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.