which spends more than it makes, or exports more than it imports, is a spendthrift, and will come to grief.

12. That the interest of society is in mere cheapness, whether the producing classes prosper or the reverse, Protectionists do not believe. If that were true, then hard times would be the best of times, for they are the times of greatest cheapness. In fact it is impossible to sunder the interests of the producers from those of the consumers, especially in a country like ours, where every one is a producer of some sort. To do so is to act like the man who refused to take quinine for the chills, because the chills were in his back and not in his stomach, where the quinine would go. We are all one body, and if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it. Better therefore than a low price for a thing is a fair price, at which the producer can live comfortably. If we pay less, his loss is likely to come back to us in some shape.

13. The Free Trade argument fixes attention exclusively on the price of what we buy. But no man prospers simply by the cheapness of what he buys. His interest is in the ratio of the price of what he buys to that of what he sells, whether it be clothing he has made, or wheat he has grown, or brain-power he has put at the service of his fellow-men. And this ratio is most favorable when all kinds of industry are associated, when most power is spent in producing and least in transportation, and when there is least idleness of capital and of labor.

In this respect Ireland furnishes the contrast to America. In Ireland everything is done for the consumer, and little or nothing for the producer. Everything is cheap in Ireland, and her people fly from this cheapness as from a blight, to find employment for muscle and brain in other lands. An Irish immigrant in America was grumbling that he "could buy as much for a shilling in Ireland as for a dollar in America."

ee

"Why did you not stay there?" he was asked. Because I could not get the shilling!"

14.

It is of no advantage to the farmer to be able to buy clothing and hardware cheap, if he has no home market in which to sell his produce. He can sell some things indeed to the foreign artisan who supplies him, but even of these not a quarter so much as the same artisan would consume if he were working in America. If the farmer had to exchange his wheat directly for plows, ox-chains, dress-goods, and the like, he would find how great his advantage is in dealing with the home manufacturer. It is the fact that money is used as the medium, which conceals this advantage.

15. The price of raw materials and of manufactured goods approach each other most nearly where the one is converted into the other. If all our paper-mills were on the Hudson and the Delaware, the price of rags and of paper would be nearer to each other there than anywhere else. As one went westward he would find rags fall and paper rise in price. This is true of all raw material as compared with manufactured goods; and food is but one general form of raw material, needed for all manufactures equally. It is therefore the interest of the producers of raw materials and of food, that they should be in the neighborhood of those who effect the conversion we call manufacture. There they

get the largest share of the manufactured article in exchange for the raw material.

As already shown (p. 78) this interest is opposed to our railroad policy as well as to Free Trade.

16. The workingman finds his interest in Protection because (1) whatever tends to increase the variety of employment in the country increases the demand for labor of all kinds. Merely farming countries are full of idlers, who live off the earnings of those who have work. (2) Variety of employment creates a competition for labor.

In its absence, employers, being all of one trade, come to an understanding to keep wages down. Hence, even in the same country, as in Belgium and in England, wages of labor are much higher in districts where there is manufacturing, than in those where there is only farming. (3) Every country has its own kind of public opinion as to the style in which its working classes ought to be able to live. This demands in America a much higher standard of comfort than in Europe. But if the products of European labor and capital came in free of duty, it would not be possible to maintain this higher standard. Our workingmen would be dragged down to the level of the laborers of monarchical and aristocratic societies. Under the Protective Tariffs of 1860-1892, the American standard rose faster and higher than in any part of the world, as was shown by the inflow of European labor to secure the benefits and the (alleged) disadvantages of Protection. Whether it was better to admit it or to exclude it, is not here the question. The fact was that it came.

17. The Constitution of the United States says that government is established to "promote the general welfare." In all countries it is held responsible for this. Parties have been driven from power in our own country because business distress prevailed under their administration. In Europe violent revolutions are almost always associated with popular distress and scarcity. To insist that the government shall abstain from all management of industry, is to refuse it the power to discharge this responsibility. It is to limit its powers as the nations in fact never have agreed to have them limited. Now Protection makes no more interference with the movement of industry than is sufficient for its purpose. It does not do anything for individuals, or confer personal advantages of any kind on them. It merely creates a new industrial condition, which every one is equally free

to take advantage of. By enlarging the number of employments it also enlarges the range of individual liberty, as it gives greater choice of fields of labor. It thus helps to develop that individuality in the working classes which Socialism seeks to destroy. It leads away from Socialism, not toward it.

In this connection it is well to remember that we do not have Protection because we have manufactures but manufactures because we have had Protection.

18. Protection and Free Trade are in controversy. The former is unfairly charged with artificiality, hostility to freedom, class legislation and paternalism. It has the sanction of even Free Traders in their wiser moments, and can be defended as a benefit to all classes.

CHAPTER XII.

Communism, Socialism and Anarchism.

1. OUR modern system of land, labor and industry is based on private ownership and competition. Land is distributed among owners in severalty and they are given almost as complete control of it as though it were clothing or tools or cattle. The accumulations of past labor are mostly in the hands of private capitalists, who pay in wages for the labor of the working classes, and make such bargains as they can in the labor-market. Transportation by sea and land is carried on by individuals and private or semi-private corporations, under the laws which control the common carrier, while the State takes charge of making common roads only, and in some cases leaves even that to turnpike companies. The extension of enterprise is left to private initiative, and even Tariff legislation goes no farther than to create larger opportunity for private enterprise. Only in the regulation of coin and paper money, in the creation of harbors and water-ways, and the carriage of letters, does the government directly enter the sphere of industry, and undertake to do what the people might be left to do for themselves individually or by co-operation.

2. To this whole system of private management objection is now brought on the ground that it inflicts injustice upon the people at large, while enabling a few individuals to acquire an excessive share of the wealth produced by common labor of all. Those who make this objection belong to several schools. (1) The Communist holds that private property is essentially wrong, and whatever has any use that meets a human need should be common property, and