As soon as the issue is formed, however, and the protectionists are forced to formulate their doctrine, as a doctrine, its absurdity becomes apparent. It is not capable of statement. If we are to have temporary protection, in order to start infant industries, then it will become imperatively necessary, so soon as public attention is occupied by the subject, to say how, and how far, and how long, the system is to be kept up, and the public will demand to know how it is getting on, and at what rate it is approaching its goal. For this reason those who have any logical directness of thinking, have already advanced to a more intense position; they advocate protectionism as a permanent and universal economic philosophy. In that form it flies in the face of common sense and civilization; in some of the latest forms which it has taken on in the hands of some professors of political economy, it is a kind of economic mysticism.
If, however, the United States could be cut off from all the rest of the world as regards trade and industry, then at least it should be plain that whatever material prosperity they could gain would be just what they, with their energy, enterprise, and capital, are able to extract from such soil and climate as nature has given to us here. What would be the difference if, then, there were no tax barriers? Certainly none whatever. The wealth which the American people get they must produce by applying their labor and capital to the natural advantages which they possess. With foreign trade open to them, they will not make use of it unless they find an advantage in it; that is, unless American labor and capital can attain more wealth through exchange than without it. The task of American producers will still be to attain the greatest possible wealth by expending their labor and capital on American soil, either directly, or with an intermediate step of exchange. Wages are only a part of the product of the country; if then, trade increased the amount of commodities at the disposition of the people, it would increase the amount of each share in the distribution. This is the simplest common sense of the matter, stripped of all technicalities, and to this the whole discussion must again and again return.