each other, for the sale of their products, in a distant market,

with constant, and necessary, decline of price.

So, too, is it with food. -the rice producers of India and Carolina obtaining little to eat, and being, like the cotton producers of both, obliged to compete with each other for the sale of the little they have to sell. The trader desires to produce competition for the sale of all the raw materials of manufactures, food, cotton, and labor-the greater that competition, the larger being the proportion that falls to him, and the greater being his profits.

So, too, is it with corn the American price of which, for forty years, continued steadily to fall.* Why should this be so? Because the inability to make a market on, or near, the land, produces a necessity for competing with Germany, Russia, Egypt, and Italy, for the sale of food, with injury to all. The greater the competition for the sale of the rude products of the earth, the larger is the proportion of the trader, and the greater is the tendency towards the slavery of man.

Throughout Central and Northern Europe, there is an universal tendency towards competition for the purchase of labor, and of the rude products of the earth; and therefore it is, that land is there increasing in value, and becoming divided, as men become more free. Throughout the countries that follow in the train of England, there is a growing competition for the sale of labor and raw materials; and therefore it is, that, in all of them, land declines in value, and becomes consolidated, as man is more and more enslaved.

§ 8. We are told, however, that all nations may now manufacture, if they wish that machinery may be exported-that artisans are free to go abroad-and that the people of England rejoice in seeing the extension of manufactures. All people, too, are free to read; but, before they read, they must be taught. The growth of the habit of association comes with wealth; but wealth, itself, can never grow, under a system tending to exhaustion of the soil. That man may acquire wealth, he must have a scientific agriculture, which always follows, and never precedes, manufactures. By forbidding the existence of the latter, cen* See ante, vol. ii. p. 189.

tralization forbids the creation of the former; and hence it is, that the decline in the value of land and labor becomes more rapid from year to year, in all the unprotected countries of the world.

Raw materials and labor gravitate towards the centre; and the greater their tendency so to do, the greater must be the competition for the sale of labor, and the less the power, at the centre, for its purchase decline in the prices of all the raw materials of manufactures, at the centre, corresponding with the increase in the competition for their sale that is thus produced. Such were the effects so clearly pointed out by Adam Smith, as resulting, necessarily, from a system based upon the idea of having but a single workshop for the world. That such results have been produced, is proved by the fact, that the agricultural laborer of England receives but a shilling and a half of his day's labor, a fifth of which goes for the rent of his cottageleaving him, on an average, not more than a shilling with which to purchase food and clothing for his wife, his children, and himself. Deprived of competition for the purchase of his products at home, the distant farmer and planter find little abroad -declination in the value of their own land and labor being followed by similar effects elsewhere. They are thus effectually prevented from accumulating the wealth required for promoting the growth of that power of combination, so indispensable to the maintenance of competition with advanced communiThe following is given as the distribution of the wages of an English field-laborer:

Here are ten cents per week for meat, sixteen cents per week for fuel, and a dollar and twenty cents for bread, for a family; yet is the condition of these poor people comfortable, compared with that of tens of thousands of hand-loom weavers, always receiving low wages, even when employed, and often wholly deprived of employment. It is comfortable, compared with that of the hundreds of thousands who fill the cellars, or occupy the lanes and alleys, of London and Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow; all of whom are competitors for the sale of labor, leaving the buyers to fix the price.

ties, for the purchase of rude products, and for the sale of finished articles. Such is the difficulty that must everywhere exist, however favorable may be the circumstances in which a nation naturally finds itself. Added to all this, however, are the monopolies now, everywhere, being established, by means of international copyright and patent laws-securing to the communities that make improvements their exclusive use.* Piled on this, there being the wonderful power exercised by combined traders, competition for the purchase of labor, as will readily be seen, can arise in no country whatsoever, in which the whole people do not unite together for their own protection against a centralization which, as we are told, "enables a few of the most wealthy capitalists to overwhelm all foreign competition" large capitals thus becoming "instruments of warfare against the competing capital of other countries," and producing that competition for the sale of land and labor, which destroys the proprietor, and enslaves the laborer.†

Combination of action is required for resistance to invading armies, and equally is it required for resistance to the system here described. The army, having secured its plunder, may retreat; and, in a little time, all will be as it was before. Invasions of traders, bent upon annihilating the power of association, produce effects more permanent-reducing a country to a state of barbarism, extrication from which is scarcely to be hoped for.

* The patent laws of Great Britain have been recently extended over the hundred millions of the people of Hindostan.

