Page:Karl Marx - Wage Labor and Capital - tr. Harriet E. Lothrop (1902).djvu/79

 was continued for several years after the repeal of the Corn Laws. Thus protection to the silk manufacture (the only one which had still to fear foreign competition) was prolonged for a series of years and then granted in another, positively infamous form; while the other textile industries were subjected to the Factory Act, which limited the hours of labor of women, young persons and children, the silk trade was favored with considerable exceptions to the general rule, enabling them to work younger children, and to work the children and young persons longer hours, than the other textile trades. The monopoly that the hypocritical free traders repealed with regard to the foreign competitors, that monopoly they created anew at the expense of the health and lives of English children.

But no country will again be able to pass from protection to free trade at a time when all, or nearly all branches of its manufactures can defy foreign competition in the open market. The necessity of the change will come long before such a happy state may be even hoped for. That necessity will make itself evident in different trades at different times; and from the conflicting interests of these trades, the most edifying squabbles, lobby intrigues, and parliamentary conspiracies will arise. The machinist, engineer, and shipbuilder may find that the protection granted to the iron master raises the price of his goods so much that his export trade is thereby, and thereby alone, prevented; the cotton-cloth manufacturer might see his way to driving English cloth out of the Chinese and Indian markets, but for the high price he has to pay for the yarn, on account of protection to spinners; and so forth. The moment a branch of national industry has completely conquered the home market, that moment exportation becomes a necessity to it,