again reverse the logic of the situation.

Certain it is that our tariff laws must interfere as little as possible
with the natural law of demand and supply in making prices, or we must
be content to suffer from the instability that artificiality always
brings with it.

Our plain duty is to enact as speedily as possible a tariff that shall
by small but continued changes cut down our protective duties and
substitute non-protective duties until our tariff is for revenue only;
for thus and thus only can the vast majority of the agriculturists buy
what they need most cheaply, and so find that to purchase necessaries
does not cost them more than the total of their sales; and our exports
of produce, chiefly owing to agricultural prosperity, would increase,
thus materially helping to build up our general business so that the
other nations will have to pay us, in the gold we require for
comfortable management of our business, the growing trade balances
against them.

The rough table below suggests that sudden tariff changes have
precipitated panics, which have come quickly if the change was to higher
protective duties and somewhat slower if the change was to lower
protective duties; that slow and well considered changes doing away with
protective duties generally have not caused disturbances; and that
agriculture has flourished in proportion as we approached tariff for
revenue only. It has for obvious reasons required about one year for
financial trouble to be shown by decrease in value of farm produce as
evinced by wheat-flour exports.

Special conditions, such as excessive wheat corps here and deficiency