This originally appeared in two installments. They're presented together here.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/235800586
The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW: 1883-1930) Sat 23 Nov 1889 Page 9
By J. Farrell.
No. V. The Humbug of Protection
I write down the above heading with particular satisfaction as a measure of reparation for having once believed in and advocated the barbarous, selfish, and dishonest principle of trade restriction. This is one of the many plans for social betterment which is offered to the world, and it is essential to the purpose of these papers that it should be closely examined; therefore I will place it upon the dissecting board. The idea of preventing a free interchange of commodities between different countries as a means of increasing the well-being of such countries, or of any one of them, monstrous as it is, is presented seductively enough. It is an apple of Sodom, but never did honest pippin look so rich or carry such allurement with it. Restriction of exchange, as a proposal of reform or advancement, could only come from economic ignorance or conscienceless self-interest, and only by these could find acceptance. I am prepared to admit the honesty, the patriotism, and the complete disinterestedness of many of those who, here and elsewhere, fight strenuously for the imposition, continuance, or increase of protective duties. I only claim that these qualities are not allied in them with such an understanding of the principles which govern production and exchange as alone can enable men to reach true conclusions. I admit that the great majority of those who are ranged on the protective side in New South Wales, earnestly believe in the cause they uphold, and only desire the greatest general good. That there are those, both among the rank and file and among their leaders who understand principles well enough to fully realize the sham and worthlessness of the protective idea, yet preach it for the furtherance of their own particular ends is also probably true.
It is a common thing to hear the average protectionist, himself unable to justify the faith that is in him with reasons deduced from analysis, fall back upon the allegation that others can do so, or have done so. He refers you to the United States or to Victoria as two countries which, having an intelligent voting power and a more educated and prosperous democracy than can be found outside Australia in the world, maintain protection and have thriven under it. Before going into this question any further I may as well admit that I think these two countries, which are taken as the great examples of what may be done by tariff-fighting to build up prosperity, are, in the respects named well ahead, especially the latter. In the United States the voting power has been enormously and palpably vitiated of late by wholesale importations of the cheapest labor to be obtained in protected European countries, invoiced by highly protected and highly patriotic American manufacturers of the Carnegie stamp. It is a notable fact, a fact commented upon and deplored by American newspapers from the eastern to the western shores of the republic, that latterly the American workman has almost entirely disappeared from many branches of industry. His place has been given to the Austrian, the Italian, the Hungarian, the Belgian and the German, who, finding that no industrial paradise came with the feet of protection in their own countries have sadly enough gone across in the character of pauper labor to compete with him. But in our sister colony no such influence has been at work. The wide expanse of sea which lies between Australia and the extreme low-wage countries of Europe has effectually prohibited the influx of impoverished immigrants from such sources. The general standard of intelligence in Victoria is high, as it ought to be. Never was such a premium offered, never such a prize held out for the strongest and the most enterprising by any country of modern times. The magnificent gold discovery that in the years of one decade taught the names of Ballarat and Bendigo to tongues strange to the English language, all over the earth, was a challenge to the world's best, and just the sort of challenge they were sure to accept. From all quarters poured the most adventurous and ardent spirits to compete with each other for fortune, and these and their descendants are the Victorians of today. Those 10 years brought to Victoria an incalculable gain in the best manhood the world could send, and gave her a very marked advantage over the more sluggish populations of the other colonies. The discoveries of the gold epoch brought to her from New South Wales even, the very class of young men who so persistently leave her borders now and find their way here and elsewhere. Granting all the advantages claimed, granting alertness and intelligence on the part of the Victorian and the American, there is still no reason to suppose that in either place the fiscal policy has been molded by a general perception of economic truth. There is every reason to think otherwise.
