The pre-war tariffist argued, when he dealt with the problem, that
tariffs would suffice at will to keep out manufactured goods and let in
only raw material. To that the answer was simple. An unbroken conversion
of the whole yield of exports and freight returns and interest on
foreign investments into imported raw material to be wholly converted
into new products, mainly for export, was something utterly beyond the
possibilities. It would mean a rate of expansion of exports never
attained and not only not attainable but not desirable. On such a
footing, the producing and exporting country would never concretely
taste of its _profit_, which is to be realised, if at all, only in
consumption of imported goods and foods. It is no less plainly
impossible to discriminate by classes between kinds of manufactured
imports on the plea that inequality in the exchanges gives the foreign
competitor an advantage in terms of the relatively lower wage-rate paid
by him while his currency value is falling. Any such advantage, in the
terms of the case, must be held to accrue to all forms of production
alike, and cannot possibly be claimed to accrue in the manufacture of
one thing as compared with another, as fabric gloves in comparison with
gold leaf. In a word, the refusal of protection to gold leaf is an
admission that the argument from inequality of currency exchanges counts
for nothing in the operation of the Safeguarding of Industries Bill. In
the case of any other import, then, the argument falls.


MEMBERS ONE OF ANOTHER

But that is not all. The case of Russia alone has brought home to all
capable of realising an economic truth the fact that the economic
collapse of any large mass of population which had in the past entered
into the totality of international trade is a condition of proportional