Page:Some Aspects of the Tariff Question.djvu/23

In this introductory chapter I shall consider, even at the risk of repeating elementary matter, the way in which duties work, the significance of the continuation of imports after duties have been imposed, and the possibility of measuring the charge which they lay on the community.

A common notion is that any duty operates automatically as a price-raising cause, bringing at once and permanently a tax up to its full rate. Not a little speechifying of a very effective kind has consisted in an enumeration of extreme rates, with the implication that they bring burdens no less extreme.^[1] Even more remarkable is the eagerness with which protected producers have themselves schemed and labored for high duties as if it were certain that they would get the full benefit, in a corresponding rise in the price of their wares. The burden which our protective system imposed on the community has been much exaggerated by its opponents; but the protected producers and their spokesmen have countenanced the exaggeration by virtually endorsing the indictment against themselves. They ask for advances in duties and protest against reductions as if a corresponding effect on domestic prices were certain to appear.