WHAT ONLOOKERS THINK OP FREE-TRADE 59 



flourishing condition, because I find that this one thing alone 

 does not, and cannot, constitute in itself all the many factors 

 that are essential to ultimate success and prosperity. I find 

 that the wonderful cry of the party in power, that great trade 

 expansion means National Prosperity, is as false and mislead- 

 ing and as fatal to the real interests of the People, and there- 

 fore to my interests, as such political cries and catchwords 

 usually are. 



" I find that trade expansion, despite the wonderful things 

 claimed for it, means prosperity to a comparatively small 

 number of manufacturers and commercial men, and to the 

 "aristocracy" of industrial labour, but the same dead level of 

 non-prosperity for the masses; the same sordid, narrow, mean, 

 half-fed, struggling existence for millions of workers, and there- 

 fore for myself; and my faith in the universal benefits that are 

 said to come out of the great trade expansion is dead; killed 

 by the falseness of its own doctrine. 



" I find that the great party war-cry of the Cheap Loaf, for 

 example, is as false as it is destructive, because, despite its 

 attractiveness, it has done no more for the People than has any 

 other political catchword. I look around me on all sides, and 

 instead of finding thriving, prosperous conditions and a fair 

 average standard of material comfort among the masses, I find, 

 on the contrary, there are excessive poverty and a general 

 average of wretchedness, denoting a precariousuess of life which 

 has no parallel in any other country. 



The "Cheap Loaf" Cry a Mockery 



"The scheme which was going to bring about National 

 prosperity and which adopted the Cheap Loaf cry as its watch- 

 word, has, in reality, robbed the people of the means of earning 

 the so-called cheap loaf, and the cry is nothing but a mockery 

 and a delusion. 



"What is the use of promising a man cheap bread if you 

 deprive him of the means of earning money to buy it with ? 

 If the promise were wortli any tiling, would hundreds of thousands 

 of our workers be on the brink of starvation to-day ? Would 

 work be so difficult to get and so hard to retain ? 



"Would the great Unemployed question be so prominent, 

 pauperism so rampant, poor-rates so high, excessive emigration 

 so necessary, and wides]H-ead despondency among our working 

 classes so pronounced, if there were anything of value in this 

 often used and much-vaunted cry ? " 



Then he would proceed — 



" I find among my fellow-countrymen an amount of political 