To realize how little the true rules by which to build up enduring and equitable laws are understood by the people generally anywhere it is only necessary to listen to the representative utterances of their accepted and trusted leaders. The parliamentarians, who look but to a life of administration sweetened with some rewards of office, dare not, any of them, shed all jugglery and unworthiness and stand upon principle alone. Sir Samuel Griffith at his study desk, patiently and conscientiously searching out the relation between wealth and want, is not the man they vote for at the polls. That Sir Samuel must be a party leader with all the pitiful liabilities such a title involves. It can hardly be that Gladstone is not thoroughly ashamed of the hedging and shuffling, the shelving of true issues to make way for false, and the accepting of crumbs instead of whole loaves which make up practical politics. So many questions arise for answer at general elections, although only one may be written before all eyes on the blackboard, that the answers may be given to what different eyes discern between the lines. It is always difficult to conjecture how far the apparent issue is the real one, and the judgment of voters who may have formed a correct opinion on fiscal matters is too often clouded by passion or sentiment, which are the powers set in active motion by the professional politician at election times. In the United States, especially, this is the case, and I have no hesitation in saying of the last Presidential election, even though, as far as the issue was raised, a substantial majority of votes was then counted for free trade, that the tactics pursued, and a great deal of the literature of both sides, were disgraceful to a degree unbelievable. During the process of that great contest I looked through hundreds of columns of virulent party pleading, gross misrepresentation, reckless charge and poisonous innuendo. These were the weapons used by papers having a great circulation and naturally a considerable influence upon the public mind. The memory of everything calculated to inflame the American people against England was kept very green by Republican journals; all the bitterness that the past has left rankling in Irish breasts against English rule was stirred to its depths. Out of their graves all the hates and distrusts that ever came between North and South were dug up and their ragged ghosts paraded as living and terrible things. All this you could get in the American papers, ad nauseam, but only here and there any ray of authentic light upon the fiscal controversy. Just the same clatter of contradictory tongues and the same bandying of contradictory statistics not "understanded of the people;" just the same diligent dragging in of foreign issues, as here, by the machine politicians. Craft playing upon ignorance; real love of country and kind not knowing what way to turn amid all the noise and bewilderment. The verdict so delivered, whatever it may be, is not safely to be accepted as a precedent.
From the lips of Victoria the verdict is no more weighty. Moreover, it is not very unanimous, and their manner has not that repose which indicates a pronounced success. Not there more than anywhere else has the acceptance of a protective tariff resulted from any clear understanding of what was under the apple skin. The outs, hungry to become the ins, held the thing up and said it was genuine, and then talked about something else all the time, and by and by the people began to believe them. There was no analyzing done though, and they begin to be not so sure about it now. The selfishness of each class is what was appealed to; from that, not from reason, the answer was taken. The great mass of people, intelligent as they may be in Victoria, are not only not interested in abstract principles but incapable of comprehending them, or detecting the similar incapability of those whom they choose as lawmakers. So when a farmer is told that the keeping out of the colony of the grain of other farmers will enable him to command a monopoly price for what he produces, it looks very like the truth, and he has no occasion to trouble about abstract principles. The plow maker, the woolen-manufacturer and others look at it in just the same light. They see that if foreigners are not allowed to enter the market to sell the particular goods which they bring they will reap greater gains. They do not see that if the same principle is applied to all classes of manufacture they will be left no better off than before, after paying a good deal away in order to get there. And no one tells them that if the same principle is not applied to other manufacturers they have been placed at a distinct and unjust advantage over these others by a subsidy from the general purse. What is told to each class whose votes are wanted is that that particular class is going to gain, and with it, somehow, the whole community. "The plow and the money too" are to be kept in the country. The inevitable result of the adoption of a policy which throttles trade, and, in doing so, checks production and places burdens grevious to be borne upon the weakest backs, however, is beginning to be manifest in the cries for subsidies to those branches of industry which have so far been left out of the protected circle. There is also a pretty incessant demand for more protection lest they perish from what were the infant industries of 20 years ago, and still stand, hat in hand, pleading minority and begging pence from the public.
