is the same, and by no means proportioned to the income of the purchasers. What costs the poor man one-tenth of his annual income, may cost the rich man one-thousandth part of his. And this is the case, chiefly and especially, with those things which are the means by which the poor man can rise in the world.

Or suppose again the fees of a distinguished surgeon are, for certain services, one hundred dollars. This is but one-twentieth of the income of a man who has two thousand dollars a year. It is one tenth of that of him who has but a thousand a year, and one-half of his who has but two hundred, and quite out of the reach of the poorer men in the community.

In the same way if a man wants to take a journey, to educate his children, to buy a book, or any other article of general or universal value, its cost is a definite sum, the same in amount, indeed, to all, but a greater or less proportion of his income according as his wages are high or low.

(4) The higher the wages of the laborer the faster he can accumulate capital and rise above the condition of a mere laborer, provided, of course, his wages are such that he can save anything after paying for the minimum of food and clothing that can be made to supply his wants. In fact any one who is sufficiently resolute in his determination to accu

mulate something, can and will save all of his wages that are in excess of that minimum. Suppose that minimum is twenty-five cents a day, and the wages of one man are fifty cents, and those of another seventy-five cents per day, the latter will be able to save money twice as fast as the former.

190. Beneficial effects of the higher manufactures.

There is another important fact bearing on the two systems, free trade and protection, which ought to be considered. It relates to the promotion of both the thrift and the intelligence of the people.

A protective tariff is neither needed or justifiable, except when it is required to diversify labor and give increased occupation to the people by introducing the higher and more costly manufactures.

This is abundantly illustrated by facts in our own country. All the finer cottons and woolens are manufactured in the eastern States, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, etc. In the western States only the coarser goods are manufactured; the cost of transportation is a large per cent. of the cost of the cheaper goods, and a small per cent. of the cost of the finer ones. Hence, for the western States, the cost of transportation is an effective protective tariff against eastern competition on all the coarser goods.

But it is so small a per cent. of the cost of the. finer goods, that these are not manufactured there at all. And the difference in the distributive wealth of the people of the two respective portions of the country will not be, I suppose, a matter of question with anybody.

And in another point of view, their production is essential to the highest welfare of the nation.

(1) They require and imply the highest skill and the most refinement of taste in their production. Hence their manufacture not only implies, but it also encourages and promotes, the culture of the people; they must be more intelligent and refined in order to carry on these forms of industry successfully and efficiently.

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(2) Again, it is precisely these higher manufactures in all civilized countries that utilize the forces of nature to the greatest extent, and thereby making them work for us. They make our labor day for day the more efficient, and of course, therefore, and just to that extent, the more productive of value; or, what is the same in effect, the kind of labor that enriches a nation the fastest, the manufacture of the finest goods, must either be left to savage and mere semi-barbarians, where wages are the lowest-almost nothing or carried on by the most highly civilized and the richest people, with the greatest distributive wealth, where the use of machinery has been made the most effective in saving human labor.

Let any foreign manufactured articles drive our domestic manufactures out of existence, one after another, and our people will be obliged to become agriculturists. They would then have to pay the entire cost of transportation, both of their raw material, as cotton, and of their food, as grain and meat, to the place where both are manufactured into the articles we ourselves need for the supply of our wants; the one, manufactured by the loom into cloth, the other, by digestion and assimilation, into the bones and muscles of the laborer, who spins and weaves it.

And thus, everything we might have to sell, would be low-priced; and everything-all our finer and better articles, would be high-priced: we should be compelled to sell cheap and buy dear.

191. Free trade only with free laborers.

If, however, we could remove all restrictions, educate those that are immersed in ignorance and barbarism, and obliterate all hereditary monarchies and aristocracies, making the laborers as free as trade, the law of supply and demand would undoubtedly bring all things, labor, capital, skill and stupidity, industry and idleness, extravagance and economy, profligacy and frugality, each to its proper level.

But until these conditions are fulfilled, free trade, with the unfree laborers of the old-world, must bring our laborers down to their level—it cannot raise them to ours, or labor anywhere, to its proper equality with capital.

192. Difference between British doctrine and British practice.

Political Economists have very generally advocated free trade. Politicians have quite often advocated a tariff for revenue, while statesmen have been found advocating protection under some one or other of its forms. Even in England, which is commonly regarded as especially devoted to free trade, free trade is not practiced any further than it suits the local national interests to practice it. That government imposes no "protective tariff" indeed.

Its

writers and statesmen appear to have a great horror of such a thing. But it imposes "countervailing duties" upon every object of foreign production which is likely, by its importations, to interfere seriously with any branch of industry, pursued by its own subjects, which it can protect. The English will admit tobacco, for example, free of duty: they can raise none that is good for anything. But they impose a "countervailing duty," on cigars, snuff, and all the forms of manufactured tobacco, so great as