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labor without augmenting production has been well called 'Sisyphism," for it chains humanity to efforts that lead to no result, just as Sisyphus was compelled to roll to the summit of a hill a stone that always fell back again. The goal we should pursue is the increase of commodities and diminution of toil.

Error the Second.-No service, but an injury, is done to workmen in thrusting them into manufactories by force of law and in spite of nature. Thus in the case of Italy it is a thousand pities that the custom house should have snatched workmen and workwomen from their open air tasks in this lovely country with its genial climate, to chain them in gloomy work-shops for twelve or fourteen hours a day to the monotonous movements of machines.

Free trade by applying to whole peoples the principle of the division of labor, assures them all the benefits it can bestow, and thus greatly increases their welfare. If in a family each member is employed at what he can do best, it is clear that the total product, and consequently the individual shares, will be as great as can be attained. On the contrary, if each is forced by legislative restrictions to devote a part of his time to a labor for which he has no aptitude, each and all will be worse off. Apply this principle to nations, and it is plain that when each country devotes its energies to the tasks which its nature most favors, not only will it bring to the international market the maximum of products obtained with the minimum of toil, but the welfare of humanity at large will be increased in proportion to the increase of the productivity of each country's labor.

A man who, in the wish to be self-sufficing, should constrain himself to manufacture everything he needed, food, clothing, furniture, and books, would plainly be extremely foolish, nor is a nation that imitates him any wiser. ·

If the soil of my farm is sandy, and so better suited for rye than for wheat, the least laborious way of obtaining

wheat is, not to cultivate it myself, but to ask for it in exchange for my rye of those who have a clay soil. This plain truth demonstrates the absurdity of the system of protection which would oblige me to grow wheat even upon sand.

The upholders of protection make the further objection that foreigners will inundate us with their produce. Such a fear is quite idle, since foreigners will not give us their goods for nothing, but will be willing to take ours in payCommerce is always an exchange of produce against produce. So much imported, so much exported. If imports exceed exports, all the better; the foreigner is paying us a tribute, and we shall have more to consume. If exports exceed imports, all the worse, it is now we who are paying a tribute. Here, however, we are touching on the difficult question of the balance of commerce, the discussion of which we defer to a later paragraph.

Protectionists are anxious to sell much and buy little, in order that the foreigner may be forced to pay the excess of his purchases in cash. These aims involve a great contradiction. It is clearly impossible for the different countries in their exchanges with one another always to sell more than they buy.

The principal cause of industrial progress in a country, 18, as we have seen, the competition between manufacturers, each of whom strives to improve, and, above all, to cheapen, his fabrics, in order to extend his business. The more widely competition is extended, the greater will be every. one's profit. Do not, therefore, limit it by the frontiers of a state, but extend it from country to country. Monopoly begets sloth, and protection, routine. On the other hand, the manufacturer who is forced to carry everything to perfection in endeavoring to keep his hold of the home market will conquer that of the world.

A railroad uniting two countries facilitates exchanges.

Custom dues on foreign goods impede them. Yet the same men at the same time support two policies, the results of which are thus completely diverse. That Frenchmen and Italians, after spending nearly two millions sterling in boring a tunnel through the Alps, can place their custom-house officers at each end to destroy in a great measure by the dues they exact the usefulness of this marvel of engineering, is an inexplicable contradiction.

To be consistent, a protectionist should demand the destruction of machines, for machines and free trade have as their common result the diminution of the labor necessary to obtain an object. Thanks to machinery I obtain my coal at less expense; thanks to the stranger I again obtain it cheaper; the result is identically the same. If we exclude the foreigner we should also break our machines; and thus increase in both ways the amount of labor requisite to obtain a given quantity of coal.

Capital turns spontaneously to the most lucrative field of employment. Protection diverts it from these to the less lucrative, compensating it for the difference by a tax levied on consumers, by the amount of which tax production is again diminished.

As their last argument protectionists maintain that for objects of the first necessity, such as corn and iron, a country should be independent of foreigners, lest, in case of war, it should find itself without the means of nourishment or defense. There is no example, however, of a people having lacked necessaries in war time, and to-day there is even less cause for fear than formerly. In the first place railways facilitate revictualling; in the second, since the Treaty of Paris, in 1856, the ships of neutrals may continue to transport the goods of belligerents. The complete blockade of a state is thus more impossible than ever; and it is the height of folly to inflict a permanent and certain harm in order to avoid a distant and more than improbable one.

CHAPTER XXX.

TARIFF AND WAGES.*

BY F. W. TAUSSIG,

Instructor in Political Economy in Harvard College.

THR

HE general question of free trade and protection has been treated in a previous chapter (Book III, Chapter VI). One argument for protection was not mentioned there, which is much urged by protectionists in the United States. -the argument that protection is necessary to maintain the high wages paid in this country. It is said by the advocates of protection that the competition of articles made by ill-paid laborers in Europe would reduce, if free trade were established, the prices of articles made in this country, and that wages must fall correspondingly. Professor Laveleye does not mention this argument, because it is not advanced by protectionists in Europe. On the contrary, in Germany and France high duties are demanded in order to protect the ill-paid laborers of those countries from the competition of the better-paid laborers of England. This fact shows. sufficiently that low wages in themselves do not enable a country to compete in another country, and that high wages do not prevent it from competing; otherwise England could not compete on the continent of Europe. The truth of the matter in this country is, that in those branches of industry to which we can most advantageously direct our labor and capital, the laborers produce a large product, and employers

*Supplementary Chapter in Laveleye's Political Economy.

can afford to pay them high wages. If in a given branch of industry, these high wages cannot be afforded, this industry is one which it is not advantageous for our country to undertake. Agricultural laborers in the United States are paid much higher wages than such laborers receive in any European country. Yet nobody believes that the wheat and grain produced by the ill-paid laborers of Europe can be imported hither in competition with our own wheat and grain; everybody knows that, on the contrary, we export these products to Europe. The reason is that the United States have great advantages for raising agricultural products; hence high wages are and can be paid to the laborers producing them. The general high rate of wages with us is due fundamentally to the great general productiveness of labor, which, again, is due in part to the energy and efficiency of our laborers, in part to the extended use of machinery, and in a very large part to our great natural resources. It is in no sense due to the protective policy. If in making particular commodities, for instance, silk goods, such high wages cannot be paid to laborers under a system of free trade, it is a proof that it is not worth while for us to make silks. We can get laborers in Europe to make silks for us at the low rates of pay which prevail there. We can employ our own laborers, who are now making silks, in producing other commodities-for instance, grain or cotton. goods. In producing the grain or cottons our laborers are advantageously employed; and in exchange for these com modities we can get from the foreign laborers more silks than our domestic laborers can produce at home.