On the whole, I don't think anyone who wants to find out what is the true policy for any people to pursue, need be deterred from inquiry by the example of any country what ever. "It is an awful fact," said Mr. John Morley recently, speaking at Newcastle-on-Tyne, "that in this country, with all its wealth, all its vast resources, all its power, 45 percent — that is to say, nearly one-half — of the persons who reach the age of 60 are, or have been, paupers. I say that it is a most tremendous fact, and I cannot conceive any subject more worthy of the attention of the Legislature — more worthy the attention of us all." I think it very probable that he couldn't. But, a few months ago, I read appalling accounts of destitution in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, in the latter of which cities a leading local paper said there were no fewer than 25,000 persons supported by charity and in the direst distress. Unless papers like the New York Herald and World and Times lie deliberately and early and often, and unless truth inhabits only the "orations" of some of our local protectionists, things are not very prosperous in the States just now, save in the line of strikes, lockouts and closings up, nor are wages very high. In the Sydney Morning Herald's letter from its New York correspondent a couple of months ago reference was made to a strike which was won by the strikers — an event so unusual in the United States as to be well worthy of mention. Not only that, but the strikers were said to have secured a wage — it was in some special branch of skilled labor — the exact amount of which I forget, but which was far higher than any wage to be obtained in the same work here. At the public meetings in connection with the late Protectionist Conference, I heard several of the speakers dwelling at considerable length upon this magnificent proof of the prosperity of the American workingman. They chewed it over and over and exulted; they reveled and wallowed in the fact that the American worker gets an all-round wage such as his Australian brother could never dream of getting, and they asked with scorn how the calico contingent felt and what Pulaford was going to do about it. The spirit of dead Richard Cobden was flouted with this result, and the burden of the whole chapter was "Hail Columbia!" The wage referred to was manifestly misquoted, for such a wage or anything approaching it would have drawn to the States the competition of the same class of labor from the very north and south poles, if any existed there. It was a bonanza in the way of wages, but the "Australian national" speakers spoke as if it were just the ordinary thing in the States.
It is not the ordinary thing though. The United States Labor Commissions Report up to 1886 — since which time I have not heard it claimed that wages have increased — supplies the following information Kansas (page 28), average earnings, £1 5s 6d per week; highest in any trade, £2 per week; Michigan (page 141), average, taken from 549 persons, representing many different occupations, 6s 7d per day; Pennsylvania (page 111), highest skilled labor 8s per day, ordinary labor, 5s, 8d per day; New Jersey (page 170), skilled miners, 4s 8d to 6s, ordinary labor 4s to 5s. Average wages: Taking all States, and skilled and unskilled labor, the average is 4s 7d per day (page 611). The hours of labor are thus touched upon: — Kansas (page 827), tramdrivers, 15 hours; bakers, 14 hours (Sundays included); laborers, 12 hours. Connecticut: Of 65,627 hands, 5 percent work 54 hours per week; 22½, from 55 to 59 hours; 6 percent, 60 hours and over; 20,000 of these are women and children, and 78 percent of the women and 89 percent of the children work 60 hours and over per week (page 15). Pennsylvania: Contract, miners (class highest wages, 8s per day, referred to), work 12 to 14 hours, and have to pay dockage, light, &c., out of this (page 128). Probably this is all rubbish, for our traveling protectionists did not observe anything of that kind during their visits to America, and the United States Labor Commission may not know anything about it. But they go on all the same and tell (page 259) that one person in five (exclusive of tramps) is always out of work; they tell of factory rule where 10 days' notice before leaving must be given by the employee, who may be dismissed without notice (page 136). They babble (page 21) of the Foreign Contract Law being continually evaded, the workman's fear of black-listing preventing exposure, and of the Truck Law being continually broken for the same reason. They point out that the legislation against children under 12 years of age working more than 10 hours a day breaks down, because without the wages of children families could not be supported (page 112). They tell of placards in factories offering $10 reward for information of any workman joining a trade union. They conclude by deciding that there is a decrease of wages in many trades, accompanied by an increased number of hours of work, greater uncertainty of employment, more intense application made necessary, and no gain to labor in any direction.
All this must be falsehood— or something must. But I have candidly admitted the East End of London and all Cradley Heath, and it is only fair to have some trans-Atlantic illustrations. There is no reason that I know of why the United States Labor Commission should paint things so black for their own country if they could truthfully do otherwise, and I can find abundant corroboration of their version. In February last, for instance, there was a particularly interesting strike among the New York and Brooklyn car-drivers, who, like the luxurious and idle dogs they probably are, asked for more money or less work. They announced, in their exaggerated American manner, that they "were starved and slaved to death and would sooner be in hell than suffer more of it." This, however, was one of the strikes which the strikers did not win, and Master Workman Powderley, the John Burns of American organized labor, writing in the official Journal of United Labor said the reason why they did not was that "within 24 hours after the strike was inaugurated 20,000 men were seeking for an opportunity to take the strikers' places, and there were thousands more as anxious for the work but too manly to seek it to the detriment of their fellows." Perhaps Powderley is mistaken altogether. Of course he was on the ground at the time, but one who is too close may not be able to see all that is going on.
