by Patrick J. Buchanan – May 18, 1998

Letter to The Wall Street Journal

Reading the five letters to the Editor (May 18) deployed to counter my lonely missive (May 12) celebrating the Protectionist Era (1865-1913) and rebutting the Smoot-Hawley myth, I am persuaded that remedial history should be a required course for all economists.

Prof. Kent Jones writes that my tariff ideas represent “government intervention in the manner of an unrepentant socialist.” But from 1789 to 1913 tariffs produced from 50% to 90% of all federal revenue. Were those tarifites-Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Clay, Webster, Jackson, Lincoln, McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt-all “unrepentant socialists”?