is realized clearly, instead of being met by incidental regulation, we are drifting rapidly toward bureaucracy, which is simply a petulant change of servitude.
Our imperialistic tendency has been indicated in discussing attitude toward foreign trade, and is confirmed by our conditions both at home and abroad. At home we have periodic unemployment, forcing the quest of new controlled markets to make up for the lack of domestic purchasing power—a lack which we have brought upon ourselves by failing to provide a valid unit of measurement to encourage effort and thrift and to facilitate exchange, and also by interfering with individual effort through archaic taxation. Abroad, by the extension of our tariff, for the benefit of special interests, we collect tribute[1] where we fly our flag. Where we withdraw our flag, as in Cuba, or give our economic dependents the right to fly theirs, as we have in the Philippines, we force, either directly or indirectly, a continuation of this tribute, and we see to it just as definitely as any King of Spain—and even more effectively—that our economic dependencies have as little traffic as possible with those nations that challenge our commercial supremacy in certain foreign waters. It is no deliberately malevolent policy, but it slowly crystallizes out from the illogical concentrations of economic power which have arisen because of our failure to measure. We have discouraged individual human effort and acquiesced in irresponsible individual control. This is unspeakably poor engineering. With our largely artificial need for foreign markets: with our refusal to accept goods from our neighbors: with our declared determination in our shipping policy not to accept services; and with most of their gold already accepted and stored away, what is there left to take? Only obligations, and these obligations must be ac-
- ↑ This is not as simple a matter as it may seem. The “tribute,” in its final incidence, does not fall upon the economic dependency, but upon our domestic producer of foodstuffs. The dependency pays more for our manufactures; but receives more for its agricultural produce; and, on balance, is no worse off. But our modern economic serf, the American farmer, who is the victim of our archaic tax-system, receives less for his produce because of additional competition—and pays more for his manufactured goods. He thinks of this in terms of low prices and high costs: it is nothing more or less than vicious taxation.
