English manufactures, for say twenty-five years, with the almost absolute certainty that at the end of the twenty-five years she will be able to hold her own in the open market of the world. Which of the two will be the cheapest and the shortest? That is the question. If you want to go from Glasgow to London, you can take the parliamentary train at a penny a mile and travel at the rate of twelve miles an hour. But you do not; your time is too valuable, you take the express, pay twopence a mile and do forty miles an hour. Very well, the Americans prefer to pay express fare and to go express speed." My Scotch Free Trader had not a word in reply.
"Protection, being a means of artificially manufacturing manufacturers," may, therefore, appear useful not only to an incompletely developed capitalist class still struggling with feudalism; it may also give a lift to the rising capitalist class of a country which, like America, has never known feudalism, but which has arrived at that stage of development where the passage from agriculture to manufactures becomes a necessity. America, placed in that situation, decided in favor of protection. Since that decision was carried out, the five and twenty years of which I spoke to my fellow-traveller have about passed, and, if I was not wrong, protection ought to have done its task for America, and ought to be now becoming a nuisance.
That has been my opinion for some time. Nearly two years ago, I said to a protectionist American: "I am convinced that if America goes in for Free Trade she will in ten years have beaten England in the market of the world."
Protection is at best an endless screw, and you never know when you have done with it. By protecting one industry, you directly or indirectly hurt all others, and
