If a selective policy is pursued in good faith and with sufficient intelligence, the nation will at least be learning from its mistakes.

It should find out gradually the kind and method of selection, which is most desirable, and how far selection by non-interference is to be preferred to active selection.
As a matter of fact the American democracy both in its central and in its local governments has always practiced both methods of selection.
The state governments have sedulously indulged in a kind of interference conspicuous both for its activity and its inefficiency.

The Federal government, on the other hand, has been permitted to interfere very much less; but even during the palmiest days of national irresponsibility it did not altogether escape active intervention.

A protective tariff is, of course, a plain case of preferential class legislation, and so was the original Inter-state Commerce Act.

They were designed to substitute artificial preferences for those effected by unregulated individual action, on the ground that the proposed modification of the natural course of trade would contribute to the general economic prosperity.