Page:Karl Marx - Wage Labor and Capital - tr. Harriet E. Lothrop (1902).djvu/82

 turned protectionist, at a moment when more than ever free trade seemed a necessity for her. The change was no doubt absurd; but it may be explained. While Germany had been a corn-exporting country, the whole agricultural interest, not less than the whole shipping trade, had been ardent free traders. But in 1874, instead of exporting, Germany required large supplies of corn from abroad. About that time, America began to flood Europe with enormous supplies of cheap corn; wherever they went, they brought down the money revenue yielded by the land, and consequently its rent; and from that moment, the agricultural interest, all over Europe, began to clamor for protection. At the same time, manufacturers in Germany were suffering from the effect of the reckless overtrading brought on by the influx of the French milliards, while England, whose trade, ever since the crisis of 1866, had been in a state of chronic depression, inundated all accessible markets with goods unsalable at home and offered abroad at ruinously low prices. Thus it happened that German manufacturers, though depending, above all, upon export, began to see in protection a means of securing to themselves the exclusive supply of the home market. And the government, entirely in the hands of the landed aristocracy and squirearchy, was only too glad to profit by this circumstance, in order to benefit the receivers of the rent of land, by offering protective duties to both landlords and manufacturers. In 1878, a highly protective tariff was enacted both for agricultural products and for manufactured goods.

The consequence was that henceforth the exportation of German manufactures was carried on at the direct cost of the home consumers. Wherever possible, "rings" or "trusts were formed to regulate the export trade and