Something very much better in the way of general conditions than has ever yet existed here, or in England, or in Victoria, or in America should be possible — must be possible. And none of the beaten paths will lead to it. It is no more honest in the protectionist to attempt to stuff down incredulous throats the prosperity and happiness of the American workman than it is in the free trader to exult into contentment and approximate comfort the English wage-earner. And life is not so much more unclouded in any one Australian colony than in any other as to show a difference that can be generally agreed upon. There could hardly be better proof that no system of fiscal government yet tried has been of much avail than continual dispute as to which is best. It commonly happens when two of the inhabitants of this great colony meet in a publichouse and one speaks of the liquor which is the motif of their meeting, as being bad the other reproves him by saying that there is no such thing as bad liquor, but only good and better. So, inversely, there is no such thing as a good fiscal system — only bad and worse. Free trade is bad because it is not what it professes to be; protection is worse because it moves in an entirely opposite direction to freedom and civilization. Revenue tariffism masquerading in the garb of free trade moves at least in the direction of truth; protection sets its face the other way, as I hope to show any reasonable inquirer who will go into the ethics of this subject with me and examine it as a student, methodically and without heat or prejudice. I promise not to be betrayed into the use of statistics, which are seldom honestly used or in themselves absolutely sure and faultless. And I will not once introduce the bonny blue flag or refer to New South Wales as sunny nor invoke anyone to "arise, ye patriots." I shall not rely upon the kangaroo and emu to pull me out of a tight economic corner, nor shall I cover up any difficult issue with gum leaves. In the investigation of this supremely important question it is not necessary to bring forward the fauna or flora of New South Wales, and I will neither depend for effect upon bunting, like Mr. Schay, nor upon bunkum, like Mr. Buchanan.
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https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/235813649
The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW : 1883-1930) Sat 28 Dec 1889 Page 9
By J. Farrell.
No. V (Continued). THE HUMBUG OF PROTECTION.
The claims put forward on behalf of protection are many and contradictory, among the principal being the building up of a nation, the securing of a market and the increasing of the prices of commodities to the producer and the lowering of them to the consumer. The degree or nature of it varies from the moderate tax, which "scientific" or "discriminating" protectionists would put upon the class of articles we can produce, instead of upon those which we cannot, to the wall of everlasting fire reaching from the earth to the stars which the more hardened and hopeless some times pray should be placed around our borders. In either event what is striven for is isolation; the difference is but one of degree. It is either sought to prevent us from interchanging products with our neighbors in some given lines, or it is sought to shut us off from our neighbors entirely. The object of protection is to partially or completely prevent trading between communities on the ground that the welfare of each, or of one of them will be served by declining to participate in that division and reduction of the labor of production which trade implies. In order to realize the absurdity of such a proposition it is necessary to thoroughly understand that trading, the exchanging of their products by two sets of producers is but an expression of the natural law that human desires seek gratification with the least possible exertion.
This becomes obvious when we consider any single case. One community has special facilities for the production of, say, wheat. Another has special facilities for the production of iron. In one case a given application of labor to raw material will produce much more wheat than in the other, in the other case much more iron. The growth of knowledge and civilization has suggested to the community which can most easily produce iron that it will get the best wages in the shape of wheat by exchanging its iron with those who can most easily produce wheat instead of by growing wheat itself under disadvantages. Similarly the wheat-growing community will realize that, although it may possess iron ore it will be more profitable to grow wheat and send it in exchange for iron to the other community, than to dig and smelt such ore itself. Each community naturally finds out by what means to get the best return in the shape of iron and wheat for the expenditure of a given amount of its labor. Thus it is true that if a man is growing wheat in Australia, requiring to use iron in some of its forms, buys it from wherever he can get it most cheaply, that man has produced that iron as absolutely as if he had devoted his labor specifically to its production in Australia. What has happened has been this. He has produced a given quantity of wheat, in return for which he gets certain coins which are merely tokens that he has added to the general store of wealth to a certain extent in the supplying of wheat, and is entitled to take from that store an equal portion of wealth in any form which he values most. He values iron most, for some reason, and in being free to take iron from that quarter of its production where he will get the largest quantity in return for the price of his wheat, he thus secures the highest wages.
