Sec. 9. #Tariffs and unemployment#.  The claim that a low tariff is bad for the workers is made with peculiar success in any period when unemployment is greater than usual.  It is vain in reply to show that again and again equally bad periods of unemployment have occurred when a high tariff was in force, and that often the most highly protected industries are most affected.  It is vain to suggest that fluctuations of unemployment are related rather to the rhythm of industrial cycles and panics, than to any particular level of the tariff, whatever it be.[9] The fact that at the moment is seen is that here are some men for the time out of work, and here are some foreign goods coming in.  Of course, what is not seen is that if we stop importing goods we thereby eventually will stop the exportation of goods of equal value now being sent in payment and this must throw as many men out of jobs as we helped into jobs by raising the tariff.  But the view easy to take is the short view, and the ulterior consequences seem to the popular mind to be vain imaginings.

Sec. 10. #Exports and exhaustion of the soil#.  It has been ingeniously argued that a tariff may keep some of the natural agricultural resources of a new country from becoming quickly exhausted.  The export of food takes out of the soil and out of the country fertile qualities never to be returned.  The shipment of several hundred million dollars of food products year after year represented a tremendous drain from the soil of the United States, but this has now largely ceased.  The assumption, however, that the use of the food in this country preserves the fertility of our own fields is in the main mistaken.  The fertile material in the food for human consumption hauled to a town five miles away from the field is almost as entirely lost as if it were shipped to Europe.  Engineering skill has as yet succeeded in returning economically to the fields from which it comes hardly a fraction as much fertile organic matter as that which flows into the sewers, that is dumped into river and ocean, and that is buried in heaps at the borders of our own cities.  Artificial fertilizers are increasingly used, to be sure, but they are obtained in other ways.  On the other hand, the increased use of iron, coal, and timber, as a result of encouraging manufacturers, has very effectually hastened the exhaustion of the natural resources of the country.

Sec. 11. #Protection as a monopoly measure#.  It has rightly been observed that a new country has a limited potential monopoly in certain kinds of products and that a tariff may make it effective.  The rapid opening up of America with its rich natural resources greatly benefited the average consumer in Western Europe, altho it caused a loss to a special class of landowners.[10] Whether the citizens of the older or of the newer country shall reap the greater benefit in the trade depends on the reciprocal demand for the two classes of goods, as was seen in discussing