Читать книгу The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays - William Graham Sumner - Страница 52

132. It is evidently meant by this that trade involves a struggle or contest of competition. It might, however, as well be said that practicing law is war, because it is contentious; or that practicing medicine is war, because doctors are jealous rivals of each other. The protectionists do, however, always seem to think of trade as commercial war. One of them was reported to have said in a speech, in the late campaign, that nations would not fight any more with guns but with taxes. The nations are to boycott each other. One would think that the experience our Southerners made of that notion in the Civil War, upon which they entered in the faith that “cotton is king,” would have sufficed to banish forever that antique piece of imbecility, a commercial war. If trade is war, all the tariff can do about it is to make A fight B’s battles, although A has his own battles to fight besides.