What has been will be, under the benign influence of cheap labor and free trade—perhaps! Let me go on with my pleasant tale—do not interrupt—I have the word—by and by you.
At this moment, to-day, this year of our Lord 1877, the merchant princes of London, the manufacturing barons of Manchester are at their wits' ends; for people refuse to buy the products of their mills. Germany will not have them, and France will not, and America chooses to make her own; and even India, ungrateful that she is, has gone to spinning her own cotton. Mills are being closed in England, furnaces are blown out, wages are reduced, and workmen are threatening to strike, or have struck, and are settling down for a comfortable winter upon the rates. All right! England has "developed her resources," and trade is free. Let her sing hosannahs, and cry, "Glory be to our god," for no such beautiful "progress" was ever seen on earth before.
What is to happen to the 300,000 or half million land-owners of England, if outside pig-headed peoples wilfully and maliciously refuse to buy the mill products of England and so to feed the 37,200,000 people of England who have no land upon which to raise their own food? What is to happen if some fine day the 37,200,000 take it into their foolish heads to say:
"We do not like to starve. We are many, you are few. We will take the land and raise our own food, and you can emigrate if you like, or you can stand out in the cold as we have done. We don't like it."
It is not quite easy to shoot those people; and if they choose to stay in England, it is not quite easy to make them emigrate—not even if the "laws of trade" tell them they really ought to go.
And besides, it is so easy for 100,000 paupers to emigrate—to take their wives and their children, their flocks and their herds, their camels and their asses, their beds and their tents, and go forth to seek the promised land—the land flowing with milk and honey. It is so simple, so pleasant, that one is lost in amazement that they do not go—that they wickedly persist in staying where they are paupers, and refuse to obey the law of "supply and demand."
Such conduct is quite unworthy of enlightened Britons who "never will be slaves."
It is too bad—it really is—and political economy ought to be preached at them severely. Why is it too that outside barbarians refuse to buy the divine productions of England? Some think we may do well to take a look at this part of the problem before we go on with our plans for introducing more cheap labor into our own happy land.
A century ago, as has been said, England discovered the wonderful way of applying the steam giant to the creation of manufactured goods, and for three-quarters of the century she has had a practical monopoly; has turned the golden streams of the whole world to enrich herself; has preached free trade; has said, "Buy cheap and sell dear," and has set her god on a high throne. But slowly and haltingly other and stupider nations have caught the tricks of the new Cultus; have caught little steam giants, and have set them to work to turn their mills and grind their grists. Germany and the United States are two of these dull nations who have done a stroke of work in this way. France has really been too stupid to do much at it—has indeed gone back to a tariff after having tasted of the new gospel, and now obstinately refuses to live by it—will pay her debts, and will not enjoy unlimited pauperism.
Germany has, however, done well. She now makes woollens, cottons, linens, irons, steels, penknives, and Bibles quite as cheap as England, and, as some say (one of her own Centennial Commission), "cheaper and nastier." Now her traders are ubiquitous; they go, with the wandering Jew, the fascinating Englishman, the penetrating Yankee, into all heathen lands, carrying everywhere the new gospel of trade, and introducing to youthful minds the civilizing influences of lager beer and free lunches. Aided by the persuasive tones of the patient and soothing Yankee, they are doing wonders in teaching the value of time, by founding establishments for "stand-up drinks" in every lazy and luxurious land, by giving prizes to all who smoke while they work, thus making labor cheerful if not respectable. So patient and indefatigable has Germany been, that at Manchester in England, which may perhaps be termed the Delos of the new faith, I was told some five years ago that she had just taken the contract, had bought from Germany the iron beams and rafters for a new city building, and had put them up under the very noses of the worshippers who burn their sacred fires at Birmingham and Wolverhampton. And so, in the whirligig of time, Trade brings his pleasant revenges.