6o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



was a good thing ; not that I had ever thought out the matter, but that 

 I had accepted this conclusion because I had heard many men whom I 

 believed wiser than I say so. But this particular speaker had, so far 

 as one of his audience was concerned, overshot his mark. His argu- 

 ments set me thinking, just as when a boy my companion's solution of 

 the iron-ship mystery had set me thinking. I said to myself : The 

 effect of a tariff is to increase the cost of bringing goods from abroad. 

 Now, if this benefits a country, then all difficulties, dangers, and im- 

 pediments which increase the cost of bringing goods from abroad are 

 likewise beneficial. If this theory be correct, then the city which is 

 the hardest to get at has the most advantageous situation : pirates and 

 shipwrecks contribute to national prosperity by raising the price of 

 freight and the cost of insurance ; and improvements in navigation, in 

 railroads and steamships, are injurious. Manifestly this is absurd. 



And then I looked further. The speaker had dwelt on the folly of 

 a great country like the United States exporting raw material and im- 

 porting manufactured goods which might as well be made at home, 

 and I asked myself. What is the motive which causes a people to export 

 raw material and import manufactured goods ? I found that it could be 

 attributed to nothing else than the fact that they could in this way get 

 the goods cheaper, that is, with less labor. I looked to transactions 

 between individuals for parellels to this trade between nations, and 

 found them in plenty — the farmer selling his wheat and buying flour; 

 the grazier sending his wool to a market and bringing back cloth and 

 blankets ; the tanner buying back leather in shoes, instead of making 

 them himself. I saw, when I came to analyze them, that these ex- 

 changes between nations were precisely the same thing as exchanges 

 between individuals ; that they were, in fact, nothing but exchanges 

 between individuals of different nations ; that they were all prompted 

 by the desire and led to the result of getting the greatest return for 

 the least expenditure of labor ; that the social condition in which such 

 exchanges did not take place was the naked barbarism of the Terra 

 del Fuegians ; that just in proportion to the division of labor and the 

 increase of trade were the increase of wealth and the progress of civil- 

 ization. And so, following up, turning, analyzing, and testing all the 

 protectionist arguments, I came to conclusions which I have ever since 

 retained. 



Now, just such mental operations as this are all that is required in 

 the study of political economy. Nothing more is needed (but this is 

 needed) than the habit of careful thought— the making sure of every 

 step without jumping to conclusions. This habit of jumping to con- 

 clusions — of considering essentially different things as the same be- 

 cause of some superficial resemblance — is the source of the manifold 

 and mischievous errors which political economy has to combat. 



But I can probably, by a few examples, show you what I mean 

 more easily than in any other way. "Were I to put to you the child's 



