And that is the result of our commercial glory! For that we have sacrificed our agriculture and endangered the safety of our empire.
Let us put the two statements of the commercial school side by side.
They tell us first that the workers must abandon the land and go into the factories, because there they can earn a better living.
They tell us now that the British worker must be content with the wages of a coolie, because foreign trade will pay no more.
We are to give up agriculture because we can buy more food with exported goods than we can grow; and we must learn to live on next to nothing, or lose our foreign trade.
Well, since we left the land in the hope that the factories would feed us better, why not go back to the land if the factories fail to feed us at all?
Ah! but the commercial school have another string to their bow: "You cannot go back to the land, for it will not feed you all. This country will not produce enough food for its people to live upon."
So the position in which the workers are placed, according to the commercial school, is this: You cannot produce your own food; therefore you must buy it by export trade. But you will lose your export trade unless you work for lower wages.
Well, Mr. Smith, I for one do not believe those things. I believe—
1. That we can produce most of our food.
2. That we can keep as much of our trade as we need, and
3. That we can keep the trade without reducing the wages of the workers.