country where the representatives of such infant industries, who have enjoyed protection for a long series of years, have been willing to submit to a reduction of the tariff, or have proposed it. But on the contrary, their demands for still higher duties are insatiable and never intermitted." Americans continue the protectionist policy, and at the same time abandon the infant industry argument as unworthy of a great industrial nation. By an inverse argument they now declare that a nation that is advanced in civilization, that is wealthy and in the habit of paying high wages to its laborers, must be protected against nations possessing a retrograde civilization and paying low wages for labor.

Meanwhile, the nations of Europe declare that a high tariff barrier is indispensable to them precisely because they are old and require protection against the dangerous competition of new countries possessing the advantages of a cheap virgin soil and low wages.

Hence, free traders ask: What conclusion must be drawn from this varied application of the protectionist argument? To whom is protection really necessary? Do the weak need it against the strong, or the strong against the weak? Do new countries require it against old ones, or the old against the new? What are we to think of an argument that is made to serve equally well for the defense of two exactly opposite doctrines ? 1

4. Turning the tables. Said the presiding officer to an Irish witness, in the course of a murder trial, "Did you see the shot fired?"

"Oi did not, sir," responded the Celt, "but Oi heard it foired."

"That evidence is not satisfactory," replied the magistrate sternly; "you may step down."

The witness left the box. No sooner had he turned his back on the judge than he gave a derisive laugh. Enraged at this contempt of court, the magistrate called the Irishman back.

"How dare you laugh in that manner in court?" demanded the judge.

"Did you see me laugh, your honor?" asked the Irishman.

1 Arranged from Gide's Political Economy, translation by C. W. A. Veditz, pp. 331-33. (D. C. Heath & Co., 1904.)

"No, but I distinctly heard you laugh," cried the irate judge.

"Such evidence is not satisfactory," rejoined the Celt, quietly, a twinkle in his eye.

Whereupon every one in court laughed, including the judge.

The witness had turned the tables. This method of taking over the argument of an opponent and showing that it tends to prove your own case, the negro Jim used in his famous argument with Huckleberry Finn on the question why Frenchmen speak French.

In the following editorial, the fallacy of an argument from effect to cause is shown by turning the tables - in this case by using the same method of reasoning to reach a conclusion favorable to the other side:

From one equation with two unknown quantities, so the mathematical school-books tell us, it is impossible to infer the value of either. But what is impossible for the mathematician is perfectly easy for the politician or the newspaper man. And we are going to see an unusual amount of this kind of inference in the coming Presidential campaign, in so far as it relates to the question of prices or the cost of living. The Philadelphia Inquirer is one of the early comers in this field. The Democratic promise of reduction of the cost of living has not been fulfilled: food prices averaged at about top-notch in 1914, according to the official figures, and "every one is aware that no reduction took place during the twelve months which have just closed." Well and good; but how about the war? "In part," says the Inquirer, "this may possibly be explained by the war, which has led to an exceptionally large exportation of provisions to belligerent European countries, but there can be no reasonable doubt that had there been no war the movement would have been the same." Thus of the two elements, the war on the one hand and domestic factors on the other, the Inquirer, by some intuitive process over which mathematics and logic have no control, determines that one, namely, the war, was of too little consequence to need to be taken into account, and of course the rest is plain sailing. But if a Democratic inquirer should take a fancy to treat the subject of wages as this Republican Inquirer does that of prices,

what then? Wages have been rising all over the country, and probably much more than the cost of living has risen. "This may possibly be explained by the war," to be sure; but what is to prevent our Democratic friend from declaring that "there can be no reasonable doubt that had there been no war the movement would have been the same"?1

Another instance of an unhappy illustration, turned effectively against the man who employed it, is quoted in Alden's The Art of Debate:

In an American court a suit for damages was brought against a railroad company which had refused a ticket reading "From A to B" on the ground that the passenger was traveling from B to A. The attorney for the railroad argued that the passenger was really claiming a different service from that he had paid for. "He paid for passage from A to B," he said, "and yet demands passage from B to A. He might as well buy a barrel of potatoes at a grocery, and then sue the grocer on the ground that he did not deliver apples instead." When the attorney for the plaintiff had opportunity to reply, he said: "The illustration drawn from the barrel of apples and the barrel of potatoes seems to be an unfortunate one for my friend on the other side. The present case would be better illustrated by a grocer, who, having sold a customer a barrel of apples, should insist that he should begin at the top and eat down, whereas the customer had a preference for beginning at the bottom and eating up."

