lines