Page:Tales in Political Economy by Millicent Garrett Fawcett.djvu/12

 shows also how it is that some people are injured through the introduction of free trade.

Captain Adam was once cruising in the Indian ocean to the west of the island of Sumatra. His object was to land on a small island inhabited by the descendants of some of the first Dutch settlers in Sumatra, and to set up a communication between them and Acheen for trading purposes. The most remarkable thing about the people who inhabited this island was that they had had no intercourse with any other people for two hundred years. They were not dependent on any other nation for food, clothing, or machinery; everything that they used they made themselves; they had no trade either with Europe or with the other islands of the archipelago. So far as getting any good from mixing or trading with other people was concerned, they might as well have lived in the moon.

Captain Adam found the Srimats, as they were called, much more civilized than he had expected. They were mild, gentle, and very courteous to strangers; they lived in houses