Less Foreign Demand Intensifies Home Competition, 49 



CHAPTER IV. 



Less. Fokeign Demand Intensifies Home Competition 



AND Lowers Price. 



With low duties the gain in value in exportations of 

 agricultural products was rapid and continuous; under 

 high duties the movement was fitful — now a loss, then a 

 gain, on the whole for twenty-two years nearly at a stand- 

 still. The stagnation in the latter case was more sur- 

 prising bcause conditions in regard to production and 

 transportation were in the highest degree favorable for 

 a brilliant record in the export trade. The one hindrance 

 to such success, the all-pervading influence of which was 

 felt at every seaport in the United States, was the high 

 protective system, which lay like a rock in the way of all 

 our commerce. Such were the facts established in the 

 preceding chapter. We are now to consider the effect 

 upon agriculture of a greatly restricted market. 



In the industrial world it is recognized that the wider, 

 the larger the market for a product, other things being 

 equal, the higher will be the price. To limit the market 

 produces the same effect as to increase the supply; and 

 where supply is increased, demand remaining the same, a 

 lower price results. Here we have the position of the 

 American farmer whose market abroad is restricted by 

 our high duties. To a great extent, products that under 

 free conditions would have gone abroad, have remained 

 here, intensifying competition, and causing price to fall 

 to a low level. 



The opposite of what has been said concerning the 



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