38. Suppose that we create an industry even in this sense--_What is the gain of it?_ The people of Connecticut are now earning their living by employing their labor and capital in certain parts of the industrial organization. They have changed their “industries” a great many times. If it should be found that they had a new and better chance hitherto undeveloped, they might all go into it. To do that they must abandon what they are now doing. They would not change unless gains to be made in the new industry were greater. Hence the gain is the _difference_ only between the profits of the old and the profits of the new. The protectionists, however, when they talk about “creating an industry,” seem to suppose that the total profit of the industry (and some of them seem to think that the total expenditure of capital) measures their good work. In any case, then, even of a true and legitimate increase of industrial power and opportunity, the only gain would be a margin. But, by our definition, “a protective duty has for its object to effect the diversion of a part of the capital and labor of the people out of the channels in which it would otherwise run.” Plainly this device involves coercion. People would need no coercion to go into a new industry which had a natural origin in new industrial power or opportunity. No coercion is necessary to make men buy dollars at ninety-eight cents apiece. The case for coercion is when it is desired to make them buy dollars at one hundred and one cents apiece. Here the statesman with his taxing power is needed, and can do something. What? He can say: “If you will buy a dollar at one hundred and one cents, I can and will tax John over there two cents for your benefit; one to make up your loss and the other to give you a profit.” Hence, _on the protectionist’s own doctrine_, his device is not needed, and cannot come into use, when a new industry is created in the true and only reasonable sense of the words, but _only when and because he is determined to drive the labor and capital of the country into a disadvantageous and wasteful employment_.
39. Still further, it is obvious that the protectionist, instead of “creating a new industry,” has _simply taken one industry and set it as a parasite to live upon another_. Industry is its own reward. A man is not to be paid a premium by his neighbors for earning his own living. A factory, an insane asylum, a school, a church, a poorhouse, and a prison cannot be put in the same economic category. We know that the community must be taxed to support insane asylums, poorhouses, and jails. When we come upon such institutions we see them with regret. They are wasting capital. We know that the industrious people all about, who are laboring and producing, must part with a portion of their earnings to supply the waste and loss of these institutions. Hence _the bigger they are the sadder they are_.