In the meantime let us examine if injustice is not done to you by the legislative limitation of the number of persons from whom you are allowed to buy those things which you need; as iron, coal, cotton and woollen cloths, &c.; thus artificially fixing (so to express myself) the price which these articles must bear.
Is it true that protection, which avowedly raises prices, and thus injures you, proportionably raises the rate of wages?
On what does the rate of wages depend?
One of your own class has energetically said: "When two workmen run after a boss, wages fall; when two bosses run after a workman, wages rise."
Allow me, in similar laconic phrase, to employ a more scientific, though perhaps a less striking expression: "The rate of wages depends upon the proportion which the supply of labor bears to the demand."
On what depends the demand for labor?
On the quantity of disposable capital seeking investment. And the law which says, "Such or such an article shall be limited to home production and no longer imported from foreign countries," can it in any degree increase this capital? Not in the least. This law may withdraw it from one course, and transfer it to another; but cannot increase it one penny. Then it cannot increase the demand for labor.
While we point with pride to some prosperous manufacture, can we answer, whence comes the capital with which it is founded and maintained? Has it fallen from the moon? or rather is it not drawn either from agriculture, or stock-breeding, or commerce? We here see why, since the reign of protective tariffs, if we see more workmen in our mines and our manufacturing towns, we find also fewer vessels in our ports, fewer graziers and fewer laborers in our fields and upon our hill-sides.
I could speak at great length upon this subject, but prefer illustrating my thought by an example.
A countryman had twenty acres of land, with a capital of $10,000. He divided his land into four parts, and adopted for it the following changes of crops: 1st, maize; 2d, wheat; 3d, clover; and 4th, rye. As he needed for himself and family but a small portion of the grain, meat, and dairy produce of the farm, he sold the surplus and bought iron, coal, cloths, etc. The whole of his capital was yearly distributed in wages and payments of accounts to the workingmen of the neighborhood. This capital was, from his sales, again returned to him, and even increased from year to year. Our countryman, being fully convinced that idle capital produces nothing, caused to circulate among the working classes this annual increase, which he devoted to the inclosing and clearing of lands, or to improvements in his farming utensils and his buildings. He deposited some sums in reserve in the hands of a neighboring banker, who on his part did not leave these idle in his strong-box, but lent them to various tradesmen, so that the whole came to be usefully employed in the payment of wages.