CHAPTER VI 



HOME TRADE AND FOREIGN TRADE 



Fifth proposition. — If trade were everywhere 

 free, the foreign trade of Great Britain, under 

 modern conditions, would in some cases give 

 more employment than an equal home trade, 

 and in other cases it would give less employ- 

 ment. 



The total trade of a country is the sum of its 

 home trade and its foreign trade. What this 

 amounts to, in the case of Great Britain, nobody 

 knows. Therefore it might seem impossible to 

 give an exact comparison between the employing 

 powers of the two trades. But it is not so. We 

 have to determine, taking the same quantity of 

 commodities in both cases, which form of trade 

 sets in motion and keeps going the greater 

 amount of labour-capital, together with the proper 

 proportion of the capital that sets labour to work. 

 And this can be done. 



The foreign trade consists, of course, of imports 

 and exports. What then is an import ? It began 

 life as an export. The export of one country 

 becomes the import of another. In the mean- 

 time the export has had done on it a certain 



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