The wisdom and the truth and the humanity of the doctrine of buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market are continually being impeached by political chatterers, whose deep ignorance of principles and elements only escapes notice in the ignorance around them. It is the true law. This rule embodied in the homely phrase of buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market is one that has stood and will stand to the end, becoming more and more obvious, and claiming more universal obedience as the field of inquiry is widened. To buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market is to gratify desire with the least possible expenditure of labor and pain: it is to ensure a mutual gain to buyer and seller; it is to get the highest possible wages and the largest possible degree of leisure and well-being. Trade is a voluntary exchange between two producers, each of whom is enriched and benefited, inasmuch as in return for what he does not desire he gets something which he does desire. To sell in the dearest market means to dispose of the product of your labor in the place where it is most highly valued; to buy in the cheapest means to get the largest share of the things you require in return for what you have sold. Whoever seeks to fetter this liberty of buying and selling is not a friend to humankind, whatever he or they may think. Any logical mind can see at once that that which is a benefit when carried on between individuals cannot be otherwise when carried on between communities which are but aggregations of individuals.
In the simple case of two individuals, each having special power of producing a certain thing, or special advantages for its production, agreeing to exchange their special products with each other, the gain to each is apparent enough. It is seen that a man who is a good shoemaker would waste his time deplorably if instead of getting bread from a good baker and giving him shoes in return he tried to bake his own bread, and the same rule would apply to the baker if instead of baking bread to give the shoemaker in return for his shoes he tried to make them for himself. There would be a waste of natural adaptability perhaps, and certainly of training. The shoemaker would not make as good bread, nor the baker as good shoes as either could, with far less labor, have got from the other. It will be seen clearly in such an illustration as this that labor is interchangeable, and that no man can "give work," as our protectionist friends say, to a foreigner, without that foreigner in turn "giving work" to him. The Australian who buys imported cloth or boots or ironware does so for the sole reason that he is satisfied that he thus gets better value for his money, or, in other words, a higher wage, in the shape of the particular articles enumerated, for his work. And to the English workman he gives in return for the boots, or the cloth, or the ironware, something which that workman could not as cheaply get elsewhere — wool, wine, copper, gold, perhaps, but something. In a more primitive state of civilization the operation of this exchange, being made at first hand between the two parties concerned, would be simple and manifest; now it is obscured by the use of money and the complexity and manifold intricacies and intersections of the channels of exchange. Now, between the two exchanging parties stand many others through whose hands the things exchanged must pass, and the real nature of the transaction is thus lost sight of. The producer of gold, wool, wine or copper here may send his products to Germany or to America; Germany or America may keep them and send timber, cotton or any other products to England; but the cloth, boots or ironware that come from England here represent payment for the wool, wine, copper or gold produced by us. Thus the Australian who buys "pauper-made" boots from England is as certainly, by his labor here in Australia, producing them as though he were a shoemaker working at his trade. Everything that is imported by us is produced here, inasmuch as that it is the earnings of Australian labor — the wages which Australian workers take for their work from the hand that will give them most. If an Australian works for £2 a week, and the Chinese, under the influence of ages of scientific protection, works for 5s, a week's work of the Australian, measured in interchangeable commodities, will be equal to eight weeks of the Asiatic. If the Chinaman could get the particular things wanted by him in his own country with the same trouble he would not apply to the Australian; and if our worker could get tea or rice as cheaply elsewhere he would not send to China. But neither of them can. They know what is best for themselves and try to do it. Any interference with free exchange would diminish national wealth and lower wages by compelling labor to engage in less profitable fields than it would choose for itself.