V. TWO ESSENTIALS OF REFUTATION

After all, although the study of these special methods should prove suggestive, there are but two fundamental requisites of effective refutation, — the power of keen thinking and a thorough knowledge of both sides of the question. Neither of these essentials is possessed by those who regard debating as the recitation of memorized speeches, consisting of strings of quotations from other men. Such parrot-like performances should not parade under the name of debating. They are not even preparation for debating. Indeed, it is an open question whether they do not hinder more than they 1 The Nation, January 13, 1916.

help, and it is altogether true that they contribute nothing to the power of adapting refutation to the needs of the moment — the one power which fundamentally distinguishes the debater from the elocutionist. Any study which develops the faculty of independent and sound thinking prepares a man for the work of refutation; and when to this general training he adds an accurate and wide knowledge of the particular subject for argument, quite regardless of the material he may expect to need for a given speech, he possesses the two essentials of effective refutation.

EXERCISES FOR THE NINTH CHAPTER

1. What methods of refutation are used in the following arguments? Are the methods effective? What other methods could be used for the same ends?

a. "A jury having been empaneled to try him, he pleaded
guilty, his counsel urging, as a reason for clemency, that
the violation of this statute was a habit of the New York
banks in the Wall Street district, and that if the wrecked
bank had not followed this law-breaking custom of its com-
petitors the stock brokers would have withdrawn their
account. The plea was successful, and the officer escaped
with a small fine. Imagine a burglar or a pickpocket urg-
ing a plea for clemency based on the general business habits
and customs of his criminal confrères!"

b. "If the two legislatures are real and strong, they will
necessarily disagree on some questions; then a single exec-
utive cannot represent both; if, on the other hand, the
two legislatures are not real and strong, if one is a mere
echo of the other, or both are slaves to the crown, then
they better not exist at all." - Macaulay, on the plan for
a separate Irish parliament.
c. "You charge that we stir up insurrections among your
slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper's
Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no Republican;
and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his
Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party
is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know
it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designat-

ing the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need not be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true is simply malicious slander." - Lincoln, Cooper Union Speech.

d. "It is said that the Home for the Aged in this city should not be supported by the State Government, but left to private charity. But the home, as all writers agree, is the foundation of the State; and the object of many of our best laws is to preserve the sanctity of home life. If, then, the home is the basis on which the State rests, no one can deny that the State should do everything in its power, not only for the home in general, but for the Home for the Aged in particular." 1

e. "If it is a crime to be a dissenter, it must be a crime by either common or statute law. The statute law making it a crime has been repealed. If it is a crime by common law, it must be so either by usage or by principle. But there is no usage which makes nonconformity a crime; and no principle that punishment ought to be inflicted for a mere opinion as to forms of worship." 1

f. "One of the arguments in defense of capital punishment is that we should obey the Old Testament law of a life for a life. This, however, has in it the barbarous idea of vengeance, which has surely been outgrown in America. To play the part of a savage, to vent spite even on a murderer, is unworthy of a nation that is great and humane.” 1 g. "According to the modern theory, the college teacher will be dull unless he is doing some 'original research' outside of his teaching. If this theory is sound, law teaching is bound to be stale, because the law is a rather fixed and definite body of material, in which there is scarcely any room for original research. But law teaching is not stale. The enthusiasm and effectiveness of the law teachers at Harvard, Columbia and Chicago who do no original research, completely disproves the contention that vigorous teaching is inseparable from research." 1

2. Write a short editorial in refutation of any one of the editorials in Appendix X.

1 Examples provided by Homer Woodbridge, of Colorado College.