aside all prejudice and preconceived ideas for or against the protective tariff system and consider candidly what are the actual facts of the case. It is evident, in the first place, that the purpose of the tariff tax which the government levies on goods imported from abroad is to keep out foreign competition from our markets . The imported goods cost more by the amount of the tariff than they otherwise would; and the American producer, if he makes equally desirable goods and does not raise his selling price above that at which imported goods can be bought, is secure against foreign competition. But we have already learned that monopoly is simply the absence of competition; and inasmuch as the tariff checks or shuts out foreign competition, it has a tendency toward the establishment of monopoly. But this tendency may not result in the establishment of any monopoly. There is a tariff on potatoes, but there is no monopoly in their production. Evidently the tariff cannot create a monopoly; it only makes its establishment more easy by narrowing the field of competition to the producers of this single country. If we turn back over the list of monopolies we have studied, to find those which the tariff has any effect in aiding to establish, we shall find none till we reach the first two chapters. The monopolies in mineral products and manufactured goods, known generally by the name of trusts, it is self-evident are largely dependent upon the tariff. If they raise their price above a certain point, people will buy goods of foreign production instead. This point—the price at which foreign goods can be profitably sold—depends on the rate of the tariff, on the cost of production in foreign countries, and the cost of their carriage here.
Of the various trusts, it is evident that only those would be effected by the removal or reduction of the tariff whose products are now covered by it. Thus the Standard Oil Trust and the Cotton-Seed Oil Trust would not be injured by any reduction in the tariff. As a matter of fact, however, nearly all of the trusts have to do with manufactured goods which are covered by the tariff, and the two exceptions already named are about the only ones.