Quotation of the Day…

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… is from chapter 2 of William Graham Sumner’s 1885 book, Protectionism: the -ism Which Teaches that Waste Makes Wealth:

There is nothing then in the legislative machinery, by which the tariff is to be made, which is calculated to win the confidence of a man of sense, but every thing to the contrary; and the experiments of such legislation which have been made, have produced nothing but warnings against the device. Instead of offering any reasonable ground for belief that our errors will be corrected and our productive powers increased, an examination of the tariff as a piece of legislation, offers to us nothing but a burden, which must cripple any economic power which we have.