638 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



practical men get together and say : " How much better it would 

 be if everybody went after water and poured what was brought 

 into a common tank from which supplies could be drawn as 

 needed ! We will build the tank." They build the tank, and the 

 people bring water and fill it. Then the practical men take pos- 

 session of the spigots and charge the people so much a gallon for 

 all the water drawn from the tank. The practical men are pro- 

 tected by the labor of the rest of the community ; unfortunately, 

 all can not be practical men. 



Of course, the effect of protection upon the morals of the pro- 

 tected must in the end be very bad. It has a tendency to make 

 them cowardly, treacherous, and grasping. The fear of meeting 

 outsiders in friendly competition ; the temptation to make poor 

 goods when poor goods can be sold for an unjustly high price ; the 

 business of seizing as legitimate prey the labor of others and turn- 

 ing that labor to one's own uses — must, sooner or later, have a bad 

 effect on the individual and the community at large. A man can 

 not thrive at the expense of other men, whether those men are his 

 near neighbors or are living at the antipodes, without being 

 hardened in his sensibilities and becoming to a certain extent in- 

 human. The effect of protection upon the moral welfare of the 

 protected is bad ; its effect on their material welfare is eventually 

 ruinous. In barbarous times, when men collected in protected 

 groups behind strong walls, the outside barbarians had as little 

 to do with them as possible. They removed their goods if they 

 could beyond the reach of plunder. On the other hand, a great 

 many practical men crowded into the fortified groups when the 

 advantages of protection were recognized, there was soon not 

 enough plunder to go round, and the practical men who believed 

 in protection quarreled among themselves as to who should have 

 the spoils, till they learned by experience how foolish fighting was, 

 and joined a larger community where they could live on friendly 

 terms with a larger number of their fellows. So it is with the 

 protected in our day. As long as the wants of a protected com- 

 munity are simple and the industries with reference to the pop- 

 ulation few, the community gets on very well. If its resources 

 are ample, it will be able to produce things at a low price and 

 compete in the open markets of the world with the producers of 

 older, unprotected communities which have no such natural re- 

 sources to draw upon. But the time comes when the natural 

 resources of the favored community are exhausted and it can no 

 longer produce certain things at a lower price than anybody else. 

 Then the members of other communities will not pay for the 

 privilege of trading with a protected community on equal terms. 

 They will go elsewhere with their products, where they can ex- 

 change them freely. An Englishman, who is a practical man 



