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port all we require from abroad! but what then becomes of the freetrade contention, "that every export of goods must be balanced by an import of goods?"

If further evidence were wanted of the utter collapse of the system, it is furnished in the ever-increasing nuinber of manufacturing capitalists who have, in recent years, been driven by it to seek in foreign countries the fair play they are denied at home. Mr Porter, of the United States Tariff Commission, tells us :

"The shares of the leading flaxmills in Germany are 20 and 22 per cent above par. The shares of the ten principal flax-mills in Belfast are 58 per cent below par.'-'Nineteenth Century.'"

In 1886 the firm of Messrs Marshall & Co., established 100 years ago in Holbeck, Leeds, and the largest flax-spinners in Europe, owing to keen competition from abroad, closed their works, and have gone to establish new mills in Massachusetts, taking with them their capital and many of their

I found old hands. shoddy manufacturers from Batby and Dewsbury established in Aachen, Prussia; Lancashire and Scottish spinners in Rouen; Leicestershire hosiery manufacturers in Saxony; Yorkshire wool-combing establishments in Rheims; Dundee jute-mills in Dunkerque; all-wool-stuff manufacturers in Roubaix; English iron and steel mills in Belgium; and English woollen mills in Holland. Removing English capital to the Continent has secured a profitable home market, while England was near with widely open ports to serve as a 'dumping ground, to unload surplus goods made by foreign labour superintended by English skill. In this way the English markets are swamped, and her labour undersold. Let English authorities tell the result.

"During the last twenty years of this century the linen industry of Germany has increased 300 per cent.' -MULHALL.

"During the last twenty years the linen industry of Great Britain has decreased 18 per cent.'-' Nineteenth Century,' June 1883.

"During the last ten years the exports of linen yarn from England have decreased steadily every year, until they are less than a half of what they were a decade ago.'-' British Statistical Abstracts,' 1882.

They employed 4000

workmen, who are thus thrown out of employment. It is said seventy millions of yards of linen were spun daily in their works. When Germans read of this displacement of home produce by theirs, and see so many of our captalists with their works in the Fatherland, how they must smile at the homilies we address to them on the folly of protection! Mr Jacoby, M.P., another manufacturer who has opened a branch in Germany, said in a recent speech at Alfreton-" When Prince Bismarck put up the duties on cotton goods and lace curtains, it was impossible for these goods to be made in Nottingham, I therefore opened a house in Germany;" on which the Times' remarked-"Owing to foreign duties, it is more profitable to send Nottingham machines abroad and work them there, than to continue working them at home." Here is an actual free-trader, who represents in the British Parliament a constituency of working men, employing foreign labour, to

I

1 When Sir John Macdonald was in England, he was waited on by a body of gentlemen who were anxious Canada should revert to a free-trade policy. After patiently hearing them to the end, he said, "I know Canada; you do not. know the marvellous change which has occurred since she adopted a tariff;" and when concluding, he told them that "the proposals of the Fair-Trade League to have free trade with our colonies and dependencies, and protection against the rest of the world, were in the highest sense patriotic."

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the interest on loans, and divi-
dends on
British investments in
foreign countries, estimated
60 millions; and as, of course,
they do not do so in specie, the
excess of their export over what
we send them, plus the charges
and profit, if any, is merely a re-
mittance in payment of a debt due
for something else. Driven from
their position by such figures as
these, one-sided free-traders con-
tend that, let that be as it may,
the growing excess of the import
over the export, inasmuch as it
shows foreign countries are getting
more and more indebted to us,
only points to increased national
wealth. Is this certain? Is there
not strong reason to believe that
we have, as Mr. Medley appears
to admit in his controversy with
Lord Penzance, been recently part-
ing with foreign securities? but
whether or not, it is not with the
accumulation of wealth in the
hands of a few we are here con-
cerned, but with industrial pro-
gress and the wellbeing of the
masses. Lord Penzance, in his
reply to Mr. Medley in the Nine-
teenth Century' of last September,
shows the absurdity of our trying
to persuade ourselves that accumu-
lation of wealth (if indeed it be
accumulating) from such sources
is indicative of increased national
prosperity. He says:-

"Imports are paid for, he (Mr Medley) says, either by the export of merchandise or by securities. Be it so. In the word 'security' he includes, I presume, bills of exchange, which I have shown to be the ordinary method of payment in point of fact, and then what does it all come to? Why, nothing but this; that imports are paid for somehow, either by goods or securities, or something of value. All this is plain and simple enough as a matter of reasoning and experience, but let me imagine a state of things which will illustrate it in a practical

light. Suppose the great American millionaire Mr Vanderbilt had been able and willing to buy the entire Isle of Man, and built himself a palace luxury, importing everything that there, and lived a life of opulence and such a life demanded from England or from abroad. If he lived there to the age of Methuselah, what was there to prevent his spending his vast income in the purchase of foreign imports, without exporting a single bale of goods, paying his way by bills drawn on America, representing the earnings of the New York Central Railroad?"