For the Parliamentary document in which these ideas are fully set forth, see ante, vol. i. p. 420.

"During the present year, the prices of iron in America have been steadily declining; best brands having fallen about $5, and inferior qualities from $7 to $10, during the year. In the last three years, the make of iron in America has very largely increased: from 1853 to 1855, the annual production is believed to have been doubled, or to have increased from 500,000 tons to 1,000,000 tons, and that it is since increasing at fully 200,000 tons per annum. * * * These facts have led some interested in the trade to the conclusion, that it would be sound policy for the Staffordshire ironmasters to reduce prices next quarter-day £2 per ton, with a view to regain the command of the American market, and to get rid of the competitors who are supplanting English iron in the United States. Doubtless, if the price of iron could be reduced to that extent for some considerable period, it would ruin many of the American manufacturers, and would for a time open the way to a large demand for English iron."-London Mining Journal, Dec. 1856.

§ 9. Freedom of commerce has, as we are told, much advanced. What, however, have been the causes of that advance ? Forty years since, the British navigation laws were still continued, and in their fullest force their object being that of preventing competition for the purchase and transport of the rude produce of the earth. They have now ceased to exist; but why? Because of determined resistance on the part of the United States, Prussia, and other countries. Forty years since, Germany exported wool and imported cloth-paying twelve cents per pound, for the privilege of passing it through the looms of England. That charge is now no longer made. Why? Because Germany established competition with England for the purchase of wool. At that time, cotton, and all other raw materials, paid duty; but, step by step, as France, Germany, Russia, the United States, and other countries, became competitors for their purchase, the duties disappeared. Every advance towards the emancipation. of international commerce, thus far made, has been directly consequent upon efforts made by the agricultural nations for the establishment of competition, at home, for the purchase of labor, and of the rude products of the soil. Every advance towards freedom, among men, in the last forty years, has resulted from a determination to resist the trading centralization sought, by Britain, to be established. Every descent towards slavery is to be found among the people who have submitted to the system. To these things there is, and can be, no exception slavery being a direct consequence of exclusive agriculture, and freedom always resulting from that diversification in the modes of employment required for developing the individual faculties of man. The road to perfect freedom of commerce, domestic and international, is, therefore, to be found in the adoption of the system advocated by Colbert, and maintained by France that one, by

means of which men are enabled to combine their efforts for developing the powers of the earth-for becoming masters of nature for increasing the proportion borne by fixed to movable capital and for producing that state of things, in which competition for the purchase of labor will be universal, while competition for its sale will cease to have existence.

§ 10. The agricultural nations of Europe, it may be thought, profit by the poverty of the Hindoo, the wretchedness of the

Irishman, and the slavery of the negro-competition for the purchase of cotton wool being thereby diminished, and its price reduced. At what cost, however, do they obtain this profit? The total production of cotton but little exceeds a pound and a half per head; and, were the price doubled, it would require, for its purchase, an additional contribution, amounting to ten or fifteen cents per head. On the other hand, the people of India, and of the United States, unable to make a market on their land for its products, are obliged to force their rice, wheat, corn, flour, and pork, upon the one great central market, to the heavy loss of the farmers of Poland and Russia, Italy and Egypt. The price of the whole product being fixed by that of the trivial quantity they export, the thousand millions of bushels produced in the United States, are forced to submit to whatever reduction is produced in the central market by Russian and Turkish competition. The production of such competition being the object of trading centralization, its effects are seen in the fact, that the purely agricultural nations of the world are unable to compete for the purchase of the labor of either domestic or foreign artisans; while the latter, in turn, are unable to purchase food. Stoppage of circulation anywhere, tending to produce stoppage everywhere, the land and labor of the world pay in dollars for imaginary advantages that count by half-pence. The complete establishment of the cotton manufacture in the United States, would enable their people wholly to withdraw from competition with the Russian farmer, for the sale of grain-thereby adding hundreds of millions to the money value of Russian crops, and enabling their producers to make large demand for cotton, which now they cannot purchase. The emancipation of Turkey from a system under which her manufactures have disappeared, would enable her to restore to cultivation the rich soils which are now abandoned, and to develop the mineral wealth that everywhere abounds. Producing much, she would then have much to sell, and much to buy-supplying wool to Germany, while relieving her of competition for the sale of wheat.

Look where we may, we find a perfect harmony of real interests. all nations being concerned in the universal adoption of a policy tending to the promotion of competition for the purchase of the raw materials of manufactures-labor and skill, wool and cotton, hides and corn.