To illustrate this in a familiar way: A farmer in New South Wales buys an English-made plow for, say, £10. This farmer has himself produced that plow, because he has grown wheat which has been changed into money, which in its turn has been changed into a plow. Similarly the plowmaker in England has produced wheat, because he has made a plow which was turned into money and afterwards into wheat. Or, if the exchange was not direct in the shape of exports and imports between England and Australia, the Australian farmer might have sold his wheat to Africa, which purchased it with money obtained by selling something to India, which bought this something with money representing a sale of something else to England, which bought that something with money derived from the sale of plows to Australia. The protectionist mind does not seem to be able or does not want to assimilate this fact for the truth it involves — namely, that every penny's worth of anything that is imported here from China, Belgium, Prussia or anywhere is produced by our own workers and is wages paid to them for work done right here in our midst. They cheerfully recognize half of the truth; indeed, they most volubly and constantly proclaim it from the housetops. They never tire of telling us that when we import goods we are giving employment to foreigners, but they forget to say that these foreigners employ us to make what is sent in return to them. Reduced to its elements, trade is the act of exchanging one man's labor, exerted upon one particular branch of production, for that of another man, exerted upon a different branch. But science, knowledge and invention have enabled the two exchanging parties, who formerly could only exchange as near neighbors from hand to hand, to stand far apart from and out of sight or knowledge of each other, perhaps at the very opposite limits of the world. But let it be remembered that when we employ a Chinese, or a Belgian, or an Englishman to make anything for us he employs us to make something to pay him with, and no matter how many hands it may pass through or who may intervene that something, or its equivalent, will surely reach him.
Protection would say to the farmer, "You must pay £11 for your plow and have it made in Australia instead of importing it. By this means more employment will be given in our own country, wages will be raised and an increased demand for your wheat will arise." On the surface this looks like truth, but no further than that. Anyone who has closely followed what I hare already written will, I venture to think, see that it is all the same to the farmer so long as his wheat really is exchange for a plow whether the man with whom he makes the exchange lives beside him or in Kamschatka. The only question of interest to him is — from whom can he get the largest return in labor devoted to making a plow for his own labor devoted to growing wheat? If, deluded by the fair rind of the sham apple offered, he accepted it and consented to pay an extra pound — so much more of his wheat — for the plow, it would only mean that he had given so much of his substance just to import his plowmaker instead of his plows. No employment would have been created except the utterly unprofitable pound's worth represented in the difference in cost between making the plow in England and making it here. One more unit would have been added to our population, though, and rent would have risen a fraction in consequence of the appearance of a new claimant for room to live. The protectionists would tell you that the plowmaker would not be attracted here from England, but that we have plowmakers now in plenty who cannot get work to do, and who under a protective tariff on manufactured plows would be able to do so. The answers to this are that the persons who propose to keep out plows and throw the English plowmaker out of employment do not propose to prevent him from coming and pursuing his avocation at the new center of production created. And it is obvious that, being deprived of work in England, he would have to seek it elsewhere, and in the guise of a considerably impoverished and therefore "cheap" tradesman. What "protection" does this offer to the individual for whose special benefit it is being advocated — the unemployed mechanic? None, save until his foreign rival mechanic, starved out by our refusal to take his plows, is brought here by the protected manufacturer to compete with and take the starch out of him. The other answer is this: If plowmakers in our midst stand idle, because plow-users can get their implements more profitably from England, it is better that they should be allowed to remain so than that as subsidy from another class, or other classes, of the community should furnish them with an employment which, truly judged, is unproductive. Every farmer who gave a pound more for a plow than he need have given would have a pound less to spend in any other direction, and what the plowmakers gained would be taken away from other industrial classes. Not only this, but the cost of administering this cumbrous and Chinese system of idiotic tyranny would be loss also, as it would be payment for unproductive labor.
