Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 149 of the original edition of the Harvard economist Frank Taussig’s 1915 volume, Some Aspects of the Tariff Question; the chapter in which this passage appears is titled “How Far Growth Was Due to Protection” (that growth being U.S. economic growth in the 19th and very early 20th centuries):

Here again, however, we are dealing with causes whose operation was not confined to the iron industry or the protected industries in general. In part, they were of world-wide effect. All countries shared in the advances of the arts and the triumphs of applied science. True, in our own country special industrial excellence was achieved in many directions; but not solely or peculiarly in the protected industries. American mining engineers pushed their art with signal success in coal mines and in mines for the precious metals, as well as in copper and iron mines. No more remarkable achievements were made than in electrical engineering, where a nurturing shelter from foreign competition cannot possibly be supposed to have played a part.