122. The movement of men over the earth and the movement of goods over the earth are complementary operations. Passports to stop the men and taxes to stop the goods would be equally legitimate. Since it is, once for all, a fact that some parts of the earth have advantages for one thing and other parts for other things, men avail themselves of the local advantages either by moving themselves to the places, or by trading what they produce where they are for what others produce in the other places. The passenger trains and the freight trains are set in motion by the same ultimate economic fact. Our exports are all bulky and require more tonnage than our imports. On the westward trip, consequently, bunks are erected and men are brought in space where cotton, wheat, etc., were taken out. The tariff, by so much as it lessens the import of goods, leaves room which the ship owners are eager to fill with immigrants. To do this they lower the rates. Hence the tariff is a premium on immigration. The protectionists have claimed that the tariff does favor immigration. But nine-tenths of the immigrants are laborers, domestic servants, and farmers.[23] Probably more than one-third of the total number, including women, find their way to the land. As we have seen, the tariff also lowers the profits of agriculture, which discourages immigration and the movement to the land. Therefore, if the farmer believes what the protectionist tells him, he must understand that the taxes he pays bring in more people, and raise the value of land by settling it, and that they also bring more competition, which the farmer must buy off by lowering the profits of his own (the farming) industry. Then, too, so far as the immigrants are artisans, the premium on immigration is a tax paid to increase the supply of labor, that is, to lower wages, although the protectionists say that the tariff raises wages. Hence we see that when a tax is laid, in our modern complicated society, instead of being a simple and easy means or method to be employed for a specific purpose, its action and reaction on transportation, land, wages, etc., will produce erratic, contradictory, and confused effects, which cannot be predicted or analyzed thoroughly, and the protectionist, when he pleads three or four arguments for his system, is alleging three or four features of it which, if properly analyzed and brought together, are found to be mutually destructive, and cumulative only as to the mischief they do (see §§ [29], [101]).
(I) That our Industries would Perish without Protection.
123. Those who say this think only of manufacturing establishments as “industries.” They also talk of “our” industries. They mean those we support by the taxes we pay; not those from which we get dividends. No industry will ever be given up except in order to take up a better one, and if, under free trade, any of our industries should perish, it would only be because the removal of restrictions enabled some other industry to offer so much better rewards that labor and capital would seek the latter. It is plain that, if a man does not know of any better way to earn his living than the one in which he is, he must remain in that, or move to some other place. If any one can suppose that the population of the United States could be forced, by free trade, to move away, he must suppose that this country cannot support its population, and that we made a mistake in coming here. This argument is especially full of force if the articles to be produced are coal, iron, wool, copper, timber, or any other primary products of the soil. For, if it is said that we cannot raise these products of the soil in competition with some other part of the earth’s surface, all it proves is that we have come to the wrong spot to seek them. If, however, the soil can support the population under an arrangement by which certain industries support themselves, and those which do not pay besides, then it is plain that the former are really supporting the whole population—part directly and part indirectly, through a circuitous and wasteful organization. Hence the same strong and independent industries could certainly still better support the whole population, if they supported it directly.
124. I have been asked whether we should have had any steel works in this country, if we had had no protection. I reply that I do not know; neither does anybody else, but it is certain that we should have had a great deal more steel, if we had had no protection.
125. “But,” it is said, “we should import everything.” Should we import everything and give nothing? If so, foreigners would make us presents and support us. Should we give equal value in exchange? If so, there would be just as much “industry” and a great deal less “work” in that way of getting things than in making them ourselves. The moment that ceased to be true we should make and not buy. Suppose that a district, A, has two million inhabitants, one million of whom produce a million bushels of wheat, and one million produce a million hundredweight of iron; and suppose that a bushel of wheat exchanges for a hundredweight of iron. Now, by improved transportation and emigration, suppose that a new wheat country, B, is opened, and that its people bring wheat to the first district, offering two bushels for a hundredweight of iron. Plainly they must offer more than one bushel for one hundredweight, or it is useless for them to come. Now the people of A, by putting all their labor and capital in iron production, produce two million hundredweight. They keep one million hundredweight, and exchange one million hundredweight of iron for two million bushels of wheat. The destruction of their wheat industry is a sign of a change in industry (unifying and not diversifying) by which they have gained a million bushels of wheat. Such is the gain of all trade. If the gain did not exist, trade would not be a feature of civilization.
(J) That it would be Wise to Call into Existence Various Industries, even at an Expense, if we could thus Offer Employment to all Kinds of Artisans, etc., who might Come to us.
126. This would be only maintaining public workshops at the expense of the taxpayers, and would be open to all the objections which are conclusive against public workshops. The expense would be prodigious, and the return little or nothing. This argument shows less sense of comparative cost and gain than any other which is ever proposed.
(K) That we Want to be Complete in ourselves and Sufficient to ourselves, and Independent, as a Nation, which State of Things will be Produced by Protection.
127. I will only refer to what I have already said about China and Japan (§ [69]) as types of what this plan produces. If a number of families from among us should be shipwrecked on an island, their greatest woe would be that they could not trade with the rest of the world. They might live there “self-contained” and “independent,” fulfilling the ideal of happiness which this proposition offers, but they would look about them to see a surfeit of things which, as they know, their friends at home would like to have, and they would think of all the old comforts which they used to have, and which they could not produce on their island. They might be contented to live on there and make it their home, if they could exchange the former things for the latter. If now a ship should chance that way and discover them and should open communication and trade between them and their old home, a protectionist philosopher would say to them: “You are making a great mistake. You ought to make everything for yourselves. The wise thing to do would be to isolate yourselves again by taxes as soon as possible.” We sent some sages to the Japanese to induct them into the ways of civilization, who, as a matter of fact, did tell them that the first step in civilization was to adopt a protective tariff and shut up again by taxes the very ports which they had just opened.