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Protection or Free Trade
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I 'N this book I have endeavored to determine whether
protection or free trade better accords with the interests
of labor, and to bring to a common conclusion on this,
subject those who really desire to raise wages..
I have not only gone over the ground generally traversed,
and examined the arguments commonly used,
but, carrying the inquiry further than the controversialists
on either side have yet ventured to go, I have sought
to discover why protection retains such popular strength
in spite of all exposures of its fallacies; to trace the connectionbetween
the tariff question and those still more
important social questions, now rapidly becoming the
"burning questions" of our tirnes; and to show to what
radical measures the principle of free trade logically
leads. While pointing out the falsity of the belief that
tariffs can protect labor, I have not failed to recognize
the facts which give this belief vitality, and, by an exami.
nation of these facts, have shown, not only how little the
working-classes can hope from that mere " revenue
reform" which is miscalled "free trade," but how much
they have to hope from real free trade