446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



the protective system of the republic of Mexico or the continent of 

 Europe has had no effect in improving the condition of laborers there ; 

 and — no end of instances could be brought to show that the supposed 

 tendency does not exist. The only way to make out that it may exist 

 is to ignore every test by facts. Wages are high in this country, for 

 several good reasons; but a protective policy is not among them. Yet 

 men even so intelligent as the manufacturers who appeared before 

 the Ways and Means Committee, joined in protesting that they 

 could only maintain their business, in the event of lower duties, by 

 lowering their rate of wages. Unquestionably a lower price for the 

 product, unless accompanied by considerably larger sales, argues either 

 a lower total profit or a reduced cost of production; but why should 

 these manufacturers look for their saving only to the payroll? Would 

 they have us believe they are now paying their workmen more than the 

 competition of other employers compels them ? Or is their first thought 

 always, in case of a business loss, to take it out of their men? As has 

 been shown, they could not if they would. 



There are positive reasons, moreover, for believing that a stronger 

 demand for the services of the laboring man would naturally follow 

 when we put our trade and industries into a more normal condition. 

 It would be a benefit, surely, to cease to discourage the higher grades of 

 industry by making their raw materials dearer. Even the protective 

 nations of Europe — Germany and France and Italy — as well as Great 

 Britain, adopt the expedient which Alexander Hamilton emphatically 

 recommended as an encouragement to manufacture, admission of the 

 raw material free of duty. Such a piece of barbarous stupidity as tax- 

 ing the importation of raw wool, for instance, never occurs to European 

 nations, although they raise many sheep. Nor do they put a penalty 

 on shoe wearing by a tax on hides, or a premium on forest waste by 

 barring out lumber. Again, we learn from the experience of Germany 

 that lowering the duties on food is followed not only by a reduction in 

 the laborers' cost of living, but by an increase in the government's 

 revenues, and by increased merchandise exports, thus conferring a 

 triple benefit. For another instance, we see the two Australian colo- 

 nies. New South Wales and Victoria, characterized until 1901 by a dif- 

 ference in fiscal policy, adopted some thirty years before, and we find 

 the free-trade colony, at first in the rear, now taking the lead in 

 amounts manufactured and in income per capita. Once more, we are 

 reminded by a prominent member of the British Parliament that in 

 the twenty-eight years following 1879, when the Cobden treaty with 

 France expired and when Germany definitely adopted a protective 

 system, exports of British merchandise not only increased, but in- 

 creased by a much greater amount, than during the thirty years that 

 preceded; thus proving that free trade encourages exports, not only 

 when other countries reduce duties at the same time, but also when the 



