5 oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are steamboats, railroad-iron, metals, and sugar. These very articles 

 are the most highly protected ones in nearly every country. Too 

 many steamers have been built, and freights have fallen below a 

 paying price. What is there strange about that, when England has gone 

 into the business with all the acquired advantages and prestige of her 

 maritime supremacy, and most of the other nations are encouraging 

 the building of ships with all their might by means of direct appropri- 

 ations, differential duties, subventions, or special postal privileges? 

 To make the disproportion still greater, protectionism is now at pains 

 to reduce as much as possible the amount of freight which this sur- 

 plus of ships will have to carry. By its discriminating duties, it tries 

 to restrict, or even completely to prevent, the importation of foreign 

 goods. If you will have a marine, and go to the extent of subsidiz- 

 ing it, you ought to have something for it to carry. Now, it can 

 carry nothing but goods coming from abroad or going abroad. The 

 protectionist policy of most of the countries practicing it can be re- 

 duced to the maxim, " Get by means of subsidies and prizes, as large 

 a marine as possible, and secure for it, by protection and prohibitory 

 duties, as little freight as possible " ! 



The deplorable effects of the protectionist regime are no less evi- 

 dent in general metallurgical industries. Protection is given every- 

 where by means of extravagant duties. In France, the duties repre- 

 sent from fifty to sixty per cent of the current value of the goods. 

 Yet these industries are among those that are languishing the most. This 

 is because the effort has been made everywhere by means of customs 

 duties to stimulate them to excess. In the United States, Russia, Aus- 

 tria, Italy, Spain, and France, the people have been persuaded that they 

 can not build enough furnaces and machine-shops ; and the result has 

 come about that Spain has by great exertions succeeded in sending a 

 locomotive to England, the very home of steam-engine making, for 

 sale. All countries are taxing their ingenuity to build up their export 

 trade. Formerly this was the branch of business which returned pro- 

 portionately the most profit ; now it returns the least. 



In no industry does the absurdity of the protectionist system make 

 a clearer exhibition of itself than in the trade in sugar. France, Ger- 

 many, Austria, Italy, Belgium, Holland, and Russia, are each laboring 

 to make their national sugar industry the greatest in the world. Each 

 of them gives premiums, by ingenious devices, upon exportation. The 

 consequence of their efforts is, that this sugar industry, the object of 

 extraordinary favors, has gone entirely astray from its natural ways. 

 Production is pushed everywhere. The cost price is not considered, 

 but only the export price ; and the point has been reached that so much 

 sugar is made in every country that the price is going down every day. 

 Governments are induced by this fact to increase their favors, and then 

 the price takes another fall. 



While it has a less palpable influence in the generality of cases, the 



