and the bricklayers, now employed, will purchase a portion of the overstock of necessaries, and enable their producers to augment their production. And this can go on until the production of commodities has become so profitable that it may appear desirable to increase the aggregate of productive instruments; and the employment of men to construct these will cause a further demand for commodities, a further diminution of the unemployed capital, a further rise in profits, concurrent with a greatly increased demand for labor.

But our young man has been taught that an increased supply of commodities is impossible, unless at the same time there is an equal diminution in the demand for services, or for other commodities; that a glut is impossible; that demand cannot in the aggregate increase beyond supply, nor supply beyond demand; that no new industry can be introduced except by diminishing or preventing some other industry; that the demand for labor cannot increase suddenly, but only gradually and slowly, as capital is, little by little, saved out of income. He has been taught these and other errors, which tend to seriously mislead him in practical life, and may ruin him, if he wants that quick perception and almost intuitive interpretation of facts which are needed to place him where he would have been had he never studied these subjects abstractly.

In Professor Cairnes's book, entitled "Some Leading Principles of Political Economy," already alluded to, we have an elaborate work, designed evidently to affect public opinion in the United States and on the continent of Europe in favor of free trade. Let us examine its logic. He says, part iii., chapter i., paragraph iii.:—

"Secondly, when it is said that international trade depends on the difference in the comparative, not in the absolute, cost of producing commodities, the costs compared, it must be carefully noted, are the costs in each country of the commodities which are the subjects of exchange, not the different costs of the same commodity in the exchanging countries. Thus, if coal and wine be the subjects of a trade between England and France, the comparative costs on which the trade depends are the comparative costs of coal and wine in France as com

pared with the comparative costs of the same articles in England. England might be able to raise coal at one-half the amount of labor and abstinence needed in France; but this alone would not render it profitable for France to obtain her coal from England. If her disadvantage in procuring other commodities was as great as in producing coal, she would gain nothing by an exchange of products, and the conditions of a trade between the two countries would not exist. But, supposing she was, in the case of some other commodity, under a less disadvantage than in that of coal, still more, if she had, with regard to that other, -as in wine, a positive advantage, it would at once become her interest to employ this commodity as a means of obtaining through trade her coal from England, instead of producing coal directly from her own mines."

All that this proves is, that in some cases it will be advantageous for France to get its iron from England in exchange for wine. That it will not be so in all cases is easily shown, as follows: Let the utmost requirements of England for wines be £2,000,000 sterling; let the requirements of France for iron be £10,000,000 sterling. She (France) can in this case obtain from England iron somewhat more cheaply, we say somewhat, because the advantages would be divided between the two countries, but she would have to go without fourfifths of the iron she required. Her saving of labor and abstinence upon the iron she did get from England would be a considerable percentage, of the value of, let us say, 100,000 tons of iron; her loss would be the enormously greater value of 400,000 tons of iron.

Professor Cairnes's reasoning, then, leads only to a particu lar conclusion, and can be used only as a particular, not as a universal, premise.

Further on in the same paragraph Professor Cairnes quotes the instance of Barbadoes buying to advantage its food in New York, and paying in tropical products, notwithstanding that it could raise food also more cheaply than New York.

Here is another particular instance from which no general conclusion can be drawn. It may or may not be well for a small island inhabited by a handful of people to purchase their food and clothing and other conveniences, by giving for

them sugar and coffee and spices; but scarcely even a lunatic would propose to 100,000,000 of people to do the same thing; because the quantity of sugar and coffee and spices which they could find a market for would not procure them a twentieth part of what they required in other things.

We come now to Professor Cairnes's chapter iv., entitled "Free-Trade and Protection." Unfortunately he based the main portion of his argument upon the statistical deductions of Mr. David A. Wells. The Professor probably did not know how roughly these had been handled in Congress; but, being a prominent economist, he ought, one would think, to have distrusted the accuracy of figures which appeared to prove that the real wages of the people of the United States had declined twenty per cent between the years 1860 and 1868. However, he accepted them in full faith, and based upon them his main argument, which amounts to this:

So great a deterioration in the condition of the people must have a cause. I look about in every direction, and cannot find anything to attribute it to, except the MORRILL TARIFF. Here we have a sufficient cause. It puts on duties averaging forty-seven per cent.

