The protectionists are fond of flashing to the public eye the glittering delusion of great money — results from manufactures, mines, artificial exports — so many millions from this source, and so many from that — such a seductive, unanswerable show — an immense revenue of cash from iron, cotton, woollen, leather goods, and a hundred other things, all bolstered up "protection". But the really important point of all is, into whose pockets does this plunder go?…The profits of "protection" go altogether to a few score select persons–who, by favors of Congress, State legislatures, the banks, and other special advantages, are forming a vulgar aristocracy full as bad as anything in the British and European castes, of blood, or the dynasties there of the past…
That is from p.332 of Specimen Days & Collect, Dover edition. Thanks to Michael Gibson for the pointer.
Much the same could be said about many other forms of government regulation on the one hand, and about XIX-century style freewheeling robber-capitalism on the other.
Whitman’s point is a good one, and one that probably escaped the quoter: that the protectionism which benefits the owners of huge industry is just as bad as the ‘free trade’ that benefits the owners of other huge industries; the only way to live up to America’s radical potential is to construct a political economy (probably, in his case, a nation of small-holding petty-bougeois — a far cry from 20th century state socialism) where the ‘immense revenue of cash’ flows broadly.
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