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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVII. No. 681 



moved without restraint to the market 

 where they found the most profitable use. 

 If every one bought in the cheapest and 

 sold in the dearest market, then universal 

 free trade might prevail among the na- 

 tions, imperialism would fold its flag and 

 sheathe its sword, and every community 

 would be producing either the agricultural 

 products or manufactured goods which ex- 

 perience had taught that it could produce 

 with the greatest efficiency and in exchange 

 for which it could obtain the greatest sum 

 of the desirable products of other com- 

 munities. 



But we know that this is not the case. 

 No peace conference and no appeal to the 

 universal brotherhood of man can prevent 

 wars based upon the intensity of industrial 

 competition. The world of to-day is 

 organized upon the system of competing 

 nationalities. Many generations distant is 

 the dream of universal peace among the 

 nations, such as Rome by her power en- 

 forced for four centuries throughout 

 nearly the entire civilized world from the 

 time of Augustus to that of the third 

 Valentinian. The origin of modern wars, 

 as was doubtless the case in reality with 

 many ancient and medieval ware, is the 

 struggle for existence. Few nations have 

 yet been willing to stand forth, as does 

 Great Britain in the field of trade, seeking 

 no shelter behind artificial barriers against 

 the competition of other peoples. The 

 cause of free trade, which it was believed 

 in Cobden's time had only to be presented 

 to civilised men, like the teachings of the 

 gospel, in their simple beauty, to make con- 

 verts of all the world, has made little 

 visible progress in recent years. On the 

 contrary, a great wave of protectionism 

 swept over Europe in the eighties and the 

 barriers have been erected higher in most 

 cases rather than lower within our genera- 

 tion. Converts to the principles of Adam 

 Smith and John Stuart Mill and Cobden 



have undoubtedly been made among think- 

 ing men, but even those men, when exalted 

 to official place, have usually found that 

 they had to deal with a status quo which 

 was too enormously complicated to permit 

 the cutting of the Gordian knot of special 

 privilege and interdependent industries 

 during the time in which they were likely 

 to continue as public servants. 



More significant still of the general 

 belief of responsible governments, that uni- 

 versal free trade and the unfettered move- 

 ment of capital are still far in the future, 

 has been the policy of imperialism which 

 has followed on the heels of protection and 

 been deemed sufficiently important to 

 justify the sacrifice of thousands of lives 

 and millions of treasure, even by that 

 champion of economic freedom, the empire 

 of Great Britain. Experience has shown 

 that "trade follows the flag" to a large 

 extent, not perhaps because competition in 

 a free field would not make the flag a 

 negligible factor, but becatise by skilful 

 regulations and legislation can be created 

 discriminations and favors of many sorts 

 which give potent advantages to those 

 under the flag over alien rivals. Even the 

 policy of "the open door" in the East, 

 which did honor to the memory of Secre- 

 tary Hay as much as it did violence to the 

 professed economic views of some of his 

 predecessors, was not potent enough to in- 

 sure that equality of opportunity for non- 

 Russians in Manchuria which it was de^ 

 signed to secure and did not prevent the 

 greatest death-struggle of our generation 

 between Russia and Japan as to who should 

 in future attend to the execution of this 

 avowed policy of equality. 



If the professor of political economy, 

 therefore, desires to exercise a greater in- 

 fluence than he exercises to-day in mold- 

 ing the policy of this nation or any other, 

 he may well give greater weight than here- 

 tofore to the influence of friction in econ- 