Having regard to the interest of the working classes, what does the decrease in the export, and rapid increase in the import of manufactured goods, but too clearly point to? It points to diminished work for them. That America for instance, aided by her protective system, and assisted by British capital, the interest on which she pays by enormous importations of grain as well as manufactures, is not only manufacturing for herself much she formerly took from us, but is sending, in spite of having to pay double what we do for labour, her manufactures to compete with ours, and that successfully, in our home and foreign markets! A startling and flat contradiction to the dictum of the Cobden school, "that duties imposed for the protection of home industries, increase the cost of production, and make it more difficulty for us to compete with foreign producers;" for be it observed, it is only since American industries have been by a high tariff protected, they have been able to compete with ours. If the excess of the import over the export is a certain proof of increasing national wealth, it follows that the greater the amount of that wealth, and the excess, the greater should be that we shall only have attained the zenith of our prosperity when we have ceased to export, and im

port all we require from abroad! but what then becomes of the freetrade contention, "that every export of goods must be balanced by an import of goods?"

If further evidence were wanted of the utter collapse of the system, it is furnished in the ever-increasing number of manufacturing capitalists who have, in recent years, been driven by it to seek in foreign countries the fair play they are denied at home. Mr Porter, of the United States Tariff Commission, tells us :—

"The shares of the leading flaxmills in Germany are 20 and 22 per cent above par. The shares of the ten principal flax-mills in Belfast are 58 per cent below par.'-'Nineteenth Century.'

In 1886 the firm of Messrs Marshall & Co., established 100 years ago in Holbeck, Leeds, and the largest flax-spinners in Europe, owing to keen competition from abroad, closed their works, and have gone to establish new mills in Massachusetts, taking with them their capital and many of their "I found shoddy manufacturers old hands. They employed 4000 from Batby and Dewsbury established workmen, who are thus thrown in Aachen, Prussia; Lancashire and out of employment. It is said Scottish spinners in Rouen; Leicester- seventy millions of yards of linen shire hosiery manufacturers in Saxony; Yorkshire wool-combing establishments in Rheims; Dundee jute-mills in Dunkerque; all-wool-stuff manufacturers in Roubaix; English iron and steel mills in Belgium; and English woollen mills in Holland. Removing English capital to the Continent has secured a profitable home market, while England was near with widely open ports to serve as a

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dumping ground, to unload surplus goods made by foreign labour superintended by English skill. In this way the English markets are swamped, and her labour undersold. Let English authorities tell the result.

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were spun daily in their works. When Germans read of this displacement of home produce by theirs, and see so many of our captalists with their works in the Fatherland, how they must smile. at the homilies we address to them on the folly of protection !1 Mr

Jacoby, M.P., another manufacturer who has opened a branch in Germany, said in a recent speech at Alfreton-" When Prince Bismarck put up the duties on cotton goods and lace curtains, it was impossible for these goods to be made in Nottingham, I therefore opened a house in Germany;" on which the Times' remarked-"Owing to foreign duties, it is more profitable to send Nottingham machines abroad and work them there, than to continue working them at home." Here is an actual free-trader, who represents in the British Parliament a constituency of working men, employing foreign labour, to

I

1 When Sir John Macdonald was in England, he was waited on by a body of gentlemen who were anxious Canada should revert to a free-trade policy. After patiently hearing them to the end, he said,-"I know Canada; you do not. know the marvellous change which has occurred since she adopted a tariff;" and when concluding, he told them that "the proposals of the Fair-Trade League to have free trade with our colonies and dependencies, and protection against the rest of the world, were in the highest sense patriotic."

at

the interest on loans, and dividends on British investments in foreign countries, estimated 60 millions; and as, of course, they do not do so in specie, the excess of their export over what we send them, plus the charges and profit, if any, is merely a remittance in payment of a debt due for something else. Driven from their position by such figures as these, one-sided free-traders contend that, let that be as it may, the growing excess of the import over the export, inasmuch as it shows foreign countries are getting more and more indebted to us, only points to increased national wealth. Is this certain? Is there not strong reason to believe that we have, as Mr. Medley appears to admit in his controversy with Lord Penzance, been recently parting with foreign securities? but whether or not, it is not with the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few we are here concerned, but with industrial progress and the wellbeing of the masses. Lord Penzance, in his reply to Mr. Medley in the Nineteenth Century' of last September, shows the absurdity of our trying to persuade ourselves that accumulation of wealth (if indeed it be accumulating) from such sources is indicative of increased national prosperity. He says:

