Making haste to be rich has had more to do with that depression than the weight of foreign competition. Manufacturers who scamp and merchants who swindle; folks who endow churches or build chapels to compromise with their conscience for robbing their customers and blasting the honour of the English name—these are the men who deserve to be pilloried when we talk of depression. We do want fair trade in the sense of honest trade, for it is the burning desire for gain, the resolve to practise any device that leads to money-making, which is injuring the British manufacturing industry far more than the foreigner. The sick man who disliked a wash was at last, in desperation, recommended by his doctor to try soap; the manufacturers who size their cottons to the rotting point, and the merchants who have been accustomed to sell German cutlery with a Sheffield label, should be told, when they cry out upon depression, to try honesty. And when they whine, as they sometimes do, that it is the demand for cheap goods that makes such a supply, they must be reminded that the butcher who sells bad meat, or the baker who adulterates his bread, pleads the same excuse, but it does not save either from being branded as a cheat.
There is a further point which will account for the loss of British trade in foreign markets, and that is the lack of adaptability to new circumstances shown by English traders. And this is displayed all round. Our farmers ought to know by this time that they cannot compete by wheat-growing with the United States, Canada, or India; but they will not comprehend that they can compete with foreign countries in the matter of butter, eggs, cheese, fruit, and poultry. And the consequence is that we are paying many millions yearly to France, Holland, Belgium, and America for articles that our own farmers ought to supply; and that the largest cheesemongers in London find it cheaper, easier, and quicker to import all their butter from Normandy than to buy a single pound in England. It is the same with our manufacturers. An American firm had a large order to give for cutlery; they asked terms which the English manufacturer rejected because they were novel; and a German at once seized the chance, and kept the trade. In New Zealand there was wanted a light spade for agricultural purposes; the English manufacturer would not alter his pattern to suit his customers; and the whole order went to the United States. In China the people wish for a cotton cloth which will not vanish at the first shower of rain; Manchester is so accustomed to heavily size its goods that it cannot change; and the China trade in that commodity is going elsewhere. Before, then, we complain of foreign competition—a complaint which is bitterly heard to-day as against England in France, Germany, Austria, and the United States—let us be certain that we are doing all we honestly can to cope with it.
Some there are who say that they are in favour of Free Trade in the abstract, but that they will not support it as long as it is not accepted by other nations. This is about as sensible as a decision to cheat in business as long as some of our neighbours cheat would be honest, and is exactly on a level with the old death-bed injunction of the miserly parent—“My son, make money—honestly if you can, but make money.” And when it is stated, as it sometimes is, that Free Trade was adopted by this country only on the understanding that it would be universally agreed to, it is a sufficient answer that Sir Robert Peel, in introducing his measure for the repeal of the Corn Laws, observed:—“I fairly avow to you that in making this great reduction upon the import of articles, the produce and manufacture of foreign countries, I have no guarantee to give you that other countries will immediately follow our example.”
When the Protectionists, call themselves by what name they will and use what arguments they may, ask us to change our present system, we first then deny their assumption that England is going to the dogs, and next we ask what they propose to put in its place. Upon a plan they find it impossible to agree. Some would tax corn lightly, others as heavily as would be required to make its growth certainly profitable to the farmer; some would fix a duty only upon manufactured articles, others upon everything which is imported that can be raised here; some would admit goods from our colonies at a lighter rate than from foreign countries, others would put them all on the same level. Out of this chaos of contradictions no definite plan has yet been evolved, and none is likely to be.
