Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 by Various
page 72 of 207 (34%)
page 72 of 207 (34%)
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were thus established the three facts that wages were higher in the Free
Trade country than in the European tariffed countries; that real wages here were higher than those of the protected industries in the United States, and that Protection was thus so far from being a condition of good wages as to be ostensibly a certain condition of bad. All the same, high wages in America and low wages on the Continent were alike given as reasons why we should have a protective tariff. There stands out, then, the fact that the payment of lower wages by the protected foreign manufacturer was one of the tariffist arguments of the pre-war period, when there was no question of unequal currency exchanges. To-day, the argument from unequal currency exchanges is that in the country where the currency value is sinking in terms of other currencies the manufacturer is getting his labour cheaper, seeing that wages are slow to follow increase in cost of living. Both pleas alike evade the primary truth that if country A trades with country B at all, it must receive _some_ goods in payment for its exports, save in a case in which, for a temporary purpose, it may elect to import gold. But that fact is vital and must be faced if the issue is to be argued at all. Unless, then, the defender of the occasional tariff system contends that that system will rectify trade conditions by keeping out goods which are made at an artificial advantage, amounting to what is called "unfair competition," and letting in only the goods not so produced, he is not facing the true fiscal problem at all. Either he admits that exports and freight charges and other credit claims must be balanced by imports or he denies it. If he denies it, the discussion ceases: there is no use in arguing further. If he admits it, and argues that by his tariff he can more or less determine _what_ shall be imported, the debate soon narrows itself to one issue. |
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