FOREIGN TRADE NO REMEDY. 201 



of life, is a matter of no consequence ; and the great 

 amount of idleness to which he is subject, when no 

 wages are received, are of still less importance. He 

 must be contented with the asserted fact that his 

 wages are greater than is paid for the same work in 

 Europe. The American workingman, in his misery, 

 must find all the comforts he requires in the fact that 

 other workmen are in still worse condition. This is 

 the full extent to which the remedies of our statesmen 

 and political economists have yet reached. But we 

 are doing all we can to make our people still poorer, 

 to work for still lower wages, that we may undersell, 

 not only England, but India ; for to succeed we must 

 undersell the cheapest. 



No matter what it costs us, that is the price, and 

 the only price, at which we can obtain foreign markets 

 for our manufactures and products, and we must pay 

 it. On these conditions, and no other, we have been 

 able to increase our domestic exports for foreign con- 

 sumption from $136,940,248, for the year ending June 

 30, 1865, to $680,709,258, for the year ending June 

 30, 1878, and to $749,911,309 for the year ending 

 December 30, 1882, of which less than one hundred 

 millions were of our manufactures for either year; 

 being an increase, in seventeen years, of $612,971,061 ; 

 but we will call it, in round numbers, six hundred 

 millions of dollars, of both raw and manufactured 

 products, or one hundred millions of dollars of manu- 

 factured products alone. The value of the exports of 

 manufactures of cotton is given as $11,438,660 for 

 1878, and $13,180,044, for 1882 ; of wool and its man- 

 ufactures, $542,342 for 1878, and $391,674 for 1882 ; 



