THE PRESENT COMMERCIAL CRISIS. 50 1 



protectionist policy is not le3s unfavorable to industry as a whole. If 

 the market for most of our export products is restricted, one of the 

 causes for it is to be found in the fact that between 1878 and 1880 

 France converted most of the nations to protectionism ; we set them 

 the example and they followed it. We repel foreign wheat, cattle, 

 and cotton-thread, and they repel our articles de Paris, silks, furniture, 

 and wines. The principal factor in the disproportion between the pro- 

 duction and consumption of certain articles is the customs tariff. It 

 acts in two ways : by depriving the export trade of the markets to 

 which it has been accustomed, and by stimulating new manufactures 

 which are destined in their turn to find no market. Finally, commer- 

 cial treaties having no longer a real existence, because they are almost 

 reduced practically to a clause conferring no fixed rights the most- 

 favored-nation clause there results a great instability in tariffs, and 

 consequently in international relations. 



Another factor of the crisis may be found in the extravagant public 

 works undertaken by states. The whole European Continent and some 

 distant countries have plunged up to their ears in vast enterprises 

 which are supposed to be of public utility. The thought that great 

 works can not be indefinitely carried out, that their efficacy is limited, 

 that beyond a certain point they do harm to one another, and bring 

 no more aid, no durable stimulus to industry, simple and true as 

 it is, has become strange to the light heads that rule parliamentary 

 countries and democracies. A large country may derive much profit 

 from half a dozen first-class ports ; but what real advantage can come 

 from turning the thousand creeks which indent the shores into ports ? 

 It would be about the same thing if a man, instead of having one or 

 two outside doors to his house, should cut up his whole first floor into 

 doors. The case is the same with roads and canals. Beyond a certain 

 extent, they serve no other purpose than to withdraw the land they 

 occupy from cultivation. In a country of 500,000 square miles, the 

 first 20,000 miles of railroad are very useful ; the next 5,000 miles 

 much less so, while 5,000 miles more would be an excess, a luxury to 

 which we might perhaps afford to apply our surplus profits, but which 

 it would be foolish to pay for out of the capital fund. Every new 

 mile of railway opened in France produces a small income, but three 

 fourths of it is simply so much revenue diverted from other roads, and 

 not the product of a new traffic. This unreasoning activity in con- 

 structing useless public works which prevails in many countries adds 

 at once to the burdens upon industry and to its instability. It has 

 contributed to withdraw masses of laborers from the regular cultivation 

 of the soil, to cause abrupt rises of wages, and to make workmen more 

 exacting and more refractory to discipline ; it has given a factitious 

 development to metallurgical industry, and it has cast disorder into 

 budgets, hollowed out deficits, necessitated enormous imposts, and in- 

 creased public debts or postponed the day when they will be paid. 



