in prospect, the course of trade is abnormally affected.  If the rate is likely to be raised, large importations take place under the lower rate, and for a considerable time after the law goes into effect imports are small, while prices rise and domestic production gradually increases.  But if the rate is likely to fall, importations are for months meager, stocks of goods are reduced to the lowest point, and when the lower rate goes into effect, large importations follow to the injury of domestic producers.  In many cases a year or two of notice, time given to enterprisers to adjust their business, would probably do away with a large part both of the serious losses and of the lottery-like gains that otherwise occur.

The obvious measure of precaution and of justice would be to put any new rate into effect gradually.[13] The difficulties are of a political nature and in the desire of the party in power to “make a showing” at once of the results of its campaign pledges, in the one case by starting and stimulating industries through a higher tariff and in the other by reducing prices to consumers through a lower tariff.  Under the new permanent tariff board, constituted to suggest tariff changes and to administer the tariff laws, it would be possible to apply some such feature.

[Footnote 1:  See above, ch. 2, secs. 12, 13.]

[Footnote 2:  In European countries, on the contrary, the rates that have been mainly effective have been those levied upon food products, and the agricultural landholders have been the “protected interests,” such as the England “landed aristocracy,” the German agrarian “Junkertum,” and the French peasant landowners.]

[Footnote 3:  See above, ch. 13, sec. 2.]

[Footnote 4:  See ch. 4, sec. 6 and ch. 13, secs. 6-10.]

[Footnote 5:  In ch. 13, sec. 7.]

[Footnote 6:  See ch. 4, secs. 4 and 9.]

[Footnote 7:  That there is a certain measure of truth in this opinion is recognized in our discussion of the standard of deferred payments, ch. 6, sec. 9.  But the relation of a world-wide appreciation of the standard money commodity with the burden that this change puts upon debtors has nothing to do with the question now before us, viz.:  Does a protective tariff enable a country to keep and increase its proportion of the world’s stock of gold; and if it could, would it be a general benefit?]

[Footnote 8:  See Vol.  I, especially p. 228, and chs. 34 and 36.]

[Footnote 9:  See on wages in times of crises, ch. 10, secs. 6 and 7; and on tariff changes, ch. 10, sec. 14, and ch. 15, sec. 13.]

[Footnote 10:  See Vol. 1, pp. 361 and 443.]

[Footnote 11:  See Vol. 1, p. 436, for average wheat prices in England, practically in the world-market.]

[Footnote 12:  See above, sec, 8.  On the next paragraph, see ch. 10, sec. 14.]