Taussig not only does not claim that protection did not work but he explicitly refuses to discredit the theory. "The intrinsic soundness of the argument for protection to young industries therefore may not be touched by the conclusions drawn from the history of its trial in the United States, which shows only that the intentional protection of the tariffs of 1816, 1824, and 1828 had little effect."
And he claims that one of the reasons is that the closing off of trade prior to those tariffs did a lot of protectionism's work for it without having to involve the tariff.
And these quotes are not data mining since I have read his book and do not share your opinion of his conclusion which is simply that it "might" not have worked. To claim otherwise in the face of his clear statement that the theory was not affected is deception.
Now you are simply lying. That Taussig recognized the _theoretical_ validity of the infant industry argument (and most economists, even Friedman, do - they simply note that it seldom if ever is seen to work in practive) in no way alters his other observation that protection simply did not work in the early 19th century. Exactly what about the words "little, if any thing, was gained by the protection which the United States maintained in the first part of this [the nineteenth] century" do you not understand?
And these quotes are not data mining since I have read his book and do not share your opinion of his conclusion which is simply that it "might" not have worked.
It's quote mining, fakeit, as you are spinning out of context phrases to make it sound as if he concluded other than he did. Nor did he simply say that protection "might" not have worked - he said flat out that it did not work and made that statement unequivocally under the header titled conclusion: "little, if any thing, was gained by the protection which the United States maintained in the first part of this [the nineteenth] century"