Page:Tales in Political Economy by Millicent Garrett Fawcett.djvu/112

 as was necessary; or, in other words, a heavy poll-tax would have been imposed in order to please a small section of the inhabitants, and to enable them to confine a certain portion of the capital and labour of the island to an industry in which they were less productive of wealth than they would be if they were applied to the manufacture of matting. In the same way, the matting manufacturers of San Francisco could only have been saved the loss consequent on the introduction of the matting from Isle Pleasant by a similar process of distributing a much heavier loss over all the consumers of matting at San Francisco. It should also be remembered, that the loss inflicted on special classes of manufacturers by foreign competition is for the most part only temporary. It drives capital and labour to the industries in which they are most productive, and eventually by this means the very men who at first were most injured by foreign competition are frequently among the chief gainers by it. Whereas the loss inflicted by shutting