of new industries. The
effect of the competition of the United States, added to that already
existing in the rest of the world, has been to reduce the world's
prices in the products of those industries according to the well-known
laws of competition. Hence comes the lowering of prices to the
consumer in protected articles, a fact which is the cause of much
satiric laughter to the free trader because he can neither deny nor
explain it.

The practical question now before the people of the United States is
twofold: shall we protect new and nascent industries, and shall we
continue to guard existing industries and existing rates of wages
against an undue competition? John Stuart Mill admits the soundness of
the former policy, and with that admission protectionists may be
content. In fact, it may be doubted whether any intelligent man would
argue to-day that it would have been wiser for the United States never
to have built up any industries, but to have remained a purely
agricultural community, dependent on Europe for everything in the way
of manufacture. I think we may assume that the wisdom of protecting
nascent industries in a country with such capacities and resources as
the United States can hardly be questioned.

Nevertheless, the most hotly contested feature of the McKinley bill
was that which continued the policy of protecting nascent industries
in certain products, and notably that of the manufacture of tin plate.
If the protection of nascent industries at the beginning of this
century was a sound policy, then it is a sound policy to industries of
that description to-day. Whether we have tin mines or not (and it now
appears that we have) there is no reason on the surface why we should
not buy our Straits tin and manufacture tin plate as well as England.
Some Democratic newspapers appear to have an idea that the tin mines
of Cornwall and Wales make a monopoly in this direction for England.
They forget that to-day the tin used by England comes chiefly from the
Straits, and she can buy it there on no better terms than the United
States. If the policy of protection to nascent industries is sound,
then the tariff of 1890 is sound in this direction, and we should seek
its results in the new industries which have been started since it
became a law.

In the second branch, the question of whether we should continue
protection to industries already established is one largely of degree
and of discretion. Where a removal