Page:Forgotten Man and Other Essays.djvu/96

88 (H) That Farmers Gain by Protection, because it Draws so many Laborers out of Competition with them.

121. Since the farmers pay the taxes by which this operation is supposed to be produced, a simple question is raised, viz., how much can one afford to pay to buy off competition in his business? He cannot afford to pay anything unless he has a monopoly which he wants to consolidate. Our farmers are completely open to competition on every side. The immigration of farmers every three or four years exceeds all the workers in all the protected trades. Hence the farmers, if they take the view which is recommended to them, instead of gaining any ground, are face to face with a task which gets bigger and bigger the longer they work at it. If one man should support another in order to get rid of the latter's competition as a producer, that would be the case where the taxpayer supports soldiers, idle pensioners, paupers, etc. A protected manufacturer, however, by the hypothesis, is not simply supported in idleness, but he is carrying on a business the losses of which must be paid by those who buy off his competition in their own production. On the other hand, when farmers come to market, they are in free competition with several other sources of supply. Hence, if they did any good to agricultural industry by hiring the artisans to go out of competition with them, they would have to share the gain with all their competitors the world over while paying all the expense of it themselves.

122. The movement of men over the earth and the movement of goods over the earth are complementary operations. Passports to stop the men and taxes to stop the goods would be equally legitimate. Since it is, once for all, a fact that some parts of the earth have advantages for one thing and other parts for other things, men avail