view; and though unjust, partial, and impolitic, there is no doubt that Congress has the constitutional right thus to derange industry by partial laws. 267. One plea on which protective tariffs, as such interferences are called, have been justified, is that thus only can we have diversified industries. If this were true, it would really justify the protectionist system-for diversified industries are a great benefit to a nation. But in the next section I shall show you that so far from favoring a diversity of industries, protective tariffs have really, in our country, discouraged and destroyed many small industries, and created a powerful and to the people irresistible tendency of both capital and labor toward a few great industries. XXVII. OF DIVERSITY OF INDUSTRIES. 268. That nation or people is happiest which has the most widely diversified industries; because its members will be led inevitably to the exercise of great and varied ingenuity and enterprise, while at the same time capital, the fruit and reward of labor, will be more equally distributed among the population than in a country where but a few industries are pursued. 269. Take, for instance, a region devoted to grazing, or to the cultivation of cotton only, and you will find the mass of the people dull and subordinate, and the wealth in few hands. In like manner examine a district devoted mainly to the production of crude iron, coal, or cotton fabrics, and you will find the mass of the people subordinate, in poor circumstances, comparatively ignorant and unenterprising, and not ingenious, while the greater part of the wealth of the community is concentrated in a few hands. 270. But find a district where the people are engaged in a multitude of small industries, and you are sure to find wealth more equally divided, comfort more widely diffused, and the people more enterprising, intelligent, ingenious, and independent. 271. To contrive a system of laws, therefore, whose tendency and effect would be to draw large numbers from the smaller industries which they would naturally pursue, and concentrate their labors upon a single pursuit, would be to degrade the character of such a population, by making it less ingenious, enterprising, and independent than before; and this the more if this single industry should be of a kind which required, in the mass of those engaged in it, but little skill or thought, and at the same time required that much capital should be devoted to it. For in that case not only would the character of the people deteriorate, but wealth would more and more be drawn away from the smaller industries, and concentrated in the larger, and the mass of the people would become in time less prosperous and comfortable. 272. Now this grave injury has been done to large classes of our population by what is wrongly called the system of "Protection to Home Industry," which is simply an interference with the right of free exchange. 273. To comprehend how "Protective" laws, so called, degrade home industry, and prevent diversity of industries, I must first explain to you the natural progress of industry in any country—that course which the Creator has laid out by what are called Natural Laws. 274. When a new country begins to receive population, men being scarce and land abundant, it is inevitable that wise men will turn to industries which require for their prosecution the least amount of labor, because the rate of wages will be high, laborers being few. Hence in our new territories grazing is at first a favorite and profitable occupation. As population increases, lands rise in price, and farming is begun; and presently villages make their appearance, where blacksmiths, carpenters, masons, wagon-makers, and shopkeepers gather, to supply the farmers' needs, and afford him for at least a part of his surplus products a near market. Capital or surplus rapidly increases in a new country; as population continues to stream in, new industries are devised, and the region which at first imported every thing except its meat becomes more and more self-sustaining; for capital, intelligently directed, spies out the wants of the people and the natural resources and advantages of the land; and it is not long before even some articles of manufacture begin to be exported to neighboring districts. 275. By this time roads and perhaps railroads have been built, and, by lessening the cost of transportation and increasing production, the cost of living has been greatly cheapened; new enterprises no longer offer such great rewards as at first to capital, and the rate of interest has consequently fallen; increasing population has lowered the rate of wages-without, however, necessarily lessening the comfort of the laborers, for all prices are also less, as you have seen. Finally, there is a numerous class of hired laborers, whereas in the beginning almost every man was his own employer. At this stage what we call manufactures naturally arise. Capital, seeking new means of profitable employment, provides machinery, raw material, and wages, for the use of laborers also seeking new ways to earn a living. 276. This is the natural course of a country's industries where arbitrary and partial laws are not used to force both capital and labor out of the channels Nature has provided. In this natural development the ingenuity and enterprise of the people have constant exercise; capital is for a long time pretty equally diffused, because there will be a great and increasing diversity of small industries; the character of the population will be high, its independence great, and prosperity will be general. The greater operations of industry, which require extreme concentration of both capital and labor, will be long deferred, until at last the country's natural resources are fully explored, and the accumulation of wealth and the increase of population are both so great as to lead naturally and safely to such employment for both. The stages of development in such a case will be slow, but sure, and there will be no great crisis or panic, nor any marked lowering of the condition of the people. Their ingenuity and desire for prosperity would lead them to devise new industries and control new enterprises as fast as capital and labor offered to prosecute them; and it is an important consideration that these new enterprises would grow naturally out of the conditions of the country, as to climate and productions, and the wants of the people. 277. Unfortunately this natural and sound growth is not permitted. Different motives, among which are national pride, a desire for more showy production, the subtle fallacy of a "home market," so called, but mainly the greed for wealth and supremacy in individuals, unite to bring about the adoption of unjust and partial laws, enacted to favor some special branch of industry. These laws, under the beguiling name of "Protection to Home Industry," lay heavy duties on a few foreign products, in order to enable those who produce these articles at home to charge a higher price for them, and to give them the command of the home market-which means only, as must be plain to you, to compel the mass of the people to buy of the favored individuals at a higher price than they could, but for these laws, buy for elsewhere; in other words, to impede the free exchange of products. 278. For instance, New England capitalists-helped, I believe, originally by some Southern men-began to clamor for duties on foreign-made cotton goods; and, contrary to the wish of the first promoters of cotton manufactures, a high duty was put on the importation of foreign calicoes, sheetings, and other manufactures of cotton. 279. Of course, a duty on the foreign product is a bounty on the home product. The home manufacturer raises his price to the price at which the foreigner can sell after he has paid the duty. A duty on calicoes, therefore, confessedly makes calico-the home as well as the foreign productdearer than it would otherwise be; and all who wear calico -all the women and children in the land, that is to say must pay more for their dresses, in order that the insignificant number engaged in making calicoes at home shall obtain their bounty. 280. Now it has never been pretended that the people of New England were starving when a duty was laid on calicoes and other cotton goods. They were, according to all accounts, an extremely industrious and ingenious people, engaged in such a multitude of small enterprises that "Yankee Notions was the generic name of a great class of small inventions and products, all useful to mankind. Capital was widely dispersed in these petty industries, for which the character of the country and its inhabitants was well fitted; large fortunes were few, and not easily accumulated, but the average of comfort, intelligence, and public spirit was uncommonly high. 281. The effect of the protective duty was, 1st, by offering an unnaturally high reward to capital, to draw that away from a number of the smaller industries, and concentrate it in a few great buildings filled with costly machinery. 2d. To draw away a large part of the laboring population from their petty industries and their country homes into large manufacturing towns, and to employments which made them more dependent and less ingenious and self-helpful than before. 282. The life of a mill or factory operative being of a kind offering few hopes of advancement, and a smaller chance of independence than intelligent and enterprising people like to submit to, the best class of the New England population. presently withdrew from it, or never entered it; but capital -then not superabundant in the country-having been diverted to manufacturing on a great scale by the "protective" duty, was made less abundant for small enterprises. The temptation of cheap and fertile lands then drew off the most enterprising population to the Western States; and the Yankee girls left the factories to fill the vacant places of those who had emigrated to the West. 283. The manufacturers, to fill the gap, began systematically to import foreigners, mostly of a low grade of intelli |