Excerpt from Is Protection a Benefit?: A Plea for the Negative But the country may now indulge in the belief that the issues of war - time are no longer dominant, but have passed into history. We have fallen upon better years, when in our campaigns arguments upon economic, political, and moral questions are likely to take the place of the old-time appeals to local prejudices and sectional animosities. In this betterment of our political affairs the ques tion of the tariff is to be prominent. It has been a lively question in our past history, and it is likely to remain with us as an issue for yet many a year. It is a question upon which every citizen, and espe cially every voter, should have an intelligent and emphatic opinion. The difficulties should not appall, since they are far more imaginary than real. At the close of a day of discussion on the appointment of the Tariff Commission, a member of Congress petulantly remarked, I don't understand the tariff question, and I shall not try to understand it. This hopeless avowal of ignorance is unworthy even a private voter, and it ought to be sufficient to lay the professed statesman upon the political shelf so high that no campaign step - ladder will ever reach him again. It should be kept in view that the present issue is not between direct and indirect taxation. Such a question may arise in the future. Absolute free trade is not now contended for by any considerable number of our people. The living contest lies be tween revenue-tariff advocates and free-traders as they are interchangeably termed in the rather loose speech of the times - on the one side, and the advocates of a protective tariff as an ultimate fiscal policy on the other side. The argument here presented is confined to this purpose and scope. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.