PRODUCTION AND FREE TRADE. 53 



cost of manufacturing, as between cotton and wool, or between 

 one and another set of articles, as supposed by our correspondent. 

 The laboring classes are the nation. They are the producers, and 

 they are, moreover, the greatest consumers. Their expenditure 

 makes the great home market. When an industrious population 

 are employed, they not only enrich the whole community to the 

 extent to which they themselves are enriched, but by the market 

 which their prosperity affords to other industries. When the 

 laborers of Chicago are in full employment, what a market they 

 must afford, not only for the diversified products of the farm 

 which can not be raised in a city, but even for their own produc- 

 tions! If, however, the people content themselves with producing 

 the raw materials of the farm, the forest, and the mine, for export, 

 to be exchanged for manufactured articles, then we hire foreign 

 laborers to do the work of manufacturing. Our own laborers, be- 

 ing thus deprived of that work, and the industry of the country 

 consisting in the production of raw materials, the only employ- 

 ment open to them is in that kind of production. It is manifest, 

 in such case, that there must be a large increase in the production 

 of raw materials, with much greater competition for their sale in a 

 common market, and that a foreign one. Few exchanges can take 

 place among persons who produce the same things, each having 

 enough and a surplus, consequently such persons must look abroad 

 for purchasers. The larger the quantity of the surplus seeking ex- 

 port, the stronger will be the competition for its sale, and the 

 greater will be the tendency to a reduction of prices, since prices 

 must go down when the supply is increased without increasing the 

 demand. Such would be the condition of affairs under Free Trade. 

 How can it possibly pay better under that regime to produce ? 



Every farmer should be a Protectionist, because the effect of the 

 Protective policy is to increase the price of everything the farmer 

 has to sell, and to reduce the price of everything the farmer has to 

 buy. This proposition is not only confirmed by experience, but 

 agrees with the well-known laws of demand and supply. The 

 effect of the Protective policy, it is admitted on all hands, is to 

 build up and increase the number of manufacturing establishments, 

 and thereby to increase the demand for the raw materials and 

 breadstuff's produced by the farmer, and thereby increase (not di- 

 minish, as Free Traders say,) the price of everything the farmer 