The corn question is the first difficulty, and will long remain so. Wheat, in the autumn of 1887, was selling at 28s. a quarter; on the average it cannot be grown to pay at less than 45s.; yet it is only a 5s. duty which is being dangled before the farmer. But if he is to lose 12s. a quarter he will be little farther removed from ruin than if he loses 17s.; he will as much as ever resemble the traditional refreshment contractor who lost a little upon every customer, but thought to make his profit by the number he served; and the agricultural interest in its wildest dreams cannot imagine that Englishmen are likely to impose a duty raising the price of wheat 60 per cent. A rise of 10 per cent. in the price of bread means a rise of 1 per cent. in the death-rate, and if a duty of 17s. were imposed, that rise would be 6 per cent. What would this mean? That where 100 persons die now, 106 would die then, and the added number would perish from that most awful of all forms of death—death from lack of food. And those extra six would not be drawn from the well-to-do, from the trading classes, or from the ranks of skilled labour, but from those who even now are struggling their hardest for bread, and to whom the rise in price of a loaf from threepence to fourpence three-farthings would mean starvation. For let it never be forgotten that it is upon the poorest that a corn-tax would fall most heavily. The peer eats no more bread—probably he eats less—than the peasant; even when all his family and servants are reckoned, the quantity of bread consumed is comparatively little more than in an artisan’s household; but while the peasant and the artisan would be made to feel with every mouthful that they were being starved in order that others might thrive, the few shillings a week that the peer would have to pay would be but a drop spilt from a full bucket, the loss of which no one could perceive.
Arising out of the proposal for the re-imposition of a corn-tax is a consideration which bears upon the idea of levying a duty upon other imports. India is rapidly becoming more and more a corn-growing country; if it were decided to admit its wheat free, the British farmer would continue handicapped; if it were resolved to tax it, India would necessarily retaliate by protecting its own cotton industries: and what would Lancashire say to that?
The fact is that, when the proposal to protect industries all round is considered, the difficulties of securing a feasible plan are found to be insurmountable. The simplest way, of course, would be to place a duty upon everything that entered our ports, and to follow that American tariff which commenced with a tax upon acorns, and was so jealous of interference with native industries that it fixed a duty upon skeletons. And if it be replied that the line should be drawn at manufactured articles, the question must be asked at once how these are to be defined. One can understand shoemakers desiring to place a duty upon foreign-made boots, but they would object to have the price of leather increased by a tax upon the imports of that material. The tanner and currier would strongly favour a tax upon leather, while perfectly willing that hides should be admitted free. But the free importation of hides would affect the farmer, who would have as much right to protection as either tanner or bootmaker. And so the price of boots from the beginning would be raised to everybody, less boots would be bought, and the whole community, as well as the particular trades concerned, would suffer. Take the woollen industries again. Manufacturers might like cloths to be taxed, but would be willing to see yarns admitted free. Spinners would place a duty upon yarns, but would let wool alone. But the farmer would again step in and demand that the price of his wool should not be lowered by free importation. If Protection is started there is no stopping it; no line can fairly be drawn between the importation of raw material and manufactured articles; every trade will want to be taken care of. And we shall be driven back to the time when, in order to protect the farmer, all bodies had to be buried in woollen shrouds; and, to protect the buckle maker, the use of shoestrings was by law prohibited. More; we shall be driven back to the period when the artisan and the labourer saw wheaten bread but once a year, when it was barley alone they could afford to eat, and when the rent of the landlord was the one consideration for which Parliament cared, and the welfare of the poor the last thing of which Parliament dreamed.
One can understand why the Protectionist movement should have supporters in high places. There are landlords who are tired of seeing their rents continuously fall, and are as anxious as ever their fathers were to make the community pay the difference between what the land can honestly yield and the return its possessor desires; and there are manufacturers who are disgusted to find that the days when colossal fortunes could be rapidly made are departing.
It is the duty, therefore, of every Liberal to resist the least approach to a reversal of the present fiscal policy. For it is not a mere question of taxation; it is not even a question only of money; it is a question of life and death to the poor. And every man who knows to what a depth of misery Protection brought this country less than fifty years since, and who feels for those who are hardly pressed, will strive to the uttermost against any renewal of the system which, while enriching a few, impoverishes the many, and, to add bitterness to its injustice, involves death by starvation.