"Imports are paid for, he (Mr Medley) says, either by the export of merchandise or by securities. Be it so. In the word 'security' he includes, I presume, bills of exchange, which I have shown to be the ordinary method of payment in point of fact, and then what does it all come to? Why, nothing but this; that imports are paid for somehow, either by goods or securities, or something of value. All this is plain and simple enough as a matter of reasoning and experience, but let me imagine a state of things which will illustrate it in a practical

light. Suppose the great American millionaire Mr Vanderbilt had been able and willing to buy the entire Isle there, and lived a life of opulence and of Man, and built himself a palace luxury, importing everything that such a life demanded from England or from abroad. If he lived there to the age of Methuselah, what was there to prevent his spending his vast income in the purchase of foreign imports, without exporting a single bale of goods, paying his way by bills drawn on America, representing the earnings of the New York Central Railroad?"

Having regard to the interest of the working classes, what does the decrease in the export, and rapid increase in the import of manufactured goods, but too clearly point to? It points to diminished work for them. That America for instance, aided by her protective system, and assisted by British capital, the interest on which she pays by enormous importations of grain as well as manufactures, is not only manufacturing for herself much she formerly took from us, but is sending, in spite of having to pay double what we do for labour, her manufactures to compete with ours, and that successfully, in our home and foreign markets! A startling and flat contradiction to the dictum of the Cobden school, "that duties imposed for the protection of home industries, increase the cost of production, and make it more difficulty for us to compete with foreign producers;" for be it observed, it is only since American industries have been by a high tariff protected, they have been able to compete with ours. If the excess of the import over the export is a certain proof of increasing national wealth, it follows that the greater the excess, the greater should be the amount of that wealth, and that we shall only have attained the zenith of our prosperity when we have ceased to export, and im

port all we require from abroad! but what then becomes of the freetrade contention, "that every export of goods must be balanced by an import of goods?"

If further evidence were wanted of the utter collapse of the system, it is furnished in the ever-increasing nuinber of manufacturing capitalists who have, in recent years, been driven by it to seek in foreign countries the fair play they are denied at home. Mr Porter, of the United States Tariff Commission, tells us :—

"I found shoddy manufacturers from Batby and Dewsbury established in Aachen, Prussia; Lancashire and Scottish spinners in Rouen; Leicestershire hosiery manufacturers in Saxony; Yorkshire wool-combing establishments in Rheims; Dundee jute-mills in Dunkerque; all-wool-stuff manufacturers in Roubaix; English iron and steel mills in Belgium; and English woollen mills in Holland. Removing English capital to the Continent has secured a profitable home market, while England was near with widely open ports to serve as a

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dumping ground, to unload surplus goods made by foreign labour superintended by English skill. In this way the English markets are swamped, and her labour undersold. Let English authorities tell the result.

"During the last twenty years of this century the linen industry of Germany has increased 300 per cent.' -MULHALL.

"During the last twenty years the linen industry of Great Britain has decreased 18 per cent.'- Nineteenth Century,' June 1883.

"During the last ten years the exports of linen yarn from England have decreased steadily every year, until they are less than a half of what they were a decade ago. British Statistical Abstracts,' 1882.

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Massachusetts, taking with them gone to establish new mills in their capital and many of their old hands. They employed 4000 workmen, who are thus thrown out of employment. It is said seventy millions of yards of linen were spun daily in their works. When Germans read of this displacement of home produce by theirs, and see so many of our captalists with their works in the Fatherland, how they must smile at the homilies we address to them on the folly of protection!

Mr

Jacoby, M.P., another manufacturer who has opened a branch in Germany, said in a recent speech at Alfreton-" When Prince Bismarck put up the duties on cotton goods and lace curtains, it was impossible for these goods to be made in Nottingham, I therefore opened a house in Germany;" on which the Times' remarked-"Owing to foreign duties, it is more profitable to send Nottingham machines abroad and work them there, than to continue working them at home." Here is an actual free-trader, who represents in the British Parliament a constituency of working men, employing foreign labour, to

I

1 When Sir John Macdonald was in England, he was waited on by a body of gentlemen who were anxious Canada should revert to a free-trade policy. After patiently hearing them to the end, he said. "I know Canada; you do not. know the marvellous change which has occurred since she adopted a tariff;" and when concluding, he told them that "the proposals of the Fair-Trade League to have free trade with our colonies and dependencies, and protection against the rest of the world, were in the highest sense patriotic."

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