"Every article, therefore, produced in the United States, which would not have been produced there but for the protective tariff, represents an expenditure of labor and capital greater than would have been necessary to obtain the same article had it been obtained under free trade. In a word, American labor and capital, as a whole, have, effort for effort and outlay for outlay, been producing smaller results since 1861 than formerly; and, this being so, what other explanation do we need of the actual facts which we encounter, - of diminished returns on American industry, of a fall in the real wages of labor?"

Scores of times it has been shown by American writers that, when an industry has been raised up by protective duties, its products have been often cheapened and scarcely ever augmented by the amount of the duties. Scores of times the free-trader has replied, Where, then, was the necessity for the duty? and scores of times they have been told, The duty was necessary in the first place to establish the

industry, and afterwards to prevent it from being maliciously overwhelmed by English goods sold at a loss, which was to be more than made up by the higher prices obtainable when we no longer were able to help ourselves.

It by no means follows, then, that forty-seven per cent was added to the cost of articles caused to be produced by the Morrill Tariff. It is almost certain that with the tariff we have still to offer in foreign markets as great a surplus of the commodities" in raising which we have an advantage" as can be well sold; that, if we offered a larger quantity, the net returns would be less in the aggregate than they are now; and, if so, the commodities produced by reason of the tariff are just so much clear gain. The question was, "Are protective laws a burthen to the country imposing them?" and the Professor surely made a grave slip in undertaking to prove they were, by assuming that they were! If the statement of Mr. Wells had been a fact, and the average real wages of the inhabitants of the United States had actually been reduced twenty per cent, there are many other conceivable causes besides a tariff. In 1874 to 1879 there was a serious fall in the rate of wages as measured by money, and also probably as measured by commodities; but there has recently (1881) been an enormous advance. Did the tariff cause both the decline and the advance? We certainly are not called upon to draw any such absurd conclusion. The fall in 1873-74 was sufficiently accounted for by the sudden cessation by the community from the construction of new instruments of production, and the recent advance is sufficiently accounted for by the movement in the opposite direction now going on. When the community is fully employed, the gross annual product is large there is much to divide, and wages and profits advance together. When a portion of the community is dismissed into idleness, the annual product is diminished: there is less to divide, and wages and profits fall together.

Professor Cairnes feels great anxiety about the Illinois farmer, lest he should not get enough for his corn, and have to pay too much for other things. He and M. Mongredien would like to have us confine ourselves to that in which we

have an advantage, and take the other things from England. The farmers could take $1,000,000,000, and the rest of the community converted into farmers could take another $1,000,000,000; and, twenty-five years hence, when we number 100,000,000 of people, we could take twice as much, or say $1,000,000,000 of other things. What would be the price of the other things under such circumstances, - whether double or treble what it is now, and what the price of the corn, — whether two-thirds or half of what it is now, to trouble political economists!

ought not

On looking further, I see I am in error, and that Professor Cairnes does not agree with M. Mongredien. He does not expect us all to become farmers; on the contrary, he tells us that

"(1) As regards the industries of raw produce, protection does not call into existence a single branch of production which would not equally have existed under free trade, it merely alters the proportions in which such industries are carried on, hindering their natural and healthy development; (2) in the domain of manufacturing industry it is equally inefficacious as a means of creating variety of pursuits,

for if on the one hand it secures a precarious existence for certain kinds of manufactures, on the other, by artificially enhancing the price of raw material, it discourages other kinds which in its absence would grow and flourish; while (3) over and above all these injurious effects, it vitiates the industrial atmosphere by engendering lethargy, routine, and a reliance on legislative expedients, to the great discouragement of those qualities on which, above all, successful industry mainly depends, -energy, economy, and enterprise. To conclude, having regard to the geographical position, extent of territory, and extraordinary natural resources of the United States, as well as to the character of its people, trained in all the arts of civilization, and distinguished beyond others by their eminent mechanical and business talents, there seems no reason that they should not take a position of commanding influence in the world of commerce, a position to which no other people on earth could aspire. But, to do this, they must eschew the miserable and childish jealousy of foreign competition which is now the animating principle of their commercial policy. If they desire to command a market for their products in all quarters of the world, they must be prepared to admit the products of other countries freely to their markets, and must