It is as well, after having glanced at what is chiefly the economic aspect of protection, to look for a moment at it in the light of morality. False and worthless as it is economically, it is seen to be more than false when regarded ethically. Just as every truth squares with every other truth for good, so every falsehood fits in with every other for evil. As an expedient, as a method adopted by one people to advantage themselves, it is a failure; but as a weapon directed by them against another people it is warfare, cruel as warfare can be made. Its effect upon those in favor of whom it is designed is injurious, inasmuch as that it necessarily reduces their wages; but what of its effect upon those against whom it is directed? Your average protectionist has much compassion for wage slaves of other countries, and he speaks of the misery, degradation and suffering of the English especially in a voice that wavers from deep emotion. From the bottom of his soul you can see that he pities the poor wretches who are sweated to the verge of death, but all he proposes is to make things worse for them. Mr. Traill once said very publicly that he felt at times ashamed to wear a shirt knowing how the women who make shirts live and the horrible sufferings they undergo. And the remedy Mr. Traill and the party he is allied with offers is to deprive these women of even that miserable means of sustaining life. That is all. From the sewing woman who, wretched as her lot is, choose it as the best that she can choose, take away the sewing and in the name of "scientific" protection tell her to go on the streets or to the overcrammed workhouses. From the ironworker of Belgium or England, hardly living above the beasts that perish, take away his work and let him starve or beg. That is the highly civilized and Christian way of settling the social difficulty preached by the champions of protective tariffism. The spoils are for the victor, they tell you, therefore fight your brethren and trample them down, for there is no other way to live but by trampling down some. No sophistry of statement, no oratorical becloudment can make the doctrine of protection mean anything but that. "Eat or be eaten," is the crude barbarism of thought on which the protected idea is based. As Henry George has so well shown in his "Protection or Free Trade," a book that everyone who is desirous of finding what is truth about the fiscal question should read in connection with the best works from the opposite point of view — in times of actual war only do we see protection in its true character as a weapon of strife and mutual injury. Let a war break out between two nations that have hitherto existed in friendly relations to each other and one of the first things done is a blockading of ports. Each side recognize that it will injure and weaken the other to cut off the supplies of commodities which they get from the most advantageous sources. Protection seeks to do in a smaller way and indirectly the very thing which in a larger way war does honestly and directly for purposes of destruction. Even though one nation could benefit by forcing the workers of another lower and lower into the depths of misery, by taking away their employment, it is the expedient of the man who pushed his brother off the life-raft in order to get his place. Mr. Traill's tears for the sewing women do not bear analysis well if he has nothing better to back commiseration up with than taking away their poor livelihood.
Protection does not protect labor, and never in the world was there a more brazen and impudent sham than the pretense on the part of certain of its advocates that it does. How can it protect labor when labor is the only thing that is allowed to come from abroad without any restriction and compete with local labor? Here is the matter in the smallest of nutshells. If the wage earners of New South Wales were to band themselves together and insist that no wage earners in their own particular trades were to be allowed to enter the colony, save under payment of a heavy tax, there would be immediate outcry against them by the employers. These would say that the workers were endeavoring to secure an undue advantage by increasing their wages at the cost of the manufacturer and capitalist, and would fight against such a proposition vigorously. Well, at present the employers — the manufacturers and capitalists — are demanding that the commodities which they wish to produce shall be heavily taxed, while the labor shall continue to come in free. And the astounding thing about all this is that a good many of the wage earners believe them and are willing to help them to get protection against commodities and free ports for the labor with which to produce these commodities. This some of the workers are ready to accept as protection. With unction and an excess of sentiment about Australia for the Australians and much talk of a blue flag and a kangaroo and emu, and some mental reservation about a cock and a bull, certain of the protectionist party posture as defenders of labor by the popular proceeding of shaking their fists in the faces of the Chinamen. "We will keep out the Chinese," they say, "so that our workers shall not be forced into competition with those whose scale of life is so low." And this crumb is swallowed as sufficient by the dupes who do not realize that if trade ceases with the workers of some other country, and those workers are allowed to come in here, the level of living will soon come to near Chinese point, as in Belgium, Germany, England and America. It is not the Chinese whose competition the skilled engineer, watchmaker, or type-setter need fear so much as the competition of skilled white labor in his own line. Where there is work for one bootmaker, he who is engaged in it fears more from the coming of another bootmaker than from the coming of two pauper Chinamen. But all this is kept in the background, and they make strong anti-Chinese speeches amid the enthusiastic cheers of those who never will be made slaves or fools.
Protection does not protect. If the people of New South Wales agree to pay so much — a more trifle if you like — per head to establish certain industries here, they have so much per head less to expend on some of those that are already established. Someone must go down in the raising up of others. And to what end after the industries were established? To the end that rent would rise and take any benefit accruing from their establishment. If any locality is made the center of new activities from any cause, rents in that locality rise in exact proportion. If manufactories that now only work in a desultory and half-hearted way for the reason that consumers can get what they want more cheaply from somewhere else were suddenly made to work continuously by means of a contribution levied upon the whole people the ground rents of those factories would rise. And if 1000 workmen were employed whereever there are now 50 or 100, the personal well being of each of the 1000 would be less than is now that of each of the 50 or 100, because rents would have so risen that a larger proportion of the wages received by him would be taken from him. Rent has nullified the effect of wonderful progress and mechanical advancement; it has taken to itself every gain arising from increased knowledge and production. Protection just plays into its hands beautifully by changing the center of production from one country to another to the loss of the people, and the gain of the landowners.
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